Solar has nuclear beat - btbirkett@gmail.com - Gmail

Solar has nuclear beat - btbirkett@gmail.com - Gmail

Solar and wind are growing faster than fledgling nuclear and LNG once did

Read and share the web version of this story on Bloomberg.com. Shell Plc recently published two energy security scenarios, its latest in a long series of thorough and (at least to energy analysts) memorable views into energy’s possible futures. The first, called Archipelagos, is an extension of the world’s current path; the second, Sky 2050, works backward from an idealized outcome of net zero emissions and limited global temperature increase. (Notably, the Sky 2050 scenario sees high oil prices incentivizing demand reduction. That’s a prospect countries, which are already grappling with rising inflation, may face in the coming months after OPEC+’s unexpected decision this weekend to cut oil output.)  The report is packed with charts and projections, but there is one historical chart worth exploring in detail.  Shell examined the four major energy technologies to emerge in the past six decades: nuclear power, liquefied natural gas and solar and wind power. Each technology needed years before it made a meaningful, if minor, contribution to the global energy supply, a threshold Shell sets at one exajoule annually. (One exajoule is equivalent to 277 terawatt-hours -- close to the electricity Mexico consumed in 2019.)  For example, the first grid-connected nuclear power plant began operations in the Soviet Union in 1954, and nuclear power reached 1 exajoule of global supply 19 years later. Solar took more than three decades to contribute an exajoule of supply, with the first commercial solar projects built in the early 1980s and the first exajoule not reached until 2016.  This week on Zero, Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi visits Form Energy, a startup building a battery that can replace a coal plant. Listen to the episode and learn how hand warmer packets inspired the technology. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or Google to get new episodes every Thursday. A technology’s speed after it hits that milestone is much more important than its speed before. Nuclear power doubled in the four years after, then doubled again within another five years. It now supplies more than eight times as much energy as it did 50 years ago. Liquefied natural gas had a slower start, taking nearly a decade to go from 1 exajoule to 2, and the same amount of time again to go from 2 to 4. Its progress leapt ahead in the late 2000s, nearly two decades after it supplied its first annual exajoule. But it still provides less energy than nuclear power today.  Growth of energy technologies after supplying 1 exajoule/year Source: Shell  Wind is growing more rapidly than liquefied natural gas. Both took decades to reach their first exajoule, but wind has risen at a faster pace than LNG since then. Wind was on an almost identical path to nuclear power. But it has accelerated, and now supplies nearly 30% more energy in its 14th year past the milestone than nuclear did.  Solar is on its own path. A year after hitting the milestone, it already exceeded nuclear’s supply at the same stage. In its seventh year as a significant energy supplier, solar accounted for almost one-and-a-half times as much energy as nuclear. It supplied nearly two-and-a-half times as much energy as LNG six years post-exajoule.  This is a striking finding, and it is also promising for decarbonizing global energy — with one major distinction worth noting. Global energy consumption has more than doubled in the 50 years since nuclear reached the 1 exajoule mark. In 1973, the world consumed 238 exajoules of energy; in 2021, it consumed 595, according to the latest BP Statistical Review. That means that in the year that nuclear first appears as a significant energy contributor, it supplied about 0.4% of the energy the world used. By the time that LNG hit an exajoule, it provided about 0.3%. By 2016, when solar provided its first exajoule, it met less than 0.2% of much-increased global energy demand.  On the latest episode of Getting Warmer, Kal Penn explores how retrofitting buildings to reduce their carbon footprint could eliminate a large amount of emissions. Stream online from Bloomberg Originals on Apple TV, Roku, Samsung TV, Fire TV or Android TV. On an absolute basis, today’s newest energy technologies are the fastest growing in at least 50 years. On a relative basis, though, they have more work to do to have the same global impact. Wind and solar together now generate more electricity than the world’s nuclear power fleet, but to have the equivalent impact that nuclear power had in the 1970s and 1980s, they will need to grow roughly twice as fast. Fortunately, they are. Research group BloombergNEF expects 316 gigawatts of solar power to be added this year, and 110 more gigawatts of wind power as well. That continued growth would keep the trends in Shell’s chart fresh: The two fastest-growing energy technologies of the past five decades are likely to continue their path, and continue their impact too. Nat Bullard is a senior contributor to BloombergNEF and writes the Sparklines column for Bloomberg Green. He advises early-stage climate technology companies and climate investors.

Add to Cart - btbirkett@gmail.com - Gmail

US and Saudis go from fist bump to knife in the back - btbirkett@gmail.com - Gmail

Add to Cart

Is it just me, or is shopping in-store nowadays an incredible guilt trip? I make eye contact with a salesperson, three hangers in my hands, and I’m all but helpless. They’re starting a dressing room for me! They’re selecting a shirt in two different colorways! They’re telling me I look great in this skirt! Is it psychology? Am I just weak and socially awkward? Do I really need this bucket hat, or is it just because the cashier told me she rang up four of them earlier this afternoon?? I’ll never know.

But online, things are different. I can control my own destiny. My shopping cart can rot for days, no problem. But what if salespeople existed there, too? This quote from Parmy Olson paints quite the picture:

“American users of ChatGPT will soon be able to go to the tool’s main page and select the plugin for Klarna Bank AB, a payments facilitator for thousands of brands like Nike Inc. and Gucci. Once they select Klarna, they could ask ChatGPT to make product recommendations for a gift for their sister. Thanks to the powerful language model underpinning ChatGPT, known as GPT-4, they can give the kind of detail they’d share with a human retail employee, laying out at length how their sister loves movies and kayaking and is in their 30s, for instance. ChatGPT can then make the recommendation.”

While the gift-giving advice is certainly an upgrade from Googling “cool fathers day gifts 2023,” do we really want to open up this kind of Pandora’s box? Klarna allows people to treat a Prada handbag as if it was a 30-year mortgage — a phenomenon Alexis Leondis gets into here. Instagram and TikTok algorithms are already scary-good at selling us stuff we don’t need. Adding ChatGPT — a technology that Parmy says “millions of businesses can quickly exploit” — into the mix seems rather dangerous.

In that light, regulation seems all but inevitable. Noah Feldman says there are a few distinct possibilities. On one end,AI companies might be treated “like arms and weapons producers: heavily regulated, staffed by security-cleared scientists, and closely linked to the national security state.” On the other end, “there’s the lightest-touch mode of regulation: lawsuits,” he writes. Determining which approach is most appropriate will take time, which Tyler Cowen argues is an essential ingredient for AI development. Although the prospect of a scary-good online salesperson is slightly terrifying, Tyler says a pause in AI will only hurt us in the long run.

Expelling Russia from the UN Security Council — a How-to Guide - CEPA

Expelling Russia from the UN Security Council — a How-to Guide - CEPA

The 'Shared Psychosis' of Donald Trump and His Loyalists - Scientific American

The 'Shared Psychosis' of Donald Trump and His Loyalists - Scientific American

What attracts people to Trump? What is their animus or driving force?

The reasons are multiple and varied, but in my recent public-service book, Profile of a Nation, I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.

“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals. The treatment is removal of exposure.

(4) Quora Irina Nola · Follow Hypnotherapist, Past Life Regression Therapist at New Orleans HypnosisMar 22

(4) Quora

Hypnotherapist, Past Life Regression Therapist at New Orleans HypnosisMar 22

What happens to a soul after it ascends?

Ascends - where? To 5D? Everybody ascends to 5D after death, except for ghosts or entity attachments who get stuck on low astral plane. You cannot physically ascend to 5D before you die, but some people reach 5D mentality, unconditional love and sense of oneness while still living in the body. From 5D you can reincarnate back to 3D Earth, go to New Earth (parallel Earth with higher vibration and no pollution or crime or wars), stay in 5D as a Spirit Guide or Healer or in any other numerous occupations there. You can also reincarnate on another planet, in a different star race - especially if you are a Starseed and came to Earth on a mission to help humanity. Starseeds can return to their own worlds after any human life. Leaving Earth does not mean stopping reincarnating - you can just reincarnate in OTHER PLACES, much nicer than Earth with all the violence, epidemics, natural disasters and poverty here.

You can also ascend HIGHER, beyond 5D - to 7D mental worlds or even higher to energy worlds without any shapes or forms, just energies. Some souls want to lose all individuality and unite with the Source/God, they can do that if they are ready, in this case they stop reincarnating, lose all the boundaries and become All That Is. We do not know if a soul can go on another cycle or not after it merges with the Source. But most advanced souls stay in energy worlds, and from there they can return into any lower density if they want or being asked by Galactic or planetary Councils. Advanced souls can still occasionally reincarnate for the sake of others, to help planets in need, raise vibration or bring technological, medical or artistic discoveries.

(1) How's it Gonna End (Tom Waits) - YouTube

(1) How's it Gonna End (Tom Waits) - YouTube

cruises 5 Things You Need to Know to Start Your Day - btbirkett@gmail.com - Gmail

5 Things You Need to Know to Start Your Day - btbirkett@gmail.com - Gmail

And finally, here’s what Joe’s interested in this morning

The last year-and-a-half has been brutal for the tech industry in a way that it hasn't seen in over 20 years. But as we've said about a million times, there's a disconnect between the headlines you see about layoffs at this or that FANG or startup, and what's happening at the macro level.

What defines this economic expansion is that it's bottom up, not trickle down. It's consumer strength, particularly in the middle and lower levels that keeps it going.

And so the question is, does the recent implosion of the tech industry's favorite bank (SVB) change this dynamic at all? We know it's changed the rate outlook, but other than that, does it have any effect on the overall trajectory?

Yesterday Samuel Rines at Corbu (who we recently had on the podcast) came out with a new note and says nothing has changed. Middle America is still booming. Companies are still finding themselves capable of pushing prices higher and higher. There's still plenty of heat.

Here's Rines:

"While it is popular to make broad statements about the death of the consumer, justifying it against what companies are saying is problematic. Carnival is not the most expensive cruise line, and this is not a signal of the `luxury consumer.’ It is a signal of Middle American spending. Middle America does not care about SVB or SI or FRC. Middle America sees higher wages and job postings everywhere. Which leads to a confidence in being able to book that cruise."

In fact, on Carnival's earnings call on Monday, the company's CFO David Bernstein said that as of right now, the recent "volatility out there... has not shown up in our business."

And to Rines' point about higher wages and job postings everywhere. Yesterday we got the latest Consumer Confidence report from the Conference Board, and it showed the public perceptions about the strength of the labor market are still at levels higher than their pre-pandemic peak.

It's just one company (Carnival) and one data point within the Consumer Confidence survey. But still. It may end up being that SVB's collapse is part of the old story (tech industry, not really connected to economic momentum) rather than the start of a new story (banking stress leading to broader economic stress).