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Page added on August 2, 2017

Climate change isn’t the end of the world

Yes, the costs are not evenly spread. Some places will do better and some will do worse. The American South might be a worse place to grow wheat; Southern Canada might be a better one. In a century, Miami might find itself in approximately the same situation as the Dutch city of Rotterdam today.

But spread over a century, the costs of moving and adapting are not as imposing as they seem. Rotterdam’s dikes are expensive, but not prohibitively so. Most buildings are rebuilt about every 50 years. If we simply stopped building in flood-prone areas and started building on higher ground, even the costs of moving cities would be bearable. Migration is costly. But much of the world’s population moved from farms to cities in the 20th century. Allowing people to move to better climates in the 21st will be equally possible. Such investments in climate adaptation are small compared with the investments we will regularly make in houses, businesses, infrastructure and education.

And economics is the central question—unlike with other environmental problems such as chemical pollution. Carbon dioxide hurts nobody’s health. It’s good for plants

hot air

119 Comments on "Climate change isn’t the end of the world"

Antius on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 5:54 am

Frankly what I find most delusional in the Clogster’s stance is the belief that Europe will be the new global super-power achieving global domination using low EROI energy.

This bucks the trend of every dominant empire in history. Without exception, nations have tended to eclipse their rivals by accessing a superior source of energy, either within their borders (Oil in US, Coal in UK) or by stealing it from others (i.e the Roman empire and later, the French & Dutch empires in the Caribbean and East Indies).

Clog thinks he can phase out high EROI fossil fuels and nuclear energy and replace it with low EROI renewables and still rule the world. It doesn’t work like that.

Davy on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 6:22 am

“Clog thinks he can phase out high EROI fossil fuels and nuclear energy and replace it with low EROI renewables and still rule the world. It doesn’t work like that.”

Yea, this is true of the clogster and his fantasy future of low EROI transformation. It is also true of the self-organizing efforts of globalism. The narrative of our modernism is techno optimism in a manifest destiny of growth and development. We all have this hope that low EROI world will be clean, green, and at the same time affluent. It does not work that way. Clean and green is not affluent in the traditional sense. It can be clean and green and affluent in a spiritual sense but we will have to do away with so many comforts and distractions and get back to the hardscabble of existence. We will have to battle entropy with animal and human power. We will have to have dirty finger nails and hungry stomachs. We will have to experience raw death not sanitized death of a high tech hospital but the death up front and personal. The kind that is occurring now in the third world.

We are all heading third world. It is unclear the degree and duration of this journey but it is clear a planet has been destroyed and we are a species in overshoot. There is only one cure for that. This decline will likely be location based as much as scaled. It will follow a timeline that is not fair and is irrationally random. Chaos and decay are not rational there may be rationality in their understanding. The human part of decline will not fit our expectations. Humans like happy endings. It will follow natural law and will unfold in turbulence and random disorder.

It is our challenge to manage and message this disorder and find survival. This will be an increasingly precarious endeavor but a worthy one. None of us chose to be here. We were thrust into life and we are making the best of it. Even the worst psychopaths are a product of our evolution as a species. The coming decline will be a time of refreshed heroics. There will be new niches to fill. Some of us will profit from succession and the destruction of complexity. It pains me to see a beautiful world destroyed but I know it is nature’s way of evolution and extinction.

Cloggie on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 6:34 am

cloggie, you are another example of a fantasy extremist.

At least a I’m sticking my neck out and come with a geopolitical prediction, that in hindsight can be verified/falsified. The only mantra you can ever come up with is that one-size-fits-all abstract “collapse”.

hate, bigotry, and empire.

How can you say that, I love Europe!

And it is confederation, not empire. Imperial days are over, the 21st century will be identitarian, not Marxist.

You hate empires because you want one that you don’t have.

Not true. I have zero interest in lording again over what is now 263 million Indonesian Muslims (the largest Muslim nation on earth to date).

My only true interest is preventing Europe from becoming overrun by Muslims and Africans. And since the US deep state is promoting exactly that agenda, the US deep state needs to be destroyed. Because it promotes the destruction of Europe and European-America. And the US deep state is going to be destroyed, not in the least because an ever growing number of European-Americans want to see that happening. And that is the only reason WHY it is going to happen, not because Eurasian would want to see that happening. Trump is just an early bird, who is going to succeed while he fails. He will succeed in wrecking the deep state and its media.

You want a Europe of the past that subjugated the world in colonialism.

That’s one way of looking at it. A more realistic perspective would be that we lifted stone age-ers to a higher level. If that was a good idea remains to be seen. In hindsight it would perhaps indeed have been better that Anonymouse would continue to be an illiterate cannibal and rain-dancer, rather than a diesel-trucker and BLM-adept. Mea culpa.

You think your Eurotard civilization is the greatest thing on earth.

Everybody, including you, thinks that his own civilization is top of the bill. If however you look at the direction of migration patterns, you get a more realistic, Darwinian answer to the question who has the most attractive civilization.

Can you explain how that jives with a destroyed planet?

Please give me the GPS-coordinates of where exactly the planet is destroyed so I can go there and make a picture of it and write a blog-post about it.

You dumbasses have sat back since your asses were bailed out after being destroyed in war all the while the US has done the dirty work of empire and you profited off it.

That’s the official story, I have explained to you several times what really happened and nobody here ever seriously challenged my views. In short: WW2 was the preplanned war of the koshers, owning the US and USSR, against continental Europe. Be glad that you , the prepper, got a sneak early preview of what will soon be general knowledge, after the end of the US empire.

You profited off it while you drink your wine and eat cheese.

A preferable activity methinks, compared to running around in a far-away desert, on orders of your kosher neocon overlords, on the pretext of implementing demockressy in what is essentially a tribal world.

Gouda + Portugese port, yummie.

You are always scrabbling and when the going gets tough you will turn on each other in civil war.

And en passant created the greatest civilization on earth, everybody wants to have also but can’t create themselves.

No other nation gets more criticism and inspection from within and from without.

Unjustified, you think? Just retreat and you will see how quickly this criticism will evaporate.

That is how you find identity and self-worth through hate and condescension.

Geopolitics is one giant everlasting soccer competition. Last year team A won, this year team B, next year team C.

Cloggie on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 6:48 am

Frankly what I find most delusional in the Clogster’s stance is the belief that Europe will be the new global super-power achieving global domination using low EROI energy.

I never said that that Europe is going to be the new super power. China is going to be the number 1.

What I did say was that the rise of China will dictate Paris-Berlin-Moscow confederation and a US European-American Heartland hinterland.

Clog thinks he can phase out high EROI fossil fuels and nuclear energy and replace it with low EROI renewables

That low EROI renewables is a myth. That is certainly not true for offshore wind energy, where in my little calculation I arrive at 60:

https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/eroi-of-offshore-wind/

Please state where the calculation is wrong.

The EROI of solar is admittedly lower (perhaps 10, which is workable but not great). But there is room for vast improvement of solar EROI. Here the Dutch #1 solar guru prof. Sinke predicting efficiencies of 40-50%, rather than the current 20%, which would, mutatis mutandis, mean a doubling of solar EROI into the comfortable 20-range, absolutely fine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9J-bYcbqcY

(Don’t forget the largest of them all, the British Empire)

You are absolutely right about the link between being an early adopter of a certain energy source and geopolitical preeminence. And that will apply also for renewable energy. Early adopters (Eurasia) will end up “on top”.

Oh and we never “stole” energy. The locals didn’t have a clue what was stored below their feet and if they did, they would not have a clue of how to get it above the ground, and even is they did, what to do with it.

Davy on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 7:05 am

You and I are hopeless clog but I still like you. We are just gaming our intellect with debate. We are little different from than what the kids do on the x-box. We have our ultra-serious battles of ideas and wills. The tough ones survive and those with delicate dispositions fade away. One thing about you and I clog is we walk our talk. I know you have embraced your visions and I am living mine.

I don’t agree with you on the geopolitical but I admire an adversary who lives what he preaches. I hope some of your renewable world comes to fruition. I too want some of that but my wants are reality based not fantasy. Your fantasy world of empire is not something I admire and in my opinion it is your failing. You disguise your lust for empire and domination in BS talk of confederation. History is replete with the same efforts. Power corrupts as we have seen with the US and Europe prior to that. It is understandable because we all have hidden demons and deadly passions. Your demons and passions are for a false coming age of Euro domination.

onlooker on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 7:25 am

Some scientists do believe in absolutely catastrophic consequences of climate change. Almost all past Mass Extinction Events had something to do with climate change. As someone once said “hope is the quintessential human emotion, both the source of our greatest strength but also our greatest weakness” Life depends upon a certain set of environmental conditions conducive to life, but even more so the life currently existing is adapted to current conditions. We along with many if not all higher forms of life cannot exists if those conditions are not met. That is what is at stake with our experiment with Earth’s climate.

Antius on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 7:43 am

Weissbach (2013) calculated the unbuffered EROI of wind power to be 16, which isn’t too far from your value of 18. It does depend on the local wind climate of course.

Where your calculation goes wrong is the failure to calculate whole system EROI when buffering is included. In this case, you must employ storage to cover short-term fluctuations and back-up to cover long-term and seasonal supply fluctuations. You also need more wind turbines to cover the storage losses. At high renewable energy penetration, some power would also likely be curtailed. So instead of calculating the EROI of one power plant, you need to calculate EROI for the 3.5 power plants needed to deliver a supply that matches demand profile. You have to do this because both storage and back-up are part of the whole system you need to deliver power that is actually useful to the grid.

Unless you can demonstrate that the EROI of the whole system is greater than 7, it would be irresponsible to promote this energy source as any sort of alternative. You are basically be setting people up to starve to death.

peakyeast on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 8:23 am

There is so much whining about the intermittency of renewables like wind and sun.

All that requires are some changes to our idea about working hours, when to start energy intensive production e.t.c. All very VERY small problems compared to what problem is being solved.

But not even such a slight inconvenience is WAAAY too much to be considered… This is one of the places where I lose all sympathy for humanity.

Humanity is a bunch of frigging whining stupid kids that wants all for free and no responsibility

The real problems are overpopulation, ecosystem destruction and resource degradation – those we can whine about – because they are going to really be difficult…

Cloggie on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 8:24 am

Weissbach (2013) calculated the unbuffered EROI of wind power to be 16, which isn’t too far from your value of 18. It does depend on the local wind climate of course.

My 2017 value is 60, not 18.

Where your calculation goes wrong is the failure to calculate whole system EROI when buffering is included.

That is true, I was talking about “raw unbuffered intermittent” kWh’s. Never suggested it was anything else.

Fair enough, there your go:

round trip efficiency pumped hydro storage is 80%.

Which reduces my calculated EROI to 48, boohoo.

Q.E.D.

Oh wait… I calculated my offshore EROI=60 on the premisse that offshore wind towers will fall over after 30 years.

The Eiffel tower still hasn’t fallen over for 130 years and is expected not to do so for another 300 years.

If offshore wind towers would display the same behavior as does the Eiffel tower, my EROI would become stellar, like 500. Anyway, “to cheap to meter”.

Enjoy your meal tonight!

Antius on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 10:42 am

“My 2017 value is 60, not 18.”

Your expected EROI is higher than any other study has so far indicated. I don’t have time to trawl through numbers, but I strongly suspect that this is optimistic.

“round trip efficiency pumped hydro storage is 80%. Which reduces my calculated EROI to 48, boohoo”

Afraid not. A full EROI calculation should include the energy invested in pumped storage plants. In addition, there are energy costs in transmission.

Your usual tactic at this point is to roll out the prospect of Norwegian hydro as a pumped energy store for Europe. Is it realistic to expect Norway’s tiny electricity grid to be sufficient to absorb the power grid fluctuations from an all renewable European power grid?

Pumped storage will be capable smoothing short-term fluctuations in power supply (hours to a few days at most). It is not practical for plugging the sort of gaps that occur due to depressions, which may last weeks. It is also useless at covering inter-seasonal and inter-annual fluctuations. For that, you will need some form of back-up generation.

On top of this, an 80% storage efficiency is optimistic considering you have to transport electric power about 1000km via subsea cable to reach those Norwegian dams. Does the Norwegian transmission grid have the capacity to transmit hundreds of GW of power at peak wind output? If not, that needs to go into the EROI calculation as well.

Antius on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 10:59 am

“There is so much whining about the intermittency of renewables like wind and sun.

All that requires are some changes to our idea about working hours, when to start energy intensive production e.t.c. All very VERY small problems compared to what problem is being solved.

But not even such a slight inconvenience is WAAAY too much to be considered… This is one of the places where I lose all sympathy for humanity.

Humanity is a bunch of frigging whining stupid kids that wants all for free and no responsibility

The real problems are overpopulation, ecosystem destruction and resource degradation – those we can whine about – because they are going to really be difficult…”

The problems of attempting to live on an intermittent power supply are not trivial. Can you imagine a situation where you are getting the train to work and the power fails, leaving you stranded on that train for several days? What would it be like working in an office building in which the power fails unannounced for periods as long as days or weeks? Suddenly you have to pay people to do nothing and whatever deadlines you have go on hold. How many businesses would survive in an environment like that? Some manufactures suffer physical damage to equipment due to interruption of power supply. Food manufacturers would lose entire batches of stock were this to happen part way through an operation.

Then we have the easily overlooked problem of productivity. Manufacturers tend to operate 24/7 in order to maximise the productivity of capital equipment. If the power supply is interrupted for long periods of time, that becomes impossible.

There is a lot of energy invested in infrastructure as well. If energy supply is intermittent then societal EROI goes down, because infrastructure is less productive. Avoiding storage and using an intermittent supply merely passes the problem onto another area of society, for which the effects are often intolerable.

It would be very difficult indeed to adapt to this sort of situation.

Cloggie on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 11:07 am

Your expected EROI is higher than any other study has so far indicated. I don’t have time to trawl through numbers, but I strongly suspect that this is optimistic.

Have a brief glance then at this article from the nineties (scroll down for table):

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/1863

Danish studies, no doubt referring to onshore wind arrive at values of up to 71.43. And that was onshore, smaller nineties turbines and technologically less developed.

But even if wind was 20 (it isn’t anymore, certainly not offshore), it would be on the safe side of the energy cliff:

https://deepresource.wordpress.com/#jp-carousel-3815

Yep, it is realistic as this German professor has explained:

https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/norway-europes-green-battery/

But is will require substantial investment. But what did you expect for setting up an entire new energy base. It is going to cost several trillions over the coming three decades. But so what, on an EU budget of 18 trillion euro.

The idea is to build an energy island at Doggersbank…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOz0okqTW4M

…that will be the hub for the UK, Holland, Germany and Denmark to collect all the wind power from the North Sea and distribute it to said countries and en passant use Norway as the battery pack.

We will be needing 40 times the cables that are already installed:

https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/norned/

Personally I think it is not wise for Europe to make itself 100% dependent on a single source of storage (Norway), but instead diversify over several options (H2, NH3, compressed air, fluid car battery electrolyte and a lot of other options). But yes, Norway could become a very attractive part of the solution.

The NorNed cable had earned itself back in no-time due to leveling of power-production in an almost 100% fossil situation. NorNed has an efficiency of 95.2%:

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

Davy on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 11:22 am

Antius, your comments are rational and sober unlike our friend who is caught up in irrational exuberance. Anything too good to be true always ends up being a stretch. Cloggie is stretching the truth on every subject he posts on.

Cloggie on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 11:43 am

But you are not going to stick your neck out and say where exactly I “stretch the truth”.

All you have on offer is collapse.

The US oil business was not built up on skepticism either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeSLPELpMeM

Or the moonlanding.

Your collapse world view is build on laziness.

Does that mean that you support Antius’ idiotic plutonium world view as a model for the entire world? Now that would be really fake green.

GregT on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 11:54 am

“Geopolitics is the only interesting theme these days, not peak-oil or CC (if any), I’m sorry.”

No need to apologize Cloggie. My satirical sense of humour was obviously missed.

As I have mentioned numerous times in the past, on geopolitical issues you have done your homework. While you are to be commended on your positive outlook for humanity, infinite exponential growth, and some semblance of future BAU, at times you are way over the top in denial.

Antius on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 12:05 pm

“But even if wind was 20 (it isn’t anymore, certainly not offshore), it would be on the safe side of the energy cliff:”

Not after storage and back-up. You can expect this to eat into your EROI substantially, because as I have said before, you need to build and operate 3.5 power plants to provide the same output as one fully dispatachable power plant.

“It is going to cost several trillions over the coming three decades. But so what, on an EU budget of 18 trillion euro.”

The cost won’t stay the same. If you are using declining EROI energy to build more declining EROI energy, costs will increase steadily. Grim fact of life.

France built its entire nuclear fleet at an average cost of $2000/kW in today’s money. They did it in not much more than a decade. That was with 1970s-80s technology. The South Koreans are achieving the same build costs today using more advanced and safer designs. Instead of focusing ‘Several trillions’ of Euros on renewable fantasies, the EU would be better placed spending $400billion on a simplified mass-produced PWR and building 200GW of baseload power supply. You can then spend 6.6trillion on something else.

“The NorNed cable had earned itself back in no-time due to leveling of power-production in an almost 100% fossil situation. NorNed has an efficiency of 95.2%”

That’s impressive. But what about step-up, step-down and transmission losses at either end?

“Personally I think it is not wise for Europe to make itself 100% dependent on a single source of storage (Norway), but instead diversify over several options (H2, NH3, compressed air, fluid car battery electrolyte and a lot of other options). But yes, Norway could become a very attractive part of the solution.”

I think so too. But most of these storage solution have substantially lower efficiency than the 80% you assumed for pumped storage, though capital cost may be lower.

Must go now. I am tired after a full day of work and my BS detector is burned out through overuse.

AM on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 12:10 pm

offshore winds is a good storage technology because the water holds energy longer a few hours after sundown.

with this exception, wind power is evenly distributed through the entire earth surface. with on-land winds could possibly be cheapter to deploy and maintain than offshore

queen victoria the fat tape worm was against feminism. I’m neither for or against. I just want women to enlist and kill their way out of poverty.

http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-mt-mother-teresa-was-not-a-friend-of-the-poor-she-was-a-friend-of-poverty-she-said-that-christopher-hitchens-63-8-0857.jpg

MASTERMIND on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 12:35 pm

The US middle class will be extinct by 2035 (Federal Reserve NYC)

https://imgur.com/a/bSHfJ#04sxw3O

Apneaman on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 1:28 pm

clog, there are many thousands of blogs dedicated solely to ~~monkeypolitics~~ geopolitics that never ever mention AGW or peak oil. Why would you spend so much time here arguing against AGW and peak oil if you really did not believe they are happening or matter? It doesn’t make sense, but what does is that you know they are going down and denying them all day, every day helps (not much) to soothe your ever growing cognitive dissonance. You know what I don’t believe in? God. You can tell I don’t believe because you will never catch me going out of my way to spend my limited time and efforts on some religious blog telling the religious how wrong they are and how right I am.

Carbon Dioxide May Rob Crops Of Nutrition, Leaving Millions At Risk – August 2, 2017

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/08/02/540650904/carbon-dioxide-may-rob-crops-of-nutrition-leaving-millions-at-risk

Apneaman on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 1:36 pm

Way back grandma and grandpa were Cancers too.

Humans have been altering tropical forests for at least 45,000 years

“The first review of the global impact of humans on tropical forests in the ancient past shows that humans have been altering these environments for at least 45,000 years. This counters the view that tropical forests were pristine natural environments prior to modern agriculture and industrialization. The study, published today in Nature Plants, found that humans have in fact been having a dramatic impact on such forest ecologies for tens of thousands of years, through techniques ranging from controlled burning of sections of forest to plant and animal management to clear-cutting. Although previous studies had looked at human impacts on specific tropical forest locations and ecosystems, this is the first to synthesize data from all over the world.”

It just took a while to develop more and better reward seeking tools and to get our numbers up to hit the terminal stage. Once the human brain took that cognitive leap it was inevitable.

“The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialisation, ‘Western civilisation’ or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate. Throughout all of history and prehistory, human advance has coincided with ecological devastation.”

― John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts On Humans And Other Animals

Dredd on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 1:54 pm

“Climate change isn’t the end of the world”

Yep. There is no end to a circle.

Even utterly dead circles (The Extinction of Chesapeake Bay Islands – 2).

Davy on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 2:00 pm

Clog, I don’t care for hype. You remind me of a used car salesman with renewable energy. You remind me of a snake oil salesman on the geopolitical. One is half baked and the other is pure fiction.

Cloggie on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 2:13 pm

“You remind me of a used car salesman with renewable energy”

I take that as a compliment.

onlooker on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 2:18 pm

I think I know why Clog is so interested in Geopolitics he is curious about who will be figuratively and literally the last man standing. In humanities stand against resources shortages and climate change, survival of the fittest will be the only geopolitics going on.

Antius on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 2:36 pm

Here is a summary of analysis carried of by Dr David McKay:

https://www.withouthotair.com/c10/page_62.shtml

‘To create 48 kWh per day of offshore wind per person in the UK would
require 60 million tons of concrete and steel – one ton per person. Annual
world steel production is about 1200 million tons, which is 0.2 tons per
person in the world. During the second world war, American shipyards
built 2751 Liberty ships, each containing 7000 tons of steel – that’s a total
of 19 million tons of steel, or 0.1 tons per American. So the building of 60
million tons of wind turbines is not off the scale of achievability; but don’t
kid yourself into thinking that it’s easy. Making this many windmills is as
big a feat as building the Liberty ships.
For comparison, to make 48 kWh per day of nuclear power per person
in the UK would require 8 million tons of steel and 0.14 million tonsE of
concrete. We can also compare the 60 million tons of offshore wind hardware
that we’re trying to imagine with the existing fossil-fuel hardware
already sitting in and around the North Sea (figure 10.4). In 1997, 200
installations and 7000 km of pipelines in the UK waters of the North Sea
contained 8 million tons of steel and concrete. The newly built Langeled
gas pipeline from Norway to Britain, which will convey gas with a power
of 25 GW (10 kWh/d/p), used another 1 million tons of steel and 1 million
tons of concrete (figure 10.5).’

On top of this, if we pursue offshore wind power, we must add undersea transmission, pumped storage plants, more wind turbines to cover storage losses and backup power plants for long-term lulls. Is this something Europe can really afford to do with a failing economy?

peakyeast on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 2:50 pm

@antius: I dont say they are trivial – but they are trivial when compared to what happens if we do not adjust. At least to the AGW crowd – if not peakoil ones.

And I am fully aware of said difficulties – and many others. And of course there has to be some backup power for certain things. The future is not homogene at all – and its solutions are much more local.

And yes there are luxuries that we will have to do away with. There are MANY personal adjustments to be done to the workers for it to be possible. The same on the worlds business models, factories and so forth.

But striving towards living with intermittency a long way in reducing our energy problems and if done within social constructions instead of brute force building alt-e+storage then it will be much more achievable at large scale.

Now do we actually mean it seriously when talking about reducing CO2? And that it must be done fully and now for it to even have a chance to be worth anything?

I guess all that climate scare wasnt enough to convince anyone to even adjust by working from home (or countless other things)…Its obviously – deduced from the effort actually done – not important at all since we cant even change a small workers pattern to mitigate it or much of anything else.

😉

Davy on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 3:26 pm

“But striving towards living with intermittency a long way in reducing our energy problems and if done within social constructions instead of brute force building alt-e+storage then it will be much more achievable at large scale.”

With my understanding of systems and intermittency it is likely beyond the scale of adaptability of moderns both with behavior and economy. It may be possible in smaller arrangements but wide scale adjustments I feel are beyond the scope of our economic system. It is further outside of the realm of acceptable human behavior. People are not ready to adjust. They are clueless on what intermittency means. It would take a huge change in lifestyles and behaviors. We would in effect need to go local and decentralize. We are doing just the opposite. We are centralizing and traveling more.

I am all for a renewable based world of less affluence and more intermittency. One based on localism and decentralization. Yet, remember such a world will be much less affluent. The economic potential would be lowered and it is unclear if we could avoid a die down going the route of localism, decentralization, with intermittency. We can hardly afford a drop in living standards now. People in many locations are close to dangerous resource constraints of water, food, and energy. This would cascade with dramatic changes to globalism. We need to do it. Nature will force us to do it. Can we begin to do it now to have less pain later? I doubt it.

Cloggie on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 4:30 pm

EU policy: almost 100% renewable by 2050 or 33 years. That would be 6.6 ton per person normal steel production. 1 ton extra is not a big deal. The Australians can rub their hands and order that Porsche now.

For comparison, to make 48 kWh per day of nuclear power per person
in the UK would require 8 million tons of steel and 0.14 million tonsE of
concrete. We can also compare the 60 million tons of offshore wind hardware
that we’re trying to imagine with the existing fossil-fuel hardware
already sitting in and around the North Sea (figure 10.4).

As you have admitted yourself, the Uranium stock left is small. At the rate of 2014 consumption, 135 years:

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

But if you want to scale up and make nuclear the primary planetary energy source, we need to proceed on the plutonium path.

How on earth would you want to go about and convince a global population, that is largely anti-nuclear, that they should embrace a nuclear future in the overdrive. Plutonium is the most poisonous substance ever invented by man.

It is simply not going to happen. Chernobyl and Fukushima killed nuclear. Renewable energy has tremendous support in large parts of the world, certainly in Eurasia and they will proceed on that path. You are fighting a rearguard fight. Perhaps that in France and Britain, with their nuclear weapons programs, nuclear will continue to have a future, but not in the rest of the world.

Just watched a program on German television about the Energiewende (energy transition), with tremendous support among the German population. One key item in the German strategy is “power to gas”, to solve the storage problem:

https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/power-to-gas/

They have a project going on in Mainz to that effect…

http://www.energiepark-mainz.de/en/

Not sure where Kay got his 48 kWh/day/capita. Does it comprise everything, including heat, industry, transport and heat?

I know that I personally get along fine with a proven track record of 5 kWh per day. I have a fridge, large freezer, large television, 7 computers always on, router, lights, washing machine. Add to that 4 kWh for a private e-vehicle I do not yet have…

https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/opel-ampera-e-chevrolet-bolt/

… and on a private level I have 5+4 kWh = 9 kWh.

Add to that a few kWh per day for a heat pump sufficient to heat the living room:

https://www.amazon.com/WYS012-17-Air-Conditioner-Inverter-Ductless/dp/B01DVW6G06/ref=sr_1_2

…and I am sufficiently covered with say 9+4 kWk = 13 kWh/day to lead a relatively comfortable Western lifestyle.

As peakyeast has indicated, the public can be asked to adapt their consumption pattern to the availability of renewable energy supply. Don’t drive to grandma if the wind doesn’t blow. washing-machine likewise. This can be steered with variable energy prices, enabled by smart-meters.

Cloggie on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 4:40 pm

I don’t believe in the “last man standing” or in a massive die-off. World population will unfortunately continue to grow with another few billion and somehow manage to survive. I would prefer a world population of 1 billion too, but it is not going to happen.

Antius on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 5:56 pm

“How on earth would you want to go about and convince a global population, that is largely anti-nuclear, that they should embrace a nuclear future in the overdrive. Plutonium is the most poisonous substance ever invented by man.”

Plutonium is not the most poisonous substance in the world, although it is quite toxic. But that isn’t really an issue unless you intend to eat it or grind it into fine powder and breath it into your lungs. I wouldn’t recommend it, but why would anyone do that?

The Indians, Russians and Chinese are building new reactors as fast as they can. The complacent west lags behind. Unless these people wake up and take a serious interest in reality, they will end up either dying in thermodynamic energy collapse, or becoming and impoverished part of a global Chinese empire a few decades hence.

Cloggie on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 6:22 pm

Russia builds one reactor per year… merely to replace old capacity:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-o-s/russia-nuclear-power.aspx

China is indeed expanding but from a small base:

“China’s National Development and Reform Commission has indicated the intention to raise the percentage of China’s electricity produced by nuclear power from the current 2% to 6% by 2020 (compared to 20% in the United States and 74% in France).”

The expansion of Chinese wind power is much more impressive:

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

250 vs 58 GW by 2020.

Davy on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 6:59 pm

More Chinese malinvestment parading as impressive by the clog:

“It Can Power a Small Nation. But This Wind Farm in China Is Mostly Idle.”
http://tinyurl.com/h7fonu3
“More than 92,000 wind turbines have been built across the country, capable of generating 145 gigawatts of electricity, nearly double the capacity of wind farms in the United States. One out of every three turbines in the world is now in China, and the government is adding them at a rate of more than one per hour. But some of its most ambitious wind projects are underused. Many are grappling with a nationwide economic slowdown that has dampened demand for electricity. Others are stymied by persistent favoritism toward the coal industry by local officials and a dearth of transmission lines to carry electricity from rural areas in the north and west to China’s fastest-growing cities. That has left China unable to generate enough renewable energy to make a serious dent in air pollution and carbon emissions, despite the state-driven building spree. Even with its unmatched arsenal of turbines, China still lags the United States. Wind power now accounts for 3.3 percent of electricity generation in China, according to the nation’s National Energy Administration, compared with 4.7 percent in the United States.”

Harquebus on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 7:37 pm

“Many of these newly constructed buildings become silhouettes against the sunset that are as dark as a dead tree trunk.”
“This image is one of wasteful spending and immense economic errors. The contrast is as puzzling as it is scary. It tells us something important about the nature of the recent Chinese economic miracle: that it is fundamentally fake.”
https://mises.org/blog/china-keynesian-monster

boat on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 8:36 pm

Davy,

Your data is old. Months ago wind in the US was at 5.7.

Apneaman on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 9:11 pm

Study finds human influence in the Amazon’s third 1-in-100 year drought since 2005

https://www.skepticalscience.com/human-influence-amazon-droughts.html

Cloggie on Fri, 4th Aug 2017 3:27 am

Adding to the energy discussion…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity

Roundtrip efficiency PHS is 70-80%. In the case of far-away Norway that number will likely be closer to 70 than to 80%.

The method was first used in Italy and Switzerland around the 1890s.

These days the machinery can operate in dual-mode: generator or pump.

Most generating potential in the West has been exhausted.

The HPS is still in its infancy, also in the West. You would prefer to use fresh water, but PHS with seawater does exist in Japan. Similar projects are proposed in Hawaii, Chile and Ireland. You could of course also use under ground cavities to store water and pump it up. Proposed project in Norton, Ohio. These empty mine projects could potentially be cheaper because you do not have to build anything.

https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/06/11/unconventional-pumped-hydro-storage/

In flatland Holland there are proposals to build storage facilities at sea, by building a ring dike of 30 m high and use varying water levels for storage, scroll down to “Plan Lievense” and more concrete “Brouwersmeer”:

https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/06/11/unconventional-pumped-hydro-storage/

A very interesting new proposal is to sink large hollow sphere-shaped tanks at great depth and use not only gravity, but also increase hydro-pressure into the energy storage balance:

https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/03/04/new-wind-power-storage-method/

From the Wikipedia link:

In March 2017 the research project StEnSea (Storing Energy at Sea) announced their successful completion of a four-week test of a pumped storage underwater reservoir. In this configuration a hollow sphere submerged in deep water acts as the lower reservoir while the upper reservoir is the enclosing body of water. When a reversible turbine integrated into the sphere uses surplus electricity to pump water out of the sphere the force of the pump must act on the entire column of water above the sphere, so the deeper the sphere is located, the more potential energy it can store and convert back to electricity by letting water back in via the turbine.
As such the energy storage capacity of the submerged reservoir is not governed by the gravitational energy in the traditional sense, but rather by the vertical pressure variation.

Storage capacity hollow sphere with 30m diameter with a volume of 12,000 m³ and water depth of 700 meter: 20,000 kWh.

Estimated storage cost at large scale operation: 1.6-2.0 eurocent/kWh.

GregT on Fri, 4th Aug 2017 10:24 am

Cloggie,

If peak-oil and CC are ‘not interesting themes these days’, then why is there so much interest in alternate electric power generation?

Cloggie on Fri, 4th Aug 2017 10:45 am

If peak-oil and CC are ‘not interesting themes these days’, then why is there so much interest in alternate electric power generation?

Peak-oil and CC are very relevant and important topics… until they were addressed by renewable energy. And there is enough fossil fuel left to realize the transition.

In 2012 I thought like you, as you can easily verify for yourself with Google.

What happened since was:
– rise of fracking
– rapid decline of renewable energy prices

These two facts changed the picture for me completely.

I think that the chances are good for an avalanche in the direction of rapid implementation of a global renewable energy base and that EU target date of 2050 will turn out to be overly pessimistic.

https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/08/04/100-companies-committed-to-corporate-renewable-energy/

Cloggie on Fri, 4th Aug 2017 10:50 am

Should have added that my interest is from a purely techie point of view. I just like the topic, just as I liked the entire IT-development from my old Commodore-64 until my present day Apple tablets, HP desktop, 6 Linux machines, 30 inch screen, iPhone6+, etc.

That’s my life these days… staring at two screens, figuring out debugger, queue’s, enterprise java beans, etc… and every now and then alt/tab to peakoil to look for an opportunity to lock horns or write a blogpost.

GregT on Fri, 4th Aug 2017 11:08 am

Using the remaining fossil fuels to transition to Alternate electric power generation does not address CC. CO2 is accumulative in the environment, and the gadgets that we use to power with that alternate electric also require fossil fuels in their resource extraction, refinement, manufacturing, distribution, installation, and maintenance. All of the above also require economies of scale and exponential growth due to fiat monetary schemes.

Cloggie on Fri, 4th Aug 2017 11:10 am

Using the remaining fossil fuels to transition to Alternate electric power generation does not address CC.

In 15-30 years it will. Damage has already been done. Damage limitation is the challenge.

GregT on Fri, 4th Aug 2017 11:12 am

No growth equals collapse in those same said schemes Cloggie. The 3 E’s, energy, economics, and the environment are all interwoven. The one that we will not survive without is a healthy natural environment. Both modern economics and energy production are destroying that natural environment..

GregT on Fri, 4th Aug 2017 11:24 am

Adding another15-30 years worth of CO2 into the environment does not address CC. It adds to the problem.

GregT on Fri, 4th Aug 2017 11:36 am

According to 3 separate thermometers in the shade on my property, temperatures reached 39’C here yesterday.
Stunning dark red sunrise this morning, surreal. Due to all of the wildfires in BC burning out of control. Only another 50 million hectares of dead standing trees due to global warming left to burn. At some point much of the province is going to erupt into massive firestorms. It is only a matter of time, and heat.

Cloggie on Fri, 4th Aug 2017 11:47 am

Strange:

https://weather.gc.ca/canada_e.html

11AM

Vancouver: 18C
White horse: 14C
Iqalite: 4C
Montreal: 26C (nice Summer weather, to be expected for Southern France latitudes)

You are sure it wasn’t the hygrometer?

Apneaman on Fri, 4th Aug 2017 11:48 am

Record temperatures, storms and landslides on Switzerland’s birthday

https://www.thelocal.ch/20170802/record-temperatures-storms-and-landslides-on-switzerlands-birthday

Apneaman on Fri, 4th Aug 2017 11:49 am

Extreme heat warnings issued in Europe as temperatures pass 40C

Authorities in 11 countries warn residents and tourists to take precautions amid region’s most intense heatwave – nicknamed Lucifer – since 2003

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/04/extreme-heat-warnings-issued-europe-temperatures-pass-40c

Apneaman on Fri, 4th Aug 2017 11:50 am

Pacific Northwest threatened by hottest weather ever recorded; Seattle could hit 100

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/08/02/pacific-northwest-threatened-by-hottest-weather-ever-recorded-seattle-could-hit-100/

GregT on Fri, 4th Aug 2017 12:00 pm

B.C.’s heat wave is breaking maximum temperature records that have stood for over 100 years: report

B.C. is baking under an intense heat wave that is breaking maximum temperature records in communities all over the province, said a preliminary weather summary from Environment Canada on Wednesday night.

http://globalnews.ca/news/3644588/b-c-s-heat-wave-is-breaking-maximum-temperature-records-that-have-stood-for-100-years-report/

GregT on Fri, 4th Aug 2017 12:02 pm

Air quality advisory, heat wave warning continues for B.C. south coast

Smokes from the wildfires burning in B.C.’s interior reached the south coast’s ground level Tuesday morning, which caused hazy skies in the region.

This development, along with an expected record-setting heat wave in the province, prompts officials to remind the public to be responsible and take the necessary measures to keep themselves and their loved ones safe.

“There’s some warning signs of serious health-related illness which is actually [a] life threatening condition, and that is body temperature above 40 and people start to have neurological signs so they get dizzy, have difficulty walking, and difficulty communicating,” said Reka Gustafson, medical health officer at Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH).

http://globalnews.ca/news/3642238/air-quality-advisory-heat-wave-warning-continues-for-b-c-south-coast/

Climate change isn’t the end of the world

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