New preface for AQOP, Simon Michaux on metals, mining, & alt-energy, Dark-eyed Juncos at Oxley
A new preface for A Question of Power, Michaux on the podcast, & Juncos at Oxley
I have deep roots in Oklahoma. Returning to Tulsa for the Thanksgiving holiday is always joyful and a little wistful. About those Oklahoma roots: my maternal great-grandfather, Michael Raphael Conway, took part in the Cherokee Strip land run of 1893. My paternal great-grandmother was a first cousin to Will Rogers, who was born in Oologah in 1879 in what was then known as Oklahoma Territory. When he died in 1935 in an airplane accident in Alaska, Rogers was perhaps the most famous person in America. He was an actor, journalist, and lecturer. He was also an expert horseman, polo player, and roper. Check out this series of roping tricks.
On Wednesday, Lorin and I drove up to Pawhuska to visit some friends in Osage County which is, without doubt, one of the most beautiful parts of the state. Despite the cold and drizzle, the fall colors were amazing. (If you go to Pawhuska, be sure to visit The Water Bird Gallery, a wonderful shop owned by my pal, Danette Daniels.) We also visited Fairfax, which was the epicenter of the Reign of Terror, the years-long organized crime spree that resulted in the murder of dozens of members of the Osage Tribe. I highly recommend David Grann’s marvelous and haunting book on that dark time in Oklahoma’s history, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. The book has been made into a movie (directed by Martin Scorsese) of the same name that is slated to be released in May 2023. Amid the travel and visiting, I wrote a preface for the upcoming paperback edition of A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations. (More on that below.) Three items today:
Sneak peek at the new preface for AQOP
Podcast: Simon Michaux talks Cu, metals, and alt-energy
Dark-eyed Juncos at Oxley
The photo of the Dark-eyed Junco above was taken in Quebec in 2011.
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On Wednesday morning, I submitted a 5,100-word update for the upcoming paperback edition of A Question of Power to Anupama Roy-Chaudury, my editor at PublicAffairs. The paperback is slated to be published on May 16, 2023. As I explain in the new preface, the world has changed a lot since the hardcover edition of the book was published on March 10, 2020. I wrote:
More than three and a half years have passed since I made the final edits to this book. During that time, global electric grids have been in near-constant tumult. The COVID pandemic, followed by the first land war in Europe in more than 70 years, and an ongoing global energy crisis have combined to validate and spotlight the thesis that I laid out in the hardcover edition of this book as well as in my new feature-length documentary, Juice: How Electricity Explains the World. That thesis, of course, is this: electricity is the world’s most important and fastest-growing form of energy.
I will focus here on the four biggest developments that have occurred since I sent those final edits to my colleagues at PublicAffairs. First among those is Europe’s energy suicide. Second, we are witnessing a massive rebound in global coal demand -- a rebound that proves what I call the Iron Law of Electricity. Third, the “green halo” around solar energy has been badly tarnished by reports that Chinese solar companies have been using slave labor. Finally, we have seen a huge surge in land-use and ocean-use conflicts around renewable energy projects. Those conflicts led me to publish the Renewable Rejection Database on my website, Robertbryce.com, so that everyone can see the hundreds of rejections of wind and solar projects that are happening from Maine to Hawaii.
I didn’t expect to write such a long preface. But electricity grids all around the world are under huge stress and the Iron Law is being proven over and over again. I am always happy to work with my friends at PublicAffairs, which has published all six of my book. I will keep you posted about the forthcoming paperback. In the meantime, if you don’t have a copy of the hardcover version, it will make an outstanding Christmas gift!
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Simon Michaux on metals, mining, & Europe's "flamboyantly stupid" policies
Simon Michaux is an associate professor of geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland. Last year, he published a 1,000-page report titled, Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels which details the staggering amount of mining that will be required if the world attempts to quit using hydrocarbons. It is a sobering document. Here’s a summary of the full report:
Current expectations are that global industrial businesses will replace a complex industrial energy ecosystem that took more than a century to build. The current system was built with the support of the highest calorifically dense source of energy the world has ever known (oil), in cheap abundant quantities, with easily available credit, and seemingly unlimited mineral resources. The replacement needs to be done at a time when there is comparatively very expensive energy, a fragile finance system saturated in debt, not enough minerals, and an unprecedented world population, embedded in a deteriorating natural environment. Most challenging of all, this has to be done within a few decades. It is the author’s opinion, based on the new calculations presented here, that this will likely not go fully to as planned. In conclusion, this report suggests that replacing the existing fossil fuel powered system (oil, gas, and coal), using renewable technologies, such as solar panels or wind turbines, will not be possible for the entire global human population. There is simply just not enough time, nor resources to do this by the current target set by the World’s most influential nations.
On the podcast, (episode #149) Michaux explains why copper will be the key constraint for the attempted move to alt-energy. He also talks about the “flamboyantly stupid” decisions being made by European policymakers, and why the pending limits to economic growth will require a new “social contract and a radically different system of governance” from what we have today. He also walked me through some of the mind-boggling numbers in the report, including his calculation that to produce one generation of what he calls “technology units” needed to phase out fossil fuels would require 4.3 billion tons of copper. At current rates of copper production that would take about 180 years. I also recommend you pay attention to his point that mineral deposit discoveries are declining, as are the grades of processed ore. Those two points mean that processing yields are falling which means we will have to use more energy to process the metals needed for the much-hyped “energy transition.”
While I don’t agree with some of Simon’s conclusions, his work is difficult to refute. This episode was recorded on November 11, 2022. The audio and transcript are on my website. And of course, the video is on YouTube.
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A "blizzard" of Dark-eyed Juncos at Oxley Nature Center
Whenever Lorin and I come to Tulsa, we usually make a pilgrimage to one of my all-time favorite birding spots: the Oxley Nature Center at Mohawk Park. On Thursday afternoon, the fields near the nature center were pretty quiet. But once again, we learned that success (in birding and life) is all about showing up. As we headed back to the car, a Bald Eagle flew almost directly over our heads. It was perhaps 100 feet off the ground. We both saw it clearly and agreed that nothing else looks like our national bird. (For more on that bird, listen to the Power Hungry Podcast I did in July with Jack E. Davis, the author of a terrific book, The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird.) Since I’ve written about the Bald Eagle before in this “news” letter, I decided to focus on another bird we saw at Oxley: the Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis), which is a type of sparrow. (The photo just above was shot by Ken Thomas in North Carolina.) We saw several of them in the tall grass and reeds near the nature center’s feeders. The white outer tail feathers were the key identifying mark. Wikipedia says that the Dark-eyed Junco was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758, It also says:
breeding habitat is coniferous or mixed forest areas throughout North America. In otherwise optimal conditions it also utilizes other habitats, but at the southern margin of its range, it can only persist in its favorite habitat. Northern birds migrate further south, arriving in their winter quarters between mid-September and November and leaving to breed from mid-March onwards, with almost all of them gone by the end of April or so...These birds forage on the ground. In winter, they often forage in flocks that may contain several subspecies. They mainly eat seeds supplemented by the occasional insect. A flock has been known to be called a blizzard.
Have a great weekend, y’all.
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