160 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, April 6, 2017”

  1. Top Democrats Are Wrong: Trump Supporters Were More Motivated by Racism Than Economic Issues
    https://theintercept.com/2017/04/06/top-democrats-are-wrong-trump-supporters-were-more-motivated-by-racism-than-economic-issues/

    Philip Klinkner, a political scientist at Hamilton College and an expert on race relations, has pored over this ANES data and tells me that “whether it’s good politics to say so or not, the evidence from the 2016 election is very clear that attitudes about blacks, immigrants, and Muslims were a key component of Trump’s appeal.” For example, he says, “in 2016 Trump did worse than Mitt Romney among voters with low and moderate levels of racial resentment, but much better among those with high levels of resentment.”

    The new ANES data only confirms what a plethora of studies have told us since the start of the presidential campaign: the race was about race. Klinkner himself grabbed headlines last summer when he revealed that the best way to identify a Trump supporter in the U.S. was to ask “just one simple question: is Barack Obama a Muslim?” Because, he said, “if they are white and the answer is yes, 89 percent of the time that person will have a higher opinion of Trump than Clinton.” This is economic anxiety? Really?
    _snip_
    Their view is backed by a detailed Gallup analysis of interviews with a whopping 125,000 Americans, which found that Trump supporters, far from being the “left behind” or the losers of globalization, “earn relatively high household incomes and are no less likely to be unemployed or exposed to competition through trade or immigration.” The “bottom line” for Gallup’s senior economist Jonathan Rothwell? “Trump’s popularity cannot be neatly linked to economic hardship.”

    So I guess to be elected, Hilary should have been more racist?

    -Lloyd

    1. Trumpster sez HRC WOULD HAVE WON if only she had had brains enough to understand that the times called for a candidate who represented REAL CHANGE, not just a Republican Lite candidate, especially considering that even the real foot soldier core of the R party was so pissed at the BAU R party that it rebelled and nominated Trump, who for all intents and purposes HIJACKED the R party.

      The election was CLOSE, in terms of the way elections are conducted in this country. She was so arrogant that she ASSUMED that the REAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY CORE would vote for her, even though she pretty much IGNORED that core , and rubbed that core’s NOSE in it, by taking the banksters money while not even making a few token appearances in the last three big rust belt states that put Trump in the WH.

      Trumpster sez you can always find a professor, or a dozen professors, to argue any point you want for you, when it comes to politics. Professors are generally partisans.

      Now the election WAS close enough that IF there had been no email scandal, or IF there had been no Russian ( apparently, but Trumpster sez he has not seen any actual PROOF it was the Russians, just allegations from spy agencies, etc, so far, but he sez he is PERFECTLY willing to believe the Russians did hack the D’s right left and indifferent,MAYBE including Clinton’s home brewed secret system. If that happened and the CIA, etc, found it out, it would NOT be publicized,as a matter of national security policy. ) hacking of the D party emails revealing to the public how her campaign cheated in setting up debate schedules via control of the party machinery, etc, she might have won.

      Trumpter sez, If she had had brains enough to UNDERSTAND as a PRACTICAL matter, that just about EVERYBODY, except her Italian suit guys and Prada women type delegates, is or was concerned or actually SCARED about their jobs, and that virtually ALL the minorities and special interest groups, RIGHT UP TO THE BIGGEST SINGLE EASILY CLASSIFIED GROUP OF PEOPLE, WOMEN THEMSELVES, are first and foremost, by actual count, members of the WORKING CLASSES, well, she would have won.

      He goes on to say that between her baggage train, and her lack of STREET SMARTS, she actually managed to lose to the worst candidate the R party has EVER run, in terms of the general publics opinon of his ethics and qualifications for high office. Now THAT took some doing, but she managed it.

      And Trumpster sez, the insiders in the Trump camp acknowledge all these things he has just said to be TRUE, and they all say THANK YA to all you dimmerkrats who wuz dum enuf ta think union guys will vote for a globalist when they are scared for their jobs, etc etc etc.

      Trumpster sez he’s ready to move on, but not till people quit blaming Clinton’s losing on OTHER people, rather than accepting that she was the WORST candidate in modern D party history, in terms of the opinion of the country as a whole, and THE WRONG CANDIDATE FOR THE TIMES, as evidenced by the rebellion of the best and brightest and youngest of the D party, the FUTURE CORE of the D party actually. The best educated, most liberal and most idealistic young D’s mostly went for Sanders. The R core went for Trump, who is or was cordially hated by the entire R establishment, up until he actually got the nomination. Of course since then, the R establishment has sort of fallen in lust with Trump, getting what it want’s, in spades.

      Trumpster sez, you gonna lose, till you figure out you control your own team, but you don’t control the opposition team. You don’t pick the opposition coach, or write the opposition game plan, or select the starting line up of the opposition team.

      Blaming your losses on the opposition team is a sure as fuck way to continue to lose.

      Trumpster sez there is no question that there are racists among the Trump voters, and stupid people, and ignorant people, and self serving rich people, and all sorts of people who may not be the sort yer average snooty nose in the air holier than thou liberal would invite to dinner, only a complete and utter fool, or an R type partisan, would claim otherwise.

      Trump also sez any dimmerkrat with little enough brains to outright say or insinuate that the tens of millions of people who voted for him are racists, or homophobes, or xenophobes, or superstitious, or selfish, etc, is too stupid to be allowed out of the house without duct tape on his fat mouth, cuz his words are worth more than paid advertisements to the Trump camp.

      Trumpster sez we got this thing called the internet these days, and jis about ever redneck out there hears about it when you talk trash about him that away, and that his usual response is to put up another Trump sign in his yard, and another Trump sticker on his car, and vote R.

      Trumpster sez thank JESUS for rednecks who believe in working hard, and playing by the rules, and owning an arsenal, and defending the borders, and dumping nasty chemicals in the water upstream, so as to provide work for water treatment technicians down stream, and water treatment plant builders, and on an on and on.

      Trumpster sez TRUMP THANKS YA FOR YER STUPIDITY, and that with friends like this professor, the D party doesn’t even NEED any enemies, cuz it will continue to shoot it’s own feet off.

      But maybe ya dimmerkrats can figure out a way to purge the voters rolls, and keep all them rednecks from voting. It’s gonna be hard though, cause ya can’t use any of the old standard tricks anymore, such as race, religion, sex, national origin, or possession of a certain amount of property, or the LACK thereof, etc.

      1. I was going to tell “Trumpster” that I wasn’t going to read 1009 words of blather and to kiss my ass.

        Instead, I decided to edit his comment down to the parts that are responsive to my thesis: that there are statistics to back up the claim that racism, not economic hardship, was a prime motivator for Trump voters, and that to be elected, one tactic for the Democrats would be to be more racist. I edited out the catcalling, the discussion of other aspects of the campaign, of Clinton’s ethics, of the Russia Scandal, of how all statistics are questionable, of how bringing up these topics at all will affect any coming elections, anecdotal economic discussion trying to dispute the statistical claims of the article, etc. This is what I got:

        Trumpster sez there is no question that there are racists among the Trump voters

        So I guess we are in agreement.

        1. OldMacDonald aka KGB Trumpster is more dangerous than Javier

        1. Sorry Dennis.
          I’ll ignore this bear trap and not place any new ones for at least a few days… You can cut my 10:14 comment if you want.

          -Lloyd

        2. I somehow managed to miss that message.
          Ron, please accept my condolences.
          Wishing you peace at this time.

      2. When Trump got nailed with the ‘grab them by the pussy’ comments and it did nothing to his popularity it was like the moment in a horror movie when the next victim shoots a whole mag of ammo into the monster and the monster just keeps on coming. A dirt bag narcissist faux populist. Fun times at the end of empire. At least weed is legal.

    1. That’s a very good discussion, with one big flaw.

      I looked at the discussion of the conflict between economic growth and emissions reduction, starting with the footnoted Kevin Andersen blog entry.

      I don’t see much evidence for his argument. He simply refers to a lack of evidence for a compatibility between growth and emissions reduction. He refers to Stern’s discussion, which is also striking for it’s very weak set of evidence. One bit of evidence was the Soviet Union, and the fact that emissions didn’t fall much faster than it’s economy. Another was France during it’s move to nuclear power.

      In fact, none of the examples were of economies making a concerted effort to specifically and aggressively reduce emissions. All of them were aimed at other things: Brazil, for instance was not specifically aiming at CO2 emissions reductions when it pushed ethanol. It just wanted to reduce oil imports. The same, by the way, is true of Denmark and wind power.

      The fact is that we haven’t tried an aggressive reduction of emissions. But, there’s pretty good evidence that it could be done without harming GDP growth. For instance, the US reduced it’s passenger vehicle fuel consumption by about 50% with CAFE regulations. Granted, the reductions probably weren’t higher than about 4% per year, but we weren’t hitting any kind of barrier at that point: that pace of reduction was achieved without any economic harm at all. There was absolutely no sign of a tradeoff between economics and emissions reductions. That pace likely could have been doubled without much problem.

  2. This may have been posted previously, but if so I failed to click and watch.

    Up until now, PIECES of houses were printed, and then hauled to the job site, and assembled.

    Three D house scaled printing is now actually a PRACTICAL reality, although the machine used to build this particular house is not really as big as it needs to be, in order to build a more typically sized house, according to conventional Western expectations. That will be easily remedied with later model machines, or simply by moving a small one as necessary.

    Apparently they use concrete that sets up really fast.

    The building trades guys are going to be in big trouble in ten or twenty years, when this tech scales up, and the patents start expiring.

    http://thenextturn.com/first-residential-house-printed-on-site-in-under-24-hours/

    1. As a building trade guy, the framing is the easiest, cheapest, and quickest part of building. Already, pre-fab and air tools are very quick. I always get a kick out of the guys who buy there own mills and mill up their own material for framing. It saves almost nothing and takes time; lots of time.

      Most people do not want a concrete structure. Even light weight mix for flooring has no effective R value. Walls? Insulation will have to be applied and that would require strapping to the point of negating any cost savings by printing.

      It still has to be finished out. Electrical will be problematic and have to be surface mounted, or wiring will have to be ‘fished’ if the printer produces the paths, etc.

      My own guess Mac is that there might be a greater reliance on factory-made modular over time, but I have had to make so many fixes to these shoddy products over the years there is really no cost savings. The cheapest, of course, is a stand-alone modular laid onto an approved foundation.

      regards

      1. Hi Paulo,

        Short to medium term, I agree with just about everything you say, except to point out that time is not necessarily money to a lot of people, since they don’t have good opportunities to sell their time at a decent profit.

        So if such a person mills his own lumber, he may be making the best available use of his own time.

        In the longer term, say ten years plus, the extruded concrete house will probably work out pretty good. The walls will be hollow, with insulation blown in between the inner and outer walls, and some sort of framework that is easily removable will be used to produce the necessary penetrations for windows, wiring, plumbing, etc. The frame work may simply left in place, rather than removed.

        And the concrete itself probably won’t be used as extensively as in the video, because some other extrude able materials will probably be available, such as a wood chip slurry, or something similar to the various expanding foams used as insulation today.

        I personally don’t care for living quarters built from concrete, but ya gotta admit concrete is termite proof, generally storm proof, and almost fire proof, depending on how much flammable material is used as finishing materials and as home furnishings. And taken all around, concrete is very low maintenance.

        Three or four guys could frame out a simple little house in less than two days , and a pretty big one in five days, back in the eighties. I guess they’re at least ten to twenty percent faster these days, lol.

        But it won’t just be the framing, everything else will be simplified and standardized, to the point that it will take very little real skill to do the work.

        The video showed somebody using a paint roller, but in actuality, a spray gun will be used, and the spray gun itself may well be robotically controlled.

        Add in the losses of jobs resulting from the automation of other trades and services, such as restaurant cashier, and people without really specialized skills are going to be in a hell of a spot, in terms of earning a living. Throw in globalization and off shoring, and some of the best employment opportunities down the road will probably be as personal servants.

        Hopefully having a REAL LIVE human servant will be considered high class. Otherwise robots may displace most servants. 🙁

      2. Hi guys,

        What do they say? Something like, “You have a choice of only two between speed, quality and cost.”?

        Perhaps– although what do ‘they’ mean by speed, quality and cost exactly and who’s they? Distant, wage-slavemaster, profit-sycophants? Real local community members who know you and actually care for that community because they live there too?
        But in any case, take one example; spray foam insulation:

        What’s in it? Where does it come from? Shipping costs? How is it acquired? How is it manufactured and by whom/what? Wage disparities? What out-gases from it? How safe is it? How local recyclable and environmentally-friendly is it, such as if it burns? Are there superior alternatives in those regards? In what senses? Etcetera.

        And that’s just with one particular type of building material and industrial insulation. In order to do a proper cost-benefit analysis, you need to factor in these kinds of things, from cradle to recycle/reuse, to destruction, to grave.

        While this should go without saying, it seems to nevertheless bear repeating: Just because a lot of people who do some things and/or some ‘experts’ do it and advocate it, doesn’t necessarily mean some things should be done.

        And sometimes, maybe usually, simple intuition, like what’s right for you and your community, knows best.

        1. Hi Caelan,

          Often times these decisions are made by individual contractors and the homeowners who are having the home built. So the individual business (often these are small operations with a working carpenter and his single employee who subcontract the foundation, electrical, plumbing and HVAC work to independent contractors.

          They do what they think is best. You can do what you wish when building, the others might find ironic that you want to impose your views and limit their personal freedom.

          1. Hellooo, Dennis!

            There’s a huge difference between suggesting simple, resilient and ethical ways in the face of glaringly-obvious lacks thereof… (which don’t necessarily go away just because we ignore them or wish they would)… such as maybe wage-slave industrial cookie-cutter pseudoresidential developer-shlock ‘business’ operations fucking up in assorted ways on 500+ residences, (maybe including your own, as some people fool themselves and attempt to fool others into believing that they’re doing what’s best). Well, if you’ve invested that much in a house, you had better be doing what’s best, ay?

            What did Jeffrey Brown suggest to you just before he left Peak Oil Barrel? Something along the lines of 1 + 1 doesn’t equal 3 or 2 + 2 doesn’t equal 5?

            1 + 1 = 2, and 2 + 2 = 4, Dennis.

            We can pretend that 2 + 2 = 5, but then, interestingly, that may resonate with some people’s apparent source of pride, that ‘they could be wrong and that’s ok’. ‘Hey look at me: I’m wrong again, haha, and I can live with it. OMG this is so fun. I love being wrong and admitting it.’

            But of course, internalize stuff like that too deeply and we run the risk of running too far with it until it becomes essentially something to strive for, a dead end in itself.

            “Now, all that appalonian, platonic model is what the building industry is predicated on, and there are a number of things that exacerbate that…One is that, all the professionals– all the tradesmen, vendors, inspectors, engineers, architects– all think like this: And then it works its way back to the consumer who demands the same model. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, we can’t get out of it…” ~ Dan Phillips

            1. Hi Caelan,

              Well clearly Caelan knows best and all decisions about the best course of action should be made only by Caelan. 🙂

              One can claim that different opinions their their own are wrong or that other people’s predictions of what might happen in the future under a very specific set of assumptions are incorrect, especially when they make no predictions themselves, doesn’t make it so.

              Can you find where I have ever claimed that 1+1 is not 2, or something to that effect, I am pretty sure you will not find any such claim. Only some people claiming my disagreement with their view was equivalent, aka false equivalency.

            2. Hey, Dennis,

              I am pretty sure none of us think you literally suggested that 1 + 1 was not 2, at least I hope not, just that it begged the question as to what else might lurk within the deep recesses of your cranium, such as, for example, if you might (still?) think that a particular set of people, say, called ‘government’, pushing other people along with pitchforks and bayonets (and calling much of it, ‘economic’) is the ‘best’ way to go.
              I know enough to tell you that it’s not.
              1 apple added to 1 apple equals 2 apples. Go ahead, try it.
              You don’t need a degree in economics or engineering to figure some things out. It’s overkill. The rest of the animals get along fine without them. Better, even… if it weren’t for us.

              Overkill

        2. Caelan no doubt makes sense every day, but some days I lack sense enough to make sense of what he has to say, lol.

          “While this should go without saying, it seems to nevertheless bear repeating: Just because a lot of people who do some things and/or some ‘experts’ do it and advocate it, doesn’t necessarily mean some things should be done.”

          In this case, he’s DEAD ON.

          But but but but we shouldn’t be so naive as to expect people to do the right thing just because it’s the right thing to do, lol.

          Mother Nature didn’t “design” us that way. We’re expendable, and her patented continuous quality improvement program runs on the principle of tossing out experimental variations by the billions. Some survive, with offspring that thrive, no matter what. The rest perish.

          A billion years from now, the earth will still be orbiting the sun, but we will be long gone, and the various little green men who live on other planets orbiting other stars thousands and millions of light years away will neither know nor care that we ever existed.

          We might all be gone in a thousand years.

          A million years from now, if they survive, raccoons will be using their paws, which will likely have evolved to be more useful as prototype hands, to manipulate stainless steel spoons to dig in stream bottoms. In another million years after that, they may discover that breaking a ceramic cooking pot produces a better cutting tool, easier, than banging two rocks together until one breaks.

          After that, they may take over and spoil it all, all over again, the same way we naked apes are spoiling it all today, lol.

          Mother doesn’t care who wins, or what wins . All that matters to her is that the game goes on.

          1. Hi OFM,

            Pretty sure nature doesn’t care one way or the other, it just is.

            I agree it would be best if a detailed cost benefit analysis of every action was taken by individuals. It seems that in Caelan’s view, enlightened local communities would automatically behave in such a fashion, no enforcement and none of the coercion which he so despises (and generally I agree that coercion is not a good thing) would be necessary.

            I contend that humans in general are not always well behaved (even as “adults”) so that in some cases coercion is necessary to modify poor behavior (where “poor behavior” is decided by the local community).

            A World where there were no possessions and all the World was shared by benevolent individuals would indeed be nice, but it’s not a World that exists and it may be a long time (probably equal to infinity) before it does.

            To think otherwise is naïve in my opinion.

            1. Dennis,
              The moment one or some self-appointed or money-appointed set of people (with a monopoly on violence) suggest that they have to coerce me and other upstanding people because of what other people might do (‘thought crimes’? ‘preemption’?) and, on top of that, ‘legally’ (there’s that rationalization word again) essentially mug us in broad daylight of some of the fruits of our hard work because of what they decide they want to do with it, is the moment that they’ve ‘lost it’ and their society has ‘lost it’ (not my and others’ society, because we’re coerced into it, right?).

              (A metasociety pseudogovernment like that can make practically any rationalization it wants to justify doing whatever it wants against our natural rights and freedoms. And some, perhaps many of us here know all too well about those kinds of so-called societies/regimes.)

              And the moment enough of the aforementioned happens with and against enough people is the moment that that particular ‘metasociety’ takes itself down for the count and then, when the dust settles, maybe it’s back to closer to what I (and others) likely really want anyway: In part, small-scale, local and with coercion, where/when any, we can better deal with within an improved ‘feedback response time’.

              As I’ve written before, this shit knows it’s shit and wants to hit the fan, and already is. Just ask the MENA refugees.

              Naivete, if we want to use that word– hey, why not– is polishing it, pretending it is something else and promoting that.

              By the way, did you catch my recent quote of an article that mentions the word, ‘fink’ and how some ‘intellectuals’ may have been ‘used’, whether they realized it or not, by the CIA for its own questionable purposes? The author(s) wouldn’t consider you a ‘fink’ for this metasociety, would they?

              We create the world we expand into.

          2. Hi Glen,
            I seem to recall responding in a similar way to another of your comments some time ago, to the effect that nature cares insofar as we care insofar as we are among nature’s manifestations.

            Dmitry Orlov, in, if recalled, one of James H. Kunstler’s more recent podcasts mentioned the idea– which I’d thought about myself, including probably most who’ve been involved in academic pursuits surrounding evolution– along the lines of (particular individuals selecting for) particular systems selecting for particular individuals– less likely to care, say– and how that can change when the system changes, such as when, in part, a lack of care compounds and overwhelms it and it collapses. ‘u^

            I Care Because You Do

        3. Hi Caelan,

          We have been brought up, conditioned, that we have to DO, that we have to be a DOER, constantly alert and moving and fighting for millenniums. We have been brought up in a milieu which says that you have to fight for your survival; otherwise you will be lost, otherwise you will achieve nothing.

          But things are happening by themselves, it is their nature. A three is there…towards the north, 100 feet away, there is a water source. How does tree know that roots have to move towards north, not the south? And three has no mind of its own, no ego. But the elemental forces by themselves.. and three starts growing roots towards the north and one day it reaches the water sources.

          When we are NOT “doing” our elemental forces will start functioning. There is no need to be DOER, just the watcher. The body feels hunger it is moving itself and finding the sources of water or food. A natural man simply sit inside and allows things to happen. He does not “do”.

          1. ■■■

            Ves, 1 will send that 2 an acquaintance in Colombia, see what they say, and I’m t3mpted to agree, it seems to make sense, thanks… What a waste of lives sometimes…

            “…and three starts growing roots…” ~ V.e.s.

            Indeed

            1. ‘ What a waste of lives sometimes…”
              Hi Caelan,

              If we look at it as fragment of just one life – it is a definitely a waste to live in a misery of a “doer”. But if life is a continuous circle then it is just learning experience. We probably waste 1000’s of our lives.
              In my personal experience if I did not know what sadness is how could I know what happiness is? It would be impossible. So I need both in order to grow, mature: sadness & happiness, love & hate, day & night, winter & summer. But if we look little bit deeper they are the same, just polar opposite. Like two sides of the same coin. Anger & Compassion are the same because the same energy within us is used but expressed in different way. So that is that learning part of life where we need to dust off our awareness and use our energy on more nourishing things.

              Everybody is born in freedom, but dies in bondage. The beginning of life is loose and natural, but then society enters, morality, discipline and we lose our naturalness. But the society is needed because if child is left on its own, child will never grow, it will never be able to re-gain awareness. Child would become like animal. The society has to come in, the society has to be passed through, it is needed. So society is just a passage. But then it has to be transcended; the rules have to be learned and then unlearned.

            2. ~ Inspiration For The Lives of Hermits ~
              a little piece inspired by Ves

              Makes sense, Ves. You describe it well, and we pretty much seem to be on a similar wave…

              I guess one could also see society as a kind of body that eats us at birth, we go through its digestive tract, and it poops us out at the end. The body is still there, left behind, for what it’s worth, after we’ve spent our lives in it as it extracted nutrients from us, subjected– some would say, victimized– along the way, to its own rules of digestion/extractive processes, and at particular points in the process; crushed by teeth here, dissolved in acid there…

              In order to understand the light at the end of the tunnel, we must first pass through the anus…

              Hermitage, Part 1

        4. What’s in it? Where does it come from? Shipping costs? How is it acquired? How is it manufactured and by whom/what? Wage disparities? What out-gases from it? How safe is it? How local recyclable and environmentally-friendly is it, such as if it burns? Are there superior alternatives in those regards? In what senses? Etcetera.

          Since you asked… There is a whole world of bio materials out there. There are businesses, and corporations that are focused on doing things differently by incorporating (no pun intended) concepts from nature and Biomimicry.

          Here’s an example of just one: https://www.ecovativedesign.com/

          Ecovative is…

          (ee•koh•vay•tiv)

          a leading biomaterials company growing high performance, premium, award-winning products that are safe, healthy, and certified sustainable. Ecovative products enable customers—including Fortune 500 companies, international mills, and furniture makers—to meet their design, production, and delivery needs while achieving sustainability goals.

          1. For that to work, pure democratic corporations come first, Fred, then we’ll talk.
            Otherwise, maybe I should ask you the same question I just asked Dennis, regarding the word, fink. I your case, more corporate.

            Bio and other materials are already out there in any case, and free.
            Some of them are called, stone, wood, straw, earth and clay.
            And you don’t have to steal them from the people’s commons, stamp them with a corporate trademark symbol and sell it back to them as if it’s somehow worth their ravaged lands and wage-slavery to purchase it.

            By the way, given that you previously seemed gung-ho about Uber, have you heard any news about them recently? Last I looked, they appeared to be in a sort of economic slow motion car accident… But you know, as per the aforementioned, that kind of thing is/will be expected until we wise up. This, alas, and to paraphrase Dennis, may take an infinite amount of time. So then, if it’s going to take that long, maybe it’s best to begin ASAP.

            1. By the way, given that you previously seemed gung-ho about Uber, have you heard any news about them recently?

              You still don’t get me, do you?! I have never given a flying fuck about Uber per se! I have nothing invested in their survival one way or another. What I have done is report instances of disruption and paradigm change. Whatever you may think of Uber they are without any doubt disruptive. Just look around the world and see how many people are fighting them. Italy just banned them. Remember what Ghandi said about winning!

              I tend to agree with Douglas Rushkoff’s views in his book ‘Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus’. That Uber like many other high tech and digital corporations doesn’t understand the OS!

              However there are signs of furry little mammals running around under the feet of the dinosaurs. If and when the next asteroid hits, (metaphorically speaking) it may wipe out all of civilization as we know it and some of those furry creatures might fill new niches that the dinosaurs will leave behind.

            2. “Hey look everybody! The self-mutilating and other-mutilating and world-mutilating economy is disruptive to itself and to others! ([crowd, faking surprise and awe]: ‘No way!’) Yes way! Take Uber for example! Now, I don’t give a flying fuck about Uber per se but… you know… It’s disruptive! Ya! Take a look at Italy for example! Italy has banned them! Do you really know what disruptive means?! Well I’ll tell you what it means!…”?

              Gandhi, Lennon and King all got shot. Nobody’s winning, Fred.

            3. …It is not so much that Uber is novel or innovative or whatever– that’s not the point. The point is that it is an outgrowth of brutality, brutality of the system. And brutality was a word one particular journalist, whose piece I may have quoted hereon, used to describe the issue with Uber. But most any anarchist is hardly surprised by that. Disruption has different semantics.

            4. Uber is just an instance, or an implementation of a disruptive idea. Uber will fail, but the idea looks pretty good. The same happened to altaVista, a search engine that ranked links by their popularity instead of raw count. It failed, bu Google’s PageRank didn’t.

              Another example is Bitcoin, which is probably doomed to die. But blockchain looks promising.

    1. Registered drug addicts paying the government toll. Lots of ways to keep the peasants entertained and not forming revolutions. Smart phones, TV, internet, and now psychotropic drugs. All traceable and with taxable profits. It’s party time, all the time.
      Seems like society is no longer interested in producing responsible thinking citizens.
      This over-entertained world is producing a lot of selfish and undisciplined people. Pity the children and the world that has to put up with them when and if they grow up.

    2. Substituting expensive drugs with a cheap agricultural product reduces the size of the GDP and is thus in violation of the prime directive: Growth at all costs.

  3. As Congress rewrites it’s rules to serve a narrow few, lets look back at the unwinding of American society and the realization, too late, that we have been had. Although we really knew it all along. Thank goodness nature is taking over, people certainly have shown they cannot run even a partial democracy without giving the reins to the sociopaths. We let it slip through our fingers and got credit cards, cars and houses we could not really pay for. How brilliant.
    Meanwhile we made many around the world quite rich off of our great inventions and technology. We did not spread democracy, we spread greed and self-serving attitudes around the world.
    I think it’s called being derailed.

    Decline and fall: how American society unravelled
    In or around 1978, America’s character changed. For almost half a century, the United States had been a relatively egalitarian, secure, middle-class democracy, with structures in place that supported the aspirations of ordinary people. You might call it the period of the Roosevelt Republic. Wars, strikes, racial tensions and youth rebellion all roiled national life, but a basic deal among Americans still held, in belief if not always in fact: work hard, follow the rules, educate your children, and you will be rewarded, not just with a decent life and the prospect of a better one for your kids, but with recognition from society, a place at the table.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/19/decline-fall-american-society-unravelled

    1. ” but a basic deal among Americans still held, in belief if not always in fact: work hard, follow the rules, educate your children, and you will be rewarded, not just with a decent life and the prospect of a better one for your kids, but with recognition from society, a place at the table.”

      I couldn’t agree more, although I personally think the time frame ought to be described as beginning in the early seventies and continuing right on thru until the last ten or fifteen years.
      BY 200o or so in general terms, tens of millions of people had lost their faith in the so called American Dream, and now…… probably at least half to two thirds of the country no longer believes that if you play by the rules, you will eventually own your own home and a nice car, be able to take a vacation, and send your kids off to college.

      The people who have money in the stock market,etc, and are fortunate enough to be in lines of work that pay well and aren’t threatened by globalization to any real extent, are still mostly happy campers, except they are worried about what the REST of the country may be thinking and doing, with ample justification.

      Every body else is at an emotional and often at an economic boil, and more than ready to lash out at the establishment, witness the Sanders rebellion from the left inside the Democratic Party, and the outright hijacking of the Republican Party by Trump, who was cordially hated by just about every body with an official Republican Party position of any sort, until his winning the nomination forced the R Party to start kissing his ass.

      I personally will not be surprised to any real extent if we see either or both parties split into two or more factions within the next few years, say within a decade.

      One scenario is that we might wind up with a new party, either D or R, but more likely known as the D party, which is comprised mostly of what I call Republican Lite Democrats, and the sort of voters who generally vote for the kinds of Republicans known as RINO, Republican in Name Only.

      This could leave us with a leftish/ populist leaning party and a rightish / BAU economically leaning and culturally hard right party.

      I ‘m NOT predicting this scenario will come to pass, but simply trying to get my head around what the political landscape might look like in ten years by speculating this way.

      My guess is that it’s more likely the D and R parties will survive, with the D’s moving back to more traditional D platforms and values, and the R’s doing something along the same line, pulling back from the Trump type of Republican politics, which suits the hard right quite well, at present. But the R’s aren’t likely to KEEP winning elections with Trump type policies, which are not at all what most of the country actually wants.

      We hear a lot about how stupid right wingers are, and I totally agree that a hell of a lot of right wing individuals are as dumb as fence posts. But the AVERAGE R type voter has come to depend on Social Security and Medicare, etc, making it possible for Mom and Dad to continue to live in their OWN home, rather than in the kids bedroom, lol.

      And the average R voter has things on his mind, at least part of the time, such as cancer and heart trouble, and is smart enough to understand, once he gives it a little thought, that cutting back on medical research, etc, is NOT in his own enlightened best interest. He also is gradually coming to realize that when he needs medicine, he is apt to be getting ripped a new backside by big pharma, etc, and that THAT ain’t right, etc.

      Such a person needs some gentle and subtle reminders of where his own enlightened self interest lies, of course. Yelling and screaming at him, and calling him ignorant, racist, xenophobic, etc, won’t help, no sir, not at all.

      Thank Sky Daddy for the net. It’s gradually breaking the power of the elites, both D and R, to control public opinion.

      It may take another five or ten years, but my guess is that the R type man on the street will believe in forced climate change by 2028, just as he now believes that smoking is the primary cause of people getting lung cancer, etc. It takes a while, but the truth eventually sinks in.

    2. “In or around 1978, America’s character changed. ”

      Rat thinks it happened as a result of the ’73 and ’79 oil crises. In ’73, when the price of gas tripled, we went from “Mom wants to work to feel fulfilled” to “Mom has to work so Dad can afford to buy gas to drive to work”.

  4. California Lawmakers Approve Gas Tax To Pay For $52 Billion Infrastructure Plan

    California’s transportation systems have gone unrepaired and unexpanded for decades.

    The measure will increase the excise tax on gasoline by 12 cents per gallon from the current $0.28 and on diesel fuel by 20 cents per gallon, among other fees, over 10 years. The money will be used for repairs to roads and bridges as well as for anti-congestion projects.

    Owners of electric vehicles, who do not use gasoline and would not pay the gas tax, would have to pay a $100 fee to help repair roads. The fees and taxes should raise about $5.2 billion per year.

    The average motorist in California will see costs increase by about $10 a month, according to Democrats, the Sacramento Bee newspaper reported.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/california-gas-tax_us_58e75c4de4b00de141022c6f?

        1. WARNING FRED MAYGAR, WARNING

          I failed to get the link, but the University of Florida has verified that Nile crocs are living wild in the Sunshine State, and there doesn’t seem to be any real reason to think they won’t become established like all the other invasive species thriving there already.

          This forum just wouldn’t be the same without you, so be EXTRA careful while enjoying a brew or two at the end of a long hard day while dangling your toes in the water, lol.

          1. Heh! Funny you should mention that. I used to live in a condo next to a mangrove where a very large American croc also lived and probably still does. He is featured on a video of one of our local nature centers. Was strongly suspected of carrying off a few pets that wandered too close to its lair. It think it mostly kept the local raccoon population in check…

            In any case I still think my chances of being killed in a car crash on I95 are far greater than by any living creature, invasive or not. Anyways The northern tourists are probably a lot more tender and tasty than I am. 😉
            Cheers!

            1. Back to you, Fred,

              In some respects, the more things change, the more they stay the same. 😉

              Ten thousand years ago, the baying of wolves, or the scream of a big cat flooded us with adrenalin and made our hair stand up.

              Now it’s the wail of ambulance and fire truck sirens come to get us after we are mangled up by automobiles.

              Since you are so good at finding them, maybe you can find a classic cartoon, the one with two bears finishing up a tourist. One is saying to the other how great the tourist was, no teeth, no hair, no hide, no nothing, just nice and yummy.

              There seems to be some evidence, not sure if it is solid, that there are also some rock pythons in the swamps now, I forget the proper species name, but these are the biggest ones of all, and known to take a human occasionally.

              Do you know how if it is likely Nile crocs will breed with the local gators and if the offspring might possibly be fertile? A mule like cross seems entirely possible, just looking at the two side by side, but such crosses are generally not fertile unless the species are very closely related.

            2. Do you know how if it is likely Nile crocs will breed with the local gators and if the offspring might possibly be fertile?

              I’d would say that is highly unlikely! Alligators are in a different genus from crocodiles. I’m aware that Cuban Crocs do mate with American crocs but they are very closely related. However the chances of a nile crocodile mating with an American crocodile is slim to nil!

              http://crocodilian.com/cnhc/csl.html

              Let’s just say I’m not too worried!

            3. FredM,

              What threw me was when I learned that the American croc is found on both coasts of Mexico. How did they pull that off? Should I be worried?

              (what’s that noise outside the windo…

            4. OFM,

              Burmese pythons are doing very well in southern Florida and will likely spread throughout the Everglades, and farther. The state is trying to find ways to get rid of or at least control them and have had some luck using dogs, especially teamed with Irula snake catchers from southern India. The dogs do the finding.

              Crocs and gators aren’t particularly closely related. If hybridization were possible I’d expect it to be the Nile croc with the smaller American one.

              It’ll be a major film next Summer, mark my words.

          2. Glen, the other day, I was looking at a You Tube animation of how all the land on the planet might look if all the ice melted. Florida was among, if not the, worst hit, with just about its entirely disappearing under water. LOL

            And to think our Florida Fred ostensibly specialized in scuba diving.

            The crocs apparently survived most of the dinosaurs, save the birds. In that sense, in time, Florida looks like one of the best investments.

      1. It is well known truism that the source of most problems are the solutions of previous problems.

          1. James H. Kunstler keeps saying it’s a racket and then we have Naomi Klein’s Disaster Capitalism. What more do you need? Oh but a happy face sticker on all of it of course. The happy face, an element of the rationalization/denial machine, helps us to say, “1 + 1 = 3”.

            1. Hey Gonz…
              It’s too late to edit my comment above, but I realize that I didn’t put a happy face with it, at least like Dennis did with his! So, here it is, better late than never:

              🙂

              …But where’s your happy face? Are you not feeling happy today? Well you can always fake it… Ok, hang on, I think I have an extra one lying around… Ah, here it is… There:

              🙂

              🙂 <– You can link smilies! It's not obvious, but it works!

              ^u^

              (I’ve linked your smiley to your comment so people know it’s yours.)

            2. Cally baby, I am flattered you are concerned about my emotional state. Since you are spouting nonsense though and doing weird things, it’s more like having a stalker be concerned about me.

    1. Hi Huntington beach,

      Interesting $100 fee, which is equivalent to a car that gets 50 mpg travelling 12k miles per year. A better plan would be for EVs to pay for mileage driven (pay 0.8 cents per mile driven in the past year when registering their car) photo of odometer as proof, with stiff fines for fraud.

  5. WARM ATLANTIC WATERS WAGE A NEW ASSAULT ON ARCTIC ICE FROM BELOW

    “Sensors that have plumbed the depths of Arctic seas since 2002 have found warm currents creeping up from the Atlantic Ocean and helping drive the dramatic retreat of sea ice there over the last decade. A new study shows this “Atlantification” of the Arctic Ocean as a new, powerful driver of melting, alongside losses due to rising air temperatures.”

    http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/warm-atlantic-waters-wage-new-assault-arctic-ice-below

    1. Sea level rose 229 mm from 1880 to 2016. 1.7 mm/year
      From 1993 to 2016 there has been almost 90 mm of sea level rise. 3.9 mm/year
      From 2010 t0 2016 there was 35 mm of sea level rise. 5.8 mm/year
      The rate of sea level rise is accelerating.

    2. Life itself long ago taught me that the physical world is non linear, past certain parameters.

      If for any reason there is a major change in the prevailing winds and ocean currents, all the ice in existence is not enough to cool off the top couple of thousand feet of the world ocean very much, considering that the sun will continue to beat down on it as usual in the low and mid latitudes.

      Personally I don’t have the necessary physics , math, and computer skills to study the climate models in detail, but you don’t have to understand the details to understand that small random changes often result in later catastrophic changes.

      Any links exploring the possibility that the major currents will fail, divert to new paths, or accelerate, etc, will be greatly appreciated.

  6. Literary Agents: Rethinking the legacy of writers who worked with the CIA

    “Today’s intellectuals are no longer needed as chits in a great power conflict, and our nostalgia for the Cold War generation’s prestige seems increasingly misplaced: An era of heroic thinkers now looks instead like a grubby assortment of operatives, writers who appeared to challenge the establishment without actually being dangerous to it. Jason Epstein was right. The CIA created conditions that subverted the essential task of an intellectual: to cast a critical eye on orthodoxy and received wisdom.

    Today the state maintains its capacity to influence political thinking, but the frontiers have shifted. Freedom is now defended less in little magazines than on social media. In 2014, the U.S. Agency for International Development was caught nurturing a Cuban version of Twitter—a logical extension of the CIA’s work in the ’50s and ’60s. And as Edward Snowden’s revelations demonstrate, the promotion of freedom through open communications remains uncomfortably intertwined with the potential for surveillance. What’s more, the vehicles we employ for personal speech are not only subject to electronic censorship and propagandistic manipulation by governments: They are also corporate properties. While social media can facilitate the circulation of ideas and the defense of free thought, they also depend on profit-chasing and maximizing saleable engagement. In such a highly mediated and monitored system, the line between participation and unwitting collaboration can be difficult to discern.

    Cold War intellectuals didn’t always realize the function they performed as ‘finks’, as accessories to power in systems they would have preferred not to validate. Today the specific configuration of state interference may have changed, but we remain subject to forces that shape our opinions and the boundaries of our thinking in ways we cannot see clearly. How will we recognize it in ourselves if we, too, are finks?

  7. I encountered my first pure ev’s of 2017. Had a meeting in Ojai, California followed by a light lunch at the Ojai Valley Inn, a $400++ resort hotel, There were two charging stations, I saw 4 Tesla S models and one X model charging, also a Volvo plug-in.. Of course there were hundreds of ICE’s in the parking lots.

    1. Hi Robert,

      The Tesla Model S and Model X are pretty inconspicuous on the road, not as easy to spot as a Prius for example (or maybe I notice the Prius because I have owned a couple).

      I test drove a Model S recently, very nice car, though I have never owned an ultra luxury car (Mercedes S class or BMW 7 series for example) so perhaps by those standards it is mediocre.

      The “autopilot” was tried in heavy highway traffic and was excellent, acceleration and ride were impressive. Hard to justify spending $82k for a car so I will probably wait for the Model 3 which will probably be about 45K (a guess) comparably equipped (possibly less as battery prices fall).

      1. Hard to justify spending $82k for a car so I will probably wait for the Model 3 which will probably be about 45K (a guess) comparably equipped (possibly less as battery prices fall).

        I spoke with a guy in line in front of me at my local bank who was wearing a Tesla jacket and he told me he had purchased a two year old Tesla Model S 60 Sedan 4D for about 50K and he was thrilled with it.

        As for the Model 3

        From http://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-3
        Tesla Model 3 MSRP $35,000.00

        https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/02/22/tesla-plans-model-3-electric-car-production-from-july-and-more-gigafactories/#171f81b9201b

        Tesla Plans Model 3 Electric Car Production From July — And More Gigafactories

        Anyone interested in Tesla battery and drive train tech on the salvage market to power your home or build your own EV, check out Jack Rickard’s EVTV site. he is one of the few Trump supporters and climate change deniers I follow. He has done a lot of work figuring out Tesla Tech. He’s a redneck I can talk to!

        http://evtv.me/

        1. Hi Fred

          Hard to find the AWD Tesla used at 50k at least where I live .

    2. I can remember my maternal grandfather telling me about the first automobile he ever saw, on a trip to town in a horse drawn wagon. Within twenty years or so, he owned one, and a dozen or so, including trucks, after that. He died in his nineties about fifteen or twenty years ago.

      Some time after that, probably five or ten years later, he saw people hit the ground on their knees when they saw their first airplane, because although these folks had HEARD of airplanes, they didn’t believe they were real. Most people’s first look at a plane back in those days involved so called barnstormers visiting their town and putting on a show. This was still well before the arrival of the grid out in the deep country. Most people had little or no formal education, and a nickel for the once a week local paper was hard to come by, even for those who could read it.

      With a little luck, I will live long enough to buy a used Volt or other plug in hybrid car, or maybe even a pure electric.( Cars are just tools to me, except for certain COLLECTIBLE cars. I get my status cookies other ways, lol. )

      If industrial civilization survives, Sky Daddy alone knows what might be seen as common place a century down the road.

    3. There was a Kia hybrid on display in the local mall, last Saturday. First of any type of EV I have seen around here.

      NAOM

  8. Do you protest, resist or transcend the status-quo much? No? Well you should, in part because it’s likely toast anyway. But for those who do, here’s a clever way to resist cop zip-tie handcuffs.

    1. A PR stunt with a 100 Mio USD price tag.

      MAGA! One cruise missile at a time!

      If a US president is concerned about his approval rating or wants to distract, Tomahawks fly. If he’s serious about getting reelected, he sends soldiers to kill.

      1. Those same victims of the chemical weapons are Trumps punching bag when it’s time to ban refugees, and his pretext for attack when they are killed in a civil war. It’s worth remembering that Trump once campaigned on the idea of killing the families of America’s terrorist enemies. USA’s got a real shit for brains running the ship. The demographics of the white trash vote is a real can-o-worms.

  9. Hi All,

    Ron’s wife passed away recently. He let me know yesterday afternoon.

    Alice Myrna Patterson

    September 26, 1941 – April 6, 2017

    Alice M. Patterson age 75, passed away Thursday, April 6, 2017.
    Mrs. Patterson is survived by her husband Ronny O. Patterson; children Stanley R. Patterson, Stephen B. Patterson, Scott D. Patterson; brother Clark D. Cleveland; six grandchildren; five great-grandchildren.
    She was preceded in death by her son Stuart Jeffery Patterson.

      1. Ron my heart is with you at this time.

        Been to more funerals lately than all other important gatherings put together. We’re the old folks now.

    1. Though we may not understand why sad things happen. May it some how help to know how much we care.

    2. Stay strong Ron. I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers.

      Regards,
      Ralph
      Cass Tech ’64

    3. ==Sorry about your loss==

      i just read about the sad news. please accept my well wishes Ron. i will say a prayer for you tonight.

    4. Ron,
      Like everyone else, I’m sorry for your wife’s passing. I’m 78 so we’re in the same age ballpark and we’ve lost many friends and relatives through the years.

      It’s never easy even when you know it’s coming. We just lost a good friend for over 40 years last week.
      Todd

  10. Perhaps wind and solar electricity generation costs are becoming competitive with fossil fuel and nuclear fission electricity generation in parts of the World:

    https://thinkprogress.org/renewables-cheapest-new-power-globally-74910c78bbbe

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/world/2017/03/31/while-trump-promotes-coal-other-countries-are-turning-to-cheap-sun-power/?utm_term=.16bf3b173075

    Meanwhile, the coal industry strokes trump and continues to exact health tolls on people:

    https://thinkprogress.org/coal-miner-health-care-c53ecc09be0b

    https://thinkprogress.org/coal-paris-the-market-and-climate-change-7a7605431251

  11. I’m still freaking out about the CO2 and methane bursts GKaplin posted about last week.

    https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/index.php?code=brw

    In Barrow Alaska you see this nice smooth trend on CO2 going back to 1971, but this year BOOM. Methane is spiking also. But it’s not just there, but also in
    Key Biscayne, Florida, near Miami
    Mace Head, County Galway, Ireland
    and Ulaan Uul, Mongolia

    Again, you see smooth trends going back decades and then huge bursts over 420ppm. There are smaller spikes all around the arctic and even Midway Island. It sure looks like the climate has hit a tipping point and it’s game over very soon.

    This is pretty much exactly what Guy McPherson has been predicting, last I heard he had civilization collapse in 18 months (but that may have been 6 months ago) and extinction by 2026.

    1. I’m not convinced of Guy’s prediction. By what mechanism does extinction occur? Humans live quite fine at very high temps in many parts of the world. Surely the heat will not kill us all.

      I for one believe that climate change will create agricultural production problems and on a long enough time line there will eventually be severe food shortages and perhaps wide ranging famine as a result. But extinction is in my opinion not likely for a very very long time.

      Now I have heard people state that everything collapses real fast and all the nuclear power plants meltdown but I don’t believe that will occur. If worse comes to worst then I’m sure some smart team will decom all the facilities and drop the rods in the Mariana Trench, or something like that.

      I’m not convinced by Guy at all.

      1. Humans can’t survive high temp and high humidity. The gulf of Mexico gets up to 90F in the summer already, imagine that at 100F and the humidity still at 80%. The hot dry places humans currently live may not have the humidity but the temp will go up even more in those areas. Back in the Jurassic park days it was that hot and it was fine for dinosaurs, but humans not so much.

        Another issue is growing grains. It is possible to grow food indoors, in a climate controlled environment, but there is nowhere near enough time to scale that up to feed billions of people. Without the grains, civilization collapses along with all our technology.

        We all are in a bit of denial, it’s only normal, but we can’t survive the exponential growth of methane that is well underway. I always hoped Guy was being overly pessimistic on the time scale but his arguments are hard to rebuke. But now, with these huge spikes of methane never before seen showing up in the data, it sure looks like it’s happening .

        1. What you say is true regarding the high temps and high humidity. When the wet bulb temperature spends a few hours at 37*C large mammals die, however I don’t think temps/humidities like that will be a global event.

          I fully agree with your comments on grains. Human civilization is based upon the continued production of a lot of wheat, corn and soybean. Most of that is grown on land in the northern hemisphere. I feel that land temps in the NH are most important to the future of food security.

          http://woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vnh/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:12/plot/crutem4vnh/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/trend

          A great video here below. If nothing else please observe the Seneca Curve at the approx 46 min 30 seconds mark and listen to the presentation that pertains to it.

          https://youtu.be/YToMoNPwTFc

          This is a an interesting chart. Select the file- station: northern hemispheric means, then select 1880 to 1980 for Base Period. Results are just shy of 2*C increase.

          https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/customize.html

          I lean towards a near term population bottleneck not the near term extinction.
          On the weather depends the harvest. On the harvest depends everything.

          1. Decades ago I wrote a required term paper for Pediatrics on insensible water loss from lung and skin and the likelihood of rapid death from vomiting or especially diarrhea in the very young with diseases like cholera. One conclusion (this was 1954) was that the diarrhea ward at Houston’s Jefferson Davis Charity Hospital should have air conditioning. Water (sweat) will not evaporate when the humidity is near 100% and the body must dissipate heat to maintain temperature at or near 98.6 F.
            –R Wilson MD ret.

      2. While it’s mathematically possible that something could happen that would lead to the planetary extinction of naked apes within the next 24 hours, never mind the next year or two, the odds against our going extinct within the next year or two, excluding flat out war, a big asteroid hitting the earth, etc, are extraordinarily high, maybe even astronomically high.

        We’re too spread out, with too many local populations that are isolated, or that can isolate themselves if it becomes necessary, for a contagious disease to get us all, and there’s no reasonably likely scenario in any of the professionally produced climate models indicating the climate getting so bad world wide that nobody can survive.

        I enjoy reading people like Guy, but it’s not so good for people like him to get too big an audience. They do everybody else in the scientific community, and in the climate community, and the associated political community, great harm, by writing and talking the way they do.

        This sort of talk is the sort that hard core right winger anti renewable climate denying coal loving business as usual types can point to, and TRULY make environmentalists in general look like fools, and climate scientists in particular look like money grubbing scam artists at the worst, or just fools.

        Sometimes exaggeration is a good technique, but guys like Hansen are taking it WAY too far.

        The only real reason why an otherwise intelligent person would do so that I can think of is that it builds a following among such people as like to think about such catastrophes right around the corner, and a following is a very useful thing to have. It’s good for the wallet, good for the job prospects, good for the ego, and can be worthwhile politically as well..

        Crying wolf continuously is bad strategy. By the time the wolf inevitably EVENTUALLY shows up, you have lost all credibility, and will be ignored.

        1. OFM says – “We’re too spread out, with too many local populations that are isolated, or that can isolate themselves if it becomes necessary, for a contagious disease to get us all, and there’s no reasonably likely scenario in any of the professionally produced climate models indicating the climate getting so bad world wide that nobody can survive.”
          ———Isolation is an important theme of the1950’s book by Charles Galton Darwin “The Next Million Years”, available free on the internet. Farr’s Law of Epidemics is important relative to the common limits of epidemics.

          1. Hi Robert,

            I first heard of Farr back in the sixties as an ag student. The chapters in ag text books concerning the spread and control of contagious diseases are so similar to the ones in medical texts on the same topic that if you read one, you have no need of reading the other, lol, except for the details.

            Thanks for mentioning the book, I have added it to my reading list. It’s great to find a GOOD book of this sort free for the asking. Local libraries out in the boonies don’t keep much in the way of this kind of book.

        2. OFM says “Crying wolf continuously is bad strategy. ” but these spikes in the data are happening now, and right on Guy’s schedule. Somebody crying wolf can be ignored but not when you can hear the wolf pack howling in the distance.

          Yes, you might think some places will stay habitable and maybe that’s true, but how much damage will be done buy all the starving refugees from places no longer habitable? In the chaos, some of the nukes or their storage ponds will likely cause problems, but it might be largely local and not a major adder to our extinction. The climate alone is bad enough.

          Millions of people are starving right now in Africa and the middle east. People die every year from the heat, and the numbers are growing. How much hotter does it need to get to be lethal to most people? Think about power being out on the hottest day of the year, if it were 5 or 10 degrees hotter on those days then not just the old and sick will die. Maybe you think you can just move north? Well the hottest days of the year in New York city are the same temperatures as in Miami.

          Barrow Alaska and some of the other stations have both the “flask data” and the “In-Situ data” . The in-situ data has spikes as well, that can’t all be faked, sorry guys.

      3. There is no particular reason to worry about any particular nuclear power plant reactor melting down, in an economic collapse situation. It’s perfectly obvious that every possible man and nickel would be put on the job of keeping it running, rather than just running away. So long as there is a maintenance crew, and an plant operator crew on the job, the odds of a reactor running away will be about the same or a little higher as during normal times, not zero, but slim.

        It’s the SPENT FUEL STORED at plant sites we REALLY need to be worried about. The anti nuclear faction didn’t quite understand, and still even after FUCK US SHIMA still does not understand the need for a permanent spent fuel storage depository, and as things stand now,I doubt we will have such a depository within the easily foreseeable future here in the USA.

        The quantity of spent fuel stored onsite is a high multiple of the fuel actually in reactors.

        I have posted the following question numerous times, with never a response from a qualified scientist or engineer.

        WHY shouldn’t it be possible, in theory at least, to pulverize hot spent fuel, and pump it DOWN ten or fifteen thousand feet, in SMALL amounts, thoroughly diluted, into an old exhausted oil field? It seems VERY unlikely to me that once an old deep oil well is properly plugged, redrilling it, and getting the spent fuel back to the surface, in the small amounts it was put into any given well, would be nearly impossible for any entity other than a sovereign government with money and man power to burn.

      4. If worse comes to worst then I’m sure some smart team will decom all the facilities and drop the rods in the Mariana Trench, or something like that.

        LOL! What could possibly go wrong…

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N4xmNGeCVU
        Life in the Mariana Trench

        Note: This video was NOT brought to you by US taxpayers.
        Thanks go to Oceanlab, University of Aberdeen

    2. Is it possible these scientists did some tinkering, with the calibration, to the sensors once Trump was elected president? I read about how they think all the climate science jobs will be cut now. So I could see coming up with something to keep from being sent to the unemployment line.

      Regards,
      Ralph
      Cass Tech ’64

      1. Yeah you probably got it right. All the scientists working at Canadian, UK, Russian, Norwegian etc climate monitoring stations are likely faking data due to being worried about their job security because USA elected a pussy grabbing dumpster fire with a grade 6 vocabulary. Your talents are wasted. You should be chief intelligence data analyst with CIA department of complicated operations.

        1. The data comes from a NOAA web site. NOAA is an organization of the U.S. Government, which means the funding comes straight out the pockets of U.S. Taxpayers. So any scientist anywhere in the world depending on NOAA data has to depend on money taken from U.S. Taxpayers. That means these scientists are working for us the public instead of the other way around. Because of that, Trump could cut the data stream if he wants, thinking that’s no longer a worthy use of all the taxpayer money. That was my point.

          Regards,
          Ralph
          Cass Tech ’64

          1. The data is published on a NOAA site. The sensors and the scientists who calibrate them are located all over the world. They are not NOAA employees. Your point was that are scientists tinkering with the calibration to save their jobs. Now you appear to have moved the discussion to whether or not NOAA might discontinue publishing the data because Trump needs to save a few bucks. That’s irrelevant to data collected outside USA by non NOAA employees. For example, the data collected at Estevan Point in Canada are employees of the Canadian Government.

            http://weather.gc.ca/marine/weatherConditions-currentConditions_e.html?mapID=02&siteID=15300&stationID=web

            https://www.ec.gc.ca/mges-ghgm/default.asp?lang=En&n=F1A7FB1A-1

            The data is published elsewhere, not only by NOAA. NOAA gets it from them and publishes it too. I understand if you’re finding this a bit abstract.

            I know it’s a little confusing because a NOAA website publishes data provided by folks who don’t get paid by American taxpayers but if you think about it for a while and do some reading maybe you’ll come to understand it with time.

            I’m rather sure the cost of publishing that data is very small. Probably less than a weekend of Golf. Or 59 cruise missiles.

            1. I know it’s a little confusing because a NOAA website publishes data provided by folks who don’t get paid by American taxpayers but if you think about it for a while and do some reading maybe you’ll come to understand it with time.

              Doubt it! Trump supporters don’t understand that out of the 7.5 billion plus inhabitants of this planet only about 5% of them reside in the US. They also don’t seem to grasp that 175 sovereign nations are currently signatories to the Paris Climate accords. Many of those are already advanced nations and have their own highly developed science programs and plenty of others such as China, India, Brazil and many others are are advancing into the 21st century embracing science and technological advances while the US seems hell bent on going back to the 19th. The whole ‘Make America Great Again’ meme is rather pathetic!

            2. Hi GF,

              I wish I had said that FIRST. I could have copyrighted it as the name of a book or something, lol.

      2. Нет, но возможно ли, что вы русский тролль, и не очень хороший?

      3. I read about how they think all the climate science jobs will be cut now.

        Really? You do realize that 175 countries signed on to the Paris Agreement. Do you think that all the scientists in all those countries are faking the data and are concerned their jobs will be cut because of Trump?!

      4. Some of the stations have small spikes last year, before Trump. And Guy was talking about the issue years ago. According to Guy, the data on methane fits to an exponential curve going back to the late 1700’s if not further.

    3. These measurements are still preliminary – they get vetted and verified. A lot of the rare, high outliers will get discounted. I read somewhere that a single cargo vessel exhaust can make a big bias if it passes at the right moment and the weather conditions are favourable. What struck me was the concentration of points compared to other years, plus that the effect seems to be seen for CH4 and CO2, and at various different sites around the Arctic. There may also be some confirmation bias on my part as melting permafrost and loss of ice caps of hydrate regions should follow from the high temperature anomalies seen over the last couple of years up there. Similarly for the recent extreme fire seasons in Canada and Siberia (where it might still be going on – doesn’t seem news of the fires there gets out very easily).

      1. Forest fire season interests me a great deal. I did wilderness fire for 9 seasons back in the 90’s. Thrilling stuff. This link below has a photo showing forest fires in eastern Russia/china area. I feel that the fire season is gonna be a big factor in liberating tundra and Arctic region carbon to the atmosphere.

        http://arctic-news.blogspot.ca/2017/04/gulf-stream-is-heating-up.html?m=1

        And one more on a story

        http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/others/news/n0674-wildfires-rage-in-siberia-and-russian-far-east/

        1. “I feel that the fire season is gonna be a big factor in liberating carbon to the atmosphere.”

          I agree having seen Arctic and Sub-arctic fires (from planes). They seem to be getting more common and larger with time and some that become established in peat beds burn right through the winters. They’re almost impossible to put out (in the tundra) and I’d guess they’re just left to smolder away.

        2. Further more
          “After a 10,000-year absence, wildfires have returned to the Arctic tundra, and a new study shows that their impact could extend far beyond the areas blackened by flames.”

          https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110727131415.htm

          “The 2007 fire was probably the first for that area in 6,500 years, according to scientific evidence examined later, Higuera said. But the wait for the next big burn won’t be nearly as long, according to the evidence gathered in the study.”

          https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/science/2016/05/30/warming-fires-warming-fires-how-tundra-wildfires-could-create-an-unstoppable-cycle/

          Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests

          http://www.pnas.org/content/113/42/11770.abstract

          Once those Arctic/sub Arctic peat beds get burning the only thing that puts them out is Mother Nature. The wildfire season in the northern hemisphere is increasingly coming closer to 12 months a year.

          1. Hi Doug, Survivalist,
            I don’t have much in the way of forestry credits on my transcripts, but I have a couple of basic courses, and I have read extensively about various forest types and so forth.

            The basics of fire control ARE generally covered in introductory applied forestry courses, which are the ones ag students usually take, if they so desire, as electives.

            You are dead on about it being extremely tough to impossible to put out a large fire in a remote location burning into and below ground and the peat like organic layer in tundra is apt to be pretty thick. Any place there’s a hump in the ground, and the peat is more or less above the standing water ( summer time ) on top of the permafrost, putting out the fire pretty much requires digging up and wetting the peat, and moving men and machinery to such a fire is prohibitively expensive.

            And even wet peat is actually a pretty good insulator, and when it freezes up in the winter, this property tends to allow the fire to keep on smoldering, rather than expiring, as might be expected, once it’s covered with snow and only a very little oxygen can reach the fire.

            We are passing tipping points at an accelerating rate, which in turn means that MORE tipping points will be passed. For instance the smoke from a long term fire will drop enough soot on snow to substantially increase the melt rate……

            It’s hard to say how many positive feed backs will come into play over the next few decades. If it gets warm enough in the far north for any sort of annual grass to invade large areas, the green in the summer and the brown in the fall and spring, before and after snow cover, will result in a substantial increase in captured solar energy……..

            Grasses can sometimes spread at astounding rates, with the seed being carried in the digestive tracts and on the feet and feathers of birds, and sometimes in the manure of larger animals that cover large territories or may even be migrating.

            The spread of cold hardy trees is already well documented. I’m out of the loop when it comes to the journals these days, so I mostly rely on news feeds and environmentally oriented web sites to keep up. So far I haven’t seen much on the northward spread of grasses, but I expect too, before much longer.

            1. That Earth will adapt to some extent, kind of a la Daisyworld, is naturally to be expected, with three main questions being, how, how much and how fast?
              A great thought-experiment in some sense in this regard is the idea of terraforming another planet like Mars.
              Apparently, you can throw the models quite quickly into new equilibriums, maybe sort of like as if you were using a clicky ratchet jack or worse, rather than a smoother electric-pump hydraulic one. IOW perhaps, sometimes Daisyworld gets overwhelmed in an initially-smooth transition and something clicks, snaps, or breaks.
              And then there goes the neighborhood and your weekend as you’re called in to work yet again to drag yet another asteroid from the asteroid belt to smash it into the planet to get the gravity ‘just right’.
              But at least you get overtime pay.

      2. Thanks George, I’m freaking out a little less. But even if some of the outliers get discounted the trends seem to be turning up in lots of places. Some of this may also be from sea level rise – flooding releases a lot of methane when land based vegetation drowns.

    4. Release of Arctic Methane “May Be Apocalyptic,” Study Warns

      http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39957-release-of-arctic-methane-may-be-apocalyptic-study-warns

      It appears that the thinnest ice, and that which likely to melt this season, is the ice closest to Eurasia and over the Chukchi Shelf, the Siberian Shelf, the Laptev Shelf and the Kara Shelf. Perhaps the geographic North Pole will have sailing conditions this summer. The last of arctic ice will likely be that closest to the Canadian archipelago.

      http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/polarportal/sea/CICE_map_thick_LA_EN_20170408.png

  12. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/08/business/china-trade-solar-panels.html?_r=0

    Everything below this paragraph is from the article. I will come back with some remarks of my own later, there’s company at the door.

    The story of China’s rise in solar panels illustrates the profound difficulties the country presents to Mr. Trump, or to any American president. Its size and fast-moving economy give it the ability to redefine industries almost on a dime. Its government-led pursuit of dominance in crucial industries presents a direct challenge to countries where leaders generally leave business decisions to the businesses themselves.

    Already, China is the world’s largest maker and buyer of steel, cars and smartphones. While it does not necessarily dominate those industries, its government ministries are moving to replicate that success with robots, chips and software — just as in solar.

    But economists and business groups warn that China’s industrial ambitions have entered a new, far-reaching phase. With its deep government pockets, growing technical sophistication and a comprehensive plan to free itself from dependence on foreign companies, China aims to become dominant in industries of the future like renewable energy, big data and self-driving cars.

    If successful, Made in China 2025 would represent a fundamental shift in how China deals with the world. Initially, most of the industries that moved to China, such as shoe and clothing production, were already leaving the United States anyway. Heavy industries such as steel followed. While the shift was profound — some economists estimate that up to 2.4 million American jobs were lost to China from 1999 to 2011, though others dispute that analysis — China has struggled in some areas like autos to create viable global competitors.

  13. The creator of the first lithium-ion battery has just released a new battery cell that could mark the next stage of battery development, offering a huge boost for the electric car industry and beyond.

    The solid-state cells that John Goodenough and his team have developed use glass electrolytes instead of liquid electrolytes like the lithium-ion batteries currently use. This means they are incombustible, overcoming one serious problem with other lithium-ion batteries: the so-called dendrites that appear when a battery is being charged too quickly, causing a short circuit and killing the battery.

    And that’s just the start. According to the researchers, their battery has at least three times the energy density of other lithium-ion batteries, it has a longer life cycle (a minimum of 1,200 charge-discharge cycles), and it charges more quickly – in minutes instead of hours. On top of all of this, the low-cost battery—yes, it’s cheap—can work in both subzero temperatures (-20 degrees Celsius) and major heat (60 degrees Celsius).

    http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/Is-The-Latest-Lithium-Battery-Too-Good-To-Be-True.html

    Report: Hyundai developing solid-state EV batteries itself

    Solid-state rechargeable batteries are drawing significant attention due to their increased energy density (partially enabled by the safe use of Li metal anodes), safety and reliability. Solid-state electrolytes are superior to liquid electrolytes in various aspects including dendrite formation on the anode, flammability, and leakage.

    Replacing the organic liquid electrolyte with a nonflammable and more reliable inorganic solid electrolyte (SE) simplifies battery design while improving safety and durability of the system. This also allows the use of large-capacity electrode materials—sulfur positive electrode paired with a lithium metal negative electrode, for example, which are difficult to employ in conventional liquid electrolyte batteries.

    The all-solid-state battery also offers improved packaging efficiency, as the cell design can allow in-series stacking and bi-polar structures. High energy densities can be achieved by reducing the dead space between single cells.

    http://www.greencarcongress.com/2017/04/20170408-hyundai.html

    1. Thanks for the battery updates HB. It seems like we are just one breakthrough away, in either price or performance, from enabling the EV industry to really achieve a dominant position around the world.

  14. It’s hectic for an old guy on the farm this time of year, even after retiring, and I’m not keeping up with my political reading as well as usual.

    This link outlines at least most of what is known for sure about Trump’s Russian affairs. If any body takes up defending Trump here in this forum, I will be quoting it in part to show what the real score is, what sort of guy he really is. It’s a thousand times worse than the average Trumpster realizes, but in a forum such as this one, there are plenty of others ready to spill the rotten beans, lol, saving me the trouble.

    http://www.salon.com/2017/04/09/donald-trumps-russia-scandal-what-you-need-to-know-and-what-you-should-avoid/

    But for the moment, I am just going to ask this question. Did SALON miss anything important that is known as of today ? I fully intend to copy and distribute all the Trump news I run across, and don’t want to get too far behind.

      1. Perhaps, but I’d still be very cautious about ‘mediation’, even our own senses, interpretations and communications. (How does our ‘reality’ get filtered?)
        I mean, if the so-called government has found that the general population has become a little more savvy about media, how about having a president who is outwardly antagonistic about some of it while embracing other facets, like Twitter? (My ‘fink link’, by the way, had a bit about USAID apparently getting caught supporting some sort of Cuban ‘Twitter’.)
        As you likely know, some of the, perhaps crucial, battlegrounds on which ‘government wars’ are waged are the media.

        “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.” ~ Joseph Goebbels
        “Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.” ~ Noam Chomsky

        Manufacturing Consent
        (a documentary)

        Scratching The Surface
        “Strapped to the media, a machine to fear…”

  15. I have long maintained that the old cultural and political establishment is a dead man walking, given time, because the demographic and cultural trends are all HUGELY in favor of the leftish liberalish faction, meaning in essence the Democrats . The Boomers are already dying off at a pretty fair clip. I can think of thirty or forty people I have known casually, as coworkers, or local businessmen etc , who died in their fifties or sixties. I knew at least five or six of them as friends or neighbors or family. The dozens of people I used to know a few years ago in their late seventies and eighties are almost all gone now. I see kids doing jobs every day that scare me, for instance a kid I once knew as a ten year old girl who is now an MD. She’s only thirty or so , and it scares the hell out of me to think I might be depending on a CHILD her age to keep me alive, lol.

    This article contains a lot of highly relevant information about the changes taking place in the Old South in particular, but these same changes are also happening all over the country, except where the old establishment is already history.

    The young D guy has a real shot at winning the seat, but not as good as some people think, since they have not thought about the fact that the R voters won’t come together until about fifteen R candidates drop out of the race.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/georgia-democrats-trump-furious-campaign-rattles-republicans-111235842.html

    1. The country is getting older- and thus more conservative.
      Also, the current generation of young people have recently voted more conservatively than the boomer generation did at that age.
      Have nots (those without opportunity or wherewithall to participate in vibrant sectors of the economy) are growing in numbers, and they will vote with whichever party appeals to their survival gut, that particular year.
      Propaganda, fake news, indoctrination, sound bites, ‘cliff note’ versions of complex issues, theocratic thinking, and partisanship are all influences which threaten to swamp intelligent voting, and thus any chance of a successful democracy, policy making, and planning.

  16. GULF STREAM IS HEATING UP (El Niño 2017 is strengthening. On March 24, temperatures in Africa were as high as 50.6°C.)

    “Over the next half year, increasingly warm waters will be carried by the Gulf Stream from the coast of North America to the Arctic Ocean. As this warmer water arrives in the Arctic Ocean, there will no longer be a large buffer of sea ice there to consume the heat, as was common for the past thousands of years and longer. Additionally, warmer water looks set to arrive in an Arctic Ocean that will be heated up like we’ve never seen before, as so much of the sunlight reaching the surface of the Arctic Ocean doesn’t get reflected back into space anymore and as temperatures again look set to reach record highs in the Arctic during the northern summer.

    “Where can all this extra heat go? Sea ice will start sealing off much of the surface of the Arctic Ocean by the end of September 2017, making it hard for more heat to escape the Arctic Ocean by entering the atmosphere. The extremely dangerous situation is that it looks like much of the extra heat will instead reach sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean that contain huge amounts of methane in currently still frozen hydrates.”

    http://arctic-news.blogspot.ca/

    1. As of three years ago CERES satellite data showed an increase of 10 watts/m2 absorbed solar radiation over the whole Arctic Ocean and 50 watts/m2 increase over the Beaufort Sea. Data was accumulated over a 15 year period.

      I wonder about the present and near future values.

  17. ‘Hello, you have reached the navy. To bomb Syria press 1. To bomb Iraq press 2. To invade the Middle East, press 3’.

    1. “To increase the brutality, please press the pound (#) key…
      To speak with an international arms representative, please stay on the line…
      Please note that your call may be monitored for ‘quality assurance’…”

      Best of On Hold Music

  18. ‘Hello, you have reached the navy. To continue in English press 1, Para español, marque dos! To bomb Syria press 3. To bomb Iraq press 4. To invade the Middle East, press 5’.

  19. HUGE PERMAFROST THAW CAN BE LIMITED BY AMBITIOUS CLIMATE TARGETS

    “Nearly four million square kilometers of frozen soil — an area larger than India — could be lost for every additional degree of global warming experienced, warn scientists. Global warming will thaw about 20% more permafrost than previously thought, they add – potentially releasing significant amounts of greenhouse gases into the Earth’s atmosphere. But these investigators also suggest that the huge permafrost losses could be averted if ambitious global climate targets are met.”

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170410124005.htm

    1. But they keep forgetting that there are dozens of positive feedbacks. They seem to block out the fact that as we decarbonize we will get at least a 1C rise from loss of aerosols.
      Also seem to ignore that ambitious decarbonization is not likely to happen. Every year we waited to act meant that more stress (physical and economic) happened from climate change and material (population) overshoot. The global battle for water, food and other resources will be too preoccupying for a major concerted effort to decarbonize industry and transport. That will happen, but not in a planned or fast way. We certainly will not be decarbonizing agriculture and ranching anytime soon (nature will do that for us).

      1. It’s all built into the models Fish, not to worry. Besides, once the tundra fires really get going the smoke will blot out the sun and cool everything down up there.

        1. Hi Doug and Gone fishing,

          It is a good thing you guys know more than all those climate scientists. 🙂

          Everything is not included in the models, but aerosols and albedo, and sea ice are.
          The carbon cycle does indeed need work, as does our understanding of how clouds and aerosol cloud interactions will affect things.

          There is much that is not understood, anybody’s claim that we know what will happen is nothing more than an assertion without proof.

        2. Sure, burning the northern forests and tundra won’t put a large CO2 injection into the atmosphere . But as you say, the models cover it and are always right. I wish those pesky scientists would pay attention to the models and stop making all these claims about non-linear global warming. Don’t they know that it’s all sewn up and no further knowledge is necessary. The LED’s and EV’s will save the planetary ecosystem. That’s all we need to know. Oh yeah, best to keep recycling but make sure you buy a lot of stuff or the economy will crash and we won’t be able to afford all that energy we are saving.

          sarc off

          1. Hi GF,

            We’re on the same page when it comes to believing that warming is likely to be faster and greater than the climate models indicate, but Dennis might be right. I’m just naturally a pessimist when it comes to believing in non linear changes happening more often than expected, and the consequences thereof being worse than expected.

            Here’s a highly relevant link discussing the aerosol question in some detail.

            http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/artificial-weather-revealed-post-9-11-flight-groundings

            Personally I don’t keep up with the actual climate literature, but rely on reporting of the literature by publications I rate as respectable, such as the NYT, Washington Post , The Atlantic, etc.

            I take it that you do follow the literature , and that in your opinion at least, that cleaning up the atmosphere WILL result in an accelerated warming trend.

            Kilgore Trout sez maybe so.

            1. I take it that you do follow the literature , and that in your opinion at least, that cleaning up the atmosphere WILL result in an accelerated warming trend.

              I think the physics is pretty clear, no pun intended, that if we remove some of the causes of global dimming, i.e. particulates then more solar energy will be absorbed by land and seas and that is bound to result in more trapped infra red energy due to greenhouse gases, ergo greater warming.

              But I also think that the point Doug and GF keep trying to make is that we may have already reached a point where it isn’t the straightforward atmospheric physics of greenhouse gases, as presented in any of the current climate models, that are going to be the major drivers of climate change going forward. We seem to be entering uncharted territory with all the potential feedbacks, some known and many possibly still unknown.

              It is these feedbacks which are not well represented in any climate models that may drive us past tipping points putting us into more dire circumstances than even the worst case IPCC scenarios even if we somehow manage to keep actual CO2 emissions at relatively low levels.

              Survivalist posted this youtube video upthread and if you haven’t seen it, I’m sure with your background in Ag science and farming you would be able to quickly grasp the kinds of tipping points that could prove catastrophic on a relatively short time frame to a couple billion people by wiping out their capability for food production.

              https://youtu.be/YToMoNPwTFc
              Climate Change and Global Food Security: Prof David Battisti

            2. The youtube presentation is a good summary of the global ag and food prospects in a warming scenario. Important viewing. None of it surprising to me, since I have studied the global ag system for decades (and have a degree in Agronomy), but for those who don’t know much about crops and climate- good introduction to the challenges.

            3. The agriculture feedback sounds quite negative. High variability of crops is not a viable system to run a high level civilization.

    1. Pipelineistan

      As the world shifts to using more natural gas the pipeline real estate will become more valuable. The ‘owners’ of Syria will be billionaires as a result of transfer fees on natural gas to Europe.

  20. Demand Destruction

    Warning to Crooks: New Ford Cop Car May Be Green, But It’s Fast

    by Keith Naughton, Bloomberg, April 10, 2017

    Pursuit-rated Police Responder cuts fuel consumption by half

    The cruiser will average 38 miles per gallon in combined city and highway driving, more than twice what the current Police Interceptor model gets with a 3.7-liter V-6 engine. Ford calculates fuel savings of $3,877 per car annually. For big-city police forces that can have more than 1,000 cruisers in their fleet, that can translate to yearly savings approaching $4 million.

    Personally, this should go in the petroleum thread, but it seems that thread is largely a “supply” thread. This side of the blog I guess is more the “demand” thread.

    1. Trumpster sez even redneck ‘publican polerticins likes to save money on gas, cause it leaves more for’em to steal or steer to buddies they like better than the local gasoline wholesalers.
      But the price of this super duper cop car is apparently high nuf nobody even wants to discuss it,but a city patrol car driven out of city motor pool can really go thru some gas, sixty gallons plus a week at least, maybe a hundred in some cities.

      If it turns out to be reliable, and it lasts five years, which is a long time for an around the clock around the calendar for city cop car, it’ll be worth it to pay as much as 20 thousand or so extra for the hybrid option.

      One real opportunity to save a substantial amount of tax money would be for a state to standardize to the extent possible on a particular make and model cop car, and set up a factory type shop to go over the cars when they start giving trouble. It would be a hell of a lot cheaper than buying new. Ninety percent of every car outlasts the drive train, except in cases of rust, and a mechanic who does the same job over and over again gets to be extremely good and fast at it. A two man team working on the same make and model all the time, with the right tools, can install a new remanufactured or brand new engine and transmission, new front struts and brakes, etc, in less than a day. One guy who is competent but who hasn’t done the same exact job a few times is going to take a week at least, on average.

      Specialization sucks when it comes to resilience, but is shines when it comes to efficiency.

  21. In its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that US crude oil production, which averaged an estimated 8.9 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2016, will average 9.2 million b/d in 2017 and 9.9 million b/d in 2018. That level is higher than originally forecast, exceeding the previous record level of 9.6 million barrels per day reached in 1970, said EIA Acting Administrator Howard Gruenspecht.

    For summer 2017, EIA forecasts motor gasoline consumption to average 9.5 million barrels per day (b/d), up about 20,000 b/d (0.3%) compared with last summer, which was a record high. Highway travel is forecast to be 1.4% higher than the level last summer. The effect of the increase in highway travel is expected to be partially offset by a 1.2% increase in fleet-wide vehicle fuel efficiency.

    http://www.greencarcongress.com/2017/04/20170411-eia.html#comments

  22. California now has enough solar power infrastructure in place that it can supply fifty percent of demand midday under favorable weather conditions, meaning that there’s so much solar power available that some of it is necessarily curtailed, shut off, at times.

    It’s certainly possible to convert this juice into heat and store it in extra large domestic hot water heaters, and to use it to chill or freeze water for later use in hvac systems. So here’s the question.

    How much more wind and solar capacity will have to be put in place to make it economic for homeowners and the owners of hotels,office buildings, etc, to invest in additional thermal storage capacity?

    How often will dirt cheap wind and solar electricity have to be available to super charge ( pun intended!) home owner and small business demand for on site battery storage ?

    Right now the real , immediate monetary incentive (other than tax and subsidy related ) to own some battery storage seems to be that you can charge up at ordinary rates, night time or mid morning for instance, and then discharge during evening and afternoon hours when demand is peaking and much higher rates are in effect.

    If public policy evolves toward selling juice for charging at extremely low rates when the wind and solar farms are really cranking, this might have enough of a positive effect on the cost of owning batteries to make a real difference in the pay back time.

    Other folks mileage may vary, but it’s my opinion that the single variable that will have the MOST to do with people being willing to purchase battery storage systems for their homes and businesses will be the pay back time. If the sales person can show the customer he’s free and clear and it’s gravy all the way after say four or five years, he can just hand the customer a pen, he will sign. Ten years, now that’s a different ballgame altogether.

    There’s a tipping point involved , and while the biggest single variable is almost for sure the actual installed cost of a battery system, the cost of charging and the savings involved by discharging at times when demand is peaking and time of use rates are in effect may turn out to be almost as important as the cost of the battery system itself, especially for customers who don’t have the option of installing their own pv system.

    Any links involving estimates of when this tipping point will actually be reached will be greatly appreciated.

    1. While the Calif renewables output is considerable, many days supplying about 25% of consumption, the retail cost of electricity is very high- roughly 20-25 cents/kwh.
      This has not been trending down at all over the years.
      There is increasing incentive for utility scale producers to store inexpensive energy at peak production (10-3p), and then sell it retail later in the day at peak demand (3-8pm).
      There is much less of an economic gain for the retail user, unless they have their own production to store. In Calif, the home price has always been high, lots small, and thus most people don’t have great solar capture square footage. It is crazy to see how over the years properties with great solar potential have been developed with insolation as the last thing in mind. Its like paving prime farmland.
      My guess is that when solar production doubles in Calif- then utility scale storage will become a big deal. For homeowners- mostly something for the wealthy to install. They tend to have the panels, and the money to invest in storage.
      Here is the link to the very informative Calif electric daily prod and demand site-
      http://www.caiso.com/Pages/TodaysOutlook.aspx

      1. Thanks, Hickory

        Doubling solar output in California will take a while. The higher the cost of electricity, the greater the incentive to store it, and in California, where so many people enjoy high incomes…….

        A homeowner or landlord or business owner with money doesn’t really have to do anything more than run the numbers, make the decision, and call some contractors for estimates. If the payback is definitely in the bag, and the return on the money, in the form of a reduced utility bill is comparable to or hopefully slightly better than other safe investments, the decision will be made to go with storage.

        People who are short of money find it necessary to pass up excellent potential investments, simply because they can’t afford the upfront costs. It’s quite common to see poor people drive to a laundromat, and pay thru the nose to wash and dry their clothing, because they either can’t afford a washer and dryer, or because they can’t afford to move to an apartment with the necessary plumbing and electrical connections.

        It’s good public policy to require landlords to install washer and dryer connections when doing any extensive remodeling work, and to provide money to utilities to help customers with these upgrades, because they are in the public interest.

        A person who is short of money will buy the smallest cheapest replacement water heater he can get, but if he gets a check or coupon from his utility to cover the additional cost of a larger, better insulated, longer lasting model, he will up gladly do so, with everybody coming out ahead.

        Obviously enough I strongly support subsidizing the electric car industry, the small scale solar industry, and so on, but one thing that really bothers me about these subsidies is that they are granted in such a way that unless you’re at least more than halfway up the economic ladder, you’re sol, shit out of luck.

        Any time any body comes up with a workable or at least potentially workable idea to level the energy and environment subsidy playing field, I ‘m eager to hear it, and thanks in advance.

        Personally I don’t see any reason at all why the tax codes, federal and state, should not be written so that ANYBODY who purchases an electric car can benefit from the subsidies. A woman making only thirty thousand bucks has to pay federal and state income taxes. WHY shouldn’t she could get a tax CREDIT , instead of a tax DEDUCTION, if she buys an electric car?

        Personally I live quite well, but I have very little in the way of actual taxable so I can’t take advantage of such tax credits, unless I were to sell some property. I’m very reluctant to do that, and won’t, unless I get into a bind and actually need the money.

        The stock market has been going up faster than real estate, true enough, but I’m convinced it’s more froth and bubble than real value, and they ain’t making any more farmland, lol.

        Ya can print money, and loan it into existence, and people can and do go nuts thinking they’re going to get rich in the stock market, and it works…….. until it doesn’t. I’m thinking the stock market is due for a heart attack within the easily foreseeable future.

        And you mentioned paving over good farmland yourself………. laughing out loud.

        I’m thinking that so long as business as usual lasts, damnyankees with tons of money are going to continue to invade my little corner of the world, like a plague, unless you are in the notion of selling out. They’ll pay a hundred thousand bucks for an essentially worthless little piece of hillside, so long as it has a view.

        And if the economy turns sour, they’ll still be coming, because they can sell out up north, even in a buyer’s market, and come here and live better for less, with fewer problems by a mile.

        Of course THEIR solution, moving here, is fast turning into whole new set of problems for us local folks , higher taxes, more traffic, less nature, more stores and subdivisions, excepting the locals who sell out.

        Hell, I just found out yesterday I have two new neighbors who are refugees from FLORIDA. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Both these families fled the Northeast some years ago.

        1. Regarding subsidies, I have read that Solar is much cheaper to produce at large scale installations, rather than small rooftop installations.
          I would rather see economic incentives/subsidies go to the most cost-effective installation so that the public money gets the biggest bang for the buck, rather than just to the homeowners with the wherewithall to take advantage of it.
          We should have big coop installations where people can buy production lots, like a bond. Solar Bond. And if you move, the ownership of that bond goes with you. And you can gift it to relatives. And you don’t have to cut down the trees shading your roof, or re-route your plumbing and HVAC roof vents.
          There are large stretches of available land in Calif that are- far from cities and jobs, relatively low value, are very sunny, and very dry- chaparral or sparse grassland, far from irrigation water or have poor soil, and are fairly poor grazing land. That is where incentives for production should be directed. The more important thing is getting good transmission lines to these favored but remote locations.

          Regarding yankees- Just remember that we are all immigrants. You and the ‘yankees’ are living on Cherokee land.

        2. The EV tax benefit IS a tax credit. The problem is that it’s not “refundable”, so that you can’t get cash if you don’t have sufficient income.

          But…any new car buyer that can qualify for a loan can qualify for a lease, right? A lease allows you to take advantage of the credit: the dealer still owns the car and gets the value of the credit, which is built into the structure of the lease.

          So, low income new car buyers can get the tax credit.

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