If the reason for the kernel panic was the addition of those boot parameters, for the moment, in order to being able to boot up your machine, you could do the following:
On the boot menu, choose the boot option but instead of booting press E to edit the kernel command line.
Remove those boot parameters and press Ctrl-X to proceed with booting.
Hope this helps at the moment.
Thanks a lot, that did the trick.
@jake99 after removing irqpoll the computer booted normally with the usual text, although there was 1 red line saying something like “thermal daemon service could be found” or failed. Before I made any of your amendments to the Grub that line appeared twice, now only once.
@jake99 After removing irqpoll but leaving your other 2 amendments, I ran journalctl -b -0 | eos-sendlog again from the live USB, and here is the link: https://clbin.com/G9H2t
the last log you sent
is from live environement and it does not have the grub changes you made, so its the same as the prevoious one. We would need to see the logs from your system, not the live environment.
Disable thermald systemd unit first, that is a leftover and it was not disabled/removed when you uninstalled thermald for some reason
sudo systemctl disable thermald
and then send the logs again.
Took a quick look, no changes, unfortunately 
But now your logs are getting spammed with invalid argument from auto-cpufeq, too.
Looks like its not configured properly or some bug in the cpufreq service itself:
Jan 18 12:33:14 peter-81fl auto-cpufreq[920]: /usr/bin/cpufreqctl.auto-cpufreq: line 279: echo: write error: Invalid argument
Jan 18 12:33:14 peter-81fl auto-cpufreq[920]: /usr/bin/cpufreqctl.auto-cpufreq: line 279: echo: write error: Invalid argument
Jan 18 12:33:14 peter-81fl auto-cpufreq[920]: /usr/bin/cpufreqctl.auto-cpufreq: line 279: echo: write error: Invalid argument
Jan 18 12:33:14 peter-81fl auto-cpufreq[920]: /usr/bin/cpufreqctl.auto-cpufreq: line 279: echo: write error: Invalid argument
Jan 18 12:33:14 peter-81fl auto-cpufreq[920]: /usr/bin/cpufreqctl.auto-cpufreq: line 279: echo: write error: Invalid argument
Jan 18 12:33:14 peter-81fl auto-cpufreq[920]: /usr/bin/cpufreqctl.auto-cpufreq: line 279: echo: write error: Invalid argument
Jan 18 12:33:14 peter-81fl auto-cpufreq[920]: /usr/bin/cpufreqctl.auto-cpufreq: line 279: echo: write error: Invalid argument
Jan 18 12:33:14 peter-81fl auto-cpufreq[920]: /usr/bin/cpufreqctl.auto-cpufreq: line 279: echo: write error: Invalid argument
Jan 18 12:33:14 peter-81fl auto-cpufreq[920]: /usr/bin/cpufreqctl.auto-cpufreq: line 279: echo: write error: Invalid argument
Jan 18 12:33:14 peter-81fl auto-cpufreq[920]: /usr/bin/cpufreqctl.auto-cpufreq: line 279: echo: write error: Invalid argument
Jan 18 12:33:14 peter-81fl auto-cpufreq[920]: /usr/bin/cpufreqctl.auto-cpufreq: line 279: echo: write error: Invalid argument
At this point I would recommend reinstalling your system, backup your important stuff first.
The last option you have is upgrading BIOS, maybe it will help, maybe not, firmware is definitely bugged.
Good luck!
Thanks for your help. Rather than reinstalling the system, could I not just remove auto-cpufreq and then, perhaps with instructions, reinstall it properly?
OTOH, is there any harm in not installing it?
UPDATE: I removed auto-cpufreq and rebooted, but the sudden drain at 40% persists. Updating the BIOS involves too convoluted acrobatics with risks that the process gets messed up. So, I’ll have to reinstall EOS 
@jake99 @pebcak @petsam @manuel @matadrox @vmclark
I want to thank you all for your help and input, this forum is truly amazing.
Thank you!
Just a final word about hibernation vs sleep: over the last couple of days I have put my computer on sleep rather than hibernation, and when I woke it up after 8, 10 or 12 hours I noticed that its energy consumption had been very little!
I never tracked hibernation in that sense but since sleep consumes so little it is easier to use that, esp. since the computer resumes quicker than from hibernation.
So, I don’t really see the point of hibernation.
I found something interesting on my laptop. If I left plugged in , HDMI, USB SSD, A/C charger , ALL were turned off, just plugged in. I lost significant battery power.
Removing all usable plugs, battery power was minimal. Battery is being drained through one of those items. So I have external drainage and not coming form internal configurations.
Have you been able to establish which one it is?
Yes! It was when I left the charger plugged in and off. It discharged almost completely over night. Now with it up-plugged from charger, I can go the weekend and have the battery % the same level!