213 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, April 20, 2018”

  1. Been living in Oklahoma all my life and so far I can only think of maybe one fire season at best coming close to the the magnitude of devastation from the wildfires I seen over the last week in northwestern OK. That is now how bad those fires up there have been. Now if you could the farmers, ranchers and roughnecks up there would really appreciate keeping them in your prayers as so many have lost property and possessions to fire.

    1. Indeed. Fire is hellish, no matter which corner of the world you live. Best luck, from the west coast.

  2. While the US has been figuring out new ways to suck money out of everyone’s wallet, certain European cities have been trying out free public transportation systems. I like the electric trolley system and one can see the use of scooters too. Will it work out in the long run? The roads are public, why not the transport?
    There are probably a lot of ways to set these up that have not been tried yet.

    https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/oct/11/tallinn-experiment-estonia-public-transport-free-cities

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLU6QutSh7w

    1. Hey im from germany and can tell you that this will not happen.
      But if it does it will raise the need for automobility, because all the illegal migrants, homeless skum, junkies und so on will flood the public transportation system more than they already do. Going by Train in Berlin already sucks and it would get worse. More and more people that can afford going by car will do so. Not because of status or prestige but to avoid the colorful blessings of multiculture.
      I know a lot of people that give a flower of having a car but cant stand being confronted with the collapsing society when going to work and back home.

  4. Audi will apparently have out a new electric car model with two hundred to three hundred plus mile range within the year, and it’s supposed to charge up fast too, at least at the right charging stations…. of which there won’t be very many for a long time to come.

    Charging will take as much as eight hours at home charger rates, but a typical drive won’t be driving more than fifty to sixty miles per day, meaning that with a top of the line home charging station, recharging will take only a couple of hours.

    So ……. when the wind blows hard, or the sun is shining nice and bright, with everybody knowing the weather a few hours ahead these days, it’s going to be possible to charge these cars up using mostly wind and solar power, not only saving the expense of imported oil but also providing a good market for what might otherwise be unneeded wind and solar juice. Win Win.

    Companies that can afford to hire people who can afford new Audi’s will also be able to afford a few charging stations, lol. This will help flatten the duck curve.

    But this shows that there must be at least several various ways to design the battery without violating existing patents held by other companies.

    http://www.motortrend.com/news/audi-e-tron-suv-can-recharge-little-30-minutes/

    1. This is the way the market solves the problem, produces $99,000 rich man cars. That is a total failure as far as society is concerned and a slap in the face of almost everyone on the planet. The advantages in health improvement, environmental improvement and energy savings are gigantic if EV’s can be deployed at a large scale.
      The previous transportation takeover had huge advantages in health, environment and cost. That is why it worked.
      New York insurance actuaries had established by the turn of the century that infections diseases, including typhoid fever, were much more frequently contracted by livery stable keepers and employees than by other occupational groups, and an appeal to the Brooklyn Board of Health to investigate resulted in the institution of new municipal regulations on stables, compelling more frequent removal excreta and disinfecting of premises. Medical authorities stated that tetanus was introduced into cities in horse fodder and that an important cause of diarrhea, a serious health problem among children at the time, was ‘street dust’ consisting in the main of germ-laden dried horse dung

      ”Writing in Appleton’s Magazine in 1908, Harold Bolce entitled his article ‘The Horse vs. Health.’ In a thoroughgoing assault he blamed most of the sanitary and economic problems of the modern (1908) city on the horse and essayed to calculate the savings if all horses were replaced by automobiles and motor trucks … he reach a total of approximately one hundred million dollars as the price that New York City paid for not banning the horse from its streets.”

      – Joel Tarr, “Urban Pollution: The Old Gray Mare was not the Ecological Marvel in American Cities that Horse Lovers like to Believe,” American Heritage, October 1971, p. 69.

      “[With the displacement of horse-drawn by motor vehicles in the 1920s] streets were cleaner, particle pollution resulting from ground-up manure and the diseases thereby produced were diminished, the number of flies was greatly reduced, goods were transported more cheaply and efficiently, traffic traveled at a faster rate, and the movement of people from crowded cities to suburbs was accelerate by the automobile. Events appeared to justify the spokesmen for the advantages of the motor vehicle over the horse.”

      https://www.masterresource.org/transportation/horsepower-sure-beats-horses-remembering-what-came-before-cars-and-the-failure-of-the-electric-vehicle/

      Not to mention that much of the grain grown was to feed horses, not people.

      Now that we have an answer to so many huge problems with renewable energy tied to EV’s, we still sit at the starting gate scratching our collective butts waiting for the “market” to make our decisions for us.
      Yep, the stinking clinging dung and dead horse bodies covered with flies are not piling up in the streets now, but the problem is even larger in scale if not so apparent to the nose and eye. It’s apparent in the hospital and the cemetery as well as in a future of heat, drought, flood,starvation and death for the masses.
      Yet we still sit and scratch waiting for rich entrepaneurs and big corporations along with greedy governments to solve the problem. So far, just news, some piddling changes and failure to act in the face of extreme hazard and jeopardy. Makes a person sick just thinking how cowardly we have become.

      1. Yet we still sit and scratch waiting for rich entrepaneurs and big corporations along with greedy governments to solve the problem. So far, just news, some piddling changes and failure to act in the face of extreme hazard and jeopardy. Makes a person sick just thinking how cowardly we have become.

        Yes, so true but aren’t renewables really just another ploy by left leaning crony capitalists to maintain BAU and keep the deliberately ignorant, from all turning to anarchissism, anarchistic narcissism, and permaculture?

        After all we have reputable individuals like Gail Tverberg together with eminent scientists like Charles Hall and Pedro Prieto who assure us that solar panels are completely worthless and will never be able to produce any meaningful amounts of electricity since they have an EROEI of less than 2.6 to 1, or something like that. Not to mention, that electricity is probably a bad thing anyways, it corrupts the people and then they go out and buy pseudosmartphones, don’t believe me? look at all those people in places like Africa…, how dare they aspire to a comfortable lifestyle by putting solar panels on their roofs?!

        And why aren’t we building cable car transport systems all over the world if they are so much more efficient than diesel buses?! You can’t answer that, question, can you, Mr. GF?! Hint, ask the crony capitalists who have vested interests in flooding the world with their inefficient, environment destroying, unsustainable, resource consuming, solar panels and wind turbines!

        Extreme hazard and jeopardy? Nah! No real worries, CO2 levels are currently rising at only about 10 X as fast as they did before the PETM mass extinction.

        https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/cooked-study-finds-great-barrier-reef-transformed-by-mass-bleaching-20180418-p4za9m.html

        >’Cooked’: Study finds Great Barrier Reef transformed by mass bleaching

        Yes, it sure does make a person sick just thinking about how cowardly we have become!

        Edit: On the other hand I just saw this:

        https://www.ted.com/talks/hannah_burckstummer_a_printable_flexible_organic_solar_cell/up-next#t-91788

        Hannah BürckstümmeratTED@Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany
        A printable, flexible, organic solar cell

        1. Did I disturb your dream Fred? Time to wake up. Almost fifty years since the first Earth Day gatherings and failure is happening fast on all fronts. Implementation is pathetic and serving the few rich people on the planet is not the way to accomplish anything other than more destruction.

          Reality and results, that is my interest. Not techno-pabulum or whiny chrono-reversion adherents. The results suck, explain that to the young people today how we had fifty years to make a real difference and it’s far worse than ever now. Tell them about the world they face and the world they will never see.

          Go back to playing with the trolls Fred, you are mentally confused and functionally asleep.

          1. Whatever, dude! If that’s what you think about me, so be it.
            Cheers!

            1. Just going by the way you act. I am certainly clear how you think of me.

            2. Not quite sure you do. Most of my previous post was intended to be sarcastic about the vast majority of people who think there is no problem whatsoever that some magic bullet or another can’t solve. Personally, I don’t traffic in magic bullets and I no longer participate in Earth Day activities. Admittedly I do occasionally post on some renewable technology that I find interesting.

              At this point I’m convinced that for all practical purposes we have already lost the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. It’s probably not coming back for a few million years. BTW what is happening there is also happening on almost all major coral reefs around the globe…

            3. Fred — Fear not, I, for one, (think) I get your points – usually. Besides, I expect you’re the smartest dude here.

            4. I just thought Fred was doing a Caelan Saturday Night Live impersonation.

              “but aren’t renewables really just another ploy by left leaning crony capitalists to maintain BAU and keep the deliberately ignorant”

              “we have reputable individuals like Gail Tverberg together with eminent scientists like Charles Hall and Pedro Prieto who assure us that solar panels are completely worthless and will never be able to produce any meaningful amounts of electricity since they have an EROEI of less than 2.6 to 1”

            5. LOL! Tks, for the vote of confidence. Though I’m afraid I’m quite far from being the smartest dude anywhere.

            6. Fred, the shallow corals are all doomed unless they can somehow migrate to cooler waters. Even then the chaos of the coming decades might make that tough. Everything is go now for a warm world. CO2 is becoming a follower now, just as in a natural climate change. We have given a large push and the timing was just good enough to get the natural responses started, which are much stronger and longer lasting.

              I wasn’t lucky enough to dive on more than a couple of coral reefs but they were fantastic, so full of life and color. I will never forget them.
              But they are only a small part of the life on this planet, and it is all changing as we watch.

              I recommend the book “Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution” for a look at how life adapts to new situations and finds niches even in the strangest environments.

              I came across similar harassment in the 1970’s when I started pushing solar thermal heat collectors for houses. Not many listened then and others gave nasty and irrational responses. So nothing has changed. Even the”smart” ones.

              At least wimbi understood the energy leverage factor of EV’s and renewables. Now there was a smart man. Too few of them.

              Good luck to all of you and good health in this very confused and irrational world. Try to be kind no matter what happens.

            7. GF, I’m very aware of the changes across the board in multiple ecosytems. Two years ago I was in the Brazilian Amazon, that was a bit of a wake up call as well.

              I have been focusing more on the plight of tropical shallow water corals recently because I consider them to be the canary in the coal mine for the entire global network of ecosystems.

              BTW they are affected with a double whammy with regards our CO2 emissions. First the increasing temperatures due to global warming and the greenhouse effect and second the dropping pH levels of the oceans. So even if they somehow managed to move to cooler waters they still have a problem building their carbonate structures due to changes in pH levels.

              Unless we come up with some miraculous technology to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and find a way to stop ocean acidification the coral reefs of the world will all be gone in a few decades at the most. Probably much sooner. Which dominoes will fall first after that is anybody’s guess… but you can be sure it will be the start of a cascade.

              And yes, I too held Wimbi in very high esteem!

              Peace!

            8. As a diver who made his living off speared fish:
              Micronesia is going downhill fast.
              In the 1970’s, in 4 hours, I had speared enough fish to support me for a week (somewhat of a issue with the locals— having a haoli boy from Hollywood feeding them– you needed casual interaction)–
              Last time I was there, it was decimated- would be a challenge.
              Hawaii? Long time resident, with lots of fish-
              but a different economic relationship.
              So—– the planet is in decline– and not minority .
              The big corporate guys are decimating the oceans.

            9. The big corporate guys are decimating the oceans.

              Yes they are but coral reefs are a special case and the burning of fossil fuels is having a major deleterious effect on them.

            10. Fred A question I have for you. Why are we only now seeing the massive dead zones in the gulf of Mexico? The experts are always saying its due to Agricultural fertilizers, which doesn’t make much sense to me. My estimation would be that the use of fertilizers in the Mississippi water shed has not gone up all that much in the last 30 years and vast parts have switched over to no-till practices which tends to help with soil erosion. Would you know of studies that that show a strong correlation of nitrogen and phosphorus levels in the Rivers with the corresponding dead zones?

              The reason I suspect something else to be a significant/major cause of the dead zones is because of what we are seeing happening in the soils on conventional corn and soybean farms both in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Namely a drastic dysfunction occurring in soil biology and chemistry so that the plants are running short on so many nutrients including Manganese, Copper, Boron,silicon, etc. that they require to stay healthy. In addition we are seeing a lot of Aluminum toxicities which used to never be an issue. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that these problems are basically due to the ever increasing use of Herbicides(Many of which are chemical chelators ) fungicides (well duh) and pesticides ( kills invertebrates). Having said this I have this gut feeling that most of the increase in the dead zones during the last 30 years is due to these chemicals. Otherwise how would we explain the lack of a dead zone in the Mediterranean at the mouth of the dirty Nile for the last 3000 years instead of the fertile Nile delta. And the next logical question is what impact are these chemicals having on the corral reefs, many of which are not that far from the mouths of chemical laden rivers.

            11. Hi farmlad,
              I hadn’t seen your comment till now.

              Disclaimer: I’m certainly no expert on the underlying causes of the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and suspect that many if not all the factors you mention are contributing to it at some level.

              And yes, there are plenty of studies and they seem to point at mostly agricultural runoff as the main underlying cause.

              Here’s a recent study from NOAA:

              Gulf of Mexico ‘dead zone’ is the largest ever measured
              June outlook foretold New Jersey-sized area of low oxygen

              http://www.noaa.gov/media-release/gulf-of-mexico-dead-zone-is-largest-ever-measured

              The annual forecast, generated from a suite of NOAA-sponsored models, is based on nutrient runoff data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Both NOAA’s June forecast and the actual size show the role of Mississippi River nutrient runoff in determining the size of the dead zone.

              This large dead zone size shows that nutrient pollution, primarily from agriculture and developed land runoff in the Mississippi River watershed is continuing to affect the nation’s coastal resources and habitats in the Gulf.

              These nutrients stimulate massive algal growth that eventually decomposes, which uses up the oxygen needed to support life in the Gulf. This loss of oxygen can cause the loss of fish habitat or force them to move to other areas to survive, decreased reproductive capabilities in fish species and a reduction in the average size of shrimp caught

              Again, this doesn’t necessarily completely exclude the possibility of there being many other contributing factors, however the main underlying culprit seems to be nutrient runoff from agriculture in the Mississippi watershed.

          2. Hey Fish, I have been reading Fred’s comments since back in the old theoildrum.com days and even had a couple of beers with him in Miami’s Art Deco district on one of my visits to the US so I kinda feel like I know him fairly well. The comment you were responding to was so thick with sarcasm, it would stick if you threw it against a wall! He was actually parroting (preempting) Caelan and you should have picked that since anybody who has followed any interactions between Caelan and Fred should be well aware that they are not in the same ball park on many (most?) issues, not even close!

            Fred’s tactic seems to have worked since Calean has not showed his face in this particular conversation, yet. Another hint of the contrarian nature of Fred’s post was the last link he posted which if you followed it was a talk proposing the use of organic photovoltaics. The summary of the presentation reads as follows:

            “Unlike the solar cells you’re used to seeing, organic photovoltaics are made of compounds that are dissolved in ink and can be printed and molded using simple techniques. The result is a low-weight, flexible, semi-transparent film that turns the energy of the sun into electricity. Hannah Bürckstümmer shows us how they’re made — and how they could change the way we power the world.”

            From the transcript, at 1:11 in the presenter says:

            “We all know the devastating effects of this excessive exploitation: global warming, rising of the sea levels, melting of the glaciers and polar ice, increasingly extreme climate patterns and more. The enormity of this problem really frustrates me. What frustrates me even more is that there are solutions to this, but we keep doing things like we always did. Today I want to share with you how a new solar technology can contribute to a sustainable future of buildings.“

            Bold mine, to highlight that she is pretty much on the same page as you!

            edit : I also took a little time to look at a couple videos that came up as “related videos” to the one Fred linked to. I highly encourage others to give them a look:

            The thrilling potential for off-grid solar energy
            A small country with big ideas to get rid of fossil fuels

            1. Islandboy, he has been giving sarcastic replies to many of my comments for a while now. So what is the point or objective of giving twisted comments versus actually discussing the topic? The only point I can see is, like most trolls, to disrupt any meaningful discourse or discussion. Which it does, as one can see. Any topics brought up get waylaid and forgotten. The role of the troll and the misanthrope.
              Which is why we are talking about Fred and not the actual energy, environment or social topics right now. Success to them, the internet dies as a means of actual communication.
              Praise the villagers, they stifle the world now. But not for long.

              Meanwhile, in my usual fruitless efforts to present actual thoughts and information and not roadblocks or garbage:

              5 reasons why the clean energy future is unstoppable
              https://www.greenbiz.com/article/5-reasons-why-clean-energy-future-unstoppable

              Speaking of electricity my local distributor has just decided that a 25% increase in distribution costs is the way to go. That makes the distribution cost higher than the generation cost!
              I expect the generation cost to follow that course.
              Since I plan on having an all electric vehicle in two years that has now solidified my thoughts about putting solar PV on my house.
              Here solar PV is an expensive, overregulated and a long term process taking 6 months to a year. Still, I would rather pay some contractor than pay the ever greedy FF power generators.
              The distributors are always slow in repairing the lines around here, yet I must pay as much as anyone else.
              At least PV gives me the option to go off the grid when beneficial to me.

            2. I am a little surprised that you feel Fred’s sarcasm is directed at you. As I said in my previous comment, I see Fred’s sarcastic comments as a tactic to nullify and deter the trolls by preempting them. We know their tired, old, bullshit talking points so why not put them out there (in a sarcastic way) even before they do? In my view it has worked exceedingly well as evidenced by the absence of any post, up to now in this conversation, from he who shall not be named! A perfect example of the not so chummy response by Fred to the said individual is below at http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-20-2018/#comment-637362 .

              Speaking of PV, if your utility is being a jerk, I would hold of on buying a PV system right now. Two years is a long time in the PV business with new products and innovations coming out every year, at ever falling prices I might add. With market conditions changing (the demise of net metering in more and more states), product manufacturers will be coming out with more products that match the new realities.

              That was the problem with my timing. The products available when I made the plunge were largely designed to cater for net billing while my jurisdiction engages in net billing, an arrangement where the utility pays about a half of the standard retail rate for the power you send back to them. In addition to that, battery options are changing quite quickly. There already a variety of options available that didn’t exist when I was buying my inverter. Who knows what options might be available to you closer to when you intend to buy your EV.

              If you can make it to any of the two major trade shows, Intersolar (July 10-12 at the Moscone Center, SF) or Solar Power International (September 24-27 at the Anaheim Convention Center) they should both have most of the latest goodies (PV, inverters and storage) from most major suppliers on show. These trade shows are a good place to window shop with everything from most manufactures in one place. There will be a smaller event, Solar Power Southeast in Atlanta, GA – May 15-16 which is closer to you. Solar Power Northeast in Boston, MA was on February 5-6. I don’t know how big or good the exhibits are at the regional events since I’ve only been to the big ones.

            3. “I am a little surprised that you feel Fred’s sarcasm is directed at you”

              Yes, I must be wrong. He only replied to my comment, quoted a portion directly, used my initials in a direct question to me. Guess it was not directed at me. Also he talked as if I was CM. I thought he was confused, but you guys have convinced me he was not and that I should accept being made the butt of FM’s insulting sarcasm at his whim. That might go in your world but it is a no go in mine.
              “You can’t answer that, question, can you, Mr. GF?! Hint, ask the crony capitalists who have vested interests in flooding the world with their inefficient, environment destroying, unsustainable, resource consuming, solar panels and wind turbines!”
              Who needs CM permman when we have FM sarcman?
              Yeah, I know it’s all just for laughs. HA, HA, HA. Good one Fred, you had me fooled.
              🙂
              sarc

              My answer is that aerial cable cars are highly efficient at passing over people that would want a ride.

      2. $99,000 rich man cars. That is a total failure as far as society is concerned

        It’s pretty much the same path that ICEs took in replacing horses. ICEs started as novelties for the wealthy. Expensive ICEs developed the concept and the industry. Then less expensive ICEs from Ford expanded the industry to many more people.

        Tesla started with expensive cars in part because that would finance cheaper cars, in part because they have a physics advantage: very powerful ICEs in very expensive cars are also very expensive: lots of complex high quality parts that are very expensive at the low volumes that such cars sell at. But…electric motors scale up beautifully, and are cheap at higher power ratings. So Tesla could undercut the Porsche’s of the world while providing much more power and torque.

        1. “It’s pretty much the same path that ICEs took in replacing horses.”

          Nahh, Model T came out in 1908. Come on, we have every advantage of science, engineering and technology today light years beyond 1900. If we wanted there could be full implementation of renewables and EV’s in a decade.
          Obviously, we don’t really give a shit if the world crashes or billions end up in early graves. Better to wait for market forces and tweeting governance to make the changes.
          It’s not the same world as back then. They were ignorant of what they did, we are not. Yet still there is a only a small attempt to implement and a general attitude that we should wait for the market and government to implement things. I mean how can we be responsible? What can we do?
          So far, failure and horrifying results with that attitude.

          Today I talked with a young woman, about 20 years old. She thought Earth Day was a very nice holiday. She thought Earth Day was a holiday!!!! A nice celebration, meanwhile the town was having a big parade for school sports and nothing planned for Earth Day. Sad.

          Every day is Earth Day and it is not a holiday. At least it did not start out that way.
          The point is that we are not doing even 1/10 of what we are capable of doing.
          Shrugs, walks away.

          1. Hi Fish,

            It’s good to see you have become tired of waiting for the transformation to a renewable carbon free world. Personally, I never thought the last 5 years would have ever seen as much change as what has happened. The next 10 to 20 years are going exciting and troubling.

            California has historically been a leader in the country for innovation and progress. The ground work for the model of the future is being established here now.

            “They were ignorant of what they did, we are not.”

            Not so fast. There is a whole group of FoxNews conservative views out there full of fake reality or defending their own legacy assets. Keep up your good work of getting the word out and educating. This is not a battle, but a war for future of humanity and will be going on long after we are gone(fishing).

            1. Beach, the war is with nature, which is ourselves too. There is no winning in this one, only dramatic change as the planet shifts back to it’s more normal warm state. Once CO2 dropped far enough, the main driver became water and it’s various states along with orbital forcings. Those are much stronger than CO2.
              CO2 has been a follower until lately and now it is shifting back to be a follower again.
              Combine that with the vast devastation to the environment humans have done and are doing and I would say, there is no new normal, never was in human recollection. Only change, lots of it and nature responds in kind. We had our chance and crossed the line a while ago. Now we see the edges.

              Whether the people at FauxNews are just devious conmen or actually believe what they say, I don’t know. There are as many points of view as there are people and maybe some people can convince themselves of anything. Maybe I am delusional to them.

              As far as the fight goes, it is better done elsewhere and with different methods, too much trolling and harassment on the internet. Plus, people cannot handle the full reality of the situation. They need to look at little pieces of it or get overwhelmed and wander away.

              California appears to be a different kind of critter, maybe because of the combination of Hollywood and high tech, the view is somewhat different than many places. Change is more readily accepted and maybe even desired.
              Still, who would have thought Texas would be the wind king it is now? Money is a motivator and the economics is good for renewables and EV’s.
              Maybe wind towers kind of look like oil derricks to them. 🙂

          2. When in Sonoma, I often drive in a EV.
            But that is Sonoma.
            In Bend Oregon, not a chance— (for cultural and physical issues).

          3. If you want to see positive changes, you need to allow free market entrepreneurs the opportunity to make them using common sense solutions rather than giving heavy-handed government regulators the option to do so. Recall the scariest sentence in the English language, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

            1. Well, by the same argument, the government better stop bailing out and subsidising fossil fuel then, right?

              NAOM

            2. A very few examples of major change initiated or enabled by government:

              The railroads;
              canals;
              highways;
              post office;
              internet;
              aviation;
              oil-fueled ships (as opposed to coal);
              etc., etc.

              —————————-
              Bill Gates on the value of government R&D:

              ““Yes, the government will be somewhat inept,” he said brusquely, swatting aside one objection as a trivial statement of the obvious. “But the private sector is in general inept. How many companies do venture capitalists invest in that go poorly? By far most of them.””

              “…the success of the United States in medical research is really incredible. I mean, it’s phenomenal. We spend $30 billion a year of government money, and the private sector goes out and comes up with new drugs. It’s an industry that the U.S. is by far the leader in—creating wonderful jobs, great miracle cures—and that is working super, super well, but we spend more than all other countries put together. And the U.S. lead in health technologies, including drugs, is gigantic, just like the U.S. lead in digital technologies is gigantic.

              In the case of the digital technologies, the path back to government R&D is a bit more complex, because nowadays most of the R&D has moved to the private sector. But the original Internet comes from the government, the original chip-foundry stuff comes from the government—and even today there’s some government money taking on some of the more advanced things and making sure the universities have the knowledge base that maintains that lead. So I’d say the overall record for the United States on government R&D is very, very good.”

              http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/we-need-an-energy-miracle/407881/

            1. the Cadillac Car Company (named for the French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe Cadillac, who founded the city of Detroit in 1701) was founded in August 1902. Leland introduced the first Cadillac–priced at $850–at the New York Auto Show the following year

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

              Buick is one of the oldest automobile brands in the world and the oldest in America. (Autocar, founded in 1897, is the oldest motor vehicle manufacturer in the western hemisphere; while originally an automobile maker,

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

              It took 10 years before the Model T was manufactured by the auto industry.

            2. Which is what I was trying to say above about Tesla: “It’s pretty much the same path that ICEs took in replacing horses. ICEs started as novelties for the wealthy. Expensive ICEs developed the concept and the industry. Then less expensive ICEs from Ford expanded the industry to many more people.”

              The Cadillac was roughly the same price as the Tesla Model S, adjusted for wage levels and inflation. It was undercut by the Model T, which was a budget car. Cheap, low quality but just good enough for the mass market.

            3. You could describe a Model T as a low quality car in terms of fit, finish, style, features and so forth…… but in terms of durability, ease of repair, dependability, and even performance, it was quite a car, in it’s day and time.

              There’s no question it delivered substantially more value per dollar in every measure other than comfort and status that a Cadillac of similar vintage.

            4. Well, there seems to be some disagreement on this point – maybe, as you suggest, it depends on your criteria. I wrote that from memory – I think this was the source:

              “with its blacksmithed body panels and crude instruments, the Model T was a piece of junk, the Yugo of its day.”

              TIME and Dan Neil, a Pulitzer Prize-winning automotive critic, look at the greatest lemons of the automotive industry.
              http://time.com/4723114/50-worst-cars-of-all-time/

            5. The point is, again, that the common man’s affordable car came out just a few years after the luxury cars. Now it’s been more than a few years since commercially produced EV’s came out and we have much better and faster manufacturing capability than Ford did back then. So why the slow development rate, much slower than in the past.

            6. The low priced Model T didn’t happen overnight. Doesn’t the following quote sound like Tesla and the Model 3?

              “Conceived by Henry Ford as practical, affordable transportation for the common man, it quickly became prized for its low cost, durability, versatility, and ease of maintenance. Assembly-line production allowed the price of the touring car version to be lowered from $850 in 1908 to less than $300 in 1925.“

              http://www.history.com/topics/model-t

            7. You are skipping my major point. We have far more capability in design, materials, computing, speed of assembly and knowledge now. This apparently has no real effect on timing.

              And no it does not sound like the Tesla and Model 3 which are both high priced vehicles.

            8. [Car and Driver calls the Bolt “a major milestone,” for a good reason. “It no longer matters if Tesla goes belly-up,” the magazine states. “Electric cars appear to have laid down permanent roots in the automotive landscape with the first long-range, affordable EV from an established, mainstream automaker.”]

              http://www.plugincars.com/chevrolet-bolt

            9. Hi Nick,

              About the guy who is has a rep as an auto critic, it may seem a little presumptuous of me, but I probably know a whole lot more about antique cars from the perspective of a man who knows about them from busting his knuckles and getting all greasy working on them than a man who makes his living with a word processor or typewriter. I have lots of acquaintances who work on old cars as well.

              Perspective and nuance are every thing.

              There are plenty of people who truly believe a Mercedes or BMW is far superior to a Chevy or Ford……….. and if you’re a SNOB, more concerned about status, and a LITTLE bit more performance, at SUBSTANTIALLY greater cost, well then, a Mercedes or Beemer IS a superior car.

              But they don’t last any longer than a Ford or Chevy, and they cost three times as much to maintain, and while they ride a LITTLE bit better, and may accelerate and corner a LITTLE BIT better, at legal speeds, hardly anybody wearing a blindfold can tell the difference between riding in a full size Chevy or Ford versus a Mercedes or Beemer.

              You can buy a new Impala and bank the difference and get ANOTHER new Impala ten years down the road when your Mercedes is depreciated eighty five percent. And in the meantime, you will have saved ten to twenty grand on maintenance driving the Chevy.

              Auto critics make their living selling status to snobs.

              The Model T was the greatest car of it’s era, taken all around. It’s not just fit and finish and performance that matters. Being able to travel on pig path roads, and having parts and service available at any crossroads village in the country matters too. Simplicity matters. Ease of maintenance matters. Price matters.

              But nobody who knows a lot about old cars disputes that it was obsolete before Ford quit building them.

            10. Makes sense.

              I was amused to read that Ford used only black paint on the Model T because it dried a little faster, which sped up the assembly line and reduced costs.

              It’s also interesting to keep in mind that partial electrification was key to it’s success: the electric starter. Until the electric starter was introduced, EVs had an edge. Even after it’s introduction, Ford’s wife wouldn’t give up her Detroit Electric…

              https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/209957/#slide=gs-214227

              And even now the electric starter motor is the basis of the so-called “mild hybrid”, in which the ICE turns off when the car is stopped, and starts again instantly when the driver hits the accelerator.

            11. The GM stop-start system is controlled only by the brake pedal and not the accelerator. It senses the reduced pressure on the brake pedal and starts the engine. If you move your foot from the brake to the accelerator in a normal timely manner the engines is ready to move the vehicle when you press on the accelerator. The engine never stops until the vehicle comes to a complete stop and happens within a hundredth of a second of the stop. With a slow and minimal amount of pressure on the brake right before the complete stop. It is possible to stop the vehicle and keep it stopped without the engine shutting down. The AC setting can also influence the engine from shutting down if there is a lot of demand to cool down the interior.

              About the longest the engine will stay shut down is about 2 minutes. This all depends on the electrical demands at the time. The system converts over to a second lithium battery during the shut down. This is to not shorten the life of the primary battery and you don’t see a voltage drop in the lighting during the shut down. It takes a few thousand miles of driving to get completely comfortable with the start-stop system.

            12. The big difference this time is that the battery is very expensive, but its coming down. A lower price battery will allow manufacturers to sell a less expensive car, but still get a margin of profit (they hope).

              And secondly, the Chevy Bolt is not an expensive car. All electric w over 200 mile range. Test ride it.

            13. Also, the Leaf and Ionic are not expensive. Granted, the incentives help, but you can get these for just 25-30K.

              Yes, some of the major car companies are copying Tesla’s strategy of going after the luxury market first but that’s now just to survive. Tesla has come from nowhere to dominate the luxury market – no one is buying 100K cars that are not electric – it’s already over for that market and tic tok as Tesla extends its lead in lower price points.

            14. some of the major car companies are copying Tesla’s strategy of going after the luxury market first but that’s now just to survive

              And that’s a direct result of Musk’s strategy, with a goal of forcing the industry towards EVs.

            15. The problem is that you have to pay up front for the battery. While you have to pay for electricity to charge the battery on an ongoing basis, you have to finance the battery. In an ICE vehicle, you pay for gas as an expense on an ongoing basis. The actual infrastructure costs of gas vehicles- exploration, refining, gas stations, etc., are hidden in the price of gas. The battery is paid for as a lump sum, requiring either interest payments or, if paying cash, lost opportunity for the money expended. Also, because of the cyclical nature of oil prices, and the low oil prices of the past 3 years, people do not see the immediate cash benefit that they would see with, say, $150/barrel oil.

            16. What about leasing? There’s still interest, but you don’t see the large capital outlay, which people find so intimidating.

            17. I don’t have the figures at hand, but my guess is that the mopay is going to reflect the extra cost of the battery. Also the buyout at the end of the lease.

        1. You think this was all about me buying some overpriced EV? I was talking about getting the world to change over to them.

          1. I believe the world is in the early process of changing over to EV’s. We are still in the engineering stages. Like a pharmaceutical trial test group. Keep in mind it’s important the manufactures get it right. Otherwise it could set the process time line back with consumer rejection.

            It’s not all about you buying an EV. Question for you, when you do drive your ICE. Do you drive it to optimize a minimum CO2 impact ? Do you drive 70 mph or 55 mph on the highway ?

            1. How is that big V8 running? Sea level rising from it yet so you have beach front property? That is the plan right?

            2. I’m going to take your response as a NO

              No that’s not the plan. My concrete slab foundation floor sets at 10 feet above sea level. Protected by more than 10 miles of 13 foot above sea level flood control wall. There wouldn’t be any beach front property. It will be Houston 2017.

              No V8 here

            3. With the predicted increase in storm strength from the changing Arctic, they better add 5 to 10 feet to that wall if they want it to last a decade.

            4. “I’m going to take your response as a NO”

              Your question does not apply to me.

  5. MEASURING DEVICES FOR THE WORLD’S MOST EXTREME ENVIRONMENT

    Norwegian scientists are contributing to the development of the world’s hottest geothermal well in a non-volcanic area. The goal is to exploit the inexhaustible supply of heat from the interior of the Earth, and this calls for equipment that can withstand the most extreme conditions.

    In the process of harnessing the energy in the supercritical water, the researchers have made good use of the Norwegian petroleum industry’s experience in drilling deep oil wells. The exploitation of geothermal heat has much in common with oil recovery. Petroleum technologists are therefore included in the team. However, whereas we have for many decades succeeded in exploiting the potential found in petroleum resources, nobody has yet managed to harness supercritical water. “If we can succeed in exploiting geothermal heat there will be enough of it to supply the entire population of the planet with energy for many generations. There are nuclear power plants where water that meets the conditions for supercritical water is fed through turbines, so we know that we can succeed in exploiting the energy in such water once we have managed to extract it.” In the project’s deepest descent into the Earth, the research team carried out measurements at a depth of 2810 metres. Here the temperature reached 443.6°C.

    Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-04-devices-world-extreme-environment.html#jCp

  6. Here in the SF bay area, it feels like the ball is really starting to roll on electrification of transport. Sure, its still very early, but the groundwork is in place for the next wave which will be significant. It will take time for the pure ICE fleet to turn over, but plugin hybrids will be commonplace soon.
    Here is a vehicle you can buy today- a Chrysler Pacifica minivan that plugs in to get about 32 miles, and has a ICE motor to get you over 500 more. epa 84 MPGe This is a vehicle that can go electric on most local trips and isn’t more expensive. http://www.plugincars.com/chrysler-pacifica-plug-hybrid

    And here is a writeup on the state of Calif solar/wind capacity regarding ability to handle vehicle electric charging.- http://gregor.us/california/california-solar-is-ready-for-ev/

    Enjoy your last pure ICE.

    1. I sure will. The power, the roar, the sound of the engine and exhaust, the thrill of speed. The magic. It is the only thing, the one and only thing, that allows me, a common nobody, the feeling of space, of freedom, of the horizon and infinity. I will never be a pilot or fly into space. I will never be rich or powerful.

      As such, I will never give up my gasoline car. I will burn every last drop of gasoline available. You will pry it from my cold, dead hands. I am Mad Max.

      1. So for you a car is symbolic? How about an EV that accelerates faster than your ICE car and has a speaker setup to give the roar, the sound of the engine and exhaust?

      3. dolph, i’m different in that regard. I’ve worked on lots of engines, sometimes enjoyed it and sometimes cussed it. The engineering is amazing, and some of the smells are very intriguing.
        But I’ve always been much more interested in a pretty girl than a pretty car.
        I’d give up ICE’s in a moment for a comparable size/cargo weight and cost/mile electric vehicle, and the chance to have no more maintenance other than lube, brake and tires.
        And I won’t miss going to the auto parts store, the gas station, or any place like that for even a second.

        Right now, a small car is much cheaper /mile for electric than comparable ICE (10 yr cost to own). I hoping that extends to bigger ones before too long. I suspect it will. There will be a long transition time where many cars/trucks will have both ICE and electric capability (hint- they call it a hybrid and many plug-in).
        Times are changing.
        Also consider the sense of independence you would have with an electric car and solar on the roof, knowing that you generate most of the energy (or even surplus) for the transport that you use. In that scene, you don’t need somebodies refinery, somebodies offshore rig, somebodies Arabian or Venezuelan feedback. And the money you are spending is going to pay back your upfront purchase of the solar system. You are paying you, not them. Pay it for 10 yrs and own it for over 30. Beat that. [unless of course its very cloudy and northern where you happen to live. probably great in other ways]

    2. I’ve been driving in plugin hybrids in California for many a year.
      EV’s are still rare, although I use them frequently.
      Out of California?
      Not much of a chance——

  7. RAPID RISE IN MASS SCHOOL SHOOTINGS IN THE UNITED STATES

    “More people have died or been injured in mass school shootings in the US in the past 18 years than in the entire 20th century. In a new study, researchers have reviewed the history of mass school shootings in the U.S. and found some alarming trends.”

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180419131025.htm

  9. BOTTLENOSE DOLPHINS RECORDED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN CANADIAN PACIFIC WATERS

    Both common bottlenose dolphins and false killer whales typically live in warm temperate waters further south in the eastern North Pacific, but this sighting suggests that they will naturally range into British Columbia, Canada when conditions are suitable. There has been a warming trend in eastern North Pacific waters from 2013-2016 and the authors hypothesize that the trend may be the reason behind this unusual sighting.

    Halpin adds: “Since 2014 I have documented several warm-water species: common bottlenose dolphins, a swordfish and a loggerhead turtle in British Columbian waters. With marine waters increasingly warming up we can expect to see more typically warm-water species in the northeastern Pacific.”

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180419233828.htm

  10. Why Facts Don’t Change Our Mind

    “People believe that they know way more than they actually do. What allows us to persist in this belief is other people. In the case of a toilet, someone else designed it so that I can operate it easily. This is something humans are very good at. We’ve been relying on one another’s expertise ever since we figured out how to hunt together, which was probably a key development in our evolutionary history. So well do we collaborate, Sloman and Fernbach argue, that we can hardly tell where our own understanding ends and others’ begins.

    ‘One implication of the naturalness with which we divide cognitive labor’, they write, is that there’s ‘no sharp boundary between one person’s ideas and knowledge’ and ‘those of other members’ of the group.

    This borderlessness, or, if you prefer, confusion, is also crucial to what we consider progress. As people invented new tools for new ways of living, they simultaneously created new realms of ignorance; if everyone had insisted on, say, mastering the principles of metalworking before picking up a knife, the Bronze Age wouldn’t have amounted to much. When it comes to new technologies, incomplete understanding is empowering.”

    1. “People believe that they know way more than they actually do. What allows us to persist in this belief is other people. In the case of a toilet, someone else designed it so that I can operate it easily.

      LOL! Caelan, you are so full of shit, no pun intended, it is coming out of your ears!
      When was the last time you performed neurosurgery, designed and built a suspension bridge, flew a jet plane, discovered a new drug, cured a disease or engaged in a thousand other highly specialized areas of research, science, engineering and technology?

      From your link:
      One way to look at science is as a system that corrects for people’s natural inclinations. In a well-run laboratory, there’s no room for bias; the results have to be reproducible in other laboratories, by researchers who have no motive to confirm them. And this, it could be argued, is why the system has proved so successful. At any given moment, a field may be dominated by squabbles, but, in the end, the methodology prevails. Science moves forward, even as we remain stuck in place.

      Not every one remains stuck in place. Some people actually do know their shit, you, on the other hand are a prime example of:
      “People who believe that they know way more than they actually do.”

      Have you at least designed and built one of these?
      .

    1. Yes, the authorities and other bad people will be able to lock you out of your car or cause it to pull over and stop when and where they want. So much for computers on wheels, more like rolling traps or exclusion zones. That is in addition to the unintended errors that do things to the computer, I mean car.

  12. “Probably, this sin of mine is condemning me to Hell, where I will be punished by having to spend eternity trying to teach thermodynamics to an audience of neoclassical economists.”
    -Ugo Bardi

  13. My one surviving sister is visiting the island for a brief vacation and enrolled us on a “heritage tour” hike up into the mountains surrounding the capital city where I live. We walked up some fairly steep trails and ended up at the falls in the picture below for a meal cooked on site over a wood fire by some local fellows. People live in these mountains and cultivate the hillsides but, they have to walk to the nearest access road since the trails are not wide enough for cars or small trucks, the bridges that cross the rivers being about 1 meter wide. Did see a fellow with a 30 lb. (15 kg) LPG cylinder on his shoulder heading up the trail so even in these somewhat remote areas people still depend on FF for fuel for cooking and more importantly for the supply of staple foods and meats. Also saw lots of wires heading into the bush, supposedly illegal electricity connections, since the wires used are not the type used by the utility and the utility generally suspends their wires on tall poles out of the reach of people.

    What should have been a largely positive experience for me was soured by plastic garbage. It was everywhere, including the riverbed adjacent to the falls! As we got further away from “civilization the amounts decreased but plastic trash was everywhere! It depresses me because I feel almost completely powerless to affect any sort of change. The trash was not thrown there by visitors to the area (a rarity) but by the people who live there and walk the trails past all this litter everyday! I would describe this as a flaw in the evolution of our (human) civilization. We do not distinguish between trash that decomposes fairly quickly and trash that decomposes very slowly if at all. How can we get people to start making this distinction and acting appropriately?

    1. GIANT PLASTIC ‘BERG BLOCKS INDONESIAN RIVER

      A crisis of plastic waste in Indonesia has become so acute that the army has been called in to help. Rivers and canals are clogged with dense masses of bottles, bags and other plastic packaging. Officials say they are engaged in a “battle” against waste that accumulates as quickly as they clear it. Commander of a military unit in the city of Bandung described it as “our biggest enemy”.

      http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43823883

        1. Most countries don’t have drinkable water making fresh bottled beverages the only really good option people have.

          1. No, people use tin cans to carry water, get their drinking water in 20lt returnables or drink Coke from glass bottles even in remote places. Only well off people, in these places, buy expensive bottled water.

            NAOM

    1. You could have organized a cleanup for Earth Day, getting the children involved and teaching them how this is the day of the year we think about the environment.

      1. You mean like this:

        A Sea of Plastic: International Coastal Cleanup Day Launch

        The Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) has broken another record in the number of beach cleanup sites registered for this year’s International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) Day activities in Jamaica (on Saturday, September 20, 2014). 114 ICC beach cleanup sites across the island have been registered, including ten underwater cleanups. JET expects the number of participants to increase from last year’s 6,000 to 8,000 in 2014. And, at the same time, JET is preparing to launch another marine litter focused initiative – the Clean Coasts Project (CCP), a one-year program expanding on the theme of ICC and targeted at Jamaican resort areas.

        or this:

        International Coastal Cleanup Day Jamaica

        International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) Day takes place on the third Saturday in September every year, and is the largest one-day volunteer event in the world. For over three decades, the Ocean Conservancy in Texas has been coordinating volunteers across the globe to collect millions of pounds of trash in over 100 countries.

        Well, thanks for the suggestion but, no thanks. As for “getting the children involved and teaching them how this is the day of the year we think about the environment”, I have a huge problem with that statement. We should be thinking about the environment every day. My point in posting these pictures is that we here in Jamaica have a huge problem of (mostly) plastic litter and as Doug pointed out further up, it seems that the problem is as bad or worse in other parts of the world.

        I grew up knowing the difference between biodegradable and non biodegradable waste. It frustrates me to see mountains of evidence (trash) that huge amounts of people do not recognize the difference or, more scary to contemplate, don’t care! The point is, all this mostly plastic trash should not be discarded into pristine natural environments IN THE FIRST PLACE! Assuming that any thought goes into it, what kind of thought process justifies discarding of trash in this way. Who the hell do they think is going to clean it up?

        The thinking appears to be that the rain will come and wash everything away and make it clean again, without any thought of where it all ends up, in the sea. Then you end up needing the types of activities described in the two links above. No, people need to understand that disposing of waste in this way is not too different than shitting where you eat. You are messing up the environment which ultimately must sustain you. Maybe our civilization is just not sophisticated or educated enough as a whole, to deal with non biodegradable waste. It certainly appears so.

        1. Seems to be basic animal nature. I note that even in places with robust trash handling infrastructure and designated trash receptacles, anywhere humans congregate, they almost inevitably leave behind scattered bits of trash by the time they’ve moved on. Think of concerts, sporting events, movie theaters, conventions, picnics, and so on. A big part of the service sector wouldn’t exist if there weren’t other people’s messes to clean up. Doesn’t seem very different from how the squirrels don’t bother to fill in the holes they make in my lawn while searching for nuts or how the songbirds readily take dumps on and around their feeders. The only difference is their messes correct themselves fairly quickly and may actually be beneficial anyway.

  17. The picture below was taken from a location south of the falls at a slightly higher altitude pointing south west towards the city in the distance. Trying to convey how far away the city appeared.

  18. On the Google satellite view below I have tried to mark the approximate location from which the views above was taken, with a “ruler showing the east to west extent of the image for scale. The location is maked by the Google marker, just above the 34 mile point on the “ruler”.

  20. Here’s a link about politics and demographics.

    For what it’s worth, it’s my personal opinion that all the major demographic trends are very much in favor of the leftish liberalish political camp, which is not exactly the same thing as the Democratic Party camp, but it’s close enough to the same, for conversational purposes.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-17/demographics-don-t-doom-republican-party

    The reason I say it’s not the same is that quite a few people who think of themselves as conservatives and or Republicans are actually in favor of SOME policies that are usually associated with the Democrats ……. one such policy being legalizing pot.

    Just about all the younger people I know who are hard core about such things as their right to own guns, etc, don’t pay a mixed race couple a second glance on the street, and I can’t even remember the last time I heard anybody say anything in favor of keeping women at home, rather than ENCOURAGING them to get out of the house and get a job, and help pay the bills, or just pack up and leave if they are involved with a man who is not treating them well.

    Some conservatives and Republicans are in favor of renewable energy, and some really do believe in free markets, and understand that our current health care system is not really a free market system at all, one that does not involve much in the way of real competition, one that rips off the taxpayer rather than protecting the tax payer.

    Change due to demographics may seem to be slow arriving, but when it does, it’s going to arrive like fast moving storm, in historical terms.

    My generation is dying off fast.

    ENOUGH elections are competitive in this country that when the Republicans lose one or two percent of partisan voters due to old age, and the Democrats gain a percent or two due to younger voters identifying with them, the D’s are damned near sure to regain control of the country.

  21. Gravity-based energy storage could prove cheaper than batteries

    “According to a report by analysts at Imperial College London, gravity-fed energy storage systems can provide frequency response at a cost cheaper than most other storage solutions. Gravity-fed systems use a heavy weight – up to 2,000 tonnes – suspended in a deep shaft by cables attached to winches. When there is excess electricity, for example on a windy day, the weight is winched to the top of the shaft ready to generate power. This weight can then be released when required – in less than a second – and the winches become generators, producing either a large burst of electricity quickly, or releasing it more slowly depending on what is needed. According to the paper, gravity-fed storage providing frequency response costs $141 per kW, compared to $154 for a lithium-ion battery, $187 for lead acid batteries and $312 for flywheel.”

    Labor warns Australia’s National Energy Guarantee will lead to renewables lag

    “The Federal Government’s latest energy plan will mean no new renewable energy projects would be built in Australia for a decade, the Opposition says. Labor’s energy spokesman, Mark Butler, said the NEG would mean not a single new renewable energy project would be built in Australia for an entire decade from 2020 to 2030. John Grimes from the Smart Energy Council called the NEG a diabolical policy.”

  22. A 1-acre permaculture farm supplies 50 families

    “I’ve always been somewhat of a lazy gardener. And that’s why permaculture has always made a whole lot of sense to me. Instead of throwing physical labor and fossil fuels at any given problem, the idea behind permaculture gardening is to use nature’s own design tricks to create productive landscapes that do much of the work for you.

    I’ve seen these design principles applied to various degrees of success. But Limestone Permaculture Farm in New South Wales, Australia, might be one of the finest examples yet—producing significant amounts of food from just one acre, and using only part time labor to do so. In fact, co-owner Brett Cooper suggests he’s feeding 50 families from this tiny property. (I suspect he means supplying 50 families with some produce—feeding 50 families from such a small amount of land would be a positively biblical achievement!) And he does all this while holding down a steady day job too.

    Limestone uses many of the staple permaculture tricks, including swales (ditches dug on contour to harvest rainwater and planted up with perennial crops), self-seeding edible ground cover crops, no-dig garden beds and a chicken tractor too to till the land and cycle nutrients.”

    1. A 1-acre permaculture farm supplies 50 families

      Right! So please tell us how exactly we are going to feed 10 billion humans with permaculture. I’m sure you have already done the math. You have figured in allocation for the preservation of wilderness, you have also included factors such as degradation of soils due to various factors, including but not limited to, the consequences of the continued impacts of global warming on decreasing plant yields, droughts, floods etc… etc…

      I assume you do look at global data from multiple sources and actually plot some of it in charts yourself. So based on the data in the link below and using the IPCC scenarios and UN or WHO population projections how many families can the planet actually sustain if we implement 100% permacultural practices globally say by 2030, 2050 and 2100? Please provide a realistic road map for achieving those goals.

      https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Land-use-graphic-01-01-01.png

      I.6 Breakdown of global land area today

      The graphic below details the breakdown of global land allocation and use based on areal extent. Only 71 percent of Earth’s land surface is defined as habitable; the remaining 29 percent comprises of glaciers and barren land. Here, ‘barren land’ refers to land cover in which less than one-third of the area has vegetation or other cover; barren land typically has thin soil, sand or rocks and includes deserts, dry salt flats, beaches, sand dunes, and exposed rocks.

      Humans use half of global habitable area for agricultural production (of the remainder, 37 percent is forested; 11 percent as shrubbery; and only one-percent is utilised as urban infrastructure).

      More than three-quarters of our agricultural land is used for the rearing of livestock through a combination of grazing land and land used for animal feed production. Despite being dominant in land allocation for agriculture, meat and dairy products supply only 17 percent of global caloric supply and only 33 percent of global protein supply. In other words, the 11 million square kilometres used for crops supply more calories and protein for the global population than the almost 4-times larger area used for livestock.
      https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Land-use-graphic-01-01-01.png

      1. For Caelan, the idea of permaculture is clearly not meant to be taken literally, as practical technology or science based practice.
        Rather it is a religion. A belief system upon which he can see the world as a manageable place.
        But he speaks from a theoretical stool off in the corner, rather than from any reality based experience. Therefore the information is paper thin and not useful.
        There is no dirt under the fingernails, no manure on the soles of his feet.
        I’m not looking for a belief system.

        1. Placing a comment, laden with falsehoods, etc., behind a moniker of anonymity (and therefore with little backing of personal responsibility), Hickory is clearly not meant to be taken too seriously, except perhaps where (peddling) a particular ‘belief system’ is involved.

          “I’m not looking for a belief system…” ~ Hickory

          Maybe because you’ve already accepted one…

          “…the groundwork is in place for the next wave which will be significant. It will take time for the pure ICE fleet to turn over, but plugin hybrids will be commonplace soon.
          Here is a vehicle you can buy today… that plugs in to get about 32 miles, and has a ICE motor to get you over 500 more… This is a vehicle that can go electric on most local trips and isn’t more expensive…” ~ Hickory

      2. Fred, whenever we go over this kind of thing, I too often inevitably end up feeling like I’ve somehow schooled you or flipped you over, duct-taped your legs together, and mopped the floor with your head with some sort of mop that conveniently attaches and detaches.

        It’s in part why I posted this.

        If you want to have a better-quality dialogue, or at least offer greater effort toward it, I might still consider it, time permitting, but you might need to guarantee to make better attempts. Either that or I supppose you could always direct-deposit a generous sum into my bank account, before money and banking fails of course. I promise to apply it to good causes.

        1. “I too often inevitably end up feeling like I’ve somehow schooled you or flipped you over, duct-taped your legs together, and mopped the floor with your head”

          Caelan,

          1. Weird Black Hole

            “HB and OFM have gotten into a weird black hole together.

            No fun for the rest of us, who I suspect are taking care to skip such comments as quickly as possible.” ~ Nick G

            “Huntington… in your interactions with OFM, you prove that even democrats have members that are just as juvenile, ignorant and rude as Trump. Such an a-hole.” ~ Hickory

            LOL
            (with a tip of the hat to Nick)

        2. Fred, whenever we go over this kind of thing, I too often inevitably end up feeling like I’ve somehow schooled you or flipped you over, duct-taped your legs together, and mopped the floor with your head with some sort of mop that conveniently attaches and detaches.

          ROFL! It’s ok, Caelan, I understand, It’s just a consequence of your severe Dunning Kruger syndrome. The echoes of the sound of your own voice reverberating inside that empty bubble head of yours must last for hours on end. I on the other hand have never felt as if I’ve managed to school you in anything because I realize you are just an ignorant little ass wipe! And for that, there is but one very specific use!

    2. We have a two-acre CSA farm here in Maine that we’ve been working for close to ten years now. I know what’s possible, and “supplying 50 families” is absolute bullshit, and being “lazy” while producing such an amount is quantum bullshit, and why bother reading yet another 3-paragraph round of bullshit from the permacultists? Giving 50 families a bag of greens every week over the summer is not “supplying them.”

      1. Hi Michael, welcome to the forum! Maybe you could have Caelan spend a summer working on your farm… I’m sure he could show you how to easily support 100 families from your two acres. Without even breaking a sweat. BTW, I swear I’m trying to cut down on my sarcasm quota. 😉

        1. Thank you, Fred.

          I’ve been here before, long ago. I’m a lay person who was disillusioned when the predictions of doom failed. I got kinda shouted down when I expressed my disdain for certain peakers’ forecasts, but that’s in the past.

          Now, I can’t square my disillusionment with the fact that the assumptions behind peak oil are still basically sound.

          So–I have no idea what’s going to happen, but I still like to keep an eye out.

          And romantic agricultural types really burn my ass!

          1. I’m a lay person who was disillusioned when the predictions of doom failed.

            Don’t get too disillusioned Michael, they haven’t failed yet. The ecological system is collapsing right now and has been collapsing for several decades now. It is just happening so slowly that nobody notices. Kinda like the frog in the pot, the temperature rises so slowly that he does not notice.

            Peak oil? That will be a contributing factor but not the cause.

            And yeah, those romantic agricultural types burn my ass also.

            2. Michael, thanks for the link. The author of that piece was just another of those who say something to the effect: “Sure things look bad right now but science will think of something.” Well, science is running out of options. By 2050 almost all wild animals larger than a large dog will be extinct, gone forever.

              Topsoil is being washed or blown away at an alarming rate. New farming territory is being created by cutting down the forest. Deserts are still expanding. Rivers and lakes are still drying up. The destruction is not slowing down, in fact, it is accelerating. To say things will eventually turn out okay is just down in the dirt stupid.

              Enough already, I am going to have another drink.

            3. As the US heartland overheats and dries out worse than the Dustbowl of the 1930’s I wonder what science and technology will do about that?

            4. “I wonder what science and technology will do about that?”

              Probably just geoengineer a solution; bunnies worked well in Australia, didn’t they? 🙂

            5. The rabbits have been grossly unsuccessful in removing the largest invasive species. We need bigger rabbits.

      2. “We have a two-acre CSA farm…” ~ Michael B

        Community-Supported-Agriculture (CSA) is not permaculture.

        “Ron, I’m just a confused old man now.” ~ Michael B

  23. She Tried To Report On Climate Change. Sinclair Told Her To Be More “Balanced.”
    Steven Perlberg BuzzFeed News Reporter

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/stevenperlberg/sinclair-climate-change?utm_term=.aqOzv5VJE#.xhBGVWL9r

    Sinclair Broadcast Group executives reprimanded and ultimately ousted a local news reporter who refused to seed doubt about man-made climate change and “balance” her stories in a more conservative direction.

    Her account, detailed in company documents she provided to BuzzFeed News, offers a glimpse at the inner workings of a media giant that has sought to both ingratiate itself to President Donald Trump and cast itself as an apolitical local news provider — a position the documents undermine.

    In one 2015 instance, the former news director of WSET-TV in Lynchburg, Virginia, Len Stevens, criticized reporter Suri Crowe because she “clearly laid out the argument that human activities cause global warming, but had nothing from the side that questions the science behind such claims and points to more natural causes for such warming.”

    In recent months, Sinclair has garnered intense national attention for forcing stations across the country to carry pro-Trump, “must-run” segments and instructing anchors to read statements touting conservative talking points. Sinclair, which owns local TV stations affiliated with name-brand networks like Fox or ABC, has defended the segments and noted they are a small part of its stations’ overall coverage — but Crowe’s experience as a general assignment reporter demonstrates how the parent company’s ideology can permeate throughout local news reporting.

    “The management team felt the story was one-sided — indicating that human activity is to blame for global warming — period,” said Stevens, who now works in the communications department at Liberty University, in an emailed statement to BuzzFeed News. “I understand most scientists agree with that assessment. I, myself, feel that human activity at least plays a role, but our opinions really shouldn’t matter. We were there to deliver news, not opinion. And there is NOT 100% agreement on this issue, even among the scientific community.”

    1. We were there to deliver news, not opinion. And there is NOT 100% agreement on this issue, even among the scientific community.

      Just curious how they would report the following news item: ’97 out of 100, lung cancer specialists, agree, smoking causes lung cancer!’

      Sinclair News: ‘There is NOT 100% agreement on this issue, even among the medical community.’ Disclaimer, This message brought to you by the financial support of the Tobacco Lobby.

  24. TRUMP’S NEW NASA CHIEF JIM BRIDENSTINE A ‘CLIMATE CHANGE DENIER’ WHO COULD MAKE ‘TERRIFYING’ DECISIONS, US SENATORS WARN

    The confirmation of Mr Trump’s nominee came despite Mr Bridenstine telling Congress in 2013 that “global temperatures stopped rising ten years ago. Global temperature changes – when they exist – correlate with sun output and ocean cycles”. Not only did this statement rely on debunked claims of a global warming “hiatus”, it also flatly contradicted the first sentence of the Nasa website page explaining the causes of climate change: “Most climate scientists agree the main cause of the current global warming trend is human expansion of the ‘greenhouse effect’.”

    During a November confirmation hearing Mr Bridenstine softened his position slightly to accept that global warming is still happening and “human activity absolutely is a contributor to the climate change that we are currently seeing.” But the Oklahoma congressman still refused to accept that humans were the primary drivers of climate change, instead saying: “It’s gonna depend on a whole lot of factors. We’re still learning more about that every day. In some years you could say absolutely. In other years during sun cycles and other things there are other contributing factors that would maybe have more than an impact.”

    He’s an odd person to be leader of an agency that provides the most comprehensive data on climate change in the world.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/james-bridenstine-nasa-climate-change-denier-donald-trump-ignoring-science-terrifying-launch-a8313966.html

    1. In this administration of morons and ideologues, a half brained dimwit has been given the position of leadership over actual scientists and engineers.

      On the other hand, pun intended, it seems one hand has no fucking clue what the other is doing. So while NASA is now under the administration of a climate science denialist, the DOE has released this:

      https://climatemodeling.science.energy.gov/projects/energy-exascale-earth-system-model

      ENERGY EXASCALE EARTH SYSTEM MODEL

      The Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) project, previously known as ACME, is central to ESM as well as many of the Climate and Environmental Sciences Division activities, as it is developing a computationally advanced coupled climate-energy model to investigate the challenges posed by the interactions of weather-climate scale variability with energy and related sectors. The E3SM model simulates the fully coupled Earth system at high-resolution (15-25km, including higher resolution within regionally refined areas) and is incorporating coupling with energy, water, land-use and related energy-relevant activities, with a focus on near-term hind-casts (1970-2015) for model validation and a near-term projection (2015-2050) as needed for energy sector planning. The model further employs regional-refinement using variable mesh methodologies designed to provide high resolution in regions where the complex physical and dynamical processes require it, or where more detailed information is desired. The project is led by a collaboration of several DOE-National Laboratories and includes several academic and private partners. While E3SM’s primary purpose is for scientific research, it will be available to support planning for National energy and related sectoral needs, for example by indicating the probability for regional changes in extreme temperature and precipitation, water availability, sea-level change and coastal impacts, Arctic ocean accessibility, and carbon exchange across atmosphere, land and ocean systems.

  25. The urban development model of São Paulo needs to be reversed

    “This article aims to point out some of the main changes needed in São Paulo’s development model… The continuance of the model that has guided urban policies in the city for decades – based on the unlimited expansion of the urban footprint, on the primacy of the automobile, on increasing soil imperviousness, on the depopulation of consolidated regions, on ingrained but outmoded processes of real estate development, and on the creation of outlying peripheries lacking infrastructure, services and jobs – will lead the city to an unsustainable situation, aggravating its already existing chaotic conditions… consistent alternatives do exist, but… their implementation would require increased participatory planning and societal mobilization, because changing a deeply ingrained model runs counter well-entrenched vested interests…

    The model of low density gated communities is spreading exactly in this region, tending to eliminate a greenbelt that still exists around the urbanized mass. The process will contribute to global warming, to change in water behavior, with serious consequences for water supply and the worsening of floods, besides promoting the way of life based on individual cars, the only way to access these communities. This urban model is incompatible with public transport…

    Reducing inequalities also means bringing housing, including social housing, closer to workplaces and facilities…

    That would enable reducing commuting needs and time, thus reducing the need for cars and motorized transport.“

    Increasing the Capacities of Cable Cars for Use in Public Transport

    “Cable car transport has many advantages compared with other modes of passenger transport, such as clean electricity drive, high levels of safety for passengers, and quiet operation. The most important characteristic is that cable car transport can be installed in the air over streets in urban areas, independent of congestion…

    This paper has demonstrated that cable car transport can become competitive with other types of passenger transport in urban areas. With additional platforms in gondola stations, it is possible to achieve reduced distance (intervals and spacing) between vehicles on the line and increase capacity. In this way, the necessary surfaces for passenger entry and exit in the cabins increases, which is necessary for passenger transport with large capacities…

    Gondolas also have advantages because of smaller vehicles. This means that at intermediate stations on a line, it would not be necessary to stop all cabins, but only those in which passengers would like to exit; other vehicles could freely travel to the other stations. Gondolas with two platforms in a station with twofold greater capacity would be more expensive but not twice as expensive as existing conventional gondolas with one platform. The price for a mono-cable gondola with two platforms in a station would be $11–20 million US per km…”

    2. The urban development model of São Paulo needs to be reversed

      Well, Duh! The same can be said of a hundred other large cities anywhere on the planet.
      BTW, a lot of things have happened in São Paulo even since that particular paper was published. Not to mention that São Paulo has an excellent ultra modern public transport system. Sorry, no cable cars… http://www.urbanrail.net/am/spau/sao-paulo.htm

      Received on 7 March 2011 and accepted on 15 March 2011 15.3.2011.

      Nabil Bonduki has been a professor at the University of São Paulo since 1986. He was a professor of History of Urbanism at EESC-USP and teaches urban planning at FAU-USP. He was an alderman in the city of São Paulo and rapporteur of the Strategic Master Plan. @ –nbonduki@hotmail.com

      Perhaps someone should send Professor Bonduki an email about the advantages of public transport by cable car… he obviously is behind the times.

      On the other hand the city of São Paulo and the University of São Paulo are already CE100 members.

      https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/ce100/directory/university-sao-paulo

      As the major institution of higher education in Brazil, and as one of the most prestigious universities in Latin America, the University of Sao Paulo (USP) intends to lead the development of knowledge, education, and research of the circular economy across South America. The key activities are:

      – The creation of a practice community for research and knowledge development for a multidisciplinary circular economy within the following knowledge areas: Engineering; Economy; Management; Business and Administration; Law; Agriculture and Forest Sciences; Social Science; Biology; Physics; Maths and Computing Sciences; Architecture; Urban and Regional Planning

      – The integration of circular economy content on graduate and undergraduate courses within USP
      – The development of circular economy education programmes for the society
      – Technical and scientific support on research, innovation and knowledge transfer to the society and in particular to CE100 Brasil.

  26. Introducting Permaea
    (~2015 rough-draft edit)

    “Rather than trying to bake from scratch or, at the same time, kludge the necessary changes within the drag of an unworkable structure, (such as with using its money or fossil-fuels), we would seem to need to be less as a kind of, in a sense, self-referencing stand-alone concept, and more outward-reaching, adaptive, and one that makes meaningful, mutually-supportive/regenerative symbiotic relations— ‘fixes nitrogen’; ‘helps break certain nutrients down for uptake by others’, etc.– with other already-existing organizations, movements and individuals in its environment and on a similar wave, such as, perhaps, re-wilding, Transition Towns, n55.dk, Green Wizards, FLOSS-related organizations, Former Occupiers, Alpha Generation, Deep Green Resistance, ex-ecosociopolitical-prisoners, local/native groups, CrimethInc., 350.org, CodePink, Resilience.org, Sea Shepherd, Wikileaks, and so forth. On a progressively-increasing self-perpetuating emergent momentum and dynamic, this could potentially be much easier and faster to develop than anyone might imagine and than anything else…

    Think also of the analogy of building with off-the-shelf parts.

    ‘ The point here is that people… may form a politic into a singularity. This is where solidarity dies, a place where you don’t engage with people outside your ‘understanding of reality’, but rather expect ‘reality to conform to their subject understanding of it.’ ~ Tanday Lupalupa; ‘Uncivilizing Permaculture’

    “

    A Manifesto for Rewilding the World

    “Through rewilding – the mass restoration of ecosystems – I see an opportunity to reverse the destruction of the natural world. Researching my book Feral, I came across rewilding programmes in several parts of Europe, including some (such as Trees for Life in Scotland and the Wales Wild Land Foundation) in the UK, which are beginning to show how swiftly nature responds when we stop trying to control it (18,19). Rewilding, in my view, should involve reintroducing missing animals and plants, taking down the fences, blocking the drainage ditches, culling a few particularly invasive exotic species but otherwise standing back. It’s about abandoning the Biblical doctrine of dominion which has governed our relationship with the natural world.”

    Rewilding Permaculture with Peter Michael Bauer

    “My guest for this episode is the rewilder Peter Michael Bauer, from Portland, Oregon, who is also a trained permaculture practitioner who studied under Toby Hemenway…

    During this conversation we talk about permaculture as a tool for rewilding, examine the impact of government and empire on our ability to take care of the earth and ourselves, discuss the meaning of civilization in the context of earth repair and permaculture, and our individual roles in creating useful change…

    I walk away from this conversation feeling that the act of practicing permaculture is the beginning of a life that is less civilized and a lot more wild. The more I have conversations with people like Peter, or Dan De Lion, or Ben Weiss and Wilson Alvarez, or read the work of authors like Derrick Jensen, the less and less I can sit back and be mild behind the microphone.”

      1. Thanks, downloading… Will give it a listen and maybe report back on it.

  27. The Fuckin News: In ZAD We Trust
    (video length: 7 minutes)

    “In this week’s TFN, France’s off-brand Napoleon, Emmanuel Macron, meets his Battle of Waterloo in La ZAD, or Zone to Defend, in Notre Dames Des Landes. Meanwhile, in Hamilton so-called ‘Ontario’, the pigs launch a SWAT raid against a local anarchist collective house in an attempt to save face after last month’s ‘Locke Street Riot’.

  28. Attention astronomy buffs:

    NEW MECHANISM OF RADIO EMISSION IN NEUTRON STARS REVEALED

    “Environment on the surface of a neutron star is very similar to the one that exists within a laser”, explains Nikita Teplyakov, researcher at the Laboratory of Modeling and Design of Nanostructures at ITMO University…

    “There exists the so-called population inversion, meaning that the environment is rich with high-energy particles. As they move to the lower energy levels, they emit radiation that causes nearby particles to reduce their energy as well. We evaluated the frequency of electron transitions between gravitational conditions on a neutron star and saw that they correspond to the radio band. We never even suspected that this was something no one had done before, but it turned out that we were, indeed, the first.”

    https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-04/iu-nmo042418.php

    Reference: Laser Emission from Gravitational States on Isolated Neutron Stars. Nikita V. Tepliakov, Tatiana A. Vovk, Ivan D. Rukhlenko, and Yuri V. Rozhdestvensky. The Astrophysical Journal, Apr. 11, 2018.

    1. And, closer to home:

      RESEARCH GIVES NEW RAY OF HOPE FOR SOLAR FUEL

      “A team of Renewable Energy experts from the University of Exeter has pioneered a new technique to produce hydrogen from sunlight to create a clean, cheap and widely-available fuel. The team developed an innovative method to split water into its constituent parts—hydrogen and oxygen – using sunlight. The hydrogen can then be used as a fuel, with the potential to power everyday items such as homes and vehicles.”

      Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-04-ray-solar-fuel.html#jCp

  29. SHOULD QUANTUM ANOMALIES MAKE US RETHINK REALITY?

    “Every generation tends to believe that its views on the nature of reality are either true or quite close to the truth. We are no exception to this: although we know that the ideas of earlier generations were each time supplanted by those of a later one, we still believe that this time we got it right. Our ancestors were naïve and superstitious, but we are objective—or so we tell ourselves. We know that matter/energy, outside and independent of mind, is the fundamental stuff of nature, everything else being derived from it—or do we?

    It turns out, however, that some predictions of QM are incompatible with non-contextuality even for a large and important class of non-local theories. Experimental results reported in 2007 and 2010 have confirmed these predictions. To reconcile these results with the current paradigm would require a profoundly counterintuitive redefinition of what we call “objectivity.” And since contemporary culture has come to associate objectivity with reality itself, the science press felt compelled to report on this by pronouncing, “Quantum physics says goodbye to reality.”

    The tension between the anomalies and the current paradigm can only be tolerated by ignoring the anomalies. This has been possible so far because the anomalies are only observed in laboratories. Yet we know that they are there, for their existence has been confirmed beyond reasonable doubt. Therefore, when we believe that we see objects and events outside and independent of mind, we are wrong in at least some essential sense. A new paradigm is needed to accommodate and make sense of the anomalies; one wherein mind itself is understood to be the essence—cognitively but also physically—of what we perceive when we look at the world around ourselves.”

    https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/should-quantum-anomalies-make-us-rethink-reality/

    1. Just curious Doug, but what’s your take on all this?

      Therefore, when we believe that we see objects and events outside and independent of mind, we are wrong in at least some essential sense. A new paradigm is needed to accommodate and make sense of the anomalies; one wherein mind itself is understood to be the essence—cognitively but also physically—of what we perceive when we look at the world around ourselves.

      Are we wrong to believe that objects are independent of mind? I mean I am just curious as to what your take on this would be? Or anyone else if they care to comment. Or have a clue as to what the hell quantum physics is all about.

      And since contemporary culture has come to associate objectivity with reality itself, the science press felt compelled to report on this by pronouncing, “Quantum physics says goodbye to reality.”

      There is a revolution going on now in physics. It started about 100 years ago but no one paid any attention back then. Now it is catching steam and upsetting everything we thought we knew about reality,

      1. Interesting questions. neuroscientist Sam Harris’ latest podcast addresses this very topic in conversation with theoretical physicist Sean Carroll.

        https://samharris.org/podcasts/124-search-reality/

        #124 – IN SEARCH OF REALITY
        A Conversation with Sean Carroll

        In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Sean Carroll about our understanding of reality. They discuss consciousness, the many worlds view of quantum mechanics, the arrow of time, free will, facts and values, and other topics.

        1. Harris I go back and fort with– he is on my podcast feed, and he has some great guests, but he has some real losers also—–
          And a bit to the center of the road, but you just take that going into it—-
          High cognitive, has the drug taking background, etc

          1. I’m agnostic on Sean Carroll. Just thought the coincidence of the topic of discussion was worth mentioning. I did listen to that podcast without really paying full attention to it. Maybe I’ll listen again.

            1. Okay, I listened to about half the podcast. Sean Carroll is my least favorite cosmologists. I just don’t like him. He doesn’t like the new quantum physics and thinks it is all about naturalism. That’s his favorite word, “naturalism”.

              Carroll is the only, and I do mean the only, cosmologists or physicist that even attempts to deny the fine-tuning of the universe. But even he hedges his bets and drags in the multiverse theory to possibly explain it.
              Sean Carroll: What does a Fine-Tuned Universe Mean? [Closer to Truth]

              All other cosmologists or physicists that I have ever heard of or watched on youtube, and I must have watched a hundred of them, all admit that the universe is extremely fine-tuned. About 60 to 70% of them try to explain it with the multiverse theory. That is, trillions of trillions of universes have been created and we just happen to live on the one of them that every particle and force just luckily fell into place for the creation of stars, planets, and life. In other words, we just won the lottery.

              Oh, and the other 30 to 40%? Most just admit they have no idea, others say some kind of conscious must have planned it all. The late Fred Hoyle said “It’s a put up job.”

              And Lawrence Krauss, the author of “A Universe From Nothing”, does not even mention the fine tuning problem in his book. Not one peep about it. But when asked directly by Lawrence Kuhn, on the “Closer to the Truth” series, he drags out the multiverse theory.
              Lawrence Krauss: Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Consciousness? [Closer to Truth]

            2. It’s hard for people to say “We don’t know, and we don’t even have any good guesses yet.”.

              It’s true in general. Doctors are especially bad at admitting that they just don’t know something. They’d rather tell you that your problem is all in your head, or you’re “just getting old”.

      2. Ron, you flatter me!

        I’d say, in one sense, “existence” (or reality) is something “of the mind”. If you drill into the smallest components of any material object, you won’t find some point-particle which continues to exist regardless of being observed or not, the opposite is the case which is the very basis of the so-called observer problem (or, measurement problem) in quantum physics. So, physics itself seems to have undermined the notion the universe can finally be understood in terms of “mind-independent” objects.

        1. I agree with that last sentence. Not that I disagree with anything else you wrote, but I just particularly agree with you on that last statement.

          But I am really confused as to what reality really is. I won’t say more than that because I am not sure that I can.

        2. What does this say about everyday life? Is it sensible for new-age philosophers to suggest that this supports their ideas?

          1. “Is it sensible for new-age philosophers to suggest that this supports their ideas?”

            No, to quote Richard Feynman: “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”

            I would add — Just because you can do the math doesn’t mean you understand the ramifications.

  30. Fred —

    WHALE SKULLS ACT LIKE ANTENNAS, CT SCANS REVEAL

    “Whales can sing, buzz, and even whisper to one another, but one thing has remained unknown about these gregarious giants: how they hear. Given the size of some whales and their ocean home, studying even the basics of these mammals has proved challenging. But two researchers have now developed a way to determine how baleen whales such as humpbacks hear their low-frequency (10- to 200-hertz) chatter, and they found some bone-rattling results….”

    http://www.sciencemag.org/category/oceanography

    2. Tks, that’ll be my evening read later tonight, the whale story that is. 😉

  31. Permaculture Miracles in the Austrian Mountains

    “I’d like to introduce you to Sepp Holzer, a man who not only produces food in a very unlikely location, at a high and frigid altitude in Austria, but is also growing very unlikely crops there as well — and all without the use of chemicals, and with minimal input of human labour.

    I guess you could call him a European counterpart of people like Bill Mollison and Masanobu Fukuoka — as all three independently discovered ways of working with nature that save money and labour and that don’t degrade the environment, but actually improve it. In Holzer’s case, he was effectively running a permaculture farm for more than two decades before he even realised his unconventional approach could be termed ‘permaculture’.

    In the coldest part of Austria, a farmer is turning conventional wisdom on its head by growing a veritable Garden of Eden full of tropical plants in the open on his steep Alpine pastures.

    Amid average annual temperatures of a mere 4.2 degrees Celsius (39.5 Fahrenheit), Sepp Holzer grows everything from apricots to eucalyptus, figs to kiwi fruit, peaches to wheat at an altitude of between 1,000 and 1,500 metres (3,300 and 4,900 feet).

    … ‘Once planted, I do absolutely nothing,’ Holzer told Reuters. ‘It really is just nature working for itself – no weeding, no pruning, no watering, no fertiliser, no pesticides.’ — permaculture.org.uk

    What’s more, the land he cultivates so successfully today had notoriously poor soil when he originally inherited it. Not anymore. Where people were before calling him mad, now farmers are arriving on his doorstep to learn how he does it, and others are flocking to buy his superior produce. His methods are currently being implemented in dozens of countries.

    Holzer states his path to success began when he realised he had to discard what he’d learned in agricultural college. He set out on a path of observing and emulating natural systems, rather then attempting to control (and, in the process, undermining and destroying) nature.“

    Ecological Farming

    “Ecological farming is recognised as the high-end objective among the proponents of sustainable agriculture. Ecological farming is not the same as organic farming, however there are many similarities and they are not necessarily incompatible. Ecological farming includes all methods, including organic, which regenerate ecosystem services like: prevention of soil erosion, water infiltration and retention, carbon sequestration in the form of humus, and increased biodiversity. Many techniques are used including no till, multispecies cover crops, strip cropping, terrace cultivation, shelter belts, pasture cropping etc.”

    1. Caelan, either post links with some real science behind it with actual numbers i.e. crop yields and how they scale across the board to different climate zones around the world… or STFU!

      Posting bullshit about miraculous results like supporting 50 families from one acre of land without doing any work is an insult to everyone here. especially to those of us who actually have backgrounds in the biosciences, such as ecology, soil science, agronomy etc. Hint, one hearsay anecdote about someone claiming that they produce exotic fruits and eucalyptus trees in the mountains of Austria doesn’t cut it. One no one eats eucalyptus except Koala bears and it barely sustains even them!

      Amid average annual temperatures of a mere 4.2 degrees Celsius (39.5 Fahrenheit), Sepp Holzer grows everything from apricots to eucalyptus, figs to kiwi fruit, peaches to wheat at an altitude of between 1,000 and 1,500 metres (3,300 and 4,900 feet).

      Give us the yields, of how much wheat, rice, soy, potatoes, beans, bananas, tapioca and corn can he grow per hectare on a consistent basis. That is what the world depends on for survival not peaches, apricots and kiwi fruit.

      Go chew on a couple eucalyptus leaves!

      1. Caelan, judging from the stuff he posts, is utterly incapable of separating facts from fiction, at least when it comes to real world topics such as engineering, agriculture, energy and so forth.

        I run across somebody like him occasionally, but their odd beliefs generally involve various religions.

        1. “I enjoy making a fool of myself in public jousting with Caelan…” ~ OFM

          As with Fred, Glen, I have more or less taken you offline with a canned response based on your own words.
          You’re free to ‘find enjoyment’ ‘jousting’ with each other, yourself or your apparent preference, HuntingtonBeach or whomever.

          Time’s short, guys. Spend it well or wisely.

      2. See here.

        Sample:

        “Organic farming is far superior to conventional systems when it comes to building, maintaining and replenishing the health of the soil. For soil health alone, organic agriculture is more sustainable than conventional. When one also considers yields, economic viability, energy usage, and human health, it’s clear that organic farming is sustainable, while current conventional practices are not.”

        And that’s just about organic farming. Also, it isn’t just about yields. High yields don’t necessarily mean sustainable yields. For examples, you have drawdown, toxin-buildup and general soil despoilment, to say nothing of other knock-on effects. Birds? Bees? Fish?

        “Posting bullshit about miraculous results like supporting 50 families from one acre of land without doing any work is an insult to everyone here. especially to those of us who actually have backgrounds in the biosciences, such as ecology, soil science, agronomy etc..” ~ Fred Magyar

        That reminds me of something I wrote on The Oil Drum…

        “Perhaps a factory farm/feedlot operations manager might have indignantly told us, upon inquiry, that, after decades of experience, they knew cows, despite, for example, feeding corn or some of their cow-wastes back to the cows, the administered antibiotics, or the crowded and inhumane conditions. Mad cow? Who’d have thought?!

        What appear important are things like locality, scale, observation, ethics, caution and thought, etc.. Experience? Sure. But the right kinds.” ~ Tribe Of Pangaea- First Member

        We have far too many specialists/scientists/whatever , co-opted as they’ve been, selling themselves, other people, and the rest of their planet out for a few coin, for ‘profit’.

        That’s the real insult.

        “Today we have more soil scientists than at any other time in history. If you plot the rise of soil scientists against the loss of soil, you see that the more of them you have, the more soil you lose.” ~ Bill Mollison

      3. You’d be lucky to feed 20 people barely enough calories from 1 acre of potatoes. (yield x calories / 2500/365). That is with industrial agriculture let alone permaculture where I suspect the yield may be lower. I pity Caelen’s 50 families, 225 souls, who would need to get by on less than 1/10 of a bare daily minimum.

        NAOM

        1. Everybody’s got an opinion, including you.

          One difference is that some of us back them up.

          1. Caelen, that is bullshit.

            I presented a calculation NOT an opinion. It does not need backing up as it is NOT an opinion. It is you who needs to prove the ability of 1 acre to feed 50 families instead of talking out of your rear parts.

            NAOM

    2. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepp_Holzer

      Kritik: Das Projekt Krameterhof wird auch kritisch beurteilt: es könne nur Anstöße für einen anderen Umgang mit alpiner Landschaft im Sinne der Nachhaltigkeit geben, böte aber kaum praktische Hilfestellung für eine produktive alternative Landwirtschaft, welche es dem Bauern ermögliche, seinen Betrieb auch in finanzieller Hinsicht erfolgreich zu führen. Es könne nicht jeder Bauernhof zum Erlebnishof ausgebaut werden in Erwartung ausreichender Besucherzahlen.

      Seit etwa 1995 ist der Großteil der Einnahmen der Familie Holzer vorrangig auf die Buchveröffentlichungen, Führungen am Hof und auf Beratungstätigkeiten zurückzuführen, nicht aber auf den Ursprungszweck Landwirtschaft. Die Landwirtschaft allein würde laut Kritik nicht genug Profit abwerfen…

      Während eine große Zahl von Besuchern den Besuch des Krameterhofs als bereichernde und in Erstaunen versetzende Erfahrung beschreiben, was durch eine Vielzahl an Dank- und Glückwunschschreiben an Holzer bezeugt ist, gibt es auch Personen, welche eine Visite am Hof als Ernüchterung oder Enttäuschung erlebten und angeben, kritische Fragen zur Produktivität würden nicht zugelassen, und einzelne Fragesteller seien noch während der Führungen des Hofes verwiesen worden.

      There is no evidence that his method allows an economic useful approach as farm only, and there is no evidence that his approach provides enough output to be practicable on larger scale.

      2. Agricultural Parallel Evolution As Nature’s Writing On The Wall?

        I watched a video about him on You Tube ages ago and am quite aware that Sepp Holzer is kind of outside of permaculure, or elliptical to it (which was part of my point) and was doing his own thing without knowledge of it initially.
        But that actually seems to make a strong point/case about the idea of ‘parallel evolution’, if that’s the correct term, and maybe a strong pointing toward a particular direction nature might be trying to tell us that we would all do well to go.

        From merely a quasi-permacultural standpoint, he still seems like a decent example, but also there are many actual permaculture projects around the world. Take your pick.

        I also Google translated your Wikipedia part about Holzer and it doesn’t seem so bad as an attempt at improving agro (but I’m unsure about the quality of the translation) and in the face of government regulations all over the place to control our lives, including Holzer’s.
        I mean, are you afraid to fail, Ulenspeigel? How do you learn? Do you leave it up to the corporations? And for them to do everything for you?

        Lastly, if one became somewhat famous, as Sepp kind of has, they might find it extra-profitable to start selling books as well, maybe also as per how the current status-quo can hijack/co-opt some things/organizations/people. Aside from that, I’m unsure how a concern with making more profit at book-selling globally than with a family farm locally necessarily suggests anything problematic, but again, maybe it’s the translator.

        In any case, what would you recommend, if not ‘ecologically-sensitive/responsible’ agro? Solar panels, electric cars and continued industrial agro?

        One of the main points behind such movements/concepts as permaculture and rewilding and the like is to get off the trajectory toward the cliff we appear to be on and into something we and other species can work, live and thrive with.

    3. BTW, translated from Ulenspiegel’s German text:

      Since about 1995, most of the income of the Holzer family has been due primarily to book publications, farm tours and advisory activities, but not to agriculture. Agriculture alone would not make enough profit, according to critiques …

      1. ^ What a flat cardboard statement. ^
        For one, examine ‘profit’, then proceed from there.

        1. ‘Profit’. Well, you could think of it in terms of surplus energy, as in Energy provided for sustenance of living organisms, ‘Energy Returned on Energy Invested’, so to speak. I’m guessing you never took biochemistry and cell metabolism 101.

          Krebs cycle
          From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
          The Krebs cycle (called after Hans Krebs) is a part of cellular respiration. Its other names are the citric acid cycle, and the tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA cycle).

          It is the series of chemical reactions used by all aerobic organisms to generate energy. It is important to many biochemical pathways. This suggests that it was one of the earliest parts of cellular metabolism to evolve.[1]

          The Krebs cycle comes after the link reaction and provides the hydrogen and electrons needed for the electron transport chain. It takes place inside mitochondria.

          Here’s a short video review.
          Krebs / citric acid cycle
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=39&v=juM2ROSLWfw

          1. You are completely isolating it from the discussion’s context…

            “Agriculture alone would not make enough profit, according to critiques…”

            1. The context has been EROEI and ecosystem thermodynamics all along. I was just adding a bit of multidimensionality to your flat cardboard analogy.

              https://fromfilmerstofarmers.com/money-the-peoples-proxy-for-energy/
              Money: The People’s Proxy (for Energy)

              As tough or as inconvenient as it may be, one can live without money. But you can’t live without energy. In short, money at its core is a proxy for energy.

              Show us the data that supports your contention that permaculture can produce enough surplus energy to support 8 to 9 billion humans. My guess is, that if you can do that, by coincidence it will also prove to be a profitable venture within the context of the current global economic system.

            2. You’ve changed the subject, which was…

              “Since about 1995, most of the income of the Holzer family has been due primarily to book publications, farm tours and advisory activities, but not to agriculture. Agriculture alone would not make enough profit, according to critiques…” ~ Fred Magyar, (as per translation from Ulenspiegel’s text)

              “Show us the data that supports your contention that permaculture can produce enough surplus energy to support 8 to 9 billion humans.” ~ Fred Magyar

              Show us where that contention was made.

            3. Show us where that contention was made.

              Most recently, here:
              A 1-acre permaculture farm supplies 50 families

              We have far too many specialists/scientists/whatever , co-opted as they’ve been, selling themselves, other people, and the rest of their planet out for a few coin, for ‘profit’.

              Quite a few members of my extended family are biologists, soil scientists and agronomists. As are some of my closest friends. My cousins also have a small farm in the State of Sao Paulo and I have first hand knowledge of how they operate and take care of their own soil and the local environment.

              Drop us a line when you actually have a farm that can support 50 families. Until then, just please shut up!

            4. Numbers, Scales, Supply vs Support and Getting Them Right

              ‘A 1-acre permaculture farm supplies 50 families’

              “Show us the data that supports your contention that permaculture can produce enough surplus energy to support 8 to 9 billion humans.” ~ Fred Magyar

              “Show us where that contention was made.” ~ Caelan MacIntyre

              Response:

              “Drop us a line when you actually have a farm that can support 50 families.” ~ Fred Magyar

              (rolls eyes)

              “Fred — Fear not… I expect you’re the smartest dude here.” ~ Doug Leighton

              Agreed, in a mercy-applause/consolation-prize kind of way. ‘u^

  32. Attention Mr Trump:

    A SWITCH IN OCEAN CIRCULATION THAT HELPED END THE ICE AGE

    Co-author Dr. James Rae, also from the University of St Andrews, added: “Although the CO2 rise caused by this process was dramatic in geological terms, it happened very slowly compared to modern man-made CO2 rise. Humans have driven CO2 rise in the atmosphere as large as the CO2 rise that helped end the last Ice Age, but the man-made CO2 rise has happened 100 times faster. This will have a huge effect on the climate system, and one that we are only just beginning to see.”

    Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-04-ocean-circulation-ice-age.html#jCp

    1. He doesn’t read science. Just comic books on the toilet.
      Just doesn’t have the attention span for anything else.

    2. Prior to the late end of the 1990s this article demonstrates what often was the most prevalent view in climatology. However, around that time ice cores in Greenland were drilled whereby researchers were able to determine that significant climate change has occurred over multitudes of timescales. There were changes noted over tens of thousands of years, thousands of years, hundreds of years and remarkably on timescales as brief as five years. Therefore I shall say the article above needs revision to more fully explain how and why climate has always displayed natural change over time.

      1. There were changes noted over tens of thousands of years, thousands of years, hundreds of years and remarkably on timescales as brief as five years.

        Yep! And we have a pretty good idea as to why.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbgMArpl8YE
        The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum 56 Mil yrs ago (PETM)

    3. I wonder why the scientists keep beating the CO2 drum about the end of the last glaciation. They keep implying that a watt or two per square meter really did much when the actual forcing over the northern ice from increased insolation was 60 to 120 w/m2. The change in albedo also caused a much larger global temperature change than the total CO2 change plus water vapor.
      CO2 is mostly a follower in glaciation events and only adds a little.
      As far as CO2 rising from the Pacific now, equilibrium will shift anyway over all the oceans as the ocean temperature rises so a regional upwelling is just icing on the cake. Meanwhile the snow and ice melt will have a larger effect, increasing other land and ocean feedbacks at the same time.

      It’s like a symphony, the tuning time is over, the concert begins. As the music rises to a crescendo, will most people even hear it?

    1. Drain the swamp! They are trucking in caymen and salties by the dozen.

      NAOM

  36. I’m not having much fun out of my little helper HB lately, and I’m feeling sort of cranky and interested in some fussing, so here’s a link that goes quite a long way to explaining why supporting HRC was such a colossal mistake, lol.

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/hillary-clinton-misanthrope-glum-loner-in-2016-campaign/

    Don’t let the fact that it’s from the National Review, which is a hard core right wing publication, prevent your reading it.

    WHY?

    Because it’s a basically a BOOK REVIEW of a book written by a woman who is a highly capable journalist and writer who supported Clinton, but she doesn’t put her political loyalties and beliefs ahead of her integrity as an author and journalist.

    Remember that when adults lose a contest, any contest at all, they look to their own shortcomings rather than blaming their opponents for their loss.

    1. Remember that when adults lose a contest, any contest at all, they look to their own shortcomings rather than blaming their opponents for their loss.

      Why frame it in terms of blame? And, why think of it from the point of view of one of the sides?

      Maybe better to think in terms of an overall analysis from a detached point of view? Something like: “this is the history, this is the context, this is why and how it happened, and…this is what would make sense for the country going forward”.

      I don’t care much about Trumps or Hillary’s tactics. I don’t care a lot about how primaries are structured – sure, that’s important, but I’m not an inside political tactician, at least at the moment. I really really don’t care about specific politicians’ personal short comings. I care more about the bigger picture, and the long term trends. That just seems way more interesting and useful.

      —————————-
      Edit: I just re-read the above, and I realize now that…it’s no fun at all! No fighting, no insults. Jeez! What was I thinking?

      My apologies, Mac. Carry on…

    2. Probably the easiest choice you will ever get in presidential race. Clinton 1000 to 1 over Trump.
      If you didn’t support her, you helped elect him.
      I’d find that hard to swallow, sir.

  37. RECENT RUSSIAN ARCTIC GLACIER LOSS DOUBLES FROM THE PREVIOUS 60 YEARS

    “Geophysicists examining glacier changes in the Russian Arctic have found that the rate of ice mass loss has nearly doubled over the last decade when compared to records from the previous 60 years, according to Cornell-led research published April 24 in Remote Sensing of Environment.”

    Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-04-russian-arctic-glacier-loss-temps.html#jCp

        1. No problem!
          We’re going to add Arsenic to your diet: 0.6 mg/kg/day.
          Don’t worry….it’s only a trace amount.

        2. Pierre Lechelle,

          You are correct: CO2 is still a trace gas at a concentration of about 412 ppmv.

          CO2 is the trace gas that is the reason that the average surface temperature on planet Earth is not around -15 degrees F.

          CO2 is the trace gas that supports all oxygenic photosynthesis on Earth. That’s the photosynthesis that supplies the O2 in the atmosphere that supports those life forms that require oxygen to live, like us.

          CO2 is a trace gas because, you see, most of the atmosphere is N2 and O2, but N2 and O2 neither absorb infrared radiation (that is, neither is a greenhouse gas) nor support oxygenic photosynthesis.

          Yes, CO2 is a trace gas. So what?

          1. Issues are, ability of government to tax and eradiqate depends on the classification. As trace it will not happen, only as full atmospheric gas the greens will have that success.

        3. While ignorance is not a criminal offense, deliberate ignorance is no excuse in this day of access to information and scientific facts:
          The following is part one of a tutorial that was requested by Federal District Court Judge William Alsup: The full tutorial is available at RealClimate.org http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/04/the-alsup-aftermath/#more-21273

          Part 1

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=41&v=CqjbTMz5Hro

          A few weeks ago, I had an unusual — and challenging — assignment: providing a one-hour “tutorial” on the basic science of human-induced climate change to a Federal District Court in San Francisco. Judge William Alsup had requested this tutorial to bring him up to speed on the fundamental science before proceedings begin in earnest in a case brought by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland, on behalf of the people of California, against a group of major fossil fuel companies, addressing the costs of climate change caused, they argue, by products those companies have sold.

          Myles Allen
          Published on Apr 3, 2018
          Tutorial provided to the United States District Court in San Francisco, March 21, 2018, part 1: Basic physics from Fourier to Plass

  39. Further to some discussion(s) above:

    EINSTEIN’S ‘SPOOKY ACTION’ GOES MASSIVE

    “Perhaps the strangest prediction of quantum theory is entanglement, a phenomenon whereby two distant objects become intertwined in a manner that defies both classical physics and a “common-sense” understanding of reality. In 1935, Albert Einstein expressed his concern over this concept, referring to it as “spooky action at a distance.”

    The results demonstrate that it is now possible to have control over large mechanical objects in which exotic quantum states can be generated and stabilized. Not only does this achievement open doors for new kinds of quantum technologies and sensors, it can also enable studies of fundamental physics in, for example, the poorly understood interplay of gravity and quantum mechanics.”

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180425131858.htm

  40. http://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-04-06/global-solar-capacity-grew-faster-than-fossil-fuels-in-2017-says-report/

    I’m with Yogi, who famously said predictin’s hard, ‘specially the future.

    And sometime over the last ten years or twenty years, I got old enough to know that I don’t know everything, and never will.

    So…… Maybe Ron Patterson is right, and the whole world is headed to hell in a hand basket. I used to believe that same thing myself.

    Or maybe people like Fred Maygar are right, and there’s hope that at least some of us may pull thru overshoot, while still continuing to enjoy some or most of the best features of industrial civilization.

    It’s useful to think of humanity ‘as a whole as the passenger in a technology ambulance hell bent for the Emergency entrance at the hospital. If it gets there quick enough, some or most of our modern way of life will continue. If not………. most of us are going to die hard, sometime within the next hundred years.

    There’s reason to believe the ambulance MIGHT make it in time.

    http://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-04-06/global-solar-capacity-grew-faster-than-fossil-fuels-in-2017-says-report/

    We live in interesting times.

    http://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-04-24/the-road-to-the-seneca-cliff-is-paved-with-evil-intentions-how-to-destroy-the-worlds-forests/

    I have no hands on experience working on older houses of the sort that make up most of the housing stock in many European countries, so I don’t really know how hard it is to upgrade them to modern energy efficiency standards.

    But I know without a shadow of a doubt that it’s cheaper in the long run to upgrade a typical older stick built house here in the USA than it is to continue to use large quantities of wood or other fuel to heat it and lots of electricity to cool it, and that in the future, any and all fuels are going to be much more expensive than they are today, due to depletion and growing population.

    We need to put programs in place that will make it possible for people who own older houses and apartment buildings to upgrade them with new windows, doors, plumbing , insulation, and so forth.

    Every dollar we spend on such programs will save us two or three, or more, over time, maybe a lot more.

    A really well constructed house located in a place with only moderately long cold winters doesn’t really even need a heating system as such,more than a few days a year, because the appliances and lights and body heat of the occupants are enough to maintain a comfortable temperature.

    The first large scale clear cut and chipping operation really close to my home, only a couple of miles away, is underway. It’s enough to make you cry to such a beautiful woodland reduced to just STUMPS, excepting a few trees that are left due to forestry regulations, as seed trees. There isn’t even any debris left on the ground. You couldn’t gather a pickup truck load of wood off of an acre behind the loggers.

    Most of it’s being trucked at least a hundred miles, with some of it trucked at least three hundred miles to market. The nicest logs are being shipped halfway around the world, to be turned into flooring and furniture for the newly rich one per centers of Asia.

    Some of that wood will be returned to this country, as finished products.

    We used to have local businesses that processed it here, locally, and turned out flooring and furniture as good as any in the world. But the owners couldn’t compete with dollar an hour wages in Asia, and comply with local and federal regulations, and pay the sort of taxes American manufacturing companies are expected to pay.

    The people who used to work in the industry voted for Trump. They had no reason to believe the Democrats would do anything for them, whereas Trump at least TALKED about doing something to allow them to make a decent living again.

    I don’t need to hear about automation again, and about the greater good of the greater number of people. I know these arguments backwards and forwards. They’re good arguments…….. so long as you’re not one of the people who lost your livelihood as a result.

    It pays to think about such things HARD when you are campaigning for public office. When an election turns on the way as few as two or three people out of a hundred vote, or don’t vote, such issues often determine who wins.

    1. They’re good arguments…….. so long as you’re not one of the people who lost your livelihood as a result.

      But…they’re not just good. They’re realistic. When Trump told them that they lost their jobs due to off-shoring, he was lying.

      What’s the solution to campaigning against someone who lies about immigration and off-shoring? Come up with even more outrageous lies??

      1. Hi Nick,

        Did you read the book review I posted up thread? It’s got a bunch of quotes from the book in it.

        Bottom line, the woman who wrote it lays out the reasons HRC lost. The author is no Trumpster, not by a billion miles. HRC was simply a LOUSY candidate.

        xxxx

        An excerpt

        As for larger strategic moves, Chozick notes dryly of a March excursion, “That was Hillary’s last trip to Wisconsin.” Team Clinton in its waning days was spending money in Utah, Indiana, Missouri, Arizona, and even Texas while the Upper Midwest was begging for more resources. Bill Clinton was meanwhile going “red in the face” warning his wife’s team “that Trump had a shrewd understanding . . . of the white working class,” Chozick says. Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, responded by spoofing Bill behind his back, as one would Grandpa Simpson: “And let me tell you another thing about the white working class,” he’d say, mockingly.

        Clinton mangles the easiest bits of politicking: After voting in Chappaqua in the New York primary, reporters toss the usual softballs (“Secretary! How are you feeling about tonight?”) and she snaps, “Guys, it’s a private ballot” and “Can we get the press out of here, please?” Later, Chozick adds, “Hillary was still following the Mitt Romney Playbook, not realizing that she was the Romney in the race.”

        “On the stump, Clinton wouldn’t stop talking about how much she loved Hamilton, as though the median voter were a New Yorker who could afford to spend a couple of thousand bucks on an evening’s entertainment.”

        Bill Clinton’s instincts turned out to be absolutely correct, and he had a typically folksy and endearing way of explaining what was happening in America in 2016. He’d tell people that there’s a Zulu greeting that goes, “I see you,” to which the response is, “I am here.” Clinton knew a lot of people thought Trump saw them. Hillary couldn’t stand even glancing in their direction.

        xxxx

        I don’t think there is a solution, in terms of controlling the lies a candidate can tell, other than working long term to better educate the voting public.

        But there’s a STRATEGY that can offset these lies, to a substantial extent.

        That strategy is to run a candidate who hopefully has credibility with the working people and poor people of the country. HRC lacked that credibility, famously spending her time with banksters, making secret speeches for megabucks, taking tens of millions of dollars from highly questionable ( to put it as mildly as possible ) donors to her family slush fund, PUSHING social policies that turn off religious and conservative voters, actually making fun of voters she needed to win.

        If you find yourself STUCK with such a candidate, well then, you fucking hope and pray that your candidate has sense enough to tone down the rhetoric appropriately, has sense enough to know and remember that hard core supporters are always going to be on board. Hard core ” choice ” voters are never going to vote R, hard core Second Amendment voters are never going to vote D, barring a few rare exceptions.

        You don’t go OUT OF YOUR WAY to energize the opposition by telegraphing that you have no respect for the opposition voter, that you LOOK DOWN on them as third class barely human, culturally and intellectually.

        When it comes to down to the nitty gritty, most potentially winnable voters don’t really understand most issues, not in depth. They can be swayed, and ARE swayed, to vote one way or the other PRIMARILY by the way the candidate campaigns, rather than by the RECORD of the candidate, if they’re middle of the road ( independent ) voters.

        Of course anybody who was REALLY paying attention could have learned that Trump was by far the lesser qualified candidate, ethically, BUT while Trump was well known as a businessman and celebrity, he WAS NOT well known to the voting public, in terms of his long term record…….. and it was her LONG TERM RECORD that virtually GUARANTEED that forty percent, roughly, of all older voters would never even CONSIDER voting for HRC.

        They hated her , personally, and despised her, politically and culturally, to a greater or lesser extent.

        So…….. the D party, in allowing her to gain such an octopus like, old time machine type politician grip on the levers of power of the D Party, set itself up for the loss.

        Now as far as using the word or term “blame”, I could and perhaps should have phrased my comments differently, but I don’t really want to. The Democrats, as I see it, made a truly colossal mistake in betting the fate ( near term ) of the country and the D party on HRC, for the reasons I have pointed out.

        The BLAME I refer to is on the part of people like my little buddy HP who refuses to recognize that Clinton LOST, and BLAME the people who voted for Trump, or who supported the only Democrat not scared out of making a serious effort, namely Bernie Sanders, who for all intents and purposes IS a Democrat, although he refers to himself as a socialist.

        I will go to my grave convinced that anybody else at the top of the D ticket would have won, and by a substantial margin.

        You just don’t START a second class pitcher in the last game of the World Series……. unless you don’t have anybody better.

        The D’s had better players, but since HRC owned the party apparatus, none of them ever really had a shot at the nomination. Momma owned the ball and the uniforms, and there was never any real doubt that she would be the nominee, if owning the ball and uniforms had anything to do with it.

        Clinton, and her yes boys and yes girls, proved themselves to be so disconnected from REALITY that they utterly failed to recognize what it meant when Trump came in like a rampaging Viking and won the R nomination against the wishes of virtually the entire R establishment. THAT was a giant red flag warning that the people of the country were REALLY pissed, really scared, mad, worried, and ready to lash out at what they perceived to be BAU politics.

        And HRC stood for everything about BAU politics the working people of the country hated. SO DID TRUMP, no doubt…………. BUT

        The people had decades to learn about HRC, and make their minds up about her. They had a year or so to learn about Trump. Since most people aren’t all that into politics, the voting public as a whole didn’t know much about Trump. It takes more than a year for the public to really learn who a politician IS.

        1. Why are you constantly campaigning for Trump?

          “Since most people aren’t all that into politics, the voting public as a whole didn’t know much about Trump.”
          The ones I talked to, bankers, businessmen and skilled workers knew Trump very well and were all for him. They saw money and profit, that was all they needed, the money-man getting them more than they already had. How honest he was did not matter, money matters, money controls.
          The only thing that this last election proved(again) is that the election system is not democratic and that there are a lot of greedy self-interested “citizens” .
          We live in selfish times.

        2. OFM- it only should have taken people about 10 minutes to understand that Trump was to be a huge embarrassment to this country. The ‘not enough time’ excuse is ridiculous.

          2. Okay, Hickory, only smart people could figure out Trump in 10 minutes. For the dumber ones, it might take 15 minutes. But for those who never figure him out, for those who really believe he is making America great again, they are just down in the dirt dumb.

            Donald Trump said:
            I love the poorly educated.
            And now we know why. They are his base.

            1. Many of those people couldn’t even tell you the answer- “in what year was the war of 1812?’

          3. Hi Hickory,

            You are obviously a person who knows more than a little about what’s going on in the world, including the world of politics.

            BUT you are very sadly mistaken in saying people should have figured out Trump in very short order. So is Ron Patterson.

            Look guys, what is POSSIBLE, in the ABSTRACT, if you are already well informed, and INTO politics is ONE THING.

            What actually happens between the ears of the average or typical VOTER is something else altogether.

            WE hang out together here in a forum where everybody is interested and generally well informed about economic, political, and environmental issues.

            If you live in a university town, and are surrounded by an intellectually elite class of people, yes, you and your friends and associates could see thru Trump in a flash.

            Since our peers are knowledgeable, you guys ASSUME the voting public is knowledgeable. THAT’S a mistake I don’t make.

            The typical person on the street doesn’t know shit from apple butter about politics, and doesn’t CARE to know.

            He or she votes on his or her PERCEPTIONS.
            Now in spite of what little old HB thinks, I don’t hate HRC, or women.

            I have spent a ton of time however, trying to get people to understand WHY she was a lousy candidate.

            People believe what they want to believe, and ignore what they want to ignore.

            I posted the irrefutable details of HRC’s little Cattle Gate scam here several times.

            NOT A SINGLE PERSON IN THIS FORUM EVER ACKNOWLEDGED THE FACT THAT SHE RAN A SCAM WITH HELP from a crooked broker, a powerful industrialist, a hubby in public office, etc, or that she accepted tens of millions of dollars into her family slush fund, from obviously shady characters doing business with Uncle Sam, while Sec of State, etc.

            Virtually everybody that commented about her secret and obviously home brewed email system DEFENDED her, while had she been a republican having done the same thing, they would have been screaming bloody murder… about the REPUBLICAN’s lack of respect for the law, sense of entitlement being ABOVE the rules, endangering national security, etc….. and EVERYBODY in the forum KNOWS this is true.

            So….. the people who voted for Trump cut him the same sort of slack, because they believed he was ON THEIR SIDE, at least to a greater extent than HRC.

            I can go into any business or bar or out to any golf course, or college cafeteria, ready to bet my farm that out of the first hundred people selected at random, not more than half a dozen REALLY knew shit from apple butter about EITHER TRUMP OR HRC PRIOR to his election.

            But half the people in that sample would have had a very poor opinion of HRC, as compared to Trump……. because HRC was in the public and political SPOTLIGHT for decades, where as Trump was merely a fucking celebrity, in terms of the public really knowing anything about him, meaning, essentially, that the public DIDN’T know anything much about him.

            HER negatives were well known, his were still basically news to the people that VOTED FOR HIM. NEWS they were reluctant to accept, because they didn’t WANT to accept it….. and don’t forget…. they didn’t then and don’t today spend more than a few minutes here and there taking in SOUND BITES … which is basically all the typical Democratic voter does as well.

            The time we spend here on politics, is time most people spend on their hobbies, or extra work, or family, or television, or getting drunk or laido or whatever.

            I have zero use for Trump, and can’t think of anything good to say about him, in terms of policies or his record, but I do acknowledge that while he’s an old he coon of a crook while HRC is merely a Girl Scout wannabe, by comparison, he understands people, the media, and the mood of the public. HRC never did, and never will.

            HRC did a l0t of good things over the course of her career, or at least supported a lot of good policies.

            MY POINT is that you guys didn’t know shit from apple butter about her actual RECORD, and ignored that record when your nose was rubbed in it.

            Why WHY WHY would you expect the people who voted for Trump to do differently than from what you did?

            We all have have long but SELECTIVE memories, and we interpret things in terms of the way they impact our own lives, and we remember the bad shit about our enemies, and we forget the bad shit about our friends.

            HRC spent her entire career building a vast army of enemies by way of forcing, to the extent she could, changes on them they didn’t want.

            Those memories built up, a little at a time, over the last three or four decades, in the minds of working class people who came to hate her guts…….. INCLUDING TENS OF MILLIONS OF WORKING CLASS DEMOCRATS.

            THAT’S WHY Obama could come out of nowhere and get the nomination when she expected to be anointed. Remember the insider joke in her second campaign? “I’m with her…….. I guess. ”

            Close to zero charisma.

            THAT’s why, despite her octopus like hold on the party machinery, her OWNERSHIP of it, Sanders came out of NOWHERE, after the entire D ESTABLISHMENT couldn’t turn up one serious challenger( they all knew the game was rigged in her favor ! ) and millions of the best and brightest and youngest and best educated people went FOR SANDERS….. voters were with her………. I GUESS.

            It’s utterly stupid to nominate a candidate for president with the worst negatives in the history of the party. If ANYBODY WAS CAPABLE OF LOSING TO TRUMP…….. IT WAS HRC.

            (Don’t forget the R establishment did all it could to AVOID running Trump. )

            Did any of you read the link about the book review written by a hard core Democrat woman ?

            I’ll post it again.

            Let’s hope the D’s don’t make the mistake of running such a flawed candidate again. She managed to lose to Trump, who was arguably the worst candidate the R’s ever nominated, excepting the fact that he understands people, media, has charisma, etc.

            You don’t put a pitcher on the mound that can’t pitch.

            https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/hillary-clinton-misanthrope-glum-loner-in-2016-campaign/

  41. Permaculture

    “The worldview of permaculture is based on intellectual foundations drawn from scientific research and on several assumptions that are intimately linked to the particular historical period of energy and environmental crisis in which permaculture developed. Permaculture uses a systems theory approach with design principles derived from several bodies of research, including ecology, ecological engineering, agricultural experimentation, landscape geography, and ethnobiology. The permaculture canon also includes applied research and theories from some less common, mid-20th-century books, including, for example, J. Russell Smith’s Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture (1929); P. A. Yeomans’s The Keyline Plan (1954); H. T. Odum’s Environment, Power, and Society (1971); and Masanobu Fukuoka’s One Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming (1978).

    While permaculture has several design principles similar to agroecology, permaculturalists are rarely cited or are cited by academic agroecologists (Ferguson & Lovell, 2014). This lack of crossover may be partly attributable to the less common use of statistical research models and peer review in permaculture as well as some of the working assumptions inherent to permaculture. Holmgren’s Permaculture Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability (2002) outlines several assumptions that he considers critical for understanding permaculture. In brief, these assumptions include the following: human society is subject to thermodynamic laws; modern society is based on fossil fuel–enabled industrialization, which continues to cause an environmental crisis with global impacts; the current status of scientific and traditional ecological knowledge enables local preparation for a bioregionally focused world in the future; and problems of modern society are perpetuated by the prevailing scientific reductionism that does not enable holistic inquiry into solutions, by a dominant culture of consumerism, and by political and economic elites who will lose power if local autonomy and self-reliance increase…“

    The Rise of Alternative Farming Systems: Permaculture as Ecology for the Masses

    “The design of Kainos Farm was put to the test during Typhoon Glenda. Though the solar panels and wind turbine were blown away by the strong winds, the farm landscape held its ground and received minimal damage…

    Kainos Farm ran on solar and wind power until Typhoon Glenda damaged the panels and the turbine. To this day, the farm still has no electricity…

    In spite of its popularity, permaculture as a discipline, has yet to gain significant attention in the scientific community (Haluza-DeLay and Berezan, 2010; Ferguson and Lovell, 2013). ‘Despite these parallels, permaculture has received very little discussion in the agroecological literature’, states Ferguson and Lovell (2013). But most research in ecology are based on what Morris (2012) calls ‘feral feedback’–feedback provided by individuals working with and within alternative farming systems such as permaculture.

    Morris, in his paper, ‘When Science Goes Feral’ describes the state of the discipline of ecology, particularly landscape architecture, in the context of today’s society. Environmental issues directly or indirectly affecting daily life as portrayed in the media, such as rainforest destruction and CFCs, have heightened society’s awareness toward their surroundings. Bringing ecology, economics, and community together (Miloslav, 2012) is what fuels this new movement in the mainstream. Haluza-DeLay and Berezan states, ‘If the modern world is one of disenchantment (Gibson 2014), in some senses permaculture is about re-enchanting the city and bringing the social and ecological together.’

    Permaculture was described by Morris as ‘feral ecology’ or ecology that is being discussed beyond the scientific bounds of the academe in the age of Society 2.0 (the age in which the integration of social-networking and interactive digital platforms were utilized). Permaculture designers are increasing in number thanks to the courses being offered worldwide both on-site and online.”

    1. Lots of talk=mental masturbation. Grow me some damn parsnips.

      Seriously Caelan, I like my parsnips sauteed up in butter. How about you?
      I could really use any advice you have about dealing with pocket gophers. Do you use traps, or poison?

  42. “Ford to kill Fusion, Taurus and Fiesta cars to make way for more SUVs” from USA TODAY
    “DETROIT — Ford, backing up its promise to double-down on trucks and SUVs, is killing the Fiesta subcompact, Fusion midsize sedan, Taurus large sedan and C-Max van in the U.S., it announced Wednesday.

    It will go forward with only two cars in its lineup: the Mustang and a new hatchback called the Focus Active that will take the place of the current Focus compact. The Ford Active will be a beefy small vehicle that will have a higher profile like an SUV, but still be considered a car.

    The plan is in keeping with on recently outlined by CEO Jim Hackett to introduce more trucks and SUVs, the vehicles that buyers want the most. Cars sales have been declining industrywide.

    Ford will use the excess capacity created in its plants by car models that are ending to introduce new truck and SUVs. For instance, the new Ford Bronco off-roader is on the way.”

    I personally believe this is a bad idea since an oil shortage appears imminent.

    1. Interesting, looks like the dream of greater efficiency with time has been diverted to greater profits over time. That is why the market can never succeed in responding to an emergency situation and needs to be directed. Businesses are not in the business of the public good or environmental good unless there is a lot of profit in that direction.
      Of course the government is currently braking and reversing direction in those areas, so the corporations will sniff the political wind and set sail for land of profit.

    2. I personally believe this is a great idea from the point of view of an EV advocate. Ford is putting all their eggs in one basket, the F-150 and it’s derivatives. Going forward, Tesla or Workhorse or some new, upstart company might come out with an F-150 killer EV truck, at which point Ford will be against the ropes and with any luck, we can kiss their sorry, foot dragging arises goodbye! Sound farfetched?

      Workhorse Teases Production W-15 Electric Pickup Truck

      “Everything is benchmarked to compete with an F-150 or Silverado 1500 – that’s what’s driving our minimum capabilities,” LaFleur said.

      The company has just under 6,000 orders for the W-15, not including customers who placed $1,000 refundable deposits for a consumer version.

      “We want to make sure the vehicle is living up to the expectations we’ve put forth,” he said.

      “We feel like we’ve got the right product for the niche we’re going after.”

      1. Ford will have it’s EV truck ready to go when the market shifts, they want some short term profit now. It’s a business, not a world saving NGO. We can’t depend upon business to give us what is needed. We direct them by buying or not buying their products and telling them why.
        You made your choice already. That is a signal and maybe you will convince a few others to go that direction, a bigger signal. When the signal gets large enough the big companies will change or die out.
        Put up a blog or YouTube videos about your experiences with your new EV. Get the word out.
        Here is a model for that approach. Seems informative, honest and fun at the same time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD-RIcpO8Do

        1. GM’s Path to an All-Electric, Zero Emissions Future

          GM Chairman and CEO, Mary Barra: “We have the ambition, the talent and the technology to create a world with zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion.”

          We’re moving fast. Last year in the U.S., our own ground-breaking Chevrolet Bolt EV, Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, and Cadillac CT6 Plug-in accounted for nearly a quarter of industry EV and plug-in sales. And in China, where plug-in electric sales are rising, we introduced the Buick Velite 5 and Baojun e100 along with the CT6 Plug-in.

          And this is just the beginning. We are well on our way to bringing at least 20 new all-electric models to market by 2023 – our next step toward a zero-emissions world.

          We are optimistic about EVs because last year, automakers sold 1.2 million plug-in electric and plug-in hybrids around the world.

          Furthermore, we have seen a dramatic increase in customer miles traveled in our own electric vehicles.

          In December 2012, the Chevrolet Volt was GM’s flagship electrified vehicle and its owners hit a milestone 100 million all-electric miles just two years after it went on sale. By December 2017, drivers of five electrified models, including the Bolt EV, racked up more than 2.6 billion EV miles.

          http://www.gm.com/mol/m-2018-mar-0307-barra-speech.html

    3. From what I read, the Fords trucks and SUV’s will have various degrees of electrification, most of them hybrids of some sort. Some pure electric (esp if batteries advance -like solid state- I suspect).

      1. eTrucks like power tools biggest nightmare is you can’t swap, add or stack standardized eChem modules as needed. TCD – Total Crapola Design. Sad times for eTruck loving carbon-based units frozen in a techo time warp. A market requires – BNI – Batteries Not Included

        2. Yeah, there’s still a lot of people stuck in the past but not quite everyone…

          Bankwupt, Buses & Diggers | Fully Charged News
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tprw8OAzWQE
          BTW, that NIKOLA ONE semi rig with a thousand mile range shown briefly at the end of the video ain’t too shabby, eh?

          Also kinda interesting to compare the stats from their news update to scenarios put forth by Tony Seba in any of his more recent talks.

          Seems Seba is remarkably close to what has actually been happening on the ground globally. Yes, there are still a few backwater neo-luddite holdouts in Trumpistan but most of the technologically advanced civilized first world, namely in places like California, New York, Europe and China are quickly leaving those parts of the world wallowing in their smog, nuclear fallout and coal dust. 😉

    4. Probably feeling or expecting the pinch from electric cars, concentrate on the part of the market where there is less competition.

      NAOM

      1. You call a 25% tariff very high? The import duty for electric vehicles in Jamaica is 30% and that is supposed to be an incentive! Duties for most cars, SUVs and light commercial vehicles (under 3 tons gross vehicle weight) are higher, plus there’s sales tax of 17.5% making the aggregate charges close to or above 50% in many cases. EVs are exempt from sales tax as an added incentive.

        1. I believe the normal tariff is 2.5%, so 25% is a big penalty. It gives a lot of room for profits from SUVs for domestic car companies.

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