8 thoughts on “Monday Message Board”

1. The CPI to be announced this week will most likely be low for the September quarter. This will be due to many factors, but the main one is the seasonal nature of inflation. The September quarter has few major events. There are no major holiday periods. Most of it is in school term. Then there is the need to sort out personal taxes. This usually has a negative impact on consumer spending.

   Sone other factors this time round will include the lower than expected oil prices. Then there is the stronger dollar, that sees import prices fall in domestic markets. Finally there is the tax cuts coming in at a time of debt insecurity. Already there are signs that tax cuts are being banked and not spent.

   All of this should lead to a lower CPI for September 2024. But do not expect this to influence the RBA. They may discount this lower CPI purely on the seasonal factors.

2. More placebo antidotes to election gloom cross-commented at the Substack site)

   • The IEA revised upwards its near-term forecast for global new renewables: 5,500 GW by 2030. This will bring total renewables to 2.7x 2022 levels, close to the PR target 0f 3x cynically or wishfully adopted by COP-28 less than a year ago. 80% of this will be solar. https://www.iea.org/news/massive-global-growth-of-renewables-to-2030-is-set-to-match-entire-power-capacity-of-major-economies-today-moving-world-closer-to-tripling-goal
   • China officially installed 160 GW of solar in the first three quarters of 2024, 20.9 GW in September alone. https://cleantechnica.com/2024/10/26/china-adds-160-gigawatts-in-first-3-quarters-of-2024/

   • EVs (BEV and PHEV) passed 50% of new car sales in July in China, earlier than expected. https://carnewschina.com/2024/08/07/chinese-new-energy-vehicle-car-sales-50-84-july-preliminary-figures-show/ So far this year, “sales of new energy vehicles have amounted to 4.991 million, which is a 34% year-on-year increase”. For comparison, cumulative PHEV sales in the US in the 13 years from 2010 to 2023 totalled 4.7 million.Chinese carmakers and suppliers must already be getting significant economies of scale in production, and Chinese households enjoying economies of networking in chargers.
   • “The [US] Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has approved the Fervo Cape Geothermal Power Project in Beaver County, Utah, which will use innovative technology to generate up to 2 gigawatts (GW) of baseload power….” https://www.blm.gov/press-release/biden-harris-administration-takes-major-steps-accelerate-clean-energy-geothermal The 2 GW is hype of course. Fervo’s actual project https://fervoenergy.com/fervo-energy-breaks-ground-on-the-worlds-largest-next-gen-geothermal-project/ is for a still significant 400 MW, with 24 planned wells and 320 MW of PPAs signed with Southern California Edison. That brings the world total of pre-commercial but fully sized EGS geothermal projects in progress to two, the other being Eavor’s smaller but more advanced scheme at Geretsried in Germany. The two companies use radically different technologies. Fervo stick with creating artificial hydrothermal reservoirs by fracturing deep rocks with high-pressure water and sand, which promises high yields – if you can durably get enough flow, the problem which many earlier ventures have failed to solve. Eavor bypass it, circulating water in sealed bored tubes heated by simple conduction from the surrounding rocks. This is a less risky and more conservative approach they have tested for years on a small scale. Both companies need to get their accurate drilling done cheaply enough to pay. These projects are risky, but reasonable long-shot bets with budgets in the hundreds of millions not billions. If either or both succeed, they will add useful flexibility to the portfolio. Geothermal is intrinsically almost perfectly reliable and despatchable, ideal backup for wind and solar, and geologically suitable locations are common. These features are worth paying a reasonable premium for.
   • “For more than two years, the floating offshore wind turbine TetraSpar at METCentre off the coast of Norway has been monitored by a bird camera. No bird collisions have been recorded.” Total bird detections were 21,138, 91% of them seagulls. Gulls are quite large, slow-flying and not very agile, though good at gliding on air currents. They are gregarious, and warn the flock of threats. They get on fine with humans, though the affection is not reciprocated, and are happy to exploit opportunities created by human activities like fishing and unguarded sandwiches. They have obviously learned how to stay safe around a big wind turbine blade. The 2,000 collision-free visits from other species of seabird suggest that this coexistence is normal. https://cleantechnica.com/2024/10/24/no-bird-collisions-at-offshore-wind-site-study-determines/

3. Wonderful news, James – thank you!! It is much appreciated. (I would make one of those happy whistling sounds if I knew the emoji for that.) Hope is alive!!

   I also saw some happy medical news recently. A burn victim was successfully treated with placenta, and a kid with sickle cell disease was cured (I think with stem cells?).

   This is a glorious age of science. We all just need to learn to get along better.

4. Prof Eliot Jacobson tweeted on Oct 29:

   Here’s a summary of the most recent data I have across a variety of climate metrics:

   The table includes:

   • Global surface temperature: _ _ _ _ _ _25 Oct 2024 _ 15.00 °C _ _ _ New high seasonal record
   • Global sea surface temperature: _ _ _ 27 Oct 2024 _ 20.79 °C _ _ _ below record seasonal high
   • Global sea ice extent: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 27 Oct 2024 _ 23.24 Mkm² _New seasonal low record
   • Earth energy imbalance (36-month): _ _ Jul 2024 _ _ _1.42 W/m² _ below record high
   • Albedo (36-month): _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Jul 2024 _ _ 28.78% _ _ _ _record low
   • Total Column Precipitable Water: _ _ _ _ Sep 2024 _ _26.51 kg/m² _ below record high
   • CO₂ (Mauna Loa): _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Sep 2024 _ 422.03 ppm _ record seasonal high
   • CH₄ (Global): _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Jun 2024 _1921.79 ppb _ record seasonal high
   • CO₂-equivalent (yearly): _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2023 _ _ _ 534 ppm _ _ _ record high
   • Global Radiative Forcing (yearly): _ _ _ _ _ 2023 _ _ _ _ _3.49 W/m² _ record high

   With CO₂-equivalent (yearly) at 534 ppm, and James Hansen suggesting an ECS of 4.8 °C, with a baseline CO₂-equivalent (yearly) of 276 ppm in 1750, then the Earth System committed global temperature rise is +4.6 °C.

5. The COVID-19 Response Enquiry Report is out.

   https://www.pmc.gov.au/resources/covid-19-response-inquiry-report

   A referenced report is the National Review of Quarantine from 2021.

   From my perusal it is a very nebulous managerialist report. Nebulous verbiage is the sine qua non of the generic managerialist report. Almost nothing concrete is recommended. Certainly not the use of effective quarantine, NPIs (Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions), proper testing and tracing, masking and filtering to supplement the faltering vaccines.

   The phrase “proportionate response” abounds, which in my opinion is code for putting the elite’s economic interests over and above the interests of everyone else. This means we won’t be doing much at all to slow down or stop COVID-19 or any future airborne infectious epidemics. The principle has been established and upheld that we will be living with everything which means we will be dying from everything in increasing numbers. That is my prediction.

6. Iko, the current bird flu pandemic rapidly kills near half the people so far infected. Not many have been infected yet and none afaik by human-to-human transmission – and it’s not biased towards mostly eliminating the elderly! With a little natural or lab gof and … boom … crash!

7. Geoff,

   Bill McKibben, The New Yorker, 31/10/2024:

   A Smoking Gun for Biden’s Big Climate Decision?

   A new analysis suggests that L.N.G. exports may well be worse for the environment than burning coal.

   A Smoking Gun for Biden’s Big Climate Decision? | The New Yorker

   Robert W Howarth, SCI Journals, Wiley, 3/10/2024:

   The greenhouse gas footprint of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exported from the United States

   The greenhouse gas footprint of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exported from the United States – Howarth – Energy Science & Engineering – Wiley Online Library

   More evidence LNG worse than coal – MacroBusiness

   Australian LNG – MacroBusiness

   Note. LNG numbers out of date / faulty.

   Natural carbon sink capacity numbers out of date / faulty.

   … as temperature increases … recent carbon sink capacity of soils, seas and forested land masses have fallen by 20 to 40% > GMST rise by 2 – 3 C by 2030 based on sink absorption reduction capacity alone.

8. ‘Should be criminal’: Gigantic carbon footprints of ultra-rich revealed

   “On the current trajectory the carbon budget, an estimate of the amount of CO2 that can be added to the atmosphere without causing temperatures to rise above 1.5 degrees, will be depleted in about four years…”

   Yeah, but … that supposed current climate budget and trajectory is far wonkier than even the trajectory for supposed taxes paid by the ultra-rich. Fantasies.