Famine Risk as Supplies of Vital Fertilizer Dwindle, Scientists Warn
This is sad old rubbish. There are phosphate mines worldwide including huge deposits in North Africa and China. And even Saudi Arabia is sitting on 1.4 billion MT of it. It is not going to run out
Scientists are warning that we’re running out of phosphate, a key fertilizer for the crops that feed earth’s eight billion people. This raises the danger of famine unless agriculture innovates new ways of prompting exhausted soil to bring forth its bounty.
“We have reached a critical turning point,” a professor of Soil and Water Science at the U.K.’s Lancaster University, Philip Haygarth, tells the Guardian. “We might be able to turn back but we have really got to pull ourselves together and be an awful lot smarter in the way we use phosphorus.”
Fail, Mr. Haygarth warns, and “we face a calamity that we have termed ‘phosphogeddon.’” The warning echoes those of the visionary writer, Isaac Asimov. “Life can multiply until all the phosphorus is gone,” he said, “and then there is an inexorable halt which nothing can prevent.”
“No farmers, no food,” reads a popular bumper sticker in America’s breadbasket, pushing back against the perception that produce and meat spring by spontaneous generation on supermarket shelves. Lost in the messaging is the role of phosphorus, sometimes called “the oil of our time.”
“In a few years,” a senior research scientist at Rothamsted Research, Dr. Martin Blackwell, said back in 2019, “it could be a political issue with some countries effectively controlling the production of food by having control of rock phosphate supplies.”
Low prices have led to using it as if there’s no end in sight, causing problems such as runoff leading to algae blooms and poisoning reservoirs, a subject at the UN’s first water conference in 42 years held last week.
Hennig Brand is credited with identifying phosphorus in 1669, and humanity has spent the ensuing centuries studying how to harness its many properties, with 13 scientists earning Nobel Prizes for their work in the field.
Industrial mining of phosphorus-rich guano, or bird excrement, began in the mid-1800s, and the resource became so precious that in his 1850 State of the Union message, President Fillmore pledged “Nothing will be omitted on my part” to secure America’s supply.
“Peruvian guano has become so desirable an article to the agricultural interest of the United States,” Fillmore said, “that it is the duty of the government to employ all the means properly in its power for the purpose of causing that article to be imported into the country at a reasonable price.”
Today, America “mines and consumes about 23 million tons of phosphate rock per year,” according to the EPA, whittling known domestic reserves down by 99 percent. “At current rates of use,” Dr. Blackwell said, “a lot of countries are set to run out of their domestic supply in the next generation.”
Those countries at risk include America, Communist China, and India. Together, Morocco, Communist China, Algeria, and Syria, sit on over 80 percent of rock phosphate. The national security threat of this may not be as obvious as others, but it’s just as real.
In his new book, “The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Daniel Egan, “explores the alarming reality that diminishing access to phosphorus poses a threat to the food system worldwide — which risks rising conflict and even war.”
Two centuries ago, the Guano Wars raged in South America. Spain and Peru fought over deposits in 1864, while Bolivia, Chile, and Peru spilled blood over bird droppings in 1879. So insatiable is humanity’s appetite that even the taboo of grave robbing proved no obstacle.
The director of the Center for Battlefield Archaeology at the University of Glasgow, Tony Pollard, cites reports of bones from the Battle of Waterloo being ground into fertilizer.
“The benefits of implementing measures to improve phosphorus sustainability will be observed mostly at local to national scales,” says a report by the Our Phosphorus Future project. Citing input by over 100 scientists, they warn “any delay will only accrue further impacts and societal costs.”
America may soon face a day when an updated agriculture slogan emerges, one reading, “No phosphate, no farmers, no food,” but with dead soil and Dust Bowl-style famine facing millions, we won’t need a bumper sticker to tell us that phosphogeddon has arrived.
https://www.nysun.com/article/famine-risk-as-supplies-of-vital-fertilizer-dwindle-scientists-warn
******************************************************Electric Vehicles Are Scrapped Over Only Minor Damage
Insurers are being forced to write off many electric vehicles with only minor damage to battery packs, sending the batteries to scrap yards and hindering the climate benefits of going electric, Reuters reported.
Battery packs typically represent roughly half the cost of an electric vehicle, sometimes costing tens of thousands of dollars, often making it more economical for insurers to consider a car as totaled than replace a battery pack, according to Reuters. While many carmakers, including Ford and GM, told Reuters that their battery packs were repairable, many are unwilling to share key data with third-party insurers to help assess damage.
“The number of cases is going to increase, so the handling of batteries is a crucial point,” Christoph Lauterwasser, managing director of the research institute Allianz Center for Technology, told Reuters. “If you throw away the vehicle at an early stage, you’ve lost pretty much all advantage in terms of [carbon dioxide] emissions.”
Allianz, an insurance firm and parent company of Allianz Center for Technology, has seen cases where battery packs were scratched, and likely had undamaged internals, but a lack of access to diagnostic data forced the company to write off the vehicles, Reuters reported. Producing electric vehicle batteries emits much more in terms of carbon dioxide emissions than producing a gas-powered car, in some cases requiring an electric car to rack up more than 10,000 miles before it makes up for the additional emissions in production, according to a Reuters estimate.
It cost roughly $206 per month on average to insure an electric vehicle in 2023, 27% more than gas-powered cars, Reuters reported, citing online brokerage Policygenius. Without access to diagnostic data, it is likely that insurance costs will climb as more electric vehicles are sold and low-mileage cars are scrapped.
Electric vehicle and battery production are both expected to climb dramatically by 2026, off the back of more than $120 billion in investments, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. Annual production of electric vehicles is projected to climb from roughly 1 million per year in 2023 to 4.3 million in 2026, while annual battery production is expected to climb from 2.4 million per year in 2023 to 11.5 million per year in 2026.
President Joe Biden has made electric vehicle tax credits, from his signature Inflation Reduction Act, a cornerstone of his domestic policy. While Biden’s plan was initially forecast to cost roughly $30 billion in tax breaks over the next 10 years, the surge of domestic investments has caused private analysts to reevaluate the cost of the tax breaks to more than $136 billion.
https://climaterealism.com/2023/03/electric-vehicles-are-scrapped-over-only-minor-damage/
*******************************************Biden’s Latest Fuel Proposal Promises To Drive Gasoline Prices Higher
Instead of encouraging more supply, the administration keeps poisoning the atmosphere for investment in traditional fuels.
The SEC’s and the EPA’s moves will depress investment, continuing a pattern of lowering America’s refining capacity.
The path forward is clear: The EPA should scrap this eRIN proposal for the good of America’s producers and consumers, as well as our national security.
Gasoline prices remain stubbornly high—above $3.35 a gallon nationwide on average—and will likely go higher when the summer driving season arrives. Yet rather than take steps to help, the Biden administration has blamed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the oil companies, badgering them to produce more.
As any Econ 101 student knows, gas prices are determined by supply and demand. Instead of encouraging more supply, though, the administration keeps poisoning the atmosphere for investment in traditional fuels.
In the latest example, the Environmental Protection Agency has just proposed a change to the Renewable Fuel Standard that will once again push supplies of fuel lower and make it more expensive. The EPA is creating a new way to comply with RFS by allowing auto companies to generate “eRINs” they will sell to oil refiners. This should be raising alarm bells in every agricultural and oil-producing state and at every gas pump in the country.
Right now, oil refiners have to obtain and submit renewable identification numbers, or RINs, at the end of every year to prove that they’ve blended sufficient biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel into petroleum fuels. The birth of the modern RFS in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 used this tool to diversify America’s fuel—blending American-produced ethanol from American-grown corn.
The EPA’s proposal, however, opens the door for the RFS to be dominated by EVs—taking money from gasoline and diesel customers and sending it to auto companies that make EVs. Such a transformation will further hamstring producers of our transportation fuels (farmers, blenders and refiners), hit consumers with higher costs, and endanger our national security by making us more dependent on China, which dominates the EV supply chain.
One can immediately see the problem. Farmers and biofuel makers have invested billions of dollars to build plants, terminals and trucks to blend ethanol, biodiesel and renewable diesel. These U.S.-produced fuels will be drastically reduced—if not altogether eliminated—in an all-electric future.
A study by the Agricultural Retailers of America showed EVs could cost farmers $27 billion in income in just 2050 alone and reduce biofuels by 60% (biodiesel) to 90% (ethanol). In the interim, investments will flow from traditional fuels and biofuels to EVs. That would be fine if it were driven by consumer demand. But this is happening only because of government policy.
Refiners, too, are facing higher costs and lower demand thanks to eRINs. EV mandates of 50% to 100% electric cars and enormous subsidies like those in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act cast a huge shadow on the investment climate for refining. Those effects are exacerbated by a new climate disclosure rule from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the progressive push for environmental, social and governance considerations.
President Biden scolded refining companies to “work with my administration to bring forward concrete, near-term solutions that address the crisis.” He’s essentially looking for companies to row upstream against a current he’s accelerating. The SEC’s and the EPA’s moves will depress investment, continuing a pattern of lowering America’s refining capacity, which has lost about a million barrels a day in the last two years after having risen nearly every year since 1994. Less refining capacity means lower supply, which means higher prices.
That leads to the second major group that will suffer because of eRINs: consumers. Undoubtedly, consumers will pay more for gasoline as the newly limited supply struggles to keep up with demand. They’ll also pay more to help cover the refiners’ eRIN costs. Worse, customers will be paying more for their gas-powered cars in addition to their fuel.
Automakers have to cross-subsidize EVs by charging more for traditional cars to cover the cost of EVs. This and previous administrations have acknowledged that aggressive fuel economy standards and zero-emission-vehicle mandate cost consumers thousands at the showroom. eRIN revenue could help automakers a little, but it’s not nearly enough to close the gap, which some companies have said approaches $14,000 per vehicle. Unfortunately, the ultimate beneficiary of the forced switch to EVs is going to be China, which dominates the EV supply chain.
That brings up the third harm from this eRIN proposal: Instead of increasing American energy security—the stated purpose of the RFS—this proposal encourages automakers to make cars with Chinese batteries (about 75% of worldwide battery production) or with Chinese-mined or Chinese-processed minerals (more than half the world’s processing of lithium, cobalt and graphite). It is unclear whether the United States can open mining and processing inside its borders: Right now, there is only one lithium mine in the United States, and it accounts for less than 2% of the global supply.
At a time when the United States has become a major exporter of liquid fuels—an unthinkable dream for every president from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama — we are about to throw it all away and put all our transportation eggs in a basket made in China.
The path forward is clear: The EPA should scrap this eRIN proposal for the good of America’s producers and consumers, as well as our national security. If the agency doesn’t, Congress must stop it.
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Big Australian coal-fired generator saved from closure
There's a lot of persiflage below but there is a committment not to close Eraring until replacement generation is available. That may never happen. The idea that batteries could help is a laugh. A battery will only last hours and then be useless
The soon-to-be owner of Origin Energy will hold talks with incoming NSW premier Chris Minns on the future of Australia’s biggest coal plant, Eraring, as pressure grows to keep the station running longer than 2025 amid fears of blackouts.
“What’s most important to us is that it is closed down as soon as it possibly can be. So within that context we’re obviously happy to have a conversation with the government and hear what they have to say,” Brookfield Australian boss Stewart Upson said.
“But it will be important to us that whatever happens the result of our investment here is that Eraring can be closed down as soon as it can be done so in a responsible manner.”
The takeover deal includes a plan for Brookfield to invest an extra $20bn in Origin through to 2030 to build up to 14 gigawatts of new renewable generation and storage facilities in Australia.
Before the Brookfield approach Origin had given notice that it intended to close the 2880-megawatt Eraring power plant in the Hunter Valley in August 2025.
Mr Minns has said his view is to seek talks to keep the nation’s biggest coal-fired generator open past the scheduled closure date.
Mr Upson told The Australian the August 2025 date “is not a required closure date”. Any closure would also ensure there is alternative supply in place, he added.
“It’s not a commitment by Origin to close on that date, it’s the earliest possible date, it can close.
“Both Origin (now) and under our new ownership – are focused on closing Eraring as soon as we possibly can, only if we can only in a way that’s responsible and doesn’t have an impact on consumers or supply in the market.”
“That’s about ensuring that we have the replacement capacity in place before we close it down, which is something Origin has already been working on with its battery project and something we will be working on as fast as we can,” Mr Upson said.
He said he welcomes talks with the incoming NSW Premier.
“They are a very important stakeholder and I think it’s going to be important that we work closely together to ensure that the transition happens in a way that doesn’t have a negative impact on consumers, business or the economy in general,” he said.
The comments by Mr Upson shows the infrastructure giant is prepared to play the long game on politics as it prepares to take control of one Australia’s most important power generators.
Mr Upson still has some way to go to win Origin, but he has got past the biggest hurdle – securing binding scheme agreement on the $18.7bn mega power deal.
The proposal still needs to get approvals from competition and foreign investment regulators and Orgin’s shareholders are yet to vote on the deal, although it has been endorsed by the board.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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