Death Spiral

This week, the British medical journal, The Lancet, put out their annual assessment on the impact of climate change on human health. The report examines a small number of human health indicators and a much larger slate of human climate intervention measures to arrive at the conclusion that:

Many of the trends show positive change with time, most notably in global investment in zero-carbon energy supply, energy efficiency, new coal-fired electricity capacity, employment in the renewable energy sector, and divestment in fossil fuels. However, the change is relatively slow and must accelerate rapidly to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement.

Just how slow the change has been and how rapidly it must be accelerated is the subject of a report, also issued this week, by financial gurus from Stanford and the Hoover Institute. Both of these reports are a bit too opaque for the general reader, but the Energy 202 clarifies one salient point from the latter, i.e. that 2/3 of all private investment capital would have to go to clean energy projects in order for the world to meet the 2 C upper limit set by the Paris agreement.  Right now, the proportion of investment in this sector is less than 1/5 out of the total $3.4 trillion invested by pension, mutual, and sovereign wealth funds, alongside billionaires. So much for The Lancet report's saving grace, huh?

As we would expect in a report about human health effects, mortality due to weather-related disasters and diseases is reported by The Lancet. The figures appear to be fairly steady over the past ten years - nothing to get excited about. For that, one needs to look at forecasts, rather than statistics.

From Albert Bates at The Great Change

One forecast that includes global death rates is The Limits to Growth. The notional curve portrayed in this World 3 result shows deaths beginning to climb within the next few years as food scarcity kicks in and industry output declines. Sometime before 2050, deaths begin to skyrocket. A forecast curve showing climate-related deaths only, by Sam Carana, shows a similar steep rise in the next few years after being lulled by such steady, predictable death rates over the past half century. 

Point being, that we can't expect to keep seeing a stable death rate, whether due to climate factors or in general. Life is going to become much more precarious. The Lancet understates the severity of our predicament, but deserves the last word for prompting this look at how close we might be to human extinction.

We found that the symptoms of climate change have been clear for a number of years, with the health impacts far worse than previously understood... Climate change has serious implications for our health, wellbeing, livelihoods, and the structure of organised society. Its direct effects result from rising temperatures and changes in the frequency and strength of storms, floods, droughts, and heatwaves—with physical and mental health consequences. The impacts of climate change will also be mediated through less direct pathways, including changes in crop yields, the burden and distribution of infectious disease, and in climate-induced population displacement and violent conflict.

A Genocidal War Against Nature

You hear it a lot from this President. His favorite put down: "He (she) is low energy." It is a bit odd that energy seems to be a critical attribute that Old Blowhard applies to his assessments.

Trumpists can't abide low energy. Their leader, The Pretender to the Presidency, recently gifted them with the promise of, not merely high energy, but Energy Dominance - a big relief to them, because they were beginning to sense that energy was running low. Shale oil isn't living up to their dreams, so they are leaning more toward more remote sources like deep ocean beds. With shortages projected for 2018 and the price of oil moving up, it would not surprise me to see investment rise in this area.

In the spirit of Energy Dominance, the biggest lease auction ever of offshore oil and gas drilling rights has been announced by the Department of the Interior for everything left in the Gulf of Mexico. (Shouldn't the Department of the Exterior handle these?) While the auctions should result in more takers than under the previous administration (when oil prices were ridiculously low), the operating and insurance cost of deep-water rigs makes returns-per-barrel less lucrative. Then there's the push to drill on the Atlantic seaboard, which some, like Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, are resisting. The Arctic is also becoming more open to drilling, thanks to global warming. We sure can't be dominant unless we compete in that theater.

While a call for U.S. energy dominance may sound like a prelude to resource wars, I think these untapped domestic undersea regions will yield enough extra oil to endure the current power-obsessed regime with a modicum of energy. Oil may not incite the next war - not war in the usual sense, anyway.

The war that a policy of energy dominance perpetuates is one that has enveloped the whole world for decades - a genocidal war against nature. Together with the global effects on climate, compound effects from pollution and habitat loss impact ecosystems to various degrees. Climate change, itself, is not at a likely tipping point, but species diversity is in the red zone, at least in many locales.

Planetary Boundaries 2015 from Wikimedia Commons

Keep in mind that we are just one of millions of species on this planet. Extinction of other species could lead to that of our own. Even if God issues you a dominion mandate, the Creator doesn't want you to use it for genocide. Say a prayer for The Pretender. He knoweth not what he does.

Carbon Nation

It is fortunate that Project Drawdown left CO2 capture and storage (CCS) out of their solution set, because the IPCC left us with a mixed bag by including it as a key element among their recommended approaches*. Environmentally-minded organizations such as the Post-Carbon Institute (PCI) are all too happy to explain that CCS doesn't pencil out when you consider such fixed costs as a network of pipelines in the U.S. equal to that of the entire oil industry. As implied by their name, however, the Post-Carbon Institute discounts the value of all of the extra tight oil that might be recovered and burned by enhanced oil recovery using all the captured CO2. Considering how polluting coal and other industrial combustion processes can be, it makes sense if you can exchange the CO2 output for a more clean-burning petroleum product, but the extra pipelines and other CCS components required really does cause it to look like CCS would be a net economic loss (until oil prices rise). The fact that the energy industry is begging for more subsidies to jumpstart CCS does not help their case.

Stanford Prof. Mark Jacobson, whose transition to renewables plan is embraced as the mainstay of the Green (Party) New Deal, also excludes CCS. Richard Heinberg of PCI nonetheless criticizes Jacobson's reliance on underground heat storage technologies unproven at scales needed for his plan. Both Jacobson's and CCS's scaling problems are constrained by access to storage deep underground and, in the case of CCS, sometimes hundreds of miles from the source.

Photo by Eden, Janine and Jim

It is typical of our disconnection from nature that a less brutal means of sequestering captured carbon wouldn't attract more interest. Biochar can be a coproduct of electricity production when using biomass as an input. Rather than pipe it deep into the ground, burying biochar a few inches below the surface of farmland would be all that is needed to sequester the carbon. Unlike CCS, biochar is scalable up or down, befitting the feedstock availability and soil characteristics in a locale. While not a stand-alone replacement for current fossil fuel electricity, biochar-producing power plants should be pursued before the riskier CCS plants that have already wasted billions of dollars in pilot programs and never captured any carbon. Further investments or subsidies in CCS power plants would quite likely fall short, leading to expansion of more carbon spewing fossil-fueled electricity, with the carbon capture piece set aside as too expensive or difficult to complete.

*According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, the overall cost of a global climate mitigation strategy without CCS is higher than a strategy with CCS in every scenario, and many models cannot limit likely warming to below 2 °C without CCS. (U.S. DOE Report, Jan. 2017, pg. 7)

Loosening the Grip of the Grid

One of the distinctions made by zero waste advocates is that incineration of waste to reduce landfill use exacerbates pollution. Waste industry apologists credit Maryland Governor Larry Hogan's decision to withdraw limits on landfill expansion as an effort to avoid shifting the burden to incinerators.

That might be a defensible position if Maryland's landfill gas emissions were well controlled and not the highest human-caused source of methane in the state. Fortunately, the U.S. Appeals Court rode to the rescue in their recent ruling against the EPA's delay tactics on oil and gas well methane emissions. Since the EPA has also postponed the implementation of new landfill gas emissions requirements, expect that the court will also find that decision to be unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious. More landfills will then be required to incorporate gas collection and control systems. This should serve to pressure states to become more waste conscious.

Waste consciousness should not be left to government regulators. Citizens should police their own waste streams rather than shift the burden to government and industries. Energy and waste management businesses should absolutely be required to cut emissions from their operations, but individual households may find it economical to stop relying on those profiteers and find more DIY solutions.

Such solutions are not hard to find. Humanure composting is not a first world concept, but it makes economical sense. For other organic waste, a quick Google search led me to what appears to be an economical household replacement for capturing landfill gas emissions: a solution that would pay for itself by turning your "waste" into fertilizer and cooking gas. That biogas could also be used to purify water if you add a Stirling engine generator and water distiller, as inventor Dean Kamen and DEKA Research have been doing for the third world with their Slingshot system. The biogas generator may not be functional in the very cold months (though a straw bale enclosure next to one wall of the house might alleviate that), but I would probably only use it for outdoor cooking in seasonable periods anyway. If anyone out there knows my wife, please drop hints to her about what a great invention HomeBiogas is.

Everything is Fine

Wages are up and unemployment down in the latest monthly figures for the U.S. economy. Everything is fine...except that the rise in employment probably doesn't make up for the drop in productivity, which is caused, at least in part, by the sour mood of national politics. At least the economy keeps humming along... which is actually the problem.

Photo by Steve Fuerst (CC BY-ND 2.0)

We cannot continue to pursue growth in a fossil fueled economy. It's a dead end - at the edge of a cliff - dropping off into the raging sea which is pounding at the cliff and threatening its collapse. Old Blowhard is opening up the throttle of free enterprise and disconnecting the governor. At this speed, our runaway engine won't be able to avoid sending us off the cliff. We need to back down on the throttle and steer in a new direction. A renewable economy would steer us away from the cliff, though that is a course Old Blowhard has clearly abandoned with his appointment of Daniel Simmons to head the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).

"EERE" sparks notions of an eerie silence that would pervade our surroundings in the absence of blaring internal combustion engines. It's as if we fear that before these engines enslaved us a century ago our forebears lived a medieval existence. Ironically, however, it is not EERE which would take us back a millennium, but our neglect of transitioning to renewable technologies.

The catabolic collapse that the world is currently encountering is not predestined to reverse all of civilization's progress (though it may). Renewable technologies enable civilization to retain the benefits of the industrial revolution while abandoning its initial, unsustainable devices. The more we invest now in renewables, the less we will be forced into further difficulty as the collapse proceeds.

The Count of Mar-a-Largo would be pleased enough to live a sumptuous life above the fray of neo-medieval peasants struggling for their survival, but we don't have to accept such an extreme reversal. We need to rid our government of bad apples like him and institute a Green New Deal that will bring measured progress to our times along with blessed quiet to our communities.

Stepping on the Gas toward a Clean Energy Future

In a more regionalized economy, the distributed nature of renewable electrical power sources will be helpful to maintaining grid stability. That will be especially important if the country's current three grid system is broken up along regional lines. Base load generation, from thermal, hydro, and nuclear plants will be reduced within the smaller grids because of reductions in fossil fuel usage. The net effect will be less stable electrical grids, but owners of facility/building power sources will enjoy more reliable power than those who are grid-dependent.

Photo by Chuck Coker

The reason fossil fuel usage may decrease is that industry and society are waking up to the imperative of reducing carbon emissions. In a sign that the economics now favor a shift to renewable power, even influential Republicans are lobbying for measures to push for a clean energy economy. Meeting with the head of President Donald T Rump's National Economic Council Gary Cohn, former Secretary of State James Baker represented the Climate Leadership Council (CLC) in their call for a carbon tax, which even T.,Rex supported when he was at Exxon. Maybe Dr. James Hansen and the Citizen's Climate Lobby (CCL) have been clever enough to make the august team of Republicans on the CLC believe that this proposal is their own idea, but it is good to know that there is some bilateral support for it.

The proposal is coming early enough in the ramp-up of the Rump administration that it could be put into play by Cohn, formerly President of Goldman-Sachs which recently made a case to investors that a low-carbon economy is likely (driven largely by disruptive technologies in the electrical and transportation sectors). If it gets no play there, Congress has been hearing a lot about the idea from CCL and will probably be hearing from CLC now, too. The carbon tax could become a Republican-sponsored bill that Congress would be willing to force on the administration. Donald T Rump, in turn, could use an agreement to sign the bill as a bargaining chip to eliminate the Clean Power Plan and other EPA regulations, thereby saving face. Additionally, he would be able take credit for sticking to our Paris Treaty obligations, thus saving him the trouble and international censure from backing out.

For you and I, this carbon tax would mean more income (rebates) but, also equally more expensive energy. Burning fuel, either directly or indirectly, will be like maintaining a smoking habit. The taxes forcing tobacco prices to be so high are quite enough to deter people who know the value of a buck. If the government could also stop subsidizing fossil fuels, they would really be convincing, but that's probably too much to ask.

Do and/or Die

Peter Wadhams has ample reason to believe that when a truck ran him off the road, it wasn't just an accident. The Cambridge professor is a recognized and outspoken Arctic sea ice expert who is calling for a dramatic curtailment in fossil fuel use, lest the arctic meltdown shift into a cataclysmic series of positive feedback loops. At one point, the professor speculated that oil industry or government agencies had hired the driver to kill him, just as three other sea ice scientists encountered suspicious demises in the past few years. Causes of their untimely deaths were ascribed to falling down stairs, lightning, and vehicular collision while biking.

Death threats and assassination are nothing new to climate and environmental activists. The least you can do when so threatened is to put it on record, prompting an investigation if you are killed. Professor Michael E. Mann, famous for the hockey-stick graph of global temperatures, recently leveraged his potential martyrdom in a push back against the rhetorical garbage that continually belches from Trump's craw. 

In August 2016, Dr. Wadhams sealed his testimony about our predicament in the form of a book titled, A Farewell to Ice, fortuitously published a few months before the canary in the Arctic began to swoon with temperatures now 50 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, high enough to melt ice in Winter. Wadhams sees 2017 as the first likely summer without a polar ice cap, which would remove the reflecting shield from the Arctic, causing more warming, which would allow undersea permafrost beds to disgorge greater amounts of methane stored there. He has identified ten positive feedback loops associated with Arctic warming.

Hope, nonetheless, springs eternal and Wadhams puts his hope in a radical shift away from fossil fuels and a Manhattan project scale effort to draw down atmospheric carbon. If we don't carry out this change before 2035, Wadhams fears it will be too late. Leaving out the geoengineering piece, the Green New Deal offered by the Green Party could bring the U.S. to 100% fossil-free energy by 2030. If Wadhams is right, there is little room for letting this timeline slip. Either we change our way of living, or our world will change intolerably. Or, maybe we will die from unnatural causes before that, because we were bold enough to point out the problem.

Traffic Snarls

Image by Torley

Annapolis politicians are squaring off over billions of dollars worth of potential gridlock remedies. A new coalition called Fix270NOW came out a few months ago advocating that Maryland pour huge sums into expanding I-270, the main route between Washington, D.C. and Frederick, Maryland. Another group, the Maryland Transit Opportunities Coalition (MTOC), formed, it appears, in response to Fix270NOW's efforts, is in favor of building new transit lines instead of widening existing roads.

The contest for political backing will take place over several months, well into 2017 as the Maryland Department of Transportation takes their road show to all the counties to talk about the proposed Consolidated Transportation Plan for the upcoming 6 years. The CTP tour schedule shows it reaching Calvert County on October 18th. The CTP includes the BaltimoreLink bus system rather than the Red Line rail system that MTOC is advocating.

All of these ideas are far too ambitious for these times. Not only that, plans that rely heavily on fossil fueled modes of transportation are doomed. Of the three proposals, I agree with MTOC's the most, since it is very much public transit oriented, meaning more energy efficient. Part of MTOC's proposed build out includes a Southern Maryland Rapid Transit line from the DC Metro to Waldorf. It doesn't come close to reaching the part of Southern Maryland where I live, but does address a major traffic bottleneck.

Rip Tide on the Chesapeake Bay

Here in Calvert County, the inverted middle finger of Maryland, we have a Comprehensive Plan by which we pretend to shape our own destiny. The wife and I have been ongoing participants in a group called Calvert Eats Local that meets monthly at the county library to feast and keep up-to-date on agricultural topics. Calvert Eats Local is providing input, through the umbrella organization, Sustainable Calvert Network, to the County Planning Commission in order to update the Comprehensive Plan - something that has not been done since 2004.

The impetus for this update to the plan is a wide open gap in the middle of the county seat, Prince Frederick, which appeared when an old middle school and armory were demolished. The Comprehensive Plan has a chapter on Economy which may bear most immediately on the new purpose for this piece of real estate, though I would hope that the People chapter, under the topic of Community Interaction, would play a larger role. Either way, focusing at this stage on the development of this parcel would compromise the integrity of the Comprehensive Plan, as in the tail wagging the dog.

A lot has happened in the world since 2004. I wonder if our planning commissioners have a good perspective on the economic, financial, ecological, demographic, technological, and natural resource developments that are driving our world, nation, and communities into a new era. Keeping in mind the precept that plans are nothing, but planning is everything, we should be able to improve our future through this thought exercise, as long as we don't swim against the rip-tide or exhaust ourselves trying to swim out of it.

An aerial view of the rip currents shows a financial crash in the offing followed by many years of economic adaptation. After the crash, eddy currents of energy and other natural resource peaks will drown much of what we have come to expect from commerce. The dilemma of the drill-baby-drill (or frack harder and deeper, baby) solution is that this has gotten to the point where earth, sea, and sky are revolting against further violations of whatever remains of our planet's purity. In fact, just backing off isn't going to prevent earth, sea, and sky from taking out their grievances on future inhabitants. Our future economies will be shaped by climate adaptation and, if the Paris climate agreement and the Maryland Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act mean anything, genuine consideration.

I doubt if our county planners will take this view unless the tide of the public's perception is swept in this foreboding direction and we cry out. Otherwise, our planners (even against their own misgivings) will rationalize and temporize these matters and pretend we can sustain the unsustainable.

Our focus in the Calvert Eats Local group is on the economy, with the outdated plan putting forth a vision that,

We are building a strong local economy based on renewable resources, high technology, retirement, recreation, and tourism.

Last night, among many other changes proposed by our group, I suggested that the word "strong" here be replaced by "resilient." Strong materials can also be brittle. Resilient materials, though somewhat strong, can handle a beating without shattering. We should try to make Calvert County shatterproof.

If you want to help shape the new Comprehensive Plan, there is a public forum on Thursday, 21 April at the Prince Frederick Library at 1 pm that will include the County Planning office. I may have more to say about our economic future at this meeting.

Home and Hearth

In a state that is one of the top three in home mortgage foreclosures and in a neighborhood that has greater than 10% vacancy, it's hard to justify investments in one's dwelling unless you are destined to remain in place regardless of the market. It becomes a speculative decision which includes factors of the local economy, energy prices, and climate-driven demographic shifts.

In our case, I believe these factors favor energy upgrades to our home only as a long-term investment or if the energy savings payoff begins within three years. I see our local economy continuing to be buoyed up by the national security apparatus, of which our portion is Naval Air Systems (NAVAIR). I see grid electricity becoming more scarce as the fracking bubble bursts and coal gets left in the ground. Finally, the climate-driven migration of westerners to the east will probably take a decade or so to begin.

The net result looks to me like the value of homes in Southern Maryland will not fall too heavily before they start to recover sometime around 2025. Our own lower tier neighborhood, the Chesapeake Ranch Estates (CRE), will fall harder and recover slower than most. Becoming a municipality would ameliorate CRE's decline, but that looks politically dubious. However, if the Board of County Commissioners realizes how badly they ignored our concerns over the Cove Point gas plant LNG expansion, they will approve our municipality petition as consolation.

There are a host of things you can do to save energy in your home. We have a dishwasher that costs us an estimated $35/year in excessive energy usage over the newer Energy Star models. It recently leaked slowly into our kitchen floor and through the basement ceiling, causing over $10,000 in damage. After twisting the stingy arms of HMS, our home warranty company, I expect this old dishwasher to be repaired, after which I plan to sell it and get a newer model (and fire HMS - they should have replaced it outright).

While solar power looks slightly uneconomical for us at this point, I would consider installing a solar water heater. Water heating consumes about 18% of a typical home's energy. Over three years, cutting my electric bill by 18% would total to about $1,000.  Perhaps a DIY installation of a solar water heater would make sense.

Before that, the project that looks most lucrative is to augment our electric heat pump with a wood-burning stove that could potentially shave a whopping 45% off our electric bill! So now we are looking at about $3,000 saved over three years. Rather than rely on pellet fuel, I will have to look into rocket stoves.  I produce lots of kindling in the process of making biochar. If it can make my home heating costs disappear, making more sticks would be no problem. I can picture us being warm all evening in the basement watching the glow of a real fire, then retiring upstairs with the risen heat to comfort us throughout the night. It's a picture that, in the end, makes mechanized heat less desireable than the more labor-intensive way.

Electro-technology Dreams

Offshore wind turbines may or may not appear off the coast of Maryland.  The US Wind lease of over 125 square miles of ocean to build a 750 MW wind power array by 2020 would be a first for the U.S. In spite of the apparent progress (ocean surveys, turbine purchase actions), financial headwinds face Italy where US Wind's parent company, Renexia, resides. Just recovering from the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Italy will face the coming worldwide recession too early.  Renexia's lack of financial transparency is not at all reassuring.

Aside from solar and wind, generating electricity on a residential scale from biomass, fuel cells, or closed-conduit hydropower include the opportunity to net-meter (that is, sell power on the grid) in Maryland.  Micro-combined heat and power (CHP) installations also qualify. Micro CHP (not to be confused with microchip) is exactly the kind of power that can be generated from a heat source such as those used to make biochar.  A start-up company called NanoConversion Technologies is coming out with a thermoelectric generator that they say beats Stirling engines, cost-wise.  The problem of capturing and using the waste heat from biochar could thereby be made a lot more feasible, since the operating temperature is near that for these devices. The components, which hold sodium, alumina, hot and cold fluids, and electro-magnetic fields, seem like they would cost considerably, so economics may prove to be the difficulty with this technology, as well.  However, they show humanitarian relief as a possible application of the device, so I may be pleasantly surprised at the price-tag.

Coal's Downturn

In some states, coal is being run out of business, but the "war on coal" hasn't reached that far yet in Maryland. We still make about half of our electricity from coal. Two coal-fired plants (1,200 MW in Montgomery and Prince Georges Counties) are expected to be retired by 2017 due to environmental regulations. In recent developments:

• Coal mining faces the prospect of tighter regulation to restore streams in order to reduce aquifer pollution. 
• Arch Coal, the most diversified coal mining company in the U.S. is about to be delisted by the NYSE. 
• Coal's dirty nature and regulations at the federal level are having major effects across the industry.
• Maryland claims to have the toughest clean air regulations on the east coast, and they just added some additional restrictions on NOx emissions, 

but there are still seven coal powered electric plants in the state.  Having the toughest air pollution restrictions on the east coast is admirable, but Baltimore still suffers from unhealthy air (a plight common to 85% of the world's population).

Yet, the nominally cleaner natural gas has its own set of problems. In the way of pollution, its greenhouse gas effect is 30 times worse, pound for pound, than CO2. It sometimes (more than we realize) gets loose on its own, like the 1 cubic mile of 1,500 psi gas being released from cracks that recently developed in a storage facility pipe under Los Angeles. As I pointed out in my last post, the prospect of less fracking (who wants to live in Oklahoma now, earthquake center of the U.S?) and the need to follow-through with plans to reduce global emissions makes investment in more gas-powered generation look pretty short-sighted. Solar and off-shore wind are looking better and better.

Fuel Switching

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's prognosis for 2016 sees commodities, rather than banks, as the locus of the next Lehman moment.  Countries and corporations whose continuance depends on stability of certain commodities are at most risk.  The U.S. economy is probably diverse enough to ride out the effects of commodity price swings, but some states will suffer more than others.  Maryland's diverse economy is among the strongest, so we don't need to be concerned that coal will continue to fall in production from its peak of 5 million below the current 2 million tons/year across 60 mines, all located in the two westernmost counties.  (John Michael Greer's Cumberland is at risk, though.)

The commodity that puts Calvert County's economy at risk is natural gas, though little is produced in Maryland. When Dominion Resources sought their approval for constructing the LNG export facility at Cove Point, our county commissioners acceded to deferring tax revenue from Dominion until the plant began to ship product.  That probably won't happen until 2018, if at all.

Initially, my doubts about the prospects of exporting natural gas were based on the high rates of depletion from fracking wells, leading to a precipitous drop in productivity.  While that alone may preclude exports a couple years from now, there are even more reasons to doubt now and they stem from economic causes.

Commodities volatility seems to favor exports from Cove Point, since fewer export facilities will likely be built in such an environment than the 18 originally envisioned.  Yet, the same volatility is causing mayhem among natural gas drillers.  As pointed out in my previous post, Chesapeake Energy, the second largest producer in the U.S., is headed for the junk pile.  Many others, whose business models were based on low-interest leverage and speculative land leases, will suffer the same fate.  With so many companies going under, the growth of fracked gas that has occurred over the past 5 years will level off and decline.  With coal being black-balled as a fuel due to its effect on the world's climate, it, too, will quickly decline in use.  This puts the onus on natural gas to fill some of the domestic demand.  Since 2000, the share of electricity produced by natural gas has risen 10%, replacing coal as the fuel.  The momentum of this fuel switching will be maintained, though farsighted power companies will opt for renewable sources instead, given the limits of natural gas reserves.

Just one-third of natural gas is used for electricity production.  The other uses are mainly for industrial and residential heating processes.  Something's got to give.  We don't have enough natural gas (especially if fracking is deemed environmentally untenable) to follow the current growth trend. Conservation will smooth our descent, but remember we also have lots of wood. It has an energy density about 1/3 of oil, but any able-bodied man with a sharp ax can get all he needs.

The Fracking Gamble

+Gail Tverberg 's theory about the deflationary spiral of oil prices (she thinks we are locked in to a price slide that will bottom out around $20/barrel) also applies to natural gas.  The fact that Chesapeake Energy (the U.S.'s second largest natural gas producer) is headed toward junk status supports this corollary.  A lot of Chesapeake's problem stems from land speculation with the intention of drilling and fracking.  These land deals were conducted with money from bright-eyed investors who never understood the economics of fracking and are now realizing how little real value most of the shale plays held.  Chesapeake's co-founder, Aubrey McClendon, seemed to know when to leave the party, as he departed the company in 2013.

He chose the name for the company out of a liking for the Chesapeake Bay area, despite the company's Oklahoma roots.  From Oklahoma, Chesapeake Energy's gas pipelines grew toward the Chesapeake Bay like a mycelium seeking humid climes to sprout its mushrooms.  After the fracking potential of the Marcellus Shale became known, the company surged further, to Pennsylvania. The pipeline assets were spun off years ago and now belong to Williams.

With the current demise of fracking due to the inability of the market to support the infrastructure and loss of investor interest, many natural gas companies will go under.  The price of natural gas should rise, however, once the markets have sloughed off the non-performing suppliers.  As coal is replaced by natural gas electricity generation, demand for gas should continue to grow.  The long-term damage to prices that Tverberg expects for oil may not apply to natural gas.

While the Chesapeake Bay region may have been the divining rod for Aubrey McClendon's vision of where Chesapeake Energy should go, it is there that he met the greatest opposition over the environmental repercussions of fracking.  Fracking has emboldened the U.S. to rescind laws against oil exporting and to build natural gas export facilities, such as the Cove Point Plant expansion underway a few miles from my home.  Aside from the public outcry against fracking, there are geological limits, climate considerations for which we are now internationally accountable, and the impending economic recession wrought largely by the same commercial ennui that brought about the energy price slump.  Fracking may never come back.  Cove Point may never export any liquefied natural gas.

Keep the Home Fires Burning

Most analyses of the greenhouse gas emissions problem hold the precept that we cannot quickly reduce our use of energy.  Hence, the introduction of technology to displace fossil fuel usage with more sustainable sources must serve as a substitute source of energy.  Oftentimes, the substitute is nearly as polluting as the original, or of dubious marginal value since it is difficult to estimate emissions from all potential sources.

Likewise, it is difficult to estimate the contribution of ecosystems to CO2 reduction.  This is why biochar is struggling to be recognized as an important, if small, part of the solution to the problem of global warming.  Biochar is made with little, if any, production of useful energy compared to incineration of biomass, which produces little, if any, biochar.  This is why the National Academy of Sciences gave biochar such short shrift in their recent study of carbon sequestration approaches. Maryland, unfortunately, adopted this study as the basis for sequestration in their climate action plan.

In order to embrace biochar, you have to allow for the possibility that satisfaction can come through many avenues.  Power may not be any more satisfying than assurance of abundant harvests along with restoration of biodiversity and soil health.  Electricity to power an ever more computerized lifestyle may be less satisfying to millions than lungs working to be filled with fresh air, while growing crops to fuel muscles demanding a more intrinsic energy source.

Energy is more fungible than biochar, but not as much as you might think.  Biochar's uses continue to expand beyond even the 55 identified by Ithaka Institute in 2013.  How can such a useful resource be overlooked, simply because it is not a significant source of energy?

Yet, were the world economy to break down today and trade in fossil fuels slow to a trickle, what would many people resort to?  Ubiquitous small outdoor fires for cooking and cleaning would turn into a climate and ecological disaster.  There are better ways to apply current technology to burning of wood. Coupling these with the production of biochar will help insulate us from climate change, peak oil, and financial folly.

Crash and Burn

Going into the COP-21 Paris climate talks, the U.S. position is reportedly to emulate Maryland's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act, bringing carbon emissions for the whole country down 27% by 2025.  I imagine this won't be very hard, since peak oil and financial disaster will force us down that path eventually, anyway.

Meanwhile, Maryland can't seem to see the forest for the trees of gas lines crisscrossing the state. Though informed in 2010 that Maryland's abundant biomass could provide a portion of the state's energy, clean power investment has favored natural gas, solar, and wind power.

It would be comforting if Maryland would ban fracking like New York did this year. Otherwise, investments in cleaner power plants, such as the PSEG Keys Energy Center being built up in Brandywine, may end up as incentives to further damage the environment.  While it may beat coal and gas export in terms of carbon emissions, natural gas is non-renewable and only sets us up for a big gap when we deplete it without adequate alternatives.  Solar and wind won't come close to providing the level of energy that we get from fossil fuels.  Wood biomass could help some, but we have to begin putting the infrastructure in place.  In addition to building new types of facility-scale power plants, we need to reshape the workforce to concentrate it on sustainable forestry.  It is time to turn the corner, even if we have to slow down in doing so.

We're Not Your Dumb Minions

It's disconcerting how energy issues have a way of intruding on stuff that's important to us.  In my own life, energy has come to the fore so often that I could count myself as a professional in some ways.  My naval career pulled me reluctantly through the nuclear power pipeline in both military, and later, civilian capacities.  Soon thereafter, I worked for Puget Sound Energy.  My next job involved power to the Internet, but that ended quickly after Enron's shenanigans were exposed.  My year in Iraq once again thrust me into the energy arena as part of the Energy Fusion Cell in Baghdad.

Even when energy isn't our unintended profession, it can get in our face.  So it was last night for viewers of the NFL Monday Night Football match in Charlotte, NC.  Right in the middle of their most important pastime, hundreds of thousands of fans had to stop and take notice of a couple of anti-fracking activists with a giant banner repelling down from the roof of the stadium.  Like the Wizard of Oz desperately urging his audience to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, the NFL soon tweeted that such a stunt was probably the most bizarre thing you will ever see at an NFL game.  The NFL shouldn't worry about their fans, though, because the protesters were cunningly seeking a much larger audience, not really the type of people who devote a major portion of their free time to watching a ball being squeezed out of opposing steroidal masses.

This is another instance of an energy issue being in my face, or close enough that I see it everyday that I drive out of my large residential development.  After you pass the gaggle of lofty crane booms half hidden behind a wall of trees on Cove Point Road in Southern Maryland, you soon find yourself looking at the Chesapeake Bay where an assortment of about 90 homes are arranged on a sandy flat near the water level. You are in the tiny, quiet Cove Point community which is spearheading this campaign, all out of proportion to their size, to shut down work on the Dominion Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export facility.  Note that this LNG facility has been in place for decades, but adding exporting capability will take two more years of construction and cost up to $4 Billion..., which takes us back to those protesters.

Their banner said Dump Dominion, and is aimed at Charlotte's darling Bank of America for their financing of the project. Investors should pay heed.  I have suspected since two years ago, when I spoke out publicly against the project to the Calvert County Board of Commissioners, that this whole effort is a shell game that is a part of the larger fracking Ponzi scheme.  We may have punished a few of the perpetrators of the Enron episode, but where did all the rest of the willing beneficiaries end up? Many, I assume, are still trying to squeeze money out of the ground.

My main reason for considering this particular project to be poorly conceived is that fracking has not proven to be nearly as productive over the long run as advertised.  Wells peter out quicker than Piccolo Pete on the 4th of July.  The $4 Billion will have been spent on standing up a white elephant in our remote part of Maryland when the company comes out with the news that, "Oh my, there is not enough natural gas, especially at these fallen prices, that will justify all of our sunk cost.  Government subsidies are the only way we will be able to carry it out and maintain good relations with our Japanese and Indian trading partners."

Originally a NIMBY campaign, the anti-expansion activists have begun to see the same issues just mentioned.  They have much more factual support for this view on the Dump Dominion page. In addition, just because it is natural gas, don't count on it being better for the environment. Methane is 25 times worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, so leaks are a big risk. When you add in the energy to transport, compress, and deliver the gas, it ends up being worse than burning coal.

Getting Smart

Higher education holds out some promise for getting us away from the canyon our economy is stumbling toward.  Canyon is an apt metaphor since the easiest way to stay or get out is orthogonal to the slope that you might tumble down.  When the direction that worked for awhile leads to danger, maybe there will be enough smart people around to understand that we need to change course.

Such critical thinking is rare and difficult to engender with many of the higher education programs currently available.  Non-traditional education and online groups may be better.

Here in Southern Maryland, they are pressing on with business-as-usual in the groundbreaking for a new community college campus in Hughesville, central to our tri-county area.  With the higher education industry in crisis partly due to overleveraging their student portfolios with debt slaves, many colleges will be unable to continue as before.  Community colleges will suffer less than many of the 4-year schools, but even they are at risk when they buy into poorly conceived estimates of strong economic growth such as the Bureau of Labor Statistic's projected > 20% increase in demand for construction industry trades over the coming decade.

I hope the College of Southern Maryland's new Center for Trades and Energy Training will turn 90 degrees before we tumble down the canyon and that they will prepare our workforce for building smaller, renewably energized, and resilient accommodations for a future that includes a lot more time in the outdoors.