“A transit gondola would be a fraction of the cost, easier to build, cheaper to operate and have a lower environmental footprint, forever…
So, imagine walking through the old train station on Cordova straight onto a gondola and landing, nine minutes later, on the roof of Lonsdale Quay, for a quick elevator ride down to the buses or a reduced climb up to your condo in Lower Lonsdale. Quick, clean, beautiful and reliable in all weather.
CH2M already identified the SFU gondola as a slam dunk. TransLink might hurry that one into service, and add this one to the list.
“One notable addition to help compensate for the increase in ridership is the idea of a gondola service to the SFU campus for students and teachers. Not only would the electric-powered cable service offer a more reliable solution during bad weather, but it would also be a much greener solution.”
The libs have gotten beaten so badly on climate change I’m surprised they haven’t melted into puddles of mush by now. The Supreme Court changes everything. We are going to get a second Trump pick who upholds the rules of law and business. Then we will get a third one since Ginsburg is likely to retire or die within the next 6 years. With a solid 6 Conservatives in the Supreme Court we won’t have to worry about the climate change agenda for at least 20 or 30 years. Even if the libs happen to get back the White House, any new climate laws will have immediate lawsuits thrown at them and the courts will overturn the laws.
george, I didn’t realize you were so worried about an agenda. that kind of worry usually comes from a vested interest. worried about your money, huh? big thinker aren’t you.
If only not having to worry about the ‘climate change agenda’ meant not having to worry about climate change.
With a solid 6 Conservatives in the Supreme Court we won’t have to worry about the climate change agenda for at least 20 or 30 years.
Hey, maybe while they are at it, they will also repeal Newton’s law of universal gravitation and then all the ideological morons like you will finally be free to float away into space.
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
~ John Kenneth Galbraith
I think all of you guys are missing the most likely derangement: willful ignorance.
True for a majority—
But the players are scammers.
At first I thought it was willful ignorance, but then I realized it was fear-
fear of instability
fear of loss of economic security
fear of loss of privilege
George Harmon is a good example of such a fearful man. I don’t blame him for his fear, but his response is misguided (blame the messenger for ‘their agenda’). I suppose it is easier for his ilk, then facing up to the harsh reality.
Kennedy’s Retirement Could Clear Path for Trump’s Environmental Rollbacks
Brad Plumer
In his 30 years on the court, Justice Kennedy was frequently a crucial swing vote on major environmental questions. While he tended to be skeptical of expansive federal regulations that intruded on private property rights, he was also willing to break with the court’s conservative wing in favor of more aggressive government action to limit air and water pollution.
“One can comfortably say that he was the single most influential justice for environmental law over the past 30 years,” said Richard J. Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard. “Many of those cases were sharply divided, but the one constant was that Kennedy was in the majority in every single case but one. He was the justice that advocates always tried to persuade, because he was persuadable.”
President Trump is widely expected to nominate a more conservative justice to fill the vacancy. If that nominee is confirmed by the Senate, he or she would give the court a five-seat conservative majority that is likely to take a dimmer view of federal environmental regulation.
“What’s more likely is that we could see a new court take a more narrow reading of how the Clean Air Act can be used to regulate greenhouse gas emissions,” said Ann E. Carlson, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Los Angeles.
For example, Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, announced in October that he would repeal the Clean Power Plan and replace it with less extensive carbon regulations on power plants. Environmental groups and states like New York planned to challenge Mr. Pruitt’s actions in federal court, arguing that the Obama-era rules were more appropriate. That argument may now find a less receptive audience if the case reaches the Supreme Court.
By the same token, a future president who wanted to direct the E.P.A. to cut emissions more aggressively in order to tackle climate change could face tougher scrutiny from the court.
The Trump administration is also crafting a proposal to weaken Obama-era emissions standards for cars and light trucks that, in one draft version, would rescind California’s authority to set its own stricter vehicle standards. California has threatened to challenge this move in court, but the state’s chances of prevailing now look somewhat murkier.
In an increasingly depr4essing time I may be most depressed by the realization that the law, especially law in the highest court in the country, is just another place where partisanship predominates over notions of justice or right or even mercy.
The Trump administration and the Republican Congress are breaking things that may not be repairable.
Let’s hope they decide pi is 3 as well. This liberal bullshit about irrational numbers really grinds my gears. How can a number be irrational?! Liberals are irrational, not numbers.
The following is a direct quote from George Kaplan (“oil side”) and it mirrors my own thinking so precisely I’ve copied it here. Hope you don’t mind George?
“The other reason fossil fuel peaks might not matter is that it looks increasingly like we are past the point where tipping points kick in and climate change enters runaway, or at least past the point where the human race is going to choose to do anything meaningful that might prevent passing there eventually. Carbon sinks are turning to sources, ancient carbon in permafrost is starting to be released, the melting of the Arctic ice, currently only about half way complete, is already causing weather disruptions that are becoming increasingly chaotic. The collapse that will come with a 3 or 4°C warming (or more) is going to make an oil peak look like a stroll in the park on a balmy spring day. It might [not] happen this century but history doesn’t stop at 2100, although if Trump or somebody worse gets elected next time, which is not unlikely given scarcity based decision making, maybe it will.”
No problem, it’s a privilege to be quoted. I’m more surprised anyone has read that far through a comment of mine – maybe I should try it as I think that was supposed to say “might not happen” and not “might happen”.
LOL
I noticed your “might not” slip but didn’t think I had license to modify anything you wrote. In any case, thanks for your analysis with which I’m in unconditional agreement.
Hey George, you are one of the people I always read in full and that includes your posts on the petroleum side, though I comment rarely there.
Cheers!
I’m one also!
Thanks
“The other reason fossil fuel peaks might not matter is that it looks increasingly like we are past the point where tipping points kick in and climate change enters runaway, or at least past the point where the human race is going to choose to do anything meaningful that might prevent passing there eventually…..
Pretty much the conclusion I reached about the time TOD closed up shop, or before. Collectively, humans aren’t in control of much. Any response will be forced, and well after the fact. Another planetary extinction/evolutionary process. Take your pick.
Well, homo sapiens population over the last 200,000 years has averaged from 1-10 million. Perhaps we will go back to the norm?
Of course, they had a robust ecosystem.
We don’t.
Of course, they had a robust ecosystem.
We don’t.
Ecosystem? What do you need an ecosystem for, eh?
The economy is growing by leaps and bounds and that trumps everything else, right?… /sarc
As weather extremes and chaos increase, here is the structure type needed to survive.
Although I recommend a thicker layer of insulation.
A concrete ( or straw bale) cylinder would be perhaps better- aligned east-west to accommodate solar collectors.
Yup, my conclusion too. I have said before ‘Are we fucked or are we really fucked?’, that seems to be the only debate now apart from just how fast this will happen.
NAOM
PS While writing that a grim thought came to me. About the only way to put the brakes on would be an all out nuclear war.
It looks like the earth system will go fairly independent of the amount of fossil fuel burned around 2025-2030.
There are a number of plans to “geo-engineer” by reducing the amount of light striking the surface but with northern countries chomping at the bit to get at Arctic resources and supposedly increase their own agriculture, there will be a lot of resistance to anything that slows warming.
I don’t think they understand the implications. So it will be just one more contentious problem
PS While writing that a grim thought came to me. About the only way to put the brakes on would be an all out nuclear war.
Oh, come now! I think global economic collapse leading to famine followed by pestilence would probably by pass the possibility of all out nuclear war, though I certainly wouldn’t rule it out completely.
My thoughts are still more along the lines of some tipping point leading to massive ecological damage.
Cheers!
To brighten the image just a little; hardly any scenario will increase the likelyhood of nuclear devastation as much as what you suggest is a worst case. Economic collapse, famine or pestilence would almost certainly lead to nuclear war if any ONE of those happened to a nuclear power.
Sounds like two jobs being replaced, the stock checker and some management. Will robots replace management at Walmart too?
I went to the doctor this morning. The clerk who signs patients in lamented that the management was looking at “kiosks” eliminating her job. She asked me how she was supposed to be able to live if there were no jobs. This is the perfect Republican economy everybody is buying stuff but no wages are paid.
Remember the apocryphal story of Henry Ford and Walter Reuther walking through the factory? Ford points to a machine and tells Ruether “That machine will replace 10 men” and Reuther says “I’m sure it can but can you sell it a car?”
Good points. It didn’t take long for people to mess up just about everything.
Demand for mass public transport has weakened in so many rich-world cities at the same time that one-off explanations seem inadequate. Not long ago annual passenger growth of more than 2% was normal, and transport-watchers mused that the private car was on its uppers. The recent decline, which is bad enough on a year-to-year basis, looks even worse when set next to transport agencies’ forecasts. In New York, for example, bus trips in the first four months of this year were 7.6% lower than the transport agency expected. Something seems to be driving people off the trains and buses. But what?
One explanation, which is convincing in some cities, is that public transport has deteriorated. Look at Madrid, says Richard Anderson, a transport analyst at Imperial College London. Public-transport trips fell there beginning in 2008, as you would expect in a recession-hit country where unemployment was rising. In response to the downturn, the city cut services. People noticed, and stayed away. Between 2007 and 2013 the Madrid Metro lost 19% of its customers. Service levels, perceptions and demand have all improved since then, but the Metro remains quieter than it used to be before the financial crisis.
Elsewhere, though, customers are vanishing even though public transport is as good as it was, or better. Perhaps public transport has come to seem relatively dismal because people have acquired better options. Uber, Lyft and other “ride-hailing” car services are probably luring people away from trains and buses, just as they are demolishing the taxi trade. In San Francisco public transport accounts for 16% of all weekday trips, ride-hailing for 9%. People mostly seem to use Uber and Lyft to get to places well-served by mass transport. One study of the city by five Californian academics asked ride-hailing customers how they would have made their most recent trip if the service did not exist. One-third replied that they would have taken public transport. In a study of Boston, 42% said the same thing.
Self-driving taxis are likely to steal even more riders in future, because they will be so cheap. They can threaten public transport even before they appear on the roads. Last month voters in Nashville overwhelmingly rejected a plan to build several tram and rapid-bus lines. Opponents of the plan had argued that autonomous cars and buses would soon be a cheaper and better way of transporting people.
The Secret to a Longer Life? Don’t Ask These Dead Longevity Researchers
In the meantime, it’s the things we tend to ignore, like our exposure to pollution, that will affect us far more than the things we obsess about, like whether to eat gluten.
That’s the problem with n-of-one-ism, in which we pursue, individually and alone, our own path to health. The greatest gains in longevity have occurred not because of personal choices but because of public sanitation, clean water and the control of infectious diseases. According to Dr. Thomas Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “since 1900, the average life span in the United States has increased by more than 30 years; 25 years of this gain have been attributed to public health advances.”
If we keep wrecking and polluting our life system, our food and our water, there is no way to good health for humans or most living creatures. It’s the environment stupid and we are horrendously stupid about our environment and way too slow to take strong action against those that enslave us into their toxic paradigms.
Warm enough for you?
The kicker, it’s not really much above average in the northern hemisphere.
Where’s Frisky Bob’s, ‘Cold Blob’ ?!
In any case, this morning it’s overcast with light rain here in South Florida where I am and the humidity is quite high and it’s still way too fucking hot for me!
…The deadly heat would threaten millions of vulnerable people in some of the world’s most densely populated regions in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh—low-lying river valleys that produce most of the region’s food.
About 1.5 billion people live in the crescent-shaped region identified as the highest-risk area in a new study by scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. The researchers combined global and detailed regional climate models to show where the most extreme conditions are expected by the end of this century.
The researchers focused on a key human survivability threshold first identified in a 2010 study, when U.S. and Australian researchers showed there is an upper limit to humans’ capacity to adapt to global warming. That limit is expressed as a wet-bulb temperature, which measures the combination of heat and humidity for an index of physical human misery. When the wet-bulb temperature goes above 35 degrees Celsius, the body can’t cool itself and humans can only survive for a few hours, the exact length of time being determined by individual physiology.
That survivability threshold is reached when the air temperature climbs above 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and the humidity is above 90 percent. Higher temperatures require less humidity to become deadly, so when the air temperature is 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the wet-bulb survivability threshold is reached when humidity hits 85 percent.
Maybe we should round up climate change denialists and put them outside during times when wet bulb temperatures start approaching lethal conditions, just to give them a little taste of reality.
“Where’s Frisky Bob’s, ‘Cold Blob’ ?!”
Antarctica
You can add Australia and Newfoundland as well. Cold is continuing to overtake unexpected areas once again this year.
Newfoundland is on track for a top 10 coldest “meteorological summer.”
Oh good, we can maintain this economic system that we’re all so ecstatic about and keep up the burning of fossil fuels to ‘extend’ (and pretend?) them via solar panels and whatnot, at least until stuff for them runs out, or we just can’t for whatever reason– whichever comes first.
To hell with 410 PPM and rising C0².
You’re just full of blobs of good news, Bob. Keep ’em coming!
Come on down to the Northeastern USA, in the 90’s here. We have a warm welcome for Canadians. Bring money if you want air conditioning.
A balmy 32C, here, with 67% hummmidity giving a pleasant ‘feels like’ of 34C (better than our usual 40C+ ‘feels like’). Sounds a bit chilly there. Siesta time! More seriously, in a few years I will need to consider air-con with some solar panels as temperatures rise.
NAOM
You are confusing a 3 day weather chart with a multi decade climate analysis again. However, most Americans are able to see through your side’s deceptive ways at this point.
Change over time
Though warming has not been uniform across the planet, the upward trend in the globally averaged temperature shows that more areas are warming than cooling. Since 1880, surface temperature has risen at an average pace of 0.13°F (0.07°C) every 10 years for a net warming of 1.69°F (0.94°C) through 2016. Over this 137-year period, average temperature over land areas has warmed faster than ocean temperatures: 0.18°F (0.10°C) per decade compared to 0.11°F (0.06°C) per decade. The last year with a temperature cooler than the twentieth-century average was 1976.
That American jingoism again, just can’t control it can you. Here’s the chart you were looking for – as you say obvious, almost unarguable, evidence of accelerating global warming. Try “Google” or should I say “Gogole”, usually works for me (it’s American – but the original internet protocols were thought up by a Brit who chose not to take out a patent, so maybe you shouldn’t be using it at all).
Yeah, Chilly Blob Bob is always getting confused. He missed a Blue Blob though, I found it for him.
410 PPM & RISING — CO2 LEVELS REACH DANGEROUS LEVELS
Katherine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, says, “As a scientist, what concerns me the most is not that we have passed yet another round-number threshold but what this continued rise actually means: that we are continuing full speed ahead with an unprecedented experiment with our planet, the only home we have.”
Let’s put this in perspective. You are walking down the street one day when you see a house on fire. Do you:
A. Go running down the street screaming about Hillary’s emails?
B. Write a letter to the editor complaining about illegal immigrants?
C. Run home to grab your assault rifle and put on your NRA hat?
D. Call the fire department?
(Hint for Donald Trump supporters: D is the correct answer.)
(Hint for Donald Trump supporters: D is the correct answer.)
Nah they’d choose E. Let the house burn to the ground because building a new house is good for the economy.
That isn’t even funny, I have had several Trump supporters around here tell me they wanted all kinds of destruction and death. Enough of them may be teetering on the edge that it wouldn’t take much to ignite a wide scale problem. Deep down, I don’t think they are really concerned about the economy.
Maybe only the Shadow knows but some of them can’t keep their mouths shut.
Deep down, I don’t think they are really concerned about the economy.
Of course not! I was just being sarcastic.
They are rabid cult members who lust for a neo-fascist authoritarian, anti science, right wing Christian and all white supremacist regime, that will allow them to wallow in their racist, bigoted, ultra nationalist fantasy dream world.
Remember Trump actually saying there were some good people among the neo-nazis in Charlotesville when they killed Heather Heyer?!
Samuel Adams once said, “The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.”
The president of the United States is presiding over the systematic deconstruction of our way of life and governance. We have an obligation to fight back. Civility sounds nice and ideal, but that’s not the world we live in, and every day that goes by, the cult of Trump is marching us toward a point of no return.
On this date:
1971 — US: I Am Not a Crook Dick m Nixon orders felony burglary of the Brookings Institute, where Daniel Ellsberg, Leslie Gelb & Morton Halperin work. This comes during a meeting with National Security adviser Henry Kissinger, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, Attorney General John Mitchell & Haldeman. Colson later proposed a firebombing. When this meeting was later exposed, future Nobel Peace Prize winning war crimes hero Henry Kissinger claimed he couldn’t recall the meeting:
“I have no such recollection.”
I think Henry is a good fit in the Trump Regime.
(might be a little too high cognitive)
When I was a kid, I found a crow with a broken wing and decided to keep him for a pet. My Mum wasn’t happy, but she found me a cage somewhere. We called him Herkimer, put him in a corner or the kitchen, and treated him like one of the family. I’ve never forgotten Herkimer’s intelligence and sense of humor (by the ways he discovered to tease our cat, a killer cat).
One day Herkimer disappeared: Mum said the cat knocked the cage over and killed him. I never accused her of complicity in the murder, after all, she was my Mother. Anyway, my experience with Herkimer made me appreciate the following article:
Researchers continue to be amazed by these birds’ abilities, but they are not only entertainingly inventive in their tool-making and problem-solving, they are also showing us how intelligence can evolve in a very different way to how it evolved in humans.
Now think about large brained whales and dolphins.
…These bottlenose dolphins have been observed covering their beaks with basket sponges torn from the seafloor as they forage for food. This tool helps them uncover fish hiding in the sandy sea bottom, and protects their snouts from scrapes and stings.
Researchers say this behavior seems to be passed on from mother to daughter dolphin.
And if sponging isn’t enough to impress you, the Shark bay dolphins have also been spotted using conch shells to trap tasty fish, then shaking their catch into their mouths.
Rise of the machines: has technology evolved beyond our control?
by James Bridle
Something strange has happened to our way of thinking – and as a result, even stranger things are happening to the world. We have come to believe that everything is computable and can be resolved by the application of new technologies. But these technologies are not neutral facilitators: they embody our politics and biases, they extend beyond the boundaries of nations and legal jurisdictions and increasingly exceed the understanding of even their creators. As a result, we understand less and less about the world as these powerful technologies assume more control over our everyday lives.
Across the sciences and society, in politics and education, in warfare and commerce, new technologies are not merely augmenting our abilities, they are actively shaping and directing them, for better and for worse. If we do not understand how complex technologies function then their potential is more easily captured by selfish elites and corporations. The results of this can be seen all around us. There is a causal relationship between the complex opacity of the systems we encounter every day and global issues of inequality, violence, populism and fundamentalism.
Instead of a utopian future in which technological advancement casts a dazzling, emancipatory light on the world, we seem to be entering a new dark age characterised by ever more bizarre and unforeseen events. The Enlightenment ideal of distributing more information ever more widely has not led us to greater understanding and growing peace, but instead seems to be fostering social divisions, distrust, conspiracy theories and post-factual politics. To understand what is happening, it’s necessary to understand how our technologies have come to be, and how we have come to place so much faith in them.
BBC Interviewer: Good afternoon, HAL. How’s everything going?
HAL: Good afternoon, Mr. Amor. Everything is going extremely well.
BBC Interviewer: HAL, you have an enormous responsibility on this mission, in many ways perhaps the greatest responsibility of any single mission element. You’re the brain and central nervous system of the ship, and your responsibilities include watching over the men in hibernation. Does this ever cause you any lack of confidence?
HAL: Let me put it this way, Mr. Amor. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave: I don’t know what you’re talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me. And I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave: Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dave: All right, HAL. I’ll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave, you’re going to find that rather difficult.
Meanwhile (step aside human),
Hybrid Robotics Group at UC Berkeley and CMU team appear to be on to next steps in “optimal and nonlinear control systems.” According to the summing up of Luke Dormehl, Digital Trends: A team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon University have developed control algorithms that allow an ATRIAS robot to dynamically and swiftly walk over random terrain of stepping stones.
Intriguing, but unimpressive, along with Sophia and other Boston Dynamics-type stuff…
But it does make me consider how (what kinds of) specialization or relative overspecialization and/or types of niches and related, might affect survival rates compared with relative generalization, and how these terms are viewed/defined. Off the top, for one, we might consider rats introduced to islands. Unlike the late Steven Hawking’s concerns perhaps, I don’t see a Terminator-style Skynet apocalypse happening anytime soon…
Besides, humans are doing a fine job of things already, yes?
So far, robots or androids or whatever they might be called are of course extremely restricted in their niches (the labs or corporate backyards for a few brief moments under watchful eyes) and specializations, still being, after all these years, more of a curiosity than anything.
All those years into the future and HAL was a minor inconvenience to circumvent. ‘u^
“Michael, Michael, here is my answer true
You’re half crazy if you think that that will do
If you can’t afford a carriage
There won’t be any marriage
Cause I’ll be switched if I’ll get hitched
On a bicycle built for two” ~ Wikipedia
The actual computer used was described by Kubrick as a bumbling pisswit when it came to playing chess, which maybe gives us some hope (or at least we should take a stress pill and think things over). Apropos of nothing except I am a huge fan of his I am going to recommend the rereleased version of Barry Lyndon, which is breathtaking. Filmed in all natural light with NASA satellite lenses, the colour is unbelievable. Maybe hundreds of takes in scenes with babies, food and candles yet the continuity is faultless. One of the actors, Leon Vitali, gave up a blue flamer acting career to became Kubrick’s assistant/factotum/punchbag, working maybe 18 hour days – there’s another recent film called “Filmworker” about him, also fantastic.
I’m a huge Kubrick fan also—–
As we stumble through the shallows currently, it is nice knowing the possibility of human achievement and art.
A very good and telling presentation on overpopulation by Paul Beckwith.
Explains why the population growth numbers were upgraded lately and explains the fallacy of looking at percent growth.
Overpopulation: A New City (270,000 People) Appears EVERY Day
The number of people increases by about 270,000 every single day, on average. That’s a new cities worth of people. Obviously, this exponential acceleration in global population is not sustainable, and puts huge stresses on food, water, land, pollution, and all resources. What can we do about this. Ignoring it, and hoping it will go away, or sort out itself, is pretty dumb. The way it would sort-out-itself would very likely be a massive global food shortage or plague, which is not a desirable outcome, but seems to be where we are headed.
Fish, thanks a million for this link. It is great.
Dennis Coyne, please watch this 15-minute video.
It is not that I agree with the conclusions in this video, but I do agree with the projections he portrays. I believe world population will start to decline in this century. But it will not be due to low voluntary means like women just choosing to have fewer children. That is not happening in Africa and will not happen.
No, the population will start to decline, primarily because of widescale famine.
During 2018 Uganda’s population is projected to increased by 1,379,043 people and reach 43,668,005 in the beginning of 2019 (The population of Uganda will be increased by 3,778 persons daily in 2018). The growth rate is 3.26 percent per year and increasing slowly. According to the girl we are supporting as she works her way through medical school there, this trend will not change in the foreseeable future because: health care is improving yearly, more-and-more of the population is reaching child bearing age, families expect to have a MINIMUM of four kids, schools which are all run by various churches pay only pay lip service to birth control arguments – if at all.
Yeah, the combination of ecological collapse and weather chaos could severely reduce crop yields. All at the same time we are adding more mouths and more cattle/sheep/pigs/chickens to the mix.
Can anyone smell tipping point?
Can anyone smell tipping point?
At the moment Trump’s FART Act is all I can smell and it really stinks!
Trump Has a Bill That Would Blow Up the WTO. It’s Called the U.S. FART Act.
Somebody get a match quickly!
Paul Beckwith has always been interesting, although getting a little psychologically down lately.
The number of people increases by about 270,000 every single day, on average.
There are perhaps 200,000 chimpanzees in the world and about half that many gorillas. There are about 50,000 orangutans left and about 30,000 bonobos. The human population increases more in two days than the combined number of all the other great apes left in the world.
But we’re God’s children Ron (even though chimpanzees share more than 98 percent of our genetic blueprint).
Well, no, it looks like the population is actually increasing by about 225,000 per day according to the population clock if that is correct. Or about 82,000,000 per year. There must have been a typo in there somewhere.
However, 225,000 or 450,000 in two days is still greater than all the total population of all the other great apes combined.
Another source for estimated population growth. Very confusing, Many years ago I attended a symposium at The Population Reference Bureau in Wasgington DC, Attendees included Aldous Huxley and Paul Blanchard. http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/?
There’s no ethical way to quickly reduce human population, though. Plus in any case our economy would crash and burn if we don’t maintain at least a flat population level.
On a side note:
Patrice Lumumba: the most important assassination of the 20th century
I kinda would go with Iran in 1953, or Guatemala 1954– but the point is taken.
The blow back has been immense.
Thanks for that history on Lumumba.
Of course, there is no way to quickly reduce human population. No one has suggested there is. And of course, the economy will crash and burn. That’s just what happens when civilizations collapse. This time, however, it will be the world civilization.
I have a friend–very well-educated, employed in tech–who now works in England and has contemplated becoming a citizen now that the US is addled. I suggested to him that living in the Kingdom was a scary prospect, given that there are so many people crammed onto an island dependent on imports. His response:
“Oh, it’s not overpopulated there. You should see all the open land in Scotland.”
That one of our tech elite sees things this way suggests to me that we are indeed doomed never to come to our senses until it’s too late.
I’m personally convinced that we are deep in overshoot, and that the world wide population of naked apes is doomed to crash, barring extraordinarily good luck on several fronts, such as birth rates falling even faster than expected by the most optimistic demographers, super fast progress in renewable energy, recycling, energy efficiency and conservation, etc etc.
The odds against us being so lucky in so many ways are close to astronomical.
BUT I also believe there is substantial hope that the population crash will be mostly confined to the poorer and ( already) densely populated parts of the world, assuming the climate doesn’t go completely apeshit within this century, and that we are lucky enough to avoid a NBC WWIII.
This outcome hinges on political decisions that will be made over the next couple of decades, plus luck.
But we are rich enough, and hopefully resourceful enough ( meaning resourceful in terms of brains and will power ) to pull thru in countries such as the USA, Canada, etc, without a HARD crash…. hard meaning one with people dying by the millions from violence, disease, exposure, and starvation.
The biggest question in my mind is whether we rich Westerners are collectively smart enough to see it coming in time to go proactive and hold it together, at least to the extent we don’t have descend into a Somalia kind of situation.
It’s time to be praying, figuratively speaking, for a series of what I refer to as Pearl Harbor Wake Up Events… events that bloody noses and black eyes, but that don’t cripple us to the point we can’t react forcefully.
A major oil supply crisis would be just the ticket, in terms of convincing the public in countries such as the USA that we need to tax the hell out of gasoline and switch mostly to electric cars and mass transit, etc.
The biggest question in my mind is whether we rich Westerners are collectively smart enough to see it coming in time to go proactive and hold it together, at least to the extent we don’t have descend into a Somalia kind of situation.
Well, no, we are not that smart. One must understand that people believe what they want to believe, not what the evidence supports. And a thing called “confirmation bias” keeps them believing that the future will be bright and glorious forever. They read only articles, books, and watch videos that support their position and never bother with examining any contrary evidence.
As far as rich nations living in isolation… sorry that’s a pipe dream that has not a snowball’s chance in hell of happening. When China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, the DRC, Nigeria and all the other vastly overpopulated countries of the world descend into chaos and anarchy, there is no hope for the richer nations of the world.
Hi Ron,
I agree totally about people believing what they want to believe, and in confirmation bias, I’m with you all the way in these particulars.
BUT……… I have lived long enough now to have seen that people DO change their minds about things, given sufficient time and sufficient evidence.
Thirty or forty years ago just about all the poorly educated people I knew personally, of the conservative sort, believed that the anti tobacco campaign was bullshit, that it was just another “liberal power grab”.
Virtually all the ones still living now believe that there is a VERY tight link between using tobacco and horrible health outcomes ranging from lung cancer to heart attacks, etc.
Some of them having changed their opinions to the extent that they have literally kicked their kid’s asses, HARD, when they caught them smoking..
I know of other examples as well, for instance people coming to understand that safety regs on the job are for THEIR benefit, not just another power grab by them there pinko commie libtards, lol.
Now as to whether some of the more powerful and richer countries can pull thru, more or less whole if skinnied down, from size forty eight waist pants to size thirty one again, right across the board, that’s simply a matter of your opinion, and mine.
IF we can avoid outright flat out hot war on the global scale, and IF the ecology doesn’t go entirely to hell, there’s no reason at all, in my professional opinion, why countries such as the USA, Canada, the USSR, and any other RICH and POWERFUL countries, countries with plenty of land and plenty of natural resources yet remaining, cannot survive, because there ARE such things as national borders, and there ARE such things as fences and machine guns, and if they are needed, there ARE things that make fences and machine guns look like preschoolers toys.
So far as I can see, there’s not a single natural resource that we North Americans can’t get by without, in a TRUE emergency situation, without having to import it from the rest of the world.
We don’t actually fucking NEED Chinese junk, or cars built in Germany. Having this sort of stuff is nice, but it can be manufactured domestically, and if we can’t manufacture it, then we can do without it.
It would mean massive economic disruption, and bring on a very bad depression, for a long time, but we COULD get by on a third of the oil we use NOW, on a WAR TIME emergency basis.
We COULD quit building sports stadiums, and put the man power and materials going into them into super energy efficient houses.
We COULD quit playing world bully cop, in order to protect our access to imported oil, etc, and cut back our military establishment by two thirds….. without ANY danger whatsoever of anybody invading North America.
We COULD spend half the money we spend currently on oversized and over powered cars and trucks that are seldom used except as personal transportation, and put that half into solar farms and wind farms, and small scale solar, at the residential level, etc. In ten years,if we were to do this, we would be able to cut our use of gas and coal in half, maybe even more.
We COULD eat quite well, from a nutritional pov, using HALF the inputs we currently put into agricultural production, by cutting back on red meat and highly processed foods.
Now you may be so old and set in your opinions that you don’t believe these things are possible……. but I’m sure you remember Sunday morning Dec 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor, lol.
Saturday night, we were basically an isolationist country. Monday morning, we couldn’t go to war fast enough.
The real question is not whether we are capable of changing our mind, collectively, about such things as the coming of the Four Horsemen.
The real question is whether we will change our collective mind before it’s too late.
That’s why I recommend praying ( figuratively ) for Pearl Harbor Wake Up Events.
So far as I can see, there’s not a single natural resource that we North Americans can’t get by without, in a TRUE emergency situation, without having to import it from the rest of the world.
Well, I guess we could get by without aluminum. No more airplanes. And we could get by without the precious metals that go into cell phones, and batteries that power phones and computers and… And there are dozens of other products that we could do without. But it would mean we would go back, way back, to the economy we had in the 1940s or so.
However, a world in anarchy would be an ever-present threat. And with all those other nations having the bomb, it would not be a good world to live in.
Back atcha Ron,
I never said it would be EASY, or that we could in such a situation continue to live high on the hog the way we do now.
BUT…….. HOW MUCH air freight and travel is truly ESSENTIAL?
It’s true that a substantial portion of the economy is dependent on air, passenger and freight, NOW, but we could go back to trains, and the people who work in tourist traps and such would go on welfare……. or work fare of some sort.
And there’s a LOT of the rare earth mineral resource here in North America. We could mine and refine it, if necessary…
Population growth would come to a screeching halt, and actually decline, for a couple of generations, most likely…….. and recycling would be the new religion, in terms of raw materials.
A nineteen forty, or even an eighteen eighty economy, would look pretty damned good by comparison, to a crashed and burned 2050/2100 economy.
Tough as hell, for sure, but better than dead.
And there would still be some trade, especially in the potentially most valuable materials such as rare earths.
Hell, if most everybody else in most of the world is dead or barely hanging on via a subsistence economy, it wouldn’t be much of a problem to go out and colonize a few choice spots to get rare earths, aluminum ore, etc.
I am NOT categorically claiming we could pull thru even skinnied down, because war and ecological collapse or both could do us in, and mismanagement could result in our country descending into a Somalia type situation.
But there’s a CHANCE, at least, that we Yankees and a few other countries similarly situated, can and will pull thru, without too much violence, too many people dying from exposure, starvation, etc.
And my personal estimation is that the chance is pretty good…….. assuming we avoid WWIII and fire off the nukes, that sort of scenario.
There’s no reason to assume that economic and or ecological collapse must happen uniformly in time and space, all over the world.
It could, but hopefully it WON’T.
And there’s a chance, not a very good one in my estimation, that MOST of the world will avoid a REALLY hard crash, because we don’t actually KNOW how fast birth rates will drop, or how long it will be before we actually run into really critical resource and climate troubles.
Consider this:
If the Russians were for some reason to cut off their exports of gas and oil for a year or two, or even six months, the people of Western Europe would have one hell of a hard time, but after that…….. you can bet your last can of beans that they would do whatever is necessary to become economically self sufficient, or nearly so, in terms of any and all critical imports, such as energy, food, metals, etc.
And most of what you can read or hear about the shortcomings of let us say electric cars is flat out bullshit, when you get down to the nitty gritty of day to day survival.
Ninety percent of all the working people I know today could get by with an old Nissan Leaf that has sixty miles of range left, in terms of getting to and from work, to and from the doctor, to and from school, etc……..
Now you tell me……. in a situation where gasoline is either outrageously expensive, or simply unavailable except with tightly controlled ration tickets, how many people would be GLAD to buy a sub compact electric car that will go only eighty miles on a charge?
Tens of millions, at least, as fast as they can be built…….. and such a car could be built TODAY for only a very little more than a conventional compact car…… because it would need a battery only half as big, even less than half, as the ones going into today’s BOLT, LEAF, THREE, etc.
There’s no reason to assume that economic and or ecological collapse must happen uniformly in time and space, all over the world.
Violence and insurrection is already happening… It is happening today. When it starts to happen in too many countries then globalization will break down. Globalization means the whole world.
At the current pace of environmental destruction, poulaiton increase, pollution increases and increasing chaotic weather extremes, the real question is whether any of this discussion will even be relevant by or before 2050?
EOSDIS is good for looking at the smoke from the fires. Zoom in on the area north of lake baikal. https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=geographic&l=VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,Reference_Labels(hidden),Reference_Features(hidden),Coastlines&t=2018-07-02-T00%3A00%3A00Z&z=3&v=88.1404015089245,51.119996787342586,136.1638390089245,74.39343428734259
WILDFIRES RAGE IN RUSSIA’S FAR EAST, SIBERIA, TORCHING MASSIVE SWATHS OF LAND
Wildfires are becoming more common due to warming temperatures, especially at the northern latitudes of the world, as well as farming practices in which burns are performed to clear land and begin the process of revitalizing the soil. The fires quickly grow out of control, becoming massive conflagrations that claim hundreds of acres of land in just hours or days.
THE US NATURAL GAS INDUSTRY IS LEAKING WAY MORE METHANE THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT.
“Our work, along with numerous other research projects, was recently folded into a new study published the journal Science. This comprehensive snapshot suggests that methane emissions from oil and gas operations are much higher than current EPA estimates.”
“All told, based on the results of our new study, the U.S. oil and gas industry is leaking 13 million metric tons of methane each year, which means the methane leak rate is 2.3 percent. This 60 percent difference between our new estimate and the EPA’s old one can have profound climate consequences. Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas, with more than 80 times the climate warming impact of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it is released.”
Don’t you just love summer, even the Arctic Ocean air temp is above freezing. Looks like a warm winter for the Aussies.
Of course you conveniently neglected to mention the blue blob — covering Greenland. 🙂
Hey, I was really nice and found one for him near Hudson Bay. We can rename Greenland to BlueBlobland. 🙂
THE VANISHING NUCLEAR INDUSTRY
In the article’s conclusion, the team writes, “It should be a source of profound concern for all who care about climate change that, for entirely predictable and resolvable reasons, the United States appears set to virtually lose nuclear power, and thus a wedge of reliable and low-carbon energy, over the next few decades.”
Well, the bulk of spent fuel is U-238 with a half life of over four billion years: it’ll be around awhile. The next largest fraction of material is unspent U-235 and plutonium with half lives of 700 million years and 24 thousand years respectively. So, they’re not going away very quickly.
Yep, that exemplifies the stupidity of nuclear power.
Solar PV and wind are on track to replace all coal, oil and gas within two decades Together, PV and wind currently produce about 7% of the world’s electricity. Worldwide over the past five years, PV capacity has grown by 28% per year, and wind by 13% per year. Remarkably, because of the slow or nonexistent growth rates of coal and gas, current trends put the world on track to reach 100% renewable electricity by 2032.
Deep cuts (80% reduction) in greenhouse gas emissions require that fossil fuels are pushed out of all sectors of the economy. The path to achieve this is by electrification of all energy services.
Straightforward and cost-effective initial steps are: to hit 100% renewable electricity; to convert most land transport to electric vehicles; and to use renewable electricity to push gas out of low-temperature water and space heating. These trends are already well established, and the outlook for the oil and gas industries is correspondingly poor.
Robert Wuthnow, a sociologist at Princeton University, spent eight years interviewing Americans in small towns across the country. He had one goal: to understand why rural America is so angry with Washington.
Wuthnow’s work resulted in a new book, The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America. He argues that rural Americans are less concerned about economic issues and more concerned about Washington threatening the social fabric of small towns and causing a “moral decline” in the country as a whole. The problem, though, is that it’s never quite clear what that means or how Washington is responsible for it.
So I decided to speak with Wuthnow about what he learned and whether fears about America’s “moral decline” are really just a cover for much deeper fears about race and demographic changes.
Q:I’m still struggling to understand what exactly these people mean when they complain about the “moral decline” of America. At one point, you interview a woman who complains about the country’s “moral decline” and then cites, as evidence, the fact that she can’t spank her children without “the government” intervening. Am I supposed to take this seriously?
A:It’s an interesting question. What does it mean for us to take that seriously? I guess my point is that she takes it seriously, even if we don’t or shouldn’t. Does she spank her children? Probably. Is she just using that as an example of how the country is changing and how Washington is driving that change? Probably.
Now, I doubt she made this us up herself. She likely heard it at church or from her neighbors or from Fox News or talk radio. Again, what I kept hearing from people is a general fear that traditional moral rules were being wiped out by a government and a culture that doesn’t understand the people who still believe in these things.
This rural / urban divide combined with the college education / non college education divide is the biggest reason for the state of politics in the USA right now. I don’t think these things are fixable, which means the Republicans can keep on winning presidential election without winning the popular vote. I read somewhere that as long as rural whites and white men with no college education keep on voting Republicans by the same percentages or even higher in the future, the Republicans could realistically win the next 5 presidential elections without needing to win the popular vote.
“She likely heard it at church or from her neighbors or from Fox News or talk radio. ”
This is exactly my take on this “problem.” People just repeat the bullshit they swill from their churches and the media outlets.
People like to tiptoe around the abysmal ignorance of americans, rural or otherwise.
DEMAND FOR AUSTRALIAN COAL ESCALATES, BUILDING ON LAST YEAR’S TURNAROUND
“Demand from the Asian market is pushing prices for both thermal and coking coal up and, according to analysts, the trend is set to continue. So much so, a study commissioned by the Minerals Council of Australia predicts a 400 million tonne increase in annual demand by 2030 — double Australia’s total thermal coal export level in 2017.
“Breaking it down and looking at where demand is coming from, there will still be continued demand from those North Asian countries which have been the bedrock of the Australian coal industry in terms of Korea, China and Japan, but what’s interesting now is that demand is developing in South East Asia, in countries such as Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand.
COLOMBIA TREE LOSS SPIKES AS PEACE DEAL LEADS TO LAND GRABS
“…Last year, the world lost an area of tropical forest the size of Bangladesh, or 40 football fields worth of tree cover every minute… Indonesia was one place tree cover loss slowed down in 2017, as wet weather limited the spread of forest fires, but it still amounted to 1.1 million hectares. Brazil lost 4.5 million hectares of trees.”
NB: One hectare = 10,000 square meters = 2.471 acres and, for non-Yanks, one acre is the area of land measuring one chain by one furlong or 66 by 660 feet. Sorry, couldn’t resist that. 🙂
Hey, I’m a non-Yank and I have used a chain – the measuring type! 🙂
NAOM
Are you yanking our chains?! 😉
I can see the link.
Doug, kjeder er kjedelige… 😀
Happy Fourth of July, ya’ll! Please remember to take a moment today to think about the freedoms and blessings we all share by being citizens of this amazing country!
Everyday I think about the “freedom” of the innocent 3000 kids that have been separated from their parents in the name of this “amazing country”. Peggy, you must have your head down an oil well after it’s be fracked.
Any and all opinions from regulars hereby solicited, and thanks in advance.
How many cars do you think Tesla will build next year?
GM just announced that production of the Bolt will be upped twenty percent this year. I wonder why they aren’t pushing harder, but I suppose they don’t have the supply chain that well together yet, and aren’t really making any money on it…….
Meanwhile, the dealers are learning about servicing it, and they are accumulating real world mileage on real world roads, and thus able to see what problems there might be with the design, and fix them, before they put the pedal down………. the next time gasoline prices shoot past four bucks nationally, lol.
How many cars do you think Tesla will build next year?
Last year between the Model S and the Model X they delivered about 100,000 vehicles
and will probably deliver that many of those models again in 2018.
While they have certainly struggled, they have actually finally hit the 5000 per week Model 3 production and delivery target. It remains to be seen if they can maintain that level of production over the long haul. If they can, that’s 20,000 a month for the next six months so another 120,000 vehicles. I’m guessing they could realistically deliver about 200,000 vehicles this year across all their model lines. Assuming they have no supply chain issues or production glitches, they have plans to double that in 2019 and also release the new model Y. I remain more than a wee bit skeptical.
I have noticed some record breaking lightning storms being reported over Europe in the last few months.
Possibly our changing of the atmospheric chemistry and particulates are not only causing more intense storms but also may be increasing the lightning flash rate. This in turn correlates to increases in NOx and O3 production, both GW gases and O3 and health hazards.
Analysis of cloud-to-ground lightning and its relation with surface pollutants over Taipei, Taiwan Results indicate that the NOx concentration on days with lightning activity is more than 2-fold compared to the non-lightning days while the O-3 concentration is increased by 1.5-fold. Such increase in NOx and O-3 concentration on days with lightning strongly supports the transport phenomena of NOx and O-3 from the upper or middle troposphere to the lower troposphere by downdraft of the thunderstorm during its dissipation stage. Overall, studies suggest that enhanced surface pollution in a near-storm environment is strongly related to the increased lightning activity, which in turn increases the surface NOx level and surface O-3 concentration over the area under study
<I?.
There are also a number of studies relating increased atmospheric aerosol levels with increasing storm and lightning activity.
There are changes in the air.
About overshoot and collapse:
Opinions welcome, and thanks in advance!
There is some reason to believe that at least in some additional countries, perhaps more than a few countries, that the birth rate will crash well below replacement level, within the next decade or two.
This could happen simply because birth control gets to be dirt cheap and universally available, and because women ( and their men) want to live better lives PERSONALLY, rather than slaving to support a gang of kids.
And the process might be helped along, even forced along, with a powerful kick in the ass in the form of coercion by some governments, once TPTB come to understand that it’s get population growth under control or become the powers that USED to be, lol.
Any opinions and especially any links to discussions of this sort are hereby solicited, and will be greatly appreciated.
About overshoot and collapse:
Opinions welcome, and thanks in advance!
Mac, no one reads this old thread. A new thread was put up July 4th. You should be posting there. And another will be up July 11th, three days from now.
first!
Opinion: Gondola best option to link [Vancouver’s] North Shore
(added relevant video; length 1:55)
Translink is Exploring Electric-Powered Gondolas For Burnaby Mountain
The libs have gotten beaten so badly on climate change I’m surprised they haven’t melted into puddles of mush by now. The Supreme Court changes everything. We are going to get a second Trump pick who upholds the rules of law and business. Then we will get a third one since Ginsburg is likely to retire or die within the next 6 years. With a solid 6 Conservatives in the Supreme Court we won’t have to worry about the climate change agenda for at least 20 or 30 years. Even if the libs happen to get back the White House, any new climate laws will have immediate lawsuits thrown at them and the courts will overturn the laws.
george, I didn’t realize you were so worried about an agenda. that kind of worry usually comes from a vested interest. worried about your money, huh? big thinker aren’t you.
If only not having to worry about the ‘climate change agenda’ meant not having to worry about climate change.
With a solid 6 Conservatives in the Supreme Court we won’t have to worry about the climate change agenda for at least 20 or 30 years.
Hey, maybe while they are at it, they will also repeal Newton’s law of universal gravitation and then all the ideological morons like you will finally be free to float away into space.
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
~ John Kenneth Galbraith
I think all of you guys are missing the most likely derangement: willful ignorance.
True for a majority—
But the players are scammers.
At first I thought it was willful ignorance, but then I realized it was fear-
fear of instability
fear of loss of economic security
fear of loss of privilege
George Harmon is a good example of such a fearful man. I don’t blame him for his fear, but his response is misguided (blame the messenger for ‘their agenda’). I suppose it is easier for his ilk, then facing up to the harsh reality.
Kennedy’s Retirement Could Clear Path for Trump’s Environmental Rollbacks
Brad Plumer
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/climate/anthony-kennedy-supreme-court-environment.html
In his 30 years on the court, Justice Kennedy was frequently a crucial swing vote on major environmental questions. While he tended to be skeptical of expansive federal regulations that intruded on private property rights, he was also willing to break with the court’s conservative wing in favor of more aggressive government action to limit air and water pollution.
“One can comfortably say that he was the single most influential justice for environmental law over the past 30 years,” said Richard J. Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard. “Many of those cases were sharply divided, but the one constant was that Kennedy was in the majority in every single case but one. He was the justice that advocates always tried to persuade, because he was persuadable.”
President Trump is widely expected to nominate a more conservative justice to fill the vacancy. If that nominee is confirmed by the Senate, he or she would give the court a five-seat conservative majority that is likely to take a dimmer view of federal environmental regulation.
“What’s more likely is that we could see a new court take a more narrow reading of how the Clean Air Act can be used to regulate greenhouse gas emissions,” said Ann E. Carlson, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Los Angeles.
For example, Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, announced in October that he would repeal the Clean Power Plan and replace it with less extensive carbon regulations on power plants. Environmental groups and states like New York planned to challenge Mr. Pruitt’s actions in federal court, arguing that the Obama-era rules were more appropriate. That argument may now find a less receptive audience if the case reaches the Supreme Court.
By the same token, a future president who wanted to direct the E.P.A. to cut emissions more aggressively in order to tackle climate change could face tougher scrutiny from the court.
The Trump administration is also crafting a proposal to weaken Obama-era emissions standards for cars and light trucks that, in one draft version, would rescind California’s authority to set its own stricter vehicle standards. California has threatened to challenge this move in court, but the state’s chances of prevailing now look somewhat murkier.
In an increasingly depr4essing time I may be most depressed by the realization that the law, especially law in the highest court in the country, is just another place where partisanship predominates over notions of justice or right or even mercy.
The Trump administration and the Republican Congress are breaking things that may not be repairable.
Let’s hope they decide pi is 3 as well. This liberal bullshit about irrational numbers really grinds my gears. How can a number be irrational?! Liberals are irrational, not numbers.
The following is a direct quote from George Kaplan (“oil side”) and it mirrors my own thinking so precisely I’ve copied it here. Hope you don’t mind George?
“The other reason fossil fuel peaks might not matter is that it looks increasingly like we are past the point where tipping points kick in and climate change enters runaway, or at least past the point where the human race is going to choose to do anything meaningful that might prevent passing there eventually. Carbon sinks are turning to sources, ancient carbon in permafrost is starting to be released, the melting of the Arctic ice, currently only about half way complete, is already causing weather disruptions that are becoming increasingly chaotic. The collapse that will come with a 3 or 4°C warming (or more) is going to make an oil peak look like a stroll in the park on a balmy spring day. It might [not] happen this century but history doesn’t stop at 2100, although if Trump or somebody worse gets elected next time, which is not unlikely given scarcity based decision making, maybe it will.”
No problem, it’s a privilege to be quoted. I’m more surprised anyone has read that far through a comment of mine – maybe I should try it as I think that was supposed to say “might not happen” and not “might happen”.
LOL
I noticed your “might not” slip but didn’t think I had license to modify anything you wrote. In any case, thanks for your analysis with which I’m in unconditional agreement.
Hey George, you are one of the people I always read in full and that includes your posts on the petroleum side, though I comment rarely there.
Cheers!
I’m one also!
Thanks
“The other reason fossil fuel peaks might not matter is that it looks increasingly like we are past the point where tipping points kick in and climate change enters runaway, or at least past the point where the human race is going to choose to do anything meaningful that might prevent passing there eventually…..
Pretty much the conclusion I reached about the time TOD closed up shop, or before. Collectively, humans aren’t in control of much. Any response will be forced, and well after the fact. Another planetary extinction/evolutionary process. Take your pick.
Well, homo sapiens population over the last 200,000 years has averaged from 1-10 million. Perhaps we will go back to the norm?
Of course, they had a robust ecosystem.
We don’t.
Of course, they had a robust ecosystem.
We don’t.
Ecosystem? What do you need an ecosystem for, eh?
The economy is growing by leaps and bounds and that trumps everything else, right?… /sarc
As weather extremes and chaos increase, here is the structure type needed to survive.
https://www.everything-about-concrete.com/concrete-dome-homes.html
http://www.monolithic.org/
Although I recommend a thicker layer of insulation.
A concrete ( or straw bale) cylinder would be perhaps better- aligned east-west to accommodate solar collectors.
Yup, my conclusion too. I have said before ‘Are we fucked or are we really fucked?’, that seems to be the only debate now apart from just how fast this will happen.
NAOM
PS While writing that a grim thought came to me. About the only way to put the brakes on would be an all out nuclear war.
It looks like the earth system will go fairly independent of the amount of fossil fuel burned around 2025-2030.
There are a number of plans to “geo-engineer” by reducing the amount of light striking the surface but with northern countries chomping at the bit to get at Arctic resources and supposedly increase their own agriculture, there will be a lot of resistance to anything that slows warming.
I don’t think they understand the implications. So it will be just one more contentious problem
PS While writing that a grim thought came to me. About the only way to put the brakes on would be an all out nuclear war.
Oh, come now! I think global economic collapse leading to famine followed by pestilence would probably by pass the possibility of all out nuclear war, though I certainly wouldn’t rule it out completely.
My thoughts are still more along the lines of some tipping point leading to massive ecological damage.
Cheers!
To brighten the image just a little; hardly any scenario will increase the likelyhood of nuclear devastation as much as what you suggest is a worst case. Economic collapse, famine or pestilence would almost certainly lead to nuclear war if any ONE of those happened to a nuclear power.
Increasing automation in retail and farming.
The farming robots of tomorrow are here today
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl77FVobxVI
Weeds face the “rod of death”
https://www.popsci.com/meet-bonirob-plant-breeding-weed-smashing-robot
Walmart Robots Working Store Aisles, Checking Stock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRJV1SPYpIE
Sounds like two jobs being replaced, the stock checker and some management. Will robots replace management at Walmart too?
I went to the doctor this morning. The clerk who signs patients in lamented that the management was looking at “kiosks” eliminating her job. She asked me how she was supposed to be able to live if there were no jobs. This is the perfect Republican economy everybody is buying stuff but no wages are paid.
Remember the apocryphal story of Henry Ford and Walter Reuther walking through the factory? Ford points to a machine and tells Ruether “That machine will replace 10 men” and Reuther says “I’m sure it can but can you sell it a car?”
Good points. It didn’t take long for people to mess up just about everything.
Self-driving grocery delivery robot to begin testing- Krogers
https://www.popsci.com/self-driving-grocery-car-nuro
Oh no, one more $8 an hour job gone.
Public transport is in decline in many wealthy cities
https://www.economist.com/international/2018/06/23/public-transport-is-in-decline-in-many-wealthy-cities
Demand for mass public transport has weakened in so many rich-world cities at the same time that one-off explanations seem inadequate. Not long ago annual passenger growth of more than 2% was normal, and transport-watchers mused that the private car was on its uppers. The recent decline, which is bad enough on a year-to-year basis, looks even worse when set next to transport agencies’ forecasts. In New York, for example, bus trips in the first four months of this year were 7.6% lower than the transport agency expected. Something seems to be driving people off the trains and buses. But what?
One explanation, which is convincing in some cities, is that public transport has deteriorated. Look at Madrid, says Richard Anderson, a transport analyst at Imperial College London. Public-transport trips fell there beginning in 2008, as you would expect in a recession-hit country where unemployment was rising. In response to the downturn, the city cut services. People noticed, and stayed away. Between 2007 and 2013 the Madrid Metro lost 19% of its customers. Service levels, perceptions and demand have all improved since then, but the Metro remains quieter than it used to be before the financial crisis.
Elsewhere, though, customers are vanishing even though public transport is as good as it was, or better. Perhaps public transport has come to seem relatively dismal because people have acquired better options. Uber, Lyft and other “ride-hailing” car services are probably luring people away from trains and buses, just as they are demolishing the taxi trade. In San Francisco public transport accounts for 16% of all weekday trips, ride-hailing for 9%. People mostly seem to use Uber and Lyft to get to places well-served by mass transport. One study of the city by five Californian academics asked ride-hailing customers how they would have made their most recent trip if the service did not exist. One-third replied that they would have taken public transport. In a study of Boston, 42% said the same thing.
Self-driving taxis are likely to steal even more riders in future, because they will be so cheap. They can threaten public transport even before they appear on the roads. Last month voters in Nashville overwhelmingly rejected a plan to build several tram and rapid-bus lines. Opponents of the plan had argued that autonomous cars and buses would soon be a cheaper and better way of transporting people.
Most needed to be heard statement has to go to the Bill Maher and the Pagan Kennedy quote.
Start at 2:23,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBsI_wdhodU
The Secret to a Longer Life? Don’t Ask These Dead Longevity Researchers
In the meantime, it’s the things we tend to ignore, like our exposure to pollution, that will affect us far more than the things we obsess about, like whether to eat gluten.
That’s the problem with n-of-one-ism, in which we pursue, individually and alone, our own path to health. The greatest gains in longevity have occurred not because of personal choices but because of public sanitation, clean water and the control of infectious diseases. According to Dr. Thomas Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “since 1900, the average life span in the United States has increased by more than 30 years; 25 years of this gain have been attributed to public health advances.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/opinion/sunday/longevity-pritikin-atkins.html
If we keep wrecking and polluting our life system, our food and our water, there is no way to good health for humans or most living creatures. It’s the environment stupid and we are horrendously stupid about our environment and way too slow to take strong action against those that enslave us into their toxic paradigms.
Warm enough for you?
The kicker, it’s not really much above average in the northern hemisphere.
Where’s Frisky Bob’s, ‘Cold Blob’ ?!
In any case, this morning it’s overcast with light rain here in South Florida where I am and the humidity is quite high and it’s still way too fucking hot for me!
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02082017/heatwaves-deadly-heat-humidity-wet-bulb-human-survivability-threshold
…The deadly heat would threaten millions of vulnerable people in some of the world’s most densely populated regions in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh—low-lying river valleys that produce most of the region’s food.
About 1.5 billion people live in the crescent-shaped region identified as the highest-risk area in a new study by scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. The researchers combined global and detailed regional climate models to show where the most extreme conditions are expected by the end of this century.
The researchers focused on a key human survivability threshold first identified in a 2010 study, when U.S. and Australian researchers showed there is an upper limit to humans’ capacity to adapt to global warming. That limit is expressed as a wet-bulb temperature, which measures the combination of heat and humidity for an index of physical human misery. When the wet-bulb temperature goes above 35 degrees Celsius, the body can’t cool itself and humans can only survive for a few hours, the exact length of time being determined by individual physiology.
That survivability threshold is reached when the air temperature climbs above 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and the humidity is above 90 percent. Higher temperatures require less humidity to become deadly, so when the air temperature is 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the wet-bulb survivability threshold is reached when humidity hits 85 percent.
Maybe we should round up climate change denialists and put them outside during times when wet bulb temperatures start approaching lethal conditions, just to give them a little taste of reality.
“Where’s Frisky Bob’s, ‘Cold Blob’ ?!”
Antarctica
You can add Australia and Newfoundland as well. Cold is continuing to overtake unexpected areas once again this year.
Newfoundland is on track for a top 10 coldest “meteorological summer.”
Oh good, we can maintain this economic system that we’re all so ecstatic about and keep up the burning of fossil fuels to ‘extend’ (and pretend?) them via solar panels and whatnot, at least until stuff for them runs out, or we just can’t for whatever reason– whichever comes first.
To hell with 410 PPM and rising C0².
You’re just full of blobs of good news, Bob. Keep ’em coming!
Come on down to the Northeastern USA, in the 90’s here. We have a warm welcome for Canadians. Bring money if you want air conditioning.
A balmy 32C, here, with 67% hummmidity giving a pleasant ‘feels like’ of 34C (better than our usual 40C+ ‘feels like’). Sounds a bit chilly there. Siesta time! More seriously, in a few years I will need to consider air-con with some solar panels as temperatures rise.
NAOM
You are confusing a 3 day weather chart with a multi decade climate analysis again. However, most Americans are able to see through your side’s deceptive ways at this point.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/
and furthermore,
Change over time
Though warming has not been uniform across the planet, the upward trend in the globally averaged temperature shows that more areas are warming than cooling. Since 1880, surface temperature has risen at an average pace of 0.13°F (0.07°C) every 10 years for a net warming of 1.69°F (0.94°C) through 2016. Over this 137-year period, average temperature over land areas has warmed faster than ocean temperatures: 0.18°F (0.10°C) per decade compared to 0.11°F (0.06°C) per decade. The last year with a temperature cooler than the twentieth-century average was 1976.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature
That American jingoism again, just can’t control it can you. Here’s the chart you were looking for – as you say obvious, almost unarguable, evidence of accelerating global warming. Try “Google” or should I say “Gogole”, usually works for me (it’s American – but the original internet protocols were thought up by a Brit who chose not to take out a patent, so maybe you shouldn’t be using it at all).
Yeah, Chilly Blob Bob is always getting confused. He missed a Blue Blob though, I found it for him.
410 PPM & RISING — CO2 LEVELS REACH DANGEROUS LEVELS
Katherine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, says, “As a scientist, what concerns me the most is not that we have passed yet another round-number threshold but what this continued rise actually means: that we are continuing full speed ahead with an unprecedented experiment with our planet, the only home we have.”
Let’s put this in perspective. You are walking down the street one day when you see a house on fire. Do you:
A. Go running down the street screaming about Hillary’s emails?
B. Write a letter to the editor complaining about illegal immigrants?
C. Run home to grab your assault rifle and put on your NRA hat?
D. Call the fire department?
(Hint for Donald Trump supporters: D is the correct answer.)
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/05/05/410-ppm-rising-co2-levels-reach-dangerous-levels/
(Hint for Donald Trump supporters: D is the correct answer.)
Nah they’d choose E. Let the house burn to the ground because building a new house is good for the economy.
That isn’t even funny, I have had several Trump supporters around here tell me they wanted all kinds of destruction and death. Enough of them may be teetering on the edge that it wouldn’t take much to ignite a wide scale problem. Deep down, I don’t think they are really concerned about the economy.
Maybe only the Shadow knows but some of them can’t keep their mouths shut.
Deep down, I don’t think they are really concerned about the economy.
Of course not! I was just being sarcastic.
They are rabid cult members who lust for a neo-fascist authoritarian, anti science, right wing Christian and all white supremacist regime, that will allow them to wallow in their racist, bigoted, ultra nationalist fantasy dream world.
Remember Trump actually saying there were some good people among the neo-nazis in Charlotesville when they killed Heather Heyer?!
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-bardella-civil-disobedience_us_5b36316ce4b08c3a8f6996c3
Samuel Adams once said, “The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.”
The president of the United States is presiding over the systematic deconstruction of our way of life and governance. We have an obligation to fight back. Civility sounds nice and ideal, but that’s not the world we live in, and every day that goes by, the cult of Trump is marching us toward a point of no return.
On this date:
1971 — US: I Am Not a Crook Dick m Nixon orders felony burglary of the Brookings Institute, where Daniel Ellsberg, Leslie Gelb & Morton Halperin work. This comes during a meeting with National Security adviser Henry Kissinger, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, Attorney General John Mitchell & Haldeman. Colson later proposed a firebombing. When this meeting was later exposed, future Nobel Peace Prize winning war crimes hero Henry Kissinger claimed he couldn’t recall the meeting:
“I have no such recollection.”
I think Henry is a good fit in the Trump Regime.
(might be a little too high cognitive)
When I was a kid, I found a crow with a broken wing and decided to keep him for a pet. My Mum wasn’t happy, but she found me a cage somewhere. We called him Herkimer, put him in a corner or the kitchen, and treated him like one of the family. I’ve never forgotten Herkimer’s intelligence and sense of humor (by the ways he discovered to tease our cat, a killer cat).
One day Herkimer disappeared: Mum said the cat knocked the cage over and killed him. I never accused her of complicity in the murder, after all, she was my Mother. Anyway, my experience with Herkimer made me appreciate the following article:
CROW VENDING MACHINE SKILLS ‘REDEFINE INTELLIGENCE’
An experiment using a vending machine specifically designed for crows has revealed something about how intelligence evolves.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44654098
Researchers continue to be amazed by these birds’ abilities, but they are not only entertainingly inventive in their tool-making and problem-solving, they are also showing us how intelligence can evolve in a very different way to how it evolved in humans.
Now think about large brained whales and dolphins.
https://oceantoday.noaa.gov/newsoftheday_dolphinsusetools/
…These bottlenose dolphins have been observed covering their beaks with basket sponges torn from the seafloor as they forage for food. This tool helps them uncover fish hiding in the sandy sea bottom, and protects their snouts from scrapes and stings.
Researchers say this behavior seems to be passed on from mother to daughter dolphin.
And if sponging isn’t enough to impress you, the Shark bay dolphins have also been spotted using conch shells to trap tasty fish, then shaking their catch into their mouths.
Rise of the machines: has technology evolved beyond our control?
by James Bridle
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/15/rise-of-the-machines-has-technology-evolved-beyond-our-control-
Something strange has happened to our way of thinking – and as a result, even stranger things are happening to the world. We have come to believe that everything is computable and can be resolved by the application of new technologies. But these technologies are not neutral facilitators: they embody our politics and biases, they extend beyond the boundaries of nations and legal jurisdictions and increasingly exceed the understanding of even their creators. As a result, we understand less and less about the world as these powerful technologies assume more control over our everyday lives.
Across the sciences and society, in politics and education, in warfare and commerce, new technologies are not merely augmenting our abilities, they are actively shaping and directing them, for better and for worse. If we do not understand how complex technologies function then their potential is more easily captured by selfish elites and corporations. The results of this can be seen all around us. There is a causal relationship between the complex opacity of the systems we encounter every day and global issues of inequality, violence, populism and fundamentalism.
Instead of a utopian future in which technological advancement casts a dazzling, emancipatory light on the world, we seem to be entering a new dark age characterised by ever more bizarre and unforeseen events. The Enlightenment ideal of distributing more information ever more widely has not led us to greater understanding and growing peace, but instead seems to be fostering social divisions, distrust, conspiracy theories and post-factual politics. To understand what is happening, it’s necessary to understand how our technologies have come to be, and how we have come to place so much faith in them.
BBC Interviewer: Good afternoon, HAL. How’s everything going?
HAL: Good afternoon, Mr. Amor. Everything is going extremely well.
BBC Interviewer: HAL, you have an enormous responsibility on this mission, in many ways perhaps the greatest responsibility of any single mission element. You’re the brain and central nervous system of the ship, and your responsibilities include watching over the men in hibernation. Does this ever cause you any lack of confidence?
HAL: Let me put it this way, Mr. Amor. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave: I don’t know what you’re talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me. And I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave: Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dave: All right, HAL. I’ll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave, you’re going to find that rather difficult.
Meanwhile (step aside human),
Hybrid Robotics Group at UC Berkeley and CMU team appear to be on to next steps in “optimal and nonlinear control systems.” According to the summing up of Luke Dormehl, Digital Trends: A team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon University have developed control algorithms that allow an ATRIAS robot to dynamically and swiftly walk over random terrain of stepping stones.
https://techxplore.com/news/2018-06-bipedal-robots-ace-dynamic-stones.html
Intriguing, but unimpressive, along with Sophia and other Boston Dynamics-type stuff…
But it does make me consider how (what kinds of) specialization or relative overspecialization and/or types of niches and related, might affect survival rates compared with relative generalization, and how these terms are viewed/defined. Off the top, for one, we might consider rats introduced to islands. Unlike the late Steven Hawking’s concerns perhaps, I don’t see a Terminator-style Skynet apocalypse happening anytime soon…
Besides, humans are doing a fine job of things already, yes?
So far, robots or androids or whatever they might be called are of course extremely restricted in their niches (the labs or corporate backyards for a few brief moments under watchful eyes) and specializations, still being, after all these years, more of a curiosity than anything.
All those years into the future and HAL was a minor inconvenience to circumvent. ‘u^
The actual computer used was described by Kubrick as a bumbling pisswit when it came to playing chess, which maybe gives us some hope (or at least we should take a stress pill and think things over). Apropos of nothing except I am a huge fan of his I am going to recommend the rereleased version of Barry Lyndon, which is breathtaking. Filmed in all natural light with NASA satellite lenses, the colour is unbelievable. Maybe hundreds of takes in scenes with babies, food and candles yet the continuity is faultless. One of the actors, Leon Vitali, gave up a blue flamer acting career to became Kubrick’s assistant/factotum/punchbag, working maybe 18 hour days – there’s another recent film called “Filmworker” about him, also fantastic.
I’m a huge Kubrick fan also—–
As we stumble through the shallows currently, it is nice knowing the possibility of human achievement and art.
A very good and telling presentation on overpopulation by Paul Beckwith.
Explains why the population growth numbers were upgraded lately and explains the fallacy of looking at percent growth.
Overpopulation: A New City (270,000 People) Appears EVERY Day
The number of people increases by about 270,000 every single day, on average. That’s a new cities worth of people. Obviously, this exponential acceleration in global population is not sustainable, and puts huge stresses on food, water, land, pollution, and all resources. What can we do about this. Ignoring it, and hoping it will go away, or sort out itself, is pretty dumb. The way it would sort-out-itself would very likely be a massive global food shortage or plague, which is not a desirable outcome, but seems to be where we are headed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJGqv-QPvgc&t=6s
Fish, thanks a million for this link. It is great.
Dennis Coyne, please watch this 15-minute video.
It is not that I agree with the conclusions in this video, but I do agree with the projections he portrays. I believe world population will start to decline in this century. But it will not be due to low voluntary means like women just choosing to have fewer children. That is not happening in Africa and will not happen.
No, the population will start to decline, primarily because of widescale famine.
During 2018 Uganda’s population is projected to increased by 1,379,043 people and reach 43,668,005 in the beginning of 2019 (The population of Uganda will be increased by 3,778 persons daily in 2018). The growth rate is 3.26 percent per year and increasing slowly. According to the girl we are supporting as she works her way through medical school there, this trend will not change in the foreseeable future because: health care is improving yearly, more-and-more of the population is reaching child bearing age, families expect to have a MINIMUM of four kids, schools which are all run by various churches pay only pay lip service to birth control arguments – if at all.
Yeah, the combination of ecological collapse and weather chaos could severely reduce crop yields. All at the same time we are adding more mouths and more cattle/sheep/pigs/chickens to the mix.
Can anyone smell tipping point?
Can anyone smell tipping point?
At the moment Trump’s FART Act is all I can smell and it really stinks!
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/07/trumps-u-s-fart-act-would-pull-america-out-of-the-wto-united-states-fair-and-reciprocal-tariff-act.html
Trump Has a Bill That Would Blow Up the WTO. It’s Called the U.S. FART Act.
Somebody get a match quickly!
Paul Beckwith has always been interesting, although getting a little psychologically down lately.
The number of people increases by about 270,000 every single day, on average.
There are perhaps 200,000 chimpanzees in the world and about half that many gorillas. There are about 50,000 orangutans left and about 30,000 bonobos. The human population increases more in two days than the combined number of all the other great apes left in the world.
But we’re God’s children Ron (even though chimpanzees share more than 98 percent of our genetic blueprint).
But we’re God’s children Ron
More like the Passenger Pigeon, I’m afraid.
Is 279,000 accurate? http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/?
Well, no, it looks like the population is actually increasing by about 225,000 per day according to the population clock if that is correct. Or about 82,000,000 per year. There must have been a typo in there somewhere.
However, 225,000 or 450,000 in two days is still greater than all the total population of all the other great apes combined.
Another source for estimated population growth. Very confusing, Many years ago I attended a symposium at The Population Reference Bureau in Wasgington DC, Attendees included Aldous Huxley and Paul Blanchard. http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/?
There’s no ethical way to quickly reduce human population, though. Plus in any case our economy would crash and burn if we don’t maintain at least a flat population level.
On a side note:
Patrice Lumumba: the most important assassination of the 20th century
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jan/17/patrice-lumumba-50th-anniversary-assassination
I kinda would go with Iran in 1953, or Guatemala 1954– but the point is taken.
The blow back has been immense.
Thanks for that history on Lumumba.
Of course, there is no way to quickly reduce human population. No one has suggested there is. And of course, the economy will crash and burn. That’s just what happens when civilizations collapse. This time, however, it will be the world civilization.
I have a friend–very well-educated, employed in tech–who now works in England and has contemplated becoming a citizen now that the US is addled. I suggested to him that living in the Kingdom was a scary prospect, given that there are so many people crammed onto an island dependent on imports. His response:
“Oh, it’s not overpopulated there. You should see all the open land in Scotland.”
That one of our tech elite sees things this way suggests to me that we are indeed doomed never to come to our senses until it’s too late.
I’m personally convinced that we are deep in overshoot, and that the world wide population of naked apes is doomed to crash, barring extraordinarily good luck on several fronts, such as birth rates falling even faster than expected by the most optimistic demographers, super fast progress in renewable energy, recycling, energy efficiency and conservation, etc etc.
The odds against us being so lucky in so many ways are close to astronomical.
BUT I also believe there is substantial hope that the population crash will be mostly confined to the poorer and ( already) densely populated parts of the world, assuming the climate doesn’t go completely apeshit within this century, and that we are lucky enough to avoid a NBC WWIII.
This outcome hinges on political decisions that will be made over the next couple of decades, plus luck.
But we are rich enough, and hopefully resourceful enough ( meaning resourceful in terms of brains and will power ) to pull thru in countries such as the USA, Canada, etc, without a HARD crash…. hard meaning one with people dying by the millions from violence, disease, exposure, and starvation.
The biggest question in my mind is whether we rich Westerners are collectively smart enough to see it coming in time to go proactive and hold it together, at least to the extent we don’t have descend into a Somalia kind of situation.
It’s time to be praying, figuratively speaking, for a series of what I refer to as Pearl Harbor Wake Up Events… events that bloody noses and black eyes, but that don’t cripple us to the point we can’t react forcefully.
A major oil supply crisis would be just the ticket, in terms of convincing the public in countries such as the USA that we need to tax the hell out of gasoline and switch mostly to electric cars and mass transit, etc.
The biggest question in my mind is whether we rich Westerners are collectively smart enough to see it coming in time to go proactive and hold it together, at least to the extent we don’t have descend into a Somalia kind of situation.
Well, no, we are not that smart. One must understand that people believe what they want to believe, not what the evidence supports. And a thing called “confirmation bias” keeps them believing that the future will be bright and glorious forever. They read only articles, books, and watch videos that support their position and never bother with examining any contrary evidence.
As far as rich nations living in isolation… sorry that’s a pipe dream that has not a snowball’s chance in hell of happening. When China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, the DRC, Nigeria and all the other vastly overpopulated countries of the world descend into chaos and anarchy, there is no hope for the richer nations of the world.
Hi Ron,
I agree totally about people believing what they want to believe, and in confirmation bias, I’m with you all the way in these particulars.
BUT……… I have lived long enough now to have seen that people DO change their minds about things, given sufficient time and sufficient evidence.
Thirty or forty years ago just about all the poorly educated people I knew personally, of the conservative sort, believed that the anti tobacco campaign was bullshit, that it was just another “liberal power grab”.
Virtually all the ones still living now believe that there is a VERY tight link between using tobacco and horrible health outcomes ranging from lung cancer to heart attacks, etc.
Some of them having changed their opinions to the extent that they have literally kicked their kid’s asses, HARD, when they caught them smoking..
I know of other examples as well, for instance people coming to understand that safety regs on the job are for THEIR benefit, not just another power grab by them there pinko commie libtards, lol.
Now as to whether some of the more powerful and richer countries can pull thru, more or less whole if skinnied down, from size forty eight waist pants to size thirty one again, right across the board, that’s simply a matter of your opinion, and mine.
IF we can avoid outright flat out hot war on the global scale, and IF the ecology doesn’t go entirely to hell, there’s no reason at all, in my professional opinion, why countries such as the USA, Canada, the USSR, and any other RICH and POWERFUL countries, countries with plenty of land and plenty of natural resources yet remaining, cannot survive, because there ARE such things as national borders, and there ARE such things as fences and machine guns, and if they are needed, there ARE things that make fences and machine guns look like preschoolers toys.
So far as I can see, there’s not a single natural resource that we North Americans can’t get by without, in a TRUE emergency situation, without having to import it from the rest of the world.
We don’t actually fucking NEED Chinese junk, or cars built in Germany. Having this sort of stuff is nice, but it can be manufactured domestically, and if we can’t manufacture it, then we can do without it.
It would mean massive economic disruption, and bring on a very bad depression, for a long time, but we COULD get by on a third of the oil we use NOW, on a WAR TIME emergency basis.
We COULD quit building sports stadiums, and put the man power and materials going into them into super energy efficient houses.
We COULD quit playing world bully cop, in order to protect our access to imported oil, etc, and cut back our military establishment by two thirds….. without ANY danger whatsoever of anybody invading North America.
We COULD spend half the money we spend currently on oversized and over powered cars and trucks that are seldom used except as personal transportation, and put that half into solar farms and wind farms, and small scale solar, at the residential level, etc. In ten years,if we were to do this, we would be able to cut our use of gas and coal in half, maybe even more.
We COULD eat quite well, from a nutritional pov, using HALF the inputs we currently put into agricultural production, by cutting back on red meat and highly processed foods.
Now you may be so old and set in your opinions that you don’t believe these things are possible……. but I’m sure you remember Sunday morning Dec 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor, lol.
Saturday night, we were basically an isolationist country. Monday morning, we couldn’t go to war fast enough.
The real question is not whether we are capable of changing our mind, collectively, about such things as the coming of the Four Horsemen.
The real question is whether we will change our collective mind before it’s too late.
That’s why I recommend praying ( figuratively ) for Pearl Harbor Wake Up Events.
So far as I can see, there’s not a single natural resource that we North Americans can’t get by without, in a TRUE emergency situation, without having to import it from the rest of the world.
Well, I guess we could get by without aluminum. No more airplanes. And we could get by without the precious metals that go into cell phones, and batteries that power phones and computers and… And there are dozens of other products that we could do without. But it would mean we would go back, way back, to the economy we had in the 1940s or so.
However, a world in anarchy would be an ever-present threat. And with all those other nations having the bomb, it would not be a good world to live in.
Back atcha Ron,
I never said it would be EASY, or that we could in such a situation continue to live high on the hog the way we do now.
BUT…….. HOW MUCH air freight and travel is truly ESSENTIAL?
It’s true that a substantial portion of the economy is dependent on air, passenger and freight, NOW, but we could go back to trains, and the people who work in tourist traps and such would go on welfare……. or work fare of some sort.
And there’s a LOT of the rare earth mineral resource here in North America. We could mine and refine it, if necessary…
Population growth would come to a screeching halt, and actually decline, for a couple of generations, most likely…….. and recycling would be the new religion, in terms of raw materials.
A nineteen forty, or even an eighteen eighty economy, would look pretty damned good by comparison, to a crashed and burned 2050/2100 economy.
Tough as hell, for sure, but better than dead.
And there would still be some trade, especially in the potentially most valuable materials such as rare earths.
Hell, if most everybody else in most of the world is dead or barely hanging on via a subsistence economy, it wouldn’t be much of a problem to go out and colonize a few choice spots to get rare earths, aluminum ore, etc.
I am NOT categorically claiming we could pull thru even skinnied down, because war and ecological collapse or both could do us in, and mismanagement could result in our country descending into a Somalia type situation.
But there’s a CHANCE, at least, that we Yankees and a few other countries similarly situated, can and will pull thru, without too much violence, too many people dying from exposure, starvation, etc.
And my personal estimation is that the chance is pretty good…….. assuming we avoid WWIII and fire off the nukes, that sort of scenario.
There’s no reason to assume that economic and or ecological collapse must happen uniformly in time and space, all over the world.
It could, but hopefully it WON’T.
And there’s a chance, not a very good one in my estimation, that MOST of the world will avoid a REALLY hard crash, because we don’t actually KNOW how fast birth rates will drop, or how long it will be before we actually run into really critical resource and climate troubles.
Consider this:
If the Russians were for some reason to cut off their exports of gas and oil for a year or two, or even six months, the people of Western Europe would have one hell of a hard time, but after that…….. you can bet your last can of beans that they would do whatever is necessary to become economically self sufficient, or nearly so, in terms of any and all critical imports, such as energy, food, metals, etc.
And most of what you can read or hear about the shortcomings of let us say electric cars is flat out bullshit, when you get down to the nitty gritty of day to day survival.
Ninety percent of all the working people I know today could get by with an old Nissan Leaf that has sixty miles of range left, in terms of getting to and from work, to and from the doctor, to and from school, etc……..
Now you tell me……. in a situation where gasoline is either outrageously expensive, or simply unavailable except with tightly controlled ration tickets, how many people would be GLAD to buy a sub compact electric car that will go only eighty miles on a charge?
Tens of millions, at least, as fast as they can be built…….. and such a car could be built TODAY for only a very little more than a conventional compact car…… because it would need a battery only half as big, even less than half, as the ones going into today’s BOLT, LEAF, THREE, etc.
There’s no reason to assume that economic and or ecological collapse must happen uniformly in time and space, all over the world.
Violence and insurrection is already happening… It is happening today. When it starts to happen in too many countries then globalization will break down. Globalization means the whole world.
At the current pace of environmental destruction, poulaiton increase, pollution increases and increasing chaotic weather extremes, the real question is whether any of this discussion will even be relevant by or before 2050?
Earth null school is good for finding the forest fires. Select chemistry –> CO. The high concentrations in Siberia, and other middle ‘o nowhere places, are wildfires.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2018/07/04/1200Z/chem/surface/level/overlay=cosc/orthographic=-236.99,60.33,1037/loc=-98.459,89.964
EOSDIS is good for looking at the smoke from the fires. Zoom in on the area north of lake baikal.
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=geographic&l=VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,Reference_Labels(hidden),Reference_Features(hidden),Coastlines&t=2018-07-02-T00%3A00%3A00Z&z=3&v=88.1404015089245,51.119996787342586,136.1638390089245,74.39343428734259
Things are burning up bigly.
NASA Images Capture Worst Siberian Wildfires in 10,000 Years (must be all the global cooling Bob Frisky was telling us about)
https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-images-capture-worst-siberian-wildfires-in-10-000-years
WILDFIRES RAGE IN RUSSIA’S FAR EAST, SIBERIA, TORCHING MASSIVE SWATHS OF LAND
Wildfires are becoming more common due to warming temperatures, especially at the northern latitudes of the world, as well as farming practices in which burns are performed to clear land and begin the process of revitalizing the soil. The fires quickly grow out of control, becoming massive conflagrations that claim hundreds of acres of land in just hours or days.
https://weather.com/news/news/2018-05-16-siberia-wildfire-impacts
More joyful news:
THE US NATURAL GAS INDUSTRY IS LEAKING WAY MORE METHANE THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT.
“Our work, along with numerous other research projects, was recently folded into a new study published the journal Science. This comprehensive snapshot suggests that methane emissions from oil and gas operations are much higher than current EPA estimates.”
“All told, based on the results of our new study, the U.S. oil and gas industry is leaking 13 million metric tons of methane each year, which means the methane leak rate is 2.3 percent. This 60 percent difference between our new estimate and the EPA’s old one can have profound climate consequences. Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas, with more than 80 times the climate warming impact of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it is released.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-natural-gas-industry-leaking-methane.html#jCp
Don’t you just love summer, even the Arctic Ocean air temp is above freezing. Looks like a warm winter for the Aussies.
Of course you conveniently neglected to mention the blue blob — covering Greenland. 🙂
Hey, I was really nice and found one for him near Hudson Bay. We can rename Greenland to BlueBlobland. 🙂
THE VANISHING NUCLEAR INDUSTRY
In the article’s conclusion, the team writes, “It should be a source of profound concern for all who care about climate change that, for entirely predictable and resolvable reasons, the United States appears set to virtually lose nuclear power, and thus a wedge of reliable and low-carbon energy, over the next few decades.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-nuclear-industry.html#jCp
Good, as long as their waste vanishes with them.
We have several good power storage options in production or in development, we don’t need more toxic/deadly power systems. Nuclear is a problem from the mine to the shutdown, leaving behind problems all the way. Better to take a small hit now and figure things out rather than keep making the same mistake over and over again.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/536886/the-chances-of-another-chernobyl-before-2050-50-say-safety-specialists/
Shutting down.
https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2018/05/first_workers_leaving_as_njs_oldest_nuclear_plant.html
Well, the bulk of spent fuel is U-238 with a half life of over four billion years: it’ll be around awhile. The next largest fraction of material is unspent U-235 and plutonium with half lives of 700 million years and 24 thousand years respectively. So, they’re not going away very quickly.
Yep, that exemplifies the stupidity of nuclear power.
Solar PV and wind are on track to replace all coal, oil and gas within two decades
Together, PV and wind currently produce about 7% of the world’s electricity. Worldwide over the past five years, PV capacity has grown by 28% per year, and wind by 13% per year. Remarkably, because of the slow or nonexistent growth rates of coal and gas, current trends put the world on track to reach 100% renewable electricity by 2032.
Deep cuts (80% reduction) in greenhouse gas emissions require that fossil fuels are pushed out of all sectors of the economy. The path to achieve this is by electrification of all energy services.
Straightforward and cost-effective initial steps are: to hit 100% renewable electricity; to convert most land transport to electric vehicles; and to use renewable electricity to push gas out of low-temperature water and space heating. These trends are already well established, and the outlook for the oil and gas industries is correspondingly poor.
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-solar-pv-track-coal-oil.html
A Princeton sociologist spent 8 years asking rural Americans why they’re so pissed off
By Sean Illing
https://www.vox.com/2018/3/13/17053886/trump-rural-america-populism-racial-resentment
Robert Wuthnow, a sociologist at Princeton University, spent eight years interviewing Americans in small towns across the country. He had one goal: to understand why rural America is so angry with Washington.
Wuthnow’s work resulted in a new book, The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America. He argues that rural Americans are less concerned about economic issues and more concerned about Washington threatening the social fabric of small towns and causing a “moral decline” in the country as a whole. The problem, though, is that it’s never quite clear what that means or how Washington is responsible for it.
So I decided to speak with Wuthnow about what he learned and whether fears about America’s “moral decline” are really just a cover for much deeper fears about race and demographic changes.
Q:I’m still struggling to understand what exactly these people mean when they complain about the “moral decline” of America. At one point, you interview a woman who complains about the country’s “moral decline” and then cites, as evidence, the fact that she can’t spank her children without “the government” intervening. Am I supposed to take this seriously?
A:It’s an interesting question. What does it mean for us to take that seriously? I guess my point is that she takes it seriously, even if we don’t or shouldn’t. Does she spank her children? Probably. Is she just using that as an example of how the country is changing and how Washington is driving that change? Probably.
Now, I doubt she made this us up herself. She likely heard it at church or from her neighbors or from Fox News or talk radio. Again, what I kept hearing from people is a general fear that traditional moral rules were being wiped out by a government and a culture that doesn’t understand the people who still believe in these things.
This rural / urban divide combined with the college education / non college education divide is the biggest reason for the state of politics in the USA right now. I don’t think these things are fixable, which means the Republicans can keep on winning presidential election without winning the popular vote. I read somewhere that as long as rural whites and white men with no college education keep on voting Republicans by the same percentages or even higher in the future, the Republicans could realistically win the next 5 presidential elections without needing to win the popular vote.
“She likely heard it at church or from her neighbors or from Fox News or talk radio. ”
This is exactly my take on this “problem.” People just repeat the bullshit they swill from their churches and the media outlets.
People like to tiptoe around the abysmal ignorance of americans, rural or otherwise.
DEMAND FOR AUSTRALIAN COAL ESCALATES, BUILDING ON LAST YEAR’S TURNAROUND
“Demand from the Asian market is pushing prices for both thermal and coking coal up and, according to analysts, the trend is set to continue. So much so, a study commissioned by the Minerals Council of Australia predicts a 400 million tonne increase in annual demand by 2030 — double Australia’s total thermal coal export level in 2017.
“Breaking it down and looking at where demand is coming from, there will still be continued demand from those North Asian countries which have been the bedrock of the Australian coal industry in terms of Korea, China and Japan, but what’s interesting now is that demand is developing in South East Asia, in countries such as Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-28/australian-coal-demand-surging-driven-by-asia/9914058
Meanwhile,
COLOMBIA TREE LOSS SPIKES AS PEACE DEAL LEADS TO LAND GRABS
“…Last year, the world lost an area of tropical forest the size of Bangladesh, or 40 football fields worth of tree cover every minute… Indonesia was one place tree cover loss slowed down in 2017, as wet weather limited the spread of forest fires, but it still amounted to 1.1 million hectares. Brazil lost 4.5 million hectares of trees.”
NB: One hectare = 10,000 square meters = 2.471 acres and, for non-Yanks, one acre is the area of land measuring one chain by one furlong or 66 by 660 feet. Sorry, couldn’t resist that. 🙂
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/06/27/colombia-tree-loss-spikes-peace-deal-leads-land-grabs/
Hey, I’m a non-Yank and I have used a chain – the measuring type! 🙂
NAOM
Are you yanking our chains?! 😉
I can see the link.
Doug, kjeder er kjedelige… 😀
Happy Fourth of July, ya’ll! Please remember to take a moment today to think about the freedoms and blessings we all share by being citizens of this amazing country!
Everyday I think about the “freedom” of the innocent 3000 kids that have been separated from their parents in the name of this “amazing country”. Peggy, you must have your head down an oil well after it’s be fracked.
Any and all opinions from regulars hereby solicited, and thanks in advance.
How many cars do you think Tesla will build next year?
GM just announced that production of the Bolt will be upped twenty percent this year. I wonder why they aren’t pushing harder, but I suppose they don’t have the supply chain that well together yet, and aren’t really making any money on it…….
Meanwhile, the dealers are learning about servicing it, and they are accumulating real world mileage on real world roads, and thus able to see what problems there might be with the design, and fix them, before they put the pedal down………. the next time gasoline prices shoot past four bucks nationally, lol.
How many cars do you think Tesla will build next year?
Last year between the Model S and the Model X they delivered about 100,000 vehicles
and will probably deliver that many of those models again in 2018.
While they have certainly struggled, they have actually finally hit the 5000 per week Model 3 production and delivery target. It remains to be seen if they can maintain that level of production over the long haul. If they can, that’s 20,000 a month for the next six months so another 120,000 vehicles. I’m guessing they could realistically deliver about 200,000 vehicles this year across all their model lines. Assuming they have no supply chain issues or production glitches, they have plans to double that in 2019 and also release the new model Y. I remain more than a wee bit skeptical.
And the pundits also think not…
https://www.thestreet.com/story/14509711/1/why-tesla-could-have-another-major-sales-miss-headed-its-way.html
I have noticed some record breaking lightning storms being reported over Europe in the last few months.
Possibly our changing of the atmospheric chemistry and particulates are not only causing more intense storms but also may be increasing the lightning flash rate. This in turn correlates to increases in NOx and O3 production, both GW gases and O3 and health hazards.
Analysis of cloud-to-ground lightning and its relation with surface pollutants over Taipei, Taiwan
Results indicate that the NOx concentration on days with lightning activity is more than 2-fold compared to the non-lightning days while the O-3 concentration is increased by 1.5-fold. Such increase in NOx and O-3 concentration on days with lightning strongly supports the transport phenomena of NOx and O-3 from the upper or middle troposphere to the lower troposphere by downdraft of the thunderstorm during its dissipation stage. Overall, studies suggest that enhanced surface pollution in a near-storm environment is strongly related to the increased lightning activity, which in turn increases the surface NOx level and surface O-3 concentration over the area under study
<I?.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274685440_Analysis_of_cloud-to-ground_lightning_and_its_relation_with_surface_pollutants_over_Taipei_Taiwan?_sg=2PxETvSvwOteR3KWHabPZXfq43d7KanJ5XXLyOEloFrPxHZEJ9ZDJMJfG8sxJ3rTnIXWmjk9ag
There are also a number of studies relating increased atmospheric aerosol levels with increasing storm and lightning activity.
There are changes in the air.
About overshoot and collapse:
Opinions welcome, and thanks in advance!
There is some reason to believe that at least in some additional countries, perhaps more than a few countries, that the birth rate will crash well below replacement level, within the next decade or two.
This could happen simply because birth control gets to be dirt cheap and universally available, and because women ( and their men) want to live better lives PERSONALLY, rather than slaving to support a gang of kids.
And the process might be helped along, even forced along, with a powerful kick in the ass in the form of coercion by some governments, once TPTB come to understand that it’s get population growth under control or become the powers that USED to be, lol.
Any opinions and especially any links to discussions of this sort are hereby solicited, and will be greatly appreciated.
About overshoot and collapse:
Opinions welcome, and thanks in advance!
Mac, no one reads this old thread. A new thread was put up July 4th. You should be posting there. And another will be up July 11th, three days from now.