Daniel Yergin Book is a Reality Check on Energy

[ronwagn + 6,290]

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/map-daniel-yergins-sobering-smart-110105377.html

Here is a man who can give an intelligent and honest forecast for the future of energy sources. RCW

 

'The New Map': Daniel Yergin's sobering and smart take on the global state of energy

David Holahan, Special for USA TODAY

September 14, 2020, 6:01 AM CDT

 

At a time when solid facts and reasoned arguments are in retreat, Daniel Yergin rides to the rescue. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author and energy savant is armed to the teeth with enough telling statistics to sink an oil tanker in "The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations" (Penguin Press, 512 pp., ★★★★ out of four).

While most “experts” predicted a decade ago that peak oil production was imminent, to be followed by a slippery slope of declining supply, Yergin said they were wrong. As usual, he was right.

The big issue today is not supply, but demand. When will our voracious appetite peak for all that plentiful oil, gas and coal?

[Meredith Poor + 883]

13 hours ago, ronwagn said:

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/map-daniel-yergins-sobering-smart-110105377.html

Here is a man who can give an intelligent and honest forecast for the future of energy sources. RCW

 

'The New Map': Daniel Yergin's sobering and smart take on the global state of energy

David Holahan, Special for USA TODAY

September 14, 2020, 6:01 AM CDT

 

At a time when solid facts and reasoned arguments are in retreat, Daniel Yergin rides to the rescue. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author and energy savant is armed to the teeth with enough telling statistics to sink an oil tanker in "The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations" (Penguin Press, 512 pp., ★★★★ out of four).

While most “experts” predicted a decade ago that peak oil production was imminent, to be followed by a slippery slope of declining supply, Yergin said they were wrong. As usual, he was right.

The big issue today is not supply, but demand. When will our voracious appetite peak for all that plentiful oil, gas and coal?

Should be an accurate assessment, for about 5 minutes after it was published. I have no doubt some of the points are valid for more than 5 minutes, but one point I make in all these discussions is as follows:

Out of the 7.8 billion people on the planet, about 4 billion show up for work each morning to produce some economic benefit.

Of those 4 billion workers, at least 20% are responsible for creating some kind of 'improvement', whether developing a technology, implementing a new technology, improving customer service, finding a new market for an existing product, etc. This is 800 million people.

There are 'butterflies' everywhere, as in triggers for chaos.

Imagine a boulder sitting on top of a 'pointed rock', as one might find in some deserts in the US Southwest. This represents a lot of 'potential energy', and only an appropriate blast of wind to send it crashing down. Now imagine $1.5 trillion in hedge fund 'dry powder' waiting for some investment opportunity. The instant something works, or works better, money shows up to move it into markets.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

All progress takes time. It took many years for ICE engines and solar power and wind to get where they are now. Windmills, and waterwheels have been around for hundreds of years. Solar dishes were used thousands of years ago to set fire to enemy ships. 

Yergin expects half of all small vehicles to be electric by 2,050. Advanced batteries will be in great demand but the minerals and the factories to produce them will take time to build, sell, and distribute. The cost will be high until all the wrinkles are smoothed out and volume reduces the cost. Batteries will be demanded for many different uses. Home backup, cars, wind turbines, solar power, communities etc. The growth will take time. The sooner the better but the cost benefit ratio must be examined and natural gas will be a competitor and relied on to make the electricity itself. 

Natural gas has enabled America to have the cleanest air of any large nation. It will continue to do the same with the help of wind, solar, and hydro. It will also continue to be exported around the world. 

Coal, according to Yergin also, will continue to be the first choice in Asia because they have it or can import it cheaply. China will continue to make solar panels and wind turbines for export and for their own use. It will be interesting to see what countries can compete for the solar and wind turbine market. America is not a major producer of wind turbines. China and Europe dominate the market. We produce and use natural gas and oil. 

https://www.bizvibe.com/blog/energy-and-fuels/top-10-wind-turbine-manufacturers-world/#:~:text= Top 10 Wind Turbine Manufacturers in the,turbine supplier Goldwind remains the third... More

China dominates solar cell and solar panel production.

https://solarpowernerd.com/top-solar-panel-manufacturers/

It is obviously in America's benefit to use natural gas as much as possible before helping other nations to enrich themselves. Meanwhile we can export our coal to Asia since they will burn coal despite what the Green Movement says. It is interesting that the Green Movement never criticizes China. Could it be that supporting China, communism, and their way of life is more important to them than anything else? Natural gas is very clean and overall may be as clean as wind or solar since they have their own pollution problems. 

https://www.ccacoalition.org/en/content/air-pollution-measures-asia-and-pacific

 

 

 

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

18 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

Natural gas has enabled America to have the cleanest air of any large nation.

 

 

Canada is large with cleaner air.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

12 minutes ago, Enthalpic said:

Canada is large with cleaner air.

True. I should have said population.

 

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

Just now, ronwagn said:

True. I should have said population.

 

I knew what you meant.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

3 hours ago, Meredith Poor said:

Should be an accurate assessment, for about 5 minutes after it was published. I have no doubt some of the points are valid for more than 5 minutes, but one point I make in all these discussions is as follows:

Out of the 7.8 billion people on the planet, about 4 billion show up for work each morning to produce some economic benefit.

Of those 4 billion workers, at least 20% are responsible for creating some kind of 'improvement', whether developing a technology, implementing a new technology, improving customer service, finding a new market for an existing product, etc. This is 800 million people.

There are 'butterflies' everywhere, as in triggers for chaos.

Imagine a boulder sitting on top of a 'pointed rock', as one might find in some deserts in the US Southwest. This represents a lot of 'potential energy', and only an appropriate blast of wind to send it crashing down. Now imagine $1.5 trillion in hedge fund 'dry powder' waiting for some investment opportunity. The instant something works, or works better, money shows up to move it into markets.

We all should acknowledge that some new invention(s). Could come along and be world changing. Nuclear fusion comes to mind. Thorium nuclear aslo.  Meanwhile we have a future with abundant clean energy. I see the major issue as replacing coal to reduce pollution. If they come up with some chemical magic to dispose of the waste that might work too. The Global Warmist Crowd has remained silent unless the coal was burned in America or Europe though. 

[Meredith Poor + 883]

1 hour ago, ronwagn said:

Yergin expects half of all small vehicles to be electric by 2,050. Advanced batteries will be in great demand but the minerals and the factories to produce them will take time to build, sell, and distribute.

'Half' by 2050 is absurd. The number is likely to be closer to 90%. The problem isn't in math, it's in understanding the speed with which cheaper technologies overrun incumbent technologies. Often this only takes three to five years.

It 'has taken' time to build, sell, and distribute 'advanced batteries'. Once we know how to do it, such experiences are easily cloned. There is still an assumption in this discussion that batteries will continue to depend on difficult to extract or expensive minerals. Projected over the next 30 years, that assumption is hopelessly doubtful.

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

1 hour ago, ronwagn said:

 

Those Iranian PM levels have gotta be dust particulates.

 

 

[0R0 + 6,251]

3 hours ago, ronwagn said:

It is obviously in America's benefit to use natural gas as much as possible before helping other nations to enrich themselves. Meanwhile we can export our coal to Asia since they will burn coal despite what the Green Movement says. It is interesting that the Green Movement never criticizes China. Could it be that supporting China, communism, and their way of life is more important to them than anything else? Natural gas is very clean and overall may be as clean as wind or solar since they have their own pollution problems. 

US is going into silicon wafer business because of high grade quartz and clean NG to produce highest grade wafers. Plant is in Toledo, OH gas and quartz are from nearby. It is rising where the US high grade glass business used to be.

China is not mentioned by the greens because the greens are a marxist movement unconcerned with the actual environment, they have been driven by their central movement being China dominated since the 1990s to suppress competing demand for commodities in the West and as a strategic social weapon to lull the West into disarmament via loss of production capacity via environmental regulations.

Actual greens get a shock from the movement's leadership being so utterly corrupt and beholden to China/CCP and dirty corporations in green drag. They - like Michael Moore, don't survive as voices in the movement. We can call it a mercantile pro China Marxist movement.

 

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

1 minute ago, 0R0 said:

 

China is not mentioned by the greens because the greens are a marxist movement unconcerned with the actual environment

Give me a break.

Some of us like nature, clean air, and water.

 

[0R0 + 6,251]

1 minute ago, Enthalpic said:

Give me a break.

Some of us like nature, clean air, and water.

 

There are true believers and apparatchiks, the movement is led by the latter and supported from outside by the first. The environmental benefits are secondary to the movement's dedication to destroying Western industry and thus capacity to counter China's building war machine. Same as it was during its day under Soviet sponsorship in the 1960s and 1970s and even in the 1980s. 

 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

29 minutes ago, 0R0 said:

US is going into silicon wafer business because of high grade quartz and clean NG to produce highest grade wafers. Plant is in Toledo, OH gas and quartz are from nearby. It is rising where the US high grade glass business used to be.

China is not mentioned by the greens because the greens are a marxist movement unconcerned with the actual environment, they have been driven by their central movement being China dominated since the 1990s to suppress competing demand for commodities in the West and as a strategic social weapon to lull the West into disarmament via loss of production capacity via environmental regulations.

Actual greens get a shock from the movement's leadership being so utterly corrupt and beholden to China/CCP and dirty corporations in green drag. They - like Michael Moore, don't survive as voices in the movement. We can call it a mercantile pro China Marxist movement.

 

I have considered myself as an environmentalist since I first heard the word and started studying the tenets. I stopped believing the movement itself long a go though. I saw that they were unreasonable about land management for multipurpose use as it is supposed to be done in our national forests. They also took millions from the natural gas movement and then turned around and betrayed it. The Sierra Club and the other such organizations have, in many instances, done more harm than good. I have contributed to most of them in the past but no more. They are controlled by extremists in most cases. 

I want to see wind, solar, and batteries manufactured in America. Then I can get behind it, to work along with natural gas. We cannot enable China, at least, to grow their industrial power at our expense. They offer many good products but we need to deal with our friends not with our opponents who do not follow humane treatment of their own people and let them live free. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

2 hours ago, Meredith Poor said:

'Half' by 2050 is absurd. The number is likely to be closer to 90%. The problem isn't in math, it's in understanding the speed with which cheaper technologies overrun incumbent technologies. Often this only takes three to five years.

It 'has taken' time to build, sell, and distribute 'advanced batteries'. Once we know how to do it, such experiences are easily cloned. There is still an assumption in this discussion that batteries will continue to depend on difficult to extract or expensive minerals. Projected over the next 30 years, that assumption is hopelessly doubtful.

Do some math. Figure how many electric vehicles will replace ICE vehicles each year between now and then. Some of those new ICE vehicles will last fifteen years. The ageing of EV's may not be any better. You will have to replace a substantial percentage of vehicles to get to fifty percent of the fleet. Even then you are competing against pickup trucks and large SUVs. It will be interesting to watch the real sale figures. 

China will be a different story. They can determine what is available to their people. Their EV's will run primarily off of electricity produced in coal plants however. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

52 minutes ago, Enthalpic said:

Give me a break.

Some of us like nature, clean air, and water.

 

We all like clean air and water. Not just Greens. They are more into politics. Their environmental policies have hidden agendas and do more harm than good. 

https://www.gp.org/platform

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

13 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

We all like clean air and water. Not just Greens. They are more into politics. Their environmental policies have hidden agendas and do more harm than good. 

https://www.gp.org/platform

I agree that some "environmental" non-profits are corrupt.

That doesn't mean everyone who actively works to minimize environmental damage has a political agenda, but of course they are related.  Environmental regulations are laws and politicians make the laws and fund enforcement (or not).  Lobbying is an important tool, every industry does it.

 

Edited September 15, 2020 by Enthalpic

[ronwagn + 6,290]

1 hour ago, Enthalpic said:

I agree that some "environmental" non-profits are corrupt.

That doesn't mean everyone who actively works to minimize environmental damage has a political agenda, but of course they are related.  Environmental regulations are laws and politicians make the laws and fund enforcement (or not).  Lobbying is an important tool, every industry does it.

 

We need enforcement but I have heard of many egregious oversteps and outrageous fines for minor infractions. We need balance of course. 

During the spotted owl issue we hired professional hunters to weed out the unprotected species of owl that also liked the habitat. It cost quite a bit. 

Then there are the stories about protecting an endangered species of mouse so someone couldn't build on their own land. LOts of stories about that type of issue. 

[Meredith Poor + 883]

2 hours ago, ronwagn said:

The ageing of EV's may not be any better.

Except that EVs don't have high temperature components, such as exhaust pipes, catalytic converters, crankcases, etc. Electric car battery replacements generally result in a better battery than the original taking its place. The major things that need maintenance on an electric car are the load controller, the A/C/Heat Pump, and the brakes. There are plenty of 50 year old ICE cars, usually 'classics' in some form or another. EVs are likely to be driven until they're wrecked.

Anyone that keyword searches on 'hybrid car battery replacements' will find out old Priuses can get their battery packs replaced with new ones for $1500. These are still hybrids with the gasoline engines. My understanding is that the old Nissan Leafs can get battery upgrades that converts them from 80 mile to 200 mile range.

Large trucks are easier to electrify than small cars. Comparing ICE trucks to electric trucks is comparing gunpowder muzzle loaders to machine guns.

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,132]

3 hours ago, Meredith Poor said:

Anyone that keyword searches on 'hybrid car battery replacements' will find out old Priuses can get their battery packs replaced with new ones for $1500. These are still hybrids with the gasoline engines.

Why blatantly lie?  Why?  It does you no favors.  Used, half dead prius batteries and YOU do the labor is $1500.  This is no different than saying you do said labor on an ICE Vehicle.  The reality is a replacement + Labor will set you back $5000 for a tiny battery pack when you add in Labor and sales tax.  https://exclusivelyhybrid.com/toyota-prius-battery-replacement/

[Meredith Poor + 883]

9 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Why blatantly lie?  Why?  It does you no favors.  Used, half dead prius batteries and YOU do the labor is $1500.  This is no different than saying you do said labor on an ICE Vehicle.  The reality is a replacement + Labor will set you back $5000 for a tiny battery pack when you add in Labor and sales tax.  https://exclusivelyhybrid.com/toyota-prius-battery-replacement/

Keyword search 'Green Bean Battery'. If these people are phony, paste in some links with reviews.

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,132]

6 hours ago, Meredith Poor said:

Keyword search 'Green Bean Battery'. If these people are phony, paste in some links with reviews.

So, in your make believe world USED 70% capacity is NEW.... Good to know...

[Meredith Poor + 883]

22 minutes ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

So, in your make believe world USED 70% capacity is NEW.... Good to know...

Where are you getting that from? When I read up on the Green Bean site, they indicate that they recondition the battery packs. These may be at 'reduced capacity', but it doesn't indicate 70%. Where did you get your number?

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,132]

4 minutes ago, Meredith Poor said:

Where are you getting that from? When I read up on the Green Bean site, they indicate that they recondition the battery packs. These may be at 'reduced capacity', but it doesn't indicate 70%. Where did you get your number?

 

And no its not same capacity, otherwise they would warranty their batteries Capacity which is STATED as a number.  Their "warranty" is a tailgate warranty for workmanship.  An absurd joke.  They also would not post "reconditioned" they would post NEW CELLS.  Giant ass difference.  Then you read the guys on the forums... and yes, they are used cells which have been matched.  With a little Sleuth work, some of their packs, claim NEW CELLS and yes, they cost more. 

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,132]

58 minutes ago, Meredith Poor said:

Where are you getting that from? When I read up on the Green Bean site, they indicate that they recondition the battery packs. These may be at 'reduced capacity', but it doesn't indicate 70%. Where did you get your number?

Here: Let me let Green Bean show you they are using USED cells...

 

[Meredith Poor + 883]

29 minutes ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Here: Let me let Green Bean show you they are using USED cells...

 

OK, they're using used cells. That still doesn't explain your 70% number. This video doesn't mention anything more than 'we take cells out of returned packs, recondition them, then reincorporate them in rebuilt packs'.