fossil fuel demand scenarios

This Bloomberg article called “The Myth of Peak Fossil-Fuel Demand Is Crumbling” looks like a good example of a journalist writing a fair and balanced data-driven article, and an editor then giving it an idiotic headline. So let’s ignore the headline. The article summarizes the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook. I couldn’t find the 2025 edition online, so Bloomberg must have an advance copy.

Anyway, I found the scenarios interesting. They have a Current Policy Scenario, which assumes countries will continue their current policies (behaviors? these aren’t the exact same thing are they?) indefinitely into the future, a Stated Policies Scenario, which includes “policy proposals”, and an Announced Pledges Scenario which includes “political aspirations”. Under “Current Policies”, fossil fuel demand continues to rise through 2050, while in the other two it turns a corner right about now. I’m not sure I buy the graph though, because it shows a notable acceleration over the past few years, then a sharp corner today where a decline begins. That is generally not how trends work, unless we are expecting some catastrophic external event to happen today. Let’s hope not.

Am I hopeful? Not really, because this is only saying that the trend of too high emissions may get more too high or less too high over the next couple of decades. It is too high, and this is pushing our world toward or possibly already past a point of no return which we will never be able to fully recover from. Regardless, it is never too late to make things less bad than they could have been if no action was taken. The fact that our past actions have closed off some good outcomes forever is not an excuse not to take action that can avoid some really bad outcomes.

The real question to me is whether economic forces are pushing policy in the right direction, because if they are, politics can’t buck economics forever. So the most hopeful thing I can say is that economics may be creating some headwinds for bad policy. Trying to go full bore on renewables like parts of Europe have may be overreach in terms of near-term policy, but being ready to make a push on electrifying the transportation system when political winds shift may be a practical strategy. Let’s have those policies ready.

biodiversity decline

Out of many doom and gloom topics, biodiversity decline may be the gloomiest, or at least the gloomiest that the global political system and public by and large are not thinking about. With climate change, at least we all know something is going on even if we are bickering about it and not doing enough 50 years after we needed to start acting in a concerted way. Anyway, global insect decline is just beyond shocking. Here is just one article hot off the presses:

Long-term decline in montane insects under warming summers

Widespread declines in the abundance of insects portend ill-fated futures for their host ecosystems, all of which require their services to function. For many such reports, human activities have directly altered the land or water of these ecosystems, raising questions about how insects in less impacted environments are faring. I quantified the abundance of flying insects during 15 seasons spanning 2004–2024 on a relatively unscathed, subalpine meadow in Colorado, where weather data have been recorded for 38 years. I discovered that insect abundance declined an average of 6.6% annually, yielding a 72.4% decline over this 20-year period. According to model selection following information theoretic analysis of 59 combinations of weather-related factors, a seasonal increase in insect abundance changed to a seasonal decline as the previous summer’s temperatures increased. This resulted in a long-term decline associated with increasing summer temperatures, particularly daily lows, which have increased 0.8°C per decade. However, other factors, such as ecological succession and atmospheric elevation in nitrogen and carbon, are also plausible drivers. In a relatively pristine ecosystem, insects are declining precipitously, auguring poorly for this and other such ecosystems that depend on insects in food webs and for pollination, pest control, and nutrient cycling.

For a more general overview of the insect decline issue, I suggest this paper: Insect decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a thousand cuts.

There is some debate about which causes are more important than others, but like climate change, the causes are pretty much known (and one of them is climate change). Destruction of natural ecosystems to clear land for urban areas and agriculture is the biggest and most obvious. Massive use of pesticides and other agricultural chemicals. Heat and drought. The spread of invasive species.

The destruction of nature is just sad for everyone who values nature for its own sake. For those who don’t, it’s a little harder to come up with the elevator pitch for why this matters. Pollination has huge and obvious economic value, but maybe we can replace natural pollinators with domesticated bees for the most critical crops.

Beyond pollination, insects are the base of the food chain. Their disappearance is actually a symptom of loss of plant life, since many of them are herbivores and depend on plants. We should be able to help a little bit just by conserving or replanting some of the native trees and other plants we know they depend on in our urban areas and on farms. A guy I know wrote a paper about this.

Insects, in their function as herbivores, are also critical in transferring energy, biomass (i.e. carbon), and nutrients up the food chain to everything from birds to amphibians to fish. So their loss is a direct cause of the loss of a lot of these other animals. But in terms of the food supply, we can probably produce chickens and pigs and cows without them I suppose. So it’s a little hard to tell that “conservative” uncle at the Thanksgiving table that there is some imminent tipping point where the bugs dwindle to a certain level and then we all starve to death. (“Conservative” is in quotes because a true conservative would be interested in, well, conserving things not destroying them.)

“fastest growing suburbs” vs. climate havens

A research group at University of Illinois makes population projections for US cities (suburbs? municipalities? this is a little unclear from the article) through 2100, and the top 40 hits are in the metro areas outside Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Oklahoma City, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Riverside (greater greater Los Angeles), Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Denver, Boise, Fargo. These would seem to be heat, drought, flood, and fire prone areas, so this does not square with the idea that disaster-driven insurance rate increases will force mass population movements out of these areas.

Part of the answer to the insurance paradox is that political pressure causes states to set up “high risk pools” initially intended to assist small numbers of highly vulnerable homeowners, and the scope of these tends to creep up over time. This has particularly happened in Florida, although Florida has taken steps to move people out of their program recently. Another piece of the puzzle is that a big factor in private insurance rates is not disasters but credit scores, and this “mutes the market signals”. I tend to think that insurance companies, evil or at least amoral as they are, know what they are doing in terms of the math, and credit scores must be highly correlated with claims and losses. They also probably have no reason to take a long term view because they can drop policies any time they want as conditions worsen. Mortgage companies might have something to say about this, but remember that they are implicitly government subsidized for the most part.

the “military-digital complex”

The first time I heard this term was in this post from Naked Capitalism, but it sounds right. The article focuses on Palantir and an “alliance” between the US government and tech companies (particularly Palantir) and the Israeli government and tech companies. Palantir does indeed seem sinister. The events in Xinjiang were the first time I had heard of the idea of “social credit scores” to track and control large masses of people, and the events in Gaza take this concept to a new level of (I’m just going to say it) abhorrent violence and immorality.

I read a book once, and I can’t remember or find the title, making the point that these systems for ranking and controlling people go back to at least the Roman and Spanish Inquisitions. If you think about it, the religious authorities of the time would have been the only ones (in their society I mean) with access to the technology and skills needed, such as paper, quills, ink, and literacy. Move on to Tsar, Gestapo, Stasi, and J. Edgar Hoover, and similar ends were accomplished with typewriters and file folders. So it was probably inevitable that modern computerized database technology, and now machine learning technology, would take this to a new level.

And these technologies have many peaceful democratic and economic uses, so we would not want to put this genie back in the bottle even if we could. I also think that as cyber- and bio-weapons of mass destruction become increasingly accessible and dispersed in many more hands, this kind of surveillance will become necessary to manage these risks, which are existential. So the only real options here are to have political controls on the misuse of these technology in democratic societies, and to have updated and strengthened international institutions akin to the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons control regimes of the past. At the moment, of course, it seems we are going down a dark path of increasingly sinister domestic surveillance with weakening democratic controls, along with weakening international controls. And I don’t know that governments focused on misusing these technologies to oppress their own citizens are going to be the ones most effective at also using them to manage the existential risks.

The International Atomic Energy Agency does in fact have a new(ish) AI-powered surveillance system called MOSAIC designed by…Palantir.

The Palantir, of course, was a crystal ball that figures in the Lord of the Rings. Created by the wise elves, who sure were somewhat elitist and mildly racist, but had the best interests of us common humans at heart overall. But the Palantir fell into the wrong hands and was misused by the forces of darkness. Only wizards and hobbits can save us now.

revisiting the Hindenburg

I always assumed that everyone on board the Hindenburg when it exploded over new Jersey in 1937 died. But in fact, there were 97 people on board and 35 of them died. That’s a tragedy, but slightly less tragic in terms of loss of life than I thought.

The U.S. military made its own experiments with airships, and many of them went much, much worse than that. The American versions tended to use helium, so they didn’t explode, but they just couldn’t be controlled well in storms. Weather forecasting and communications were much less far along then than we take for granted now, so people trying to fly these things were often taken by surprise and a lot of them crashed with people dying horrifically from falls, impacts and drowning. This long article from a site called The Atavist goes through this disturbing history.

https://itoldya420.getarchive.net/amp/media/ymca-building-akron-ohio-ad735f

Mullets are back!!!

In truly important fashion news, mullets are making a comeback. While looking at mullets is enjoyable, reading (AI generated?) articles about them is even more enjoyable. Even just reading the headlines is enjoyable. Here are a couple from a site called Fashion Beans.

Subtle Mullets That Master the Art of Tactical Hairstyles

Professional Mullets With Elegant Style for the Modern Office

The professional mullet is a refined take on the classic mullet, tailored for the modern man who desires a balance between edgy and elegant. This hairstyle typically features a medium to long length at the back, gradually tapering towards the sides and top for a polished look. The texture is smooth with a slight wave, achieved through careful layering. This style suits those with oval, square, or diamond face shapes and works well with medium to thick hair. Differing from its wilder 80s cousin, this version combines the mullet’s rebellious spirit with a professional finish, making it suitable for both formal and casual occasions. In recent fashion, it stands out as a bold statement while remaining workplace appropriate.

Country Mullet Inspiration for a Fresh Look

now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational…pipe organ

The world’s largest (fully functional) pipe organ is not in a cathedral in Europe, or in fact a church or cathedral anywhere. It’s in an office building in Philadelphia, where I happen to work. It’s shame because it was part of a our Center City Macy’s which closed recently and it is not clear if the organ will need to be moved. Perhaps not if this website is accurate and still up-to-date. Anyway, I always had the impression it had been built specifically for the space it is in and would therefore be difficult to move, but I was wrong about that – it was built for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and later moved to the Wanamaker Department Store here. So it could be moved again if it needs to be. With a pipe organ though, the space it is in is part of the instrument in a way, so if you move it that particular sound you got from the combination of the organ and the space will never happen again. It would be like moving your guitar or violin strings to another completely different instrument. Anyway, they still play it daily because apparently it needs to be played to stay in good shape. It rattles the walls throughout the building, which is cool.

I do have one more question – how common are not-fully-functional pipe organs and where are they? Maybe they are hard to maintain in good condition, and therefore for every fully operational one there are a bunch of old broken ones lying around? I don’t know.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wanamakers_Organ_at_Macys_Philadelphia_in_2023.jpg

Forest City

Forest City is a sort of boondoggle new town development in southern Malaysia, just across the border from Singapore. I think the idea was that people and companies would want to live there cheaply and commute or do business in Singapore. It hasn’t lived up to its promise.

Anyway, what caught my eye in this Los Angeles Times article was a tech entrepreneur setting up yet another seminar on the whole charter cities libertarian enclave city-state idea.

They have descended on Forest City to attend Network School, the brainchild of former Coinbase Inc. executive and “The Network State” author Balaji Srinivasan. In this troubled megaproject once envisaged to house some 50 times its current population, they’re conducting a real-life experiment of sorts with Srinivasan’s vision of “startup societies” defined less by historical territory than shared beliefs in technology, cryptocurrency and light regulation…

Nearly 400 students, many of them entrepreneurs, have so far made the journey to Forest City to study everything from coding to unconventional theories on statehood. They’re building crypto projects, fine-tuning their physiques and testing whether a shared ideology — rather than just shared territory — can bind a community. The price starts at $1,500 per month, including lodging and food, for those who opt for a shared room…

“We’re all getting jacked,” said Prad Nukala, a student at the school and founder of crypto startup Sonr, which describes itself as a “blockchain for decentralized identity.”

If there is any doubt, “jacked” here is a reference to weight lifting.

$1500 per month doesn’t sound bad at all for an all-inclusive month-long vacation.

Spain’s “solar power meltdown”?

This article in (paywalled) Financial Times is called “The Story Behind Spain’s Solar Power Meltdown”. But the “meltdown” turns out to be in the price of solar power following an extraordinarily successful implementation effort. So maybe it’s a meltdown for some corporations and their investors who created too much capacity in the short term, but it has resulted in abundant renewable energy, which has to be good for the long term.

The other issue apparently is that Spain and its electrical industry did not invest enough in their electric grid and storage capacity at the same time they invested in all this supply, and that has also caused issues. Recent blackouts have been blamed on solar power, whether that is really fair or not (this article says mostly no).

Spain may be sunnier than many parts of the US, but certainly not the desert southwest. I think the lesson here is that solar supply probably doesn’t need government subsidies any more to take off. It may need a level playing field, in other words dirtier, less efficient fossil fuels not to be unfairly subsidized with our taxpayer money while propaganda convinces us the opposite is happening. But the grid, vehicle charging, and storage infrastructure seems like it still needs government help to get over the hump. That is not where the political winds are blowing at the moment, but political winds eventually shift in the face of overwhelming economic forces. Just check in with the coal industry on that one.