Press release, Nov 2, 2021

Tewa Women United, Grandmothers' Circle

NM State Representative Antoinette Sedillo Lopez

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International guest speakers (via Zoom):
See below for more information and links to work by our international speakers.

Ugo Bardi - “Resource limitations in the Great Transition"

Antonio Turiel - "Questions about hydrogen"

David Spratt - "Climate mitigation and adaptation: "Net Zero by 2050?" - Climate Code Red

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Greg Mello - "Nuclear weapons and pit production"

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Other invited area speakers:

Donna Detweiler - "Degrowth, simple living, and high thinking"

Katie Singer - "RE is not entirely clean"

Suzie Schwartz - "Doughnut economics"

Erich Kuerschner - "Inequities in the present development model"

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Summarization:

Greg Mello - "Energy, scarce minerals, and realistic options for our future"

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Guest musicians:

Lydia Clark, organ, and Suzanne Schwartz, violin - Albinoni, Adagio in G minor

Lydia Clark, Singer/Songwriter

Peter Neils - New Mexico Nuclear Waltz (pre-recorded)

Ugo Bardi: Dr. Bardi teaches physical chemistry at the University of Florence, in Italy. He is interested in resource depletion, system dynamics modeling, climate science and renewable energy. He is member of the scientific committee of ASPO (Association for the study of peak oil) and regular contributor of "The Oil Drum" and "Resilience.org". His blog in English is called "Cassandra's legacy". His most recent book in English Extracted: How the Quest for Global Mining Wealth is Plundering the Planet (Chelsea Green”, 2014. He is also the author of The Limits to Growth Revisited (Springer 2011). Cassandra's Legacy is not being updated anymore. It has been replaced by a new blog titled "The Seneca Effect," a little less catastrophistic and a little more philosophical. But still kept by Ugo Bardi. He has also begun a new blog: "The Hydrogen Skeptics."

A Concise History of the Concept of "Hydrogen Economy", May 14, 2021

The concept of "hydrogen economy" has a distinct "1960s" feeling. It is the idea of maintaining the lifestyle of the post-war period, with suburban homes, green lawns around them, two cars in every garage, and all that. The only difference would be that this world would be powered with clean hydrogen. It is a dream that started with the dream of cheap and abundant energy that nuclear plants were believed to be able to produce. The idea changed shape many times, but it always remained a dream, and probably will continue to be so in the future.

The Hydrogen Hoax: Confessions of a Former Hydrogenist, Dec 21, 2020

The "hydrogen economy" is like a zombie: no matter how many times it is slain, it keeps coming at you. Like a Hollywood zombie movie, hydrogen seems to exert a tremendous fascination because it is being sold to people as a way to keep doing everything we have been doing without any need for sacrifices or for changing our ways. Unfortunately, reality is not a movie, and the reverse is also true. Hydrogen is a pie in the sky that delays the real innovation that would make it possible to phase out fossil fuels from the world's energy mix.

Antonio Turiel Martínez: (b. León, 1970) is a scientist and blogger with a degree in Physics and Mathematics and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the Autonomous University of Madrid. He works as a senior scientist at the Institute of Marine Sciences of the CSIC. He has written more than 80 scientific articles, but he is better known as an online activist and editor of The Oil Crash blog, where he addresses sensitive issues about the depletion of conventional fossil fuel resources, such as the peak of oil and its possible implications on a world scale.

The Oil Crash blog, original in Spanish.
The Oil Crash blog, google translation to English.

Some inconvenient questions: An open letter By Antonio Turiel, originally published by 15/15\15 July 26, 2021

Let us take a look, once again, at the disadvantages of hydrogen:

• Hydrogen is not an energy source: Currently most hydrogen is obtained through the chemical processing of natural gas or other hydrocarbons, with the release of carbon dioxide, but the objective is to switch to “green hydrogen”. This is obtained by passing an electric current through a bucket of water, which breaks the molecule of the liquid (electrolysis) and separates hydrogen from oxygen, without other emissions. The problem is that it needs to consume electricity in order to produce the hydrogen; hydrogen is a place to store energy, but not a source of energy. Technically it is what is called an energy vector.
• The process performance is low: Let’s focus on green hydrogen. The best electrolysis plants achieve a performance of 70%, meaning 30% of the energy is lost and does not accumulate in the hydrogen molecules produced. However, this best performance only occurs under ideal conditions and with very sophisticated and expensive plants; in more realistic conditions the yield is around 50%, and the other 50% is simply lost.
• The efficiency of hydrogen engines is low: If hydrogen is required for engines, it can be burned directly in a gasoline engine but then only 15% to 20% of the hydrogen energy would be used (that is, only between 7.5% and 10% of the initial electrical energy). Even by using the most efficient fuel cells (and making the engine more complex, because a battery is also required) the performance is around 50% (that is, only 25% of the initial electrical energy). By comparison, an electric motor has efficiencies that are consistently above 75% or 80%. It could be said that hydrogen is only required to produce heat (therefore, 50% efficiency of the initial electrical energy), especially industrial heat, but the truth is that hydrogen is also needed to replace diesel in the fleet of trucks and heavy machinery.
• Hydrogen has to be stored at high pressure: Being a gas, in order to achieve an acceptable volume energy density hydrogen has to be contained at high pressure. This is generally 750 atmospheres (enormous: this is the pressure at a depth of 7,500 meters under the sea) in order to have an energy density that is only half that of natural gas at normal pressure. These high pressures imply, firstly, an effort to compress it (another additional energy expenditure), secondly, using containers with dense walls (more expensive) and thirdly, that it has to be refrigerated prior to compression to avoid the temperature rising too much (more energy expenditure). And not to mention the danger posed by a crack or a moderately strong impact on the tank.
• Hydrogen escapes from containers: Being such a small molecule, hydrogen escapes easily from any container, even one with dense walls and especially well sealed. Losses of between 2 and 3% per day are normal, which implies that hydrogen has to be produced to be consumed within a few days.
• Hydrogen corrodes steel: In carbon steel tanks and pipes, hydrogen forms hydrides which over time make them brittle until they break. The solution is to cover them with special films called liners, but which are not without their problems (they withstand thermal contrasts and mechanical stresses poorly) and which, for greater irony, are manufactured with oil.

   In practice, the energy losses of converting electricity to hydrogen for any energy use are quite large, ranging from 50% for production of hydrogen to be burned immediately to losses of more than 95% if it has to be stored under pressure to be consumed a few days later in the engine of a lorry.
   At a recent conference, I presented a few simple figures comparing the energy consumption of the transport sector in Europe with the production of renewable electrical energy that would be needed for it to run on hydrogen, assuming the highest and best performance (platinum fuel cells, hydrogen produced practically for consumption, neglecting the losses due to refrigeration and compression, etc.). The bottom line is that Europe should multiply its renewable electricity production by 3.5. In much more realistic conditions, it would not be surprising if this multiplication was by 4, 5 or an even higher factor; but in any case, the 3.5 multiplication is already a major challenge … and this would only be to maintain transport. And that challenge is probably impossible, because here we have not incorporated the limits of renewables, but they still exist.
   In the case of Spain, it is not credible that we can produce here all the hydrogen that would be needed just to keep the entire transportation system up and running. And that’s not counting all the fuel costs implied by our lifestyle (for example, those freighters that arrive loaded with goods made in China).
   Has anyone stopped to look at these problems carefully and objectively? Or have they just limited themselves to adding amounts in an Excel file, assuming that everything that is needed is going to appear, just because it is needed? Has anyone stopped to think that perhaps hydrogen does not give the amounts needed, not even close, to maintain the current state of affairs? Has anyone considered that perhaps it is not the solution?
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   This model of colonial exploitation has many risks and also many weaknesses, apart from other questions of a moral nature. In addition, colonialism can be exercised on many levels. For example, the energy colonialism of the center against the periphery, within our own country [Spain]. It also occurs between countries, more specifically Germany against Spain.
   This colonial model will probably be applied to us for the benefit of Germany; the German federal government already says that it expects the European countries with the greatest renewable potential to contribute their hydrogen. In other words, the renewable energy captured here would be converted into hydrogen, with huge losses, and then be transported on a hydrogen train, manufactured by Siemens, to Frankfort or Munich. Ladies and gentlemen, political representatives of Spain, have you thought about this? Are you sure that hydrogen is what we have to produce, if it is not going to provide for ourselves and on top of that, they want to take it away from us?

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   At the beginning of the 20th century, textile colonies proliferated in Catalonia. The hydraulic force of the rivers was used to produce electricity for local consumption, and the mechanical force of the water served, in many cases, to directly drive the looms. The water force was used in many cases to directly drive the looms, giving a much better performance than putting an electric generator at one end and an electric motor at the other. With this system foundries and other industries were also maintained. In all cases they used energy more efficiently than using electricity and, more importantly, generated wealth and local employment. Mechanical energy is not like electrons or hydrogen: it cannot be exported over long distances. This energy from here stays here.
   With all the knowledge and technical development over the last century, we could do just that and much better. Taking advantage of the Sun directly to heat, melt and transform. Taking advantage of the mechanical force of water and wind to move, work and forge. Taking advantage of plants, cultivated and wild, herbaceous and trees, to obtain reagents and materials. Also producing some electricity for when it is needed, but without obsessing about producing only electricity. Also producing some hydrogen for when it was needed, but without obsessing over keeping a huge fleet of trucks and heavy machinery going with it. Being more efficient. Reaching a better balance with nature, reducing our environmental impact, adapting to the rhythms of the planet, having the minimum dependency possible on materials that come from afar, with facilities on a more human dimension which are easier to repair and maintain, creating wealth and employment locally, fully decarbonizing our activity.

   Why not?

   I repeat: Why not?

Center versus periphery, By Antonio Turiel, May 2, 2021 (Google translation)

Why, then, is there this obsession with electricity? Because the fossil paradigm has not been abandoned, and it continues to want to bring energy from the places of energy generation to the current centers of industrial production. For this reason, the debate on the renewable transition is viciously and wrongly focused on the production of electricity, so that we have reached a point where people believe that renewables are to produce electricity, and that the current political discourse pretends achieve decarbonisation with 100% renewable electricity. It matters little to that discourse that electricity is only 20% of the total final energy consumed, that it has been like this for decades without seeing how to increase that percentage, and that it is known that there is a part that cannot be electrified. And it matters little, as we have seen,that the use of electricity is highly inefficient in energy transformation.
    The centralization of industrial production over the last two centuries has led to a centralization of political power, and that centralism is used to try to force the renewable transition to be centralist as well. But Nature cannot be contradicted, and if renewable energy is distributed, it will not be possible to centralize it. Heading into doing something impossible will not do it, but it can make us collapse as a society.
   Setting the agenda on renewable electricity and the complete neglect of non-electric renewable alternatives (to the point that they are a non-issue, and that even environmental organizations adopt the renewable electricity agenda) is a way to maintain the impossible centralism in the time of energy descent. For this reason, make no mistake: electric renewable seeks to shore up consumption / production centers against the periphery of energy generation. It is a model of the plundering of the territory, it is a colonial model within and outside the walls.
   The renewable transition, the real one, the possible one, must be based on the local and efficient use of renewable energy. A use that will make the territory reborn. Reborn of the territory that must be at the cost of the abandonment of metropolitan centralism. Ceterum censeo Metropolem esse delendam.

David Spratt is a Research Director for Breakthrough and co-author of Climate Code Red: The case for emergency action (Scribe 2008). His recent reports include Recount: It’s time to “Do the math” again; Climate Reality Check and Antarctic Tipping Points for a Multi-metre Sea-level Rise.

With “net zero 2050” and the 1.5°C in the same breath, Glasgow reeks of cognitive dissonance, originally published by Climate Code Red, Nov 2, 2021

“Net zero 2050” (NZ2050) is a con, as this blog has reported over and over again, as did this Breakthrough report. Central bankers have NZ2050 scenarios in which fossil fuels constitute 50% of primary energy use in 2050. When the Murdoch media endorses the NZ2050 climate goal, you know it is the problem and not the answer. 2050 is so far away it’s a reason for procrastination. Judging by the G20 outcome, even NZ2050 and a coal phase-out may not pass muster in Glasgow. China is on net zero by 2060 and India on net zero by 2070.

But 2050 is not the critical goal. 2025 and 2030 need to be the focus, and on these targets there is no reason to think COP26 is going to be within coo-ee of what needs to be done.

Warning signs as global oil and gas giants adopt “Net zero 2050” climate goal, originally published by Climate Code Red, Aug 4, 2021

But NZ2050 is not just a goal, it also represents a strategy: it is a contested space about the energy mix, the pace of change and economic and social pathways to 2050. A number of high profile NZ2050 scenarios have been produced, including by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency and the central bankers’ and financial regulators Network for Greening the Financial System. Some of their scenarios have up to 50% of primary energy coming from fossil fuels by 2050! Others rely on technologies not yet deployed at scale, such as BECCS, for 20% of energy by 2050. The scenarios are a veritable show bag of technocratic dreaming, gas expansion and assumptions about economic growth unconcerned by material resource limits.

Of interest:

COP26 and the Five Stages of Grief, By Rob Hopkins, originally published by Rob Hopkins blog, Nov 1, 2021
The output of COP26 needs to be, as BreakThrough put it, “a ‘big minus’ in emissions, not ‘net zero’ emissions”. But it also needs to communicate acceptance, an honest and a truthfulness, that the climate and ecological emergency goes far far deeper than just electric cars and heat pumps, it demands a fundamental reimagining of everything. As long as that feels like being wrenched away from something irreplaceable it will never happen. But if we can nurture the collective imagination and talk about, and dream about, and draw, and paint, and act, and tell stories about, and create living breathing examples of a low carbon future that are so delicious that we create a deep shared cultural longing for it, then we might just do it.

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COP-26: Stopping Climate Change and Other Illusions, By William E. Rees, originally published by Buildings & Cities Community Website, Oct 29, 2021
Do not expect significant progress from COP-26 on climate change mitigation. There are fundamental barriers that prevent the deep and rapid changes that scientists advocate. Most countries adhere to economic growth policies – which create ecological overshoot. Unless and until we accept that we must live within ecological limits, then climate change will not be adequately tackled. Energy and resource consumption must be addressed through controlled economic contraction.

The U.S. Supply Chain Crisis Will Get Worse - As Will Inflation, Moon of Alabama blog, Nov 1, 2021

Trade Off: Financial system supply-chain cross contagion – a study in global systemic collapse, David Korowicz, Feasta, Jun 17, 2012

Tipping Point Near-Term Systemic Implications of a Peak in Global Oil Production An Outline Review, David Korowicz, Feasta & The Risk/Resilience Network, Mar 15, 2010

Surplus Energy Economics, The home of the SEEDS economic model – THE LIMITS OF TRANSITION, By Tim Morgan, Oct 21, 2021

Perfect Storm, Energy, Finance and the End of Growth, Dr Tim Morgan, Global Head of Research, Tullett Prebon, Jan 2013

Perfect Storm, Remember Your Humanity blog, Greg Mello, Apr 4, 2013

The Simpler Way, By Ted Trainer: Editors’ Introduction By Samuel Alexander, Jonathan Rutherford, Resilience.org, Feb 28, 2020