229 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum.”

  1. Can someone in Canada explain to me why the greenie weenies are protesting an ordinary pipeline by blocking train tracks? How do the two correlate?

      1. It’s another example of an utter lack of any kind of leadership from Trudeau. Witness the difference between this protest and the one in North Dakota over Dakota Access a few years ago. There, protesters were sprayed with water cannons, blasted with tear gas, had attack dogs mow them down, and rightfully arrested. This is the proper way Trudeau needs to treat these protesters, who have shown that don’t give a damn about obeying laws or sitting down to a dialog.

        Another point, the worst thing the protesters in North Dakota did was block a two lane country road. In Canada, they’re disrupting the national economy and VIA Rail customers travel plans. In other words, they’ve crossed the line into being anarchists and the media and government needs to start referring to them as such!

        1. We Are All Native

          Oh ya that 200-year-old-or-so dialogue with Les Leaders, sure. I’ve still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission.

          See also my immediately-previous comment on this site’s petro side.

          Intermission

          Trudeau says he can’t recall how many times he wore blackface makeup

          Justin Trudeau Wore Brownface at 2001 ‘Arabian Nights’ Party While He Taught at a Private School [Cute. The women in the pic seemed ok with it at the time. But then, maybe that’ll be another #metoo, someday.]

          Maybe if Trudeau put on some sort of greenface? Like Alec Baldwin in goldface?

          Frankly, just between you and me, I’m a little surprised that no news has been caught of blown-up or otherwise sabotaged pipelines– I mean outside of the normal war areas of course– but maybe it was just missed and/or that’s next, depending on what Les Leaders do.
          Sabotaging pipelines and home-made explosives seem a little trickier than nation-wide blockades, though, but then railways can also be sabotaged rather than just blocked.

          Same thing with bridges… and hospitals…

          Incidentally, does Bleachbit work on the coronavirus if it’s on a computer, such as a new one made in China? Lenovo? Or should we just wipe it, like with a cloth?

          “Behind Boetie’s thinking was the assumption, later spelled out in great detail by David Hume, that states cannot rule by force alone. This is because the agents of government power are always outnumbered by those they rule. To insure compliance with their dictates, it is essential to convince the people that their servitude is somehow in their own interest. They do this by manufacturing ideological systems that seem to justify despotism, such as socialism (among a thousand other excuses). If a population comes to believe in one or another form of statism, their compliance with despotically coercive schemes is assured.

          If, however, resistance develops and spreads among the subjugated people, the state must relent or step up its use of coercion and make examples out of the non-compliant. The risk of escalation is two fold: the forces of despotism may make martyrs of those singled out for malign treatment, and this can demoralize those within their own ranks who are squeamish about violating essential human rights. Once this dynamic of state collapse begins, it can be difficult to reverse, since further coercion only entrenches internal and external opposition.” ~ Llewellyn Rockwell Jr., ‘How A State Collapses’

          False Flags

          Julia Dias
          2 years ago
          I am brazilian. my country is in a process of destruction. this make me feel something

        2. Thankfully, after the Dakota Access debacle, protesting pipelines has been made a lot more difficult (effectively illegal) in several states in the central region.

          2. ‘Thankfully’, Mother Nature will step in if or as environmentalists and environmental mobilizations, etc., are unsuccessful, and pound us into the ground like a giant green Hulk fist along a billions-long lineup of human ‘nails’, where the top of each person’s head, per single smash of the fist, ends up nicely flush with the Earth’s surface, to commence pushing up daisies.

            (*BANG, BANG, BANG*…) ‘MOTHER HULK SMASH!’.

            Presumably, folks like Dan Goudreault will be among our friendly neighborhood facilitators in this likely destiny.

            1. ‘Thankfully’, Mother Nature will step in if or as environmentalists and environmental mobilizations, etc., are unsuccessful,

              Yes, thankfully Mother Nature will step in with disease, famine, war and pestilence. The death and misery will be overwhelming.

              We should be thankful for all that. /sarc

            3. I really don’t understand why you would post such a stupid link as this. It adds nothing to the conversation, just an ignorant cartoon musical. If that is the best you can do then you should post nothing at all.

            4. I guess you just didn’t appreciate my sense of humour at least in that example, Ron, and that’s ok. It was sort of inspired in part along the idea of looking deeply enough at the abyss then the abyss looks back, and in you go…
              Some people take this sort of abysmal thing this way as a way to cope.
              Dark humour?

            5. Also, you ended your previous comment with ‘/sarc’ and I enclosed ‘thankfully’ in single quotes to also denote sarcasm. So what was my following comment with the context-linked ‘carnival music’ if not also sarcastic and therefore in both agreement and inspiration?
              I often make extra effort, incidentally, to add value to the conversation, so maybe you expect too much from me or don’t pay all that much attention.
              In any case, at our ages, one would think you’d know by now that people are not going to see the world and respond to it the way you do or might wish.
              Anyway, babbling this sort of nonsense on here is not going to bring us back from the abyss if that’s where we’re headed. We both seem to be in agreement to a mass extinction that possibly wipes out our species as well, so if you want to set that to another kind of track or none at all, by my guest.

  2. Zorrogirl

    I wish I could provide a simple answer. The basic issue is who is in charge. Canada is a country. However within Canada there are these indigenous nations that say they have the final say on resource developments on their lands. They want nation to nation agreements with Canada. Basic power struggle.

    The power struggle is between the hereditary chiefs and the elected band council. The company signed community and project agreements with all of the 20 First Nations band councils along the route of the pipeline. The chiefs say that the project needs the chiefs’ authorization to proceed. Since the company has these 20 First Nations on side with these agreements, it is believed that the majority of the citizens of these nations support the project.

    This is a complicated situation and there is more to this than meets the eye. First off, this is a power struggle since a BC court ruled that issues such as the pipeline should be decided by elected officials. The chiefs disagree. Also this may be a preview of a bigger fight to come when they start building the trans mountain pipeline that carries crude. The current fight is over a natural gas pipeline.

    Shutting the rail lines shows they are well organized. The climate change activists are supporting this to help the protesting chiefs since CCs are opposed to any type of carbon coming out of the ground. Below are some background articles.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/blockade-railway-mowhak-wet-suwet-en-1.5467234
    https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-the-biggest-barrier-to-resolving-this-conflict-a-handful-of-hereditary-chiefs

    1. The struggle for power. I believe that Jay Hanson got it right – RIP Jay.

      “… in the first place, I put forth a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death. — Thomas Hobbes, LEVIATHAN

      The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialisation, “Western civilisation” or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate. Throughout all of history and prehistory, human advance has coincided with ecological devastation. — John Gray, STRAW DOGS

      …it may be time to recognize the maximum power principle as the fourth thermodynamic law as suggested by Lotka”. — H.T.Odum, 1994

      http://www.jayhanson.org/loop.htm

      The painting featured is “Saturn Eating His Child” : “Saturn Devouring His Son is the name given to a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya. According to the traditional interpretation, it depicts the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus, who, fearing that he would be overthrown by one of his children, ate each one upon their birth”.

      1. The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialisation, “Western civilisation” or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate. Throughout all of history and prehistory, human advance has coincided with ecological devastation.
        John Gray, STRAW DOGS

        Yes, John Gray hit the nail on the head. By the way, I read “Straw Dogs” several years ago. It is a fantastic little book. I couldn’t put it down. The below is about Gray, but not from the book:

        Gray sees volition, and hence morality, as an illusion, and portrays humanity as a ravenous species engaged in wiping out other forms of life. Gray writes that ‘humans … cannot destroy the Earth, but they can easily wreck the environment that sustains them.’

        Yes, that is what evolution has trained us, and indeed all species, to do. That is to take over the territory and resources of other species. And our brains has evolved to be masters at that evolutionary trait. We are at war with all other mega-fauna on earth, and we are winning…big time!

        1. “We are at war with all other mega-fauna on earth, and we are winning…big time”!

          Agreed – but the *WIN* will be in a pyhrric victory –

          A Pyrrhic victory is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Someone who wins a Pyrrhic victory has also taken a heavy toll that negates any true sense of achievement or damages long-term progress.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory

        2. Gray and Straw Dogs are interesting (it has been a while for me also), but use caution with some of the analysis.
          I made the mistake of turning Straw Dogs on to a “friend”, with mixed results.
          He was an engineer, not a historian.

    2. The protesters are putting several thousand jobs at risk, from all the furloughed railway workers on down the supply chain associated with the goods the trains transport. Deliberately damaging local and regional economies in this way, when the public benefit of this pipeline has been found to outweigh any environmental impact, seems like a great way to turn public opinion away from your cause, no matter the merits of any arguments the “hereditary chiefs” wish to make.

      1. Yes, jobs and an economy that an increasing many, except the blood-sucking business and government elites/pimps, care very little for. But public opinion and nature are turning away from that corrupt cause, which you appear to be a part of.
        Whether it’s soon enough is another matter.

    3. Many many of the protestors are white. Many natives are only partially FN. Even the protesting hereditary chiefs are in the minority of their group. They asked one young lady what was going to be transported in the Coastal Gaslink line and she didn’t know. She was a white early twenty something. First she replied, “I dunno, dead dinosaurs”? Then pressed she said with the usual lilting question, “I’m not sure, bitumen”?

      This is what we are up against.

      5 people just kept the Vancouver ports shut down last night, after an injunction removed the two week blockade.

      We are well fed in Canada, disconnected from reality, and many if not most/all of the protestors do not work and look they have never held a job. They are disheveled, many unkempt, most sporting multiple (meaningful) tatoos and lots of iron and studs in their faces. Who the hell knows why this tail is wagging the dog?

      Trudeau is a weak leader whose vision is trying to please all sides. He is a pretty boy sock puppet, elected only by his good looks and family name. His election to majority leader in 2015 was based on his support by women and he continues to play this card, although support is in decline. An avowed feminist, (and who gives a shit), he is only eclipsed by the hollowness of his opposition.

      A large majority of the Cdn population supports the pipeline, both pipelines. My own belief the politically correct cities is the basis for this protest, places that consume vast quantities of FF, but believe they are on track to electrified Nirvana.

      Anyway, I also believe a good hard core recession would be a first start to bring sanity back to our cities. When the tax dollars dry up and the free everything is in decline, perhaps some of these protestors would understand the word job, struggle, and priorities.

      regards to all

      1. Paulo,

        Good synopsis. As a fellow Canadian I concur with almost all of your points and the ones I don’t aren’t worth mentioning. 😉

        1. Drinking the kool-aid of so-called Canada.

          ” ‘Drinking the Kool-Aid’ is an expression used to refer to a person who believes in a possibly doomed or dangerous idea because of perceived potential high rewards.” ~ Wikipedia

          This railway thing underscores the potential fragility of the system and vulnerability of those who depend on it, as well as the importance and prioritization of local resilience and resilient discussion, learning, teaching and practice over some notions of the aforementioned in the context of a job that supports BAU/GAU(business-as-usual/government-as-usual) with a wash of green.

          If or when shipping ports, railways, pipelines and/or other large-scaled centralized BAU/GAU critical infrastructure are compromised, how far do we think its services and products will go compared with local resilience’s?

          Let this railway blockade thing– and more predicables and unpredictables very likely to come– be a wake-up call and one for the precautionary principle.

          “The lesson of the precautionary principle is plain: Because people are vile and corruptible, the state, which holds by far the greatest potential for harm and tends to be captured by the worst of the worst, is much too risky for anyone to justify its continuation. To tolerate it is not simply to play with fire, but to chance the total destruction of the human race.” ~ Robert Higgs

      2. I also believe a good hard core recession would be a first start to bring sanity back to our cities.

        +1

      3. There is a similar issue south of the border, regarding Montana and Wyoming coal.
        Big mining companies in those states would like to ramp up exports to the international market, by train down to Vancouver, Seattle, Portland ports.
        But most people down on the coast and along the train routes are just not interested in coal dust and other problems (derailments) coming their way from the big train volumes.
        And only a very few get any benefit from this industry, other than the mining companies, the the inland state tax/royalty collectors, and the workers at the mine, train and port.
        99% of people only get the negative fallout.
        And many aren’t to sad to see coal dying a slow death, rather than being ramped up.
        Its not like it is some great thing to sacrifice for.
        So, it should not be at all surprising to see opposition to this coal shipping attempt.
        In fact, a better question would be- why should people be at all open to having this coal dust come to their county?
        When it comes to situations like this, most people can be bought- if they receive direct economic benefit, the tune can change. But that can eat into profit, and historically that has often meant its time to roll out the Gatling guns.

      4. Snipes & Swipes, & Paulo

        “As an ex high school teacher… I have been dismayed at many of my past students believing hard work and training for future employment was not necessary.” ~ Paulo

        The modern education system was designed to teach future factory workers to be ‘punctual, docile, and sober’

        “The education system as we know it is only about 200 years old. Before that, formal education was mostly reserved for the elite. But as industrialization changed the way we work, it created the need for universal schooling.

        Factory owners required a docile, agreeable workers who would show up on time and do what their managers told them. Sitting in a classroom all day with a [droning] teacher [of what really?] was good training for that. Early industrialists were instrumental, then, in creating and promoting universal education…”

        Don’t get me wrong, I accept that FF use has provided us a wonderful existence and many benefits.” ~ Paulo

        Presumably even if they’ve been swiped from the ‘global south’, ‘first nations’ and the younger current and future generations, while some of them get sniped from former government drones employees with quips about their skin-colour, appearance and joblessness while they attempt to ‘take on the system’.

        Paulo (here and apparently elsewhere) seems to prefer to ‘drive-by’ and then disappear for awhile, and without any back-and-forth.

        It’s like, ‘Hey, I am the teacher and you are the student. I virtue-signal talk, you listen.’.

        “I have yet to ever receive a hospital bill or charge for any medical services, and I’m 63 having gone through the usual broken legs, stitches (chainsaw) appendix removal, cancer surgery (stage 1…. 8 years ago)…

        We had to go through a doctor’s strike to achieve it about 65 years ago. It’s high time to take on the system…”
        ~ Paulo

  3. Islandboy, a dose of reality — just for you. ?

    5 BIG TRENDS THAT INCREASED EARTH’S CARBON POLLUTION

    The world’s carbon pollution from fossil fuels rose this year [2019], reaching a record high. This is the third year in a row that carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels have increased. “Obviously it’s a bad thing,” Rob Jackson, an Earth-science professor at Stanford University who led the new research. “It’s just one more year where we churn along emitting record levels of carbon-dioxide pollution. THE YEARS AND DECADES ARE SLIPPING BY.”

    “We’re still seeing a strong rise in renewables around the world and in the US,” Jackson said. “That’s the good news. The bad news is that there just aren’t that many solar and wind farms in the world, so even massive year-over-year growth can generate only a relatively small amount of new electricity. “In the US, for the last five years, renewables have grown at about 11 percent per year. Even if natural gas had grown by a little more than 2 percent per year, that’s more energy gain than the 11 percent growth in renewables, because the gas base is so much bigger.”

    And most important, it seemed like humanity’s carbon pollution had stabilized. For three years, from 2014 to 2016, the world’s carbon emissions from fossil fuels did not meaningfully increase. That period has now definitively ended. The Paris Agreement’s future is in doubt; American carbon pollution actually surged last year; and China has slashed its subsidies for wind and solar power, dragging down global investment in renewables. Above all, the planet’s carbon pollution from fossil fuels has now increased for three years straight. The hope that we had somehow ended the 180-year acceleration in carbon pollution — without, frankly, doing much work — has now vanished.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/12/carbon-emissions-hit-new-high-2019-here-are-5-takeaways/602950/

    1. And then there is nature, just a part of it’s role described below.

      Arctic permafrost thaw plays greater role in climate change than previously estimated
      Abrupt thawing of permafrost will double previous estimates of potential carbon emissions from permafrost thaw in the Arctic, and is already rapidly changing the landscape and ecology of the circumpolar north, a new CU Boulder-led study finds.

      This abrupt thawing is “fast and dramatic, affecting landscapes in unprecedented ways,” said Merritt Turetsky, director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at CU Boulder and lead author of the study published today in Nature Geoscience. “Forests can become lakes in the course of a month, landslides occur with no warning, and invisible methane seep holes can swallow snowmobiles whole.”

      “The impacts from abrupt thaw are not represented in any existing global model and our findings indicate that this could amplify the permafrost climate-carbon feedback by up to a factor of two, thereby exacerbating the problem of permissible emissions to stay below specific climate change targets,” said David Lawrence, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and a coauthor of the study.

      https://www.colorado.edu/today/2020/02/03/arctic-permafrost-thaw-plays-greater-role-climate-change-previously-estimated

      Those pesky scientists just keep upping the natural emissions year after year. Someday they will approach reality and the news will get boring, but life will not be.

      1. Yup. From The New Yorker (September 8, 2019)

        WHAT IF WE STOPPED PRETENDING?

        The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.

        “Even at this late date, expressions of unrealistic hope continue to abound. Hardly a day seems to pass without my reading that it’s time to “roll up our sleeves” and “save the planet”; that the problem of climate change can be “solved” if we summon the collective will. Although this message was probably still true in 1988, when the science became fully clear, we’ve emitted as much atmospheric carbon in the past thirty years as we did in the previous two centuries of industrialization. THE FACTS HAVE CHANGED, BUT SOMEHOW THE MESSAGE STAYS THE SAME.” Caps are mine.

        https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending

        1. Technology currently exists to help us solve so much of the supposed problem. 100% renewable energy, plastic replacements, and electric vehicles. All we are waiting for is the ability to implement solutions now!

        2. With 7.7 billion people in a collapsing ecosystem, this is the norm.
          Results?

        3. Doug reference- “The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.”

          I have to acknowledge that I see it this way as well.

          We are not about to shut down 7.7 B people and their fossil burning.
          Coal is not about to disappear overnight.
          Fracking ban in the USA is an economic and political failure position.
          1 Billion ICE cars on the worlds roads are not about to be retired in short order, [not to mention trucks, trains and planes].
          The AC load is not about to be curtailed, to the contrary it is in an early growth phase.
          And methane is not about to retrograde back into the swamps and ice and crevices.
          The world organizations are not about to become effective, and reach agreements on proactive policy , even 4 decades late.
          People are not about to have a great change in character, and begin to address problems that are over the horizon, by 70 miles or 7 months.

          No, baring some grand geoengineering experiment, global warming at damaging scale is baked in the cake for this century.
          I predict that humanity will keep burning oil, coal, and nat gas at a very high rate until depletion and debt crush make them unaffordable.
          Adaptation to warming will be a scramble, as water laps at the footings.
          Migration will be common and chaotic.
          Heat death epidemics will be yearly, as will big fires like Australia this year and Calif last.
          And the 6th global extinction event will gather steam.

          I do hope to be wrong about these things. Very wrong.

          On the bright side, global population will peak this century. Bank on it. At between 10 and 11 billion.
          And fossil fuel burning will peak and begin a slow decline, collectively in the next decade or two.
          Refineries, and airports, will begin to be retired.
          And for some who have been proactive, their region will have relatively clean energy (solar), and will have learned to live with less.
          And some other animals will also survive. Eventually, over the next 10 centuries, they will recover as we decline.

          Go with dignity, if you have some.

          1. And to think I first learned about this in an Earth Science class in high school in 1974, from Arrhenius onward.

            What pathetically short-sighted apes we are.

            1. Interesting, in the 1970’s I was in school learning about how scientists were concerned about another ice age happening soon because there so many cold winters in a row happening in that decade. There was a film we watched in 8th grade physical science about it. Then those same scientists changed there minds after Reagan got elected…

            2. So far, they haven’t changed their minds this time. Perhaps they are honing their craft. Lately, I’ve noticed that they’ve been underestimating some warming dynamics, so I guess their craft is still being honed and that things and forcasts will get even warmer.

            3. Danny Brave,

              Not a matter of changing minds. In the 1970s work was published finally showing the history of ice ages (glacials and interglacials) over the past two and a half million years. Comparison with the previous interglacial suggested that Earth should have been cooling into another glacial but the data showed it wasn’t happening. The Keeling curve of change in concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere since 1958 showed why.

              There wasn’t a whole lot of published research behind the idea of an imminent ice age anyway. The news media (what Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo, called “Time and the other humorous weeklies”) got hold of the idea from a grad student at Columbia and away they went.

            4. Danny Brave.
              I am sorry about your education, and your culture for that matter.
              Hasn’t served you too well, apparently.

              I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that we all could take into consideration-
              “Don’t Believe Everything You Think”

            5. What I remember from biology class in school is:

              J-shaped growth curve:
              A curve on a graph that records the situation in which, in a new environment, the population density of an organism increases rapidly in an exponential (logarithmic) form, but then stops abruptly as environmental resistance (e.g. seasonality) or some other factor (e.g. the end of the breeding)

              Exponential growth is possible only when infinite natural resources are available; this is not the case in the real world.
              In the real world, with its limited resources, exponential growth cannot continue indefinitely. Exponential growth may occur in environments where there are few individuals and plentiful resources, but when the number of individuals becomes large enough, resources will be depleted, slowing the growth rate. Eventually, the growth rate will plateau or level off. This population size, which represents the maximum population size that a particular environment can support, is called the carrying capacity, or K.

              Holland wants to reach a circular economy in the year 2050:

              “The circular economy looks at all the options across the chain to use as few resources as possible in the first place, keep resources in circulation for as long as possible, extract the maximum value from them while in use, then recover and regenerate products at the end of service life.”

              That will be possible only with economic contraction in my opinion. How debts are going to be paid off in this way ?

            6. Economic growth is easily possible because an increasing part of the economy is intangible.

              It doesn’t seem likely that we can go on producing as much stuff and consuming as much energy as we do now, but that doesn’t mean the economy can’t grow.

              Data processing is one area where energy consumption is increasing. But current computers are still extremely inefficient — some estimates are that data processing efficiency could increase by as much as 10^30 times as efficient as currently possible.

              As for paying off debts, we owe each other, so it doesn’t seem like a big problem. For every debtor there is a creditor. If we owed the money to aliens, I would be worried.

            7. “As for paying off debts, we owe each other, so it doesn’t seem like a big problem. For every debtor there is a creditor. ”

              Oh, if only it was all so simple.
              So, you mean that we could have each creditor just give the owed debt back to the borrower and it would all be square?

              To even things up, you would be creating winners and losers on a grand scale. Might as well erase all the country borders on the map while we’re at it, and tear up all property deeds. Cool.

            8. Hickory,

              I am guessing you have heard of bankruptcy.

              Not all debts get paid, part of the risk of lending and part of the reason that interest rates are paid and are not the same for all borrowers.

            9. Hickory,
              Mao’s solution to the crushing rural debt in China was simply to burn all records of land ownership and debt whenever his guerrilla forces entered a town. It was very popular, and helped his recruiting efforts as well.

              Debt was a huge problem in rural China, with the poor inheriting debt from their parents. In many cases the debts were expected to take centuries to pay off, and all the land was owned by a tiny minority.

              Mao is best remembered for his insane screw-ups after he took power, but this policy was genius. Debt is really about who owns what.

              Property rights are crucial for making an economy work, but if the system gets too skewed, a reset can make sense. When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, there was a great hue and cry about property rights. Boohoo. Slavery had to go.

              Mao’s enemies, the Nationalists, ended up in Taiwan. The first thing they did when they got there was imitate this policy, which was one of the reasons for Taiwan’s roaring success. The fact that most of the landlords were Japanese made it more palatable.

              It’s worth mentioning that land reform policies in Africa have been much less successful. The devil is in the details.

              Another interesting case is the Russian Serf Emancipation of 1861, which included land redistribution. At the time much of the land and most of the serfs were mortgaged. (I recommend Gogol’s “Dead Souls” for a hilarious look at the business of mortgaging serfs.)

              All that rural debt defaulted, resetting the Russian banking system. I think the government issued some bonds to deal with it, but they turned out to be worthless. The policy wasn’t very successful, but the old system had to go.

              One way or another, the issue of debt is not closely related to energy. As Mao demonstrated, debt is just information. Delete the data, and the debt is gone.

            10. @Ali

              Yes as I said before, the money system is all about labour and resource distribution – nothing more.

              It sometimes comes to a moment where it has to be resetted – when too much ressources are wrong distributed. Most time when only a few people own everything and economy comes to a grinding halt because paying off debt becomes impossible.

            11. “As for paying off debts, we owe each other, so it doesn’t seem like a big problem. For every debtor there is a creditor. If we owed the money to aliens, I would be worried.”

              As I see it, debt is a claim on future extraction of resources. Debt pyramids collapse when the resource extraction process can’t go fast enough. So, yes, extreme debt at the national and international level is worrisome.

            12. Crazy apes that tell themselves bedtime stories about surviving a mass extinction.

    2. Thanks but, no thanks! I’m just fine with the sizeable doses of reality I get closer to home. I’ve been doing some work in a town in the center of the island over the past couple of weeks that has had us traveling back and forth from the capital city to this town, Mandeville. We are working on section of a street that has three fast food joints (US franchises) in a row with just one building that is not a fast food joint separating two of them. The vehicular traffic in this town is very busy and at rush hour it looks miserable, especially this past Friday when we saw a fire truck rushing on it’s way to this scene:

      Hellfire at Heaven’s – Seven injured, vehicles razed as Mandeville gas station goes up in flames

      One thing that one cannot help notice is that selling used cars appears to be a vibrant business in the town with used car lots in abundance, suggesting that the traffic problems are only going to get worse (along with CO2 emissions).

      The current local administration won the last election with the campaign promise of “From Poverty to Prosperity” and like our major trading partner up north, the economy appears to be booming. Some lots are being cleared along the route from the capital city for some sort of business, more car lots maybe? The fast food joints near where we were working appear to be doing a booming business. Yesterday for example, the “drive thru” windows seemed to have a constant flow of customers, with a waiting line in evidence from the time we arrived to start working till the time we left. Yup! No signs that anybody is concerned about CO2 emissions, global warming, peak oil or any such nonsense. That’s my dose of reality.

    1. When they get 10% market share, I’ll take notice.
      Lithium ion was commercialized in the early 1990’s by the Japanese—
      It’s been a while comrades.

      1. When they get 10% market share, I’ll take notice.

        That’s what Kodak said. The right way to see if a new tech will be successful is to look at the niches ift fills before it hits the mainstream market.

        1. The market is broken or doesn’t work properly or whatever. So what do we think we are going to get out of it?

          Mainstream market? Is that like mainstream media?

          1. Yes, the market is broken. As someone who has spent decades designing and market tech, I’d say that that is what marketing is all about. It should be called market breaking, because the big idea is to find a niche where there is no competition.

            When I talk about the mainstream market, I mean building a product that “most people” want. That is absolutely not how innovation works. For example, when you hear that “most Americans don’t want an EV”, just ignore it. It absolutely does not matter whether most people want them, and it won’t for years. And by that time the tech and the market will be totally different.

            Imagine the customers as distributed on a bell curve. In high tech marketing they talk about “innovators”, “early adopters”, “early majority, “late majority” and “laggards”. The mainstream market is the two middle ones, which are one sigma or something, I guess.

            Here’s a nice picture:

            https://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/99A2/theories.htm

            Once you establish a foothold in a niche, you use the manufacturing experience you gained there to build a product suitable for a wider audience.

            The classic example of this is probably hard disk drive technology, which went from 8″ to 5.25″ to 3.5″ to 2.5″ to 1.8″ to 1″ in a few decades. In each case, the new form factor was only used in a few high-end compact computers at first.

            In each case, the new tech was viewed as “too small” for “most people”. The number of manufacturers that collapsed is simply amazing.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_hard_disk_manufacturers

            None of this is my idea, or at all brainy. It’s common knowledge in Silicon Valley. I sold rotating memory devices by the container in the 90s, and it was quite a spectacle.

            That is why Tesla didn’t die when they came out with the Roadster, a car which practically nobody wanted or could afford. They looked at the zip codes of the customers of California compliance cars, and noticed that they were mostly bought by rich people. So they guessed that the “innovators” would be rich people looking for a high tech toy.

            The other kind of niche is the related market niche. My barber, for example, has five different electric shavers recharging on his little table at all times. Batteries are also taking over power equipment and garden tools, as well as creating the new “micro-transit” market of scooters and electric bikes. The speed with which batteries spread from electronics into these niches strongly suggests they will have some success in the car industry as well.

            Most people either look at past sales and claim nothing ever will change, or get all excited about new tech and claim it will take over because they think it is cool. Neither of these approaches works very well. Looking at niches actually gives you a somewhat realistic way to predict what is coming.

            1. The market is broken in part because it is backward and inverted and funhouse mirrored.
              We’d be happier and healthier if we just got and did things the right way. But we’d rather flog ourselves and the rest of the Earth.

              For instance, I’ve been alive on this planet for some time and so far no one has contacted me about what I wanted, how I wanted it and when I wanted it, etc..
              This very simple thing would seem to make a whopping difference if it was applied, modus operandi.
              Why should the market (or media or politicians, etc.) magically know what we all want, assuming it cares? It doesn’t quite. And so that seriously affects the socioecological drag coefficients that contribute to dragging much of everything down, like people and planet.

              We absolutely don’t read on here people who are for something, like, say, EV’s or PV’s, ask others if they want them do we? Hey, Caelan. What do you think of this? Do you have any ideas about it? Do you want it? Etc. It’s essentially, ‘This is how this is and this is how it’s going to be because that’s our agenda/belief, not yours.’.

              So what do I want? I thought you’d never ask. A relatively-pristine planet with little in the way of market cruft that ends up as pollution everywhere.

              That’s a niche that craves to be filled that isn’t, astoundingly enough.

              As for barbers, I do my own hair. It’s saved me a lot and given me some extra knowledge and skills to boot.

    1. Interesting. Many people fail to realize just how much electrification of the powertrain is happening to cars in the form of hybrid and plug-in hybrid applications. Even if not full on EV, these vehicles are a very big improvement. For example, you could get one of these summer 2020 toyota rav4 plugin hybrids and only use gas on days when you have to go over 39 miles.
      https://www.kbb.com/articles/car-news/2021-toyota-rav4-plug-in/

      1. The GM Volt I owned had about that same battery range. That car hooked me on EVs. I would expect the Rav4 to convert even more people given that it is a very popular SUV. GM’s research, I believe showed that range to cover a large amount of the driving public’s daily driving needs.

        1. “That car hooked me on EVs.” ~ Songster

          First hit’s free.

      2. In Sonoma I spent quite bit of time in a EV Fiat.
        Bend? None.
        Can you say location?
        A F150 is a compact around here.

    1. Oops, what happened to the “exponential growth” in transformative solar energy. From your link:

      “RepuTex, a carbon market consultancy, said data for Australia’s 260 largest emitting companies showed carbon pollution levels were now 60 per cent above 2005 levels, with those from oil and gas up 621 per cent. By contrast, emissions from electricity generators were down about 9 per cent from 2005. The power sector, which accounts for about a third of national emissions, is on course to be overtaken by industry as the biggest carbon pollution source as soon as 2023-24.”

      1. It’s a global game of Wack-A-Mole!
        Exacerbated by the increasing demand for renewables, EVs and all things “green”. The supply chain that feeds materials and parts to them grows on top of the supply chain that feeds everything already, which grows because 222,000 more people show up every day.
        Aaaaahhhhhhh! Runs out of house screaming. Goes for long walk, just to burn some fossil fueled calories.

  7. I carried this over from the Islandboy’s last post.
    “And when these guys, particularly GF, talk about what can or might possibly be done, they present their arguments rationally, in terms of what SHOULD, what MUST be done, but they pretty much totally ignore political, cultural and economic realities.”

    OFM, yeah, I was never good at bullshitting and lying and I really hate destroying the life on this amazing planet. But that is the predominate culture.

    GF, I’m with you totally, from the pov of a technically or scientifically literate person. I was a hard core doomer a few years back, when I first started taking environmental issues seriously at the personal level, in large part due to participating in the old TOD forum, meeting people there like Greenish, who is now one of my best friends.

    I understood the problem as far back as the sixties, when I was an undergrad taking over half my classes in the biology department, or else in the ag college, where essentially the same stuff was taught, with an emphasis on practical applications of the theories.I’ve always been a systems thinker, jumping ahead.
    But it didn’t matter to me, because my head was in the day to day world, until twenty years or so ago.

    Now my general beliefs, having given the matter most of my attention for the last decade plus, are that yes, the world as a whole is headed to hell, irrevocably, but that some pockets of civilization might or maybe even WILL survive.

    So I’m in the same book and the same chapter as you, and often on the same page.

    Where I branch off, in this forum, is that I try to think like a politician or clan leader or business owner who understands the science, that understands the shit IS in the fan, but that my neighbors, coworkers, employees, or voters haven’t yet realized it.

    So…. this means you and I and others like us have to do whatever we can to enlighten our fellow apes and gradually steer them in the right direction, which is more or less about the same thing as herding cats.

    It’s just about impossible to even get their attention, except if you offer them something good to eat, or a new toy to play with, lol.

    In the case of apes, naked, new stuff that’s shiny and cheap really gitserdone, ESPECIALLY if it makes the apes feel good and saves them some money to spend on OTHER stuff as well.

    So as I see it, the thing to do, other than working to educate our abysmally ignorant fellow apes, is to push the shiny new feel good stuff as hard as we can.. this stuff being electric cars, wind and solar power, super insulated houses, smart appliances, etc.

    These things aren’t going to save the world………. BUT they are moves in the right direction, and hopefully these industries will grow to the point that they can shoulder ENOUGH of the fossil fuel load, combined with changing lifestyles, tough conservation policies, etc, that SOME of us will pull thru ok, and that some of the natural world will survive ok.

    Most people have either never given my next point any thought, or disagree with me, but when the nation states of the world eventually come to understand that their own survival AS nation states is on the line, they will implement policies to make things happen fast, in a lot of cases. In other cases, piss poor leaders will just do whatever they can to maintain their own power, not giving a damn about anything past the next year or two of course. Zenezuela and the USA are prime examples of this kind of piss poor leadership at this minute.

    But the PEOPLE of a country that’s been importing oil and gas will come to understand very quickly, once they can’t import gas for a few weeks or months, due to a political crisis or war, that it’s PAST TIME to put the petal to the metal building wind and solar farms, etc……. past time to implement make work programs to refurbish older houses for energy efficiency, past time to double down on taxing gas hog vehicles and subsidize electric vehicles, etc.

    It IS too late to save everybody and it’s too late to save some portion of the biosphere. Maybe most of the birds and larger mammals, etc, will go extinct. I wouldn’t be surprised at all.

    What we need to do now is what Churchill was doing in the thirties for his country…… whatever he could to raise the alarm and get his country ready for the coming onslaught.

    We’re going to be fighting a defensive war, in a manner of speaking, against economic and ecological collapse. The more troops we have, in the form of experienced technicians, the more manufacturing capacity we have in the relevant industries, the better our chances of ramping up for a successful fight.

    A key element that allowed us to win WWII, seldom acknowledged by people ill informed about military matters, is that we had a solid core of experienced officers and troops remaining from WWI, which formed the core of the new and vastly expanded armed forces necessary…….. Without those experienced men, we probably ( in the opinion of a lot of professional military men) wouldn’t have been able to train and deploy enough soldiers quickly enough to have won that war .

    We’re going to be looking at a life boat situation. Countries that are still reasonably capable of producing their own food, etc, are going to be looking at forting up, unwilling and unable to deal with immigrants not by the tens of thousands, but by the millions.

    It’s going to get rough as hell.

    I’m not sorry to say I probably won’t live to see it, but countries such as the USA, Canada, and those in Western Europe will have to more or less fort up and more or less close their borders, excepting perhaps for highly skilled professional people and of course the friends and families of the rich people who will find a way in.

    Maybe it will all be too little too late, maybe Ron’s right, maybe civilization is pretty much done for, other than a few small pockets here and there, and maybe not even that.

    But a lot of people, maybe most of us, in places such as Canada and the USA might pull thru ok, assuming we avoid WWIII, etc.

    If we HAVE to, we can live quite well on no more than a third of our current grain production by eating down the food chain. We can get by on less than a quarter of our current per capita oil consumption, if we HAVE to.

    We can get by with five or ten percent of the fuel we currently burn on air travel, using that one percent to run emergency helicopters and train military pilots, etc.

    And since when the shit is finally really and truly in the fan, and the everyday economy collapses, we can put most of the people who are otherwise going to be on welfare anyway on useful make work projects…. such as refurbishing old houses for energy efficiency, planting trees, serving as teacher’s aides, community security personnel, community gardeners, etc.

    Yes, what I’m talking about, when the shit is OBVIOUSLY in the fan, is a top down war time emergency economic system. It’s worked in the past, and it can work again…… with a little luck.

    People will get behind it once they see the necessity of it.

    1. The WWII analogy falls apart in so many directions when examined even coarsely. The machines won’t save people because they are the problem and what is happening because of them has no boundaries, national or otherwise. How do you fight a war against yourself and your civilization?

      Onward Renewable Soldier riding in an EV, proudly bearing a shield made of PV.

      The acronyms will not save us, only a willingness to sacrifice ourselves and our ways to maintain a living planet would do that. The opposite of the current civilization.

      Here is an example of the machine savior we spend so much world wrecking time and energy to produce.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1RsHQCMRTw
      First Light Fusion: The Future of Electricity Generation and a Clean Base Load? | Fully Charged

      But you can think politics will change things. So far that has not done well. The wreckers are winning. People will always find ways to wreck things.
      Phantom Light (1935)
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVfqTJZi4AU&t=3s

      Enjoy, we are past peak civilization, thank goodness. Enjoy it while it lasts.

      1. Under wartime conditions, civilian and military leadership merges, and if the quality of that leadership is good, actions are taken to win the war being fought.

        When the shit is well and truly in the fan, flying fast, so that the PEOPLE understand the necessity of change, good leaders, if we are so lucky as to have good ones, will do what HAS to be done to win the war against the machines, against overpopulation, against over consumption…….. because that’s the route to victory, or in this case, self preservation.

        In WWII, we shut down civilian auto manufacture. We can shut down non essential air travel when the time comes. We can outlaw personal cars being built larger than subcompacts that won’t go over thirty mph.

        We can divert manpower and materials from industries such as building sports stadiums and resorts to building wind and solar farms.

        The materials going into more air ports can be diverted into more mass transit.

        Men who lose their jobs in non essential industries will have a choice…. work on a make work job out of uniform, or IN uniform, when the shit is well and truly in the fan. The make work jobs will help preserve whatever can be preserved, and is worth preserving.

        A wartime economic footing does not have to be about tanks, ships, and planes. It can be about conservation, renewable energy, eating down the food chain.

        Birth control can and likely will be free.

        There may well be incentives for women to have fewer kids, whereas historically there have been incentives for them to have more, sometimes.

        I don’t expect such an effort to save humanity, collectively.

        But there’s a fair to good chance it can save a substantial number of us in some of the more fortunate countries, such as the USA, Canada, Russia, etc…… countries that are not overpopulated, countries that still have substantial natural resources, capable people who know how to work…….

        But in countries that are already overpopulated, resource poor, poorly educated, things are going to get VERY rough indeed. Getting trapped in a country such as Egypt would be tantamount to a death sentence.

        There will be fences built…… real ones, and behind the fences will be men who are heavily armed and more than willing to use their weapons…….. because their own families are sheltering behind the fence and behind them………. from countless would be immigrants..

        The kind of immigrants we get trying to come into the USA today are basically almost all good people. They’re desperate for a better life.

        The kind that will be coming or trying to, later, will be starving and desperate, and desperate men don’t line up at food kitchens. There won’t be any food kitchens, except for local people.

        I’ve never stolen anything other than time on a payroll, goofing off.

        But if my belly gets empty, and there’s no other way to eat, I’ll steal…… and if necessary, I’ll do it at gunpoint. So will just about any other man. I might go a day or two eating first.

        If I had kids, I would be planning my robberies weeks before I actually ran out of food for them.

        It’s going to come down to US versus THEM once the shit is really flying. US will be the people sheltering behind the fences. THEM will be the people trying to get across.

        1. “We can shut down non essential air travel when the time comes.”

          Thats for sure, and perhaps with this virus in circulation we should do it now for practice. Non-essential means that close to 100% can be shut down.
          Six months, and then reconsider.

  9. New cronavirus cases are dropping off in China. Because people have stopped coming forward to be tested when they get sick. They know they will be hauled away and put in quarantine with hundreds of other sick people. That plus the government wants to quell the effects of the outbreak so they are deliberately under reporting. This could cause the economy of China to crash.

    And the World Health Organization is not helping one damn bit:
    Coronavirus: How WHO Corruption Helped It Spread

    1. Taken from an e-mail (this morning) from a Daughter who lives in Italy:

      “…so, it seems someone was misdiagnosed with pneumonia, sent home from the hospital with coronavirus, and in the meantime has infected Northern Italy. I am not particularly worried about this (yet). But cases are popping up everywhere from here to Milan. And all those people had contact with other people, before they were diagnosed. This could get a lot bigger fast…”

      Just got off phone with my Daughter who told me they have been closing schools and there is talk of having the army delivering food. Number of cases are expanding rapidly: one to 138 in two days!

    2. Would I be wrong if I stated that the Coronavirus is a gene selector acting for change?

      Merely as a thought experiment.

      1. “Would I be wrong if I stated that the Coronavirus is a gene selector acting for change?”

        Yes, you’d be wrong. Throughout history, there have been a number of pandemics. Think smallpox and tuberculosis. The 1918 — 1919 “Spanish flu” pandemic resulted in dramatic mortality worldwide. Coronavirus may become a pandemic, of course, but not a “gene selector”, whatever that is.

        1. Hi Tim E,

          I agree with Doug that there’s no such thing as a “gene selector”, at least not in any of my old textbooks, lol.

          But your question is a very good one never the less, although poorly phrased.

          “Would I be wrong if I stated that the is a gene selector acting for change?”

          Epidemic diseases are part and parcel of population collapses resulting from overshoot and humanity is in overshoot. There are far too many of us and something is inevitably going to wipe a large portion of us out, sooner or later.

          Famine, war, disease, etc, kill a lot of us EVERY year already, and always have, and always will.

          Species from the smallest virus to man constantly evolve and constantly spread to occupy any new niche or territory possible, whenever circumstances permit.

          The communicable diseases that kill us are pretty much self limiting, because once they kill enough people, they CAN’T easily spread anymore, for lack of handy new victims.

          Malaria for instance can’t reach people who live in high dry cold places without mosquitoes to transmit it.

          Given time, such a disease typically co evolves with its host or hosts, in this case corona virus and homo saphead, with the disease becoming less virulent, and the host becoming more resistant or tolerant, until the situation more or less stabilizes.

          This is basic freshman or sophomore level evolutionary biology, straight out of the textbooks.

          We’re in overshoot. Corona virus is one little tool in Mother Nature’s overshoot tool kit. It will kill a lot of people, maybe tens of millions or even more, unless we figure out how to contain it.

          She’s not yet doing more than just dawdling around with that tool kit, but sometime within the next century or so, barring miracles, she’s going to go on a rampage with it.

          Mother Nature could care less. She’s not even SENTIENT. She only keeps score via the fossil record, lol.

          Given time, some of us who survive corona virus will leave behind children capable of shrugging it off, or otherwise……. we will live far enough apart to stop the transmission of it on the grand scale……… until the population builds up someplace where it’s not present until it can run wild again… as Plague has run wild once in a while.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innate_resistance_to_HIV#Creating_genetic_resistance

          Given time enough, that one percent of us in the course of natural events would repopulate the planet with naked apes resistant or immune to aids. The more virulent forms of aids would evolve to be less virulent for the most part. Some really bad types would survive so long as there are pockets of new susceptible victims to be infected.

          Ditto corona virus.

          1. That’s the scary part – as you state: (OFM)”We’re in overshoot. Corona virus is one little tool in Mother Nature’s overshoot tool kit. It will kill a lot of people, maybe tens of millions or even more, unless we figure out how to contain it.

            She’s not yet doing more than just dawdling around with that tool kit, but sometime within the next century or so, barring miracles, she’s going to go on a rampage with it”

            Even Ugo Bardi just asked:

            The Return of the Black Death? The Coronavirus as an Agent of Population Collapse

            https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-return-of-black-death-can.html

            A Harbinger of things to come?

            Either we are on a Finite Planet with finite resources – OR we are on a finite Planet with Universal and ever expanding infinite resources – just trying to figure out how to unlock those resources.

            Thanks Ron – for the forum to explore these conundrums.

          2. Covid 19
            COVID-19 Fatality Rate by AGE:
            under 50 yrs 0.2-0.4% depending on decade
            over 70 8%
            Over 80 14%

            So, this will not be a significant population/gene effect virus.
            The vast majority of deaths are far beyond reproductive age.

    3. Wow informative video. Thanks for posting.
      Don’t even know what to say other than utter disgust.

  10. Gotta agree with Caelean:

    “The market is broken in part because it is backward and inverted and funhouse mirrored.
    We’d be happier and healthier if we just got and did things the right way. But we’d rather flog ourselves and the rest of the Earth”.

    The age is moving from that of Pisces – to that of Aquarius.

    “Astronomers and astrologers may agree that the Age of Aquarius starts when the vernal equinox point moves out of constellation Pisces and into Aquarius. But when will that be? There’s no definitive answer”.

    https://earthsky.org/human-world/when-will-the-age-of-aquarius-begin

    The spiritual demands of a New World deprived of natural resources will require a species which can live within those boundaries.

    Human Collosus will soon be extinct.

    Conjuring the Spirit of Jay Hanson:

    I still believe that William Catton stated the prospects for the future of Humanity the best:

    “CIRCUMSTANCE: The Age of Exuberance is over, population has already overshot carrying capacity, and prodigal Homo sapiens has drawn down the world’s savings deposits.

    CONSEQUENCE: All forms of human organization and behavior that are based on the assumption of limitlessness must change to forms that accord with finite limits”.

    http://www.jayhanson.org/page15.htm

  11. Sunday morning trivia (or, an inconvenient truth):

    Alberta’s oil sand operations, taken together, are the world’s largest industrial project. The boreal forest has been razed and bitumen is mined from the ground in immense open pits. As a result, Canada is not likely to meet its 2020 carbon emission reduction target. Nor is it likely to meet its 2030 Paris climate target – which is almost entirely due to increasing emissions from our oil and gas sector, which are expected to reach 100 million metric tons a year by then. BTW, a study published in April in Nature Communications found emissions from the Canadian oil sands, measured from aircraft, are roughly 30 percent higher than the figures reported by the industry.

    2. “While the oil sands have been painted as a high emitter of greenhouse gases, in reality, oil sands developments only account for 10% of Canada’s GHG emissions and about 0.15% of global GHG emissions. However, Canada’s oil sands industry continues to reduce GHG emissions intensity. Work is in progress on a variety of new technologies to lower oil sands GHG emissions. GHG emissions have dropped 32% per barrel since 1990 due to innovation.”

      The boreal forest stretches from coast to coast. The oil sands are located in a small part of eastern Alberta. I flew in the north and have flown for hours at a time over the forest and northern swamp.

      The ‘sands’ emissions are 1.6 of 1% of the total planet production, and Canada produces less than 10% of production. Per capita the rate is high because our population is low. None of this is benign, we all get it. But stats taken out of context are misleading. regardless, when supplies run low most of the World would give anything to live in a Country like Canada that produces 2X domestic consumption, and is a large exporter of Hydro electricity.

      1. Your flogging a dead horse. The bitumin business is dying for economic reasons anyway. It just isn’t a very good source of energy.

  12. https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/antarcticas-ice-the-one-war-that-the-human-species-cant-lose?utm_source=pocket-newtab

    The last paragraph:
    Before I went to Antarctica, I checked in with Donald Perovich, a geophysicist at Dartmouth who tracks sea ice. We got to talking about wars. “You can argue that in all wars, there are winners and losers. Afterward, societies go on. There’s an opportunity to recover and move forward. If you approach climate change as a war, there are some really severe consequences across the board,” he told me. “This,” he added, “is the one war we can’t lose.”

    Whatever effort we make, collectively, may be too little too late, but for damned sure once it’s OBVIOUS to the general public, so that R type politicians can no longer ignore it, a WAR TIME economic climate protection plan will be implemented in many countries.

    The bigger the base of renewable and conservation industries, the better, when that time comes.

    I’m close to worthless myself, physically, as a farmer these days, but I could teach the rudiments of sustainable gardening to a couple of dozen people easily, showing them how it’s done, hands on………. IF any body showed up.

    Once the shit flying fast, they WILL show up……. but I most likely will be gone by then.

      1. I am sure it will be. However the ravages of that war will leave nature a damn mess for at least a hundred years before the scars begin to heal.

      2. “The war against nature will be lost.”
        Yes.
        But nature is not a motivated, vengeful enemy determined to wipe us out, the way a human tribe or band sometimes sets out to utterly eliminate an enemy tribe.

        Nature isn’t sentient and malicious.

        When nature practices genocide, it’s an impersonal, dispassionate genocide.

        It follows that while nature is going to kick our collective ass but good some of us may still hang on and continue to live a more or less modern civilized lifestyle.

        It won’t be anything like today’s energy and resource extravagant life style, but it can still be quite pleasant, compared to going back to a preindustrial life and economy.

        We shouldn’t give up, that won’t help anything at all.

        1. “Nature isn’t sentient and malicious.”
          OFM, just look into the eyes of any human to disprove that.
          You are excluding the highly probable case that humans will finish themselves through a broad spectrum of both “good” and “bad” efforts and lack of efforts.

          Your wish for a continued modern industrial civilization goes strongly against history and reality. Industrial civilization is what put the biosystem including humans in this position.

          Efforts in all directions will continue until they can’t. The current industrial system is fully dependent upon global trade, which is a very weak link.

          1. I don’t particularly wish for it, because I’m not going to be here to participate in it.

            I’m simply saying that human beings have advanced to the point that we CAN and DO cooperate to create nation states, and that the nation state is now and has been the predominant feature of history, other than technology and economic innovations, etc, for the last few hundred years at least.

            Look at the history of nations that have gone to war over the last century, and the sacrifices made willingly or via coercion by the people thereof, and stop to consider that while the USA might be currently under the thumb of idiots, most other advanced nations aren’t.

            In the end, the politicians that listen to the engineers,economists, generals and other professionals remain in power more often than those that DON’T.

            Nation states are capable, once aroused, of accomplishing near miracles, in terms of economic change.

            I’m saying there’s a real possibility that some nations, or at least parts of some nations, can and will pull thru the coming bottleneck while preserving an industrial civilization, meaning one with working water and sewer, working grid, food in stores, cops on streets, etc.
            There will still be large reserves of most one time thru resources available in such places, or available to the people living in them, enough to maintain ESSENTIAL services.

            Where such resources are too far depleted, or too far away, and the people lack the POWER to go and get them, well, those people will die in place. Any place that is highly dependent on imported food is a good place to be FROM, before the shit hits the fan. Ditto imported energy, ditto imported raw materials that are the basis of the larger part of the economy.

            I’m NOT saying some pockets of industrial civilization WILL survive, because there are countless scenarios where it won’t happen. WWIII, the world wide climate going entirely haywire, etc, a pandemic like the one in the Stephen King novel “The Stand” if I remember the title, could mean the end of industrial civilization world wide.

            BUT if overshoot plays out piecemeal geographically and temporally, as I think is more likely by far than a fast world wide collapse, some countries will have a chance to adapt just as they have adapted to wars in times past.

            We ARE NOT dependent on the world wide supply chain in terms of our actual SURVIVAL, not really. We don’t NEED Chinese junk, or cameras or phones or computers. We can get by without that sort of stuff, although the lack of it will mean severe economic disruption. Wartime economic measures CREATE and DEAL WITH such disruptions.

            There will still be navies at sea, and strong men or actual armies that will get some materials such as lithium to a port, even if it has to get there on the backs of slaves or horses.

            Given a mandate, trucks and tractors could again be built without computers, or with really simple ones, within a year. It’s not like the engineers who designed the ones we used to use didn’t leave DRAWINGS behind, lol.

            Sure millions of people will lose their jobs in convenience stores, tourist traps, at airlines, in law offices, in countless other places.

            But in a country such as the USA, assuming the climate doesn’t go NUTS right away, there’s a good shot for the government being able to maintain essential services and maintain the peace FOR THE MOST PART.

            If the shit hits the fan this way before I’m gone, I have made informal arrangements with some of my old friends to come here and sort of fort up, just in case.

            It’s a lucky accident for me that I come from a farming background with property and experience in the biz, because I wouldn’t take the possibility of collapse near term seriously enough to be a “prepper” in the usual sense of the word.

            But it hasn’t cost me anything much to organize my affairs in such a way as to be as likely to survive a couple of years of chaos as just about anybody. Isolation, check. Water supply check. Food supply check. Fuel supply check. Defensive skills and weapons check. First aid skills check.
            Youth and energy…….. now THERE I have a problem.

            I believe large portions of the people alive today are likely to die hard, or if they don’t, their children will, before the end of this century, barring miracles.

            Most of them will die in or near the places they live, because any place they try to go, they’re going to come up against very real fences, and very real guns, with very real men manning them, once MASS migrations are attempted.

            So far the refugee situation is like the first few drops of rain along the leading edge of a thunderstorm, with the hard rain coming down a few minutes later.

            1. “Most of them will die in or near the places they live, because any place they try to go, they’re going to come up against very real fences, and very real guns, with very real men manning them, once MASS migrations are attempted.”

              Its a very troubling vision, but lets keep in mind that for many peoples, in many lands, and many times in history, including right this moment- this is the reality already experienced.
              I could give you a hundred examples off the top of my head, from the Rohingya in Burma, to the Jews of Warsaw, the Cherokee of the Smokies,…., its the recurrent story of an extremely cruel species. Count yourself among them.

    2. I’m not being disrespectful – but imagine all the “binding time” it took to be able to perform this operation.

      In other words – a lot of progress with costly and exploitative (of resources) technology had to occur prior to: “last year, ten of us set out on a Zodiac ”

      Consider the (prior) research and inventions which produced an inflatable gas engine powered inflatable – including the provisions and advanced products which powered it and fed the Researchers. Setting out on a Zodiac is a far cry from setting out on a Birch Bark Canoe – shped by fire and stone axes.

      Owning a diesel powered tractor is a far cry from owning a mule, a plow, and some leather reins.

      We = as Human Beings have moved so far away from the domain of the tangible to that of the abstract – that the Real World is now Virtual Reality and headed for collapse as only machines can exist in the Virtual Reality World.

  13. More on the Italian front:

    CORONAVIRUS: VENICE CARNIVAL CLOSES AS ITALY IMPOSES LOCKDOWN

    “Italian officials have cut short the Venice Carnival as they try to control what is now the worst outbreak of the coronavirus in Europe. Italy has imposed strict quarantine restrictions in two northern “hotspot” regions close to Milan and Venice.

    About 50,000 people cannot enter or leave several towns in Veneto and Lombardy for the next two weeks without special permission. Even outside the zone, many businesses and schools have suspended activities, and sporting events have been cancelled including several top-flight football matches.”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51602007

  15. Anyone here figure out how many giga factories would be needed to supply the us with sufficient storage and ev batteries?

    2. Well, ignoring the storage question, as the answer to that question is so dependent on the question of what means of renewable production, where located, and how connected, along with the unknown of how many other methods of storage may prove to be more effective for long terms, and more affordable, such as pumped hydro, and reserved hydro, and possibly V2G technology, there are estimated 1 billion passenger vehicles used daily globally. Assuming that each of these billion vehicles is replaced over a 10 year period using an average pack size of 60kWh, then it would take 171 giga-factories producing at the 2019 giga-factory output rate of 35gWh/yr.

      That’s a lot of giga-factories, each producing 8.75mWh of cells each hour using two 8 hr shifts and a 5 day work week, or 4mWh each hour if it is 24/7*365 production, which isn’t that unlikely considering the potential for fully automated factories.

      It’s improbable, but it doesn’t seem impossible.

      1. Whenever I concept model the energy demands versus renewable, I look back at the weather in my region. 7 weeks of very low sun along with little to no wind. Winter temps 20 degree or more below average for most of the season. Heat waves. Should regions of 30 to 50 million people have to be abandoned because backup energy is only a few days or a week long? We need to think long and hard about the anomalies, then design survivable systems. Or accept mass death, mass revolt and massive societal change.
        If people want electric world, they better include alternatives and the total weather picture.

        1. I concur GF with the observation that many places have extremely poor solar and wind prospects at many points during the year.
          It would be extremely tough to survive on just those sources without some form of additional energy, especially when you start talking about towns needing energy for industry and commerce, let alone at the household level.

          That is why, if are being realists about overshoot/peak fossil fuel/and climate change, we must acknowledge that is it a series of unpleasant and/or expensive choices to be made, which must include some combination of the following options
          – rapid downsize of energy consumption and population and gdp
          – a very robust grid that can move energy 1500 miles from source to sink
          – a continued reliance on fossil fuel for the foreseeable future while it still can be afforded [with the realization that global warming is significant, and baked in the cake already]
          – a massive diversion of resources to more renewables deployment, storage capacity and conservation measures like building retrofit
          – a system to be developed for energy rationing based on ‘common good’ and economic justice, rather than just wealth

          Along these lines, I would point out that we in the USA have barely scratched the surface of several items that could extremely useful-
          We still have over 99% of potential solar energy resource untapped
          We still have vast onshore and offshore wind energy resource untapped
          We have huge gains to made in building retrofit
          We have huge gains to made in electrification, and downsizing, of transport
          We have very big gains to be made in energy management (load shifting, etc) and storage and grid upgrading

          Some of these can be accomplished if we have proper leadership, sense of imperative, and proper management (especially of debt- and what financial priorities of the country are). On these last points, we have failed miserably since 1972 (LtoGrowth).

          In this country we have a failure of industrial energy policy, primarily due to partisan politics, crappy leadership, lack of science and engineering education, and a half-drugged populace. For example, we have high-level nuclear waste pools overflowing with no national processing and storage facility. And we can’t even pass a simple infrastructure bill.

      2. In the last EPM thread (with data for November 2019) I posted a comment with a slide from a Maxwell Technologies presentation on their dry electrode coating technology, indicating that their process should result in a “16x Production Capacity Density Increase”. Not knowing exactly how that translates to increasing the output of a given facility makes figuring out difficult but, if we were to assume that the output of a given factory could increase by a factor of 8 using these processes then 8 times fewer factories would be needed.

        Another way of looking at it based on Bob’s comment above is that, the output of 35GWh/yr would increase by a factor of 8 to 280GWh/yr. We can deduce from this that the battery chemistries and the resulting possibilities for manufacturing processes will play a large part in determining how many factories would be necessary.

        1. If you find out more about that dry electrode coating process and the amplification of battery production, please post it.

          production capacity = Volume of products that can be generated by a production plant or enterprise in a given period by using current resources.

          If I interpret that correctly then we should see a 16X increase from the same production facility. Not sure how they get the rest of the system to speed up that much, but we shall see.

          From the Maxwell Technologies page:

    3. Panasonic says it thinks production could read 50 GWh this year, though they haven’t come close yet. Giga mean billion, so that it 50 billion Wh.

      Currently about 17m light vehicles are sold a year in the US. Assume each one needs a 100 KWh (100,000 Wh) battery. That estimate is too high. Anyway, that is 1.7 trillion Wh, or 1,700 billion.

      So very roughly 1,700/50 which is 34. I would say 25 to 40.

      1. My G.F. estimate was global and based on a ten year replacement of a billion vehicle fleet. Your approach of calculating the yearly production number is better. In 2018 that was 95,000,000 vehicles.

        https://www.statista.com/statistics/265859/vehicle-sales-worldwide/

        So, using your anticipated G.F. output of 50 gWh/yr, that’s 190 Giga-Factories needed.

        That’s a static vehicle production number however, and the global fleet is estimated to be 2 billion by 2035, which assumes growth in annual production.

        100 kWh pack size is too big however, as you say.

        1. It’s not really much too big. A city car will have less, a more rural pickup truck or car for interstate travel more.

          Think the quadruple energy density from today batteries, something Lithium / Sulfur solid state or anorganic liquid.

          These batteries will need a new production technic. Perhaps it is more efficient, perhaps less. If it’s the same per cell, you need 4 times less factories in your guess.

        2. Bob,
          I agree with your rough estimate.

          Battery production is the limiting factor, and one big question is whether electric vehicles can compete with other battery hungry industries. Utilities might end up soaking up all the production, slowing EV growth. Tesla has put its semi on ice because they make much more money per battery selling cars.

  16. The future has arrived folks:

    SEE RECORD-HIGH TEMPERATURES STRIP ANTARCTICA OF HUGE AMOUNTS OF ICE

    It’s easy to forget that Antarctica is technically a desert, until you see it without snow.
    A new pair of satellite images shared by NASA’s Earth Observatory makes that stark reality clear as ice. NASA’s Landsat-8 satellite snapped the two images of Eagle Island (a small island off of Antarctica’s northwest tip) on Feb. 4 and Feb. 13, 2020, bookending a period of record hot temperatures in the southernmost continent. Between the two images, a significant amount of the island’s glacial ice disappeared, revealing huge swaths of the barren brown rock underneath. According to glaciologist Mauri Pelto, a professor of environmental science at Nichols College in Massachusetts, the island lost about 20 percent of its seasonal snow accumulation in just a few days.

    While every season has its highs, this summer has been especially warm for Antarctica, Pelto said. The continent has already seen two prior heatwaves this season — one in November 2019 and one in January 2020 — reminding us that significant melt events like these are becoming more common as global warming continues unchecked.

    https://www.livescience.com/antarctica-island-melting-ice.html?utm_source=notification

    And below,

    ‘UPSIDE-DOWN RIVERS’ OF WARM WATER ARE CARVING ANTARCTICA TO PIECES

    “Earth’s frozen places are losing ground fast. In Antarctica, melted ice spills into the ocean at rate of about 140 billion metric tons per year — an amount so confoundingly huge that it’s easier just to call it “chilling” and “unprecedented,” as a recent U.N. report did. Those numbers will only increase as humans continue polluting the air with record amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.”

    https://www.livescience.com/antarctica-ice-shelf-upside-down-rivers.html

    1. The natural feedbacks are doing their best to imitate humans, in the long run will do better. The climate has been oscillating for almost 3 million years, time for it to move to a more stable place so life can increase in population and diversity once again. Ice Ages and Thermal Maximums are just too rough on life.
      I doubt if sea level rise will be fast enough to be in the top ten list of problems by 2040.

      1. I doubt if sea level rise will be fast enough to be in the top ten list of problems by 2040.

        You may be right.
        Trading with the tribe in the next valley will be the top concern.

        1. When the penguins doff their tuxedos then put on Bermuda shorts, flowered shirts plus Ray Ban sunglasses, it’s time to get concerned. 🙂

    2. That’s great news, Doug! That means that Antarctica will soon be free of ice and ready for EV’s to roll! Ya!

      “Trading with the tribe in the next valley will be the top concern.” ~ Hightrekker

      With self-crashing— sorry, I mean self-driving EV’s no doubt! My god I’m so stoked.

  17. Interesting and somewhat surprising article popped up at insideevs.com this morning:

    Mexican Bakery Corporation Bimbo Goes Electric

    Grupo Bimbo, a Mexican bakery corporation (world’s largest one – with more than 100 locations in 17 countries), has one of the largest electric delivery van fleets in the country (about 500), and moreover – produces EVs in-house, through a subsidiary – Moldex.

    Bimbo’s adventure with EVs started in 2012. Now, after several years and some $146 million invested in development and production, Bimbo set a target to expand its fleet to 4,000 EVs in four years – by 2024.

    Most recently, the company incorporated 100 Moldex BEVs and 41 Toyota hybrid vehicles.

    The latest VDT3 model is able to cover some 80 km (50 miles) on a single charge taking 1,000 kg of payload. The top speed is just 70 km/h, but it does not have to be high.

    So, like DHL, Grupo Bimbo had to develop their own BEV delivery vehicles in house. Something is wrong when two large organizations looking for electric vans for deliveries could not find anything from the major commercial vehicle manufacturers and had to instead go it on their own and develop their own solutions. This might indicate that there is a huge untapped market for this type of vehicle. For sub 100 mile delivery routes this type of vehicle makes a huge amount of sense.

    1. “Something is wrong when two large organizations looking for electric vans for deliveries could not find anything from the major commercial vehicle manufacturers and had to instead go it on their own and develop their own solutions. This might indicate that there is a huge untapped market for this type of vehicle. For sub 100 mile delivery routes this type of vehicle makes a huge amount of sense.”

      Indeed. Companies a a good five years late to the game on this segment. The door is open for newcomers. Here comes Rivian, et al
      https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a30768563/amazon-rivian-electric-delivery-van-revealed/

    1. No breakthroughs in climate science for decades combined with overconfidence leads to this:

      A fery wake-up call for climate science

      Except for the easy stuff, such as the energy balance of greenhouse gases, climate scientists can’t make any headway in predicting climate extremes caused by ocean dipoles such as El Nino, and the shifts in storminess cause by the Madden-Julian Oscillation (and all the other climate indices as well).

      “Scientists, on the other hand, need to tread a delicate line of underlining what is certain and providing appropriate guidance on what is not, while redoubling efforts to better represent climate impacts that most directly affect society”

      1. As a follow-on, Michael Mann thinks that explaining how challenging it is to distinguish between extremes due to natural variation versus that due to climate change is bad science communication technique

        Some stuff is hard but there’s no reason to sugar-coat that fact.

  21. NASA Images Show Antarctica’s Eagle Island Almost Ice-Free

    20% of the snow on one ice cap in Antarctica melted in the heatwave between February 4th and 13th. These images were courtesy of the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8. They show a drastic before & after visual.
    https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/22/nasa-images-show-antarcticas-eagle-island-almost-ice-free/
    =
    Teck withdraws application for $20B Frontier oilsands mine

    Vancouver-based Teck Resources Ltd., has withdrawn its application to build a massive oilsands project in northern Alberta, citing the ongoing debate over climate policy in Canada.

    The federal government was slated to make a decision this week on whether to approve the $20.6-billion, 260,000-barrel-per-day Frontier
    https://news.google.com/articles/CBMiPmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmNiYy5jYS9uZXdzL2NhbmFkYS9jYWxnYXJ5L3RlY2stZnJvbnRpZXItMS41NDczMzcw0gEgaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuY2JjLmNhL2FtcC8xLjU0NzMzNzA?hl=en-CA&gl=CA&ceid=CA%3Aen

    1. Teck withdraws application for $20B Frontier oilsands mine

      I was going to put this one in myself (read it in the Toronto Star this morning). It raises a couple of imponderables: whether the coalition of the Hereditary Chiefs and their supporters, and non-indigenous climate activists, can stop the pipelines and keep the oil in the ground.

      I am actually optimistic that we Canadians could reduce our oil production and make the sacrifices this requires- cutting back on energy use in a co-operative manner (’cause we’re socialists, eh?) and, importantly, not sending oil to the USA or anywhere else.

      The downside is that under one very obvious scenario, the US will refuse to live within it’s means and will annex us by force and take all the oil.

      So….even if we could get our ducks in a row, probably a sub-optimal outcome.

      We are part of a Continental energy combine regardless of what Nafta 2 says.

      We can’t cut back unless you do.

      1. Canadians can’t stop climate change, but they can wreck their own economy and help Russia’s by trying. Putin is probably very proud of the hereditary chiefs and their enablers. And Canada is what, like 1% of global carbon?

        1. If nation-states’ so-called leaders cannot take initiatives on the sorts of smooth geopolitical choreographical synchronizations needed to dial down this self-and-planet-wrecking uneconomical economy, then their increasingly-restive captive and coerced populations may take less-than-convenient initiatives for them, irrespective of Canada’s relative amount of carbon or what folks like Putin might feel about it.

          Many on here seem to think that inconvenience and chaos will likely reign supreme on the energy/natural-destruction downslopes. In that context, this Canadian thing may very well prove to be a shot across the bow and wake some people up to avoid doing some things the hard way… Well, one can hope.

          1. You’ve been getting pretty defensive about all this talk about the illegal railroad blockades. You just get back from one or something?

            1. Plato’s Cave, Unbound: Fake Laws Versus Real Laws

              There are the immutable laws of nature, such that we are bound by, and then there are the mutable laws rules (often for the herding of the ‘sheeple’) of (nation-state) elites and their cronies and thugs (who often do not follow their own laws rules).

              Where the mutable laws of nation-states’ elites and their cronies and thugs bump up against the immutable laws of nature, guess which ones will move?

              It is critically important to recognize what we are truly bound by and stop pretending as though the pretend laws existed since the Big Bang.

            3. You can take anything you want any way you wish, which can of course involve self-servings of distortion, denial, distraction and the like. Your comment here is a bit of a case in point.

              See also here and here.

            4. Between Bernie in the States and the blockades up here, I have been motivated to think that change is possible:something that hasn’t happened to me in a long time. Not timely or effective change, but change nonetheless: movement in a direction I would want to go.

              When Bernie ran in 2016, he changed the conversation and moved the whole party to the left: this time, a sizable chunk of the electorate seems to be poised to jump in with both feet. Whether Bernie wins or not, the conversation has changed again, and the idea of what is possible has been altered.

              The blockades up here are putting the topic of climate change on the front page and forcing the population to take sides. The fact that there are real economic costs to these choices is important: this is not just virtue-signaling on Facebook. You gotta say “I will sacrifice” or “Fuck the planet.” And sure, the choice is more nuanced than that, and nobody will be totally satisfied with what comes out the other end, and it won’t solve overshoot. But Yoda was wrong: better to try, even in the face of certain defeat.

            6. And they should all live in mud huts with no heat.

              If it helps keep a few million tons of oil in the ground and not in the tank of your F350?
              Good trade.

  22. This is either science/engineering gone bonkers or just one more way to ride the profit machine on a project that would might never get completed (and cause a huge amount of GHG). This is still a thought experiment but just shows the degree of economic response to small changes in sea level. There are huge environmental downsides.

    Dutch proposal to dam the North Sea
    Scientists from the Netherlands and Germany have proposed to construct two massive dams to protect some 25 million people from rising sea levels. The megaproject stretches between the United Kingdom, France, Norway, and would completely enclose the North Sea. So, is this plan viable or is it as overwhelming and unrealistic as it seems?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neFMunVEE8E&t=385s

    Who here sees a new probable mega-disaster in building such a containment?

    1. 1) OK, it is a dam with a lot of doors which are usuall open.

      2) Artificial islands or water reservoirs as storage facilities have already been proposed and were found technically feasible.

      3) If you check the coastline of Europe, esp. Netherlands and Germany, you will find dramatic changes over the last few centuries as result of storms/floods. And you also find huge dam projects….

      1. How much CO2 would building these dams add to the atmosphere versus not building them? Seems as if a lot of cement would be involved.

        1. 20 years and probably more than 1 trillion dollars to close off the North Sea, turn it into fresh water, killing all the life within it. Then when the coasts which think they are protected develop even more infrastructure and people suddenly are inundated by a dam breach (inevitable) they have hours or a day or two to escape rather than decades. All infrastructure gone. Worse if it happens at night and people can’t get notified early or the roads get clogged and there is no escape. Probably during a massive storm. Or the breech (es) could be purposeful.
          New Orleans X 10,000.

          Good plan, kill huge amounts of life, block off shipping routes, put even more people and infrastructure at risk. SOP for an overshot civilization.

          1. There is also the problem of where the 51 billion tons of what they refer to as “sand” that they need to build the thing will come from. (I suspect that “sand” would be massive amounts of clay, large rock aggregate, and as Doug said, concrete.)

            On the plus side, the financial and political issues are insurmountable, so we don’t have to worry about the impossibility of the engineering or the biological impact. 🙂

          2. I got the impression about that plan that it attempted to point out that it’s a lot easier and affordable to stop puting more CO2 to atmosphere. Probably nothing will be done anyway until totally too late and then just some token gestures (perhaps something like the idea that let’s burn some women for being witches to prevent God’s anger – what would be substituted…..)

  23. Hi all, I’m looking for some advice/opinions from this forum. I own a 28 year old, large, thirsty sports/touring BMW motorcycle I have not ridden for 8 years. Now I’m a bit more educated about global warming, the joy has gone out of the idea of riding around burning fossil fuels, just for the sake of riding around. What do I do with it? (p.s. I’m in Australia if ideas get really specific)

    1. Hi Phil,
      Your old bike will probably get at least forty mpg, maybe even fifty or more, ridden conservatively.

      Such vehicles should be sold or donated to somebody who can use them and will use them sparingly for some years to come. Forty mpg or better on a bike is a lot better than fifteen mpg in an older truck or car, and the new owner can use the bike to SAVE fuel, not waste it, by avoiding using a thirstier vehicle whenever he rides it.

      It’s fine to advocate the latest and best, but reality dictates that lots of poor people use whatever they can actually pay for, up front.

      It’s better for me, and the environment, to drive my old existing pickup truck two town once or twice a week, regardless of the fact that it’s a gas hog, than it is to buy a new truck.

      Ten years from now, the new truck that will eventually take the place of older ones will either be an electric , or it will get substantially better fuel economy than TODAY’s new truck.

      1. Thanks for the reply ofm.
        Because it’s big and reasonably powerful, the compulsory insurance is expensive, parts like tyres are expensive, and unless you can do it yourself, servicing is expensive, so for a poor person (like me these days relatively speaking) there are much better options for them, even if I just gave it to them.
        I guess it would be best if I could give it to someone with lots of cash who can afford to run it, and would use it to commute instead of using their gas-guzzling urban truck, trusting them not to just ride around on it for the sake of it.
        I think I will just junk it 🙁

    1. Ron, it is not the USA that I have concerns about. Why are there no cases being reported from Latin America? Why are no reports of cases from much of Australasia? Why are there no reports of cases from much of Africa? I suspect that many areas are diagnosing it as influenza and it is spreading, undiagnosed, like crazy.

      My goal this week, stock up on dried beans, rice, flour, frozen food, eggs, masks, goggles, sanitising gunk etc. Get them before any panic and all stuff that I can use in the long term if not needed in a lockdown.

      NAOM

        1. Tenergrief, along with the other islands there, is part of Spain and is a big holiday destination for Europe, very popular with the UK. Not so much with Africa and I would expect there to be visa issues being part of Europe. A nice big mixing pot to spread an outbreak around Europe.

          NAOM

    2. agree .
      more outbreak hubs coming shortly
      asymptomatic carriers and spreaders should be assumed to be in your region,
      all within 1 day of each other.
      No all that lethal, but the economic effects may get very big.

      I had bronchitis for a couple weeks- reminder that being sick and short of breathe is a hellish thing.
      Be well.

  26. Guess we’re not content just to treat Earth’s surface as a garbage dump. Sigh.

    LESS THAN INFINITE: SPACE IS BECOMING AN ORBITAL LANDFILL

    “Near-Earth space is becoming cluttered with objects, whether that be probes sent by different governments vying for dominance, or test equipment launched by a growing number of commercial companies. Within the next five years, U.S. companies alone are planning to send 15,000 satellites into space… if we’re not careful and ignore long-term sustainability, our satellite communications, security infrastructure and even the future of space exploration are all at risk. To understand how serious the problem of space debris is, we need to first understand how near-Earth orbit acts like highways for these resident space objects. In other words, near-Earth space contains limited lanes where satellites most naturally fall into orbit. As objects are continually launched into space, things are beginning to interfere with these paths, putting our working satellites in danger.

    https://phys.org/news/2020-02-infinite-space-orbital-landfill.html

  27. The following comes from a Feb. 25, 2020 issue of the WSJ (so, behind a paywall). It’s titled: IF YOU WANT ‘RENEWABLE ENERGY,’ GET READY TO DIG

    “Democrats dream of powering society entirely with wind and solar farms combined with massive batteries. Realizing this dream would require the biggest expansion in mining the world has seen and would produce huge quantities of waste… “Renewable energy” is a misnomer. Wind and solar machines and batteries are built from nonrenewable materials. And they wear out. Old equipment must be decommissioned, generating millions of tons of waste. The International Renewable Energy Agency calculates that solar goals for 2050 consistent with the Paris Accords will result in old-panel disposal constituting more than double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste. Some other sobering numbers: A single electric-car battery weighs about 1,000 pounds. Fabricating one requires digging up, moving and processing more than 500,000 pounds of raw materials somewhere on the planet. The alternative? Use gasoline and extract one-tenth as much total tonnage to deliver the same number of vehicle-miles over the battery’s seven-year life. When electricity comes from wind or solar machines, every unit of energy produced, or mile traveled, requires far more materials and land than fossil fuels. That physical reality is literally visible: A wind or solar farm stretching to the horizon can be replaced by a handful of gas-fired turbines, each no bigger than a tractor-trailer.”

    Finally, last year a Dutch government-sponsored study concluded that the Netherlands’ green ambitions alone would consume a major share of global minerals. “Exponential growth in [global] renewable energy production capacity is not possible with present-day technologies and annual metal production,” it concluded.

    Engineers joke about discovering “unobtanium,” a magical energy-producing element that appears out of nowhere, requires no land, weighs nothing, and emits nothing. Absent the realization of that impossible dream, hydrocarbons remain a far better alternative than today’s green dreams. Argue all you want but remember: “Building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of plastic.”

    1. WSJ? Whoa, the anti-renewable, anti-efficiency media strikes again. There is some serious truth there about the huge task and amount of materials needed to globalize renewable energy. Should make one think about how to reduce that. Although I doubt if the WSJ gives a comparison of mass movement and waste from the fossil fuel system. Fact is that the area used by the FF system is far more than adequate to power the world with renewable energy. The mass moved and mined for fossil fuel is tremendous and it’s waste products fill our air, water and land, not recyclable at all. But it’s not all roses and honey, in fact it’s not that good either.

      Nate Hagans puts it all together for us. He has a masters degree in finance and PHD in natural resources, plus spends most of his time examining global problems and possible routes through.
      This is serious stuff and deserves strong focus and attention. An open mind helps too.

      The Resilience Gathering – Keynote Address “The Human Predicament” by Nate Hagens
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNzLkdr7UIU

    2. The Wall Street Journal is flat out lying. But it doesn’t matter. Internal combustion engines are going the way of slide rules and eight track tape.

      I remember back in the seventies when compact disks came out. The LP industry was up in arms and silly opinions like this were rampant. In the end it just didn’t matter.

      1. Okay, you don’t trust the WSJ, how about the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers?

        TO GET WIND POWER YOU NEED OIL

        “Wind turbines are the most visible symbols of the quest for renewable electricity generation. And yet, although they exploit the wind, which is as free and as green as energy can be, the machines themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels. Large trucks bring steel and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats a path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures, and all these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics. For a 5-megawatt turbine, the steel alone averages 150 metric tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 metric tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator), and 500 metric tons for the towers. If wind-generated electricity were to supply 25 percent of global demand by 2030 (forecast to reach about 30 petawatt-hours), then even with a high average capacity factor of 35 percent, the aggregate installed wind power of about 2.5 terawatts would require roughly 450 million metric tons of steel. And that’s without counting the metal for towers, wires, and transformers for the new high-voltage transmission links that would be needed to connect it all to the grid. To make the steel required for wind turbines that might operate by 2030, you’d need fossil fuels equivalent to more than 600 million metric tons of coal. For a long time to come—until all energies used to produce wind turbines and photovoltaic cells come from renewable energy sources—modern civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels.”

        https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/to-get-wind-power-you-need-oil

        BTW wind turbine blades are made from light-weight plastic composite materials, which are voluminous and impossible to recycle. Although the mass of the blades is limited compared to the total mass of a wind turbine, it’s not negligible. For example, one 60 m long fiberglass blade weighs 17 tonnes, meaning that a 5 MW wind turbine produces more than 50 tonnes of plastic composite waste from the blades alone.

        https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/06/wooden-wind-turbines.html

        1. Doug,

          That’s something like Gail Tverberg regularly wrote. And: “They are fossil fuel extenders”.
          Others write that trucks, earthmovers, trains, ships, etc can run on electricity. And wind turbines don’t have to be produced every day in big quantities.
          Anyhow, without oil it won’t be possible anytime soon. On the other hand: a lot of crude oil use now is not essential. However probably crucial for the economy to keep growing.

          1. “However probably crucial for the economy to keep growing.”

            My background is engineering and I know diddly-squat about economics. That said, I’ve had a lot of interaction with accountants over the year and they ALL insist growth is essential for our economy to survive. These guys (and women) are highly educated professionals who I trust. There are a lot of people who say we have to move to a no growth society. Perhaps they’re right. But I trust the accountants like I trust my dentist. Perhaps I don’t like his message but I have to trust him (them). Wishful thinking works for the tooth fairy but that’s about it.

          2. “That’s something like Gail Tverberg regularly wrote. And: “They are fossil fuel extenders”.”

            Gail Tverberg is either stupid or dishonest. If you check the energetical payback time of modern wind turbines, you will realise that the argument is BS.

            ATM it does not make sense to use electricity to make steel or syn-fuel, but it is possible and does not change the positive picture of wind turbines. One can calculate such effects or one could cite a clown like Tverberg…

        2. 600 million metric tonnes of coal equivalent , to replace 8 gigatons of coal x 20 years or 160 gigatons of coal. Not a bad deal if one could pull it off and not kill all the birds and bats or send the global warming over tipping points.
          Maybe only 1oo to one but not a bad energy deal. If those numbers are anywhere near correct. 50 to 1 would be acceptable. Anything less than that would probably never get done because net energy is falling fast and growth is eating from the other end.
          The only thing that makes this possible is about a two to one advantage of renewable over fossil. That can be increased with efficiency. Otherwise, it would stall out.

          Problem is we have to keep everything else running and growing while that happens or the system collapses, so tipping points here we come. Well, at least the ones we have not crossed already.

        3. The coal age was started with human and horse power.

          Even the old pictures from the beginning oil age in Texas show only horses and smoking coal engines.

          The post fossil age will be founded on oil. That’s the way it goes.

          Even if a scientist cracks the fusion code tomorrow: All the new fusion plants will be build with oil and coal, until there are enough to take over.

        4. “TO GET WIND POWER YOU NEED OIL”

          What a stupid argument.

          1) The energetical pay back time of a wind turbin is already so short that using a small part of the energy to make syn-fuel for blades and trucks would only change the picture by a few percents, you can calculate that.

          2) As long as FFs are used for generation of electricity it is, however, stupid to make syn fuels.

          Instead of repeating stupid claims of stupid people you shouldl start using your own brain.

      2. So what is your timeline to 100 percent global PV and wind energy? Or even 90 percent? How much material, energy and environmental destruction will it take?

        LP (slumped in the 80’s, ended in 2000’s, reborn in 2010’s)->8 track (1960’s to 1982) -> compact cassettes (late 1970’s)-> CD (1992) -> solid state –> streaming (end of music ownership?)
        Not relevant to energy or is it?

        Could be wind and PV are just a fad, soon to be replaced by some other much denser energy sources, to just become a small player like CD? An outdated fossil of the energy scheme for use by the very rural set and satellites?
        Time will tell. Not much time left though to play little gods if we keep wandering the wrong paths.
        Either way, our energy systems are not getting less complex and all need huge amounts of industrial systems to build and keep them running. Maybe soon the machines will build and repair themselves without us intervening. Or the complexity will cease to be energized.

        Nature has solved the complexity problems and the energy problems long ago, yet we continue to ignore that avenue, at our peril.

        1. “Could be wind and PV are just a fad, soon to be replaced by some other much denser energy sources, to just become a small player like CD”
          Why dream of fairyland? Does it make you sleep better?

          No need to respond, its rhetorical, and I’m just a little disappointed.

          1. It really could be replaced, to some extend.

            Nobody cares about geo energy. You have Yellowstone in the USA, and the costal volcano range. Europe is riddled with hot spots. Where I sit the water only 1000 meter deeper has 80 degrees Celsius. 1000 meter, this is for a drilling company used to oil wells, how deep?

            1. Unless we have some big breakthrough in managing geothermal, the cost to deploy is high, except in the most favorable spots.
              That is why new projects aren’t lined up for commissioning.
              We have a decent size system about 70 miles north of San Fran,CA
              (nameplate capacity 1590 MW, capacity factor 53%)
              but nothing new under construction in the state despite phasing out nuclear (last plant to close by 2025) and having ambitious ‘clean’ energy mandate in place.

            2. Nobody tries. No Elon Musk in sight to invest and have some new ideas.

              There are power plants in Island since long times.

              And drilling technic envolved big the last 40 years – When you would use the lessons learned for fracking drilling, you wouldn’t need only the best locations I think.

              It’s just not in the focus, so no money here.

            3. The problem with geothermal is the same as the problem with any thermal power plant: It’s too complicated and messy to convert heat into something useful like electricity.

        1. They missed the big change that makes the cost of batteries irrelevant.

  28. Hmmm, air conditioning alone could overheat the planet? How about all the rest of our activity (from 2007 to 2016 global fossil fuel energy production increased more than 10 times faster than PV and Wind energy production)?

    From the Rocky Mountain Institute:

    How is cooling warming the planet?
    If these demand projections hold true and AC energy efficiency continues to improve at its 50-year historical rate, residential air conditioning alone could lead to a 1.5 C increase in global temperature by 2100, completely derailing our Paris goals to stay below a 2 C global increase.

    Air conditioners affect the climate in two main ways: direct emissions from refrigerants; and indirect emissions from electricity use. Refrigerants leak into the atmosphere throughout the lifespan of the air conditioner and are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide. However, refrigerants account for only 20–30 percent of air conditioners’ climate impact. The other 70–80 percent is due to electricity use from the grids. If nothing is done, by 2050 residential ACs globally could use more than all the electricity that the United States and Germany use today combined.

    In addition to contributing to global warming, the increased demand for air conditioners will cost governments and consumers hundreds of billions of dollars. For governments, the increased burden on the electricity grids translates to costly infrastructure projects. For example, if India sees a fourfold increase in air conditioners by 2030 as expected, it will need to invest at least $120 billion in new power plants, plus more to upgrade their transmission and distribution system. For consumers, air conditioning can represent a significant portion of their income. For example, in India consumers spend 8 percent of median household income just to operate their ACs. In Indonesia, it’s 14 percent.

    https://www.greenbiz.com/article/cooling-warming-planet-market-failures-are-freezing-ac-industrys-innovation

    We know how to fix this, but so far not happening. Just one more feedback.

      1. Just put in more pv panels, solves everything. I used to fly sailplanes thousands of feet up with snow blowing by. No heat in a sailplane. EV drivers are wimps.

        1. Did a bit of sailplane and ultalight flying.
          But never in the snow.
          The Eastern Sierra was incredible.

  29. Renewable energy, conservation, electric cars, etc, are not going to save the world…… but it’s possible that they may enable some people in some places to continue to live a more or less modern life style.

    The MIT paper linked up thread assumes electric cars will have to compete with conventional cars head to head, same size, comfort level, etc, without considering the effects of OIL depletion, and what that might mean to the affordability of petroleum fueled cars.

    Both electric and conventional cars are assuredly going to have to shrink quite dramatically, as the daily production of oil gradually shrinks, and as the supply of materials needed to make batteries shrinks.

    But it’s only bau thinking that insists that cars will stay the same size, and that electric cars will have to have a couple of hundred mile range or better to sell.

    When the economy starts shrinking, the people who can still afford a car at all will be very glad to have an electric car with fifty to hundred mile battery……… because that will be all they REALLY need, being nearly all urban dwellers.

    Look at the RICH people who are perfectly content to live in cracker box apartments, because that’s ALL they can afford, and live where they want to live.

    My old farmhouse and the immediate grounds, even without the view, would rent for twenty thousand a month in lots of places.( I could probably fix it up a little and get maybe a thousand, at the most, here in the boonies. ) People with incomes ten or twenty times my own often live in places with one quarter the square feet, no lawn, maybe two parking spaces.

    People who want and need a car will settle for one that will get them around, when the day comes that they can’t afford a bigger one, just as they settle now for a cracker box sized place to live, even if they have money.

    People who believe in economic collapse need not worry about the long term supply of lithium and cobalt. There will likely be more than enough for the smallish portion of us that will be able to afford a car, especially if it’s a small short range car.

  30. Putting things in perspective: SARS killed 774 people and infected 8,098 between November 2002 and July 2003.

    To date:
    Infected…Sars… 8,098 Coronavirus…82,550… So far.
    Killed…….Sars… 774….Coronavirus…2,810 … So far but it is far from over.

    Ten times as many infected and 3.6 times as many killed in 8 weeks with the Coronavirus as SARS infected and killed in 8 months.

    There is panic around the world. Whether this is justified or not, it is happening. And it is playing havoc with markets and economies everywhere. Nothing like this has ever happened before. This is indeed a Black Swan. And it is just getting started.

    1. Today in a company newsletter at my company:

      Everyone coming back from a critical country has to go to quarantine. Much disruption here.

    2. Everyone is just one day from their town being in a hot spot zone. Don’t kid yourself about that.
      (unknown origin case was announced yesterday in the next county over from me).
      And consider very it likely that the virus is already circulating in your state among asymptomatic people.
      I’m wondering how this will affect super-tuesday voting, and the democratic convention.
      Some illnesses like influenza burn out in warm weather every year.
      The CDC is hoping the same happens with this.

      Japan is closing all schools for atleast one month.

      1. The reason the flu and common cold declines in the summer is people’s resistance. People’s resistance drops in the winter because of the cold weather. In the summer they get out and get sunshine and exercise and their resistance increases.

        This will definitely help some with the coronavirus. Whether enough it will be enough to kill it off before next winter remains to be seen.

        1. Ron,

          I think cold viruses such as rhinovirus reproduce optimally when the nose is cold.

          https://news.yale.edu/2015/01/05/cold-virus-replicates-better-cooler-temperatures

          And the influenza virus is also an interesting one.

          A new finding may account for why the flu virus is more infectious in cold winter temperatures than during the warmer months. At winter temperatures, the virus’s outer covering, or envelope, hardens to a rubbery gel that could shield the virus as it passes from person to person, the researchers have found. At warmer temperatures, however, the protective gel melts to a liquid phase. But this liquid phase apparently isn’t tough enough to protect the virus against the elements, and so the virus loses its ability to spread from person to person

          https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080330203401.htm

          1. Thanks Mike. I was totally unaware of that bit of information. Perhaps there is hope that the virus will die down this summer. I really hope so.

            1. Singapore is a tropical climate. You sweat your ass off as soon as you walk out the shower over there.

              And Iran isn’t exactly cold.

              The virus may be transmitted primarily through poop…which is why it is hitting countries with bad sanitary systems.

            2. Wrong- “The virus may be transmitted primarily through poop…which is why it is hitting countries with bad sanitary systems.”
              Sorry to be blunt, but it just ain’t so.

              Lets try to stay with a reality/fact based focus folks.

            4. And yes….this would be very bad for countries like China (and ones in Asia, India, etc )

              That don’t provide soap and toilet paper by default.

              And if your outside the major cities you might not even get a toilet to flush.

              And if your in the city your neighbor upstairs may have a explosive diarrhea and expose others in the building.

            5. Of course, if you have been following the science news, you would be aware that the virus is carried in all body fluids, and is thus transmissible by those fluids, including those coming out the tail end of the GI tract.
              But to assert that it is the primary mechanism of transmission is just outright false.

            6. That’s why I said “may” be primarily transmitted.

              If the virus can be transmitted when asymptomatic.

              Then people won’t be coughing.

              But they still will be pooping.

              Up to 21 day incubation period (maybe)

              thanks for the discussion!

        2. One Michael F. Holick, Ph.D., M.D. has videos on youtube featuring a talk he gives on vitamin D. He’s somewhat controversial but, the explanations he gives for various health issues make a lot of sense. I find them quite elegant as explanations for the “flu seasons” and the difference in health issues faced by darker skinned folks the further they live from the equator. If I were not in the tropics I’d be stocking up on high dose vitamin D as well as vitamin C.

          As it is, I’ll be out in the sun for the whole of the afternoon so I should make lot of vitamin D today!

          1. Thanks Islandboy. That gives me some hope. I take 2,000 IUs of vitamin D and 1,000 MGs of vitamin C every day, and have been doing that for many years. I am not in the tropics but southern New Mexico ain’t bad.

      2. I am expecting it to arrive down here. Lots of gringos heading here on vacation, once it spreads in the USA, which it will, holiday makers will bring it here. I will be avoiding places where they congregate.

        People in the USA will avoid tests because of cost, over $3,000 for influenza test, then the high cost of medical care. This means that they will struggle on in jobs that have no sick leave, paid or unpaid, so spreading the disease like crazy.

        NAOM

        1. Thanks NOMA. Yes, that is exactly what will happen. People here, without insurance or under-insured, avoid hospitals like the plague. They will get so sick they cannot walk and still not call the doctor because they cannot afford it. They doctor and medicate themselves.

          So if this thing breaks out in any poor neighborhood, it will spread like wildfire. No one will see a doctor or get tested until they are so sick they cannot walk and after they have spread the virus to dozens of others.

          1. I also point out that many people, even if they have paid medical leave, do not stay home unless they are very ill because their is no backup staff for their role at work.
            This applies to a very large percentage of health care workers in the country
            There is very little redundancy in staffing throughout all hospitals.
            Its a tight ship, and very hard to recruit, especially in a short timeframe.

  31. January 2020 temp anomaly for US.
    From National Climate Report
    “For January, the average contiguous U.S. temperature was 35.5°F, 5.4°F above the 20th century average, ranking fifth warmest in the 126-year record. This was the ninth consecutive January with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th century average for the month.”

    1. And what about Alaska? We should be academically honest when presenting climate data.

    2. What’s not being stated is that January 2020’s warmth is due to the month having the highest average AO index the world has seen since 2007. It’ll be fascinating to witness how February compares since the index’s average this month is going to end up even higher.

      1. “What’s not being stated is that January 2020’s warmth is due to the month”

        Yeh Bob, lets look for any explanation rather than the most obvious one- the one that explains why record warmth months have become commonplace over the past 10 ten years- greenhouse gas induced global warming.

  33. Hey people, it’s time to get serious. This is the most important, and very serious thing, that has come along in over half a century. It is the Coronavirous crisis. Chris Martenson is documenting it daily. Watch it. Today’s episode is 30 minutes long. But it tells you what has happened in the last 24 hours. It will blow your mind. Watch it if you ever watched anything before in your life.

    Chris Martenson: Coronavirus Situation Is Quickly Going From Bad To Worse.

    I have watched it every day for the last several weeks. Chris deserves great credit for reporting on this crisis. One hundred years from today historians will report that he was one of the very few who reported it as it was, and the one we should have listened to.

    1. May I suggest this Atlantic article as an antidote to CM’s hysteria?

      https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/covid-vaccine/607000/

      ““It’s likely that many will have mild disease, or may be asymptomatic,” he said. As with influenza, which is often life-threatening to people with chronic health conditions and of older age, most cases pass without medical care.”

      The article cites a professor of epidemiology at Harvard.

      The video source in your link is a panic-monger with an Internet connection.

      1. May I remind people about what happened in the Mexico flu scare. The scare arose when 2 grillos, contesting an election, each tried to make the other sound worse over a flu outbreak at the local hospital and they would be the one to put it right. This greatly amplified the effect of the outbreak.

        The serious and death rate were highly exaggerated as hospital is pretty much a last resort for flu patients and only end up there if they are very ill. The usual path of treatment is to get tablets (one at a time) from the local tienda. Next they may try the local snake oil salesman or go to the local ‘medic’ who may just be an unqualified nurse or someone who has just done a part of their doctor training before dropping out. Finally they may go to the local pharmacia that has a doctor attached to it who then realises they have the flu and are a hospital case.

        The result is that only the very worst cases get to hospital and recorded as flu. This distorts the figures 2 ways. First the death rate is high because only the most serious cases are recorded and treated. Secondly the number of survivors is drastically under-reported as they do not get seen by doctors. The result is to make the outbreak seem very much worse and more deadly than it actually is.

        Yeah, I am a bit touchy about it as it caused a lot of tourists to cancel and caused a lot of economic harm to our city for something that was, in effect, relatively minor.

        NAOM – oops!

        Note
        Grillo: A small insect that makes a very large amount of noise for its size. A Latin American politician who does the same.
        Tienda: Corner shop, local store that sells groceries. They also keep a stock of basic medicines which they sell by the tablet rather that the pack – great for when I hurt my back and couldn’t walk as far as the pharmacia.

      2. The video source in your link is a panic-monger with an Internet connection.

        Bullshit! You haven’t a clue as to what the hell you are talking about. And what the hell does “with an Internet connection” mean? From your link:

        Last week, 14 Americans tested positive on a cruise ship in Japan despite feeling fine—the new virus may be most dangerous because, it seems, it may sometimes cause no symptoms at all.

        That cruise ship in Japan has 705 confirmed cases with 4 deaths… so far. To state that 14 of them were Americans embarrassing. Only Americans matter?

        Chris Martenson is one of the most honest and reliable sources of information on the net. To call him a panic-monger just shows that you haven’t a fucking clue as to what the hell you are talking about.

        1. Refute the Harvard epidemiologist. Who gives a f what CM thinks?

          Also, the writer of the article is a lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health.

          “The disease (known as COVID-19) seems to have a fatality rate of less than 2 percent—exponentially lower than most outbreaks that make global news. ”

          “The world has responded with unprecedented speed and mobilization of resources. The new virus was identified extremely quickly. Its genome was sequenced by Chinese scientists and shared around the world within weeks. The global scientific community has shared genomic and clinical data at unprecedented rates. Work on a vaccine is well under way. ”

          P. S. In the video CM recommends bullshit like vitamin C and “naturopathy.” He has been pedalling bullshit for, what, over a decade now on that PP site?

          Something helpful: Keep watch here for rational news about COVID-19:

          https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/alternative-medicine-exploits-coronavirus-fears/

          They haven’t updated in a while so expect a new article soon.

          1. If you are under 40 you have a 99.8% chance of recovering.

            https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-death-age-older-people-higher-risk-2020-2?r=US&IR=T

            Very soon there will be cases of the virus in every school, university, food processing plant, shop and market.

            If we shut everything down, then there will be no food. Hundreds of millions globally will die of starvation.

            This virus cannot be contained because people with very mild symptoms can spread it. We simply need to treat as best we can those who get really ill.

          2. CM would be providing a much better service if he skipped the speculations, that occupy about 1/2 of the video.
            For example. he speculated that calif wasn’t testing for infection because they didn’t want to know the answer.
            Wrong, its because of a nationwide shortage of tests kits. That shortage is a big ingredient in the recipe for the failure to contain this outbreak.
            Calif is now expecting to get test kits at hospitals in about 1 week from now.
            Accuracy of the testing is expected to be fairly good, but none of this kind of testing is highly accurate, until you test the blood for antibodies. Antibodies do not appear in the blood until the virus has been on board for a fairly long time, long after the person becomes a virus spreader.

            On the other hand, he does a good job of sharing news updates about the issue.

            I haven’t heard this discussed in the news yet, but I reiterate the idea that the Democratic National Convention might not be able happen, in person.

      3. Taking another look at tha Atlantic article, Jeffrey Brown quotes in an email to me:

        From the Atlantic Article: “Most cases are not life-threatening, which is also what makes the virus a historic challenge to contain,” and “Lipsitch predicts that within the coming year, some 40 to 70 percent of people around the world will be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19.”

        Jeffrey replies: “So, assume that half of the people in the US get the virus and assume a 1% to 2% mortality rate. This would imply additional deaths in the US in the 1.6 million to 3.2 million range in the next year. Current annual deaths in the US are about 2.8 million, from all causes. So, doing the math, and based on Dr. Lipsitch’s projections, it’s possible that the Coronavirus could double the number of annual all-cause deaths in the US.”

        So it looks like the author of that article may be in agreement with Chris Martenson, it’s time to panic.

        Jeffrey continues and posts a link: “Note that the CDC is already predicting that the US healthcare system is going to be overwhelmed:”
        https://news.yahoo.com/cdc-outlined-ominous-hypothetical-scenario-214633263.html

        1. Most hospitals are nearly full this time of year already, just with a small extra bump of severe influenza cases.

          What do mean by panic Ron, I may have to ramp up my game?

  34. Hiding Behind the Myth of One ‘Rule of Law’
    Indigenous law exists. The courts have recognized it. The Wet’suwet’en are following it.

    “Politicians of all levels and stripes love to invoke ‘the rule of law’, as do business leaders and their allies. They utter this phrase as an incantation to conjure a spell of value-neutral logic. They speak it into reporters’ microphones as if a singular ‘rule of law’ is an unproblematic, inviolable and universal concept. It is anything but.”

  35. Burnaby council approves TransLink’s SFU gondola, but hesitant over straight route

    “A gondola public transit line between a SkyTrain station and Simon Fraser University’s campus atop Burnaby Mountain is one step closer to reality after it received unanimous in-principle approval from Burnaby city council during a meeting on Monday evening.

    ‘Today marks a historic moment as for the first time since the gondola was proposed 10 years ago, we have finally won a formalized vote by the City of Burnaby’, Colin Fowler, a SFU student and co-founder of the Build SFU Gondola advocacy group, told Daily Hive.”

    Contemplating Cable Cars in Florida, Canada, and Africa

    “Florida might be the next area for a boom in aerial gondolas. With the success of the Hard Rock Stadium gondola and the Disney Skyline gondola system, Commissioner Dennis Moss believes Miami’s transit can improve with short-haul gondolas. A consultant is recommending a gondola designed to travel 1.2 miles between two stations. The equipment and structure for the gondola are anticipated to cost $35 million to construct and $2.8 million for annual maintenance.

    Africa’s Treasury seeks private funding for projects. The Treasury has signed a public private partnership (PPP) to construct the Likoni channel Aerial Cable Car, among a host of other projects. The cable car will be an alternative to the ferry crossing and will save money and time for riders. The manufacture, Doppelmayr, has designed the system to carry 5,500 passengers per direction per hour. The cable car was anticipated to start construction late in 2018, but due to land acquisition, pre-construction work, and funding have delayed the project.

    Jasper SkyTram in Canada could be getting an upgrade after 56 years. The project is in its conceptual phase, but it is anticipated that the current aerial tramway will be replaced with a high-speed, detachable gondola. The gondola would be four times longer, run year-round, and move three times as many passengers per hour.”

    Boston’s Gondola Pitch Follows Global Trend Of Sky-High Transit Alternatives

    “Transit advocates outside Boston say looking skyward to solve traffic misery is not far-fetched. ‘We know in the Northeast how our traditional transit modes deal in inclement weather: They don’t do well in it’, Toronto-based Creative Urban Projects Founding President Steven Dale said. ‘A gondola is essentially a ski lift. It is designed for harsh weather climates.’…

    While those opposed to the gondola proposal cite its unreliability in Boston’s harsh winter weather and waterfront winds, gondolas with advanced technology can comfortably operate in winds as high as 56 miles per hour. ‘A lot of criticism we get is how it will do in the weather’, Edmonton, Canada-based Amber Poliquin said. ‘We say, ‘If it’s built for the Alpine, it’s built for this kind of weather.’ ‘ “

  36. Did someone mention getting off fossil fuels?

    ARAMCO TO INVEST $110 BILLION IN HUGE GAS FIELD

    “Aramco plans to invest $110 billion in the development of the Jafurah gas field that is estimated to hold some 200 trillion cu ft of gas. Jafurah is the largest unconventional gas field in Saudi Arabia and could begin producing in 2024, the agency also reported. Production is seen at 2.2 billion cu ft daily, a rate to be reached by 2036. Besides gas, Jafurah could also produce around 425 million cu ft of ethane, and 550,000 bpd of gas liquids and oil condensates. DEVELOPING ITS NATURAL GAS RESERVES IS A PRIORITY FOR THE KINGDOM AS IT SEEKS TO REDUCE ITS RELIANCE ON CRUDE OIL FOR LOCAL POWER GENERATION AND SWITCH TO GAS SO THERE IS MORE OIL FOR EXPORTS. In the future, Saudi Arabia plans to generate 70 percent of its electricity from natural gas and the remainder from renewables.” Caps are mine.

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Aramco-To-Invest-110-Billion-In-Huge-Gas-Field.html

    1. “Did someone mention getting off fossil fuels?”

      Yes, target date 2080 for 80% reduction in fossil fuels.
      Significant chance of being achieved.

      1. 2080? Your joking? Regardless of the caveats, the clock is ticking, and it’s getting (much) harder to meet goals as we continue to delay.

        1. Kind of joking. But really, that is pace of action we are on globally.
          Cut back in consumption of fossil fuels will closely match depletion, perhaps slightly accelerated pace.
          Coal in the USA has been scaled back, primarily due to the availability of natural gas supply, primarily from fracking technique of shale deposits.

        2. The slope of reduction is actually negative now due need for drawdown. Goals not realistic

          1. I think the goal of 80% reduction in fossil fuel emission by year 2080 is possible.
            Only because fossil fuels will be far into the depletion stage by that time.
            Simply, the vast majority of extractable (at affordable cost) coal, oil and gas will have already been burnt.
            There are many other factors, but all pale in relation to this basic factor.

    2. That’s quite unbelievable given the current natural gas prices and the degree of ridiculous oversupply and decreased demand due to warmer weather in the U.S.

      Unless they are planning to bankrupt the U.S producers.

      1. “That’s quite unbelievable given the current natural gas prices and the unbelievable oversupply!”

        My understanding is it’s primarily for internal use.

        1. Yes, it is entirely for internal use. Saudi is currently burning crude oil go generate electricity and to produce fresh water. Saudi has the largest desal plants in the world. In spite of all the oil they have, they have very little natural gas. All their power plants and desal plants can burn either oil or gas. They can even burn naphtha, and often do, from their refineries.

          They could buy gas from Qatar. That would be cheaper than burning crude. But they are at odds with Qatar and refuse to trade with them. No now they are going to produce enough natural gas to power their power and desal plants.

        2. Thanks for the info Doug and Ron. I was going to suggest why they don’t import ng from Qatar and Ron already answered lol.

    3. My personal seat of the pants opinion is that SA should be shooting for seventy or eighty percent of the country’s electricity from solar power, and the remainder from gas.

      There’s going to be one hell of a seller’s market for gas in the future, unless the world economy collapses sooner, and solar power is getting cheaper every year.

      Depletion never sleeps.

      They ought to be able to build solar farms cheap , sell nearly all that new gas for a premium, and make out like the bandits they are.

      Of course within another twenty years or so, it may be so hot there that nobody can venture outside without a cool suit of some sort during daylight hours.

  37. From Goldman Sachs:
    We lowered our Q1 GDP tracking estimate by two tenths to +1.1% (qoq ar), reflecting a larger expected drag from inventories. [Feb 27 estimate]

    Below 2% for 3 quarters and you have a recession.

  38. WHO issues ‘highest alert’ over CORONAVIRUS.
    Summary
    1. The World Health Organization upgrades the global risk from the coronavirus to “very high”
    2. Sources in Iran tell the BBC at least 210 have died of coronavirus there, far more than the official figure
    3. Stock markets across the globe are suffering their worst week since 2008
    4. The first British death from Covid-19 is announced in Japan
    5. Nigeria and Mexico confirm their first cases
    6. China confirms another 327 cases – the lowest daily increase for a month – and 44 deaths, mainly in Hubei

    https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-51669434

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