By paqnation (aka Chris): My Final Act

Radagast today with an update on the roulette game playing out in our immune systems thanks to our idiot/evil leaders discarding 100 years of wisdom and injecting billions who did not need it with a non-sterilizing gene therapy in the middle of a pandemic.

https://www.rintrah.nl/complete-antibody-evasion-is-easy-to-evolve/

I have to explain one more thing about SARS2. What you see in other species, is that persistent coronavirus infections can suddenly take a dramatic shift. Most cats infected with the feline coronavirus will survive. However, in a handful of cases, the virus manages to evolve mutations that allow it to efficiently infect white blood cells. These versions of the virus are very bad at transmitting themselves to other cats, but for the individual cat unlucky enough to have its viral parasite develop these mutations, it’s generally a death sentence.

This matters, because in the past few months, we’ve seen most of the human population infected with a radically new version of SARS2, with a Spike protein that is essentially optimized for persistent infection. It will take a few months, before we know what the long term outcome is of that.

So, although BA.2.86 had the highest ACE2 affinity ever seen so far, resulting in the most infectious version of the virus ever, that pattern just can not continue forever. Simple logic dictates that the struggle for survival will now force the virus to embark on different strategies. The most obvious path available now would be to get rid of all those antibodies binding to the NTD. That can happen through a bunch of deletions. But as I just showed you, it can be accomplished with just two amino acid mutations too.

This has already gotten much longer than I had intended it to be, but my point is: The evidence we have reveals that trying to protect people against this virus through an antibody response is a poor strategy, that can fail very suddenly and dramatically, both at an individual level, as well as at the level of entire populations. It doesn’t have to take more than two amino acids.

B today discusses depopulation.

https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-depopulation-bomb

You see, when people used to live like kings of old ages see their prospects falling away, they rather opt for a child free ‘live for the day’ lifestyle, than to pick up the hard task of rebuilding society from the ground up. This is how masses walk away, or rather: silently lay flat, as their civilization declines and crumbles into the dust. No big fuss, no mass casualty events needed… It increasingly looks like to me, that as JMG suggested, we are not headed towards a loud bust, but to a radically different world characterized by a silent hissing sound, as all the hot air leaves the balloon we used to call Europe in particular and the West in general. At the very end of the Colombian age we are about to see a largely depopulated landscape, littered with empty houses and manufacturing halls collecting dust and litter, and with a few people trying to earn a living as gig workers with a degree in corporate law in their hands.

As the over-financialized economy goes under, however, self-sufficiency, hard skills on how to actually do stuff, and how to get along with people will prove to be the only investment not losing its value. Living through decline is certainly not what one wishes to do, but it is what it is. Not that this hasn’t happened many times before: modernity is just one of the many failed projects to bring about infinite growth in a finite area (or this time: planet). Some experience only the rising tide lift all boats part. Our generation, however, got the task to carry on with life, no matter how hard it might get.

Hideaway’s got another epic thread going at POB. Here’s his side of the conversation. Go to POB for the other side. Comments by CARNOT are also very good.

https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-feb-28-2024/#comment-771559

“Technology isn’t saving the planet it’s killing the planet”. Got it in one simple line. Shame so many here believe that technology can save everything when it’s human technology since first putting fire to use that is causing ecocide.

Dennis, please note the number from your document about wind cost $32/Mwh, which is very close to the example of an actual wind farm I gave of $35M/Twh (2023).

Also note that we are still getting energy from fossil fuels relatively much cheaper at $1.7M/Twh from both oil and gas in the 2020’s. However what is most important is that we built the system, all the longer lasting bits from mostly cheap energy in the past. As everything from bridges to the education of people from the past wears out (entropy) we need to replace it with ‘new’ much more expensive energy (say wind at $32/mwh).

The background cost of energy embedded in the system is never counted in the EROEI calculations of the papers you and Nick G always refer to. They set boundaries to prove solar and wind are ‘good’. They are basically GIGO (garbage in, garbage out).

The relative energy cost is irrelevant as civilization runs on an EROEI basis of somewhere between 6-20 to 1. If it tried to run on a lower number it wouldn’t and couldn’t work. Hunter gatherers had an EROEI of 1.5 which gave them some spare time. A lion doesn’t chase mice because the EROEI is too low.
To run a civilization we have to have a large energy surplus from our energy sources to allow only a relatively few people be involved in the energy collection part of society while allowing teachers to teach, accountants to run numbers, lawyers to sue, etc etc,

As oil, gas and coal deplete and the dollar and energy cost rises, then so also do all renewables and nuclear, as they are built from fossil fuels. We also have the double whammy of decreasing ore grades of everything (even iron ore) on average, meaning more energy used in building (everything!!).

If all the $1.7M/Twh energy disappears, which it will do, then after a lag, (there is a lag because the scientists educated when energy was really cheap, eventually retire, so must be replaced by new scientists educated by much more expensive energy, plus the bridges, the excavators, the factories themselves), there will be less of everything because of less cheap energy to make any of it happen..

It doesn’t matter about the relativities, it’s the absolute energy that counts, which is why Lazard’s LCOE work is all useless. Solar, wind and nuclear can’t get cheaper than fossil fuels when they are made by and totally rely upon fossil fuels for their operation, it’s not possible in terms of the laws of physics!!

It’s one of the reasons I keep harping on about the building or making of ‘stuff’, starting with the simple like Aluminium smelters running off grid on their own renewable energy. They simply can’t if they want to remain competitive. The next point on aluminium smelters I was going to get into was how the equipment inside needs to be made from just solar and wind, plus the trucks that transport both the bauxite and the final product and the mining etc, etc.

We have a total system we call civilization, that runs on cheap energy provided by fossil fuels, all the so called replacements are in fact just derivatives of fossil fuels, they don’t exist nor can they be built without fossil fuels. Nor is anyone anywhere even trying to build any of it without the use of fossil fuels!!

Thank you Dennis, as you have highlighted the reasoning behind the cornucopian argument being the ‘relative cost’. Because the ‘relative cost’ has come down with some fancy accounting in the LCOE calculations (like adding CCUS to coal), it all sounds doable. However please note that when fossil fuels all went up in cost in 2021-2, so did the cost of renewables.
The assumption is of course that renewables will continue to get cheaper, how about you question that assumption given lower ore grades at mines meaning more energy needed to do the mining, or perhaps the higher cost of replacing bridges all the trucks need to use, using the no longer cheap energy?

It’s the absolute cost of energy that counts, giving enough extra energy to run our civilization, not the relative difference between fossil fuels and renewables/nuclear that counts. When fossil fuels get to expensive on an EROEI basis our civilization will not be possible, we are rapidly heading that way. This is strictly the physics argument, ignoring every other problem we have caused by our overshoot..

Dennis, you continue to point to papers that rely on statements like this…

” As the technology matures, necessary embodied energy for the technology will be affected56 by the improvements in material types and innovations in processes. Thus, ongoing technology improvement on CED values holds a significant position in dynamic EROI analysis. Particularly, for PV and battery the interpretation of CED values by using average energy learning rates (ELR) ensures to reflect their future technological improvements.”

Yet reference (56) states this …..”Lower financial production costs should correlate with lower values of embodied energy.”

That’s great, because currently the embedded cost of renewables and nuclear is way above the fossil fuel cost we built the system of civilization with, and your reference relies totally upon the continued technology and material improvements into the future, to get to where is needed.

Every single paper you point to has the same assumption with no evidence any of it can happen once we get into an environment of constantly falling total energy production when oil production decline accelerates to the downside. They all assume everything ‘else’ continues as normal, a very stupid assumption.. None of them assume reality of continuing lower ore grades for every ‘material’ requiring MORE energy to extract them..

Once again I’ll go back to real world numbers, that correspond with LCOE from Lazards for wind and solar current costs. (For Alimbiquated, it’s the total cost of setting up the system and running it, not just the solar panel price).

Saudi oil, refined into products, $1.7M/Twh, it’s a lower cost before refining!!!
A small gas project with gas processed and into pipeline, including cost for pipelines to consumers $1.7M/Twh
Kogan Creek power station $9M/Twh
Mt Gellibrand Wind Farm $34M/Twh with ZERO backup!!
New England Solar Farm $35M/Twh includes 30 MINUTES battery backup!!
Hinkley PC nuclear $66M/Twh assuming it doesn’t go higher!!

Each of the above are real world costs, with wind, solar and nuclear ongoing operating and maintenance costs coming from the industries own numbers (so probably low!!)

The above reference of yours clearly states ” Lower financial production costs should correlate with lower values of embodied energy” meaning, that higher production costs have higher embodied energy cost, which makes perfect sense..

The entire point of the renewables and nuclear argument is that the prices of these energy forms will get cheaper into the future, eventually going below fossil fuel costs as those costs rise. In other words it’s the ‘relative’ argument which is nonsense.

Both wind and solar today are 20 times higher energy cost than the cheap oil and gas that we built the system with. We still have a small amount of it left, as per the above numbers.
Do you really think that solar, wind plus the appropriate backup will get to 5% of the current energy cost of building them?? I don’t, as we have made all the easy improvements, which is why they are so much cheaper than 20 years ago. However just being a fraction of the cost of 20 years ago, by itself tells us nothing about the energy cost of building them.

In the real world over the last 20 years the energy from fossil fuel use has gone up by 10 times the increase in solar and wind energy during the same period.
Renewables are not replacing anything when we look at the big picture.
Sure in the west we can shut down the odd coal power station, while the places that produce all the equipment needed to build renewables (mostly China) open up 2 or 3 new ones to build everything in their society including the factories to make the ‘stuff’ we use in the West. (Building the civilization including schools, hospitals etc is part of the energy cost of getting solar and wind from China, something none of the papers you refer to ever cover!!

Extra Aluminium will be needed for the extra solar panels to be built in the future. A new large smelter is the one planned by Adaro in Borneo, using coal fired power to do it. So once again I’ll ask you, should Adaro burn the coal to power the new smelter or should they erase a few hundred thousand acres of tropical rainforest to place enough solar panels for the operation??
I say neither. That means less aluminium available for solar panels and everything else.

My point being it’s an entire system with everything interrelated, solar and wind are 4 times the cost of fairly new coal fired power right now, and probably much higher if we built simple, inefficient, very polluting coal power stations, like the ones of old. Plus the intermittency adds a huge energy cost in the building the batteries or pumped hydro or whatever. They are also 20 times the price of refined oil products from cheap Saudi wells, or gas in consumers hands.

The answer provided by every single research paper written by Cornucopians is that ‘people in the future will figure it out with better (cheaper) technology and materials’.

Dennis, I’ve asked this before, could you do some real world numbers on this bright green future, instead of pointing to papers the whole time that are mostly full of GIGO. The above numbers I’ve given are real world, anyone can go and check them if they are prepared to do the research. If you think they are way out, then prove it with a real world example or 2.

It’s fascinating that so many overshoot and pharma crime aware people deny climate change.

My guess is that when you understand that all of the climate change policies currently in place will not help, and in many cases, with make the situation worse, it is natural to assume that climate change itself is a hoax.

Today Dmitry Orlov, who I used to respect, today tells us that global warming causes CO2 to rise, and not the other way around. Global warming is occurring because the core of the earth is getting hotter, as are other planets, possibly due to the muon-neutrino flux.

Something happened in outer space that is causing planets to warm up. We can be absolutely certain that CO2 emissions have nothing to do with global warming.