Friday, December 21, 2018

Saving the planet: hard facts and simple solutions(contains a pre xmas rant)





Now that the UN Climate Conference COP 24 in Poland has wrapped up we all know what we need to do. The only way to reduce emissions of CO2 and save the planet is to stop using fossil energy and switch to renewable energy. Exactly what would we have to do? I mean, what specific steps? I read the other day that 100 globalized companies are responsible for 70% of industrial emissions The article did not mention who they are but I would assume they are the power companies, mining companies, shipping and transportation companies and manufacturing companies needing vast amounts of carbon based fuel like for concrete and sheet rock. It would seem that they should reduce their emissions since the impact would be far greater than asking us serfs to reduce our carbon footprint by riding our bikes to our cubicles. Surely they could stop making so much electricity, mining and refining and moving stuff around.  To see where we can cut CO2 emissions we need to know the sector energy consumption (EIA 2015):Warning:contains some irony and sarcasm which may not be suitable for all viewers):
Industrial 33%,Transportation 29%,Residential 20%, commercial 18%.
Over 50% of industrial energy  is for chemicals(22%),petroleum refining(16%), metals, ferrous and non ferrous(14%). Concrete and building materials particularly gypsum are each about 10%. In order to cut the industrial sector we will have to de-industrialize the country:mining and refining less, reducing chemical production.  Easy enough.
Transportation  energy: gasoline uses 61%, diesel 21%(seems low!), and av fuel 12%.  This seems obvious: we will drive less, fly less and ship less. The way to reduce energy here is stop commuting to work        and school and shopping centers in gas guzzling suvs and pickup trucks and take public transportation.No more flying vacations to Cabo. Un fortunately our suburban lifestyle of sprawling housing, shopping and work sites mandates the private automobile. Outside of a few large cities on the East Coast, mass transportation doesn’t exist. J. Kunstler describes the American suburban experiment as the “greatest misallocation of resources in world history.” The easy solution here is to leave that vinyl and sheetrock shitbox in the burbs and move to a walkable city and find a new job where the kids can bike to school and play in the park. Get a mortgage from George Bailey at the Building and loan and fire up your American dream. What’s not to like? If you got a wife like Donna Reed you’re practically there. A guardian angel will come in handy, so find one.
Residential: Most of the energy use here is heating/AC  and lighting,  appliances and electronics. To cut energy use here we need smaller insulated houses with solar water heating and energy efficient appliances.  Move out of those slab sided McMansions and into  smaller houses.  Maybe move into a tiny house. I have personal experience with this suggestion. I built a super insulated 300 sq ft tiny house for $22,000  which consumes almost no energy even in a Wyoming climate. It has the additional advantage of becoming an escape module from toothless meth snorting zombies if the SHTF.  I could tow it to Manitoba behind the Cummins and live among peace loving unarmed taciturn Canadians. This energy sector offers the easiest opportunity to cut energy use which is almost entirely electricity based. Unplug from the grid and nail   up a few solar panels.Net Zero, brother. Of course there is the issue of taxes and water and sewer……..
Commercial: as expected most energy use here is electricity supplied  heat/AC and lighting.  Once the suburbs wither away so will the big box stores and nail salons and office parks. We will be able to get what we need from Amazon drones flown to Bailey Park landing inside of our white picket fences.
Permit me to now get a bit serious. If we really want to hit the 80% emission reduction of the Paris Accords by 2033  there is only one simple way:price Carbon use. If you want to reduce the use, you have to tax it. This the easiest quickest and best way and would require every person and business to share in the burden. It would mean a tax on fuel,coal and gas, implemented in stages. There would be no breaks for farmers, fishermen , truckers or the military. No subsidies, no exemptions. For this to work it would have to be applied equally world wide to keep the playing field level. A minimal goal would be to consume the same amount of energy per capita as Europe.Americans use twice what Europeans use. We could and should tax  transport fuel  in the US the way most of the world does. The taxes collected could go to programs to mitigate the consequence of de energizing the society. Canadians and Europeans pay $5-7/gallon for fuel and so should Americans. There is virtually no tax on Av Fuel. A $5/gallon tax wouldn’t faze your average Gulstream owner. This simple step would start undoing the damage caused to the planet and the country by virtually free fuel. Oil is a finite precious resource which should be priced like one. Would this one simple step reduce economic growth and GDP? Almost certainly. Increasing economic growth  increases energy use and  increases emissions of world warming gasses. The notion that we can make a wholesale switch to a renewable solar and wind energy economy is a fool’s errand which I have covered in the past and will in the future. It is not affordable, scalable, feasible or sensible.It is something for nothing. It sounds too good to be true and it is. The proponents of this move to a green sustainable economy promise we can continue our way of life by only changing our energy mix. It is patent nonsense. Cheap fossil energy is the reason we have had an industrial revolution and rampant consumerism.  Expensive and depleting  fossil energy will ultimate close that chapter. Fossil energy has taken the work out of men’s hands and off the backs of animals and given that work to machines. Fossil fuel industrial agriculture machines grow food virtually untouched by human hands and has allowed exponential increases in world population exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet.The Green Revolution brought about by modified grains, natural  gas fertilizers,  herbicides and pesticides  doubled wheat production from 1950 to 1960. It was no accident that world population also doubled in the last half of the 20th century. If you grow it they will eat………. and breed. There is no technological or political solution to halt fossil energy depletion. There are only intelligent responses which seem few and rarely voiced. For example we should set aside reserves of fossil fuels for our descendants. Save some for our children. What a unique idea!  We Americans love to blame other people for our problems:politicians, greedy isolated elites, corporate robber barons. We never think to look in the mirror. We have met the enemy and he is us. We have built an unsustainable oil dependent industrial civilization which is starting to collapse. Cheap oil never gets the blame for materialistic consumerism, loss of middle  and working class jobs and inequality resulting in massive migration from rural regions to the slums of Rio, Lagos and Mumbai. Isn’t cheap oil  partially responsible for the fentanyl, oxycodone and meth epidemic killing 40000 a year in flyover country? If machines, robots and automation, and offshoring rendered you dispensable, redundant and deplorable, what might you do? But from the media: a deafening silence except for mawkish sentimental segments of courageous waves of “refugees” pouring out of Central America and Africa who were created by cheap oil. We created them and now we own them? “ Huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We are a nation of immigrants”……… Intelligent, thoughtful reporting of what is happening to our industrial civilization is nonexistent. Most of us know in our gut that our society has jumped the rails but from the big players in the media only event and data reporting, trivial infotainment,human interest pabulum  and fatuous  drivel at times perilously close to propaganda. What’s a poor schmuck to do? An intelligent response is to just stop playing their game, listening to their sermons and voting in the lesser of two evils, buying their stuff, reading their propaganda, eating their garbage and watching their media. Reduce your needs, use your muscles to grow things, fix things, and reuse things. Think about trying to live like your grandmother and start thinking about feathering your nest and finding skills of self reliance and voluntary simplicity.  Get out of debt and get off your butt and make contingency plans. If you have useful skills, pass them on to your children and friends. The current model isn’t working and is beyond repair and redemption and it is time to think about what a new civilization will look like. Do I think that my suggestions to turn things around to save the planet have a snowball’s chance in hell of happening? No. Sorry. Gotta go. My sheep cows and pigs are bawling and need care.

Thursday, December 20, 2018

                                COP 24.......A waste of time?



It has been a long time since my last post. This statement reminds me of the old Catholic confession days:”It’s been __days since my last confession”…..
I offer no excuses because a Marine never makes excuses, paraphrasing what  colonel pappy used to say. My “explanation” is that we have been very busy here on our sprawling Rendezvous Mountain Farm trying to grow fodder, irrigate, harvest hay, feed the livestock and keep the elk and moose from destroying our fences. But the current state of affairs in the world does demand a brief return to blogsville, perhaps a post on the Year in Review or some such. Indeed it has been a helluva year for the planet. I’m sorry to report that it has been all bad. Those of you who want happyspeak putting lipstick on one of my Kunekune pigs had best now move your mouse to the “X” and surf elsewhere.
What kind of year has our planetary goddess  Gaea endured? Well, she (Gaea) is hotter than ever and more turbulent. She is too wet in some places and too dry in others.  She is losing insect and animal and bird species at a rate not seen since some of the great species extinctions of the past 500 million years. The insect extinctions have been helped along by the likes of the globalized chemical companies from the vaporous shell of IG Farben and its bastard children:  Bayer, Heochst, BASF and of course now “roundup ready”  Monsanto and Dow. No surprise that this year the Monsanto slut has climbed into bed with Bayer in Germany.  You might recall that it was IG Farben’s brats that brought you those great Nazi products so beloved by goose steppers as Zyclon B which they piped into summer camp showers in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Amazingly these chemical assassins live on, pumping out herbicides and pesticides wiping out species after species under the umbrella of industrial agriculture making money hand over fist. So if a few bees die, what of it? It’s business.
And the markets have been  volatile of late, now in “correction” territory.  Calling them markets is a misnomer. There is no market and I don’t mean just the stock and bond and housing markets. There hasn’t been any market in a decade because the various central banks have killed them. The US markets are dead because the Fed  killed price discovery  with misguided purchases of bank garbage and QE . There is no way to know what anything is worth and if you can’t accurately price what an asset is worth, you have no market. Throw in stock and bond trading based upon algorithms which dominate 70-90% of stock trades and what do you get? No market. The Fed printed trillions of money and gave it to the criminal banksters to “save” the economy(aka:the banks) who then gave the nearly free money to the global corporations and foreign banks bailing them out at the expense of middle classes in the developed world who became poorer.  It's a Zero sum game and as a result the wealthier got wealthier at the expense of the 99% who loaded up on debt to sit in stalled traffic with their financed  400 hp Cummins crew cabs and  SUVs . This printed money sloshed everywhere as corporations and countries and citizens gorged on this cheap debt(money). Where is this all headed? What happens when your dope peddler cuts you off? Right. You guessed it. Does this mean the end of growth?  We can only hope so for the sake of our dear third rock from the sun. The “growth” meme will be hard to kill because economic growth is the Siamese Twin with  energy growth. You can’t have one without the other. And energy growth means more emissions. CO2 emissions went up 1.3% in 1016 and 1.6% in 2017 and 2018 looks to bump up as well. So what is  poor Gaea  to do? The enviro lefties say we can have our cake and cram it down our pie hole too! All we have to do is swap all those stinky coal plants burning Wyoming coal for windmills and solar farms. We can still have growth but it will be clean growth using “Clean” energy instead of dirty energy. And it’s not just our dewy eyed environmentalists mouthing this nonsense. Over there in Katowice, Poland, representatives to the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP 24 from a few hundred countries have tried to nail down an agreement to monitor emissions and somehow try to implement the limited targets of the Paris Accord.  The conference didn’t fool a 15 year old Swedish girl who grabbed the mic:https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/17/teen-tells-climate-negotiators-they-arent-mature-enough.html    The problem is that the COP 24 targets were feeble and enforcement nonexistent not to mention that President  Trump pulled out of the previous Paris Accords ages ago. I am not denigrating these well meaning people who think they can save the world by trying to implement sustainable economic strategies switching to “renewable” energy sources. The fact is: we CAN’T. Their assumption is: we CAN. All the world has to do is stop using fossil fuel energy and embark upon a crash program of getting our “renewable” energy from windmills and solar farms. tides etc. Where there is a will, there is a way says COP24. Si se puede. No puedo. To understand why I am shouting No Puedo you need only look at the breakdown of world energy consumption by source in 2015; (from BP):oil 33%, coal 30%,NG 24%,hydro 7%, nuke 4% and others 2%.” Others” includes renewables like ethanol, biomass,wind and solar, geothermal and tides.. Renewables and hydro total about 9%. Hydro is nearly maxed out worldwide. Other organizations like the EIA and the IEA give  renewables 12-13% .  No matter who you source, solar and wind renewables were a tiny fraction in 2015 . They have increased slightly in the past few years but they remain  minute.  In fact in some countries the energy contribution of wind and solar has not played out as hoped despite generous subsidies. The PV boom in Spain resulted in impressive nameplate capacity far above delivered real world capacity. IN Germany the first gen windmills are being torn down and shipped to the third world as the subsidies expire. And here is my considered opinion: they will always be a tiny fraction of the primary energy output and can never replace fossil fuels not the least because they are constructed assembled and transported  using fossil fuels. Renewables only make electricity.  Renewables cannot substitute for oil no matter what Elon Musk tells you. Renewables can’t move plastic salad spinners from China to Walmart!   I do pity the poor reader trying to sort out  all the conflicting opinions in the media concerning a switch to renewable energy.
There is general consensus in the scientific community that global climate change is largely man caused. CO2 emissions is a form of pollution just like the plastics flowing into our oceans. The problem I see with these conferences presented by the scientific community is that they assume that educating the public about the causes and implications of climate change will lead the public to conclude that something needs to be done and that they will get on board.  These writers and speakers tiptoe around what exactly needs to be done to bring down emissions. What needs to be done to bring down emissions is to EMIT LESS! That means using less energy from fossil fuels but as I have pointed out, fossil fuels represent roughly 87% of all primary energy sources. The world has been using less coal of late but more NG has replaced it so emissions have even grown. Those politicians and corporate bigwigs in positions of power know the direct correlation of energy to economic growth and a sudden decrease in energy use will decrease economic growth and generate a recession. Their power  and wealth is dependent upon economic growth. That is why they have fought the idea of using less energy. The greatest polluters are the Industrialized countries. That is where any meaningful reductions of CO2 would have to occur. What’s the chance of that happening? What say you, Donald? The COP24 conference recommended that the wealthy industrialized countries would need to help the newly industrializing ones preferably by encouraging them to adopt renewable energy sources and helping them pay for the adoption. Gaea will not be saved by well meaning pie in the sky ideas like these strategies.  Even if some of these ideas could be implemented,  the amount of energy switching is just too little to make a difference. The World Energy Outlook for 2018 is just out and it acknowledges that emissions are continuing to rise and will continue to rise up to 2040. The Paris accords mention reducing emissions by 80% by 2033 and 100% by 2060. What is the chance of that happening especially in view of steady INCREASE in emissions for the past 3 years?!!! This is devastating news for Goddess Gaea. In a future blogs I would like to show scenarios of what it would be like if we actually had to meet the CO2 reductions of the Paris Accords . At some point this century the world will almost certainly make drastic reductions in emissions of CO2. Can we do it voluntarily or will it be forced upon us?