Since I had the new data, I thought I’d update the following graphic that I made a few years ago, which only covered up to 2019.
Figure 1. The 2019 version of energy consumption.
When I put that out, people were saying things like “You don’t understand. Solar and wind are growing exponentially! Just wait a few years and you’ll see!”
So, having now waited a few years, here’s the 2022 version. This time I’ve split out fossil fuels as a separate line. I’ve also added a line for traditional biomass. All the data is from the BP spreadsheet linked above except traditional biomass, which is from Our World In Data.
Figure 2. The 2022 version, including traditional biomass and fossil fuels as separate lines.
There are some very interesting things about this graphic. First, all the solar and wind in the world combined doesn’t provide even a third of the energy we get from wood and dung.
Next, I can hear some people thinking “Wait a minute, what about all the nuclear and the hydroelectric? I’ve seen charts where they are much larger! Why is the violet line so near to the red line?”
Well, the simplest answer is … we’re being lied to. Those charts you’re thinking about only show the actual energy for fossil fuels. For fossil fuels alone, they report the real energy we use to heat our houses, cook our food, power our cars and factories, and all the rest.
But regarding all the other sources except fossil fuels, the nuclear, hydro, various renewables, and the rest, in every case the true energy numbers have all been multiplied by about two and a half.
Why? Well, here’s the explanation from the BP folks:
Figure 3. The explanation from BP about the “input-equivalent” method used to make nuclear and everything else but fossil fuels look bigger than they are.
But that “two and a half times reality” is just imaginary energy. You can’t use it to heat your house or run a factory. My graphics above show the actual energy consumed. And the truth is, nuclear provides less than 2% of our global energy needs, as does wind. And solar provides less than 1%.
Don’t believe me? Here’s Our World In Data on the subject.
Figure 4. Percentage of energy consumption by source. DATA SOURCE.
It’s worth noting that traditional biomass is second only to fossil fuels in providing us with our daily energy, and that fossil plus traditional biomass provide us with ~ 93% of all the energy we use.
(A word in passing—if you’d prefer to deal with real energy numbers rather than imaginary “input-equivalent” figures, look for the word “Consumption” in the description of the data. That’s the amount of energy that is actually consumed, not the “input-equivalent” fantasy figures that the alarmists like to quote.) [Section removed, commenters pointed out that too many sources don’t follow that convention]
Here’s the rude reality. There’s no way we will get off of fossil fuels for decades and decades. And until we have a market-ready equally inexpensive replacement for fossil fuels, all that fighting against them will do is increase energy costs, and that will assuredly screw the poor today …
And while screwing the poor today in the false hope of helping them in the year 2050 isn’t a crime … perhaps it should be. Because here’s the direction the lunacy is going.
Figure 5. Investment in solar energy and fossil fuels, 2013 and 2023
The IEA people are celebrating this, thinking it’s a big win for renewables … but here is the 2023 investment in fossil fuels and solar per 2023 kilowatt-hour of energy consumed from each source:
Figure 6. 2023 investment in fossil fuels and solar energy, per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of energy consumed by each source.
We’re spending far more on solar than the real-world sale price … “cheapest form of energy”, my okole …
Here’s another way to consider the insanity. According to the Manhattan Institute, we’ve spent $5 trillion on wind, solar, and biofuels in the last two decades. That works out to $0.18 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of wind + solar + biofuel energy consumed …
That subsidy alone is more than the US electricity sales price, which itself is jacked up by useless renewable sources. Many US states that run on coal and gas charge about $0.11 per kWh for electricity. Here in California, with lots of renewables, I pay $0.28 per kWh … grrrr.
Conclusion? We’re paying through the nose for useless, intermittent, unreliable renewable energy. After spending literally trillions of dollars on solar and wind, their combined contribution to the world energy situation is under two percent.
Under. Two. Percent.
Trivially small. Meaningless. Makes no difference. Lost in the noise.
But instead of admitting that and stopping the foolishness, politicians continue shoveling further billions of your and my money down a rathole and accomplishing … well …nothing.
Think of all the good we could actually have done with those five trillion dollars spent over two decades on meaningless renewables. That works out to six hundred and eighty million dollars per day, or two hundred fifty billion per year … the number of pressing real-world problems we could have solved with that amount of money is incalculable.
If you want a list of what the money could be spent on, you couldn’t do better than the Copenhagen Consensus’s list of 12 of the best investments we could make.
The 12 best investments for the world
The 12 best policies, our experts have identified, cover a wide range of areas: tuberculosis, education, maternal and newborn health, agricultural research and development, malaria, e-procurement, nutrition, land tenure security, chronic diseases, trade, child immunization and skilled migration.
These have both costs and benefits. The annual costs, as shown in the figure below, rise from $30 billion to almost $50 billion by the end of the decade, for an average cost of $41 billion per year. The 2030 cutoff just denotes the end of the SDG era — these policies would also be phenomenally efficient in the years and decades after. Indeed, for some of them, the researchers estimated the costs and benefits far beyond 2030, as indicated in the individual analyses.
These have both costs and benefits. The annual costs, as shown in the graph above, rise from $30 billion to almost $50 billion by the end of the decade, for an average cost of $41 billion per year. The 2030 cutoff just denotes the end of the SDG era — these policies would also be phenomenally efficient in the years and decades after. Indeed, for some of them, the researchers estimated the costs and benefits far beyond 2030, as indicated in the individual chapters.
That’s just one look at the difference $280 billion could make if spent wisely over the next seven years. 4.2 million lives saved, $1.1 trillion in economic benefits.
Instead, here’s all the difference the $250 billion dollars per year spent on solar, wind, and biofuels over the last two decades made to atmospheric CO2 levels, the CO2 “problem” that the trillions of wasted dollars are supposed to be solving.
Like I said … grrrr.
[UPDATE] Over at his substack, Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. has discussed the new BP data as follows:
The figure below shows that in 2022, more than 18% of total energy consumption came from non-fossil sources. That’s the highest it has been in my lifetime.
Over the past decade, carbon-free energy consumption has increased as a proportion of total consumption from less than 14% to above 18%.
However, he’s totally misrepresenting the situation. First, he’s not including traditional biomass, which is larger than all his “non-fossil” sources together.
Next, his “non-fossil sources” (hydro, nuclear, wind, biofuels, solar, geothermal, other) only total 7.5% of total energy, not 18%. See Figure 4 above for confirmation. He’s showing you the “input-adjusted” fake data.
Once we include traditional biomass (another “non-fossil source”) and use actual consumption figures rather than the “input-adjusted” nonsense, the trend in non-fossil sources looks like this:
I can’t comment on his substack because you have to be a subscriber, but I invite him to come here and discuss this question. If anyone knows him, could you please pass this invitation on to him?
On a related subject, since I had the new BP data in front of me, I thought I’d take a look at the capacity factor for solar installations in various countries. The “capacity factor” is the ratio of the actual energy generation from a power source to the “nameplate” amount it generates at full power. For fossil and nuclear, this is on the order of 90% plus, meaning it generates full power about 90% of the time. Here are the capacity factors for grid-scale solar power by country.
Figure 5. Solar capacity factors by country.
Enjoy.
Here, it’s Sunday, my day off from house maintenance and endless mowing. Went to the coast this morning with the Gorgeous Ex-Fiancée. The Pacific was pacific indeed today—no waves, hardly a breath of wind. And as soon as I wrap up this post, gonna watch some béisbol, Giants vs. Mets. Life is good.
With wishes that you all have a life full of wonder,
Life without oil means many products that are made with oil, such as the hundreds listed below, would need to be provided by wind and solar and hydro.
Those folks, including Biden, wanting to get rid of fossil fuels, such as crude oil, better start doing some rethinking.
Of course it also contains a fair amount of oxygen, owing to its biogenic precursors, as well as lower levels of sulfur and nitrogen, etc., but by definition it is of hydrocarbon structure.
Organic chemistry primarily began in Germany based on coal chemistry.
Even anthracite has plenty of carbon/hydrogen bonds, mainly aromatic organic carbon, so is a hydrocarbon.
The term “elemental” in your reply below just means the mass percentage of the coal on a carbon basis, e.g., via ultimate analysis. It does not say anything about chemical structure, which is what being a hydrocarbon or not concerns.
Examples of elemental carbon, that one could describe as inorganic I suppose, would include diamond and graphite.
“The term ‘elemental’ in your reply below just means the mass percentage of the coal on a carbon basis, e.g., via ultimate analysis. It does not say anything about chemical structure, which is what being a hydrocarbon or not concerns.”
coal is about 50% carbon.
the world uses more than 8 billion metric ton of coal per year
trees are about 25% carbon
the world would need at least 20 billion metric ton of trees to get the same electricity as from coal.
coal power plants are much more efficient than wood
the world would quickly run out of trees
I didn’t vote negative because coal is not “a hydrocarbon” as in a single one, but coal is composed of hydrocarbons, and those with backgrounds in organic chemistry and geology know this.
Of course there are inorganic impurities in coal, silica, carbonates, iron oxides, etc., but coal is mostly organic as others have pointed out.
The statement and reference below is probably as good as any.
“Hydrocarbon resources are resources that contain hydrocarbon molecules which means it consists of both hydrogen and carbon. Hydrocarbon resources are often known as fossil fuels (natural gas, oil, and coal) since hydrocarbons are the primary constituent in these.”
The energyeducation.ca seems a little confusing. I clicked at your “coal” link, and there is no occurrence of “hydrocarbon” on that page. They just seem to list coal as a fossil fuel. Thanks anyway.
That statement is generally not true for high grade coals used in power plants.
Coal originates from organic carbohydrate and hydrocarbon (terpenoid producing) sources (mainly plant matter) that was first buried in shallow sediments, then later moved/overburdened to very deep geological strata. The pressure and temperatures associated with such depths, over many hundreds of millions of years duration, broke down the carbohydrates and hydrocarbons (i.e., broke molecular bonds) and in turn formed compounds such as water, CO2, and methane, which in many cases leaked out of the deep strata. The residual inorganic carbon which could not leak out and was not consumed in the formation of H2O, CO2 and CH4 ending up forming different grades of coal, depending on the as-yet remaining content of untransformed carbohydrates/hydrocarbons and other impurities (e.g., sand, sulfur, etc.).
Anthracite coal (aka “hard coal”), the highest carbon content coal that is widely available commercially, has an inorganic, elemental carbon (not hydrocarbon) content of around 87% wt.
Bituminous coal (aka “soft coal”) has elemental carbon content in the range of 77–87%.
So, bottom line: coal, as used to fuel power plants, is MOSTLY inorganic, elemental carbon.
carbon is considered an organic element. In the context of chemistry, organic compounds are defined as compounds that contain carbon atoms. Carbon is the fundamental element in organic chemistry, and the vast majority of organic compounds, including those found in living organisms, contain carbon atoms bonded to other elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and various other elements. Organic compounds play a crucial role in biological processes, as they form the basis of life’s molecular structures, including carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids.
“carbon is considered an organic element. In the context of chemistry, organic compounds are defined as compounds that contain carbon atoms.”
You absolutely must inform Wikipedia and most professors and experts in the field of chemistry of your statements.
“Carbon is the 15th most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, and the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen . . . The atoms of carbon can bond together in diverse ways, resulting in various allotropes of carbon. Well-known allotropes include graphite, diamond, amorphous carbon, and fullerenes . . . The largest sources of inorganic carbon are limestones, dolomites and carbon dioxide, but significant quantities occur in organic deposits of coal, peat, oil, and methane clathrates.” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon (my bold emphasis added)
Obviously, not all carbon is considered to be “an organic element” (“organic” meaning characteristic of, pertaining to, or derived from living organisms) . . . or else please tell me what plants, animals, bacteria or even viruses produce it throughout the universe or in the crust of Earth and in the forms of graphite or diamonds.
And beware if you want to pivot on your phrase “organic compounds” because here is Wikipedia’s listing of inorganic carbon compounds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inorganic_compounds ):
Carbon dioxide – CO2
Carbon disulfide – CS2
Carbon monoxide – CO
Carbon tetrabromide – CBr4
Carbon tetrachloride – CCl4
Carbon tetrafluoride – CF4
Carbon tetraiodide – CI4
Carbonic acid – H2CO3
Carbonyl chloride – COCl2
Carbonyl fluoride – COF2
Carbonyl sulfide – COS
Carboplatin – C6H12N2O4Pt
I would agree that those are inorganic carbon compounds with the exception of carboplatin, which is an organometallic compound.
Organic compounds, were generally well defined by batpox. To echo his point, organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon. That doesn’t mean that all carbon compounds are organic.
Now, to the extent that perhaps we are arguing semantics, I do want to explain some other relevant chemistry.
Going back to the original question of coal and hydrocarbons, chemical structure is what is important, not whether an element is present or not, and structure determines the energy state of those compounds. For example whether energy can be generated from its oxidation. (I’m not saying that inorganic compounds cannot burn.)
But, for your H2CO3, even though hydrogen and carbon are present, the hydrogen is not bonded to carbon, so this molecule (carbonic acid) is not a hydrocarbon. This is also a low energy state compound having been created from water and carbon dioxide.
Now if you are interested further, look up the chemical structures of coal. You will indeed see a lot of carbon, but you will also see hydrogen bonded to carbon, hence, hydrocarbon molecular structure.
Just one more thing. Take methane (natural gas) CH4 the simplest hydrocarbon. It is 75% carbon by mass, but there are 4 times as many hydrogen atoms as carbon atoms per molecule.
Now, the hypothetical molecular formula for anthracite is C240H90O4NS. I say hypothetical because its not a single molecule but rather a mixture of numerous molecules, in some respects a polymer, but not exactly.
It’s mostly carbon but on an atomic basis it is over a third hydrogen, and it turns out that the hydrogen is bonded to carbon in an aromatic structure. Aromatic molecules are hydrocarbons. By now you should know the conclusion.
“Going back to the original question of coal and hydrocarbons, chemical structure is what is important, not whether an element is present or not . . .”
So, therefore, coal and hydrocarbons could exist without the presence of carbon atoms???
You, like batpox, obviously must inform Wikipedia and most professors and experts in the field of chemistry of your revelations.
No, obviously a hydrocarbon must contain carbon and hydrogen, and I never said that carbon has to be organic. That doesn’t make it incorrect to say that organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon.
The point I tried to make was that the chemical structure (bonding) is crucial. I tried to explain by way of example that carbonic acid, which was on your inorganics list, was not a hydrocarbon even though it contained carbon and hydrogen.
This relates to the fact that the chemical structure of coal is comprised of compounds that have carbon bonded with hydrogen, hence are hydrocarbons.
I would point out that Wikipedia sometimes contains incorrect information. To your point about professors and experts in the field of chemistry, I am one. I can be wrong like anyone, but I am providing no “revelations.”
As is obvious from the comments to my above post of July 3, 2023 1:33 pm, many people mistakenly believe that the carbon content of various grades of coal must still exist in the form of hydrocarbons. This is simply not true . . . most of the content of high-grade coals used to fuel power power plants (i.e., anthracite and bituminous) exists as free (i.e. elemental) carbon that is not molecularly-bonded to other elements such as hydrogen or oxygen.
“A polymer is any of a class of natural or synthetic substances composed of very large molecules, called macromolecules, which are multiples of simpler chemical units called monomers.”
— https://www.britannica.com/science/polymer
A carbon atom does not meet the definition of a monomer, a molecule that can be bonded to other identical molecules.
Coal is indeed a polymeric structure comprising monomers consisting of multiple interlinked aromatic rings (like the one I linked above). The purer the coal (e.g. anthracite) the more compact the monomers are ultimately resulting in graphite. anthracite.png bituminous.png lignite.png
Phil, I’ll settle for just one credible scientific article that states that the elemental carbon found to comprise the vast majority of high-grade coal is organized in a polymeric structure.
Just one.
Your linked images of chemical structures are nice as far as they go, but carbon linked in ring structure is NOT properly classified chemically as a monomer (or even polymer), but instead as a “carbocycle” under the general structural classification of “cyclic compounds” or “ring compounds” (ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_compound# ).
More to the point, the above-linked Wikipedia article specifically mentions the carbocycles can be used in ring-closing reactions and ring-opening reactions to accomplish specific types of polymerization.
Also, it’s somewhat embarrassing to have to point this out to you, but the highest “compaction” of carbon is “ultimately” found in diamond (s.g. = 3.5 gm/cc), NOT graphite (s.g. = 2.3 gm/cc)
I don’t know of any scientific claim that the formation of coal/elemental carbon under high levels of pressure and temperature as occur in deep earth strata, even over hundreds of millions of years, goes so far as to produce graphite in coal deposits, to say nothing of producing diamonds in coal deposits.
“Phil, I’ll settle for just one credible scientific article that states that the elemental carbon found to comprise the vast majority of high-grade coal is organized in a polymeric structure.”
Last ditch. Your misunderstanding, IToldYouSo, results from you not knowing the chemical definitions of elemental, purity, etc. The Purdue reference is good and agrees with everything I have been saying with 100% accuracy.
The vedantu and flushingschools links are not so good, and use misnomers that likely add to your confusion.
Let me provide one more link that discusses the elemental composition of wood, which is done very similarly to coal. Wood contains somewhere on the order of 50% carbon by weight (it varies somewhat by type). Surely you don’t think that wood contains carbon in an allotropic form like you appear to think about coal?
I apologize but that entire second paragraph is likely bullshit and at best a theory and really not germane to your argument whatsoever.
I did find it humorous though. “Hundreds of millions of years” always makes me laugh. Science, what bullcrap
With great respect for the man, I fear that Dr. Pielke has fallen for the “input equivalent” scam. He claims that:
The figure below shows that in 2022, more than 18% of total energy consumption came from non-fossil sources. That’s the highest it has been in my lifetime.
Over the past decade, carbon-free energy consumption has increased as a proportion of total consumption from less than 14% to above 18%.
First, he’s not including traditional biomass, which is larger than all his “non-fossil” sources together.
Next, his “non-fossil sources” (hydro, nuclear, wind, biofuels, solar, geothermal, other) only total 7.5% of total energy, not 18%. See Figure 4 above for confirmation.
Once we include traditional biomass (another “non-fossil source”) and use actual consumption figures rather than “input-adjusted” nonsense, the trend in non-fossil sources looks like this:
I can’t comment on his substack because you have to be a subscriber, but I invite him to come here and discuss this question. If anyone knows him, could you please pass this invitation on to him?
I’ve added this as an update to the head post.
w.
Rud Istvan
July 3, 2023 10:35 am
I had not known about the ‘input equivalent’ dodge.
It is also obvious that heavy trucks, ag and mining and construction and forestry equipment, and aviation cannot be electrified.
It is also obvious that any meaningful renewable penetration requires a second backup generation system for the grid, so will never be economic per se. And that backup system will be FF fired, because nuclear really doesn’t cycle easily while CCGT and to an extent coal do cycle easily.
Nuclear plants can cycle just as easily as any fossil plant. They just have to be designed for cycling operation instead of optimized for steady state, full power operation.
All naval reactors are designed for cycling operation, and they do so, for decades.
There is a nice story, not necessarily true, about the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California. Pacific Gas and Electricity adapted a successful naval reactor design for submarines. In a submarine everything had to be flexible, to withstand a nearby explosion of a depth charge. California code required everything to be very stiff. As original design objectives were classified, PG&E just stiffened all flexible elements, resulting in a huge cost overrun and construction delays.
And all Navy nucs use highly enriched uranium not possible for commercial grid nucs due to proliferation concerns. Navy nucs last 20 years without refueling, and then are just swapped out. Commercial nucs are partly refueled every few years.
Most of the heavy mining shovels and truck were electric/diesel hybrids back in the
day in this area. When the copper pit in Butte was in operation the shovel was electric as
I remember and the haul trucks were also. I believe they would recharge when
going back into the pit. The underground stuff was also electric. There is a
mine nearby that is still intact, as if everyone left for the day and never came back.
Drills, generators, processing mills ect, it’s mostly all still there..
The big shovel that Bucyrus Erie
build in Idaho for stripping in coal mines ran on electricity. They used a diesel
generator and a power cord . It moved on pads not tracks, the pins for the pads were
3ft in diameter.
The new stuff is battery electric. Catapillar is making battery stuff now…
When I put that out, people were saying things like “You don’t understand. Solar and wind are growing exponentially! Just wait a few years and you’ll see!”
Just replot Fig. 1 as semi-log, probably won’t change a thing.
A table of numbers is more specific and definite. One can get a general idea from a graph but, mostly, nothing exact. Certainly the numbers that went into the graph may only have been estimates rather than anything more specific but a table of those number, especially if it can be sorted as desired, is often more satisfying.
Andy, I’m interested in communicating what numbers mean, to people who are often allergic to math. So I use graphs.
Given that, however, you’ll notice that I invariably link my graphs to the source of the data, so that anyone like you can go to the data and sort or examine it as desired.
But sure, here’s the table of numbers that were used to make Figure 2:
You should not take my comment as a criticism of what you do, it was only presented as a counterpoint view to the variety of ‘yea, graph’ comments already entered. I don’t think that you would reject the fact that if one ones to consider various aspects of the data, which you often do, the data itself, not any graphical approximation, is most useful.
However, your response here is somewhat perplexing. In what I believe was your most recent article prior to this one (The Sea Level Hype Continues), I ask you for any hints or pointers to instructions on how to obtain official temperature data (raw). I thought I made clear that temperature data was my interest but, in order to relate to the topic of the article I listed the steps that I could find to get to what seemed to be the specific sea level data you were writing, pointing out that once I got there I could not make heads or tails of the files supposedly containing the data. Not stated was that NOAA temperature data seems as opaque.
Now I don’t in any way mean that you have a obligation to be helpful (and I don’t see it as wrong to ask), but your rather puzzling reply was that you had no idea how to interpret the data files either. From what you wrote here about always providing links to your data suggests to me that what you were saying was something along the line of “I don’t get my data from such NOAA files”, leaving out any reference as to what data from where that you do use. I don’t care about the internet source, as long as it is officially accepted data. I wasn’t asking you to write a DIY lesson on obtaining and analyzing data, only a pointer to something, if it exists, that is instructive on getting and using the data. Doesn’t everyone have to start somewhere?
I have no problem with you asking, and I assist people wherever I can. However, the link you gave me was to the data underlying NOAA maps that show how much land will get flooded from some give sea level rise.
I’ve never looked at either that issue or that site, so I don’t know what the formatting of the data was or exactly what each file contains.
As to temperature data, I couldn’t recall you asking for that, so I went back to your comment. You did say:
Do you know if there is anyplace that explains what these [sea level files] are and how to access whatever they contain? Of course, if temperature data is presented in some significantly different way, I may need to study a different lesson but then you also seem to have considerable experience with temperature data.
I don’t see anywhere in there that you are asking me for the source of specific temperature data. My apologies.
So let’s start over. What temperature data from which organization are you looking for? There’s global data from GISS, JMA, Berkeley Earth, UAH MSU, RSS, HadCRUT4, HadCRUT5. In addition there’s daily station-level data, ocean data, the list goes on.
My recommendation as a place to start is KNMI, which contains most of those and more in a readily accessible form.
Thanks, I will see what I can make of the KNMI Climate Explorer. I was looking at NOAA since they are the most official weather data agency but as long as I can get the thermometer readings, the raw data, it seems it should have to be the same data regardless of who is presenting it.
I have seen various articles that start with showing recorded temperatures for a number of stations, then showing how the climate manipulations change them into a quite different picture. I don’t care about the climate presentations, I just want to be able to compare what was recorded at various specific locations for the past 20 or 30 years, regardless of whether or not that represents “climate”.
The monthly files by station are separate for “raw”, “tob” (time of observation adjusted) and “FLs.52j” (after pairwise homogenization) tmax, tmin, tavg. And raw and FLs.52j for precip.
That should keep you busy for a couple of decades …
During my years as a budget manager for a large organization, $458 million dollars annual revenue, almost twice that for expense. I used graphs to wow those so inclined and often to hide/disguise inconvenient information.
Presentations for Regional or HQ personnel were always in graphic form, usually achievements we wanted highlighted.
My CFO boss hated graphs, refusing to look at them as communication or of any use besides confusion. With his decades in Finance, his dislike for showy graphs is understandable.
Every report that I submitted to him was tabular with all the information included.
If a number was adjusted and different from an official report (Accounting period, quarterly and annual reports), we had to include full information regarding the reason(s), source, what was adjusted, why it was adjusted, and the adjustment amount.
Sometimes but rarely, he would ask for a table(s) to be sorted on a particular field.
All of this latter information just doesn’t fit on most graphs legibly, unless one removes most of the fields graphed.
IEA, NOAA and manniacal graphs are excellent examples of graphical misinformation with virtually zero information regarding a host of hidden adjustments and dubious calculations.
Still, I greatly enjoy studying Willis’ graphics using pristine data. They are a joy to study.
Curious George
July 3, 2023 10:46 am
The “input equivalent” is a new, rather inventive, lie – or, at least, a way of twisting the truth.
BTW, in Michigan “misgendering” is now an offence punishable by up to 5 years in prison. The only safe way to address a stranger there is “Hey, you!”
Michigan, the Hey, You State.
The only ones in Michigan who should be in jail are the legislators and the governor for criminalizing speech. I guess the MI State Patrol want to be nicknamed “Gestapo” if they enforce such drivel.
Depends which side of the pond you are. It was Kilroy for the Brits, Chad for the Yanks. I was going for the widest coverage.
Alan M
July 3, 2023 11:09 am
Great article outlining the myths of renewables. Slightly off track but of some relevance I think is the advert on UK television for a new “all electric” SUV (can’t remember which) which shows the family driving off up mountain roads to wild camp in the middle of nowhere. Nobody in their right mind would do that – where on Earth (literally) would they recharge to come home? Selling a myth.
If they get to their destination and park their EV facing downhill, maybe they can use their ‘regenerative braking’ to recharge the battery enough to find a charging station once they get out of the mountains.
It really does seem to me that the approach is going to have to be to rely on hybrids for a transition, until the infrastructure is in place for recharging stations everywhere people want to drive.
Yes. Hills in Scotland, Fells in Cumbria and the Pennines and…….. Mountains in Wales
Richard Page
July 3, 2023 11:14 am
Story tip:
A bit off-topic but relevant. A devastating flat fire in Cambridge, UK that killed an adult, 2 children and injured another adult is believed to have been started by an e-bike that was charging. It might be a little disingenuous to attribute 3 more deaths to all EV’s but it is fair to say that Lithium batteries are still too dangerous for the applications they’re being used in. We need to stop using them.
According to the NTSB in the US:
Hybrids have 3,475 fires per 100K vehicles.
ICE vehicles have 1,530 fires per 100k vehicles.
EVs have 25.1 fires per 100k vehicles.
By this metric, EV are much safer.
Admittedly, there are ICE vehicles on the road that are 80 years old (and older). We see a lot of them here in Reno as a lot of folks enjoy restoring them. There are extremely few EVs on the road that are over 50 years old, if any.
However, in the event of accidents, NTSB says that EVs cause more damage and deaths than ICE vehicles because of their (EV) heavier curb weights. i could find no statistics to support this claim.
I couldn’t find statistics on unattended vehicle fires, although there is a lot of evidence that both ICE and EVs can catch fire while parked.
That information is from an insurance company and is the result of insurance claims resulting from various fires – it fails to account for non-claimed EV fires or where the car has been replaced by the manufacturer rather than submit a claim. It also fails to account for the fact that you are 15 times more likely to suffer a serious or fatal injury from an EV fire rather than an ICE fire or that it takes vastly more resources to deal with an EV fire or the collateral fires rising from those initial fires. ICE fires are, despite Hollywood films, easier to deal with are more likely to be a small electrical fire and rarely result in collateral fires that cause serious injuries or worse. It’s not just a case of how many EV fires there are, we know there are a tiny number of EV’s on the road, it’s the devastation those fires can cause.
RE “There are extremely few EVs on the road that are over 50 years old, if any..”
I guess we would have noticed them…
Just surprised you put the number so far back. I pegged the start of the electric vehicle craze as being the last 20-30 years. But maybe I just wasn’t that aware of them.
“You don’t understand. Solar and wind are growing exponentially! Just wait a few years and you’ll see!”
In 2021 in a comment in which I expressed concern for an economic disaster looming for UK, I made mention of an article that stated that renewables had peaked in 2017, and, with energy companies going broke, investors shying away from the sector and a number of early wind/solar farms to be decommissioned, I opined the 2017″peak” was firm and the sector would decline . Your graph certainly shows no surge. I wonder if the data includes wind and solar sill standing but not working?
The 2017 ‘peak’ was in building/commissioning not output.
Harry Passfield
July 3, 2023 11:40 am
Willis – commenting from the UK, I so wish your post could be included in our secondary school curriculum – hell, even our Primary schools! Balanced argument with real data is so needed to stop the march of the green nihilists: that which they think will save us will be the death of many.
KBO!
This added capacity comes at a wholesale price of $180 per MWh. CA typical wholesale price is less than $100 per MWh. The cpuc says this is the least expensive option to meet emission reduction mandates.
As you know, CA mandates “net zero” by 2045 in the electric grid so prices are destined to increase even more.
“The Governor appoints the five [CPUC] Commissioners, who must be confirmed by the Senate, for six year staggered terms.”
God help the Democratic California.
Well, the U.S. and Canada are pouring massive subsidies into domestic battery manufacturing plants owned by foreign companies. But I’d bet on China for most batteries given its material mining capabilities and low-cost energy.
Watch for all the trade wars related to nations’ EV subsidies. Also watch for Western auto manufacturing bankruptcies when EV mandates kick in. It is a highly competitive and intricate market that is not taking well to heavy-handed government interference. I hope I’m still around when the lamppost and piano wire phase begins.
China has 6 of the top 10 EV battery manufacturers with c. 60% of the global market share led by CATL (37.1%) and BYD (13.6%), followed by CALB (4%), Gotion (2.8%) Sunwoda (1.7%) and Eve (1.3%).
China is also the worlds largest market for EVs with more than half of all EVs on the road there. However their industry is facing problems. Their largest EV manufacturer Nio has been making considerable losses and recently reduced the price of its cars by $4200 to try and shift them and stopped its free 6 battery swap out scheme. The Chinese government has just had to extend its subsidy scheme to 2027 at a cost of £56.9bn to keep the market afloat.
We also saw in a recent post here that VW is having problems in its EV division. According to the IEA there are currently around 27m EVs worldwide compared to 1.4 bn ICE vehicles.
In the UK the CEO of Kia Motors has said a “mass market in affordable electric cars will not happen because of the difficulty of producing them on a viable basis” (Times newspaper Jan 23 2023)
For all the investors on the thread (with a sufficiently long investment horizon), the take-away is have a significant stake (long term) in O&G companies (the majors in particular & select smaller companies if confident in long term prospects) . With the considerable under-investment, both now and over the last decade +, the long term pricing & profit scenario looks robust for this segment.
The plots Willis has presented are consistent with longer term plots that there never has been an energy transition in the history of the world. There have been new energy sources that just are just new slices into an ever increasing energy consumption pie. To think that wind and solar will somehow be different is folly.
I agree, and with some additional reasons. The past crude glut was caused by the shale frackers land rush with ‘use it or lose it’ lease terms. Those days are over. And as laid out in several energy chapters in ebook Blowing Smoke, the peak production in conventional crude was about 2008, and the peak production in all is between now and 2025. Not a disaster since the function is NOT Hubbert’s logistic but rather a gamma with a shallow peak and a long production tail. Just means prices will hold up at about current levels for decades, very good for the O&G industry.
John Hultquist
July 3, 2023 12:30 pm
Interesting and entertaining post. Thanks.
Regarding biomass – there is a small category of non-traditional biomass.
The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) does balancing in much of the Pacific Northwest. A chart updated at 5-minute intervals is here:
Note that VER means Variable Energy Resources, which are primarily wind and solar. That line is green.
There is a brown line for Fossil/Biomass.
Under the chart there is a list of 24 facilities producing with the names, sometimes, indicating what is being burned. There’s no camel dung or buffalo chips, but lots of other waste is being turned into electricity. One would have to do a lot of searching and reading to determine the costs and contributions of these.
Under that list are the 42 dams. 42 is the answer.
The total generation is always greater than the total BPA load because most of the time BPA is a net exporter of energy. The BPA Load does not include scheduled energy to other balancing authority areas.
For one method of export, see: The Pacific DC Intertie (also called Path 65)
Also, Grand Coulee, one of the 42 dams and the largest hydropower plant in the U.S., uses excess electricity to pump water 280 feet uphill with 12 massive pumps to manmade Banks Lake for irrigation and energy storage. When they need to supplement power from the 27 main turbines in the 3 powerhouses, they release water from Banks Lake back down through 6 of the pumps which are also designed to be power-generating turbines, adding 314 MW of “on demand” power. That power is inefficient since it takes more power, 600 MW, to pump the water uphill in the first place, but it provides some backup for the 6,800 MW dam.
Thanks for the BPA link. Interesting. I didn’t know that biomass contributed so much electricity. Even more interesting, solar and wind with their variability barely produce about the same power as burning biomass. Looking at the graph, solar and wind seem superfluous, like “boutique” electricity; the almost useless luxury of zealots and their big dreams to change the world. It’s the best evidence against wind and solar I’ve seen, updated in real time. I’ll see if I can get the data to do monthly and annual plots.
I can speak from past consulting experience in the timber industry (lots of it in PNW). Most board mills run on electricity plus process steam heat (phenolic resin plywood/wafer board bonding). That is almost always produced at the mill by burning shredded bark and waste wood in a steam boiler powering a steam turbine/generator. Same is true for big (but not small) sawmills.
I’m not disputing the basic idea of the stupidity of wind and solar for anything except special, limited situations. That has been evident for a long time, but the presentation here doesn’t represent what is really happening where it matters. Most of the world hasn’t signed onto the stupidity so their inclusion skews the picture.
It is the “western 1st world” that has bought into this and is directly paying for it. The rest of the world may well be suffering fallout from the west’s obsession, but they are not going down the same dead end path. I suspect that, for the west, wind and solar are a significantly larger penetration of total energy consumption and a significantly larger expense vs benefit by any measure of energy consumption. If it were possible to produce similar graphs that cover only the west, and perhaps for comparison, separate graphs that cover the rest of the story, it should be interesting.
As a separate issue, why is the legend of Figure 4 placed to redact most of the information for the last half century?
That has been evident for a long time, but the presentation here doesn’t represent what is really happening where it matters.
It’s interesting that you think the West is “where it matters” … me, I’ve worked all over the planet, and to me, it all matters.
And to answer your separate issue, the legend in OWID graphs appears when you put the cursor over the graph. I have no say in where it is located. That’s why I linked to the data source, so you can see all of it.
Andy, agree true but probably not nearly as big a difference as implied. Western Renewables are mainly for grid electricity (US, UK, Germany). Much energy consumption isn’t electricity. Primary steel and cement, most transportation, all ag, mining, construction, forestry, all aviation, most military are not electrified—only Navy submarines and carriers are nuclear electric.
Looked up US. In 2021 37% of US primary energy (includes FF, Nuc, hydro, renewables) was used to produce electricity, so 63% of US energy had nothing to with electricity and therefore with renewables.
I suspect that, for the west, wind and solar are a significantly larger penetration of total energy consumption and a significantly larger expense vs benefit by any measure of energy consumption. If it were possible to produce similar graphs that cover only the west, and perhaps for comparison, separate graphs that cover the rest of the story, it should be interesting.
Last year I extracted limited data for certain countries from the (then) BP dataset to “mess around with”.
When EI updated the dataset last week I updated my spreadsheet “just for laughs”.
I found your request “interesting”, but to speed things up I am defining “The West” as “The USA + the European Union + Canada + Japan + Australia”.
Assuming by “the rest of the story” you actually meant “the rest of the world (ROW)”, I used the following formula :
ROW = “World” (specific lines in the EI spreadsheet) – “The West”.
The preliminary results are attached below.
NB : Special mentions to both the UK and Australia maybe ?
Note also Willis’s caveats about EI’s “PEC” numbers. My approach is more “If they insist on making ‘extraordinary’ claims, beat them to death with their own data …”
BenVincent
July 3, 2023 12:42 pm
One comment to Willis. Don’t forget that some people are color blind, or in my case, slightly color blind. Also, most screens used by people are not color calibrated. It took me a moment to tell the difference between the periwinkle colored line and the light blue line in the graph and legend of figure 2. It’s not a bad idea to test colors on several devices and monitors than the one you always use. I found this out on a GIS project I did. Colors looked great on a monitor. But doing a PowerPoint presentation of it using a projector taught me I needed to test colors.
Yes!
For those of us who don’t have color printer, using different types of lines
makes it very easy to follow the curves. And it makes it easy to do B & W handouts
when I give a talk to a small group. I use Right-Click & “Save Image As…” all the time to keep a library of pertinent graphics. A good graph is worth a 1000 words!
But having said all that, I will always make a color copy of Dr Christy’s “spaghetti
graph” of the models vs satellites as a hand-out. Its’ visual impact is remarkable.
Back when I was a very well paid senior partner at a multibillion consulting firm, I demanded such details of everyone I worked with. Willis is an unpaid volunteer contributor. I hope he contributes more and spends no time polishing them.
While we’re at it, let’s look at energy densities as well: https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Energy_density
For conversion purposes, there are 277.777778 watt hours/mega joule.
So, when reading about batteries and energy densities, congrats, they have reached roughly table sugar but not yet wood for a fire place. Much less coal.
cuddywhiffer
July 3, 2023 1:32 pm
Thanks Willis. Excellent perpective.
Jan Kjetil Andersen
July 3, 2023 1:52 pm
I still say «never underestimate an exponential growth»
and wind and solar have an almost perfect exponential growth curve.
Most of it is due to the huge Chinese investments. They have committed to peak emissions before 2030 and to be carbon neutral by 2060. So far they seem to be about five years ahead of schedule.
So how should we in the west respond to that?
Shall we just continue to poison our water and soil with mecury from coal, or should we also go for emission free sources?
There is no such animal as emission free source. Until solar panels and wind mills strictly use their only power source, it is still redirected fossil fuel output.
If you wanted to get rid of your mother-in-law would you daily feed her fish caught in a lake down-wind from a power house? How long do you suppose it would take?
However, I think your mercury graph is misleading.
The point is that for mercury you need to distinguish between primary and secondary pollution.
Primary mercury contamination is when you bring things up to the surface from deep underground sources. Combustion of coal is now the largest primary mercury polluter.
Once the mercury is absorbed, it will not easily disappear again. The mercury that falls into the oceans can evaporate back into the atmosphere, and the substance that falls on land can also rise again. This happens during forest fires, dust storms and simple evaporation.
It is the secondary mercury pollution.
Secondary mercury pollution is greater than primary, but we wouldn’t have any secondary pollution if we didn’t have primary pollution.
If we stop the primary pollution, the secondary pollution will gradually decrease, but if we continue the primary pollution, the secondary pollution will gradually increase.
Your graph appears to have added these together and it gives a misleading picture.
A large part of the graph is, for example, the oceans. But it is not “natural” pollution. Almost all mercury from the oceans is secondary pollution caused by human-induced primary pollution.
Before the industrial revolution, there was very little mercury in the oceans. There is still very little in the deep sea, but the surface water is polluted.
we should stop the primary mercury pollution before we have polluted the ocean to the very bottom.
Natural primary mercury pollution comes from volcanoes and the amount is small.
Always a pleasure to discuss with you Willis.
However, I think your mercury graph is misleading.
The point is that for mercury you need to distinguish between primary and secondary pollution.
Primary mercury contamination is when you bring things up to the surface from deep underground sources. Combustion of coal is now the largest primary mercury polluter.
Once the mercury is absorbed, it will not easily disappear again. The mercury that falls into the oceans can evaporate back into the atmosphere, and the substance that falls on land can also rise again. This happens during forest fires, dust storms and simple evaporation.
It is the secondary mercury pollution.
Secondary mercury pollution is greater than primary, but we wouldn't have any secondary pollution if we didn't have primary pollution.
If we stop the primary pollution, the secondary pollution will gradually decrease, but if we continue the primary pollution, the secondary pollution will gradually increase.
Your graph appears to have added these together and it gives a misleading picture.
A large part of the graph is, for example, the oceans. But it is not "natural" pollution. Almost all mercury from the oceans is secondary pollution caused by human-induced primary pollution.
Before the industrial revolution, there was very little mercury in the oceans. There is still very little in the deep sea, but the surface water is polluted.
we should stop the primary mercury pollution before we have polluted the ocean to the very bottom.
Natural primary mercury pollution comes from volcanoes and the amount is small.
Thanks, Jan. I took the liberty of reformatting your post to make it easy to read.
Is there still mercury pollution from US coal plants? Yes, but it’s only a fraction of what it once was. And the pending new MATS regulations on lignite-burning plants will reduce it even further.
In the US, the health consequences of this remaining pollution are small compared to the human costs of replacing these coal-fired plants with renewables.
Me, I’d like to see them shut down and replaced by nuclear plants, but noooo, the fake greens won’t allow that.
I’d guess that we get more mercury from Chinese coal emissions generated for the purpose of producing our “clean” solar panels and wind turbine components.
Always a pleasure to discuss with you Willis.
However, I think your mercury graph is misleading.
The point is that for mercury you need to distinguish between primary and secondary pollution.
Primary mercury contamination is when you bring things up to the surface from deep underground sources. Combustion of coal is now the largest primary mercury polluter.
Once the mercury is absorbed, it will not easily disappear again. The mercury that falls into the oceans can evaporate back into the atmosphere, and the substance that falls on land can also rise again. This happens during forest fires, dust storms and simple evaporation.
It is the secondary mercury pollution.
Secondary mercury pollution is greater than primary, but we wouldn’t have any secondary pollution if we didn’t have primary pollution.
If we stop the primary pollution, the secondary pollution will gradually decrease, but if we continue the primary pollution, the secondary pollution will gradually increase.
Your graph appears to have added these together and it gives a misleading picture.
A large part of the graph is, for example, the oceans. But it is not “natural” pollution. Almost all mercury from the oceans is secondary pollution caused by human-induced primary pollution.
Before the industrial revolution, there was very little mercury in the oceans. There is still very little in the deep sea, but the surface water is polluted.
We should stop the primary mercury pollution before we have polluted the ocean to the very bottom.
Natural primary mercury pollution comes from volcanoes and the amount is small.
Great analysis as usual, Willis. One small error on your graph of Mercury sources, however. I have lived in Savannah most of my life, and we produce almost zero mercury. The word I think you were looking for is Savanna 😉
I see no evidence for your claim that China is 5 years ahead of schedule. All I am seeing in the emissions figures is the effect of business cycles around a growing trend. The current global recession is likely to be quite deep, but the world will correct out of it, and so will China.
Amigo, you really need to stop getting your “science” from the Guardian. They wouldn’t recognize a lie if it bit them in the differential, and they are suck-ups to China.
For example, the article says:
It says that as of the first quarter of the year, China’s utility-scale solar capacity has reached 228GW, more than that of the rest of the world combined.
But according to BP, China reached 383GW in 2022, and that was a long ways from being more than the 660GW of installed capacity in the rest of the world.
The article also makes the following claim:
The findings are in line with previous reports and government data released this year, which predicted that China could easily surpass its target of supplying a third of its power consumption through renewable sources by 2030.
Guardian takes their numbers from Global Energy Monitor. For some reason, their numbers for solar are smaller than BP’s. It could be that it’s because they do not count small installations, they say:
“Summary data includes solar farm phases 20 MW and greater, 10MW and greater for MENA countries.”
But Guardian doesn’t pass this information, so you are right.
We’ll see whether they reach a third through renewables in 2030. I am one of those who are impressed by what they do.
I have been to dozens of Chinese cities and what I see of modernity, and especially the speed of development, is stunning.
Jan, I fear you sound like an overly enthusiastic leftist who went to Moscow in the ’30s and gushed about how wonderful it was … of course, they never were allowed anywhere near the gulags …
One of my sons lived there for 18 months, came back with a Chinese girlfriend, a relation that lasted so long that I for a while thought our familily ties would soon extend to China.
Unfortunately it’s unlikely we’ll actually find out what China’s renewable figures are, not precisely. China does not release figures for individual installations – usually it’s just totals per region which, given their practice of co-locating coal power plants with renewables, means that we have to rely on somewhat ambiguous, possibly heavily biased, data from Beijing. I tend to view some of the figures with suspicion as they do seem to indicate the renewables are outperforming western renewables whilst the co-located coal plants sometimes appear to be remarkably inefficient – my layman’s view is that the numbers are being distorted for appearances sake.
Jan, did you not see Dr. Pielke, Jr.’s calculations of how much our consumption of FF energy would have to be reduced between now and 2050? Propaganda is no substitute for hard facts.
Fossil fuel is a limited resource. If we continue burning it in the current rate we will sooner or later run out it. I don’t think it will happen soon, but we cannot use it for ever. We should spare something for our decendants.
I think continued increase in the atmospheric CO2 content will cause increasing and unpredictable changes in the climate and the environment. The current global 50% increase from 280 ppm to 420 ppm, is perhaps not too bad, but what about 600 ppm or 1000 ppm?
Some of the materials used in the construction of renewable installations are far more limited, we will run out of those much, much faster – renewables are unsustainable. As to hydrocarbons, there are vast seas of liquid methane on Titan, if only we could get at it – they are not as limited as you have been led to believe.
Carbon dioxide has yet to cause any change in the environment; on the contrary the warm period we went through up until 1998 caused the increase in atmospheric CO2 (as has happened many times before). The biggest change will be to green the planet – plants absolutely thrive on high CO2 – their ‘goldilocks’ concentration is around 800-1200ppm. As to us animals, it will take an unachievable concentration of about 45,000ppm before we have any problems and over 60,000ppm before we exhibit serious respiratory problems. As an environmentalist, I am relishing the regreening of parts of the world and the increased plant growth, as should we all.
Less air pollution is fantastic, but can only be achieved by a responsible, managed response – China is, unfortunately, not doing well in that respect. Less air pollution also means less reduction in solar energy, more surface warmth and more CO2 from increased plant growth etc. – it’s a natural cycle that works to our benefit, not our detriment.
We will never run out of materials used in the construction of renewable installations, because chemical elements never disappear.
We have just as much of those elements on the planet as we had a million years ago and they will still be around a million years from now.
They can be reused infinitely.
On the other hand, the molecules that forms fossil fuels can only be used once. After that the energy rich resource is converted to CO2 and water.
You mention lakes of methane on Titan. Unfortunately, that is impossible to utilize here.
Maybe we can mine other planets for very rare and very expensive minerals. Uranium can be possible, but methane and other hydrocarbones have far too low energy density to give a net positive contribution.
Jan, with respect, you are incorrect and a little naive about the rare materials involved in renewables. They are incredibly scarce, far more so than hydrocarbons and getting harder to source – prices are rising for them almost daily. As to the myth that we can keep re-using them, well we can’t; firstly it’s hugely costly and uneconomical to do so at the moment so it’s not being done – they are being thrown away rather than recycled. Secondly, some work has been done on recycling elements in the construction and the result is not great – the acid method used results in huge wastage, something like 75%-95%, so only a tiny fraction of the materials used can ever be recovered. I’m sorry to break this to you, Jan, but renewables are far less sustainable than hydrocarbon technology.
You are arguing against fundamental physical laws Richard. Chemical elements never disappear. Chemical bound energy do.
Technically all Chemical elements are 100% recoverable. No chemical process exists that are so irreversible that it is impossible to recover the element.
The reason it is not done is economical. It is cheaper to mine new materials than recovering the old.
This is solved by ordinary market forces. If the raw materials get more scarce, the price will go up and we will recover more of the old.
I am arguing a position of real-world data, Jan, rather than wishful thinking. Look it up yourself – 75-95% of the rare minerals used in the construction of renewables are simply not recoverable by current technology. It’s a simple statement of fact and a limiting factor on renewable growth.
“I think continued increase in the atmospheric CO2 content will cause increasing and unpredictable changes in the climate and the environment.”
That is an opinion. There’s no evidence that CO2 is causing any problems for the Earth’s atmosphere or for humans. There is no evidence that CO2 needs to be controlled or regulated.
NutZero is not based on facts. It’s a religion based on pure speculation.
Fossil fuel is a limited resource. If we continue burning it in the current rate we will sooner or later run out it. I don’t think it will happen soon, but we cannot use it forever. We should spare something for our descendants.
Right. Screw the poor today in the hope that someone in the year 2080 will be better off. That’s a brilliant plan.
The poor single mom whose gasoline cost goes up today because of your “ideals” may have to choose between gas to get to work, and food for her kids, but that doesn’t matter to Jan. He has principles, you see, he’s saving the world, so people don’t matter to Jan.
You do understand, I hope, that she’s cursing your name already, and the name of everyone involved in the insane war against fossil fuels. And she’s cursing it with very good reason—your actions are actively hurting her children today, in the name of maybe doing someone some unknown good in the year 2080.
I think continued increase in the atmospheric CO2 content will cause increasing and unpredictable changes in the climate and the environment. The current global 50% increase from 280 ppm to 420 ppm, is perhaps not too bad, but what about 600 ppm or 1000 ppm?
Jan, they’ve been pushing that line of patter for forty years now. They took it up right after they realized that their predictions of a “New Ice Age” weren’t coming to pass.
Not one of their predictions has come true. Look at the upper right of this page. Click on the “FAILED PREDICTION TIMELINE”. How many times do their predictions have to fail before you wake up and notice that you’re not only drinking the Koolaid, but like a good little robot, you’re also repeating their lies?
Less air pollution.
Air pollution was a problem when I was a kid. The US and most industrialized countries have solved it. You want to see real air pollution, Jan?
Visit some woman who is cooking her food over a dung fire.
From all appearances, you live so far up an ivory tower that you have no idea of the conditions of the people living at the bottom of the economic ladder.
This argument that measures to mitigate climate change may hurt the poor, is real, but not unsolvable.
The US has a huge, and seemingly growing, poverty problem.
When my parents were young it was common for Europeans to migrate to the US. An ordinary worker could earn two to three times the salary there, compared to what he could get home.
Now it is the opposite way for unskilled workers, European salaries are the highest.
I am not just taking about my own country, Norway, which is rich because of luck, found oil, I am talking about most west European countries. Although the average GDP per capita is higher in the US, it is more unevenly distibuted.
Trump said once that he wanted more Norwgian migrants, this is one reason, the other is that since new migration laws in 1960, you need to have a good education to get a legal immigration.
However, in spite the unfavourable salary gap, the US is still popular among many. I know Norwegians who have tried to immigrate, but they were not allowed.
My point is that serious effort should be put into raising salaries and generally reducing poverty in all countries.
This must be solved independently of any climate mitigation efforts.
Jan, the problem is that almost all of the policies in the idiotic war on fossil fuels increase either the price of energy or the price of things that utilize energy (cars, gas stoves, etc).
And for the people making the policies, it’s not a problem … but for much of the world, it is a HUGE isssue.
Here’s a story about those at the bottom of the economic ladder.
And below, after trillions of dollars and decades of computer time and millions of man-hours expended on the effort, is how much your insane war on CO2 has accomplished.
Jack sh|t. You are shafting the poor for NO GAIN AT ALL!
“They [China] have committed to peak emissions before 2030 and to be carbon neutral by 2060.”
Have they? It is my understanding that the Chicoms will re-evaluate their CO2 position in 2030, and they have made no firm committments about peak emissions beyond that.
I still say «never underestimate an exponential growth»
and wind and solar have an almost perfect exponential growth curve.
You’re making the mistake that Thomas Malthus made. He, like you, was a great believer in exponential growth. Malthus said that “Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.” By this, he meant that populations grow exponentially, whereas the population limits (food production capacity) grow linearly.
Malthus was wrong.
In nature, exponential growth never lasts long. It can’t.
And you are totally incorrect about wind and solar having “an almost perfect exponential growth curve”. The facts don’t bear that out at all. Exponential growth means the variable grows by the same percentage every year.
BP shows wind data from 1989, and solar data from 2001. Here are the growth rates by year, along with the trend lines. Note that in both cases, rather than being “perfect exponential” growth, the growth rate is decreasing each year.
It’s the nature of the beast.
w.
PS—Folks, a word to the wise. DO YOUR HOMEWORK AND ACTUALLY RUN THE NUMBERS before making claims.
Thank you Willis for all you write about.
LIFE WITHOUT OIL
Life without oil means many products that are made with oil, such as the hundreds listed below, would need to be provided by wind and solar and hydro.
Those folks, including Biden, wanting to get rid of fossil fuels, such as crude oil, better start doing some rethinking.
blob:https://wattsupwiththat.com/f01c58d0-80ad-4db8-ba90-fa989899eb4f
Just click on the image to get a big image
Buffalo Chips, for that natural smokey flavor (and nuclear for back-up in the wet season).
The original Frisbies…
Fossil fuels are actually hydrocarbon fuels. If we ever run out of fossil fuel, we’ll almost certainly synthesize hydrocarbons with nuclear power.
Coal is not a hydrocarbon. But then, they did already phase that one out.
Coal is composed of hydrocarbons.
Of course it also contains a fair amount of oxygen, owing to its biogenic precursors, as well as lower levels of sulfur and nitrogen, etc., but by definition it is of hydrocarbon structure.
Organic chemistry primarily began in Germany based on coal chemistry.
No, see my reply below to Mike Dombroski.
Even anthracite has plenty of carbon/hydrogen bonds, mainly aromatic organic carbon, so is a hydrocarbon.
The term “elemental” in your reply below just means the mass percentage of the coal on a carbon basis, e.g., via ultimate analysis. It does not say anything about chemical structure, which is what being a hydrocarbon or not concerns.
Examples of elemental carbon, that one could describe as inorganic I suppose, would include diamond and graphite.
No, see my reply below to batpox.
Coal is almost entirely carbon.
More so on a mass basis than a molar basis, but in any case, its carbon content very much depends on the type and grade of coal.
Yes, also correct.
Yes.
coal is about 50% carbon.
the world uses more than 8 billion metric ton of coal per year
trees are about 25% carbon
the world would need at least 20 billion metric ton of trees to get the same electricity as from coal.
coal power plants are much more efficient than wood
the world would quickly run out of trees
Not if “they” refers to China, India, the United States, Japan and nearly every other developed nation on Earth. “Coal remains the world’s single largest power source, generating 34% of global electricity in 2020.”
— https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/top-25-coal-power-countries-in-2020/
Why are so many people down voting a simple chemical fact?
I didn’t vote negative because coal is not “a hydrocarbon” as in a single one, but coal is composed of hydrocarbons, and those with backgrounds in organic chemistry and geology know this.
Of course there are inorganic impurities in coal, silica, carbonates, iron oxides, etc., but coal is mostly organic as others have pointed out.
Maybe I find a good reference and post later.
I am looking forward to it.
The statement and reference below is probably as good as any.
“Hydrocarbon resources are resources that contain hydrocarbon molecules which means it consists of both hydrogen and carbon. Hydrocarbon resources are often known as fossil fuels (natural gas, oil, and coal) since hydrocarbons are the primary constituent in these.”
https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Hydrocarbon_resource#:~:text=Hydrocarbon%20resources%20are%20resources%20that,the%20primary%20constituent%20in%20these.
The energyeducation.ca seems a little confusing. I clicked at your “coal” link, and there is no occurrence of “hydrocarbon” on that page. They just seem to list coal as a fossil fuel. Thanks anyway.
What is confusing about “hydrocarbons are the primary constituents in these” (natural, gas, oil, and coal)?
Here’s a more technical reference: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0146638084900652
Please quote your own post correctly.
Regarding your more technical reference, coal surely contains hydrocarbons, as well as uranium.
That statement is generally not true for high grade coals used in power plants.
Coal originates from organic carbohydrate and hydrocarbon (terpenoid producing) sources (mainly plant matter) that was first buried in shallow sediments, then later moved/overburdened to very deep geological strata. The pressure and temperatures associated with such depths, over many hundreds of millions of years duration, broke down the carbohydrates and hydrocarbons (i.e., broke molecular bonds) and in turn formed compounds such as water, CO2, and methane, which in many cases leaked out of the deep strata. The residual inorganic carbon which could not leak out and was not consumed in the formation of H2O, CO2 and CH4 ending up forming different grades of coal, depending on the as-yet remaining content of untransformed carbohydrates/hydrocarbons and other impurities (e.g., sand, sulfur, etc.).
Anthracite coal (aka “hard coal”), the highest carbon content coal that is widely available commercially, has an inorganic, elemental carbon (not hydrocarbon) content of around 87% wt.
Bituminous coal (aka “soft coal”) has elemental carbon content in the range of 77–87%.
So, bottom line: coal, as used to fuel power plants, is MOSTLY inorganic, elemental carbon.
carbon is considered an organic element. In the context of chemistry, organic compounds are defined as compounds that contain carbon atoms. Carbon is the fundamental element in organic chemistry, and the vast majority of organic compounds, including those found in living organisms, contain carbon atoms bonded to other elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and various other elements. Organic compounds play a crucial role in biological processes, as they form the basis of life’s molecular structures, including carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids.
I suspect that you’ve studied chemistry, as have I.
Indeed, it shows in your postings.
You absolutely must inform Wikipedia and most professors and experts in the field of chemistry of your statements.
“Carbon is the 15th most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, and the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen . . . The atoms of carbon can bond together in diverse ways, resulting in various allotropes of carbon. Well-known allotropes include graphite, diamond, amorphous carbon, and fullerenes . . . The largest sources of inorganic carbon are limestones, dolomites and carbon dioxide, but significant quantities occur in organic deposits of coal, peat, oil, and methane clathrates.”
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon (my bold emphasis added)
Obviously, not all carbon is considered to be “an organic element” (“organic” meaning characteristic of, pertaining to, or derived from living organisms) . . . or else please tell me what plants, animals, bacteria or even viruses produce it throughout the universe or in the crust of Earth and in the forms of graphite or diamonds.
And beware if you want to pivot on your phrase “organic compounds” because here is Wikipedia’s listing of inorganic carbon compounds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inorganic_compounds ):
Carbon dioxide – CO2
Carbon disulfide – CS2
Carbon monoxide – CO
Carbon tetrabromide – CBr4
Carbon tetrachloride – CCl4
Carbon tetrafluoride – CF4
Carbon tetraiodide – CI4
Carbonic acid – H2CO3
Carbonyl chloride – COCl2
Carbonyl fluoride – COF2
Carbonyl sulfide – COS
Carboplatin – C6H12N2O4Pt
The truth is out there.
I would agree that those are inorganic carbon compounds with the exception of carboplatin, which is an organometallic compound.
Organic compounds, were generally well defined by batpox. To echo his point, organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon. That doesn’t mean that all carbon compounds are organic.
Now, to the extent that perhaps we are arguing semantics, I do want to explain some other relevant chemistry.
Going back to the original question of coal and hydrocarbons, chemical structure is what is important, not whether an element is present or not, and structure determines the energy state of those compounds. For example whether energy can be generated from its oxidation. (I’m not saying that inorganic compounds cannot burn.)
But, for your H2CO3, even though hydrogen and carbon are present, the hydrogen is not bonded to carbon, so this molecule (carbonic acid) is not a hydrocarbon. This is also a low energy state compound having been created from water and carbon dioxide.
Now if you are interested further, look up the chemical structures of coal. You will indeed see a lot of carbon, but you will also see hydrogen bonded to carbon, hence, hydrocarbon molecular structure.
Just one more thing. Take methane (natural gas) CH4 the simplest hydrocarbon. It is 75% carbon by mass, but there are 4 times as many hydrogen atoms as carbon atoms per molecule.
Now, the hypothetical molecular formula for anthracite is C240H90O4NS. I say hypothetical because its not a single molecule but rather a mixture of numerous molecules, in some respects a polymer, but not exactly.
It’s mostly carbon but on an atomic basis it is over a third hydrogen, and it turns out that the hydrogen is bonded to carbon in an aromatic structure. Aromatic molecules are hydrocarbons. By now you should know the conclusion.
So, therefore, coal and hydrocarbons could exist without the presence of carbon atoms???
You, like batpox, obviously must inform Wikipedia and most professors and experts in the field of chemistry of your revelations.
No, obviously a hydrocarbon must contain carbon and hydrogen, and I never said that carbon has to be organic. That doesn’t make it incorrect to say that organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon.
The point I tried to make was that the chemical structure (bonding) is crucial. I tried to explain by way of example that carbonic acid, which was on your inorganics list, was not a hydrocarbon even though it contained carbon and hydrogen.
This relates to the fact that the chemical structure of coal is comprised of compounds that have carbon bonded with hydrogen, hence are hydrocarbons.
I would point out that Wikipedia sometimes contains incorrect information. To your point about professors and experts in the field of chemistry, I am one. I can be wrong like anyone, but I am providing no “revelations.”
Yes carbon as organic. I presume this is where we get the phrase — “Carbon Based Lifeform”, in various contexts, mostly science fiction movies! 🙂
Plus the all important
Carbohydrate – (C·H2 O)6
Get rid of the carbon and you’ve all wet
As is obvious from the comments to my above post of July 3, 2023 1:33 pm, many people mistakenly believe that the carbon content of various grades of coal must still exist in the form of hydrocarbons. This is simply not true . . . most of the content of high-grade coals used to fuel power power plants (i.e., anthracite and bituminous) exists as free (i.e. elemental) carbon that is not molecularly-bonded to other elements such as hydrogen or oxygen.
“Carbon forms more than 50% by weight & more than 70% by volume of coal (this includes inherent moisture). This is dependent on coal rank, with higher rank coals containing less hydrogen, oxygen & nitrogen, until 95% purity of carbon is achieved at Anthracite rank & above“
— https://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/energy/assets/pdfs/cctr/outreach/Basics8-CoalCharacteristics-Oct08.pdf
(my bold emphasis added)
“What is the percentage of free carbon in anthracite? . . . the percentage of free carbon in anthracite is 95%.”
— https://www.vedantu.com/question-answer/percentage-of-free-carbon-in-anthracite-class-10-chemistry-cbse-5f7238f522272301fe6ac9cb
(my bold emphasis added)
“Anthracite coal has the highest carbon content of all the coal. It is between 86 and 98 percent pure carbon.”
—https://www.flushingschools.org/cms/lib/MI01808725/Centricity/Domain/259/coal%20formation.pdf
(my bold emphasis added)
Enough said.
Not quite, coal is a polymeric structure, it is not elemental carbon, here’s a typical structure:
coal_structure.gif
Thank you. You can lead a horse to water.
As you can also find scissors that just don’t quite cut it.
No.
“A polymer is any of a class of natural or synthetic substances composed of very large molecules, called macromolecules, which are multiples of simpler chemical units called monomers.”
— https://www.britannica.com/science/polymer
A carbon atom does not meet the definition of a monomer, a molecule that can be bonded to other identical molecules.
Chemistry 101.
Coal is indeed a polymeric structure comprising monomers consisting of multiple interlinked aromatic rings (like the one I linked above). The purer the coal (e.g. anthracite) the more compact the monomers are ultimately resulting in graphite.
anthracite.png
bituminous.png
lignite.png
Phil, I’ll settle for just one credible scientific article that states that the elemental carbon found to comprise the vast majority of high-grade coal is organized in a polymeric structure.
Just one.
Your linked images of chemical structures are nice as far as they go, but carbon linked in ring structure is NOT properly classified chemically as a monomer (or even polymer), but instead as a “carbocycle” under the general structural classification of “cyclic compounds” or “ring compounds” (ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_compound# ).
More to the point, the above-linked Wikipedia article specifically mentions the carbocycles can be used in ring-closing reactions and ring-opening reactions to accomplish specific types of polymerization.
Also, it’s somewhat embarrassing to have to point this out to you, but the highest “compaction” of carbon is “ultimately” found in diamond (s.g. = 3.5 gm/cc), NOT graphite (s.g. = 2.3 gm/cc)
I don’t know of any scientific claim that the formation of coal/elemental carbon under high levels of pressure and temperature as occur in deep earth strata, even over hundreds of millions of years, goes so far as to produce graphite in coal deposits, to say nothing of producing diamonds in coal deposits.
Oh well.
As I suspected, none offered up.
The stupidity . . . it burns.
Last ditch. Your misunderstanding, IToldYouSo, results from you not knowing the chemical definitions of elemental, purity, etc. The Purdue reference is good and agrees with everything I have been saying with 100% accuracy.
The vedantu and flushingschools links are not so good, and use misnomers that likely add to your confusion.
Let me provide one more link that discusses the elemental composition of wood, which is done very similarly to coal. Wood contains somewhere on the order of 50% carbon by weight (it varies somewhat by type). Surely you don’t think that wood contains carbon in an allotropic form like you appear to think about coal?
https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.1201/b12487-5#:~:text=Overall%2C%20dry%20wood%20has%20an,and%20trace%20amounts%20of%20inorganics.
?
I apologize but that entire second paragraph is likely bullshit and at best a theory and really not germane to your argument whatsoever.
I did find it humorous though. “Hundreds of millions of years” always makes me laugh. Science, what bullcrap
Why am I not at all surprised by that admission?
Following my post to you I came across an article by Roger Pielke Jr. on the same subject this weekend.
URL : https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-energy-transition-has-not-yet
While some aspects of his musings are parallel to yours, he seems to have come up with a few “wrinkles” of his own.
As an interested observer the old adage “Great minds think alike …” may need an extension along the lines of “… but not necessarily identically”.
With great respect for the man, I fear that Dr. Pielke has fallen for the “input equivalent” scam. He claims that:
First, he’s not including traditional biomass, which is larger than all his “non-fossil” sources together.
Next, his “non-fossil sources” (hydro, nuclear, wind, biofuels, solar, geothermal, other) only total 7.5% of total energy, not 18%. See Figure 4 above for confirmation.
Once we include traditional biomass (another “non-fossil source”) and use actual consumption figures rather than “input-adjusted” nonsense, the trend in non-fossil sources looks like this:
I can’t comment on his substack because you have to be a subscriber, but I invite him to come here and discuss this question. If anyone knows him, could you please pass this invitation on to him?
I’ve added this as an update to the head post.
w.
I had not known about the ‘input equivalent’ dodge.
It is also obvious that heavy trucks, ag and mining and construction and forestry equipment, and aviation cannot be electrified.
It is also obvious that any meaningful renewable penetration requires a second backup generation system for the grid, so will never be economic per se. And that backup system will be FF fired, because nuclear really doesn’t cycle easily while CCGT and to an extent coal do cycle easily.
Nuclear plants can cycle just as easily as any fossil plant. They just have to be designed for cycling operation instead of optimized for steady state, full power operation.
All naval reactors are designed for cycling operation, and they do so, for decades.
Naval reactors do not have cost as a consideration. The performance capability is achieved by substantial inbuilt redundancy.
There is a nice story, not necessarily true, about the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California. Pacific Gas and Electricity adapted a successful naval reactor design for submarines. In a submarine everything had to be flexible, to withstand a nearby explosion of a depth charge. California code required everything to be very stiff. As original design objectives were classified, PG&E just stiffened all flexible elements, resulting in a huge cost overrun and construction delays.
There is no Califonia code for nuke plants. See 10CFR50.
And all Navy nucs use highly enriched uranium not possible for commercial grid nucs due to proliferation concerns. Navy nucs last 20 years without refueling, and then are just swapped out. Commercial nucs are partly refueled every few years.
Most of the heavy mining shovels and truck were electric/diesel hybrids back in the
day in this area. When the copper pit in Butte was in operation the shovel was electric as
I remember and the haul trucks were also. I believe they would recharge when
going back into the pit. The underground stuff was also electric. There is a
mine nearby that is still intact, as if everyone left for the day and never came back.
Drills, generators, processing mills ect, it’s mostly all still there..
The big shovel that Bucyrus Erie
build in Idaho for stripping in coal mines ran on electricity. They used a diesel
generator and a power cord . It moved on pads not tracks, the pins for the pads were
3ft in diameter.
The new stuff is battery electric. Catapillar is making battery stuff now…
Autonomous vehicles and drones used now too in mining..
Just replot Fig. 1 as semi-log, probably won’t change a thing.
Excellent post. But, math is hard and graphs are harder.
One quibble: the Giants are playing the Mariners tonight…I am saving this for skeptical friends in any case.
I’ve always found graphs to be more enlightening than tables of numbers.
Clyde, that’s why I use so many graphs. A table of numbers tells me little.
Regards,
w.
A table of numbers is more specific and definite. One can get a general idea from a graph but, mostly, nothing exact. Certainly the numbers that went into the graph may only have been estimates rather than anything more specific but a table of those number, especially if it can be sorted as desired, is often more satisfying.
Andy, I’m interested in communicating what numbers mean, to people who are often allergic to math. So I use graphs.
Given that, however, you’ll notice that I invariably link my graphs to the source of the data, so that anyone like you can go to the data and sort or examine it as desired.
But sure, here’s the table of numbers that were used to make Figure 2:
You tell me, which one means more to the person in the street, that table or Figure 2?
w.
You should not take my comment as a criticism of what you do, it was only presented as a counterpoint view to the variety of ‘yea, graph’ comments already entered. I don’t think that you would reject the fact that if one ones to consider various aspects of the data, which you often do, the data itself, not any graphical approximation, is most useful.
However, your response here is somewhat perplexing. In what I believe was your most recent article prior to this one (The Sea Level Hype Continues), I ask you for any hints or pointers to instructions on how to obtain official temperature data (raw). I thought I made clear that temperature data was my interest but, in order to relate to the topic of the article I listed the steps that I could find to get to what seemed to be the specific sea level data you were writing, pointing out that once I got there I could not make heads or tails of the files supposedly containing the data. Not stated was that NOAA temperature data seems as opaque.
Now I don’t in any way mean that you have a obligation to be helpful (and I don’t see it as wrong to ask), but your rather puzzling reply was that you had no idea how to interpret the data files either. From what you wrote here about always providing links to your data suggests to me that what you were saying was something along the line of “I don’t get my data from such NOAA files”, leaving out any reference as to what data from where that you do use. I don’t care about the internet source, as long as it is officially accepted data. I wasn’t asking you to write a DIY lesson on obtaining and analyzing data, only a pointer to something, if it exists, that is instructive on getting and using the data. Doesn’t everyone have to start somewhere?
Thanks, Andy.
I have no problem with you asking, and I assist people wherever I can. However, the link you gave me was to the data underlying NOAA maps that show how much land will get flooded from some give sea level rise.
I’ve never looked at either that issue or that site, so I don’t know what the formatting of the data was or exactly what each file contains.
As to temperature data, I couldn’t recall you asking for that, so I went back to your comment. You did say:
I don’t see anywhere in there that you are asking me for the source of specific temperature data. My apologies.
So let’s start over. What temperature data from which organization are you looking for? There’s global data from GISS, JMA, Berkeley Earth, UAH MSU, RSS, HadCRUT4, HadCRUT5. In addition there’s daily station-level data, ocean data, the list goes on.
My recommendation as a place to start is KNMI, which contains most of those and more in a readily accessible form.
My best to you, sorry for the misunderstanding,
w.
Thanks, I will see what I can make of the KNMI Climate Explorer. I was looking at NOAA since they are the most official weather data agency but as long as I can get the thermometer readings, the raw data, it seems it should have to be the same data regardless of who is presenting it.
I have seen various articles that start with showing recorded temperatures for a number of stations, then showing how the climate manipulations change them into a quite different picture. I don’t care about the climate presentations, I just want to be able to compare what was recorded at various specific locations for the past 20 or 30 years, regardless of whether or not that represents “climate”.
Andy, if you wish for the most untouched data, on the KNMI home page click on “Daily Station Data”.
Alternatively:
Daily GHCN data – these are not adjusted. Each station file contains its entire record.
At this link: https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/
The ghcnd_hcn.tar.gz file contains all the 1,218 USHCN station files of daily data.
Or the individual files can be found here.
https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/hcn/
And the monthly files are here.
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2.5/
The monthly files by station are separate for “raw”, “tob” (time of observation adjusted) and “FLs.52j” (after pairwise homogenization) tmax, tmin, tavg. And raw and FLs.52j for precip.
That should keep you busy for a couple of decades …
w.
oohh – my head hurts just looking at those numbers.
During my years as a budget manager for a large organization, $458 million dollars annual revenue, almost twice that for expense. I used graphs to wow those so inclined and often to hide/disguise inconvenient information.
Presentations for Regional or HQ personnel were always in graphic form, usually achievements we wanted highlighted.
My CFO boss hated graphs, refusing to look at them as communication or of any use besides confusion. With his decades in Finance, his dislike for showy graphs is understandable.
Every report that I submitted to him was tabular with all the information included.
If a number was adjusted and different from an official report (Accounting period, quarterly and annual reports), we had to include full information regarding the reason(s), source, what was adjusted, why it was adjusted, and the adjustment amount.
Sometimes but rarely, he would ask for a table(s) to be sorted on a particular field.
All of this latter information just doesn’t fit on most graphs legibly, unless one removes most of the fields graphed.
IEA, NOAA and manniacal graphs are excellent examples of graphical misinformation with virtually zero information regarding a host of hidden adjustments and dubious calculations.
Still, I greatly enjoy studying Willis’ graphics using pristine data. They are a joy to study.
The “input equivalent” is a new, rather inventive, lie – or, at least, a way of twisting the truth.
BTW, in Michigan “misgendering” is now an offence punishable by up to 5 years in prison. The only safe way to address a stranger there is “Hey, you!”
Michigan, the Hey, You State.
So you could be thrown in jail for calling someone a bastard instead of a bitch?
But aren’t there a large number of other choices today?
Gone is the sentiment that supported the Enlightenment:
“I may not agree with what you say, but I will support your right to say it with my life.”
Hey, You, get offa my cloud
Hey, Government, Get Offa My Ass!
The only ones in Michigan who should be in jail are the legislators and the governor for criminalizing speech. I guess the MI State Patrol want to be nicknamed “Gestapo” if they enforce such drivel.
“Where’s” Wally”? Sorry, time warp moment – meant Stokes?
Won’t be long now before the “yeahbutts” chime in…
Chad has a question..
You mean Kilroy?
Depends which side of the pond you are. It was Kilroy for the Brits, Chad for the Yanks. I was going for the widest coverage.
Great article outlining the myths of renewables. Slightly off track but of some relevance I think is the advert on UK television for a new “all electric” SUV (can’t remember which) which shows the family driving off up mountain roads to wild camp in the middle of nowhere. Nobody in their right mind would do that – where on Earth (literally) would they recharge to come home? Selling a myth.
If they get to their destination and park their EV facing downhill, maybe they can use their ‘regenerative braking’ to recharge the battery enough to find a charging station once they get out of the mountains.
It really does seem to me that the approach is going to have to be to rely on hybrids for a transition, until the infrastructure is in place for recharging stations everywhere people want to drive.
Not even then.
Just spent 2 enjoyable weeks in that green and sceptre isle. There are mountains there? 😄
Yes. Hills in Scotland, Fells in Cumbria and the Pennines and…….. Mountains in Wales
Story tip:
A bit off-topic but relevant. A devastating flat fire in Cambridge, UK that killed an adult, 2 children and injured another adult is believed to have been started by an e-bike that was charging. It might be a little disingenuous to attribute 3 more deaths to all EV’s but it is fair to say that Lithium batteries are still too dangerous for the applications they’re being used in. We need to stop using them.
There have been a number of such e-bike fires in NYC.
I think one report said they were averaging a couple of e-bike fires a week in NYC.
I wouldn’t put any vehicle powered by a lithium battery inside my home or garage. You never know, it might just catch on fire for no good reason.
Electric scooters have been banned from the London Tube after 3 caught fire in a couple of weeks last year.
A phone has a lithium battery and they also very occasionally catch fire and could burn down your home. Do you have a phone?
At least outlaw their storage (parking) and charging in or near human structures.
In New York City?
See?
According to the NTSB in the US:
Hybrids have 3,475 fires per 100K vehicles.
ICE vehicles have 1,530 fires per 100k vehicles.
EVs have 25.1 fires per 100k vehicles.
By this metric, EV are much safer.
Admittedly, there are ICE vehicles on the road that are 80 years old (and older). We see a lot of them here in Reno as a lot of folks enjoy restoring them. There are extremely few EVs on the road that are over 50 years old, if any.
However, in the event of accidents, NTSB says that EVs cause more damage and deaths than ICE vehicles because of their (EV) heavier curb weights. i could find no statistics to support this claim.
I couldn’t find statistics on unattended vehicle fires, although there is a lot of evidence that both ICE and EVs can catch fire while parked.
That information is from an insurance company and is the result of insurance claims resulting from various fires – it fails to account for non-claimed EV fires or where the car has been replaced by the manufacturer rather than submit a claim. It also fails to account for the fact that you are 15 times more likely to suffer a serious or fatal injury from an EV fire rather than an ICE fire or that it takes vastly more resources to deal with an EV fire or the collateral fires rising from those initial fires. ICE fires are, despite Hollywood films, easier to deal with are more likely to be a small electrical fire and rarely result in collateral fires that cause serious injuries or worse. It’s not just a case of how many EV fires there are, we know there are a tiny number of EV’s on the road, it’s the devastation those fires can cause.
RE “There are extremely few EVs on the road that are over 50 years old, if any..”
I guess we would have noticed them…
Just surprised you put the number so far back. I pegged the start of the electric vehicle craze as being the last 20-30 years. But maybe I just wasn’t that aware of them.
Here’s the history of electric cars …
“Exponential growth”, they said …
w.
I was wondering about this low number for EV fires.
Could it be that the insurance company also insures EVs like Golfcarts, Forklifts and such?
As far as I know, those EVs run with lead batteries. Those are not known to spontaneously ignite.
Excellent work, Mr E!!! Linking this to many people, pronto.
“You don’t understand. Solar and wind are growing exponentially! Just wait a few years and you’ll see!”
In 2021 in a comment in which I expressed concern for an economic disaster looming for UK, I made mention of an article that stated that renewables had peaked in 2017, and, with energy companies going broke, investors shying away from the sector and a number of early wind/solar farms to be decommissioned, I opined the 2017″peak” was firm and the sector would decline . Your graph certainly shows no surge. I wonder if the data includes wind and solar sill standing but not working?
The exponential growth is useless until it out paces actual consumption.
consumption increases
Yes, that’s where I was going with that.
The 2017 ‘peak’ was in building/commissioning not output.
Willis – commenting from the UK, I so wish your post could be included in our secondary school curriculum – hell, even our Primary schools! Balanced argument with real data is so needed to stop the march of the green nihilists: that which they think will save us will be the death of many.
KBO!
As far as I can see the education ‘blob’ has been quite successful in ensuring that the idea of ‘balanced argument with real data‘ no longer exists.
More bad news Willis. In Feb 2022 the cpuc approved a plan to add more renewables and batteries by 2032.
https://www.pv-tech.org/cpuc-approves-plans-to-add-18-8gw-of-solar-15gw-of-battery-storage-by-2032/
This added capacity comes at a wholesale price of $180 per MWh. CA typical wholesale price is less than $100 per MWh. The cpuc says this is the least expensive option to meet emission reduction mandates.
As you know, CA mandates “net zero” by 2045 in the electric grid so prices are destined to increase even more.
As I said … grrrr …
w.
Hey, Willis, chill. We need the crash test dummy. You are old enough and, presumably, adaptive enough that your life won’t be ruined.
The CPUC still hasn’t figured out that the correct unit for grid storage is GWh, not GW. Won’t end well.
“The Governor appoints the five [CPUC] Commissioners, who must be confirmed by the Senate, for six year staggered terms.”
God help the Democratic California.
Commissioners or Commissars?
Where are all those batteries coming from? I know who will be paying for them.
Well, the U.S. and Canada are pouring massive subsidies into domestic battery manufacturing plants owned by foreign companies. But I’d bet on China for most batteries given its material mining capabilities and low-cost energy.
Watch for all the trade wars related to nations’ EV subsidies. Also watch for Western auto manufacturing bankruptcies when EV mandates kick in. It is a highly competitive and intricate market that is not taking well to heavy-handed government interference. I hope I’m still around when the lamppost and piano wire phase begins.
China has 6 of the top 10 EV battery manufacturers with c. 60% of the global market share led by CATL (37.1%) and BYD (13.6%), followed by CALB (4%), Gotion (2.8%) Sunwoda (1.7%) and Eve (1.3%).
China is also the worlds largest market for EVs with more than half of all EVs on the road there. However their industry is facing problems. Their largest EV manufacturer Nio has been making considerable losses and recently reduced the price of its cars by $4200 to try and shift them and stopped its free 6 battery swap out scheme. The Chinese government has just had to extend its subsidy scheme to 2027 at a cost of £56.9bn to keep the market afloat.
We also saw in a recent post here that VW is having problems in its EV division. According to the IEA there are currently around 27m EVs worldwide compared to 1.4 bn ICE vehicles.
In the UK the CEO of Kia Motors has said a “mass market in affordable electric cars will not happen because of the difficulty of producing them on a viable basis” (Times newspaper Jan 23 2023)
All is not well in the EV world.
For all the investors on the thread (with a sufficiently long investment horizon), the take-away is have a significant stake (long term) in O&G companies (the majors in particular & select smaller companies if confident in long term prospects) . With the considerable under-investment, both now and over the last decade +, the long term pricing & profit scenario looks robust for this segment.
The plots Willis has presented are consistent with longer term plots that there never has been an energy transition in the history of the world. There have been new energy sources that just are just new slices into an ever increasing energy consumption pie. To think that wind and solar will somehow be different is folly.
I agree, and with some additional reasons. The past crude glut was caused by the shale frackers land rush with ‘use it or lose it’ lease terms. Those days are over. And as laid out in several energy chapters in ebook Blowing Smoke, the peak production in conventional crude was about 2008, and the peak production in all is between now and 2025. Not a disaster since the function is NOT Hubbert’s logistic but rather a gamma with a shallow peak and a long production tail. Just means prices will hold up at about current levels for decades, very good for the O&G industry.
Interesting and entertaining post. Thanks.
Regarding biomass – there is a small category of non-traditional biomass.
The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) does balancing in much of the Pacific Northwest. A chart updated at 5-minute intervals is here:
https://transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx
Note that VER means Variable Energy Resources, which are primarily wind and solar. That line is green.
There is a brown line for Fossil/Biomass.
Under the chart there is a list of 24 facilities producing with the names, sometimes, indicating what is being burned. There’s no camel dung or buffalo chips, but lots of other waste is being turned into electricity. One would have to do a lot of searching and reading to determine the costs and contributions of these.
Under that list are the 42 dams. 42 is the answer.
The BPA operating area is the Pacific Northwest. It has abundant timbered areas to provide biomass.
What happens when Hydro generates more than the LOAD, happening every afternoon per the graph?
The total generation is always greater than the total BPA load because most of the time BPA is a net exporter of energy. The BPA Load does not include scheduled energy to other balancing authority areas.
For one method of export, see: The Pacific DC Intertie (also called Path 65)
Also, Grand Coulee, one of the 42 dams and the largest hydropower plant in the U.S., uses excess electricity to pump water 280 feet uphill with 12 massive pumps to manmade Banks Lake for irrigation and energy storage. When they need to supplement power from the 27 main turbines in the 3 powerhouses, they release water from Banks Lake back down through 6 of the pumps which are also designed to be power-generating turbines, adding 314 MW of “on demand” power. That power is inefficient since it takes more power, 600 MW, to pump the water uphill in the first place, but it provides some backup for the 6,800 MW dam.
Thanks for the BPA link. Interesting. I didn’t know that biomass contributed so much electricity. Even more interesting, solar and wind with their variability barely produce about the same power as burning biomass. Looking at the graph, solar and wind seem superfluous, like “boutique” electricity; the almost useless luxury of zealots and their big dreams to change the world. It’s the best evidence against wind and solar I’ve seen, updated in real time. I’ll see if I can get the data to do monthly and annual plots.
I can speak from past consulting experience in the timber industry (lots of it in PNW). Most board mills run on electricity plus process steam heat (phenolic resin plywood/wafer board bonding). That is almost always produced at the mill by burning shredded bark and waste wood in a steam boiler powering a steam turbine/generator. Same is true for big (but not small) sawmills.
I see what you did there. Very clever reference to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy!
I’m not disputing the basic idea of the stupidity of wind and solar for anything except special, limited situations. That has been evident for a long time, but the presentation here doesn’t represent what is really happening where it matters. Most of the world hasn’t signed onto the stupidity so their inclusion skews the picture.
It is the “western 1st world” that has bought into this and is directly paying for it. The rest of the world may well be suffering fallout from the west’s obsession, but they are not going down the same dead end path. I suspect that, for the west, wind and solar are a significantly larger penetration of total energy consumption and a significantly larger expense vs benefit by any measure of energy consumption. If it were possible to produce similar graphs that cover only the west, and perhaps for comparison, separate graphs that cover the rest of the story, it should be interesting.
As a separate issue, why is the legend of Figure 4 placed to redact most of the information for the last half century?
Thanks, Andy. You say:
It’s interesting that you think the West is “where it matters” … me, I’ve worked all over the planet, and to me, it all matters.
And to answer your separate issue, the legend in OWID graphs appears when you put the cursor over the graph. I have no say in where it is located. That’s why I linked to the data source, so you can see all of it.
Best to you and yours,
w.
Andy, agree true but probably not nearly as big a difference as implied. Western Renewables are mainly for grid electricity (US, UK, Germany). Much energy consumption isn’t electricity. Primary steel and cement, most transportation, all ag, mining, construction, forestry, all aviation, most military are not electrified—only Navy submarines and carriers are nuclear electric.
Looked up US. In 2021 37% of US primary energy (includes FF, Nuc, hydro, renewables) was used to produce electricity, so 63% of US energy had nothing to with electricity and therefore with renewables.
Last year I extracted limited data for certain countries from the (then) BP dataset to “mess around with”.
When EI updated the dataset last week I updated my spreadsheet “just for laughs”.
I found your request “interesting”, but to speed things up I am defining “The West” as “The USA + the European Union + Canada + Japan + Australia”.
Assuming by “the rest of the story” you actually meant “the rest of the world (ROW)”, I used the following formula :
ROW = “World” (specific lines in the EI spreadsheet) – “The West”.
The preliminary results are attached below.
NB : Special mentions to both the UK and Australia maybe ?
Note also Willis’s caveats about EI’s “PEC” numbers. My approach is more “If they insist on making ‘extraordinary’ claims, beat them to death with their own data …”
One comment to Willis. Don’t forget that some people are color blind, or in my case, slightly color blind. Also, most screens used by people are not color calibrated. It took me a moment to tell the difference between the periwinkle colored line and the light blue line in the graph and legend of figure 2. It’s not a bad idea to test colors on several devices and monitors than the one you always use. I found this out on a GIS project I did. Colors looked great on a monitor. But doing a PowerPoint presentation of it using a projector taught me I needed to test colors.
Ben, I do my best not to use both red and green for that very reason. However, I have no clue what color “periwinkle” is …
In addition, I only have one “device and monitor”, I’m just a guy working from my house.
Regards,
w.
I have this issue when teaching classes with color-blind students, the attached source give suggested color mixes to avoid the problem:
https://www.datylon.com/blog/data-visualization-for-colorblind-readers?_gl=1*jrvlaf*_up*MQ..*_ga*NDIzMjM5OTIzLjE2ODg0OTc1NDY.*_ga_4RCNNGGZW2*MTY4ODQ5NzU0NS4xLjAuMTY4ODQ5NzU0NS4wLjAuMA..#color-blind-palette
One should also consider using different line weights and types (dotted, chain-broken, etc).
Yes!
For those of us who don’t have color printer, using different types of lines
makes it very easy to follow the curves. And it makes it easy to do B & W handouts
when I give a talk to a small group. I use Right-Click & “Save Image As…” all the time to keep a library of pertinent graphics. A good graph is worth a 1000 words!
But having said all that, I will always make a color copy of Dr Christy’s “spaghetti
graph” of the models vs satellites as a hand-out. Its’ visual impact is remarkable.
Back when I was a very well paid senior partner at a multibillion consulting firm, I demanded such details of everyone I worked with. Willis is an unpaid volunteer contributor. I hope he contributes more and spends no time polishing them.
Yeah, Rud: It is rude to demand something you are not paying for.
who’d ya work for?
Biggest rainmaker SVP (senior partner) at BCG back in the day. Left after 15 years to become corporate intrapreneur and then CSO at client Motorola.
Motorola has an interesting history. My first mobile phone was a small brick sized Motorola..
Here is another visual example of how fossil fuels consumed world wide.
https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/the-scale-of-fossil-fuel-production/
This is another example of just how important these are and just how difficult replacement is.
While we’re at it, let’s look at energy densities as well:
https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Energy_density
For conversion purposes, there are 277.777778 watt hours/mega joule.
So, when reading about batteries and energy densities, congrats, they have reached roughly table sugar but not yet wood for a fire place. Much less coal.
Thanks Willis. Excellent perpective.
I still say «never underestimate an exponential growth»
and wind and solar have an almost perfect exponential growth curve.
Most of it is due to the huge Chinese investments. They have committed to peak emissions before 2030 and to be carbon neutral by 2060. So far they seem to be about five years ahead of schedule.
So how should we in the west respond to that?
Shall we just continue to poison our water and soil with mecury from coal, or should we also go for emission free sources?
/Jan
There is no such animal as emission free source. Until solar panels and wind mills strictly use their only power source, it is still redirected fossil fuel output.
Use their own power output as their emission free power consumption for manufacturing is how that should have been stated.
If you wanted to get rid of your mother-in-law would you daily feed her fish caught in a lake down-wind from a power house? How long do you suppose it would take?
Funny!
However, the problem with mercury is that it seldom kills.
It damages the brain though.
Each coal power plant takes a few thousand IQ points from the nation.
Thanks, Jan, good to hear from you.
First, any and all numbers coming out of China need to be viewed with total skepticism.
Next, I wouldn’t hold my breath on China achieving carbon neutral or peak emissions. Here’s where they are today.
Not seeing it …
Next, “how should we in the west respond to that?”.
By laughing our asses off at their stupidity.
Finally, regarding mercury, it appears you’ve drunk the koolaid on that one as well. See my posts Mercury, The Trickster God and The EPA’s Mercurial Madness. Here’s a sample.
I live in one of the more mercury-contaminated areas of the US. Why? Because so much of the mercury comes from the ocean.
w.
And it was Joseph Goffman that was arranging a meeting with a Harvard group about Mercury. It’s all about the connections.
Always a pleasure to discuss with you Willis.
However, I think your mercury graph is misleading.
The point is that for mercury you need to distinguish between primary and secondary pollution.
Primary mercury contamination is when you bring things up to the surface from deep underground sources. Combustion of coal is now the largest primary mercury polluter.
Once the mercury is absorbed, it will not easily disappear again. The mercury that falls into the oceans can evaporate back into the atmosphere, and the substance that falls on land can also rise again. This happens during forest fires, dust storms and simple evaporation.
It is the secondary mercury pollution.
Secondary mercury pollution is greater than primary, but we wouldn’t have any secondary pollution if we didn’t have primary pollution.
If we stop the primary pollution, the secondary pollution will gradually decrease, but if we continue the primary pollution, the secondary pollution will gradually increase.
Your graph appears to have added these together and it gives a misleading picture.
A large part of the graph is, for example, the oceans. But it is not “natural” pollution. Almost all mercury from the oceans is secondary pollution caused by human-induced primary pollution.
Before the industrial revolution, there was very little mercury in the oceans. There is still very little in the deep sea, but the surface water is polluted.
we should stop the primary mercury pollution before we have polluted the ocean to the very bottom.
Natural primary mercury pollution comes from volcanoes and the amount is small.
Thanks, Jan. I took the liberty of reformatting your post to make it easy to read.
Is there still mercury pollution from US coal plants? Yes, but it’s only a fraction of what it once was. And the pending new MATS regulations on lignite-burning plants will reduce it even further.
In the US, the health consequences of this remaining pollution are small compared to the human costs of replacing these coal-fired plants with renewables.
Me, I’d like to see them shut down and replaced by nuclear plants, but noooo, the fake greens won’t allow that.
Best to you and yours,
w.
I’d guess that we get more mercury from Chinese coal emissions generated for the purpose of producing our “clean” solar panels and wind turbine components.
A lot of Chinese coal plants are fairly modern and far less polluting than earlier versions.
Translation: China is building over 100 new coal plants … remind me again about their commitment to net zero?
w.
Thank you for the formatting Willis
I agree 100% on the nuclear.
Unfortunately, there are not many nuclear construction starts in the West:
https://pris.iaea.org/pris/home.aspx
Jan
Always a pleasure to discuss with you Willis.
However, I think your mercury graph is misleading.
The point is that for mercury you need to distinguish between primary and secondary pollution.
Primary mercury contamination is when you bring things up to the surface from deep underground sources. Combustion of coal is now the largest primary mercury polluter.
Once the mercury is absorbed, it will not easily disappear again. The mercury that falls into the oceans can evaporate back into the atmosphere, and the substance that falls on land can also rise again. This happens during forest fires, dust storms and simple evaporation.
It is the secondary mercury pollution.
Secondary mercury pollution is greater than primary, but we wouldn’t have any secondary pollution if we didn’t have primary pollution.
If we stop the primary pollution, the secondary pollution will gradually decrease, but if we continue the primary pollution, the secondary pollution will gradually increase.
Your graph appears to have added these together and it gives a misleading picture.
A large part of the graph is, for example, the oceans. But it is not “natural” pollution. Almost all mercury from the oceans is secondary pollution caused by human-induced primary pollution.
Before the industrial revolution, there was very little mercury in the oceans. There is still very little in the deep sea, but the surface water is polluted.
We should stop the primary mercury pollution before we have polluted the ocean to the very bottom.
Natural primary mercury pollution comes from volcanoes and the amount is small.
Great analysis as usual, Willis. One small error on your graph of Mercury sources, however. I have lived in Savannah most of my life, and we produce almost zero mercury. The word I think you were looking for is Savanna 😉
I see no evidence for your claim that China is 5 years ahead of schedule. All I am seeing in the emissions figures is the effect of business cycles around a growing trend. The current global recession is likely to be quite deep, but the world will correct out of it, and so will China.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/29/china-wind-solar-power-global-renewable-energy-leader
Amigo, you really need to stop getting your “science” from the Guardian. They wouldn’t recognize a lie if it bit them in the differential, and they are suck-ups to China.
For example, the article says:
But according to BP, China reached 383GW in 2022, and that was a long ways from being more than the 660GW of installed capacity in the rest of the world.
The article also makes the following claim:
Not gonna happen. Look at my chart above.
w.
Guardian takes their numbers from Global Energy Monitor. For some reason, their numbers for solar are smaller than BP’s. It could be that it’s because they do not count small installations, they say:
“Summary data includes solar farm phases 20 MW and greater, 10MW and greater for MENA countries.”
But Guardian doesn’t pass this information, so you are right.
We’ll see whether they reach a third through renewables in 2030. I am one of those who are impressed by what they do.
I have been to dozens of Chinese cities and what I see of modernity, and especially the speed of development, is stunning.
Jan
Jan, I fear you sound like an overly enthusiastic leftist who went to Moscow in the ’30s and gushed about how wonderful it was … of course, they never were allowed anywhere near the gulags …
w.
Maybe I am a bit biased.
One of my sons lived there for 18 months, came back with a Chinese girlfriend, a relation that lasted so long that I for a while thought our familily ties would soon extend to China.
It hit an end though.
Jan
Always sad to see relationships end.
Best to you and yours,
w.
Unfortunately it’s unlikely we’ll actually find out what China’s renewable figures are, not precisely. China does not release figures for individual installations – usually it’s just totals per region which, given their practice of co-locating coal power plants with renewables, means that we have to rely on somewhat ambiguous, possibly heavily biased, data from Beijing. I tend to view some of the figures with suspicion as they do seem to indicate the renewables are outperforming western renewables whilst the co-located coal plants sometimes appear to be remarkably inefficient – my layman’s view is that the numbers are being distorted for appearances sake.
That was marginally true of older, unfiltered plants.
It is not true of modern power plants.
The filtered plants are still the biggest mercury polluters by far.
Quite many particles get through the filter.
Jan, did you not see Dr. Pielke, Jr.’s calculations of how much our consumption of FF energy would have to be reduced between now and 2050? Propaganda is no substitute for hard facts.
Yes, and I think net zero by 2050 is unrealistic.
But, as I see it, we need to go in that direction, whether we perhaps need a few decades more to get there is not so much to make fuzz about.
Why would we need to spend any extra money to “go in that direction?”
There are three reasons:
Some of the materials used in the construction of renewable installations are far more limited, we will run out of those much, much faster – renewables are unsustainable. As to hydrocarbons, there are vast seas of liquid methane on Titan, if only we could get at it – they are not as limited as you have been led to believe.
Carbon dioxide has yet to cause any change in the environment; on the contrary the warm period we went through up until 1998 caused the increase in atmospheric CO2 (as has happened many times before). The biggest change will be to green the planet – plants absolutely thrive on high CO2 – their ‘goldilocks’ concentration is around 800-1200ppm. As to us animals, it will take an unachievable concentration of about 45,000ppm before we have any problems and over 60,000ppm before we exhibit serious respiratory problems. As an environmentalist, I am relishing the regreening of parts of the world and the increased plant growth, as should we all.
Less air pollution is fantastic, but can only be achieved by a responsible, managed response – China is, unfortunately, not doing well in that respect. Less air pollution also means less reduction in solar energy, more surface warmth and more CO2 from increased plant growth etc. – it’s a natural cycle that works to our benefit, not our detriment.
Thanks for the comment Richard
We will never run out of materials used in the construction of renewable installations, because chemical elements never disappear.
We have just as much of those elements on the planet as we had a million years ago and they will still be around a million years from now.
They can be reused infinitely.
On the other hand, the molecules that forms fossil fuels can only be used once. After that the energy rich resource is converted to CO2 and water.
You mention lakes of methane on Titan. Unfortunately, that is impossible to utilize here.
Maybe we can mine other planets for very rare and very expensive minerals. Uranium can be possible, but methane and other hydrocarbones have far too low energy density to give a net positive contribution.
Jan
Jan, with respect, you are incorrect and a little naive about the rare materials involved in renewables. They are incredibly scarce, far more so than hydrocarbons and getting harder to source – prices are rising for them almost daily. As to the myth that we can keep re-using them, well we can’t; firstly it’s hugely costly and uneconomical to do so at the moment so it’s not being done – they are being thrown away rather than recycled. Secondly, some work has been done on recycling elements in the construction and the result is not great – the acid method used results in huge wastage, something like 75%-95%, so only a tiny fraction of the materials used can ever be recovered. I’m sorry to break this to you, Jan, but renewables are far less sustainable than hydrocarbon technology.
You are arguing against fundamental physical laws Richard. Chemical elements never disappear. Chemical bound energy do.
Technically all Chemical elements are 100% recoverable. No chemical process exists that are so irreversible that it is impossible to recover the element.
The reason it is not done is economical. It is cheaper to mine new materials than recovering the old.
This is solved by ordinary market forces. If the raw materials get more scarce, the price will go up and we will recover more of the old.
Jan
I am arguing a position of real-world data, Jan, rather than wishful thinking. Look it up yourself – 75-95% of the rare minerals used in the construction of renewables are simply not recoverable by current technology. It’s a simple statement of fact and a limiting factor on renewable growth.
What metals are you talking about? There is no surge in the prices. So-called rare earth elements are not so rare.
blob:https://wattsupwiththat.com/916b8cf6-7fa4-49de-b62b-556ce185080d
blob:https://wattsupwiththat.com/c148046a-9840-44ae-98b3-2375ba9a588c
blob:https://wattsupwiththat.com/864f4f0a-2bb8-4b2f-b1e8-2b07efeafcac
Taken from https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalprices.php
Jan, in 2020 lithium carbonate was $5,380 per tonne.
It is now $42,410 per tonne, about eight times as much.
Neodymium prices are up 67% over the same period.
Praseodymium is up 150%.
Dysprosium is up 50%
I’ve implored you before, DO YOUR HOMEWORK, because I sure will.
In friendship,
w.
PS—None of your links work.
“I think continued increase in the atmospheric CO2 content will cause increasing and unpredictable changes in the climate and the environment.”
That is an opinion. There’s no evidence that CO2 is causing any problems for the Earth’s atmosphere or for humans. There is no evidence that CO2 needs to be controlled or regulated.
NutZero is not based on facts. It’s a religion based on pure speculation.
Jan, you say:
Right. Screw the poor today in the hope that someone in the year 2080 will be better off. That’s a brilliant plan.
The poor single mom whose gasoline cost goes up today because of your “ideals” may have to choose between gas to get to work, and food for her kids, but that doesn’t matter to Jan. He has principles, you see, he’s saving the world, so people don’t matter to Jan.
You do understand, I hope, that she’s cursing your name already, and the name of everyone involved in the insane war against fossil fuels. And she’s cursing it with very good reason—your actions are actively hurting her children today, in the name of maybe doing someone some unknown good in the year 2080.
Jan, they’ve been pushing that line of patter for forty years now. They took it up right after they realized that their predictions of a “New Ice Age” weren’t coming to pass.
Not one of their predictions has come true. Look at the upper right of this page. Click on the “FAILED PREDICTION TIMELINE”. How many times do their predictions have to fail before you wake up and notice that you’re not only drinking the Koolaid, but like a good little robot, you’re also repeating their lies?
Air pollution was a problem when I was a kid. The US and most industrialized countries have solved it. You want to see real air pollution, Jan?
Visit some woman who is cooking her food over a dung fire.
From all appearances, you live so far up an ivory tower that you have no idea of the conditions of the people living at the bottom of the economic ladder.
Here’s a story about that. Read’m and weep.
w.
This argument that measures to mitigate climate change may hurt the poor, is real, but not unsolvable.
The US has a huge, and seemingly growing, poverty problem.
When my parents were young it was common for Europeans to migrate to the US. An ordinary worker could earn two to three times the salary there, compared to what he could get home.
Now it is the opposite way for unskilled workers, European salaries are the highest.
I am not just taking about my own country, Norway, which is rich because of luck, found oil, I am talking about most west European countries. Although the average GDP per capita is higher in the US, it is more unevenly distibuted.
Trump said once that he wanted more Norwgian migrants, this is one reason, the other is that since new migration laws in 1960, you need to have a good education to get a legal immigration.
However, in spite the unfavourable salary gap, the US is still popular among many. I know Norwegians who have tried to immigrate, but they were not allowed.
My point is that serious effort should be put into raising salaries and generally reducing poverty in all countries.
This must be solved independently of any climate mitigation efforts.
Jan
Jan, the problem is that almost all of the policies in the idiotic war on fossil fuels increase either the price of energy or the price of things that utilize energy (cars, gas stoves, etc).
And for the people making the policies, it’s not a problem … but for much of the world, it is a HUGE isssue.
Here’s a story about those at the bottom of the economic ladder.
And below, after trillions of dollars and decades of computer time and millions of man-hours expended on the effort, is how much your insane war on CO2 has accomplished.
Jack sh|t. You are shafting the poor for NO GAIN AT ALL!
History will not judge you kindly, my friend …
w.
I read your story about meeting poor people around the world, Willis.
I loved it!
I have noticed that you have many such stories from your travellings.
Those stories are material of such genuinity that I think a publisher would gladly offer you something for giving out a collection in a book.
Jan
«never underestimate an exponential growth»
That’s the underpinning of the Club of Rome thinking as exposed in The Limits To Growth.
“They [China] have committed to peak emissions before 2030 and to be carbon neutral by 2060.”
Have they? It is my understanding that the Chicoms will re-evaluate their CO2 position in 2030, and they have made no firm committments about peak emissions beyond that.
Yes. I thought 2060 was only an ‘aspiration’, they’ve not ‘committed’ to it.
https://odi.org/en/insights/five-expert-views-on-chinas-pledge-to-become-carbon-neutral-by-2060/
Here’s my expert view on China’s pledge to become carbon neutral by 2060.
Anyone who puts the slightest credence in this Chinese pledge is dumber than a box of rocks, and doesn’t understand what “Talk Is Cheap” means.
w.
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/10/12/china-s-transition-to-a-low-carbon-economy-and-climate-resilience-needs-shifts-in-resources-and-technologies
Jan Kjetil Andersen July 3, 2023 1:52 pm
You’re making the mistake that Thomas Malthus made. He, like you, was a great believer in exponential growth. Malthus said that “Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.” By this, he meant that populations grow exponentially, whereas the population limits (food production capacity) grow linearly.
Malthus was wrong.
In nature, exponential growth never lasts long. It can’t.
And you are totally incorrect about wind and solar having “an almost perfect exponential growth curve”. The facts don’t bear that out at all. Exponential growth means the variable grows by the same percentage every year.
BP shows wind data from 1989, and solar data from 2001. Here are the growth rates by year, along with the trend lines. Note that in both cases, rather than being “perfect exponential” growth, the growth rate is decreasing each year.
It’s the nature of the beast.
w.
PS—Folks, a word to the wise. DO YOUR HOMEWORK AND ACTUALLY RUN THE NUMBERS before making claims.
Because you can be sure that I will …
Thank you for excellent analysis Willis.
My claim was based on the numbers for the last decade. You find them on page 46 in the Energyinst.org report.
14% sustained growth for renewables from 2012 to 2022.
You provide more context to this.
Jan
Thank you for your time and effort.
My pleasure.
w.