Ron will be posting something soon on the ND Bakken. This thread is for non-petroleum comments. Thanks.
134 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum”
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Ron will be posting something soon on the ND Bakken. This thread is for non-petroleum comments. Thanks.
Comments are closed.
There is a fantastic article by Euan Mearns on high altitude wind power. Something I knew absolutely nothing about. Whether it will deliver as promised remains to be seen, as it is in its infancy, but in any case it makes for a fascinating reading and speculation:
Energy Matters: High Altitude Wind Power Reviewed
Thanks Javier,
I know very little about this, but agree the article was well worth reading.
I believe Wimbi is a mechanical engineer and in any case knows far more than me and he thinks the wind power with kites is a very good idea, unless I have misunderstood him.
Actually I think Wimbi is a Sparky (Electrical Engineer), not a Gear.
BS 1950,ME. After that, in grad school and practice, team member in R%D group.
Typical such group attitudes.
if it exists, it’s possible
if we have done it, we can do it better.
close enough, good enough.
if physics possible, then possible.
politically impossible,irrelevant
I live on a ridge over a river, facing wind.
Lots of vultures scooting up and down that ridge, having fun.
Up and down, fast. No vertical tail, take 180 turn in a couple body lengths
no collisions
shed violent gusts no problem.
So, enthusiasm for kite power.
I have read everything I can find about high altitude wind power, and assuming Old Man Business As Usual lasts a couple more decades, I am convinced the technology will be a big success.
The key will computerized control of the entire flight process, including take off and landing. There’s PLENTY of near empty land out where the wind blows hard and steady, and cows and corn aren’t all that valuable anyway in the event of an occasional crash.
The biggest technical problem may turn out to be building tethers and electrical conductors up to the job that aren’t too heavy. But as best I remember, you are in pretty tall cotton at a thousand feet.
Maybe it would be possible to hang a wind turbine between a hydrogen balloon and the ground, up close to the tether. That would take care of a hell of a lot problems, all you would have to do to keep things under control is locate the balloon rigs far enough apart they could never become entangled. So if you want a working height of say two thousand feet, separating them a little over four thousand feet on the ground would be ample.
I wouldn’t be afraid to farm land with juice kites flying overhead, but I would opt for a heavy duty roll over cab on my tractor just in case one happened to fall on my head, lol.
My silicon valley son tells me can safely assume control system software costs nothing. So, each kite is as smart as a vulture, and can do anything I see them doing, which is everything the kite dance requires, and much more.
Kites on floats off shore could be ideal
cross country glider wings these days are very efficient, and could shed gusts just as the vultures do.
I would bet on offshore wind. Most people live near the coast, and construction costs are rapidly falling.
That float could have hanging fish shelter, so produce fish as well as electricity.
t
True wimbi, and could also be hosting wave generators, once designs have been worked out better.
And PV on appropriate exposed surfaces.
If these systems can’t be feasibly connected to a grid, the electricity could be used for desal and hydrogen production.
Admittedly expensive products, but better than none I suppose.
No conductors,just a dyneema rope,yo yo motion toheavy stuff on island.
E. Mearns works with some incorrect assumptions, the most problematic is IMHO that conevtional windpower can not scale.
Conventional wind can of course scale. In densly populated Germany a few percent (5-8%) of the surface are sufficient to provide electricity for a 100% RE scenario with 2010 wind turbines. With a little bit offshore wind and PV 2-3% more than sufficient to provide electrcity for a 100% RE scenario.
Most countries have better resources than Germany. E.M.’s argument is bogus.
While some aspects of the kite concept are IMHO indeed interesting, no working prototype has been presented yet. Therefore, he compares hot air with systems that exist in reality and BTW still have some room for improvement.
A Friend who owns the Harley, Indian, etc Dealer just stopped by on way to see Blue Angles Show. . I’ve been leaning on him to check into ZERO Electric Motorcycles. He said Factory brought 3 to review and the ride was incredibly thrilling. Must have one for Himself. But after reviewing maintenance schedules, Not a chance consider handling the line since his bread and butter is servicing super techno high maintenance machines that consume expensive parts. An army of techs are required to keep these beasts performing and safe. Dealer must perform the majority of work. Right to repair – WTF?. Maintenance free electric machines are of ZERO Interest. While eCars are the Future, eMotocycles are making sense, considering that many cars get better fuel economy than many bikes.
That’s pretty much been Tesla Motor’s argument all along for why the dealership model does not work for their cars hasn’t it?
Traditional dealerships primary revenue is from parts and service. They are not particularly keen to promote vehicles that undermine their profit model.
I just bought a Chevy Volt. After 1400 miles I have used about 4 gallons of gasoline. My energy equivalent average mileage is about 90 mpge. That is the combination of something like 105 mpge electric and 41 gas. I routinely obtain 60 miles on pure electric with overnight charging and special nighttime rates from the utility. I have yet to get enough billing information to see how much or if I’m saving any money.
Except for the pointless electronic gee-gaws apparently necessary to sell cars to the unwashed masses the car is an engineering marvel; smooth, quiet, adequate power. Hopfully it will be more reliable than my last Chevy from 1983. It certainly is different and I believe the format is the transition car into the future.
Team Ludd seems to be on a roll this week. Some quality humor.
But my favorite is still this line from Ves,
“All you need is electric scooter, flip flops and pair of shades on the tropical island.”
But there is still a long way to catch up with this season’s leading team, Team Koch.
A classic from Fernando Leanme,
“I’m the team Koch quarterback coach, we emphasize handing off to the halfback, who follows right behind a full back who is tossing AAA batteries on the ground, ahead of a hard run right up the middle. The Team EV gets distracted looking at the batteries and we score about 70 % of the time using this rather simple play scheme.”
“I believe the format is the transition car into the future.”
I agree JJHMAN. You can see it happening rapidly. GM, Toyota, and BMW are all taking different approaches with their respective hybrid offerings of the Volt, Prius Prime, and the i3rx, but the result is largely the same: cars that can run on petrol when going long distances, but that the majority of the time are in electric mode. OFM has pointed out several times that a VOLT at 200,000 miles may have very little run time on its engine and other ICE components. These cars may very easily hit half a million miles.
Elite manufacturers like McLaren, Lamborghini, and Ferrari are starting to add electric motors into their supercars for the instant acceleration that they provide, and they are calling them hypercars. It’s very interesting to see both high performance and high efficiency converging on the same solution; electrification of power trains.
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/hyping-hypercars-2014-ferrari-laferrari-vs-2014-mclaren-p1-lamborghini-veneno-comparison-test
In the near future, two car households with a pure battery electric EV and a PHEV will be common. Such households won’t have any distance constraints on their car travel, but the day to day reality will be that they burn very little petrol.
It isn’t hard to imagine that within something like 25-35 years that maps of gas station locations will look similar to what the Tesla Supercharger network looks like now: Interstate locations to facilitate long distance travel.
There simply won’t be enough demand for petrol to support the number of gas stations that we have now. People will be typically leaving both home and work with fully charged cars. Wind power will charge cars at night, and solar power will charge them during the day. Solar canopies will become common over car parks. Electric cars will provide load balancing services.
Within 50 years, gas stations will likely no longer be a thing.
It’s almost insane how much motorcycles cost, compared to cars. They contain less than half as much raw material, etc. You can put four in the same space as one car, on a truck. I suppose it has to do with the low production volumes of any one given model.
In the last thread , OPEC hits a new high, there was some discussion of the problems associated with overbuilding a renewable energy system so as to avoid most or nearly all the need for storage of electrical energy.
Just about every body gave Dennis a tough time. Now I have recently posted comments in favor of building a new generation of nukes, and one of the reasons I am in favor of doing so, assuming they can be built economically and operated safely, is that nukes are the last word in base load power. You don’t have to worry about much of any thing at all, short term, such as a rail road strike, or a hurricane, or a shortage of gas, etc, taking a nuke off line.
So- I recognize that going renewable is going to cost a HELL of a lot. But nobody who has been criticizing Dennis has yet come up with an workable answer to the fossil fuel depletion problem, other than nukes. storage , and overbuilding.
Building three times as much as needed sounds really tough, and it will be, but we actually seem to have TWICE as much fossil fuel capacity as we need, overall. Look it up. The problems arise with peak demand loads during extremely hot or cold weather, and LOCAL shortages of generating capacity.
There are many things we overbuild. We have highways in most places that are heavily traveled only a few hours a day, we have shopping centers that do more business between Thanksgiving and Christmas than during the rest of the year. We have automobiles by the tens of millions that are driven on average less than an hour out of twenty four. There are millions of tractors on farms that aren’t used more than five hundred hours over the course of a year. A new eighteen wheeler truck can run over a thousand miles a day, hooking and dropping, with two drivers, but it’s rare for one to accumulate more than half that over the course of a year.
If we look at this elephant of a problem thru the other end of the telescope, it looks like a damned small elephant, and a cuddly friendly one at that.
Suppose we say we need to build enough renewable capacity to meet our needs without fossil fuels, and that by doing so, we will have humongous amounts of juice to use any way we please, lots of days, for next to nothing.
Somebody made a sarcastic remark about cutting the defense budget in half for three years to pay for this renewables infrastructure. That won’t happen, but although I am pretty much of a conservative when it comes to Uncle Sam having the biggest club of all the political cavemen, I wouldn’t have a problem cutting the military budget ten percent and spending that much extra on renewable energy and efficiency.
We don’t actually have to build out a fully viable renewable energy infra structure on any given schedule. We aren’t going to run out of oil or coal or gas abruptly. Building it out double time won’t stop other countries from dawdling around about giving up fossil fuels, and might even have the opposite effect. Demand destruction means lower sales, and lower prices, and lower prices in the short term are very much to the advantage of developing countries.
The question is not so much WHETHER we can afford a robust nationally tied grid and wind and solar energy system, but more whether we MUST have such a system.
If having it means the continuation of life as usual, more or less, and being without it means the END of life as usual, we will HAVE to afford it.
Folks who don’t like it can avoid facing up to it, but I think we don’t really HAVE much in the way of a choice in this matter. To me, it looks like do or die.
I’m not for doing nukes for one main reason-
I don’t trust people to get it right.
I don’t trust that there won’t be sabotage.
I don’t trust that there won’t be sloppy work, or distracted operators.
I don’t trust that there will be proper oversight and enforcement of safety regulations.
I don’t trust that there will be proper transport and storage of the radioactive materials
(the fact that all high level waste produced since about 1950 is still in temp holding facilities doesn’t help with my confidence on this one).
I don’t trust people to behave themselves with the utmost care and sensibility when bribes, greed and haste are taken into account.
I also don’t trust ‘mother nature’ to be benign. Ever thought an earthquake would trigger a tsunami and cause a meltdown. Got tornadoes?
Sure , a nuclear industry that is safe and effective is theoretically possible, but we don’t live in a theoretical world.
The real problem with nukes ist that they are a a hopelessly over-complicated solution to a problem that could easily be dealt with by good old fashioned frugality.
Funny how when I saw Dennis taking heat for saying renewables should be overbuilt, I thought pretty much the same thing. Why all the hue and cry about overbuilding renwables, when so many things are overbuilt to provide capacities for peak use, with huge amounts of capacity “going to waste” most of the time? I would add sports stadiums and mass transit systems to your list of overbuilt stuff.
The thing about nukes is that the current generation of plants are so hugely expensive that they cant compete with renewables. Take the UK’s proposed Hinkley point C, the proposed cost of electricity from that plant will be some of the most expensive electricity the UK has ever seen.
Based on what I could find on-line the clant could end up costing anywhere from £18 billion to over £37 billion and that same amount of money could build 18 GW to 37 DW of utility scale solar PV. Add to that, the fact that nuke construction is notorious for cost overruns and delays while renewables are more likely to be on time and within budget and the situation looks even worse for nukes.
“Funny how when I saw Dennis taking heat for saying renewables should be overbuilt, I thought pretty much the same thing.”
Overbuilding does of course not mean that (much) more energy is generated than demanded. Overbuilding means to compensate for lower capacity factor of the noncorrelated generators with higher capacity.
HP blocks C costs at least 22 billion EUR for only 3.2 GW with – let’s be optimistic – a CF 0f 90%, i.e. a kW of the NPP costs at least 7000(!) EUR.
You get 3 kW modern onshore wind turbines (CF 35-40%) for 4500 EUR, even 2 kW offshore wind (CF >50%) costs less than 6000 EUR.
“To me, it looks like do or die.”
OFM – What does this look like?
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-fake-biofuel-factory/
What does this look like?
I’m assuming that is a rhetorical question. It looks exactly like what it was, a scam perpetrated by a scam artist. What did Bernie Madoff’s investment portfolio look like?
What exactly is your point?
We should close all banks. It is a sin to take interest, and Madoff proved it.
Not to worry, it will trickle down to the lower classes.
It looks to me like a good ole boy seen his chances and took’em.
The thing that amuses me about such crooks is that they are smart enough to pull off the scam, but dumb enough not to know how to permanently disappear with at least a couple of million in small bills.
I am all for heavy duty research into biofuels, but pretty much dead set against subsidizing or even selling any that are produced using crop land. Down that road lies an ecological disaster.
The returns on the money and resources invested are ten times better when you spend them on improving efficiency.
I wonder why geothermal energy is not being avidly pursued.
Lack of good places. They are doing it in Iceland.
Next glaciation to be postponed for 100,000 years.
Apparently we may have missed the beginning of a glaciation that would have started in pre-industrial times. Now with an even greater CO2 build up and limited orbital forcings over the next 50,000 years, forget about a major glaciation for 100,00 years. No wonder the Holocene had a temperature plateau.
Too much CO2 and too little orbital forcing.
“Here we propose a critical functional relationship between boreal summer insolation and global carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration, which explains the beginning of the past eight glacial cycles and might anticipate future periods of glacial inception. Using an ensemble of simulations generated by an Earth system model of intermediate complexity constrained by palaeoclimatic data, we suggest that glacial inception was narrowly missed before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The missed inception can be accounted for by the combined effect of relatively high late-Holocene CO2 concentrations and the low orbital eccentricity of the Earth7. Additionally, our analysis suggests that even in the absence of human perturbations no substantial build-up of ice sheets would occur within the next several thousand years and that the current interglacial would probably last for another 50,000 years. However, moderate anthropogenic cumulative CO2 emissions of 1,000 to 1,500 gigatonnes of carbon will postpone the next glacial inception by at least 100,000 years”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v529/n7585/full/nature16494.html
So it did not take much to miss the glaciation. Will we continue on with another 1,500 gigatons of carbon in the atmosphere and all it’s unknown ramifications? Maybe we can skip the next few glaciations altogether. No snowball earth in our future. Gators in New York might be exciting, though for NYC they will have to be the salt water type.
That’s a hypothesis that rests on two unproven assumptions being true:
1. That CO2 produces the warming that some scientists believe it produces. There is a big crucial scientific dispute over climate sensitivity values. If climate sensitivity ends up being low this assumption is untrue.
2. That CO2 levels have had a big effect on the glacial-interglacial cycle in the past. This is related to the first assumption. Right now we don’t know if CO2 is cause, consequence, or both of the warming at glacial terminations. It is probably both, but it is crucial to determine if it is a primary or secondary order factor. If it is a secondary order factor then this assumption is untrue.
In my opinion the hypothesis is false. Glacial inception takes place at maximum CO2 levels, which indicates that CO2 cannot stop glaciations and thus cannot be responsible either for glacial terminations.
Of course this is all irrelevant. Next glaciation will not start for thousands of years. These people get a paper published now through easy fiddling with data, hypotheses, and models, now, that cannot be refuted by data for thousands of years.
Since we are running out of oil, gas, and coal, within the next two centuries at most, it is very possible that CO2 levels in a few thousand years can be significantly lower than now. If I had the opportunity to be paid, I would definitely bet for the glacial-interglacial cycle to continue as scheduled. That is a mighty force of Nature to contend with.
You speak of glaciation as a force of nature. That is not true, it is a result of changes in radiative forcing. The phase change of water to ice takes a lot of energy change, that change generally being provided by a loss of radiative forcing. Sounds like you do not have much of a background in physics.
Your postulation that since glaciation starts at peak CO2 it is not a radiative forcing factor is wrong. The progress toward glaciation starts at peak temperature and peak CO2 by nature. If a glaciation is to proceed, the negative forcings merely must be larger than the current positive forcings at the time. That is when the insolation diminishes to the point of making a negative forcing. If you read the paper, it stated that this time CO2 was already too high for glaciation to proceed. Combine that with an orbital forcing that has already reached a minima and is headed toward a new maxima, and voila, no glaciation. Now add to that a large pulse of greenhouse gases and there is no way to promote a glaciation from orbital forcing changes.
Of course we must always account for the role of water, the largest greenhouse gas on the planet and the progenitor of phase change climate control. In this case, there is a large amount of water in both the vapor phase and liquid phase, both increasing in quantity. Since one is a greenhouse gas and the other a low albedo surface, the forcings are all in one direction now. Orbital, albedo, and gaseous forcings are all increasing. No glaciation. The role of ice and snow are losing out and the Holocene/Anthropocene will be the longest interglacial since ice ages of the deep past.
Have fun in the sun, the warmer regions are really going to suffer.
GoneFishing,
Forcing is a very new concept exclusive to climatology. It has no meaning in Physics. As climatology is a science in its infancy with a lot more unknowns than knowns it is a matter of debate the role of radiation variability in climate changes.
The causes of glacial-interglacial alternation are currently unknown. Milankovitch theory admits several interpretations, and experts currently discuss the role of insolation changes due to precession and obliquity. The textbook interpretation that 65°N summer insolation controls the cycle is heavily contested because it has a lot of problems to explain paleoclimate data. To name a few: The 100 kyr problem, the causality problem, and the symmetry problem. You probably don’t know what I am talking about. You can find an explanation for those in Wikipedia.
That you sound so sure about what you say indicates that you know a lot less than you think you know.
Likely to be another failed prediction. Climatology is full of those.
Javier wrote:
“That you sound so sure about what you say indicates that you know a lot less than you think you know.”
While I rarely agree with Javier, this thought is spot on. There are no absolutes in science, only high and low probability statements.
And while it clearly applies to GoneFishing, it’s generally true for all of us as well.
Everyone should listen to the auriga standing behind them, holding the laurus crown over their head, continuously whispering in their ear, “memento homo”.
Cheers.
LTG, making the comments personal and then jumping on the band wagon, not only ends all intelligent discourse but puts you in the role of peanut gallery. If you can’t respond to the science and the meaning, stop acting like a spoiled child. Making noise, does not mean you are making sense.
Forcing is a very new concept exclusive to climatology. It has no meaning in Physics.
Not really, ‘Forcings’ have been studied for quite some time in chaos math in deterministic dynamical systems and have been integral part in the understanding of physical and biological systems, to name two.
They also are necessary in understanding and solving engineering problems in areas such as hydraulic systems with turbulent flows.
Forcings are studied in just about any phenomena, of which there are many, that depend upon specific inputs of initial conditions and might be highly sensitive to perturbations.
They are definitely not a new concept exclusive to climatology.
Absolutely correct Fred. In fact forcings are an integral part of chaos theory among many other related and un-related non-linear dynamic systems. Why would weather and climate that are highly sensitive to initial conditions not be included?
The term radiation forcing may be fairly new, but the original calculations go back to Arrhenius for CO2.
But Javier claimed that “forcing” has no meaning in physics. I disagree.
Beats me! 🙂
Ok. I stand corrected. I know nothing of chaos mathematics and my physics textbooks that didn’t have the word forcing in them are now quite dated.
However I just checked this 550 pages physics textbook:
https://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Class/intro_physics_1/intro_physics_1.pdf
And it does not contain the word “forcing”
so it must not be such a basic physics concept.
I didn’t search any basic physics textbooks for the word ‘forcings’ so you may be right that it isn’t taught as an introductory concept but in case you are interested Google: ” Physics, nonlinear dynamics, forcings”
You will get plenty of hits such as this one which have nothing to do with climatology but are still very much related to physics albeit at a more advanced level :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19045456
Format: AbstractSend to
Chaos. 2008 Sep;18(3):033118. doi: 10.1063/1.2964200.
Resonant forcing of nonlinear systems of differential equations.
Gintautas V1, Hübler AW.
Author information
Abstract
We study resonances of nonlinear systems of differential equations, including but not limited to the equations of motion of a particle moving in a potential. We use the calculus of variations to determine the minimal additive forcing function that induces a desired terminal response, such as an energy in the case of a physical system. We include the additional constraint that only select degrees of freedom be forced, corresponding to a very general class of problems in which not all of the degrees of freedom in an experimental system are accessible to forcing. We find that certain Lagrange multipliers take on a fundamental physical role as the effective forcing experienced by the degrees of freedom which are not forced directly. Furthermore, we find that the product of the displacement of nearby trajectories and the effective total forcing function is a conserved quantity. We demonstrate the efficacy of this methodology with several examples.
(c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.
PMID: 19045456 DOI: 10.1063/1.2964200
[PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]
Javier said:
What kind of rationalization is that? The word forcing derives from force, which is about the most fundamental concept in physics that one can imagine.
In terms of mathematics, differential equations contain a left-hand-side (LHS) which governs the response and a right-hand-side (RHS) which is the forcing. This type of formulation spans physics and engineering applications, and like Fred said can be used for anything from hydrodynamics, to mechanics, and to electronics.
I think perhaps Javier should come back in a few months or years when he learns what it takes to work these problems. So far all I see from him is these wordy qualitative “just-so” stories tying long-term climate trends to stuff he dreams up.
I would almost recommend that Javier study this latest post of mine which nails the theory of climate QBO by applying a lunar forcing to Laplace’s tidal equations, but I am not sure it would do him much good: http://contextearth.com/2016/07/04/alternate-simplification-of-qbo-from-laplaces-tidal-equations/
WHT, pass me the citation once it gets published. No point in losing time on amateurish efforts when the real pros are publishing their science in peer-reviewed journals.
Too late. The analysis is solidified. No one can undo what I have posted on my blog and at the AzimuthProject forum where other scientists have been peer-reviewing the progress. In the years to come, anybody that searches for “QBO and lunar” will find my analysis.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=QBO+lunar&t=hb&ia=web
Welcome to the new world of scientific dissemination.
The only thing for you to do now is to bellyache.
Claiming forces are not valid or “something new” is just a diversionary tactic. If they can’t discuss the science and have to get personally derogatory on comments, then they should just go back to the playground.
GoneFishing said:
” then they should just go back to the playground.”
Or in Javier’s case, he should go back to all the crackpots at WUWT or other denier sites where they don’t care about deliberative science.
Javier, cut the personal derogatory remarks and either have an intelligent discourse or forget it.
” The textbook interpretation that 65°N summer insolation controls the cycle is heavily contested ” First of all, no one says that insolation alone is responsible. No one.
The only contesting I know is by those who formulated a hypothesis that we were on the verge of imminent glaciation in the 1970’s. Those ideas did not pan out and were set aside because they were not based on valid assumptions and apparently we are not in the midst of growing glaciations.
The part about demineralization of soil from heavy rainfall causing forest weakening and then burning which then promoted glaciation was an astounding assumption. The idea that increased CO2 causes glaciation is interesting but even I can punch a lot of holes in that one. At least the way it was postulated.
Deriding and tossing aside mainstream science is your thing. Ok, I get that, but don’t expect people to just jump on your wild claims without some serious proof and discussion. Personal derogatory remarks end discussion.
I would’ve thought that, for as smart as you climate experts claim to be, you would understand that telling people to “just go back to the playground” or “if you can’t respond to the science and the meaning, stop acting like a spoiled child” does absolutely nothing to advance your cause. In fact, those types of remarks are what have nearly completely destroyed the entire climate change brand ever since the shenanigans in the climategate email scandal were exposed. There’s a reason why latest surveys show the percentage of people still believing anything the climate scientists say is in the single digits, with the true believers mostly consisting of hard-core leftists, certified communists, Berniebros, professional agitators, BLM protestors, etc. The ironic thing of course is the ones who yell the loudest about stopping “personal derogatory remarks” regarding climate change are the ones most guilty of delivering those very types of remarks.
The interesting thing about climate change is that, if it is true, which is looking ever more likely with each passing day, and accepted by the general public, then the whole panicked business industrial complex, that doesn’t really work for anyone, goes down the toilet.
It’s this kind of understanding that gets people like me fired from offices like people like Chad Tevlin’s. Right Chad? Yeah, you know what we’re talking about. You know why I know you’re here.
If you think the percentage of people still believing anything the climate scientists say is in the single digits, then what are you doing on this site, like this? Eh, Chad? We both know the answer.
Your own words are a self-betrayal, like so much of what you stand for. Like your whole panicked business industrial complex.
Do you hear that sound? It’s the sound of it slowly circling the bowl, with the likes of you in it, splashing around among the dumplings.
Throwing it back in the face of people like Richard Lindzen of MIT. He is an AGW denier and if you want to see what kind of playground bully that guy is you ought to read this:
http://kitzhaber-resignation.blogspot.ch/2014/01/richard-lindzen-paradox-for-ages.html
Lindzen has nothing but contempt for his fellow scientists, who he apparently considers intellectually inferior.
GoneFishing,
Cut playing the victim. I haven’t gone after you with derogatory remarks. If you think you know why glaciations take place then you are suffering from Dunning–Kruger effect since nobody knows why glaciations take place. There are only hypotheses. And this is not derogatory as it only refers to what you think you know with respect to what you really know.
Going back to science, the most interesting idea in my view has been pursued by groups that propose that obliquity and not 65°N summer insolation is the main control behind the glacial-interglacial cycle. See for example:
– Huybers, P. and Wunsch, C. 2005. Obliquity pacing of the late Pleistocene glacial terminations. Nature 434 491-494.
– Huybers, P. 2007. Glacial variability over the last two million years: An extended depth-derived agemodel, continuous obliquity pacing, and the Pleistocene progression. Quat. Sci. Rev. 26 37-55.
– Liu, Z., Cleaveland, L. C. and Herbert, T. D. 2008. Early onset and origin of 100-kyr cycles in Pleistocene tropical SST records. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 265 703-715.
And regarding the reason why some cycles are skipped, Paillard hypothesis is as good as any:
– Paillard, D. 1998. The timing of Pleistocene glaciations from a simple multiple-state climate model. Nature 391 378-381.
If obliquity really controls the cycle as this hypotheses propose, and as the data supports, then we are in for 10,000 years of cooling and somewhere along that time (maybe just in 2,000 years) a new glacial period will commence.
What most people don’t realize is that the Neoglacial period of the Holocene started about 5,000 years ago; so called because it represents a much cooler period than the Holocene Hypsithermal as they like to call it now. Within the Neoglacial period, warming trends of a few centuries are neither unusual nor represent a change of primary trend.
To say that this short period of warming that we are living represents a complete departure from Quaternary conditions that is going to abolish the glacial-interglacial cycles for tens of thousands of years to hundreds of thousands of years is a pretty bold statement. Considering that they have absolutely no evidence to back that claim makes it for a good laugh. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
As a known book series and TV series says: “Winter (glaciation) is coming.” thankfully it won’t come for a few thousand more years.
Javier, don’t you want to go and play on an actual climate science forum, where they can maybe bounce an Earth ball off your head a few times?
What will happen when the climate guys, with creds unlike yours, catch on and start making the rounds too, such as on here?
Where will you go then? Will you stick around, or, like Judith Curry apparently, run away?
It would seem that if you were truly interested in the truth of climate change, that you’d be elsewhere, yes? That you remain here, and with your considerable expended efforts to boot, would seem to painfully suggest that it is less, if at all, about truth and more about uncertainty-sowing, politics and/or propaganda.
Ball of Confusion
Nice music. I prefer something hotter though if we are talking global warming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p0wFDmiJsE
Cute, thanks for sharing. I like the puppets at the end too.
A lot of guys around here are walking around with beards and the women with unusually simple dresses, etc.. Shades of simplicity-to-come, maybe. No razors and make your own dresses, because shipping has collapsed.
Patreon is what James Howard Kunstler is using too. I should check it out.
Caelan,
I have already been invited before (perhaps by you?) to go to climate alarmist blogs. As I have explained several times, I am here for the oil news and analysis. I do not come to make climate proselytism as some do, and therefore I never initiate a climate discussion in this blog out of courtesy for being an oil blog, not a climate blog. I am forced by others to respond to their misinformation and misplaced alarmism. Therefore your invitation to go to other places to have this discussions is misplaced. You should make it to the persons initiating this discussions. In this case GoneFishing.
For my climate news and discussions I certainly go to other blogs. I have tried to respond to arguments in alarmists blogs as you suggest, like in Tamino’s blog and my comments are censored. It looks like alarmists do not tolerate dissent.
Javier said:
(my emphasis)
Wow, that doesn’t work very well if you don’t even understand what a forcing is!
WebHub, remember CO2, albedo changes, and large orbital changes do not matter. Clouds don’t matter if they are inconvenient. Only small perturbations and energy changes of low magnitude matter.
sarc
Still making remarks about me and still pretending you are not and know what I know. Telepathy? What an absurd way of thinking.
For the rest of you:
The tilt of the earth and it’s variations due to precession are combined with the elliptical nature of it’s orbit (changing distance with orbital position, therefor changing solar irradiance). Those variations of flux add and subtract over time to give marked changes in the polar insolation. The reason polar insolation is important is because of the properties of water and it’s phase change to ice. Both have very different albedo and highly modify the effects of changing insolation. Since only the polar regions have large areas of ice and water, the changes occur there and are more limited elsewhere on the planet.
As to the claims of the paper, one must have an understanding of past performance of the earth system to comprehend their conclusions.
Nice explanation, and probably correct in general terms, since it avoids all the nuances of all the things that do not fit that general picture.
The polar insolation cycle is a 23 Kyr cycle since it is primarily driven by precession and only secondarily by obliquity and it is anti-symmetric, since precession is anti-symmetric while obliquity is symmetric. The temperature of the planet through the glacial-interglacial cycles however barely shows a 23 Kyr response, shows a quite strong 41 kyr response and a very strong response at 100 kyr, and this response is in all cases symmetrical.
Therefore the general explanation that polar insolation through water phase changes is responsible for the glacial-interglacial cycles is not valid. We do not fully understand how glaciations and interglacials happen.
The claim that the atmospheric increase in CO2 has abolished the next glaciation is extravagant and unsupported by evidence. It is pure speculation of the worst kind.
You forgot the forcing from the elliptical orbit. That is one more period in the multiple periods. Also the eccentricity changes on a 100,000 cycle from about 0% to 5%.
Apsidal precession is on the order of 112,000 years and is one more variable in the insolation problem.
Summer polar insolation is dominated by precession.
Although orbital cycles do provide the necessary energy changes for glaciation and deglaciation, effects of albedo change, CO2 cycles and boundary effects need to be taken into account to obtain a full picture of why ice sheets grow and then fade quickly.
GoneFishing,
I did not forget eccentricity, but it acts mainly by modifying precession (there’s no precession of the equinoxes in a circular orbit). The changes due to eccentricity alone are just too small.
But the fact is that we don’t understand why interglacials took place when they did for the last million years, and we are not capable of hindcast them. It is therefore obvious to anybody that to forecast that there won’t be a new glacial period for the next 100,000 years is both preposterous and stupid.
Javier said:
What’s more important to our understanding of climate : the next 100,000 years versus the next several years?
I can accurately forecast when the QBO winds will shift direction over the coming years based on the cyclic forcing of the lunar gravitational potential.
The sad fact is that the climate science practiced by contrarian bullies such as Richard Lindzen has stalled progress by decades on this topic. Its amazing that Lindzen never figured out how a forcing applied to QBO.
“I did not forget eccentricity, but it acts mainly by modifying precession (there’s no precession of the equinoxes in a circular orbit). The changes due to eccentricity alone are just too small.”
Poor Javier, he does not know much. At maximum orbital eccentricity, the difference in solar irradiance between aphelion and perihelion is 23%. That would mean 62 w/m2 insolation difference. Sure it is only 7% now, but that is not small and it will not stay that way.
What other nonsense will he come up with? Only time will tell what else he will negate and deny. I wonder if the earth being round and going around the sun is up for grabs.
Ok, GoneFishing,
“Poor Javier, he does not know much. At maximum orbital eccentricity, the difference in solar irradiance between aphelion and perihelion is 23%. That would mean 62 w/m2 insolation difference. Sure it is only 7% now, but that is not small and it will not stay that way.”
You just demonstrated you are an ignorant in Milankovitch theory and you ignore everything about the 100 kyr problem.
“Variations in the eccentricity (100,000 yr), obliquity (41,000 yr) and precession (23,000 yr) of Earth’s orbit have been linked to glacial–interglacial climate cycles. It is generally thought that the 100,000-yr glacial cycles of the past 800,000 yr are a result of orbital eccentricity. However, the eccentricity cycle produces negligible 100-kyr power in seasonal or mean annual insolation, although it does modulate the amplitude of the precession cycle.”
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n5/abs/ngeo828.html
You just made a fool of yourself. What other nonsense are you going to come up with? I wonder if the earth being round and going around the sun is up for grabs.
No point in talking about the next glaciation with you, as you ignore the basics of Milankovitch theory.
“It is generally thought that the 100,000-yr glacial cycles of the past 800,000 yr are a result of orbital eccentricity1, 2, 3, 4. However, the eccentricity cycle produces negligible 100-kyr power in seasonal or mean annual insolation, although it does modulate the amplitude of the precession cycle”
From the first sentence, the bulk of research has determined eccentricity as the primary driver of glaciation. That result is surprising to me as I thought eccentricity was just one factor.
The second sentence has a major flaw in it’s logic and thus makes the whole premise of the letter.
Would be nice if I could see the full letter. The reference links are also unusable and merely circle back to the abstract.
I do like the last lines of the abstract of this letter though.
“I propose that the anticorrelation arises from the strong precession forcing associated with strong eccentricity forcing, which disrupts the internal climate feedbacks that drive the 100,000-yr glacial cycle. This supports the hypothesis that internally driven climate feedbacks are the source of the 100,000-yr climate variations12.”
How can the elliptical forcing be both weak and strong at the same time? Sounds contradictory. The last line appears to indicate that earth based processes are the prime drivers for the glaciation process. Again, a conclusion going against most thought on this process. Essentially throws out the Milankovich forcings as the driver.
I do get the sense that if the abstract is this internally conflicted that the full letter is also.
Here is a more sensible and recent study linking eccentricity to the 100,000 year glaciation cycle.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n4/full/ngeo1756.html
Here is an article explaining some to fhe details of the study cited above.
“The conclusions we should draw from this is that orbital variations are the primary driver of climate change on Earth. Over time the effective period of the forcing may change as resonance frequencies shift but it is a combination of planetary motion and solar insolation that moves our climate into and out of glacial periods”
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/100000-year-problem
“Would be nice if I could see the full letter. The reference links are also unusable and merely circle back to the abstract.”
You are not very adept at researching scientific literature. You can solve both problems using Google scholar. Many articles have pdf author copies that can be accessed for free and found through Google scholar. That is the case of this paper, and can be the case for some of the references.
You are just scratching the surface of the 100 kyr problem. There are lots of hypothesis but the problem has not been solved satisfactorily. In essence we do not know why interglacials take place when they take place. However we do know that when obliquity falls and 65°N summer insolation is not very high interglacials come to an end. Those conditions are going to be met for the next 5000 years. That’s what the evidence shows, and all the rest are hypothesis.
If we continue your scientific education you might learn to read critically scientific papers and trust only the evidence shown and not the authors conclusions. You will learn that a lot of papers have little scientific value and might become an skeptic of many things yourself.
You are quite amusing.
I actually think climatologists don’t pay enough attention to forcings. The contrarian climatologist Richard Lindzen left off the forcing when he created a model for the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) of atmospheric winds. I added a forcing due to the lunar gravitational pull and the model fits the data like a glove. Of course Lindzen is an AGW denier so its not surprising that his past research should come under renewed scrutiny.
Javier said:
“Forcing is a very new concept exclusive to climatology. It has no meaning in Physics. As climatology is a science in its infancy…”
That’s a bunch of nonsense. Tides are caused by a forcing. Gravity is a forcing. I will never take Javier seriously on anything he writes. GoneFishing is probably right in that Javier has never taken a physics class. Didn’t he say he was a biologist or some such?
No problem Webby. I don’t take you seriously either. You are always repeating yourself about how bad Lindzen and Curry are and how good your studies on QBO and ENSO are. All talk and few publications. For being deniers they are doing much better. How unjust.
Thanks for bringing up the incompetence of certain contrarian climate scientists. It’s true that science is difficult to simplify unless you have what it takes. I don’t think those two have what it takes.
Richard Lindzen is a prime example of a guy who thrives on creating complex mounds of scientific goo and then bullies all who dare question his authority. I found it amazing that he couldn’t make the connection between QBO and lunar tidal forcing … as in FORCING, Javier, lol.
More detail here:
http://contextearth.com/2016/06/29/simplifying-laplaces-tidal-equations-for-qbo/
I am submitting this research to the AGU for the December meeting and will report back if it gets accepted.
Didn’t he say he was a biologist or some such?
To be fair you can not really understand certain concepts in biology without a firm grounding in physics. I remember taking a course in ecosystems dynamics given by a zoologist and we got quite deeply into ecosystem thermodynamics. In his very first lecture he impressed upon us a need to brush up on our calculus and physics.
Ironically in your typical high school curriculum students usually take biology first, then chemistry and physics last. I have always thought it should be the other way around.
I remember my molecular biology course I was required to take while studying to be a physicist. Tough course, packed as much as possible into one course.
I agree, it should be the other way around.
And without a understanding of thermodynamics and evolutionary biology, it is doubtful that critical thinking is possible.
Actually Socrates set the agenda for the tradition of critical thinking long before thermodynamics or evolutionary biology had been thought of.
Socrates is a character of Plato’s, the “Ronald Reagan” era of Greek philosophy.
5th Century Athens was already in the rear view mirror, the height of Greek Culture (and defined and created the world we currently live in).
Aristotle and Plato got just about everything wrong.
Modern Science started with the rejection of Aristotle, and without the Catholic Church embracing his delusional ideas, he would lack the standing he currently has.
Monty Python football
https://goo.gl/kqjNZ
Enjoy!
Brilliant! (As they say is the UK)
Having St Aquinas as a ref assured the Greek win.
Hi Javier
Most of the research on the geochemistry suggests it takes 100,000 years or so to remove the excess carbon that man will put in the atmosphere. This is assuming only 1200 Pg of carbon from human activity.
Regardless of climate sensitivity there has never been a glacial maximum in the past 800,000 years with atmospheric co2 above 250 ppm.
So no ice age for 100,000 years or more even if ECS is 1.5C.
Read papers by David archer.
The Arctic region is warming fast, reversing a 2000 year cooling trend. The Arctic is again headed for a seasonal ice scenario. This despite the loss of 50 w/m2 insolation at 65N over the last 10,000 years. This is about half the loss of insolation that happened at the start of the previous glaciation.
Increased CO2 and it’s feedback H2O in the atmosphere has to be the initial driver of current Arctic melting. Decreasing albedo is accelerating the reduction in ice and snow cover.
https://www.wunderground.com/climate/SeaIce.asp?MR=1
Except that there hasn’t been a significant Arctic melting in the last 10 years despite record temperatures. Arctic sea ice levels are similar to 2006, before Al Gore started to scare everybody with the bogus end to Arctic sea ice in summer. So much alarmism gone to waste.
ROFL. Best climate comedy available.
Dennis,
Antarctic ice cores do not support that assertion. CO2 falls almost at the same speed as temperatures but with a slight delay indicating CO2 levels can fall drastically in a few thousand years at most.
Glaciations always start at maximum CO2 levels, whatever they are, and levels are kept higher longer by all the CO2 released from biological sources due to the die off caused by the cold. If only 20% of the biological organisms die during a glaciation, the amount of CO2 released should be equivalent to 100 years of burning fossil fuels at current rates.
The Ordovician ice age took place at much higher CO2 levels than present indicating that there is no obstacle from CO2 for a planetary glaciation.
We won’t see it, but the next glacial period will arrive in due time.
Hi Javier,
The ice cores do in fact support what I said, read carefully.
The atmospheric CO2 gas never been more than 250 ppm at a glacial maximum. Atmospheric CO2 will reach at least 500 ppm. After 100,000 years 6.5% of the excess carbon dioxide added by humans will still be in the atmosphere see fig 1 in paper linked below. Regardless of the exact timing of CO2 levels and the start of a cooling World, initiated by changes in insolation in the Northern hemisphere due to Milankovitch cycles (I agree the exact mechanism is not known precisely, but we have an approximate understanding).
The earth was very different millions of years ago, land masses were in very different positions during the Ordovician with Gondwana in the Southern hemisphere near the South pole and Solar insolation was lower so that higher CO2 levels were required to keep the planet warm.
Perhaps you expect the Worlds land masses to move to their positions during the Ordovician in the next 100,000 years? 🙂
This is not what most geologists expect.
https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2005.fate_co2.pdf
Dennis,
Look at the green line in the figure that I posted at 275 ppm. Your 250 ppm claim is not true.
Between 235,000 yr – 225,000 yr CO2 went from 270 ppm to 200 ppm, a 26% drop in 10,000 years. Similar drop from 450 ppm would be to 330 ppm. Not far from the 300 ppm at 320,000 yr ago that did not prevent glaciation.
You are claiming opposite exceptionalism for both present CO2 levels and Ordovician ice age and then predicting unprecedented outcomes. That is not serious. High CO2 either can stop galciations or it can’t. Available evidence indicates it can’t. Archer’s models suggest it can, but models are just educated guesses, not evidence. Climate models are based on a very imperfect knowledge and not to be trusted to predict future climate.
==The survey says==
Just 20% of the general public of Americans are still believing in climate change being a actual problem, the rest are all democrats or RINO. see the surveys i have seen on this political matter…
Now that survey is what we call political science. This survey should have an age component.
Most young people are very aware of climate change and believe it is happening. Polls of young people range from 97% to 84% believing climate change is happening, across all political leanings. The days of the dinosaur conservative spouting disbelief in global warming are quickly coming to a close. Democratic politicians had better start pressing for strong global warming action or else they will lose credibility among the up and coming voting population.
I believe you have completely misread that chart.
Anybody other than a Republican is not part of the general public of Americans ????????!!!!!!!!!
NAOM
well its an easy answer, just like the ole bumper sticker says your either a democrat or an American!
Anyone else notice we’ve gone to 10,000,000+ page views? I was worried we might lose the extra digit, but no, it’s there 🙂
Yes, I did.
I thought I was going to win something for being number 10,000,000, alas Ron hasn’t contacted me yet 😉
Speaking of un-related non-linear dynamic systems. – How much smarter than yeast can one be to deploy these gadgets in Chaostan
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-16/turkey-suspends-all-us-operations-against-isis-incirlik-airbase-which-vaults-us-b61-
Sounds like Turkey has things well in hand and the rebel military is being purged. The US and Turkey are allies in the fight against ISIS.
The B61 has been deployed for a long time, it is a small tactical weapon designed to be deployed on fighter-bombers. It is not a strategic nuclear device. Tactical weapons have to be available at forward positions for use, otherwise they are just dust collectors and offer no deterrent or tactical value.
The comments at zero hedge are precious.
The US and Turkey are allies in the fight against ISIS.
LOL. Look at a map – how was ISIS transporting their oil for sale? Why was ISIS only gaining strength from 2012-2015 until Russia entered the fray? Read this for a glimpse of actual US policy (i.e., use jihadis as proxy forces), not the bunk the MSM spews:
https://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf
“7.b. Opposition forces are trying to control the Eastern areas (Hasaka and Der Zor), adjacent to the Western Iraqi provinces (Mosul and Anbar), in addition to neighboring Turkish borders. Western countries, the Gulf States and Turkey are supporting these efforts.”
“8.C. If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”
Interesting:
Evaded Israeli defenses.
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense-news/2016/07/17/syrian-launched-uav-evades-israeli-air-defenses/87225302/
it is called:
Сделано в России
… in other words – a “message” to us (US) through proxy…..
be well’
Petro
Today is World Emoji Day! ?
http://www.nationaldaycalendar.com/2016/07/16/july-17-2016-world-emoji-day-national-ice-cream-day-national-wrong-way-corrigan-day-national-peach-ice-cream-day-national-yellow-pig-day/
It is also National Ice Cream Day! ?
http://glaciers.research.pdx.edu/glaciers-montana
The winter of 1917-18 was a cold one.
Probably exacerbated the influenza outbreak.
http://www.reddeerexpress.com/opinion/Remembering_the_brutal_winter_of_1919-1920_239273641.html
The globe has warmed since 1915.
The Children’s Blizzard
https://www.minnpost.com/minnesota-history/2013/01/125-years-ago-deadly-children-s-blizzard-blasted-minnesota
PHYSICISTS BLUR THE LINE BETWEEN CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM PHYSICS BY CONNECTING CHAOS AND ENTANGLEMENT
“Using a small quantum system consisting of three superconducting qubits, researchers have uncovered a link between aspects of classical and quantum physics thought to be unrelated: classical chaos and quantum entanglement. Their findings suggest that it would be possible to use controllable quantum systems to investigate certain fundamental aspects of nature….
The study’s findings have fundamental implications for quantum computing. At the level of three qubits, the computation is relatively simple, said Roushan, but as researchers push to build increasingly sophisticated and powerful quantum computers that incorporate more qubits to study highly complex problems that are beyond the ability of classical computing — such as those in the realms of machine learning, artificial intelligence, fluid dynamics or chemistry — a quantum processor optimized for such calculations will be a very powerful tool.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160712130113.htm
I used to think Ray Kurzweil’s prediction of a singularity was just completely off the wall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuG2224hlG0
Now I’m not so sure…
Will quantum computers be mothballed?
http://www.ibtimes.com/quantum-computing-mothballs-scientists-find-way-stabilize-electron-spins-room-2392321
Hi Fred,
I was wondering if you could shine a little light on the subject below:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-farago/obama-to-florida-gov-rick_b_11052260.html
“When Gov. Rick Scott recently asked President Obama to declare a federal emergency over the toxic algae catastrophe coating South Florida’s coasts, my head nearly exploded.”
“Governor Scott blames the president, but in his six years as governor he has branded his bona fides by; a) rejecting federal authority, b) spurning federal assistance (ie. Obamacare), c) knee-capping state environmental agencies and science staff, d) cutting regulations specific to forms of pollution causing the algae blooms and e) lobbying against rule making by the U.S. EPA to regulate fertilizers.”
“If I were President Obama, and you — the reader — were Florida Governor Rick Scott, and you asked me to declare a federal emergency of counties afflicted by toxic algae blooms, I’d be tempted to say:”
“Really? You and the Florida legislature worked like mad dogs to reject, refuse and to deny the ability of the U.S. EPA to regulate fertilizers including nitrogen and phosphorous, the cause of the algae blooms. And you want the federal taxpayer to rescue you because of your own stupidities? When the federal government offered to assist in regulating fertilizers, you said ‘no thanks’. Then you set the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Florida loose on Congress. When we have tried to move Everglades restoration forward, your administration has pushed back against any efforts to put tighter restrictions on phosphorous and nitrogen flowing from sugar fields owned by your buddies, the Big Sugar cartel. So who are you kidding with your complaints about the federal government not stepping in and being active? We tried. You denied. We promoted the U.S. economy and environmental stewardship and you demagogued against pollution control laws because they “kill jobs”. You kicked us out and then you cut your own agencies’ science staff to the bone. Next time you call, give me some good news; like you support buying enough land in the Everglades Agricultural Area to stop the use of Florida waterways as sacrifice zones for Big Sugar.”
This emergency is yours, Governor. Own it.
I was wondering if you could shine a little light on the subject below:
You really expect me to explain the arrogance and the general anti science stupidity of Republican political agents?!
I just found it unbelievable. Thanks for the confirmation.
It’s very easy to explain, the human race is diverging. All species radiate genetically and highly intelligent ones should also radiate mentally. We don’t know what changes are actually happening, but to have such polarization in thought, action and world view should be an indicator of fundamental changes within the brain system.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/republican-democrat-brain-politics-fmri-study_n_2717731.html
Democrats seem to use the emotional empathy portion of the brain, while Republicans use the fear-reward area of the brain while gambling.
I think studies concerning delusion should be quickly funded. Probably more important than risk studies.
I think studies concerning delusion should be quickly funded. Probably more important than risk studies.
Jonathan Haidt has a been studying this for a while and has a good book out titled the “The Righteous Mind”.
https://goo.gl/2CxPtD
Just ordered it, thanks. I am really interested in physical studies of brain differences concerning this subject.
Let’s rejoice one and all,
A REPLICA OF NOAH’S ARK HAS BEEN BUILT BY A CREATIONIST MINISTRY IN KENTUCKY
Built precisely to the dimensions specified in the Book of Genesis, the newly designed ship in Williamstown, Kentucky stretches a staggering 300 cubits, by 50 cubits, by 30 cubits. Adherents of the ministry responsible for the barge’s creation believe in the literal word of the Bible and estimate that the world is only 6000 years old… the Ark provides mankind with a palpable symbol of protection from worldly dangers and the encroachment of secularism.”
The really great news: it only cost 100,000 grand.
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160708-creationists-have-built-a-giant-noahs-ark-in-kentucky
I wonder what the Talking Snake thinks about this?
Should maybe ask him– he hangs out with the Rib Woman under that Magical Tree.
Well which one is the REAL Noah’s Ark?! They have one in the Netherlands as well…
http://orthodoxengland.org.uk/ark.htm
If you think about it, it does sort of make sense. All the middle of the US and the Netherlands were a sea in the distant past. If they are very good at preserving those arks, they might come in handy when the sea returns.
Several early civilizations have flooding myths. They might come from actual catastrophic floodings as people used to live preferentially along rivers. Also the Black Sea is thought to have been a smaller lake before it connected to the Mediterranean and it is thought that the abrupt connection caused it to increase on a daily basis displacing or sinking everybody on a huge area. This is thought to have happened around 5600 BC, on time to get incorporated into first civilizations myths in the area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis
The controversy comes because the laws to protect religious freedom in the US have forced the state of Kentucky to give several millions in tax incentives to what essentially accounts to a private business building a theme park. To make matters worse they only hire people that sign a Christian fundamentalist statement. From the distance it is all quite amusing and shocking.
I hope our Republican Golfer cadre doesn’t get too upset:
http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2016/07/18/france-golf-course-sabotaged/
As long as they don’t erect guillotines on the course, there is not much to worry about.
I suspect it is the British or more likely the Scottish, just a few divots and a few plugs does not seem like a French response to me. Too weak for the French to have done it, and no derogatory statements.
No tank tread marks and artillery shell holes, so probably not the Germans.
The Swiss? Who would suspect the Swiss? Were any chocolate wrappers or bank receipts left behind?
Or maybe it is a new movement generated by this leader of men.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4w7H48tBS8
Warning to all golfing patrons: If you see a crowd advancing on you with torches, please exit the area as rapidly as possible and have your personal assistant call the gendarme.
Saw Carlin’s last performance in Santa Rosa before his death.
Was burning as bright as ever.
Well, there is always Bill Burr. He certainly is not afraid to say it like it is and go against the politically correct grain.
Saw a cartoon a long time ago. Satan was gazing out his living room window one morning. The caption read ‘Looks like another hot one’.
Hot out there today, sidewalk is hot. Hotter than a match head. I’m gonna fry an egg, don’t need a fire, just the sidewalk.
No wind, the wind turbines aren’t doing one thing except burning electricity from the coal-fired power plant. A negative for sure, robbing power from consumers when they need it most.
The coal-fired power plants are producing electricity for millions of people so they can remain comfortable in the office buildings and homes in every state in the union, plug in the air-conditioning, voilà, instant comfort.
The wind turbines are sitting there doing absolutely nothing.
Thank your lucky stars for electricity and the resource that is part of the energy mix, coal comes to the rescue.
People are out of touch. Completely brainwashed.
Today, wind turbines are useless, irrelevant.
Beer time!
No wind today here either, but the sun is shining, the sky is blue. Old man coal is shaking about tomorrow. The winds of time will blow it away.
No wind is just today pausing, because tomorrow is on the doorstep. Hand on the doorknob. On the eve of World War with the Depression still hanging on, the World of Tomorrow was built. Little did they know of the terror and horror to follow and the wonders that would be spawned.
1939 World of Tomorrow
https://vimeo.com/142589744
>> Today, wind turbines are useless, irrelevant. <<
Maybe today. But July 12th they provided 12% of California's MWh. And utility solar another 12%.
http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/20160712_DailyRenewablesWatch.pdf
In another five days, we should have an update on the EIA’s Electric Power Monthly, telling us how much solar (and wind) contributed to the US grid in April. Gonna have to wait another three months or so to find out what the contribution of solar to the grid is right now, har!
On a serious note, below is a graph of seasonal US electricity generation by year with the dashed lines and the right hand axis showing the contribution from solar (part estimated). Solar has grown from an annual contribution of about one hundredth of one percent (0.01%) in 2007 to, I expect, over one percent in 2016. If the growth over the next nine years is one tenth of the growth over the previous nine years that would make the contribution from solar in the region of ten percent. Looks like a pretty good outcome for satisfying peak daytime, summer loads (A/C) to me,
Might try some pot instead:
https://www.salk.edu/news-release/cannabinoids-remove-plaque-forming-alzheimers-proteins-from-brain-cells/
(seems to protect against Alzheimer’s.)
2016 EIA Energy Conference
Non-Petroleum presentation themes (which have impacts on the petroleum Industry 🙂 )
Clean Power Plan: EIA, EPA, and state and regional perspectives
Oil demand and transportation: Transportation sector developments affecting oil demand and price response
Climate—next steps: Perspectives from the United States, Europe, and China
Measuring energy efficiency: Opportunities from standardization and common metrics
Renewable electricity: State-level issues and perspectives
Renewable energy and the transmission grid: Integrating renewable energy capacity into electric system operations
Information technology and the energy industry: How the application of information technology is driving change in the energy industry
The Population Conundrum
Is the real environmental problem population growth, or overconsumption? The answer is Yes.
Jonathan Foley, Earth System Scientist, Executive Director, California Academy of Sciences.
Nov 23, 2015
We haven’t crashed yet, but is the catastrophe hiding just around the corner, or just a chimera?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/the-unrealized-horrors-of-population-explosion.html?_r=0
I think the EV advocates might get a kick out of this.
Fully Charged Visits Electroflight Which Dreams About Electrifying Aviation
Electric aircrafts are a few steps behind electric cars (well, more than a few really), but slowly more and more projects are appearing on the scene.
One of the most interesting is Electroflight’s Electric Lightning P1 E in UK, which as seems obligatory, has now been featured by Fully Charged
Very cool.
Something that is often overlooked about electric motors versus ICE is the added value, lighter weight, full torque from the get-go, and the ability to re-engineer. The contra-rotating propellers is an example of that last point. A good idea that can be reintroduced because of the flexibility of electric motors.
The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and i some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulate at Bergen Norway
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in
climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.
Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81
degrees 29 minutes.
Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.
Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report
continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.
Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.
Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.
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I must apologize.
I neglected to mention that this report was from November 2, 1922, as reported by the AP and published in The Washington Post – 93 years ago.
The years the Gulf Stream wandered further north. Last line is added BS.
Still hot out there, no wind, wind turbines are still, dead in the water.
Good thing coal-fired power plants are doing the job, you would be very uncomfortable with no air-conditioning and very little electricity.
Wind turbines will never fill the void.
Coal delivers, has the capacity to do the work that has to be done.
Nothing can replace it.
Yair . . .
R Walter
“Coal delivers, has the capacity to do the work that has to be done.
Nothing can replace it.”
Last I heard we were using coal a bit faster than it was being made . . . how do your sentiments reflect that reality?
No work “has” to be done or can be done if the resources are not available.
It won’t be an issue for those reading this blog but future generations will fit the “work” to the energy available.
Cheers.