I am waiting

      -Rolling stones

Like desperados

waiting for a train

      - Townes Van Zandt

Greetings

Bonus Feature:   A new Nate Hagens video.  A Guide to Being Human in the 21st Century  (This one is about ten times better than the others - he got an editor )

     OK  So perhaps we have come to fork in the road..   

     On the one hand we have, the opportunity to reduce consumption .  This is the most straight forward way to reduce carbon emissions.  And reducing consumption by the 20% that are responsible for 80% of the emissions would not have a significant effect on our quality of life.    Here is an article:   The historical ecological footprint : From over population to over consumption    , which makes very interesting reading.  One of the conclusions our move to overshoot in the 70's was caused by over consumption, not increased population. Interestingly they also assert that  if we had the continued the consumption pattern of the 50's we would still be using only one earth, despite the increase in population during the last 60 years!    Here are some hints on how to do that:   http://www.plancurtail.org

     In the Hagens video, you will see that he takes the position that reduced consumption is unavoidable.  As he points out for 95 percent of us, growth is over - as measured by income.   He suggests, we will go through some turmoil and re-set at a less complex society, one that uses 1/4 to 1/3 the energy.

      Nevertheless, this seems  we are not likely to take this road voluntarily.  Why?  Because,  as Hagens explains we are are "programmed, by natural selection",  to want to accumulate stuff in order to improve our status, to get more power influence,  (and opportunities for mating. !).   While some people can break free of that conditioning, especially when "all the cool kids" are still doing it.   see e.g. Evolutionary psychology and consumer behavior

    

 Another option is accelerated construction of renewable facilities, DC lines, and storage, as well as new electric based  transport options.    Some version of this will , no doubt, be what H. Clinton will be suggesting.  see here This seems to be physically possible.   Dave Roberts,:  "Here's what it would take for the US to run on 100% renewable energy   (based on this study)    and Ugo Bardi:   How much for the sustainable energy transition. (based on this study  A Net Energy-based Analysis for a Climate-constrained Sustainable Energy Transition. )  

       But its not free

"We said that we need to increase the installation rate of about a factor of 8 in energy terms. Assuming that the cost of renewable energy won't radically change in the future, monetary investments should of about the same factor. It means that we need to go from the present value of about 300 billion dollars per year to some 2 trillion dollars/year. This is a lot of money, but not an unthinkable: amount. If we sum up what we are investing for fossils (about $1 trillion/year), for renewables ($300 billions/year) and nuclear (perhaps around $200 billions/year) we see that we are not far from there, as we can see in the image below. The total amount yearly invested in the world for energy supply is about 2% of the Gross World Product, today totaling about US$78 trillion".

       Relying on the market will probably not do the trick.   Its interesting to note that while we continue to see headlines about how wind and solar are so cheap, and how they will naturally conquer the world,  investment in renewable energy (which had had been rising dramatically )  has plateaued  since 2011 at the 300 billion dollar level.  see here  Another issue is the cost of retrofitting or junking the current equipment which does not run on electricity.  Hagens estimates that 80% of our energy use uses such equipment, and would cost $100 trillion to replace

        So, whats left  ?   .Straight ahead, I suppose.  BAU - continued growth of consumption and the economy, as long as possible, ,  based mainly on fossil energy, with renewable power slowly added in to address growing demand, and to replace existing facilities as they decay.  ( i.e. Boardman).  Carbon emissions stay pretty steady, and the price of energy rises and the EROI declines. 

            So, how does BAU play out?    Hall and Murphy sketched out one model in their 2011 paper,    "Adjusting the economy to the new energy realities of the second half of the age of oil".  

     (1) economic growth increases oil demand, (2) higher oil demand increases oil production from lower EROI resources, (3) increasing extraction costs leads to higher oil prices, (4) higher oil prices stall economic growth or cause economic contractions, (5) economic contraction leads to lower oil demand, and (6) lower oil demand leads to lower oil prices which spur another short bout of economic growth until this cycle repeats itself

       

 We have seen this play out in recent years.  The economy crashed in 2008, lower demand, and  oil prices, then as demand increased, (thanks to record breaking debt), oil companies invested in high cost  and high EROI projects, (fracking and oil sands).  The resulting over supply crashed the price.  

         And many companies have also crashed.  Bloomberg reports

“Three bankruptcies this week shows that $45 a barrel oil isn’t enough to rescue energy companies on the verge of collapse…

…Since the start of 2015, 130 North American oil and as producers and service companies have filed for bankruptcy owing almost $44 billion, according to law firm Haynes & Boone. The tally doesn’t include Chaparral Energy Inc., Penn Virginia Corp. and Linn Energy LLC, which filed for bankruptcy this week owing more than $11 billion combined.”

   

Here's some interesting speculation about how this might develop.  (from a longish article here  

Jason Schenker, president and chief economist at Prestige Economics, says: “Oil prices simply aren’t going to rise fast enough to keep oil and energy companies from defaulting. Then there is a real contagion risk to financial companies and from there to the rest of the economy.”

Schenker has been ranked by Bloomberg News as one of the most accurate financial forecasters in the world since 2010. The US economy, he forecasts, will dip into recession at the end of 2016 or early 2017.

Mark Harrington, an oil industry consultant, goes further. He believes the resulting economic crisis from cascading debt defaults in the industry could make the 2007-8 financial crash look like a cakewalk. “Oil and gas companies borrowed heavily when oil prices were soaring above $70 a barrel,” he wrote on CNBC in January.

“But in the past 24 months, they’ve seen their values and cash flows erode ferociously as oil prices plunge—and that’s made it hard for some to pay back that debt. This could lead to a massive credit crunch like the one we saw in 2008. With our economy just getting back on its feet from the global 2008 financial crisis, timing could not be worse.”

Ratings agency Standard & Poor (S&P) reported this week that 46 companies have defaulted on their debt this year—the highest levels since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009. The total quantity in defaults so far is $50 billion.

An environment where prices are continually gyrating is not conducive to investment.  And without investment discoveries decline   IHS reports that conventional oil discoveries continue to decline from about 30 bbl in 2910 to about 3 in 2015.  They note that while high prices can stimulate prompt response in short term projects like fracking, the lead times for conventional projects are much longer.  But tight oil cannot fill the gap as it much smaller.

"North American tight oil alone cannot cover future supply gap—exploration will need to resume

According to IHS Energy Conventional Exploration and Discovery Trends analysis from our Upstream Industry Future Service, conventional oil and gas discoveries made outside onshore North America continued their multi-year decline trend last year, based on initial 2015 results. And the drop is dramatic:  Oil and gas volumes discovered in 2015 were the lowest since 1952, with oil finds setting a record low since the significant ramp-up of oil and gas exploration began following World War II. As anticipated, exploration and appraisal (E&A) drilling fell sharply in 2015, exacerbating the annual drop in resources found."

        
This comes as no surprise to Art Berman, an oil geologist  who, while the rest of the media was trumpeting the "Shale Revolution, pointed out,  in 2012,  that it was not a revolution but a "Retirement Party".  

"Oil companies have to make a big deal about shale plays because that is all that is left in the world. Let's face it: these are truly awful reservoir rocks and that is why we waited until all more attractive opportunities were exhausted before developing them. It is completely unreasonable to expect better performance from bad reservoirs than from better reservoirs."  from here 

    .  Berman also noted that it was clear from the public filings of the companies involved, that they wren't making money, even at $100 a barrel. But that thanks to cheap debt they still  make the payments, and keep the stock price up.

      So, what does Berman say now?  He says the price will not stay low, but will rise soon.  That in all likelihood it will rise sharply, and that thanks to years of little of no investment, it will stay high.  from here

   "Here’s what I see: I look at this chart and I talk about this in talks and I say “Hey look from 2005 to 2012 the world spent about three trillion dollars on upstream oil and gas exploration and production and basically got the same amount of crude and condensate out of ground for its trouble," right? We doubled our investment on a yearly basis from $300 to $600 billion and basically held production flat. I can only imagine what happens to production once you take a trillion in spend off of the top of that."

"And so if we get to a point— and we will, we almost certainly will—where suddenly everybody wakes up and says “Oh my God we don’t have enough oil." We’re now half a million barrels a day low, and what happens? The price shoots up, okay? That’s the way commodity markets work. And everybody says “Whoopee, let’s get back to drilling big time." Well there’s a big lag. There’s a huge time lag between when the price responds and people actually get around to drilling and they actually start bringing the oil onto the market and it becomes available as supply, because they’ve been asleep at the wheel for  how many months or years. You don’t just turn a valve and all of a sudden everything is okay again. 

  Are consumers preparing for a likely jump in oil prices?   Consumers not worried about energy.  See Gallup poll    In this low price environment, consumers tend to ignore MPG.  See here; and here

 "The overwhelming popularity of SUVs trumps just about any other trend in today's market," says Caldwell. "SUV sales are up 22 percent in the last five years, and almost every other segment has suffered as a result. It's especially true for hybrids and EVs, which generally don't offer the size that today's shoppers crave."

...

 "In fact, Edmunds found that a hybrid or electric trade-in is more likely to go toward the purchase of a SUV (33.8 percent) than another hybrid or EV. The trend is even more apparent when looking only at EV trade-ins — 25.7 percent of EV trade-ins went toward the purchase of a SUV, compared to just 4.8 percent that went toward another EV.

         So, what's Hagens' recommendation?    Not guns and gold.  But more of a mental attitude.  Reject the "consensus trance" (what the cool kids are doing.  Choose your own tribe wisely - people who won't try to draw you back in to the trance.  Go on an internet/electricity holiday.  Spend time in woods.  Work on your "meta cognition"  watching the thoughts and feelings that arise.  Which ones are useful?
     And above all, in the words of Bill and Ted  "Be excellent to one another!"

We didn't start the fire

You must leave now, take what you need
you think will last
But what every you chose to take,
you'd better garb it fast

    - Bob Dylan (Baby Blue)

I am the god of hell fire
And I bring you FIRE

      - Arthur Brown (Fire)

Greetings

      In case you haven't heard, northern Canada is on fire .  Its pretty amazing .  Yesterday, I read that they are trying to put together a convoy to get out of town, but were turned back by a 200 foot wall of flames . see here     Here's   a few sites to take a look at : NASA,  Elizabeth Colbert take from the New Yorker.,    Roberts Scribbler has very good coverage especially in the comments .

       The situation is not limited to Alberta.  BC has turned down requests to send fire fighters to Alberta becasue their own early fire season.  see here   Of course it's been well known that the Canadian boreal forests were a likely victim of climate change .   Here's a study from the the National Academy of Sciences from 2013.  

       So, what to make of this?

       Here's an interesting spin.   Humans are not likely to act until they get hit with a two by four "up side" the head..    Here David Goldstein  suggests that this type of disaster has a good side, in that it may finally inspire action, and forestall even worse things later. He says:

>>>

   "Your first wish may be that humanity wake up and take responsible climate action soon. Great. That is my first wish as well. But, sadly, sometimes first wishes do not come true. So what is your wish assuming that only wider and deeper suffering will wake us to change our unhealthy behaviors? What is your wish, knowing that any further damage we incur is cumulative and not reversible for many decades? Though it hurts my heart more than I can say, I can no longer escape this conclusion: If, as it seems, we are set on pushing the climate out of balance to the point where it becomes unbearable, then the quicker the better. “Burn, baby, burn”, so that maybe, possibly, hopefully... the healing can begin.".

     Its one way to make a silk purse .

     One thing about this theory , is, of course, that it only works if the person getting hit by the two by four has the ability to make the necessary changes.  So far this has not been the case.     Last week, I went to a presentation on how the health folks are trying to get a handle on their role in the new climate changed world.   The presenter pointed out one unfortunate fact about the situation.   That is , that while the problem is caused by the super consumers , the impacts are initially felt primarily by the poor - such as day laborers who must work outside in the heat, or the elderly who suffer in hot apartments.

     The same principle applies internationally.     For instance see this report from Robert Scribbler's blog on the situation in India.

     

>>
>>
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>> "Throughout April and into early May temperatures have soared to well above 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 C) and to sometimes higher than 122 F (50 C) all across the broad plains at the feet of the Himalayas. There, water stress now affects more than 330 million people. There, water trains are now necessary to keep whole towns from suffering dehydration. Farmers who have seen fields transformed into a baked white hard-pan are migrating to the cities in search of food, water and work. And armed guards now patrol the local water sources in regions hardest hit by the drought — preventing private farmers from stealing public water supplies for their crops.

>>
>>
>>
>> The temperatures are so high that more than 300 people have now perished as a result of heat injuries. And Indian officials have now banned cooking during the day in an effort to reduce loss of life. But today the forests themselves are cooking as the air is filled with the smoke of more than 21,000 fires burning upon the flanks of India’s great mountain ranges."

          

     see also   Major wildfire outbreak In Central and Western Africa As Drought, Hunger Grow more widespread.   Se also  How Climate Change Affects the Poor

             So who has the power to make a change.   Well, the 1%, I suppose.    But bear in mind that it only takes $34,000 in income to be in the global 1%.

             I wonder, if  "we" didn't start the fire, who did?

For information about the Break Free From Fossil Fuels see here

Giddy Up 409

Baby you're much too fast

    -Prince (Little Red Corvette)

But life is just a party
And parties weren't meant to last

     -Prince (1999)

Greetings

     I hope you are enjoying the recent spate of warm weather.  If it hits 85 in April, what does August hold in store? 

     Well, at least it gets your mind off the political campaign.  Here's some fun facts. from here

"According to Media Matters, there have been a whopping 1,477 questions asked during the 20 Republican and Democratic debates so far. Just 22 of those questions—or about 1.5 percent—have been about climate change. Nine of the debates, including one that took place four days after the historic Paris climate agreement, included no global warming questions whatsoever.  

      Perhaps  this whole climate deal has settled down?    Well... not really.   It seems that things are actually moving faster than anticipated.    The UN reports that the future is happening now, as 60 million are affected by climate disruptions including droughts, and floods..

       Recently the Keeling curve hit a record 409.     Temperature records are indicating that we may alredy be hitting 1.5 degrees above pre industrial temperatures.  see here

 "February was also notably far above the long-term average, enough so that scientists described that month as a "shocker," as well as it being "a kind of climate emergency." Then, on the heels of February, the Japan Meteorological Agency released data showing that March was even hotter. NASA data confirms this increase, and also shows that March was 1.65 degrees Celsius higher than the 1951-1980 March average, while February was 1.71 degrees Celsius hotter than the February average over that time period."

(1.5 is believed to be sufficient to begin the process of melting permafrost, releasing tons of frozen carbon and methane.  see here )

      Meanwhile up north, its hotter than ever.  

 Image source: CIRES.)

As Robert Scribbler reports:

"From just about every indicator, we find that the Arctic sea ice is being hit by heat like never before. And the disturbing precipitous early season losses we now see in combination with the excessive, extreme warmth and melt accelerating weather patterns are likely to continue to reinforce a trend of record losses. Such low sea ice measures will also tend to wrench weather patterns around the globe — providing zones for extreme heatwaves and droughts along the ridge lines and related warm wind invasions of the Arctic that will tend to develop all while generating risk of record precipitation events in the trough zones. To this point, the North American West is again setting up for just such a zonal heatwave pattern. Extreme heat building up in India and Southeast Asia also appears to be following a similar northward advance."

For an interesting review of the impacts of an ice free arctic, see here

Speaking of melting ice, I recently saw a video of James Hanson explaining a new paper he and 18 co-authors published.  It cane be seen here/

     Here's  a transcript.     Here's how it starts:

"Hi, I’m Jim Hansen, Director of the Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions program at Columbia University Earth Institute. I want to discuss some implications of the paper Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms that is being published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, a paper on which I have 18 exceptional American and international co-authors.

We have uncovered information and a partial understanding of feedbacks in the climate system, specifically interactions between the ocean and the ice sheets. These feedbacks raise questions about how soon we will pass points of no return, in which we lock in consequences that cannot be reversed on any time scale that people care about.

Consequences include sea level rise of several meters, which we estimate would occur this century or at latest next century, if fossil fuel emissions continue at a high level. That would mean loss of all coastal cities, most of the world’s large cities and all their history.

A more immediate threat is the likelihood of shutting down the oceans overturning circulations in the North Atlantic and Southern oceans. That’s where superstorms come in.  Let me explain."

Here is the paper by Hanson et al

         So, why is the issue all but ignored by the media and politicians?   Perhaps the Hanson video provides the answer.  Listen as he patiently tries to explain the multiple interacting factors ; and the evidence from deep history.  Then take a look at this   Why we can't understand global warming .   Previous issues have been simple in terms of cause and effect. CFC's destroys ozone, tobacco causes cancer, DDT softens egg shells  -   but to understand climate change , you have to be able to deal with multiple causes, effects,  and  feedbacks.  You have to see the system.    

     "Any application or force to something or someone that produces an immediate change to that thing or person is direct causation: When causation is direct, the world cause is unproblematic. We learn direct causation automatically as children because that's what we experience on a daily basis. Direct causation, and the control over our immediate environment that understanding it allows, is crucial in the life of every child. That's why it shows up in the grammar of every language.

The same is not true for systemic causation. Systemic causation cannot be experienced directly. It has to be learned, its cases have to be studied, and repeated communication is necessary before it can be widely understood.

That's right, no language in the world has a way in its grammar to express systemic causation. You drill a lot more oil, burn a lot more gas, put a lot more CO2 in the air, the earth's atmosphere heats up, more moisture evaporates from the oceans yielding bigger storms in certain places and more drought and fires in other places, and yes, more cold and snow in still other places. The world ecology is a system - like the world economy and the human brain.

As a result, we lack a concept that we desperately need. We need to understand and communicate, for instance, about the greatest moral issue of our times - global warming. The ecology is a system operating via system causation. Without an everyday concept of system causation, global warming cannot be properly comprehended. In other words, without the systemic causation frame, the oft-repeated facts about global warming cannot make sense. With only the direct causation frame, the systemic causation facts of global warming are ignored. The old frame stays, and the facts that don't fit cannot be comprehended."