By Neil Halloran: A Skeptical Look at Climate Science

Over the entire year (1 April 2020 – 1 April 2021), beekeepers in the United States lost an estimated 45.5% of their managed honey bee colonies (Fig. 1). This is the second highest annual loss on record, 1.8 pp higher than last year’s estimated annual loss (43.7%), and a 6.1 pp increase over the average loss rate (39.4%) over the last 10 years.

https://beeinformed.org/2021/06/21/united-states-honey-bee-colony-losses-2020-2021-preliminary-results/

Review by Frank Kaminski of Alice Friedemann’s new book “Life After Fossil Fuels”.

https://mudcitypress.com/lifeafterfossilfuel.php

Fossil fuels are the lifeblood of modern industrial society, and they’re steadily being depleted. Eventually, their rates of production will cease to grow and will begin to permanently decline, spelling disaster for a civilization dependent on ever-increasing quantities of ever-cheaper fossil energy. Their supposed replacements are pitiably inadequate, possessing nowhere near the necessary abundance, concentration, versatility, transportability and/or commercial viability. Given how long it takes to build an entirely new energy infrastructure, the time to begin doing so was decades ago. Since we didn’t do that, we now face not a continuation of our present lifestyles courtesy of alternative energy sources, but an involuntary “simplification” of every aspect of our lives, to quote energy researcher and author Alice Friedemann.

Friedemann’s analysis starts with the most concentrated and widely used fossil fuel, petroleum (aka oil). She succinctly chronicles the evolution of the oil industry, from that first big gusher in Spindletop, Texas, in 1901 to the money-losing proposition that is the present-day U.S. tight oil (i.e., shale oil) industry. She goes on to reveal the profound degree to which oil has enmeshed itself into every part of our lives, having become the lynchpin of cement and steel production, road construction, automobile manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare and countless other things. And she wonderfully conveys a sense of the sheer energy density of conventional oil, along with the implications of its 2005 production peak, steadily shrinking energy return on investment (EROI) ratio and present decline rate.

The book’s appraisal of alternative energy sources is comprehensive. It begins by considering potential replacements for diesel fuel in commercial freight transport. Options examined include liquefied coal, liquefied natural gas, hydrogen, power-to-gas (P2G) and biodiesel–only the latter of which meets the requirement of being both renewable and commercial. Friedemann refers to biodiesel as “the great hope, our main hope, to replace diesel for transportation and fossils in manufacturing.” Unfortunately, it has serious shortcomings, including its poor EROI and inability to travel in pipelines or serve as a drop-in replacement for conventional diesel. Thus, it’s anything but a true “alternative” to the latter.

Friedemann also enumerates the many failings of a host of proposed schemes for running manufacturing, electricity generation, public transit, agriculture and other critical sectors on alternatives. We learn that battery-powered commercial transport is a nonstarter because the batteries’ energy density is too low and their cost, weight and charging time far too great. As for the use of overhead electric catenary wires to power commercial trucks, this is still in its infancy and would be extremely costly to implement. Using electricity or renewables to fuel manufacturing would be impracticable because manufacturing processes require high temperatures that can be generated only through onsite furnaces, kilns and boilers fueled by either fossil fuels or wood. Nor is there a clear path toward transitioning the electrical grid to renewables.

It’s sobering to reflect on how many fixtures of early 21st-century life we stand to lose as fossil fuels wane. Because of the difficulty, in these fuels’ absence, of generating the heat needed to smelt metals and make bricks, glass and ceramics, Friedemann predicts our infrastructure will be made mostly of wood in the future. Needless to say, she doesn’t expect we’ll be making computer chips indefinitely, as their metal alloys require especially high heat. Moreover, high tech in general relies on a slew of rare earth metals that could be running short by mid-century. Another reason why computer chips, glass and ceramics–not to mention concrete, asphalt pavement, paint and abrasives–may vanish is the depletion of beach sand, which may be completely gone by 2100. The age of plastic, one of the most ubiquitous synthetic materials on Earth, likely also will end. Friedemann explains that while there are ways of making it from biomass, these face crippling problems of scale and complexity.

China recently ordered a halt to bitcoin mining. This apparently reduced electricity consumption by about 8 GW which is the equivalent of about 4-8 coal fired plants.

Gail Tverberg says peak coal is in the rear view mirror for China.

Coincidence?

New paper from Bossche…

https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/post/why-the-ongoing-mass-vaccination-experiment-drives-a-rapid-evolutionary-response-of-sars-cov-2

The naked scientific truth on why the ongoing mass vaccination experiment drives a rapid evolutionary response of SARS-CoV-2

The ongoing denial by WHO, public health agencies and governments of science-based evidence on how to mitigate the already disastrous global and individual consequences of this pandemic are beyond mind-blowing. Whereas a number of medical doctors are now doing the utmost to make highly successful early multidrug treatment broadly accessible, I am contributing my part on analyzing the epidemiologic and health consequences of the ongoing mass vaccination campaigns and sharing – in all transparency – my insights with the broader public. From the critical opinion article below, it becomes already obvious that several scientists who are studying the evolutionary biology and genetic/ molecular epidemiology of this pandemic know too well that this pandemic is not over at all and that the global health risk posed by variants is very substantial. So, why do they keep silent?

I realize that the scientific language is not easily accessible to laymen. I hope the way I structured the article will, however, help them to grasp the key message.

It is almost impossible to believe that scientists studying the genomic/ molecular epidemiology or evolutionary biology of Sars-CoV-2 would not understand that mass vaccination campaigns promote natural selection and propagation of immune escape variants when they all come to the conclusion that selective immune pressures exerted by antiviral host immune responses provide fitness-enhancing mutations with a transmission advantage enabling their adaptation to the infected host (tissue)-specific environment. In light of all scientific evidence provided and the sinister perspective of the current evolution when put in an immunological and vaccine context, knowledgeable scientists should feel a moral and ethical obligation to loudly voice their concerns publicly. It is appalling that some leaders of the very institutes disclosing some of these critically enlightening data on the evolutionary molecular dynamics of circulating variants seem to be denying the observations of their co-workers and continue to blindly advocate for mass vaccination. Instead, some of them are even bold enough to encourage arrogant and scientifically illiterate fact-checkers to misrepresent compelling scientific evidence as a hoax and debunk experts who put their career on the line in making this critically important information accessible to the broader public.

Compassionate scientists who have been taking a deep dive in these complex matters are now increasingly left with the impression that health authorities and advising experts will simply continue to deny that they are desperately wrong, no matter how compelling the scientific evidence that has been brought to the table and no matter the consequences this unprecedented public health experiment may involve for many years to come.

The world consumes oil but is not ready to invest in it. This trend [of low upstream investment] may become a ‘new norm’ for global majors and result in resource base depletion. The world runs the risk of facing an acute deficit of oil and gas. – Igor Sechin, Rosneft’s CEO

https://energybulletin.org/the-energy-bulletin-weekly-21-june-2021/

It’s kind of sad watching people like Mac10 flail around and make up stories to explain the insanity because they don’t understand Varki’s MORT, thermodynamics, or overshoot.

https://zensecondlife.blogspot.com/2021/06/there-is-no-safe-space-from-reality.html

There Is No Safe Space From Reality

One thing both the far left and far right have in common is an extreme aversion to reality. Since 2008 central banks have sponsored this vacation from reality by consistently bailing people out of their own stupidity, which has encouraged ever greater stupidity. Now this Idiocracy is painted into a corner with no way out. It was inevitable they would come to believe that markets drive the economy, instead of the other way around. Yet, no one wants to question this paradigm of moronism, because they don’t want to look stupid. They believe in the strength of numbers…

The reason why this society doesn’t see this ending is because they are now fully addicted to cheap money. This latest global housing bubble is exhibit A of a gambling addiction that has far more fear of missing out than of bubbles crashing. This week, global risk markets had a taper tantrum over the prospect of higher Fed interest rates TWO YEARs from now. What a joke. At any other time in history, these interest rates would be considered a disaster from an economic and financial standpoint. Dire emergency measures indicative of ZERO future economic growth. Today these record low rates are considered an opportunity to ignore valuations and bid asset values to infinity. The value of a perpetuity over 0% is theoretically infinite according to Finance 101. Unfortunately, in the real world there is no such thing as a perpetuity. When the cycle ends, the cash flow on insolvent assets turns negative. The value of an insolvent asset at the end of the cycle is ZERO. Today, as the global economy struggles to re-open amid massive amounts of new debt, gamblers are bidding up their own assets like it’s 1929. There is now an entire generation of gamblers who believe that bear markets are a relic of the past. Defeated by free money and infinite leverage.

This week the Fed monkey hammered the reflation trade by merely suggesting that a rate hike could happen in 2023, almost two years from now. Never before has there been such a long runway given for a planned rate hike and yet it still caused a major market selloff. The question on the table is, did it kick off the final meltdown? Gamblers are now caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of a moribund economy and risk assets bid to record valuations in anticipation of strong economic growth. There are two paths this can take – imminent economic collapse to justify low interest rates, OR sustained growth justifying higher interest rates. These monetary addicts want low interest rates and high growth and now they’re having a temper tantrum because both does not exist in the real world.

Carbon dioxide peaks near 420 parts per million at Mauna Loa observatory

Atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory peaked for 2021 in May at a monthly average of 419 parts per million (ppm), the highest level since accurate measurements began 63 years ago, scientists from NOAA and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego announced today.

https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2764/Coronavirus-response-barely-slows-rising-carbon-dioxide

I remember a joke about a thrifty cold Polack that unraveled the wool from one end of his blanket so he could lengthen the other end of his blanket.

https://wolfstreet.com/2021/06/17/holy-moly-feds-reverse-repos-spike-to-756-billion-undoing-6-months-of-qe-in-opposite-direction-feds-qe-pushes-assets-past-8-trillion/

Holy Moly, Fed’s Reverse Repos Spike to $756 Billion, Undoing 6 Months of QE. In Opposite Direction, Fed’s QE Pushes Assets Past $8 Trillion

The Fed sold a record $756 billion in Treasury securities this morning in exchange for cash via overnight “reverse repos.” This was up by a stunning 45% from yesterday’s operations of $521 billion. There were 68 counterparties involved. Yesterday’s overnight reverse repos had matured and unwound this morning, to be more than replaced by today’s tsunami.

Even as the Fed was busy draining cash from the system, it continued to add cash to the system via QE. The Fed’s total assets on its balance sheet for the week through Wednesday, June 16, jumped by $112 billion from the prior week, to a new mind-bending record of $8.064 trillion.

If you enjoy non-fiction history audiobooks you will love Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast. I’ve listened to every one of his 67 episodes.

His latest episode focuses on the harsh fighting and nuclear bombings that ended WWII in the Pacific.

I’m very fortunate not to have been a young man during that period. So much of our good fortune is luck.

When do spirit, tenacity, resilience and bravery cross into madness? When cities are incinerated? When suicide attacks become the norm? When atomic weapons are used? Japan’s leaders test the limits of national endurance in the war’s last year.

https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-67-supernova-in-the-east-vi/