379 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, Feb 2, 2018”

  1. Global water scarcity is perhaps a greater threat to humanity than anything else. The problem with water unlike oil is there is no substitute and also unlike oil and gas it is far too expensive to move around the world in tankers.

    Globally we used 4.3 billion tonnes of oil last year and transporting oil around the world only adds a few percent to it’s cost. Also oil can be substituted for natural gas and electricity in transportation.

    Water consumption is on a scale far beyond oil consumption, globally we consume twice as much water in a day as we consume oil in a year.

    http://everylittledrop.com.au/knowledge-center/water-consumption-around-the-world/

    In many countries farmers and industries use ground water for free, many of these sources will soon be gone. Many westerners take eating rice and other imported foods for granted, but some day soon we will experience a world where exports of certain foods are banned in order to feed the local populations.

    http://www.wri.org/blog/2017/08/7-reasons-were-facing-global-water-crisis

    The green revolution is as much the product of industrial draining of ancient aquifers as it is the use of pesticides.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/08/vanishing-midwest-ogallala-aquifer-drought/

    Once the water is gone, importation especially in a post peak oil world will not be an option.

    1. Does anyone have good data on the various costs (lighting, labor, construction, etc) of greenhouses?

      They seem to allow 100% recycling of water, and much higher production per hectare. So…does anyone know anything specific and quantitative about the costs, relative to open air farming?

      1. A greenhouse needs ventilation or the temperature will soar, killing plants, and humidity will be 100% – bad for crops, good for disease. For 100% water recovery you would need artificial ventilation and, in sunny places such as CA, A/C. Even in the UK, open roof vents and door are essential on many days.

        NAOM

        1. So, I wonder how water consumption in a UK greenhouse compares to conventional farming? Just a rough approximate estimate: 5%? Or closer to 25%, or 50%?

            1. Fascinating.

              So, a greenhouse produces 12x as much food per unit of land, and uses about 1/12 as much water. But, it uses 82x as much energy.

              That indicates a tradeoff between water and energy. You save 230 liters per kilo of lettuce, by using about 24 kWhs of energy. That’s .1kWh per liter.

              If water is your only concern, you’d be better off with desalination, which only uses about .01kWh per liter.

            2. If they reduced their yield somewhat they could lower their energy use dramatically and still be way ahead on production and water use. They set it up in a highly stressed environment and forced 365 day production through energy use. Cut it back to 3/4 of the year and energy use would drop dramatically. Not sure why they used so much lighting power (main power use) in a place that gets a lot of sunlight. Seems like a forced experiment instead of a practical one.

            3. I think the problem is that we’re not seeing all of their costs, especially the fixed costs of capital expense and basic operating expense.

              It probably makes sense to leverage those investments by increasing production through extra lighting, even at the cost of disproportionate energy cost increases.

            4. If they have a high value crop then spending the extra money for energy makes sense economically.
              It’s funny though, around here hothouse tomatoes in the winter go for about the same price as local field grown tomatoes in the summer. Not sure how that works.

      2. Hi Nick,

        A lot of us ag guys congregated in one particular dorm back in the Dark Ages, which made it very likely that you could join into a lively discussion about the future of the art and science of agriculture any evening in a commons area.

        Some of us believed we would be doing a lot of farming indoors by now. I was open to the idea myself, because I was a cornucopian at that time, in terms of believing that technology would continue to provide us with cheaper glass, steel and aluminum, plus more efficient construction techniques as well.

        But we weren’t engineers, and we didn’t really understand the problems involved in scaling up greenhouses to the sizes needed to run the necessary machinery indoors. We just assumed the engineers would make it possible to build such gigantic greenhouses.

        Half a century later, it’s still impossible to produce any staple food in a greenhouse in competition with ordinary growers working outside. ( Staples almost by definition can be easily stored and shipped. Consider bananas, which can’t be stored , but they do last long enough to be shipped to market easily. Bananas are a true staple food only in the areas where they are produced. )

        But it’s possible that a greenhouse revolution will come to pass, because with ever more people, and ever less good land and ever less reliable weather, the cost of growing staple foods conventionally may rise to the point that inside production is a viable option in some places, maybe a LOT of places.

        Steel, aluminum, and glass are still expensive, and will be ever more expensive from here on out, considering the depletion of ores and fossil fuels and so forth, but on the other hand, we now have an incredible array of awesome new and at least potentially affordable technology available to RUN greenhouses, such as cheap electronic controls and automated or robotic equipment capable of doing almost all the work.

        Depending on the “make an ass out of u and me” assumptions you start with, indoor production of some staple foods might happen in some places.

        It works already for non staple tomatoes ( and a few other non staple crops) because the high cost of green house production is sufficiently offset by the cost of shipping and storing the crop, and because of seasonal shortages that result in high prices during the off season.

        Let’s say you live in a rich country such as the UK, which is short of agricultural land, and you’re collectively worried about the costs and risks associated with importing a large portion of your food from now until ………..

        If you were to go at it on the grand scale, it’s possible that producing some staple foods indoors will turn out to be a viable option. A military establishment large enough to guarantee access to imported food ain’t exactly cheap. Exporting enough stuff to pay for imported food may turn out to be a real problem in a world short of food but well supplied with cheap labor to make the junk that fills up stores and driveways these days.

        I can visualize the UK having some super sized greenhouse operations up and running within the next few decades and producing SOME staple foods in them. It won’t work on the nickel and dime scale though, any more than renewable energy will save us using it on the nickel and dime scale. Lowering the cost of doing it will depend more on scaling up than any other factor.

        It won’t just be greenhouse farmers that want robots and automated machinery, everybody will be wanting these tools, and I assume robots will be cheaper every year . Robots and or automation are cheap already, compared to human labor, in countless applications.

        A hell of a lot of the expense associated with going indoors can at least potentially be offset by the simply ENORMOUS savings that are possible by way of using less water, less fertilizer, fewer or even no pesticides, avoiding lost production due to bad weather, and losses associated with shipping, storage, and marketing over long distances.

        Just going indoors is enough to break the life cycle of most and potentially all of the major insect pests. If a given insect CAN reproduce in a greenhouse environment, once you have wiped it out once, you can usually KEEP it out, indefinitely, if you are a good enough manager with well constructed and well maintained greenhouse.

        Various blights and rots will be problems, but these are problems that are manageable, and potentially more easily and more cheaply controlled in a greenhouse than outdoors.

        Waste heat is available in staggering amounts, if we organize things so that super sized greenhouses can be located close to heavy industries. Sewage can potentially be treated in large part right INSIDE greenhouses, enabling us to recover most of the vast quantities of NPK ( the big three) and trace elements that currently wind up as water pollutants.

        The cost of producing nitrogen is always going to be determined by the cost of energy more than by any other factor, and as energy gets to be more expensive………..

        There AREN’T any substitutes for P and K, and there never will be, period.

        Depletion is a hell of a problem that eventually must be dealt with, because the cost of producing these two will obviously go up as these resources deplete, as is the case with steel, coal, aluminum, etc. Recycling will be more and more attractive as time passes. It’s not the total quantity in the world, there’s a million times more iron and aluminum than we will ever use, ditto P and K. It’s the quantity that is easily accessible and affordable that counts.

        The water consumption per unit of production in a green house can be and usually is only a very minor fraction of the quantity needed per unit of conventional production, because most of it can be recycled right inside.

        I’m currently helping one of my cousins build a small ( about five thousand square feet) but state of the art greenhouse that will incorporate the production of tilapia with the water used for the fish being circulated thru the growth medium so the plants can suck up the nutrients excreted by the fish. There won’t BE any waste water, lol. There won’t be any pollution , and there won’t be any pests to amount to anything, because if he has an infestation, he can wipe it out in such a small space, and by keeping the screens in good order, and the doors SHUT, pests won’t get in very often.

        If he gets the prices and production he expects, he will make some money, pretty decent money actually, in terms return on his investment, assuming he pays himself an arbitrary wage of twenty bucks an hour. Twenty bucks is decent money in this area, especially considering he won’t have any expenses he can’t write off, such as commuting to a wage or salary JOB working for the Man, and that he won’t have to kiss any ass excepting those belonging to his customers. If he scales up later, he can probably net a hundred k Yankee with only one or two helpers, assuming he can continue to get today’s prices for fresh organic farm raised fish and herbs.

        But he’s not going to be selling potatoes and grain, lol.

        Any staple, other than the fish, appears to be economically impossible for now, given today’s market prices, at least in this area.

        Consider however that we will likely have perennial grain sooner or later. It will then be possible to run small simple robots on permanent tracks ( simple on tracks will be the cheapest option, probably) to apply fertilizers, plant as necessary, and harvest the crop. Such a farmer would still need a truck, but no tractor or combine. Roof supports can be close together, no need for wide open spaces, cutting the expense of the framing members that hold the roof up by as much as eighty to ninety percent.

        Plowing and cultivation can be eliminated almost entirely. Pesticide applications can potentially go to zero, ditto herbicide usage. Most of us farmers tend to think of fungicides as a separate class from pesticides. We would likely still need fungicides and other chemicals to control blights and rots, but maybe not in any greater quantity than we use them already per unit of production.

        With integrated management at the city level, sewage could be kept clean enough to use it directly, with very minimal processing, as fertilizer. The biggest problem would be making sure very little, other than number one and number two, go down the drains and into the sewers, because separating contaminants you don’t want in your irrigation slurry is either impossible using current tech, or prohibitively expensive.

        Food waste could be kept in a separate garbage stream, and fed to poultry, or fish, with the production of the poultry or fish, (pigs or rabbits anyone ?) integrated with greenhouse management. Chicken litter is one of the very best fertilizers available, WHEN it’s available, lol.

        The biggest single problem might turn out to be the need for artificial lighting to support around the clock and around the calendar production, so as to make the best use of the investment.

        I can’t see any technical reason why, with some research, that it won’t be possible to use any surplus wind and solar juice to supercharge the lights anytime it’s available, but the lights MUST stay on at least a certain number of hours per day. Maybe one of the schemes to import solar electricity from the Mediterranean area will succeed , or maybe a new generation of nukes that are safer and cheaper will be available.

        I forgot to mention all the near free heat that would be available in a city with a subway system if you simply feed the subway exhaust air into the greenhouse complex. It would already be CO2 enriched to some extent, lol.

        A greenhouse built to cover the entire roof of a high rise building wouldn’t likely need any heat at all, other than what could be salvaged from the building’s ventilation system, if it were designed with that in mind.

        I know of at least a couple of experimental greenhouses that have been built using a lot of duct work buried in the ground right under the greenhouse, with blowers installed for forced circulation. They stay warm enough to work ok even in freezing cold weather without any other source of heat except that from the earth itself, but the excavation and the pipe together cost a hell of a lot.

        There’s no need to give up just yet, lol.

        I banged this out about as fast as I can type, so some of it may be less than clear. I should have said high rise residential building for instance. Such buildings generally generate excess heat even in fairly cold weather due to the people and appliances and lights and so forth inside them.

        1. To pick a small nit. Bananas have been transported, by sea, from the Caribbean to the UK for many, many decades. They refrigerate well, for storage and travel, though they do not do well at very low temperatures. I remember Fyffes (www.fyffes.com) from my childhood. Check out The Banana Boat song.

          NAOM

          1. Hi NOAM,
            Right on, I usually bang out comments without reading them over very carefully. I eat a lot of bananas myself, lol, but not many people think of them as a staple food, unless they live someplace near where they grow.

            Grains and beans and such can be stored for years.

        2. Well, thanks for all that effort – interesting. If energy for lighting is the biggest barrier, I think we’re in good shape – I’d guess that we’re going to have a lot of surplus solar power.

          I wonder if your friend with the 5k greenhouse would be willing to have you share his business-case cost estimates for various inputs, and his revenue estimates?

          1. Hi Nick,

            I’ll ask him, but he doesn’t really KNOW what his costs and revenue will be.

            He’s working on the assumption that figures supplied by people in the industry and by various government agencies are realistic.

            We know to within five percent or so what the green house and associated equipment will cost when finished.

            Whether he can produce as much as estimated , and whether he will get the prices he expects are unknowns. He’s an engineering guy, with hardly any relevant experience , and this thing is well outside my own personal field of expertise, although I’m well acquainted with the basics.

            So there’s going to be a steep learning curve for the first year at least, but there’s no question he can master the art and science of greenhouse operation.

            It’s not all that complicated, and there are plenty of professional people on government payrolls who are paid to help solve any problems encountered by professional farmers.

            We’re no more two hours on the road from three fair sized to large cities so he expects to sell his production without doing any long distance marketing.

            Considering the prices upscale restaurants pay for same day fresh organic herbs and fish ( we’re five hours plus from the coast) , driving a small refrigerated van that far to make deliveries isn’t a big deal.

            I suppose I should make it clear that I am not a partner or paid consultant in this undertaking. I’m just helping with the actual construction. I’m good at that and have the necessary equipment.

            I know enough to advise him on the operational basics, and will happily do so in exchange for some fish and herbs, but he will have call on a specialist more than a few times, lol, for the first year or two. He’s good on programming and electronic control systems, so things out to work out ok.

            It will be at least a year before he knows how well this undertaking will work out.

            As far as work goes, commenting here is as much recreation as work. I have learned a great deal here and all I learn is being incorporated into a book……. hopefully I will finish it before I die of old age, lol.

            Anybody who wants to type at conversational speed should investigate the Dvorak keyboard. It’s twice as fast as qwerty , at the same level of training, as measured by practice time. Taught it to myself using a free program. It’s built into just about every PC and Mac except maybe laptops and tablets. I don’t know about what’s loaded into them from the factory.

        1. Thanks. The Dutch do seem to be doing well. Have you seen any details on the costs of their operations?

          1. About those Dutch farmers, lol

            There’s no doubt they ARE the leading edge, in some respects, and almost no doubt they will continue to be well ahead of every body else for quite some time.

            Unfortunately I don’t have access to much in the way of Dutch agricultural news, since I don’t speak the language, and what’s available in English is behind paywalls in almost every case, and I don’t have access to professional publications these days, being retired.

            Now National Geo is one of my very favorite publications and I have my own in the mailbox, lol.

            But like all other publications I know of, there’s a powerful tendency toward editorial bias, and in this case, it’s the desire to paint the Dutch as supermen, leading to an astounding case of cherry picking the data, considering NG’s rep for quality journalism.

            I will point out some key facts that were VERY CAREFULLY AVOIDED, so as to enable the authors and editors to paint such a flattering picture.

            ONE…….. there’s only one mention of chickens. Zero mention of any other poultry, zero mention of beef, pork, mutton, etc. Fish yes. The technology of producing fish in a green house tied operation is sound, but it ONLY works, in terms of money, when you can sell your greenhouse produce at VERY high prices. Without HIGH prices, the greenhouse itself is a money pit.

            Zero mention of the testicle busting capital costs involved in setting up such farming operations.

            All mention of the levels of professional expertise needed are ga ga about how great the Dutch are, without mentioning that only a VERY few countries in the world have such high educational achievement levels, and such other social and cultural capital as to make this kind of farming viable.

            The only two crops even MENTIONED which are ordinarily thought of in the industry as STAPLES are potatoes and onions, which ARE a staple in places such as India.

            Everything else mentioned is something that is either EXTREMELY expensive, on a per pound or per kilo basis, or else basically a piss poor deal in terms of feeding a hungry world. I have never yet met a farmer or ag professor who refers to CARROTS as a STAPLE food, lol.

            I’m not knocking tomatoes, or carrots, or my own beloved apples and peaches, neither of which are mentioned, lol. All these are super foods, in some respects, and such foods are ESSENTIAL in a well balanced, nutritionally optimal diet.

            But you can’t live on them, no way in hell. They’re nutritional jokes, except for micro nutrients, low in calories, and basically big fat ZERO’S in terms of fats and proteins, BOTH of which are ESSENTIAL nutrients.

            I could live a couple of years on a thousand kilos of properly selected dry grains and beans, but I would die of malnutrition in a matter of weeks on a diet consisting of the sort of stuff the Dutch sell for human consumption, excepting potatoes and some rather small quantities of fish.

            A bag of modern hybrid SEED corn typically costs fifty bucks. You can feed it to a hog, or grind it and make corn meal and tortillas with it, the same as ordinary corn, which costs less than ten percent as much. Ditto any other kind of seed, pretty much. Sure they can produce seed for sale. You won’t find the words wheat or rice, in relation to the use of them as FOOD, in this article.

            Soybeans get one quick mention, comparing soy protein production per acre to the POTENTIAL protein production per acre of insects.

            Sure the potential is there.Insects are probably going to be a NEXT BIG THING, at some point, but so far, there’s little in the way of actual evidence that farming insects is economically viable……. again EXCEPT for EXTREMELY valuable insects, such as pollinators, honey bees, bumblebees, etc. I don’t know how much they get for bumble bees and ladybugs, wholesale, but if you want some, the price they sell for HERE makes rib eye look like dry pinto beans, price wise, lol.

            Just about all the FOOD they sell costs a lot to ship and tends to go bad in a hurry. They’re in the cat bird seat in that respect, because they’re right in the heart of the richest possible seller’s market, lol, with very short transit times and distances.

            Taken all around, the article is a puff piece. It’s informative, if you like a diet of cherries, but it could have been written by a Dutch pr crew.

            I’m sure their pr people are just as competent as their farmers, world class. Both lights are on, sarc light AND laugh track light.

            Green house farming isn’t going to save our collective ass, because hardly any of us, on a world wide basis, are rich enough to make the transition from open field to enclosed production, and we aren’t going to get that rich, collectively, before the population crisis starts seriously thinning us out.

            One of my PRIMARY goals as a writer to be, publishing later under my own personal byline, with my own site and so forth, is to TELL IT LIKE IT IS, to tell BOTH sides of any story I write about.

            This site is my practice playground. I’m learning a lot from the regulars, guys like Fred, Doug, GF, and the articles published by Dennis, Ron, and so on, and I’m having a good time, and I’m getting some feed back that helps me eliminate my own blind spots.

            This determination to tell the WHOLE STORY is why I hammered away at HRC’s shortcomings, and the shortcomings of the D’s, which resulted in their throwing away an election they had in the bag otherwise……. and in allowing the R’s to take over the country over the last couple of decades, as well….. because they fucked up royally in misreading the true mood, the prevailing culture of the country. It was BACKLASH that put the R’s into power again, more than anything else.

            The D’s will continue to lose until they get their heads out of their asses in respect to political backlash, and come to understand that ordinary people, WORKING class people, are the TRUE foundation of the D party.

          2. Their operations stop dead at the German border for some reason. I’ve never heard a convincing explanation.

            I asked the chairman of the German Farmers’ Association, an old friend, over a beer just a few weeks ago, and the best answer he could come up with is land prices, which is clearly false.

            My guess is that the Dutch are better at running greenhouses than the rest of the world.

            1. “Their operations stop dead at the German border for some reason. I’ve never heard a convincing explanation.”

              As a German from Lower Saxony I made the same observation. My theory is that the Dutch farmers had a longer tradition with modern techniques, a lot of new land was gained after WW2 leading to larger farms, and they have more experience with the cultivation of flowers, a typical greenhouse product.

            2. Don’t the Dutch utilise cheap/cheapish natural gas for their greenhouse production?
              Anyhow greenhouse crops are mostly salads, staples are needed in much greater quantities and are grown in the field.

      3. Rat has tenant farmers (the Rat brothers, Herb and Bud) who set up 12,000 sq feet of greenhouses for medical marijuana on my place (Wharf Rat Ag Inc :>). I asked Herb about costs. They use high-end, low tech greenhouses, meaning they are “light dep” https://hightimes.com/grow/the-secrets-of-light-deprivation-for-greenhouses/ , but with a manual crank instead of motors. Light dep gives 2 crops/year. He said they cost $8/sq foot, but you can get ordinary GH’s for $1/ft. Costs about $2/ft for labor to set them up. County limits them to 10,000 sq.ft, not counting aisles. Mendocino Co. grow the best weed, but is not very grower-friendly. Humboldt, to the north, has 1 acre permits.

        Water source was my pond, but they are gonna drill a well because of concerns about contamination, even just from frog poop. Medical marijuana goes to test labs working in the PPB range, so no E. coli. It’s not labeled “organic”, cuz the US Dept of Ag regulates the process, and they view marijuana as illegal, so it can’t be certified by our county ag dept.
        Last year, they were pretty ( well, horrifyingly) carbon-intensive; they used a generator to run fans. I can’t remember if they had any lights. Part of the regulation process prohibits FF-powered outdoor generators, so PG&E was out here last week to plan a tie-in to the line. The plan is to eventually go solar.

    2. Water-related energy use in California also consumes approximately 20 percent of the state’s electricity, and 30 percent of the state’s non-power plant natural gas (i.e. natural gas not used to produce electricity).

      Energy is used in five stages in the water cycle:

      1. Extracting and conveying water: Extracting water from rivers and streams or pumping it from aquifers, and then conveying it over hills and into storage facilities is a highly energy intensive process. In California, the State Water Project (SWP) pumps water almost 2000 ft over the Tehachapi Mountains! The SWP is the largest single user of energy in California. It consumes an average of 5 billion kWh/yr, accounting for about 2 to 3 percent of all electricity consumed in California.

      2. Treating water: Water treatment facilities use energy to pump and process water.

      3. Distributing water: Energy is needed to transport water.

      4. Using water: End users consume energy to treat water with softeners or filters, to circulate and pressurize water with circulation pumps and irrigation systems, and to heat and cool water.

      5. Collecting and treating wastewater: Energy is used to pump wastewater to the treatment plant, and to aerate and filter it at the plant. On average, wastewater treatment in California uses 500 to 1,500 kilowatt-hours per acre-foot.

      https://www3.epa.gov/region9/waterinfrastructure/waterenergy.html

    3. Thanks for the links Peter. Water shortages will probably be the manifestation of overpopulation and global warming that ends up hitting us in the head like a hammer.

      Right now the Cape Town clock is ticking down loudly-
      https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/cape-town-running-out-of-water-drought-taps-shutoff-other-cities/

      And here in California we have had an extremely poor showing of the winter rainy season thus far. The snow pack is pitiful. For those who don’t live here, know that literally tens of billions of economic activity are at stake in the largest state economy.

      1. Hickory

        I had not heard how dire things have become in Cape Town, with it’s wealth I would have thought it would be better prepared. As the article says people think they can use as much as they like.
        If people filling swimming pools and watering gardens paid the proper price for water then better infrastructure could be built.
        In England there are still many homes that just pay an annual charge and can use as much water as they like. I am on a meter and only pay £1 per cubic meter, which at 0.1p a litre is ridiculously cheap. I would rather pay double/triple now and have water in 10 years time than face what people in several cities are facing now.
        Matt Simmons talked about oil being cheap at 22 cents a cup, I think water at 0.01p per cup is far too cheap.

        1. I think you’re on the right track with proper pricing for water, but…it’s not residential consumption that’s the problem. Something like 90% of world water consumption is by farmers, and they mostly don’t pay any fees at all for their consumption. That includes irreplaceable aquifers, and expensive government river diversion and irrigation.

          Farmers have choices of crops, which vary wildly in their water consumption. They also have choices of water sources and forms of water distribution, which vary wildly in their sustainability and efficiency.

          Right now very few farmers have any incentive to use water properly.

          1. Nick

            As I said many farmers and industry extract water for free. You are correct that residential consumption is not the biggest problem. I believe all bore holes should be metered and aquifer water should be considered a national treasure and not to be consumed for nothing.
            Your estimate of consumption by farmers is too high, but agriculture is the largest consumer of fresh water in Europe, followed by industry including power generation.

            https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/water/water-resources/water-use-by-sectors

            Looks like energy production is the largest consumer of water in the States, I am surprised by that.

            https://water.usgs.gov/watuse/wuir.html

            1. There is a large difference between withdrawals and actual consumption because many thermal power plants return most of the water to the rivers (once through designs). The once through designs are at older plants, newer ones have recirculating evaporative tower systems which consume more water but cause less ecological damage by avoiding dumping hot water back into rivers.
              BTW hydroelectric plants consume 12 to 52 gallons of water per kWh produced (as compared to losses if it was just a river).

              About 43 percent of thermoelectric generators in the United States use once-through cooling, 56 percent recirculating, and 1 percent dry-cooling (2008 data). In 2008, some 30 percent of electricity generation involved once-through cooling, 45 percent recirculating cooling, and 2 percent dry-cooling. (In some cases, those same power plants also produced electricity using non-steam systems, such as combustion turbines.)

              https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/energy-and-water-use/water-energy-electricity-cooling-power-plant#.WnhvsLcwvow

            2. Gone fishing

              Will read up on that.

              My first thought is withdrawals is what is needed to replace what goes up the chimney?

            3. Nope, with the once through the withdrawals are 200 times the actual consumption. Problem is they are using the river to cool the system, kills the aquatic life in the summer.

              Recirculating systems the withdrawal is closer to the consumption, since evaporation through a cooling tower is used to cool the recirculated water. Recirc is slowly replacing once through in the US, don’t know about ROW.

            4. Water withdrawals disqualify thermal power plants from the arid and semi arid regions of the planet where most of the population growth is happening.

              Solar and wind are often seen as advantageous because the require no fuel. It’s worth noting that the also require no water.

            5. aquifer water should be considered a national treasure and not to be consumed for nothing.

              Yes. Don’t forget about river water. River allocations are an enormous issue.

              Your estimate of consumption by farmers is too high

              I’ve seen an estimate of 80%s for the US, and 96% for the world. What have you seen?

            6. Another key water source is rainwater. If properly managed it can re-green arid regions and sequester huge amounts of carbon.

    4. Water scarcity is already becoming an issue.

      I will say the underlying issue is that small subset of evil men who prevent women from using birth control, prevent them from getting abortions, and generally treat them as brood mares to pump out maximum babies.

  2. I had posted this in the other non-petroleum open, but since this one opened just now, I’ll re-post it here.

    Long time no speak. Hiya folks!

    So I came across this video this morning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1817&v=R-28etfOLUw

    Stephen Pinker spends an hour setting out various reasons to be optimistic about the future. He looks at all kinds of areas of the environment, human welfare, economics, etc. etc. etc., and shows that there is reason to hope for an actually good future and not catastrophe.

    In light of this, I have a question for the folks here.

    Why is this optimism misplaced?

    I know that there are many well informed sound thinkers here who are a relatively pessimistic bent about the future. That is why I ask the question here.

    Thank you very kindly for your replies.

    1. As for my views on the video, I think that the data that Linker brought to light is much better than I expected. However, I’m biased to pessimism and negativity on these matters, though not always able to give sound reasons for my pessimism (thus my original post. Heh!).

      I don’t think humanity or the world is doomed as such, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. We may yet surprise ourselves with just what we can accomplish if we put our minds to it. Whether we do so remains an open question.

      Time shall tell if my view is correct or not. It always does.

      That said, I’m somewhat surprised by how wrong I apparently am about various things, based on what Pinker has brought to light here. Perhaps he’s full of it, but I don’t find him to be that sort.

      1. Yes, there is hope, but the price is extreme commitment to advancing our knowledge and acting in much different ways than we do now. To “bend the curve of destruction” would be the absolutely most impressive and fantastic thing that mankind has ever done. It would take a global concerted effort, every bit of knowledge we have and can get and a huge amount of discipline applied over centuries., with the hardest part of that application in the very beginning.
        To derail the current paradigm and replace it with mostly correct and successful ones is a huge job. Maybe some genius or AI will come up with ways to move humanity toward a successful world outcome for all life, but so far no one has come up with a way. Yes, bits and pieces are coming together, very important ones, but the clouds have not parted yet.
        Does not look probable to me, but it is within the realm of possibility.

        1. Meanwhile,

          FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES ARE A STAGGERING $5 TN PER YEAR

          A study was just published in the journal World Development that quantifies the subsidies directed toward fossil fuels globally, and the results are shocking. The authors work at the IMF. The subsidies were $4.9 tn in 2013 and rose to $5.3 tn just two years later. According to the authors, these subsidies promote fossil fuel use which damages the environment, are fiscally costly and, discourage investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy that compete with the subsidized fossil fuels.

          https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/aug/07/fossil-fuel-subsidies-are-a-staggering-5-tn-per-year

          1. It’s got to be love, why else would people stay with such a sorry mess as the fossil fuel industry? Oh yeah, most everything is designed around it and there are a lot of vested interests bent on keeping it running. So it keeps on going despite it’s problems and despite it’s costs.

            Just was at a closed steel mill, with the towering blast furnaces rusting away. The area used to have a continuous pall of pollution, noise and stench. It was tough on the people when the mill closed but the city did not crash economically, it is now a vibrant center of business and transportation with parts of the mill converted to other uses. Parks adorn the banks of the river and condos fill some of the old factory buildings. The mill is now history. The city moved on.
            Things change and they do not necessarily get worse, sometimes they get better.
            I have also seen this in a coal mining region that got depressed somewhat when the mining collapsed. Sixty years later it is better than ever and there are no giant sulfurous burning piles of tailings across the valley floor. No lung wrecking, paint blistering and back breaking. Just a large group of successful towns and cities over the forty mile long valley that used to live on coal and be covered in it’s residues. The mines are still down there below the whole valley, but nothing goes down there anymore except water. Wind turbines dot the hills. Things change, especially when the resource runs low.

            1. I saw the same changes in South Wales, decades ago. The old dirty industries went and new ones came in. Guess what? Ex-miners did very well working in high tech electronics – who’d have thunk. I recall red snow in the steel towns … and Aberfan.

              NAOM

            2. Industry, especially coal mining, takes a lot of lives. Possibly as many as 12,000 mine workers a year.
              But that figure pales in comparison to the early deaths caused by particulates and SO2 pollution from fossil fuel burning and biofuel burning. On the order of 7 million premature deaths per year.

    2. This one is worth a book, but I will try and quickly cover a few points.

      Dr. Pinker is probably correct in most of what he says within the bounds of his assumptions, but with statistics and simple graphs one must always be skeptical. Not so much of the data but of the assumptions and conclusions about the data. We live in a fully interactive world where everything is mostly linked to everything else, so great care must be taken when separating out a given factor or variable. It is then out of context, which can lead to erroneous assumptions.
      Also averages, percentages and per capita graphs can be very deceptive. Here is a fictional example. If 50 years ago there were 1 billion people with food or clean water shortages in the world and now there are one billion people with food or water shortages, the percentage of people who do not have enough food or clean water will have dropped dramatically since the population rose during that time. Yet there are still one billion people without enough food or clean water. Did things actually get better or do we just get a false sense of success while leaving one billion people in dire straits (they die early, get lots of disease and live miserably at times or all the time, so count the excess deaths in the total and it would really be two billion or more)? Did the things we did to feed and give clean water to all those other people just destroy and overuse the ecosystem that all life depends upon?

      Now as far as he goes, yes we live in a fantastic world with lots of medical and technological improvements and some social improvement over past societies. We are enjoying miraculous technology and it has often been delivered cheaply to a large number of people. These are fantastic times for at least half the population on earth, at least one quarter.
      But all that was had at a huge price. The burning of coal, oil and natural gas has energized our great technological leap forward, keep people warm and fed and entertained. It allowed the population to explode in the last two centuries like never before seen. No limits meant food had to be produced faster, but the new energy and machines and chemistry let that happen. With this huge gain in population came vast ecological destruction, pollution of air water and soil. It is causing full planetary changes.
      So if one can ignore the sixth great extinction event, the increasing global temperatures and the overshoot predicaments, there are many wonderful and improving things within the human society to focus upon. Sort of like having your house expanded, redecorated and improved while at the same time the foundation is crumbling and vanishing. Something will give and when it does all the improvements will be for naught.

      As far as global warming goes, I usually run middle of the road between the extremes stated in the literature and by scientists. Things are just really getting going plus the changes are happening so fast the Earth has to play catch up to the forcings. Average global temperature (not a good indicator) is rising at about 0.1C per decade which sounds slow but is about 70 times faster than previous natural rise rates. Again the average is just that, in some regions it is more than double that value. The fact is that within this century and in some regions much much sooner, we will be experiencing a whole new climate regime. The coldest months will be as hot or hotter than the warmest months were. Across the whole planet.

      I would say to you to take a close look at some of the graphs presented and examine the data behind them. See if they really fit and model the reality in the world. The world is not a point of view about a single thing or group of things, it is a highly interdependent complex system. Points of view can be highly biased and for short terms (even a century or several centuries) can appear to be much better or different than they really are. Short term wonder and “good” leading to massive disaster is not a great plan.

      1. The best predictions show population will level off in 3 decades or so. Industrialization will continue to reduce birth rates with a side effect of poverty declining more rapidly than ever thanks to spreading free enterprise around the world. Predictions of food production show increases year over year while becoming more efficient. Don’t buy into the enormous fear and paranoia from salesmen who deliberately come up with scary concepts because they want you to turn more control of your life over to central government planners.

        1. Kevin, do you realize that you revealed yourself as the fearful paranoid by making that comment?

          1. I tell you what, if you are so concerned about that stuff, then do something about it. Words are cheap.

            1. I have been for many years.
              You too can help change the world in positive ways and learn how to help others. There are huge opportunities out there and both people and animals need help every day.

    3. I’m not going to watch the video, but I skimmed a few articles about his premise.

      If you compare quality of life now to the past, yes, conditions have improved for many people.

      I think the pessimism here is that we worry that this progress is not sustainable because of resource limitations. Yes, people have been warned for decades about over population and resource decline, and civilization hasn’t collapsed yet, but we have seen real destruction. Loss of forests and vegetation. Dying coral reefs. Declining oil and coal in some areas.

      In the past, when we devastated an area, there was somewhere else to move. But when humans totally encroach on the world’s habitats and use up cheap resources, a wall is hit eventually.

      Now, if die off is an acceptable way to correct the problem, then this may be a solution. Have a lot of people disappear so the quality of life improves for the few. But if this isn’t acceptable, something else must be done.

      1. Also, if you look at all of human history, progress did not take an uninterrupted path. There have been collapses along the way, where a highly advanced civilization, for its time, hits a plateau or backslides.

        I think there is an awareness that the US may be hitting one of those. We have a government shunning science. Luckily, the rest of the world doesn’t have a similar mindset, so there may be hope on that front.

        Science and technology and humanism have never been the only drivers of mankind. There have been populations which choose a leader or a religion over rational thought and empirical results.

      1. A very good article about the general state of the American Democracy!

        Indeed, if I had to rank the most unsettling moments of the past year, high on my list would be press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s rejoinder to a journalist who asked about a baldfaced lie Kelly had told. “If you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that that’s something highly inappropriate,” she said. That is how democracies die.

        I posted this youtube link in the last thread at the end of a comment on Timothy Snyder’s book: ‘On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century’ I highly recommend that every free thinking American read it!

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv0jav4lNsk
        Tomorrow Belongs to me! (With lyrics)

        1. American Democracy?

          The US exhibits wider disparities of wealth between rich and poor than any other major developed nation. Inequality is skyrocketing even within the Forbes 400 list of America’s richest. THE NET WORTH OF THE RICHEST MEMBER OF THE FORBES 400 HAS SOARED FROM $2 BILLION IN 1982 TO $81 BILLION IN 2016, FAR OUTPACING THE GAINS AT EITHER THE FORBES 400 ENTRY POINT OR AVERAGE. The billionaires who make up the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans now have as much wealth as all African-American households, plus one-third of America’s Latino population, combined. In other words, just 400 extremely wealthy individuals have as much wealth as 16 million African-American households and 5 million Latino households.

          https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/

          1. I took the nightmare scenario of the Crash of 29 and the Great Depression to break the last oligarchy (see the Gilded Age) and allow a major inroad of progressive government changes.

            So what horrendous occurrence will allow the breaking of the oligarchy and re-mold the political system in favor of the people in general?

  3. Things could possibly turn out OK over the next half century or so, and get better after that, perhaps a LOT better.

    But there is a hell of a gulf between COULD or MIGHT and WILL.

    Luck is going to play a simply enormous role in future history just as it has always played an enormous role in the past.

    My personal opinion, based on many thousands of hours devoted to actual study of the issues involved, is that there’s a substantial change that the entire world will go to hell in a hand basket, both economically and environmentally.

    Again in my opinion, there is a substantial chance that at least a few countries— that are already economically successful, with educated citizens, and with a good sized remaining endowment of natural resources—- will pull thru the next few decades more or less whole, but in doing so, they’re going to be taking in more than a few belt notches around their very substantial economic midsections.

    I’m just about dead sure that barring near miracles a very large number of people are going to die hard over the next half century or so. I’m not going to argue that simply feeding and housing them is technically impossible. TECHNICALLY things depend on how much progress we make in various fields such as breeding more productive crops, more disease resistant crops, developing crops that can tolerate salty soil and drought, I could go on all day. Technical solutions are probably possible.

    Politically and economically viable solutions are different ball games altogether. If we Yankees were willing to give up beef and pork, we could export enough grain to keep a billion people fed with the grain and other forage we feed to hogs and cows, but how likely are we to actually DO IT?

    And just how would that billion impoverished people pay us ?

    Then there’s the climate question, and the soil loss question, and the water depletion question. Technical solutions may not BE possible.

    Luck can bring us andhi’s and Jefferson’s. Luck can also deliver Hitler’s and Stalin’s.

    Anybody who thinks he knows for SURE what is going to happen is not thinking very clearly.

    Somebody could decide to manufacture and give away birth control pills, just dump them out of cargo aircraft, lol, or develop and release a strain of a venereal disease that is fast moving and highly contagious and results in permanent loss of fertility.

    A priest or preacher of some sort in a position to do so in a country politically dominated by a religion could decide doctrine should call for small families, instead of large ones. It’s happened before.

    Birth rates have fallen like a rock, unexpectedly, in some countries. They could continue to fall farther, and faster, than anticipated by demographers. Suppose somebody who is super rich decides to spend his or her fortune on a couple of satellites dedicated to basic educational programming, and provides tens of millions of hand held cheap solar powered computers to hundreds of millions of desperately poor people ?

    And those computers broadcast some soap operas everyday, where in the women have only one or two or no kids, but they have SHOES, and TWO dresses, and the guys have cell phones and flashlights and maybe even motor scooters, lol……. because with only one kid, or no kid, these things are suddenly affordable.

    There are a lot of reasons to be optimistic, a lot of reasons to be pessimistic.

    Place your bets as you please, lol.

    Personally I believe the USA, Canada, and a few other rich countries have a pretty decent shot at weathering the coming storm…… unless the climate goes NUTS.

    If you , Dear Reader, are the praying kind, think hard about praying to the Mountain or Rock or Snake or other deity of your choice for a series of what I refer to as Pearl Harbor Wake Up Events .

    Any priest will tell you that deities work in mysterious ways.

    We are in desperate need of sharp mugger’s bricks upside our collective head, big enough and sharp enough and often enough to WAKE US UP, but not so hurtful as to prevent our being able to go proactive and work on our problems.

    We CAN go renewable, I’m sure of it, because I have confidence in lots of engineers and physicists and other scientists who believe we can, and because I have a pretty decent technical education myself.

    BUT ……….. Will we make the necessary sacrifices to giterdone before it’s too late?

    I guess this answer to that depends mostly on luck. If we are lucky and get the right leaders, and enough PHWUE’s, we will giterdone.

    It may sound strange to advocate praying for droughts, wildfires, crop failures, hurricanes, minor hot resource wars, tornadoes, killer heat waves and other such troubles out the ying yang….. but my personal belief is that nothing less will be enough to get our collective attention soon enough to act decisively while decisive action is still possible.

    1. Technically, we could get by, but in the real world…

      http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/farmers-chickens-antibiotic-boost-weight-colistin-farm-animals-infections-a8191521.html

      We feed our antibiotics of last resort to healthy chickens to boost growth. Resistance has already led to one human death.

      There are a million stupid and / or selfish people in the world for every intelligent and educated one in a position of real power . Rationality will be overwhelmed.

      1. Hi Ralph,

        I’ve never looked for any data directly tying the death of one particular person to antibiotic resistance due to antibiotics being used recklessly and on the grand scale to promote faster growth in livestock.

        But I can assure you and anybody else that literally tens of thousands of people have died already because some of our former best antibiotics are basically useless as human meds…… in very large part because these FORMERLY PRECIOUS BEYOND PRICE drugs were fed to chickens, hogs, and cows to make them grow a little faster on a little less feed.

        The really ironic part of this true story is that this practice doesn’t even make money for farmers as a collective group. Only such live stock producers as are the early adapters gain anything, as they have a competitive advantage FOR A LITTLE WHILE in the market place over those who are late adapters.

        Farmers essentially operate at cost, over time, because we are in a brutally competitive business. Anything that results in any given farmer achieving lower costs instantly attracts the attention of other producers, who copy his innovation, whatever it may be, and this results in the average market price and revenue falling, over the next year or two, maybe a little longer, to more or less wipe out the cost savings resulting from the new innovation.

        Basically what this means is that if the practice of feeding drugs to cattle is outlawed, it won’t make any difference on the bottom line of the farming industry after the first year or two.

        The pharmaceutical companies are the ones who make all the money associated with this practice. I just pass my costs along, as is done by virtually all farmers. If I manage to lower my costs, well, I also lower my revenues by an equivalent amount, on average.

        If the price of diesel goes up a couple of bucks, I just pass that extra expense along, the same as all my other expenses.

        Big Pharma is treating EVERYBODY to constant involuntary sex, no lubricant, and laughing at us while doing so.

        And as sad as it is, there are TONS of farmers out there with real degrees from real universities who are so fucking self centered and busy looking at their own operation rather than the big picture they can’t see it.

        1. Not just humans. I have a cat just finished the 4th course with 6 different antibiotics to try and get rid of an infection. If tests still show infection then a sample will need to go to the lab to see what it is resistant to and what will work. It won’t be long till antibiotics are history like bleeding.

          NAOM

          1. It won’t be long till antibiotics are history like bleeding.

            If you are referring to bleeding by leeches they are considered FDA approved medical devices and currently used in treatment of patients at American clinics and hospitals.

            http://www.pharmacytimes.com/publications/issue/2005/2005-11/2005-11-5004

            Leeches Approved as Medical Devices
            NOVEMBER 01, 2005
            Max Sherman, BSPharm
            The FDA has approved medicinal leeches for commercial marketing, not as drugs, but as medical devices. According to an FDA Talk Paper, the agency announced that leeches meet the definition of a device because they are considered to be articles intended to diagnose, cure, treat, prevent, or mitigate a disease or condition, or to affect a function or structure of the body, that do not achieve their primary effect through a chemical action and are not metabolized.1 Leeches’ primary mode of action is the eating of blood, which is a mechanical process.

            1. Maggots have their uses too but, in this case, I was considering the barber surgeon and the doctors knife.

              NAOM

            2. You are right about maggots and most surgery these days is high tech, minimally invasive with laser cauterization so bleeding is minimized as well.

              There is still a place for knives, scalpels, saws and drills when working on rib cages and big joints like knees, elbows and shoulders, or amputating limbs…

              I have a friend who is one of the top hepatic and pancreatic surgeons in Brazil and have watched him map out a complex surgery on his 3D VR computer system. I also got to tag along to a medical fair with him and got to try out some of the laser cauterization tools on some fresh prime rib, smelled like barbecue 😉

        2. But I can assure you and anybody else that literally tens of thousands of people have died already because some of our former best antibiotics are basically useless as human meds…… in very large part because these FORMERLY PRECIOUS BEYOND PRICE drugs were fed to chickens, hogs, and cows to make them grow a little faster on a little less feed.

          To be honest, I thought exactly that! Then I did some reading.

          http://animalantibiotics.org/dig-deeper/effect-on-human-health/

          Limiting use of agricultural antibiotics

          Changes voluntarily adopted by the animal health community Jan. 1, 2017, in the United States limit the agricultural use of antibiotics important to human medicine. They can be used only to treat, control and prevent disease in animals – not for growth promotion. Additionally, increased oversight by a veterinarian is required. With this new approach, farmers adjusted their management practices to continue to ensure food safety and animal health while minimizing the risk of antibiotic resistance.

          Bold Mine.

          Seems that not all that long ago there was some doubt with regards this practice having a significant negative affect. This particular paper even seemed to take issue with ‘The Precautionary Principle’ as being not scientifically valid, in and of itself… I assume their point is/was, that if the data do not support your hypothesis than you probably need a new hypothesis or perhaps better data… in any case their conclusions are somewhat counter intuitive to my own rather firmly entrenched biases.

          https://academic.oup.com/jac/article/53/1/28/680882

          Does the use of antibiotics in food animals pose a risk to human health? A critical review of published data
          Ian Phillips Mark Casewell Tony Cox Brad De Groot Christian Friis Ron Jones Charles Nightingale Rodney Preston John Waddell
          Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, Volume 53, Issue 1, 1 January 2004, Pages 28–52, https://doi.org/10.1093/jac/dkg483
          Published: 01 January 2004

          Abstract
          The use of antibiotics in food animals selects for bacteria resistant to antibiotics used in humans, and these might spread via the food to humans and cause human infection, hence the banning of growth-promoters. The actual danger seems small, and there might be disadvantages to human and to animal health. The low dosages used for growth promotion are an unquantified hazard. Although some antibiotics are used both in animals and humans, most of the resistance problem in humans has arisen from human use. Resistance can be selected in food animals, and resistant bacteria can contaminate animal-derived food, but adequate cooking destroys them. How often they colonize the human gut, and transfer resistance genes is not known. In zoonotic salmonellosis, resistance may arise in animals or humans, but human cross-infection is common. The case of campylobacter infection is less clear. The normal human faecal flora can contain resistant enterococci, but indistinguishable strains in animals and man are uncommon, possibly because most animal enterococci do not establish themselves in the human intestine. There is no correlation between the carriage of resistant enterococci of possible animal origin and human infection with resistant strains. Commensal Escherichia coli also exhibits host-animal preferences. Anti-Gram-positive growth promoters would be expected to have little effect on most Gram-negative organisms. Even if resistant pathogens do reach man, the clinical consequences of resistance may be small. The application of the ‘precautionary principle’ is a non-scientific approach that assumes that risk assessments will be carried out.

          So much reading to do and so little time to do it! Regardless, my gut (fauna) tells me not to throw out the precautionary principle without a much more in depth risk assessment of this issue, though I bet I can find a dozen or so papers that disagree with this one… 😉

          1. Hi Fred,

            Law and regulations do eventually catch up with reality……. eventually…. most of the time……… in relatively well governed countries such as the USA and better governed ones such as the Western European countries.

            I don’t know what’s going on for sure anymore in the rest of the world in terms of antibiotics in feed, being retired, but I can tell you for sure that it’s easy as hell to cheat, if you can get them in quantity at low enough prices.

            All you need do is cut them off a few days or weeks before you ship to market, as a rule. They leave few traces, and testing is expensive, and only done at random and at longish intervals.

            You’re right, the use of antibiotics for growth promotion is on it’s way out. Been seeing it advertised on labels a while now, NO antibiotics, and then somewhere in small print, the fact that it’s illegal to use them these days. lol.

            ( Was it you that posted a link about the ads for GLUTEN FREE water a few days back? I’m thinking I saw them here, could have been somewhere else. )

            Now as far as whether the PAST use of them as growth stimulants has resulted in their being largely useless in some cases , and in the case of some infectious bacteria……….. there’s no doubt whatsoever in the mind of anybody I have ever met who understands the basics of evolution in general, and the basics of evolution in bacteria and other microorganisms in particular.

            (A nickel’s worth of drugs could generate close to a dollar in extra net revenue sometimes. This dosing animals with drugs was a damned profitable business….. for the drug companies, and for early adapters of the practice. Later on, the drug companies made all the money, because farmers basically operate their businesses at economic cost, and most producers adopted the practice, thereby releveling the playing field. )

            Generation times can be as short as a few minutes in some cases, and genes are shared and jump around about like bottles and joints at a rock festival back in the sixties. We count larger organisms such as mammals by the thousands, whereas we count bacteria using exponential notation, lol. Bacteria associated with livestock get all over farm workers and inevitably are carried into homes, hospitals, and other public places. Some get onto food that is shipped fresh or frozen. People who go swimming in supposedly clean public waters are exposed to bacteria from feed lot and pasture runoff, and thereby introduce these drug resistant strains into any and all places they visit, sooner or later.

            When I was in classrooms at Tech back all the way back in the sixties, I had ag professors talking about how fine a thing antibiotics are, and how much they could help farmers produce more food, using less of all other resources.

            They seemed to have the evidence on their side that it would be ok. Logical fallacy of course. An absence of evidence is not evidence of an absence of a problem. Problems take a while to show up in lots of cases, this being one of them. Ditto CO2 pollution, depletion of fossil fuels, etc.

            My professors over in the biology department, where I spent about half my time, were generally pissed as hell that anybody would even CONSIDER such foolishness, and back then, biologists were only really beginning to get a good handle on how easily and how often genes move around in microscopic species, compared to what we know now.

            Barbara McClintock did the pioneering work in the field in the forties and fifties, but in those days genetics work was damned slow and tedious, compared to today, and it took a long time for the biology profession as a whole to come to grips with her work. She finally got her Nobel decades later, in 1983. First ever for a woman without having it shared.

            http://www.pnas.org/content/109/50/20198.full

        3. Synthetic meat is expensive, several thousand dollars to the pound. But prices are falling at 20-30% a year.

          The tipping point is likely to come in 20 years. After that, “natural” meat will be too expensive for the mass market. It could come earlier if environmentalists persuade governments to take action, but I doubt that will happen.

          People don’t really like meat — they like things like Bratwurst or Chicken McNuggets, which are almost meat. My children won’t even even eat chicken drumstick meat from the bone. I served my boss a grilled salmon steak a few years ago and he complained it was “too complicated” to eat. That makes things easier for the industry.

          1. Yair . . .

            “My children won’t even even eat chicken drumstick meat from the bone.”

            And you actually put up with that crap?

  4. IN 2017, THE OCEANS WERE BY FAR THE HOTTEST EVER RECORDED

    It turns out that 2017 was a record-breaking year, 1.51 × 10^22 Joules hotter than any other year. For comparison, the annual electrical generation in China is 600 times smaller than the heat increase in the ocean. It’s interesting to look at the top five years on record in terms of ocean heat; they are listed below.
    1. 2017: 19.19 × 10^22 J
    2. 2015: 17.68 × 10^22 J
    3. 2016: 17.18 × 10^22 J
    4. 2014: 16.74 × 10^22 J
    5. 2013: 16.08 × 10^22 J

    Note that these are the five hottest years ever recorded.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jan/26/in-2017-the-oceans-were-by-far-the-hottest-ever-recorded

    1. Considering that the ocean is trying to radiate near proportional to T4and the temperature is going upward in a somewhat linear fashion. The problem is most of the long wave radiation never makes it to the TOA, it is intercepted by GHG and clouds. A lot of the outgoing LWR is returned to the ocean surface. Here is what happens to outgoing long wave radiation .

      Outgoing Longwave Radiation due to Directly Transmitted Surface Emission
      A frequently used diagram summarizing the annual- and global-mean energy budget of the earth and atmosphere indicates that the irradiance reaching the top of the atmosphere from the surface, through the midinfrared atmospheric window, is 40 W m−2; this can be compared to the total outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) of about 235 W m−2. The value of 40 W m−2 was estimated in an ad hoc manner. A more detailed calculation of this component, termed here the surface transmitted irradiance (STI), is presented, using a line-by-line radiation code and 3D climatologies of temperature, humidity, cloudiness, etc. No assumption is made as to the wavelengths at which radiation from the surface can reach the top of the atmosphere. The role of the water vapor continuum is highlighted. In clear skies, if the continuum is excluded, the global- and annual-mean STI is calculated to be about 100 W m−2 with a broad maximum throughout the tropics and subtropics. When the continuum is included, the clear-sky STI is reduced to 66 W m−2, with a distinctly different geographic distribution, with a minimum in the tropics and local peaks over subtropical deserts. The inclusion of clouds reduces the STI to about 22 W m−2. The actual value is likely somewhat smaller due to processes neglected here, and an STI value of 20 W m−2 (with an estimated uncertainty of about ±20%) is suggested to be much more realistic than the previous estimate of 40 W m−2. This indicates that less than one-tenth of the OLR originates directly from the surface.
      https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JAS-D-11-0248.1

      Beside the atmosphere being dark and glowing in longwave radiation, what happens when the ocea gets warmer? It’s not just volume that changes or the melting of ice shelves.
      Increasing the temperature led some species to rapidly grow while others declined, resulting in an overall reduction in the biodiversity—or in the number of different species—of animals making their home on the ocean bed.

      https://www.popsci.com/heat-antarctic-ocean

    2. It is probable electromagnetic wavelengths from the sun are now in altered states during this time period. Open water is highly sensitive to small changes in certain wavelengths (as are plants — such would be revealed by talking to a market horticulturist on how careful they have to be in choice of glass for greenhouses). In any event, although the average energy is the same, if it is being distributed differently in accordance with wavelength, heat would arise; therefore the findings in this article appear consistent with an entirely natural process.

        1. bol·locks
          /ˈbäləks/
          noun

          1. the testicles.

          2. used to express contempt, annoyance, or defiance.

          3. British colloquialism for bullshit.

      1. http://www.psychicsuniverse.com/articles/spirituality/attracting-positivity/charging-water-harmonic-resonance

        WHAT IS CHARGED WATER?
        Charged water has distinct qualities that regular tap water or spring water is lacking. The difference is so pronounced that if you drink it, you can actually taste the difference.

        Charged water is known for its healing and revitalizing properties. Drinking charged water will help you feel refreshed, improve your health and vitality. Just bathing in it can lift the mood and lighten the spirit, making you feel as though you’ve gone through a spiritual cleansing.

        Harmonic resonance that causes a vessel to vibrate can charge water with healing energies.

        Even plants and animals are not immune to the water charged with harmonic resonance; try pouring some charged water on your plants and watch them flourish, or put it into your pet’s water bowl and see his spirits perk up.

        Traditionally, water has been charged in vessels known as Tibetan singing bowls. These special bowls—originally made of metal but also now found made of crystal or glass—create the vibrations when a tool is rubbed around the rim of the bowl. These bowls have long been used for meditation purposes, to induce trances or to heal through sound waves.

        Occasionally, to change the frequency, water would be poured into the bowls in varying amounts. If you’ve ever seen someone ‘play the water glasses’, then you’ve seen that the sound changes with the amount of the water in the glass. This water, when used, is found to be a powerful improvement over plain water.
        .

      2. Nicholas, if you can’t daze them with military-grade flashes of brilliant light shone in their eyes and/or Cuban-style neuroscrambling, disorient them with personal insults, ad hominems and assorted logical fallacies, flagrant (safe-space) ignore-button posing and sucking up to the regulars/owners.

        Failing that, or at the same time, present links to TED Talk, etc. videos, scientific papers and cutting-edge BAU research, like AI, robotics, biomimicry and genetics (notably, CRISPR), and offhand mentions of Elon Musk, humble self-described ‘thought leaders’ like Tony Seba, and Fred’s secret fetishes, Janine Benyus, Ellen MacArthur and Hunter Lovins. ?

        Lastly, cloak or otherwise distract from any hints of the repackaged/greenwashed/equitywashed continuation of the crony-capitalist plutarchy status-quo in any of the aforementioned with such benign and sweet-sounding notions as ‘circular doughnut economics’.

        Bad cop, no circular doughnut economics.

        Disclaimer: We are not affiliated with Krispy Kreme but might suggest getting their doughnuts out of the box ASAP because you know that that’s what you want to do anyway.

  5. This one is for Doug!

    Scientists Build Universe to Understand How Black Holes Kill Galaxies

    https://science.howstuffworks.com/scientists-build-universe-to-understand-how-black-holes-kill-galaxies.htm

    Creating a Virtual Universe
    In the most ambitious cosmic simulation of its kind, an international team of scientists have created their own universe inside a computer to better understand the large-scale structure of the cosmos. It’s called the “Illustris–The Next Generation” (IllustrisTNG) project. The simulation relies on the basic laws of physics and shows how the cosmic web of dark matter has evolved and shaped our universe since the Big Bang.

    Scientists built IllustrisTNG using a powerful code called AREPO that they ran on Germany’s fastest mainframe computer, the Hazel Hen machine. The project is the largest hydrodynamic simulation to date and can model the emergence of cosmic structures, according to a statement. One of the two simulation runs, which used over 24,000 processors, took two months to complete and modeled the formation of millions of galaxies in a simulated volume measuring one billion light-years wide.

    In short, the researchers threw the ingredients of the universe into a virtual box and let the known laws of physics bake a cosmic cake. And the results are stunning. See for yourself in the video:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IIEJlSwuXo
    IllustrisTNG: The cosmic magnetic field strength

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjSFR40SY58
    Illustris Simulation: Most detailed simulation of our Universe

    1. Thanks Fred, extraordinary stuff. When I see this kind of magic, words fail me.

      To think my Mother was in university in May 1932 when James Chadwick announced the atomic nucleus contained a new uncharged particle, which he called the neutron. Then I was in university when neutron stars (pulsars) were discovered (November, 1967). What will my nine year old Grandson witness?

      1. Things like this really do go to show how far humanity has come in our time on earth. These phenomena probably have for occurred for millions of years but just now is our intelligence catching up. Where our science (not to mention technology) will be in 500 to 1,000 years is quite mind blowing to think about!

        1. These phenomena probably have for occurred for millions of years but just now is our intelligence catching up.

          Good Bot/Bad Bot?! (You’re poor grammer and ahhd phraesiology cupold with you’re non-sequiters is show’ng threw,,,)

          For the record, the simulation depicts the history and evolution of the universe from shortly after the big bang about 13.8 billion years ago, to the present, based on known physical laws.

          A good Bot needs to be able to pass the Turing test with flying colors. Perhaps Larry Bot needs to get a clue?!

      2. What will my nine year old Grandson witness?

        Well for starters, my sincerest wish to him and his generation would be to experience a world still alive and teeming with life in all its splendid glory! I also wish them fewer and fewer crossings of paths with small minded anti science ideologues of the sort currently running the US and a complete freedom from the moralistic dogmatic influences of religious teachings and superstition, other than through the lens of historical and anthropological studies…

        Assuming they are fortunate enough to inherit a viable planet from us and are able to participate in some sort of benign and enlightened civilization the possibilities would seem endless!

        Case in point:

        From zooming out to a full simulation of the universe scaled in parsecs to zooming in to the nanometer scale for an animation of CRISPR gene editing…

        https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/crispr-cas9-hd-final/

        Using the CRISPR–Cas9 system, scientists can do much more than gene editing—they can boost gene transcription or use fluorescent proteins to paint and track a chromosome. In this Nature Video animation, several innovative uses for CRISPR are outlined and explained.

        This video was reproduced with permission and was first published on October 31, 2017. It is a Nature Video production.

        Cheers!

      3. BTW a clarification, that last link in my previous post is to the 350 million light-years per side cube simulation from just four years ago.

        Here is a slightly different write up with some added animations found at this link to the phys.org site:

        https://phys.org/news/2018-02-astrophysicists-illustristng-advanced-universe-kind.html

        Astrophysicists release IllustrisTNG, the most advanced universe model of its kind

        IllustrisTNG is a successor model to the original Illustris simulation developed by the same research team, but it has been updated to include some of the physical processes that play crucial roles in the formation and evolution of galaxies.

        Like Illustris, the project models a cube-shaped universe smaller than our own. This time, the project followed the formation of millions of galaxies in a representative region of a universe with nearly 1 billion light-years per side (up from 350 million light-years per side just four years ago). lllustrisTNG is the largest hydrodynamic simulation project to date for the emergence of cosmic structures, says Springel, also of MPA and Heidelberg University.

        Bold mine.

        It really is mind boggling stuff to contemplate but IMHO, this simulation makes comments about planet Earth’s climate being too complex or difficult to accurately model, somewhat less compelling…

  6. I’ve been lookin at the Climate Balance presentation here:

    http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/17/files/GCP_CarbonBudget_2017.pdf

    They show previews of new scenarios that will be used in the next IPCC. RCP8.5 has become “baseline” and they’ve added one other. As far as I can see they are admitting that there is no way to keep below 2°C rise this century without negative emissions technology. The most likely rise seems to be somewhere around 3 to 4°C given the path we are on and a-holes like Trump in charge. Including longer term feed backs is going to add a couple of degrees, which would give 5 or 6°C maybe within the first half of this millennium. That means, to a first approximation, no humans left and a scale of death and suffering beyond anyone’s imagination on the way for our children.

    1. I expect the curves to keep shifting upward with time as more information is digested. They should be called the Climate Hydras.

      Humans are a smart manipulative bunch. We will use our extreme tech in the 2030’s to start manipulating weather and solar insolation on the planet to reduce the effects of global warming. What that will do in the long run is unknown, but 4C-6C is a bad place to go, unless one wants to get rid of humans. The other alternative is a dystopian world where the sociopaths are running most everything and we crash as fast as possible.

      In the meantime renewable energy, power storage and EV’s will progress. We need to get agriculture in control to stop the insectamageddon. Otherwise staving off extreme temperature rises will not be worth much. No food, no effort.

      Glaringly, not one mention of methane in the slideshow listed by George K.

  7. The scientist who predicted ice-sheet collapse — 50 years ago
    A seminal 1968 study warned of the demise of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

    Mercer sought to explain how sea levels could have risen by 6 metres in the previous interglacial period, around 120,000 years ago. The melting of Greenland or the East Antarctic Ice Sheet could not explain it, because both are located on solid earth and would respond relatively slowly to warming. By contrast, much of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is grounded well below sea level. That makes it a “uniquely vulnerable and unstable body of ice”, Mercer wrote.

    http://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01390-x?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20180202&spMailingID=55891285&spUserID=NTU5OTkwMDEzOTES1&spJobID=1340119441&spReportId=MTM0MDExOTQ0MQS2

  8. How methane clathrate may have saved he world.

    Snowball Earth termination by destabilization of equatorial permafrost methane clathrate

    The start of the Ediacaran period is defined by one of the most
    severe climate change events recorded in Earth history—the recovery
    from the Marinoan ‘snowball’ ice age, ,635 Myr ago


    The equatorial palaeolatitude implies a highly volatile shelf permafrost
    pool that is an order of magnitude larger than that of the present
    day. A pool of this size could have provided a massive biogeochemical
    feedback capable of triggering deglaciation and accounting for
    the global postglacial marine carbon and sulphur isotopic excursions,
    abrupt unidirectional warming, cap carbonate deposition,
    and a marine oxygen crisis. Our findings suggest that methane
    released from low-latitude permafrost clathrates therefore acted
    as a trigger and/or strong positive feedback for deglaciation and
    warming. Methane hydrate destabilization is increasingly suspected
    as an important positive feedback to climate change
    that coincides with critical boundaries in the geological record
    and may represent one particularly important mechanism active
    during conditions of strong climate forcing.

    Permafrost clathrates
    that accumulated beneath the broad exposed shelves of the Arctic
    during the Pleistocene are now destabilizing as a result of post-glacial
    flooding and global warming11,12,25. Similarly, retreat of the Marinoan
    ice sheet would have destabilized methane clathrates by (1) reducing
    hydrostatic pressure, (2) warming permafrost shelves with flooding
    sea water, and (3) flushing clathrate fields with meteoric water
    derived from meltwater discharge.
    The extension of a volatile permafrost clathrate pool to equatorial
    palaeolatitudes has important implications for the role of methane in
    the climate system. Initial warming or, more simply, inherent icesheet
    instability, might have been enough to trigger local methane
    destabilization through meteoric flushing of the permafrost clathrate
    field on the Marinoan shelf, particularly in this low-latitude setting2
    where it was most sensitive to subtle external forcing. Once initiated,
    clathrate destabilization provides a positive feedback through
    greenhouse warming caused by methane and CO2, and is amplified
    by further destabilization in progressively higher latitudes

    This event both identifies
    the range of function of the climate system, and demonstrates a
    mechanism activated by strong climate forcing not unlike projected
    future effects of atmospheric CO2.

    http://faculty.ucr.edu/~martink/pdfs/Kennedy_2008_Nature.pdf

    So are we initiating a 1000 year event of permafrost and methane clathrate disintegration resulting in climate/ecological reset? Something to think about the next time we start a car engine or do pretty much anything.

      1. Fred, you don’t start an electric car you turn it on. Unless of course you have lost your touch. 🙂

        Here is your citizen’s guide to global warming.
        http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/what-on-earth-the-concerned-citizens-guide-to-global-warming-1835069.html

        BTW, I don’t think current EV’s will work well up in the melting permafrost where most people will have moved to in a +6C world. They will get stuck and sink and the solar energy is a bit less up there. Probably be running everything on the methane escaping from the ground and lakes.

          1. We have enough problems here right now without bringing the mammoths back. They shed like crazy when it gets warm out. What a mess. My vacuum cleaner just is not up to the task and when you take them out for a ride, watch out for all those pesky power lines. Just shocking. 🙂

            Speaking of messes, this should cheer you up. Got lots of holiday spirit and a catchy tune. Like catching the flu, but catchy.

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

          2. Fred, from your link:

            But don’t worry: we all know that this paper is part of the great conspiracy of the 97% of the world’s climate scientists. Fortunately, they have been debunked by a group of brave internet trolls, helped by friendly fossil fuel lobbyists.

            1. Yep! And not to mention all the thousands of field biologists, ecologists, both marine and land based, agronomists, plant physiologists, soil scientists, etc… etc… who are documenting changes all over the planet that they claim can only be attributed to rapid climate change. Which means that they too are a part of this massive conspiracy that 97% of the world’s climate scientists are fostering upon the innocent unsuspecting citizens of the world.

              Oh and lest we forget, the governments and militaries of the 195 countries behind the Paris Climate Accord and all the major global insurance companies too. This is definitely the mother of all conspiracies.

    1. “So are we initiating a 1000 year event of permafrost and methane clathrate disintegration resulting in climate/ecological reset?”

      No sweat Fish, it’s all built into the models.

        1. What’s that mean…Michael Mann is back in town with his Tree Ring Circus?

          1. Kal90, what would we do without brave internet trolls like you who debunk this grand conspiracy by 97% of the world’s climate scientist?

          2. The science is no longer in question. Society has moved on to how much and when along with what can we do about it. Please update your talking points, don’t get left so far behind.

    1. May have played a role, but I am more convinced that man hunting with dogs did most of the damage, worldwide.

      1. Hi Hickory,

        You may well be right.

        Or the people who are convinced the likeliest explanation is that we humans brought over new diseases that wiped out the lost species may be right.

        Depending on the odds offered, I would bet with you, or with the new diseases faction, or with the authors of this paper. My personal guess is that the likeliest explanation is a combination of the hunting and disease arguments.

        There’s no way to know for sure, not yet anyway.

        The possibility that mega fires caused by an impact brought on this extinction event is a great example of why we shouldn’t take Occam’s razor TOO seriously.

        Occam’s Razor is a very useful TOOL.

        It’s not a LAW, it doesn’t always hold up.

    2. OFM,

      First off, it’s the Journal of Geology, not the Journal of Geography. Second, Matt Williams, the author of this piece, refers to a thousand-year cold period that may have resulted from the postulated impact, and later mentions that the impact may have caused the Younger Dryas. They’re the same thing. He also refers to changes in styles of spear points (yep, that’s all he says) that occurred as a result of or during this cold period.

      I would not pay a lot of attention to that site. Look up the same topic on EurekAlert and you’ll get the actual sources.

    1. The article’s criticism of EV’s is based on two assumptions which I think are false.

      The first is a continuation of a linear growth based economic model whereby we extract resources, use them to make mass market products with previously designed expiration dates and then discard those products without reusing the materials and components from which they are made.

      The second is the idea that we as societies will continue to promote the idea of individual ownership of vehicles.

      If we adopt a circular economic model within which we design reusablility of all components from the get go into all products, we eliminate the unsustainability implicit in the first flawed assumption.

      If we then also start thinking of personal transportation as an as needed service, provided by fleets of autonomous vehicles then the increased efficiency of EVs starts making a lot more sense.

      BTW, cars as we know them today are not good examples of uses for EVs if we follow the same model of ownership that we have today for ICE vehicles. Let’s not forget that EV simply means electric vehicle. That would include electric buses, trucks, trains, bicycles as well as some individual passenger cars.

      So let’s not throw out the EV with the bath water, just because we can’t yet visualize a completely different paradigm and economic model. EVs are fine, it’s the people’s mindset that needs major changing.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCRKvDyyHmI
      Re-thinking Progress: The Circular Economy – YouTube
      YouTube‎ · ‎Ellen MacArthur Foundation

      Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation but merely cite their idea as an example of out of the box economic systems thinking.

      1. And almost as if on cue, drum roll please…

        http://www.siliconbeat.com/2018/02/02/uber-and-lyft-want-you-banned-from-using-your-own-self-driving-car-in-a-big-city/

        Uber and Lyft want you banned from using your own self-driving car in urban areas

        Though in my humble opinion, the author of this piece doesn’t quite get it and comes across as a fear mongering neo-luddite desperately clinging to a quickly fading paradigm where car ownership still equals freedom. It doesn’t now nor did it ever. We were just sold a fairy tale by the ultra slick marketing geniuses of the past. All Edward Bernays’ acolytes, the evil bunch of them!

        Here’s why you, dear reader, ought not to be allowed to toodle around downtown San Francisco or central San Jose (or probably anywhere in between if the ride-hailing giants had their druthers) in your own self-driving car, according to Principle No. 10:

        “Shared fleets can provide more affordable access to all, maximize public safety and emissions benefits, ensure that maintenance and software upgrades are managed by professionals.”

        Bold mine. Seems to me, more of a feature than a bug!

        1. Hmmm, software upgrades are managed by the provider not the owner of the vehicle. Most vehicle maintenance is already done by professionals What a crock.
          Taxi services given exclusive rights to public roads? What a crock. Let them buy the roads first and then force them to maintain them.
          So just as when I go use the train to enter the city, the railroad must provide a parking lot for my vehicle at the train station. Who is going to provide all those parking lots at the edge of those exclusive cities?

          My simulations of Uber type services show they use more energy than private vehicles and they need to have a vast overage of vehicles to handle rush hour times. Vehicles that will not be used very much each day, mostly sit between rush hours.
          Better to add a lot more buses and charge all cars a daily use fee to be in the city if they want to reduce traffic congestion. Adding more trains in a city is hugely expensive and often not possible.

          I can just imagine the garbage and bodily fluids that will accumulate in these unmanned vehicles during the day and night as they operate across the cities.
          There is no way most people would get in an unmanned taxi with a stranger, which means each ride would be with far less than capacity for the vehicle.

          1. Hmmm, software upgrades are managed by the provider not the owner of the vehicle. Most vehicle maintenance is already done by professionals What a crock.

            Yes, but… in a world of no or very little private individual ownership the provider is the fleet owner and therefore responsible by default. I don’t really see a problem other than with the semantics.

            Taxi services given exclusive rights to public roads? What a crock. Let them buy the roads first and then force them to maintain them.

            They will, together with the state. Maybe something like railroads today? In any case, the idea is to eliminate the need for private car ownership as much as possible. We already pay taxes, some will go towards roads and public transportation.

            So just as when I go use the train to enter the city, the railroad must provide a parking lot for my vehicle at the train station. Who is going to provide all those parking lots at the edge of those exclusive cities?

            Why would you even need parking lots? You will not have your own private vehicle. Get off train, summon autonomous vehicle, get dropped off at destination, vehicle goes to next passenger, rinse and repeat until vehicle goes back to yard for charging, cleaning and maintenance.

            My simulations of Uber type services show they use more energy than private vehicles and they need to have a vast overage of vehicles to handle rush hour times. Vehicles that will not be used very much each day, mostly sit between rush hours.

            Redesign cities and civil society, eliminate superfluous commutes and jobs. Create walkable spaces, use more bicycles, trams, electric buses. Eliminate traffic jams altogether.
            New paradigms, remember?

            I can just imagine the garbage and bodily fluids that will accumulate in these unmanned vehicles during the day and night as they operate across the cities.

            Really?! We already have things like elevators. Do people urinate or defecate in them? Have you been to Singapore. If you leave trash around or chewed gum you get arrested.
            We already have big brother tracking our every movement with cameras, GPS and our credit card trails. If you soil you will be tracked down and you will pay the price.

            There is no way most people would get in an unmanned taxi with a stranger, which means each ride would be with far less than capacity for the vehicle.

            Same argument as with elevators, people get into them all the time with complete strangers and then the doors close. I already ride in the driverless Metro Mover in downtown Miami. For all practical purposes It’s just a big elevator moving sideways along a track…

            Checkout the autonomous bus in this episode of fully charged
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k5TDZ6irG4
            TransforMOTION | Fully Charged

            Of course this entire conversation may be moot if industrial civilization collapses and hordes of barbarians overrun our cities. 😉

            Cheers!

            1. I guess you have not read the stories written by Uber drivers.

              I used a taxi once to get home from town 12 miles away, cost me $40. Would cost me less than a buck normally to drive my own.

              I am sure it would work somewhat in the city and dense areas. Would never work for what I do with my car out in the rural areas. Doubt if AI could even drive here, maybe in ten years.
              By then I might want one so I can nap along the way. 🙂

              The number of cars needed will not reduce since the demand will increase and be determined by family needs plus rush hour at the same time periods. Energy use will rise compared to private vehicle usage due to extra miles driven unless the price of taxi service goes high, then private cars will be cheaper for many.

              Since 80 percent or more will live in cities, I guess private car ownership percentage will drop anyway. Depends on economics.

              Here is a list, by city, of car free households and rate of car ownership. Also has an interactive map. Will make a good baseline for future comparison.

              http://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-vehicles-by-city-map.html

            2. Just noticed this.
              ” In any case, the idea is to eliminate the need for private car ownership as much as possible.”

              This is a serious question. Why is the idea to eliminate private car ownership and move it into corporate hands? Maybe you could give me a few hints as to why and what the benefits would be for the public at large. I honestly can’t see it.

            3. This is a serious question. Why is the idea to eliminate private car ownership and move it into corporate hands? Maybe you could give me a few hints as to why and what the benefits would be for the public at large. I honestly can’t see it.

              It is difficult to explain water to a fish, but here goes 😉

              I guess the issue boils down to how you feel about things like public transportation and a service economy where you don’t own most of your appliances.

              As far as corporations, how about cooperatives instead where the organizations are owned and run jointly by members, who share the profits or benefits. I can think of a few alternative models. Have I mentioned new paradigms?

              Maybe watch this video from VIGGA a Danish business that provides baby clothes within a model where you don’t own the clothes.
              https://vigga.us/in-english/

              Can you see the benefits to society and extrapolate the concept to other items like washing machines and refrigerators and even vehicles?

              I guess I’m a fish out of water in that I don’t see all that many benefits to ownership of products if I can just use them when I need them. Then all of society becomes responsible for the entire life cycle of such products.

            4. Fred, you are a dreamer. That is good, we all need to have dreams but this stuff is not new, just having it organized and incorporated is newer.

              I don’t see the problem, me, my neighbors, and my community already have had methods in place to reuse clothing and appliances for years. I give them things, sometimes things come to me, the clothes don’t get thrown away unless they are worn out. My washing machine is second hand, my car is second hand, my cameras, and many other items. I give stuff to people that want or need them. Just got a free coffee maker, gave away a lighting fixture to a neighbor.
              Garage sales and moving sales, you get things for pennies on the dollar. I support thrift stores too. We reuse books a lot and support our libraries.
              My own daughter got tons of clothes (way more than I will ever have) given to her. Really good stuff that had been outgrown.
              Much does not go to the dump, they get used a second and third time. No subscription needed.

              I guess things are different in the highly educated cultural city areas and they need a subscription to help each other and not waste stuff. Here we talk and share tools, time and skills. But that is the elitist mind, thinks it has come up with new and amazing ideas when they have been around for ages.

              I see no real advantage for me or my neighbors (except a few oldsters) to have a car service. Wouldn’t work. Need to move wood or fridges, we help each other, somebody lends a pickup and we get it done. Need work done on your house, a neighbor might just step in and do it or help. Need a ride, we do that too. Need to borrow a car, just ask a neighbor. Done that several times.

              I can’t see some friends of mine with several kids using a taxi service for the many trips they need to do. Put them in the poorhouse. Dad is at work building things, mom needs help getting a kid somewhere so grandma acts as taxi service or a friend does it.
              Even my retired neighbor is in and out a couple times a day.
              Uber costs per minute, per booking, per mile plus base fee, add up fast. Just for me to go into town and back would be about $32, costs me $1 (five mile round trip). I combine trips and take my time, stop and eat lunch in my car or in a park, that would probably cost $80 to do what I do for $3. No thanks, I will keep my car and keep helping people in my own way.

              BTW, I can rent a car on the weekends for $9 a day. They pick me up and drop me off for free.

              Uber would charge me $18 just to take me a nearby town 10 miles away. Then another $18 to take me back (just checked). Don’t know what it would cost if I made two or three stops, probably a lot more. Uber also has time/demand charges that could double that cost for the same trip if I do it when they have lots of demand.
              Not a viable option. In fact here, it might just be one more way to separate people and reduce their interactions. That is the major idea behind many of these plans, separate people and make money from them.
              United we stand, divided we watch TV and hire a car.

            5. I agree with your points and have practiced most of what you describe myself. I grew up just a little above being poor.

              Basically what you say about the difference between urban and rural life pretty much hits the nail right on the head. What works in the big city probably doesn’t work too well in your neck of the woods.

              You are also right that most of what I have described is dependent on organization of civil society.

              Now I may be a dreamer, but I’m not the only one 😉

              That business in Denmark already exists today and I’d prefer to see many more following in their footsteps.

              The only thing I’m almost 100% convinced of is that BAU can’t continue. Either we voluntarily get on a different path or it will collapse.

            6. Fred, it tis the way of Nature to take down what has outlived it’s usefulness and survivability. BAU will change and is changing, we just happen to be in the mix and can’t clearly see what the cake will become when it’s baked.
              There are so many great ideas out there and it’s because their time has come or it is coming. There will be failures and restarts and glitches and successes. It could be one of the most amazing times in all of mankind’s history because not only are we often set against ourselves but we are working against and being worked against by the very environment and nature that we exist within. What challenges and opportunities we will have.

              This will be a true test of human endeavor and maybe, just maybe we will pass and be better for it. If not, doesn’t matter.
              I just wish a lot more people would take things a lot more seriously now, make things easier later.
              What was it that they used to have, air raid sirens. That is what we need, climate emergency sirens going off all around us until we all get together and start acting as if this is real instead of a minimalist game to be played. The idea of “well we probably won’t stop at 2c” could be the same thing we hear about 3C later on. Not a good plan, but at least there is a plan now. At least they are starting to hear the sirens.
              Raining here, mid winter. Snowed a little then rain. Spring is just around the corner. Hope some bugs come back.

            7. Umpisolmu (Overhand Knot)

              “…Which lifeline will curl to a roll first
              To an overhand knot
              Ideas have a tendency to land on their knees…
              …but don’t worry
              Humans have a tendency to land on their feet…”

            8. As a sailor I’ve found this knot to be more useful… Bonus points if you know what it is called and what it is used for. Extra bonus points if you can tie it without looking at your line.
              .

            9. Nice knot, thanks for sharing. I’d like to learn those…
              I should get back to my knitting…

            10. We had to tie the bowline knot behind our backs in sailing at UCSB.
              Don’t know if I can do it now.
              All those years offshore in Micronesia behind the back was not a issue.

            11. Plus these days almost everybody has a cell phone that works almost everywhere they are apt to go, and it’s super easy to snap and send a picture, or just talk on the phone while in the company of a stranger who might be just a tad scary.

              The fear of getting into a driverless cab or bus will go prove to be unfounded, whereas I have already seen at least two or three reported rapes or assaults of passengers in the news….. committed by guys who are running for hire taxis via the new franchises that are putting the old line cab companies out of business.

              You could say this much for cab companies in days gone by in most places…… the law checked them out well enough previous to issuing a license that you very seldom heard about a driver assaulting a passenger.

            12. I happen to live in a place where I’m lucky to get cell phone service 50% of the time.
              I sometimes don’t look at it for days.

            13. “I happen to live in a place where I’m lucky to get cell phone service 50% of the time.”

              I have a good signal about eighty percent of the time. A lot of people who live within a few miles having no signal at all and must still depend on a land line.

              But rural people will likely continue to own their own cars, and if they do want to hire a car, they will no doubt be able to specify a rental with no passengers other than their own party, autonomous or otherwise.

              I don’t see any reason at all to think it will be cheaper to hire a rental more than a couple of times a month when you live in the boonies than it will be to own your own car. I can drive my own OLDER depreciated car to town at least five or six times, times, ALL costs included, for less money than I can hire a cab to take me to town, take me to a couple of different places, wait for me to shop, and bring me back home.

              My opinion is that old depreciated autonomous cars will eventually be just as cheap, relatively speaking, as old conventional cars are today. .

              Ditto electric cars, and old retired guys like me will be able to time almost all our trips so our old electric car can be connected to our own solar panels during the sunniest hours in the middle of the day.

              If I were still working, and working evening or night shift, I could justify buying an older somewhat ratted out Nissan Leaf and enough solar panels to keep it charged up almost all the time, and never buy gasoline for commuting or shopping in the nearest town again. I might have to buy juice to charge the car as many as four or five days a month though, depending on the weather.

      2. I should point out that, made properly, EVs last much, much longer than most gasoline cars. Gasoline engines have a limited lifespan. It turns out electric motors and batteries both last much, much longer. If you thermally manage the battery (so that it doesn’t get heat or cold damage).

    2. Great article, if you like false premises supported by false assumptions to come to erroneous conclusions.
      As has been discussed in the past on this blog, the energy used to produce liquid fuel such as gasoline is about 40% of the energy that it contains for use. Those discussions, supported by references, showed that just energy of production (refining and distribution included) would be more than enough to run the average EV a typical 12,500 miles per year. Considering that every EV saves over 6000 gallons of fuel over it’s life time, that is 6000 gallons that did not have to be produced or could be used for other purposes. That is now “extra” energy in the system that was not there before.
      So EV’s produce a surplus of energy due to their high efficiency and lack of need for fuel production energy and materials. Wind power and PV will develop much faster than the EV so there will be no lack of power to run EV’s.
      Actually I am going to have to amend those earlier calculations, since some new EV’s are now down to 0.2 kWh per mile average versus the original 0.3. But I don’t see a problem.

      BTW, an EV can run in it’s own solar footprint. The high efficiency PV panel area needed to produce the power used by an EV running a typical 34 miles per day is about the same area as the horizontal plane area of the vehicle.

      One million EV’s on the road saves over 6 billion gallons of fuel having to be produced, transported, refined, transported and distributed. It would take 22.5 million EV’s on the road to save a year’s worth of US gasoline use over their 15 year lifetime, if the average fuel use rate was 30 mpg. Plus all that coal, natural gas, electricity and oil products energy that go into production, refining and distribution of gasoline (or diesel) can be produced by clean PV and wind power directly, since that is the only energy needed to run the electric vehicles.

      So even without all those great ideas that Fred promotes about circular economy and recycle/reusability, the EV is a clear energy winner over fossil fuel.

      1. U.S. Transportation fuel consumption accounts for over 70 percent of total U.S. oil consumption, and more than 65 percent of that amount is for personal vehicles. American drivers consume about nine million barrels of gasoline per day for personal transportation—378 million gallons every day—about 45 percent of total U.S. oil consumption.

        — U.S. Energy Information Administration

        1. That’s a lot of gallons every day. Might mean up to 9.4 billion miles a day, but probably less due to idling and traffic jams. Compare that t0 1.9 billion kWh to run efficient EV’s that far. At $3 gasoline that is 1.1 billion dollars at 0.12 dollar per kWh that is $228 million dollars per day. Quite a savings per day. Even less efficient EV’s have about a 4 to 1 advantage over the typical ICE. Sure the most efficient ICE’s vehicles (non-electric) are closer but still far behind the efficiency of an EV.
          Wonder why our economists have not caught onto that one. Or have they? One would think saving 318 billion dollars on transportation fuel per year would be a great thing to talk about. And it would make America energy independent.
          Does somebody up top have the wrong formula for success?

          1. One would think saving 318 billion dollars on transportation fuel per year would be a great thing to talk about.

            Isn’t that roughly in the ballpark for the estimates of what last summer’s hurricanes, floods and fires cost the US economy in direct infrastructure losses alone?

            1. It’s the cost of 1000 square miles of installed PV. Enough to displace 600 million tons of thermal coal every year, year after year.

            2. From the link:
              “If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah; you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States,” Musk said at at the event in Rhode Island. “The batteries you need to store the energy, so you have 24/7 power, is 1 mile by 1 mile. One square-mile.”

              Of course there is no reason to think that all these panels and batteries need to be located in one place. It would make much more sense to build distributed micro grids wherever there are roofs, empty toxic landfill sites and places like parking lots available. Like in 90% of our urban and suburban areas.

              Oh, wait, kind of like what he is already planning on building in Australia…

              https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/5/16973270/tesla-south-australia-worlds-largest-virtual-power-plant

              Tesla is helping South Australia build what will be the world’s largest virtual power plant

              Installation is planned for 50,000 homes across the state over the next four years

            3. “Of course there is no reason to think that all these panels and batteries need to be located in one place. It would make much more sense to build distributed micro grids wherever there are roofs, empty toxic landfill sites and places like parking lots available. Like in 90% of our urban and suburban areas.”

              Duhhhh, really? The guy sells rooftop solar tiles.

              Now add in wind, tidal, some compressed air and hydrogen storage and we will have more than enough power for everything. Especially when the EV’s save the energy usage. Oh, I forgot efficiency changes.

              Energy is not a problem unless we make that way (some are really trying).

              Right now it looks like the US is adding 2.5 square miles of PV every year. We need to double that rate.

            4. The trolls fret so much about grid instability and the need to build new grid to cope with renewables. Distributed production and storage is what is needed instead. Put the batteries near the consumption, use existing infrastructure sites such as ex power plants, at switching stations, transformers and right next to the consumers – plenty of space near industrial parks and burbs. Distributed generation across the local grid avoids the need for up-rating long distance grid which will move over to time of day balancing. Seems like the way to go.

              A good example is a local restaurant with solar on the roof. Peak production during the day, when it is not needed there, supplying the businesses around then taking back from the grid at night, when they do need it and the other businesses are closed. A form of load balancing for the local area.

              NAOM

            5. A further thought on this and I will keep it separate. Battery storage does not have to mean Lithium 18650s, there are lots of other technologies coming on line – !pun – flow batteries, liquid metal, salts etc. Is there any reason stationary, Lithium batteries need to stay as arrays of 18650 size or could larger cells be used to increase efficiency and storage capacity?

              NAOM

    3. This article is full of canards.

      >Looking ahead – and ignoring, for now, EVs – demand for electricity is rising at about 2.5% annually, well ahead of the rates at which either population numbers or total energy consumption are increasing.

      1% is a better guess.

      >Now, instead of requiring additional generating capacity of 10,160 TWH (+41%) by 2030 just to meet growing baseline demand, we would need to find extra capacity totalling 17,500 TWH (+71%).

      Extremely doubtful. Batteries could be charged in off-peak times, so EVs probably won’t require any capacity increases.

      >The fossil fuel currently burned in IC-powered transport will simply be displaced from vehicle engines to power stations.

      Not even close to being true, EVs use much less energy.

      >We are going to need every KWH of renewable output just to keep up with growth in the baseload (non-EV) need for electricity.

      This is pretty much nonsense as well. We haven’t even scratched the surface of energy efficiency. The idea that technology can’t improve is dumb.

      >The norm has become suburban and exurban sprawl, rather than the greater housing densities of earlier times.

      Where to begin? He is talking about the US here. Anyway, EVs make life more dense by reducing noise and pollution. And EVs certainly do not prevent cities from rezoning for density, so it is a false dilemma.

      And so on.

  9. Here’s a link to the present lead article in Low Tech Magazine. It compliments the one by Tim Morgan beautifully.

    Both are WELL worth careful study in the event you, Dear Reader, aren’t already thoroughly familiar with the energy issue, and even if you’re already expert, there’s probably some stuff in both you haven’t seen yet, such as particular statistics.

    http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/01/bedazzled-by-energy-efficiency.html#more

    Don’t forget that both authors may occasionally exaggerate certain arguments, or quote less than sterling quality statistics gathered by other parties.

    Fred pointed out some problems with Dan Morgan’s article.

    Low Tech says ( more or less in so many words) that while LED lights are six times more efficient than old style incandescent lights, they have merely resulted in six times more light, and gives references for this statement. Personally I don’t doubt that LED’s often lead to using more light, but I’m pretty much ready to bet my farm against a cold beer that we aren’t using six times as much light as we were at the time LED’s took off, and even if this were true, a large portion of the increase would be due to growing population and prosperity.

    I have personally increased my use of light by probably five or ten percent, since I switched to led’s, because I now feel comfortable leaving a couple of night lights on I used to turn off and on each trip thru the house, but I’m sure I have reduced my electricity consumption for lights by at least seventy percent over the last ten or fifteen years.

    I’m perfectly sure my own experience reflects that of the large majority of all the people I know personally, and also the experience of nearly all or maybe all the small businessmen I know.

    We shouldn’t let the fact that the linked articles have some shortcomings prevent us from reading and studying them. They’re both jam packed with useful and generally very accurate information.

    It’s perfectly reasonable to read Morgan’s article and draw conclusions about his statements that are quite different from those arrived at by Fred and GF, although I totally agree with both of them that ev’s are one of our very best options going forward as fossil fuel supplies run short and as we work to clean up the environment.

    1. I switched from 60-watt bulbs to “40-watt-replacement” LEDs, to be clear. People don’t want ultra-bright light.

  10. Here’s a random fact about LED lights that somehow has escaped the attention of most tradespeople and homeowners.

    The ordinary screw in LED’s that are used in ordinary fixtures are satisfactorily shock resistant, and seldom fail if you bump or even drop one of them three or four feet, if it’s enclosed in a work light fixture on the end of an extension cord.

    Everybody knows they don’t get hot, but hardly anybody seems to realize they don’t give up if you look hard at them, the way ordinary incandescent bulbs do. Drop the fixture three inches , you will need a new incandescent bulb almost every time, unless it’s a so called rough service bulb, which still gets VERY hot, and will still fail every time if you drop it a couple of feet.

    So there’s no need to buy dedicated LED work lights with cords if you already have a cord equipped with a light fixture on it.

    1. Some years ago I bought a work lamp with a fluorescent lamp in it from a well known store with lots of lighting and building gear in it. The lamp took a knock and the tube broke. Guess what? Despite selling many, many varieties of tubes that store did not carry a spare for that lamp. Now, I am considering digging it out, cleaning it up and LEDifying it as it will be handy for some things I need to do.

      NAOM

  11. BAU for next 25 years?

    EXXON’S ENERGY OUTLOOK ANTICIPATES IMPROVED EFFICIENCY, BUOYANT DEMAND

    According to ExxonMobil’s energy outlook assessment, the growing world population coupled with the energy demands of an expanding middle class will drive an ever-growing demand for energy, Pete Trelenberg, ExxonMobil manager for environmental policy and planning, told the Alaska Support Industry Alliance’s Meet Alaska conference on Jan. 19. And, while the efficiency of energy usage continues to improve significantly, oil, gas and coal will continue to play a significant role in the global energy mix for several decades to come, Trelenberg said.

    The number of people within the population with middle class standards of living is expected to grow from around 2 billion now to somewhere in the range of 3 billion to 5 billion in 2030, with this growth taking place essentially in the developing world. As people become wealthier, they start to use energy consuming technologies such as washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners and automobiles.

    ExxonMobil expects oil to remain the primary fuel over the next 25 years, especially for transportation and as an industrial fuel. Even supposing that all passenger vehicles become electrically powered, that phenomenon would only account for about 20 to 22 percent of total oil demand. The remaining demand would still require oil production of about 80 million barrels per day, maintained by re-investment in the oil industry, Trelenberg said. “This industry has a long future and we need to continue to invest, to meet consumer demand,” he said.

    http://www.petroleumnews.com/pntruncate/728318700.shtml

    1. The remaining demand would still require oil production of about 80 million barrels per day, maintained by re-investment in the oil industry, Trelenberg said. “This industry has a long future and we need to continue to invest, to meet consumer demand,” he said.

      Uh-huh! And Rex Tillerson is now the Secretary of State of the Greatest Oil Exporting country ever! And Scott Pruitt is the head of the EPA of that same Great country. While the President went to Davos to tell the world that there has never been a better time to invest in that same great country.

      Meanwhile the Europeans, the Chinese and the Saudis are all switching investments away from oil.

      Also Shell Oil, BP and French Total are quietly investing in alternative energy as well.
      Oh guess what?! So is Exxon, what a surprise…

      https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-03/exxon-is-spending-1-billion-a-year-to-research-green-energy

      Anyone who seriously thinks we will have another 25 years of fossil fuel based BAU is delusional. I don’t believe that any of the CEOs of the oil majors believe any such thing. Maybe Donald Trump, but I highly doubt anyone else does.

      1. Tillerson carefully sold all his oil stock *including* the restricted Exxon stock which he wasn’t supposed to be able to sell, and then put it into a “blind” trust which was prohibited from buying fossil fuel stocks. Crazy like a fox, that one.

    2. Does anyone believe if most transport went electric and renewable energy took over that it would only cut the oil demand by 22 percent? I can see a few percent for lubricants and a few percent for chemicals, but having 80 percent demand left to do what? Ships (7 million barrels a day globally)? Heating? Much better ways now. Electric power, too expensive. Even jet planes are getting far more efficient. Then what?

      The Energy Information Administration has released data showing that the transportation of people and goods accounts for about 25 percent of all energy consumption in the world and that passenger transportation, in particular light-duty vehicles, accounts for most transportation energy consumption. Light-duty vehicles alone consume more than all freight modes of transportation, such as heavy trucks, marine and rail.

      https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/transport-uses-25-percent-of-world-energy#gs.h6rdU64

      1. Ferries are already going electric. Small planes are already going electric. Rivergoing cargo ships are already going electric. Basically, there’s nowhere to hide for oil.

    1. Thanks Doug!

      The real miracle is that of a highly educated and participatory society responding to the will of the majority of its citizens before it is forced to, based on the hope of preserving their way of life.

      That miracle is a function of culture, and culture is almost impossible to replicate. The oil wealth funding the subsidy policy isn’t unique to Norway. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela and Canada are all energy rich countries, but none save Canada possess the political culture to enact similar incentives, nor the civic norms to provide the catalyst for such subsidies to succeed.

      What would define success for the Norwegian experiment? That they can afford the subsidies long enough for battery technology to match or beat ICE range and cost, at which point the subsidies can go away, and the EV tipping point will actually arrive.

      I happen to be a big fan of highly educated, cultured, participatory civil societies. Just wish they were more the norm rather than the rare exception.

      1. Are you a fan of beheadings? Are you fond of autocratic regimes? Do you want to help those kooky, lovable Koch brothers purchase another member of Congress? Do you yearn to support Saudi Arabia, Iran, Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin, but it seems so difficult to give them direct, individual donations? Lucky for you, there’s an easy answer! Just buy gasoline!
        -Karen Lynn Allen

  12. Does anybody here believe that air to fuel synthetic fuel using CO2 captured from the air and oxygen and hydrogen obtained by the electrolysis of water can possibly be a PRACTICAL solution to the CO2 problem?

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/04/carbon-emissions-negative-emissions-technologies-capture-storage-bill-gates

    I don’t care if Bill Gates has thirty or forty points on me in IQ, or ten thousand times as much money.

    I can remember enough basic physics and chemistry that I’m utterly convinced that we aren’t going to build enough wind and solar farms within the next thirty or forty years so as to generate enough otherwise surplus electricity to make such a scheme WORK.

    Why would anybody (who is technically literate at the freshman sciences student level ) even CONSIDER such a scheme, as a practical matter, unless he believes we can eventually build enough wind and solar farms that renewable electricity will be, like they once said about nuclear electricity, ” too cheap to meter”?

    Now I’m all for any sort of research, so long as it may generate some useful new data or result in the discovery of a useful new technology, so it’s ok with me if billionaires want to spend their money on such schemes.

    But using any available renewable electricity directly, rather than for carbon capture, certainly appears to be a far more practical and economic strategy, and even in this article, there are well qualified people who say the same in no uncertain terms.

    So……. just speculating……..

    Since Bill Gates and Richard Branson and other such guys are obviously not STUPID, can we conclude that they actually do believe that we can and will build THAT MUCH combined wind and solar electrical generation capacity?

    I’m open in principle to that possibility myself, since it may be possible to automate most of the work involved, from mining to erection, and supply the energy by bootstrapping the first few years of net production from wind turbines and solar panels built in automated factories and erected by robots…. to build more and more wind and solar farms. MAYBE….. EVENTUALLY.

    Not anytime soon, though, like within the next ten or twenty years.

    1. Read this earlier, what a crock.

      First, it does not remove CO2, it recycles it.

      Second, the energy needed to run it could be used instead of the fuel it makes and, if FF, puts more CO2 back.

      Third, by the time it becomes widely available, it will be producing something that is not required.

      Oh, and 1 ton of CO2 is hardly going to make a dent in Gigatons, you’ll put out more CO2 just building out.

      NOAM

    2. “I don’t care if Bill Gates has thirty or forty points on me in IQ, or ten thousand times as much money.”

      So now your doing comedy ?

      1. Hi HB,

        Glad to hear from you. Comedy is a lot easier when you’re around to help me.

          1. Hi Hickory,

            WHICH news in particular are you referring to, that I have defended, which you consider to be fake news?

            Every once in a while I post a link to FOX News, but not everything there is fake. Some of it is perfectly accurate. Not much, lol, but still some.

            I can’t answer properly without your reply.

  13. The global temperature for January 2018 was well above average. Although not as exceptional as the values for January 2016 and January 2017, it was in line with the upward trend of 0.18°C per decade seen in global temperature data from 1979 onwards. January 2018 was:

    -0.4°C warmer than the average January from 1981-2010;
    -the fourth warmest January on record;
    -more than 0.3°C cooler than the warmest January, which occurred in 2016.

    The warmest and second-warmest instances of each month of the year occur between October 2015 and December 2017.

    https://climate.copernicus.eu/resources/data-analysis/average-surface-air-temperature-analysis/monthly-maps/surface-air-5

    1. Arctic temperature rise is at the rate of 0.5 C per decade since 1977.

  14. OPES Solution, Fraunhofer CSP develop ultra-light solar modules

    OPES Solutions and Germany’s Fraunhofer Center for Silicon Photovoltaics (CSP) have developed a module that weighs around only 20 grams per watt. Conventional crystalline solar modules, in comparison, weigh roughly 60 grams per watt, the Berlin-based provider of off-grid PV products said.

    The company said that PV module backsheets, made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) on which mono or polycrystalline solar cells are laminated, is largely responsible for the weight reduction.

    As the material is particularly cost-effective at high production volumes, production costs for the frameless modules “O-Lite-Plus” in series production would be at a comparable level to that of conventional modules, OPES Solution added.

    This technology also allows for the production of curved modules, which are particularly suitable for weight-sensitive applications, such as vehicles, boats and small appliances. Demand for the ultra-light, durable solar modules is already visible from vehicle manufacturers and bike-sharing providers, according to the company.

    Ready for Solar Impulse III? At the end of the global odyssey of SI 2 back in 2016 I suggested that a SI 3 would be a smaller, lighter, faster and more powerful aircraft than SI 2. The aim of such a project might be to circle the globe in a much shorter time than SI 2 did. All of this with a view to advancing the state of the art in solar PV, advanced batteries and electric motors.

    1. I want to see panels that can join together with seals in between so that they can be used as a roof, like traditional corrugated material (but without the corrugation). Then you would not need to build a roof then put solar on it, it would be the roof. The savings in roofing material would be an offset against the cost of the solar. It would be perfect for porches, verandas, car ports etc – anywhere corrugated is used now.

      NAOM

        1. No, like simple corrugated laminates except flat (doesn’t hurt the cells so much as when you bend them 🙂 ). Just simple panels like you can buy by the pallet, cheap. Just very simple and very cheap. Use them for porch, veranda, shed, greenhouse (for shading), car ports, gazebos etc.

          NAOM

  15. I noted the Info Wars feed I use to pickup with my big communications dish is gone now. They might be returning to a different feed so people can pickup with a smaller dish, and that would be good because many people want it but dont have a big enough dish. Anyway because some topic’s from here are discussed on Info Wars I thought to give notice here in case any body else wanted to know what happened to it.

    1. Alex mentioned on a recent show his contract for the big dish programming was ending. Then he said he would return and launch two new feeds with alternative programming for a total of 3 InfoWars channels! Hopefully he does come back soon.

      1. thank u for that info.. wifey an me watch his show for the news no where else has.. savage nation is a good show to for thinkers..

    2. I get Infowars just fine on my Roku, along with Newsmax and a few other patriot news channels. If you can go to streaming, that’s where you should go since there’s so much available these days.

  16. These are 12 month average rate changes in atmospheric CO2 yoy using monthly data from the Mauna Loa Keeling curve. They are seasonally adjusted values. One can notice a wide variation in rate of change from year to year. Certainly not a smooth rise. I placed a linear trend line, not to say the trend is linear but to give a visual reference line due to the wide scatter in values.
    All rates of change are positive. Overall trend is increasing but changes from year to year do not hold much validity for determining trends.

  17. Comments/Questions from: Good idea, bad idea: The Merits Of Renewables The Folly Of EV

    “Hi guys, what do you think of these quotes from elsewhere (Peak Oil Barrel) regarding Dr. Morgan’s article here:

    Quote 1:

    “The article’s criticism of EV’s is based on two assumptions which I think are false…” ~ Fred Magyar

    Quote 2:

    “Great article, if you like false premises supported by false assumptions to come to erroneous conclusions…” ~ GoneFishing

    Thanks!” ~ Caelan MacIntyre

    Some responses:

    The first quote says, I think, that things would be a lot better if we (a) gave up on consumerism, and (b) stopped obsessing about private car ownership. I agree, entirely, but I can’t see how we persuade the public about this, or overcome the vested interests involved with both.

    I simply disagree with the second quote.” ~ drtimmorgan

    ——

    “Really?

    Let’s follow that through — people decide not to shop … not to travel … not to eat in restaurants… not to buy new cars

    Where does that lead?

    Very obviously to total economic collapse. Because that would result in the loss of millions of jobs in those industries… those people would have no means to consume… more jobs lost… and then the financial system would collapse as these out of work people defaulted on their debts…

    Tim — is the kitchen getting too hot for you? These comments are making no sense.” ~ Thomas Malthus

    ——

    “Oh my where do I start?

    First of all EV isn’t a apple to apple replacement. EV needs a primary power source.

    It is incredibly sad how ignorant people are on the reality of trying to convert the present fossil fuel based system with renewables. Frankly it’s sheer lunacy.

    In the last 14 years we have only reduced our use of fossil fuels by about 5% with wind and solar. We haven’t even started any meaningful change in transportation. If that rate was sustained it would take 300years to reach grid utopia. Another 600 years to replace all energy systems. That’s without replacement at 30year intervals.

    Only fools without basic math skills believe this. People like Janet Yellen and Ben Bernake.” ~ JT Roberts

    1. Wow, you make so much more sense when you use my words. Far more than your own, which is none.
      Found some buds to hang around with?

        1. I should get some kind of outfit…
          Seriously, though, why build a wheel when the one you’ve already built will suffice?

          “…it is like that bell curve for intelligence, and they say that average intelligence– the majority– is not that smart.

          So society averages out at average. We can have all the great technology and ideas we want, but somehow it all gets averaged-out/diluted at the peak– the majority– of the bell curve of human intelligence.

          So maybe culture is a kind of averaged-out manifestation of 100 IQ, which is not that bright as some have suggested.

          Looking around, that seems to make sense. We should be skateboarding on Mars by now, for example, yes? Or have nuclear fusion and nuclear fission waste all taken care of by now, everything all neatly decommissioned? We should be working far less by now, with no wage-slaves, poverty or illusions of democracy. We should be living in a kind of Frescoesque Venus Project World by now, no? Doing art, music, philosophy, leisure, mountain biking and hiking in the trails, swimming in the pristine local waters of happy fish and making love beside a knocked-over tray of tea-and-crumpets?

          But we’re not. Not quite.

          We are living with climate change and ceaseless arguments about it; with ecosystem despoilment and depletions and Fox News.

          In the physical and spiritual manifestation of a 100 IQ world.” ~ Caelan MacIntyre

          “Caelan, my observations precisely. Thanks.

          We are still stuck in an evolutionarily determined predator-prey situation in which the most successful predatory top 0.001-1% gain disproportionately by manipulation and enforcing of self-serving symbols and beliefs, perpetuating the mythos of meritocracy and perpetual growth of population, resource consumption, and–choose your particular poison–’capitalism’, ‘free markets’, ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘progress’, or whichever religious-like basis for meaning, purpose, and motivation suits…” ~ BC

          “I’m amazed, truly and honestly amazed that 1/2 of all life has disappeared since I was born.” ~ The Wet One

          “Me too. Whenever techno-optimists post the amazing graphs showing the human condition improving year by year, it’s a struggle not to reply with the famous Living Planet Index graphs.” ~ Jim Galasyn

          “I did find it interesting that the king of Jordan imported Tesla EV’s for himself and his top ministers.” ~ Bob Nickson

          “The King is a rich kid, it’s normal behavior for those types to buy rich kid toys.” ~ Fernando Leanme

      1. “Wow, you make so much more sense when you use my words. Far more than your own, which is none.
        Found some buds to hang around with?” ~ GoneFishing

        Cripes, what an asinine adolescent-level comment of yours here…
        Anyone from ‘over there’ may feel an added sense of conviction in their disagreements with your aforementioned contentions by it.

        FWIW (probably less than nothing), regarding ‘my buds’, Survivalist posted the initial link to the article there, not me. I don’t participate on that forum.
        FWIW2: ‘Peer review’

        1. CM, you have all the attractive characteristics of a lamprey. Feeding off of and sucking the life out of every thinking being around you and doing it incorrectly. After reading some of your chaotic jumbled posts I wonder if you have any actual comprehension of reality at all or just exist in a one dimensional mental delusional space inside your own head.

          1. So you write in yet another self-sucking comment.

            We don’t require your authorization to share your comments, Gonzo, that others clearly disagree with, and that you don’t bother defending or elaborating upon anyway. If talk is cheap, your talk is a steal, as you keep making plainly evident. And so we run with it.

            But sharing can create the conditions, if you let it and can get over your text-based tantrums, that expand your reality, such as beyond your virtual ‘buds’ opinions and outside of your virtual boxed ‘hangouts’.

            As for my concepts, comments, etc., I think they’re pretty tight for the most part, but once in awhile, there can be distractions, etc….

            And even art! ^u^

            Fragmented
            Undone
            “Drown, world trade organization drown” ~ Deep Blue Kitty

            1. Whining parasites trying to justify their actions and their hate of everything. What a sad thing you are Caleen.

            2. You’re back! I almost wrote “Your turn.” at the end of my previous comment! LOL

    2. Yawn. I skimmed the article and some of the comments and it sounds a bit like and old British conservative echo chamber. Actually, I smell a rat or more likely a Koch brothers sponsored EV hit piece. I haven’t looked too closely at the numbers but they sure do fly in the face of more optimistic outlooks from the likes of Tony Seba.

      In my neck of the woods there’s an old folks saying, essentially meaning “it’s something in the future, not in the past” or more simply put, “we shall see”. Neither of the disruptions in energy or transportation are showing any signs of slowing down at the moment. They appear more likely to accelerate, if anything.

      1. “Actually, I smell a rat or more likely a Koch brothers sponsored EV hit piece.” ~ islandboy

        We could replace you here with a drive-by AGW-denialist and your phrase woudn’t seem out of place.

        “Neither of the disruptions in energy or transportation are showing any signs of slowing down at the moment. They appear more likely to accelerate, if anything.” ~ islandboy

        Now this one sounds a lot like the old adage of ‘everything’s fine until you hit the ground’ regarding the metaphor of someone falling from a great height without a parachute.

        It’s as if– and not just with your comment, Alan– no civilizations have collapsed before or that our planet’s ecosystem is not already in the throes, or nearby, of the sixth mass extinction event… and that we can afford to embark on or continue these sorts of ‘manufactured’ transitions.

        Some tough arrogant nuts to crack these humans, ay? That’s ok, because…

        “I brought you into this world and I can take you out!” ~ Mother Nature

        Now if only my tribe can hold out long enough to pass through the bottlenecks that crack all the rest of the nuts…

    3. “The first quote says, I think, that things would be a lot better if we (a) gave up on consumerism, and (b) stopped obsessing about private car ownership. I agree, entirely, but I can’t see how we persuade the public about this, or overcome the vested interests involved with both.

      Close but not quite a cigar!

      And whether one agrees with me or not, I have actually proposed a pathway for paradigm change and perhaps persuading the public on how to overcome the vested interests involved with both, in some of my previous posts on this forum. But to know that you would have to be a least somewhat familiar with my previous posts.

      But this kind of third party cross posting that you seem to enjoy engaging in does not allow for clarification of ideas that may not be completely clear at first blush. Especially in the case of someone who is not familiar with an individual’s style or where they might be coming from. Even here, among the regulars who have some history of exchanging ideas with each other, it often happens that we need to further explain our thoughts to each other.

      While cross posting what any of us puts up on a public forum is fair game, it runs the risk of losing some of the original intent much like in a game of telephone… Information can easily be corrupted by indirect communication. I much prefer direct communication!
      .

      1. I found the following while doing some file scrubbing and it may give some insight to why some don’t quite get it.

        The Plan

        In the Beginning was The Plan
        And then came the Assumptions
        And the Assumptions were without form
        And the Plan was completely without substance
        And the darkness was upon the face of the Workers

        And the Workers spoke amongst themselves, saying
        ” It is a crock of shit, and it stinketh.”

        And the Workers went unto their Supervisors and sayeth,
        ” It is a pail of dung and none may abide the odor thereof.”

        And the Supervisors went unto their Managers and sayeth unto them,
        ” It is a container of excrement and it is very strong,
        such that none may abide by it.”

        And the Managers went unto their Directors and sayeth,
        ” It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength.”

        And the Directors spoke among themselves, saying one to another,
        ” It contains that which aids plant growth, and it is very strong.”

        And the Directors went unto the Vice Presidents and sayeth unto them,
        ” It promotes growth and is very powerful.”

        And the Vice Presidents went unto the President and sayeth unto him,
        ” This new Plan will actively promote the growth and efficiency of this
        Company, and in these Areas in particular.”

        And the President looked upon The Plan,
        And saw that it was good, and The Plan became Policy.

        And this is how Shit Happens.

        NAOM

      2. The case for cross-posting is a no-brainer for anyone who supports the free and unfettered sharing and dissemination of information– never mind science, peer review, publishing, Wikileaks, Snowden and all the rest. Are you kidding?

        In fact your comment here could even support the case for it, paradoxically.
        Read it again– and think.

        “We ought to establish our own little club of misfits, and not allow anybody in except those with backgrounds similar to yours and mine.” ~ OFM

        Careful what we wish for.

    4. drtimmorgan on February 6, 2018 at 4:53 am said:

      “JT

      That’s exactly how I feel about this – frustration at apparent ignorance of the blindingly obvious.

      Which still leaves me wondering – why are governments and industry so gung-ho about this?

    1. Yep, the Arctic Ocean ice is going, the snow cover is going earlier in the spring, then the whole region warms up much faster. This sets into play the frozen tundra melting feedbacks and the Greenland Ice cap melt rate increases. The decade of the 2020’s will be the time of the great tipping.

      Oh great EV in the sky, save us all. 🙂
      BTW, SpaceX is supposed to send an EV to Mars orbit tomorrow with the first flight test of the Falcon Heavy.

      1. Say what you will about Elon Musk but the guy is involved with some pretty high flying projects…

        The animation with sound track.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk338VXcb24

        SpaceX
        Published on Feb 5, 2018

        When Falcon Heavy lifts off, it will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two. With the ability to lift into orbit nearly 64 metric tons (141,000 lb)—a mass greater than a 737 jetliner loaded with passengers, crew, luggage and fuel–Falcon Heavy can lift more than twice the payload of the next closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy, at one-third the cost.

        Falcon Heavy’s first stage is composed of three Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft.

        Following liftoff, the two side boosters separate from the center core and return to landing sites for future reuse. The center core, traveling further and faster than the side boosters, also returns for reuse, but lands on a drone ship located in the Atlantic Ocean.

        At max velocity the Roadster will travel 11 km/s (7mi/s) and travel 400 million km (250 million mi) from Earth.

        1. “Falcon Heavy’s first stage is composed of three Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft. ”

          For us dumb hillbillies and Republicans, how much is that in HORSE POWER?

    2. Survivalist,

      What a great contribution to the discussion. Thank you for posting this.

      Doug

        1. Sorry but I must point out the following video which shows similar characters of the 1970s warning of an entirely contrary story regarding sea ice. I lived through this time and remember my schoolteachers discussing how man’s behaviour was causing ice caps to grow larger.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kGB5MMIAVA

          1. The world’s only genius with an IQ below 70.
            You should run for office in a fly-over state.

          2. Rather than being sorry why not make an effort to actually find out what is going on rather than picking the first thing that gives you the answer that makes you comfortable. Science works by people coming up with different ideas, these being investigated and then a consensus forming, recognising that this might always change as new facts emerge. Even in the 70s most scientists thought the world would warm. Over time the cooling theory faded except among a few fringe scientists and maybe a few more, also fringe, amateurs. Until recently the consensus was warming that caused fairly slow ice loss, as the paper points out it is not as slow as thought so the theories are changed.

          3. I lived through this time and remember my schoolteachers discussing how man’s behaviour was causing ice caps to grow larger.

            I lived through that time as well and was a university student at the time. Can’t recall a single professor of mine, (most had PhDs in scientific fields) ever saying anything of the sort. Then again, Spock wasn’t on the faculty…

      1. I really like Jason Box. I find that article interesting as he presents some factors influencing ice melt that aren’t in the models.

        “Surprise, Surprise, Surprise.” – Gomer Pyle

  18. Record-breaking cold? PyeongChang braces for frigid weather ahead of Olympics
    by Miguel Almaguer

    https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/winter-olympics-2018/record-breaking-cold-pyeongchang-braces-frigid-weather-ahead-olympics-n844836

    The only thing more extreme than the Olympic sports is the weather here.

    The Winter Olympics are slated to begin on Friday as temperatures in the South Korean city plunge.

    While the athletes are prepared for the bone-chilling temperatures, worries about spectators catching hypothermia or staying home have been raised.

    “The athletes are pretty well insulated for the hypothermia but, for somebody out here watching the sports, it can occur as quickly as 45 minutes,” said Dr. Dave Weinstein, a physician with Team USA who specializes in orthopedic surgery.

    The city has already seen lows of -9 degrees, but Friday’s forecast is expected to range from a high of 40 degrees Fahrenheit to a low of 30 degrees Fahrenheit, according to The Weather Channel. The first weekend is expected to see temperatures as low as 11 degrees Fahrenheit.

    During Friday’s opening ceremony, Team USA athletes will be fitted with special battery-powered heated jackets. An American Flag stitched into the interior of the jacket will heat up to keep athletes warm as they walk through the ceremony.

    But spectators, who are just sitting still, could be more susceptible to the cold.

    1. They admitted on the NBC nightly news tonight, it will be the coldest winter Olympics ever.

      Regards,
      Ralph
      Cass Tech ’64

      1. You have got to be kidding me, 10 degrees is cold? I used to start skiing at the Olympic Center up in Lake Placid at -20 in the Adirondacks. Have even slept out in temps down to minus 20. This is bullshit. Winter Olympics have always been cold. Sounds like normal temps to me.

        “The city has already seen lows of -9 degrees, but Friday’s forecast is expected to range from a high of 40 degrees Fahrenheit to a low of 30 degrees Fahrenheit, according to The Weather Channel. The first weekend is expected to see temperatures as low as 11 degrees Fahrenheit.

        Meteorologists have likened the chill in South Korea to February weather in Des Moines, Iowa, or Albany, New York. ”

        Look it hits -50F up in the Adirondacks, -30 in the Poconos, sounds more like Jersey weather to me where the lows in winter hit -10 sometimes as low as -20F .
        The media is full of wingnuts and people actually believe them.

        1. From Wikipedia:
          The altitude of Pyeongchang is wide-ranging, with 84% of its territory comprising mountains with average elevations of 750 m (2,460 ft).[3]

          Its best-known place, the township of Daegwallyeong-myeon, averages between 700 to 800 m (2,300 to 2,600 ft) above sea level, with some areas over 1,000 m (3,300 ft) high.[4]

          Climate[edit]
          PyeongChang, Gangwon – winter is cold but relatively dry, with clear blue skies.
          Pyeongchang County experiences a warm-summer humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification: Dwb).[5] During the winter, Siberian cold air masses pass through the Korean peninsula, causing extremely cold conditions in Pyeongchang. Winters are long and very snowy.

      2. Maybe they should move them to Svalbard it’s up to 30K above normal around there at the moment.

      3. The forecast for PyongChang is for it to be above average and mostly above freezing for the next week. I was in Oslo when the Lillehammer Olympics were on and it was well below -20°C a lot of the time, I think down to -30°C the night before the big cross country blue ribbon race that they love over there, and a lot slept out to be first in line for the best spectator spots (and some say cricket is boring)!?

        Either way Class of ’64 I think you probably had biased hearing, as I suspect you have on many things.

  19. LOL! Ya gotta love them Repubs!

    https://thinkprogress.org/nebraska-republican-wind-power-redefining-not-renewable-43dfc592e184/

    Nebraska State Senator Tom Brewer (R) has proposed a new bill that would restrict wind power development in the state and end the designation of wind power as “renewable.”

    “Wind energy is not Nebraska Nice,” Brewer wrote in an opinion piece last October. “Wind energy is a scam that hurts people and animals, wastes billions in tax dollars, and isn’t ‘green’ energy by any definition of the term.”

    BTW, for the record, coal is technically speaking renewable, you get a new batch every 300 million years or so. With climate change, maybe even sooner!

    1. This guy sure knows which end of the egg he wants cracked. Welcome to Deep Lilliput. One thing that appears amazingly renewable in the US is delusion and bullshit thrown on the people to achieve political agenda. The sad thing is they often believe it or don’t care.

    2. http://www.omaha.com/money/proposal-to-remove-wind-power-s-renewable-designation-in-nebraska/article_fa91c68f-a28a-5753-aad5-7d2a25bb33d4.html

      It’s hard to know exactly where this Brewer is coming from, because most of the people in Nebraska understand that wind means jobs, tax revenue, and economic security for rural Nebraskans.

      It’s hard to imagine he thinks he’s doing himself any favors when reelection time rolls around.
      First guess is that he’s bought and paid for, with some body bankrolling him who has reasons to want to put the skids under wind in Nebraska.

      Maybe somebody has the goods on him, and he’s doing as he’s told. Maybe he’s just trying to extract some favors he wants for some particular constituents by pushing this bill, figuring on backing off if he gets what he wants. THAT’S an old story in politics, lol.

      Most Republicans in the mid west where the wind industry is strong and growing are on board with wind power.

      Read this link carefully, and you will see that his bill is SPECIFICALLY written to stop wind, without interfering with solar power. This is in my estimation a dead giveaway that his motivations are less than upright.

      http://www.omaha.com/money/proposal-to-remove-wind-power-s-renewable-designation-in-nebraska/article_fa91c68f-a28a-5753-aad5-7d2a25bb33d4.html

    3. Technically legislators/senators in Nebraska (there is only one legislative chamber in the state) are elected on nonpartisan tickets; there are no Republicans or Democrats.

      Wind power is controversial because outside developers primarily want to come in and put windmills in the Sand Hills, despite how doing so would be destructive to a fragile, mostly undeveloped ecosystem which makes up a quarter of the entire state. For the few people who do live in the region, tourism during the annual Sandhill crane migration is an important part of the economy.

      Additionally, what really irks some people is how coastal liberals often cite environmental degradation as to why they don’t windmills very close to their coasts, but disrupting a prairie biome in a state mostly irrelevant to them elicits little concern. The debate over the route of the Keystone XL Pipeline through the state brought up these same sort of issues as well.

      1. Well then, all that’s needed is to require environmental studies and define out of bounds areas where such damaging conflicts occur.

        NAOM

      2. coastal liberals often cite environmental degradation as to why they don’t windmills very close to their coasts

        No. There are no major “coastal liberal” organizations who say things like that. Partly it’s wealthy people who are worried about their view. Partly it’s outsiders like the Kochs who are simply trying to protect their fossil fuel investments.

        1. Well “coastal liberal” and “wealthy people” usually go hand in hand, since the coasts are where most of the country’s wealth is concentrated isn’t it? Then as long as we’re talking about wealthy people, snobbery towards rural folks in the middle of the country is common.

          1. coastal liberal” and “wealthy people” usually go hand in hand

            No. The wealthy (who are the ones taking your money) tend to be conservative and republican. Conservative new organizations like Fox are trying to confuse you, and make you blame the wrong people.

            1. No, but most wealthy coastal elites are, in fact, Republicans. Like Trump. Or Bloomberg. Or Schwarzenegger. Or Romney. Need I go on?

              This is changing as the Republicans get crazier and crazier, because at some point the excessive crazy is bad for business.

            2. “The wealthy (who are the ones taking your money) tend to be conservative and republican. ”

              Not that a Kennedy can’t be stupid or selfish on occasion, like when someone wants to put wind turbines in the ocean which might conceivably be visible from their oceanfront compound.

  20. OZONE AT LOWER LATITUDES IS NOT RECOVERING, DESPITE ANTARCTIC OZONE HOLE HEALING

    The ozone layer – which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation – is recovering at the poles, but unexpected decreases in part of the atmosphere may be preventing recovery at lower latitudes.

    Global ozone has been declining since the 1970s owing to certain man-made chemicals. Since these were banned, parts of the layer have been recovering, particularly at the poles.

    However, the new result, published today in the European Geosciences Union journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, finds that the bottom part of the ozone layer at more populated latitudes is not recovering. The cause is currently unknown.

    https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-02/icl-oal020218.php

    1. I recall a hole opening up in the early 90’s over the northeast, people where getting sunburned in early April in the mountains of Pennsylvania. One woman with light skin turned bright red from just being outside for about 5 hours.
      UV is dangerous radiation.

      The increasing threat to stratospheric ozone from dichloromethane
      https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15962

  21. More bad news faster and faster seems to be the norm these days, politically and environmentally.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/attack-of-the-clones-creature-that-started-as-pet-now-multiplying-out-of-control/ar-BBIJOt5?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

    This fast evolution of the ability of this crayfish to clone itself is a huge surprise.

    I’m not a biologist as such, but professional ag guys necessarily spend about half of their U time in one sort or another of biology class , plus just about every ag course is based on the fundamentals of biology, so I’m not THAT far from being a biologist.

    And you can take this to the bank.

    One day, and sooner rather than later, we’re going to wish like hell we put every last person who trades in exotic species in jail. Yesterday. Thirty or forty years before the DAY BEFORE yesterday.

    We’ve been blessed with awesomely good luck that this day hasn’t arrived already, that we haven’t yet lost a staple food species right across an entire continent to an introduced pest.

    But it’s just a matter of time. History books and scientific journals are chock full of accounts of somewhat less damaging ecological and economic disasters brought about by exotic imports, and the majority of these in recent times are apparently the result of the trade in exotic species.

    The rest appear to be accidental, as when a species hitches a ride on imported food or ornamental plants, or even on the person of a visitor from another country.

    We have already lost at least one keystone species right here in the Eastern USA that could be considered a staple food, the American chestnut , Castaneda Dentata, to an imported blight. Fortunately we will soon have blight resistant American chestnuts again, by way of breeding resistance in, but it will be forty years before we have any significant quantity of chestnuts for our tables again, and a hundred years plus before we can be harvest super premium quality mature chestnut timber again.

    Considering that it’s one of nature’s best gifts, used as a construction material, this is an economic disaster as well as an ecological disaster. Chestnut lasts outside for fifty to a hundred years, and it’s strong and works easily. It’s way better than pine pressure treated with nasty chemicals so it won’t rot.

    1. Hmmm Crayfish, does this variety taste good, promote dishes to control it?

      That about Chestnuts probably explains why I didn’t see any this Christmas. The problem with the wood is it is hell on tools.

      NAOM

      1. There are other kinds of chestnuts, but they aren’t nearly as good tasting as the American variety, and they don’t cover entire mountains growing wild, as the American Chestnut used to do. You can usually find some in larger supermarkets during the holiday season, and some stores stock them year around.

        I can remember old people, back when I was a kid, talking about about picking them up by the wagon load to sell and for their own use. Some of my neighbors still have a few chestnut fence rails, which are now over a hundred years old, but they’re rare, because they do eventually rot, and because they’re hot collectors items and sell high. Leave a split rail chestnut fence someplace out of sight of a house, and somebody will steal it sooner or later.

        Maybe there was a short crop of the domesticated varieties this past year. That could explain why you didn’t see any.

        We have carbide tools these days, lol.

  22. Graph of the Day: Renewables overtake coal in European electricity supply

    Good wind conditions and huge investment into wind energy have helped the European Union generate more electricity from renewable energy sources like wind, solar and biomass than from coal in 2017, a new study has shown.

    The analysis by Sandbag and Agora Energiewende – and illustrated in the chart above – found that renewables accounted for more than 30 per cent of Europe’s electricity for the first time last year, led by Germany and the UK; the two nations have contributed 56 per cent of the growth in renewables in the past three years (2014-2017).

    Also notable was the massive 19 per cent increase in wind generation in 2017 – two-thirds of which was in Germany and the UK. Solar power generation, however, grew only by 8 per cent despite falling costs of the technology and record low power purchase agreements.

    As noted here by the UNFCCC, the report – European Power Sector 2017 – described the progress made by renewables as “incredible”, particularly because coal power generation was more than twice that of wind, solar and biomass just five years ago.

    I shudder to think what EU carbon emissions would look like without all these renewables and sense an onslaught of a new form of denial, notably from one participant of this blog in particular and also the likes of Tim Morgan with his questionable reasoning supported by his echo chamber. These folks seem to be trying to deny that anything can be done to reduce the carbon footprint of our civilization, despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary. Below is a link to another story from RenewEconomy.au that includes indications of the effect rooftop solar is having in Australia.

    Rooftop solar most reliable source of new generation on NEM, says report

    The installation of solar on Australian homes and businesses has made rooftop PV the most reliable source of growing generation on the National Electricity Market, a new report has found.

    In its January 2018 issue of the NEEA Electricity Update – the companion publication to the National Energy Emissions Audit Report – The Australia Institute says a rooftop solar market that had more than doubled since 2013 delivered record total of 6.2TWh in the year to December 2017.

    “Rooftop solar has been installed by over 1.6 million households and is the most reliable source of steadily growing generation in the NEM (see Figure 3, red line),” the report says.

    “Steady growth in rooftop solar PV, contributed to net generation or ‘generation sent out’, being 5 per cent lower than in June 2008 (see Figure 1 below),” the report added.

    The report also noted that overall changes in the mix of generation supplying the NEM had delivered a drop in average emissions intensity for the year, of 0.2 per cent, to 0.831 t CO2-e/MWh.

    “Up to the end of November 2017, reduction in demand for electricity from the grid contributed about one-third of the total reduction in annual emissions from NEM generation since June 2008,” said the TAI report.

    “The other two thirds were contributed by the lower average emissions intensity of electricity generation.”

    I strongly suspect that we are going to witness an increase in the cadence of these voices railing against renewables and EVs. When one considers that there appears to be very strong demand for Nissan’s refreshed and improved EV, coupled with the likelihood that Tesla might approach their 10,000 a week production target towards the end of the year, 2018 may turn out to be the year when EVs “move the needle” in terms of liquid fuel consumption. Be prepared for more FUD from the FF crowd!

    1. Thanks, good news. Interesting, from the article it appears that all other power sources only comprise about 40 percent of the power generation. I do wonder about the prediction that only 35% of generation in 2030 will be renewable. Are they expecting that much growth in power demand for the next dozen years or are is the growth of wind and solar expected to slow?

    2. That is good news.

      or maybe not

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-40963488

      Chopping down more forests is hardly what the world needs.

      https://friendsoftheearth.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/felled-fuel-46611.pdf

      CO2 emissions in the power sector did not fall despite huge increases in solar and wind installations.

      http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/File:Net_electricity_generation,_EU-28,_2015_(%25_of_total,_based_on_GWh)_YB17.png

      When Germany and France close down their nuclear power stations you will see a dramatic increase in gas burning.

      1. “When Germany and France close down their nuclear power stations you will see a dramatic increase in gas burning.”

        “or maybe not”

      2. I agree that the pseudo-green of using biomass for power is bad for the forests and produces a lot of particulates. It does produce less carbon than coal over a 50 year period because supposedly the forests grow back but in between it puts a lot of carbon in the air.
        All will be well when wind and solar take over along with storage of various sorts, but it could be a while before all that is sorted. Right now the regulations are promoting wood power.

        However, speaking of UK productions, this unique production is hard to match. 🙂
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1GsI8ZlH_M

      3. “When Germany and France close down their nuclear power stations you will see a dramatic increase in gas burning.”

        No. The current addition of wind and PV (in the EU) is sufficient to replace two or three baseload power plants per year, France will run most of their NPPs until 2040 or later. Therefore, until 2040 we will very likely see enough EEs to compensate for NPPs and reduce coal power.

    3. There are waiting lists in the US for every long-range electric car: the Chevy Bolt, the Nissan Leaf, the Hyundai Ioniq Electric, the Renault Zoe (when will they bring it to the US?), and of course all the Teslas. The people seem to be ahead of the manufacturers.

  23. Monthly CO2 levels from Mauna Kea with a best fit polynomial trend line going forward if we continue on this path. Future natural increases due to soil changes, permafrost melt, and reductions in natural sink rates not included.

  24. Is PV about to take off in Mexico? The story below is about a single project that will almost double the amount of PV capacity installed in Mexico up to the end of June 2017. This is after installing roughly 140 MW in thr first six months of 2017.

    Acciona breaks ground on 404 MW solar park in Mexico

    Spanish renewable energy company, Acciona has begun construction on its Puerto Libertad solar complex, a 404 MW PV project that is being developed under a 50% consortium with Tuto Energy Trading.

    According to Acciona, the project is expected be completed in the last quarter of this year, while commercial operation is planned to start in the first three months of 2019.

    Other PV related news specific to Mexico can be found at:

    https://www.pv-magazine.com/region/mexico/

    1. With better than 6 kWh/m2/day average solar insolation the Sonoran region is ideal for PV. An old article (2010) stated Mexico could be fully powered by solar in an area 25 km square. That was back when panels were less efficient (15% or less) and was calculated on the average for the whole country. In Sonora and nearby regions, the area needed for full power would be significantly less.

        1. Defiantly but they need to ban boilers on new construction and insist on solar water heaters. I am being held up as I can only find tube and tank systems when all I need is a flat panel. Telmex is selling solar panels through the phone bill too.

          NAOM

          1. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s starting to get more cost-effective to use an electric water heater and photovoltaic panels. Lower maintenance.

    1. It appears that small as they are (6% of total power), wind and solar together grew at half the rate of thermal (largest sector of power). Wind and solar are catching up in China.

      1. Minor quibble. Wind and solar together did not grow at half the rate of thermal. They in fact grew at a rate of about six and a half times more than thermal. The absolute growth of wind and solar together was a little more than half the absolute growth of thermal (114.5 TWh vs 209 TWh).

        1. I meant in real power (notice I used total power in the sentence) terms not in statistical comparison terms. It’s power that counts not percentages.

          1. I would say that in some ways it actually is percentages which count.

            Solar photovoltaic deployment has been growing, worldwide on a *very* consistent exponential curve. Which means that the percentage growth rate is typically the same from one year to the next. It’s a very important number if you want to make projections. The same is largely true of wind (and seems true of wind in China).

            We can therefore predict that the total growth of wind + solar in China will exceed the growth of thermal plants in 2019 — if not in 2018, since thermal does *not* show a consistent growth rate. After that, we should see thermal shrinking.

    2. Island

      China’s dictatorship has had decades of practice deceiving people like you.

      Banner waving their solar panels to fool those easily fooled. While INCREASING coal and gas electricity production by 224Gwh.

      China now burns 121 times more coal as the world’s 5th largest economy.

      1. Nobody’s denying that they have been and continue to burn a lot of coal, certainly not me. Are you denying that they are growing solar at a faster rate than any other country ever has, even faster than what the anti renewable people refer to as the misguided Germans? What would be the objective of their deception? How does their deception of yours truly advance any goal of theirs? Surely they do not need to appease anybody to justify increasing their usage of fossil fuels. I see no evidence that what the rest of the world thinks has been a factor in their decision making.

        1. Their objective is too continue to burn cheap coal, while pretending they are turning over a green leaf.

          https://www.rfa.org/english/commentaries/energy_watch/chinas-rising-coal-use-defies-forecasts-11272017105607.html

          Even at lower estimates 2017 consumption was 3,800 million tonnes while Britain consumed around 20 million and France about 15 million.

          Their objective is to destroy western manufacturing buy making manufacturing in the west noncompetitive.

          https://visual.ons.gov.uk/uk-trade-partners/

          What gutless western leaders should do is impose a carbon tax on all Chinese goods.

          http://www.thesleuthjournal.com/open-air-genocide-china-pollution/

          http://allthatsinteresting.com/pollution-in-china-photographs

          These pictures show the reality of your renewable China fakery

        2. Their objective is too continue to burn cheap coal, while pretending they are turning over a green leaf.

          https://www.rfa.org/english/commentaries/energy_watch/chinas-rising-coal-use-defies-forecasts-11272017105607.html

          Even at lower estimates 2017 consumption was 3,800 million tonnes while Britain consumed around 20 million and France about 15 million.

          Their objective is to destroy western manufacturing buy making manufacturing in the west noncompetitive.

          https://visual.ons.gov.uk/uk-trade-partners/

          What gutless western leaders should do is impose a carbon tax on all Chinese goods.

          http://www.thesleuthjournal.com/open-air-genocide-china-pollution/

          http://allthatsinteresting.com/pollution-in-china-photographs

          These pictures show the reality of your green, renewable China fakery

          1. Comparing Chinese coal consumption to France and England’s is like comparing Elephant’s and mice turds and saying Elephants create a bigger mess than mice! You do realize that China has a population of 1.3 billion, right?! On a per capita basis they use far less coal than some western countries. You are just another pathetic troll!

            1. Fred

              You should get a degree for stating the moron obvious.

              France and the UK have a population of 132 million.

              China has a population 10 times that amount.

              China GDP is 2.5 times combined GDP of France and Great Britain.

              So I think it fair to say that China burning 100 times more coal than France and UK combined should tell even someone like you, the extreme pollution it is producing.

              Your stupid comment reveals one thing. You are stupid.

            2. Their objective is to destroy western manufacturing buy making manufacturing in the west noncompetitive.

              Yep, I’m stupid, and that is one of the most brilliant insightful statements I have ever read!

              “Energy demand has decoupled from economic activity, and when this is combined with record annual renewable energy installations, China continues to diversify away from coal faster than anyone expected,” said Tim Buckley, the Energy Finance Studies Director with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

            3. China also burns more coal per person than almost any other country.

              Whatever, dude! I’m not supporting coal use anywhere on the planet but you are spreading myths about the way the Chinese are changing their energy generation.

              https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/reports/2017/05/15/432141/everything-think-know-coal-china-wrong/

              Everything You Think You Know About Coal in China Is Wrong

              This issue brief covers three things American observers need to understand about coal in China:

              1)China’s new coal-fired power plants are cleaner than anything operating in the United States.

              2)China’s emissions standards for conventional air pollutants from coal-fired power plants are stricter than the comparable U.S. standards.

              3)Demand for coal-fired power is falling so quickly in China that the nation cannot support its existing fleet. Many of the coal-fired power plants that skeptics point to as evidence against a Chinese energy transformation are actually white elephants that Chinese leaders are already targeting in a wave of forced plant closures.

              Whether you agree or not China has a long term plan for getting off coal and transitioning to renewables. China has been around for a pretty long time and they have a track record of achieving their goals.

              BTW, I’m not even a fan of the Chinese government or economy, but to deny they are changing their ways is to spread a myth.

            4. The folks who regularly post on these threads may very well be unaware of the growing groundswell – in the US, at least – targeting renewable energy sources, most especially wind.

              Actions such as the declining permitting for the much-needed Clear Line transmission from the Midwest, dismantling Falmouth’s wind turbines, the moratorium on Maine wind power build out are just a small sampling of the expanding, organizing efforts targeting wind power.

              The recent court decision from the Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal cited the methodology of analyzing infra sound effects as demonstrably inadequate as anything below 20 decibels is not measured by current protocol.

              Throwing into the mix the objective, measurable results from the Max Planck Institute showing clearly altered cortical and sub cortical effects from infra sound exposure, and the floodgates for litigation are thrown wide open.

              Google images of the Lowell Mountain wind complex should show why neighbors are opposed to expansion of what they describe as destruction of their viewshed.
              And the neighboring townships are shutting down expansion plans as a rule.

              People may yet be unaware of the enormous consequences of the recent New Hampshire SEC decision to prevent build out of the Northern Pass transmission line, but – rest assured – as monthly electric bills skyrocket in the region in the coming years, the fallout will be both painful and preventable.

              As of this posting, 26,000 megawatts currently are being consumed in the 5 eastern Australian states.
              Solar and wind grid contribution is 600 megawatts.
              The de-industrialization of Australia is no longer being viewed as tinfoil hat stuff.

              Unfortunately, the intense polarization of the greater population in these matters bodes ill for any resolution absent great pain and purposeful, informed engagement by large numbers of people.

            5. Coffeeguyzz: the attacks on both transmission lines and on wind turbines are well-understood by many of us here. These attacks are probably funded by coal & oil interests, though I can’t prove it. They are causing trouble.

              The advantage of solar is that it is totally immune to such attacks.

  25. Falcon heavy launch coming up live within a couple of hours.

    History in the making, free to see.

    1. It’s close today with the weather.
      We shall see if the private guys can pull this off.
      (looks like a go!)

      1. space x is live now, and launch seems likely within the next couple of minutes or a little longer.

          1. One of the engineers just said seventeen minutes, about fifteen minutes or so now till launch.

          1. EV’s in space or on Mars make sense, no need for air to run.
            That Roadster is going to get really high mpg from this launch, after a few times round the sun.

          2. 2/3, RUD on the 3rd.

            Not bad for a 1st try, better than taking out the launch site.

            NAOM

  26. Average Arctic sea ice volume in January 2018 was 16,000 km3 . This value is 1400 km3 above the previous January record that was set in 2017 with 14,600 km3 and similar to January volumes seen in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Janauary 2018 ice volume was 42% below the maximum in 1979 and 27% below the mean value for 1979-2017. January 2018 ice volume sits right on the long term trend line.

    http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/

    1. I think a key difference with those previous years is that the volume now isn’t in hard, often landfast multiyear ice but in one or two year smashed up and mobile floes. The current train of cyclones heading up the east of Greenland is moving a lot of the ice south where it will melt very quickly.

    1. Climate reanalyzer predicting +6K anomaly for the end of next week, and averaging about 4K until then.

  27. An ill wind is blowing in Oklahoma. The state has money trouble and it’s going after the wind industry.

    Tempers flare with talk of ‘punitive’ wind energy taxation

    OKLAHOMA CITY — Tempers flared Tuesday as members of a wind advocacy group accused some lawmakers of pressing for “punitive” taxation that would harm the industry.

    http://www.enidnews.com/news/state/tempers-flare-with-talk-of-punitive-wind-energy-taxation/article_ade6dce1-ace1-5b5e-92ed-a46535b51bd6.html

  28. Fred might be quite right, don’t own a car. At least not one of the new autonomous ones. Hire them but don’t own them. At least until they are proven in the wide variety of road conditions and weather.
    They are learning but it will be a while yet. Of course not even a robot can see black ice, not yet at least.
    Or can they?

    To test the abilities of their new car, the researchers drive Martti autonomously on a real snow-covered road in Muonio, Finland. During the test, they hit 25 miles per hour, clearing a major hurdle for the advent of autonomous cars in rough conditions.

    Kutila explained that it has been a challenge to develop a car that could handle inclement weather.

    “This of course depends on markets. Scandinavia, Finland, Russia and Canada are not maybe the biggest markets compared to China, etc,” he said. “Fog and rain is everywhere and automotive and sensor industry is investing to tackle those conditions first.

    https://www.rdmag.com/article/2018/01/new-autonomous-car-can-handle-snow-and-ice

    1. They are learning but it will be a while yet. Of course not even a robot can see black ice, not yet at least.
      Or can they?

      Good question! And the follow up question is how do we know when it is past time to have started worrying… maybe it was last year!

      https://samharris.org/podcasts/116-ai-racing-toward-brink/
      #116 – AI: RACING TOWARD THE BRINK
      A Conversation with Eliezer Yudkowsky

      LOL! After listening to this conversation some of us may hope that climate change destroys civilization before we accidentally let the genie out of the AI box and it decides that we are detrimental to the biosphere and must be eliminated asap!

      Combine that with this…

      https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/mutant-crayfish-got-rid-of-males-and-its-clones-are-taking-over-the-world/

      Mutant crayfish got rid of males, and its clones are taking over the world
      From a stream in Florida to a pet shop in Germany and on to Japan and Madagascar.

      I have been sitting alone in my room laughing… 😉

      1. Usually asexual adaption is short lived and the last twig on the tree – it just needs the right parasite to come along and they’ll be gone, of course they might have taken out all other crayfish by then, but it’s evolution baby:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDaOgu2CQtI

        1. Usually asexual adaption is short lived and the last twig on the tree – it just needs the right parasite to come along and they’ll be gone,

          Certainly some truth to that. However this is a somewhat special case from which much can be learned, especially about the role epigenetics can play in species adaptability and overall fitness. And nature does occasionally play some cards from a deck she usually keeps hidden up her sleeve.

          http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/aquarium-accident-may-have-given-crayfish-dna-take-over-world

          More important than the crustacean’s origin may be that this clone thrives in a wide variety of freshwater habitats, with different temperatures, salinities, and acidity. Clones are supposed to be at a disadvantage because they lack the genetic variation to adapt to new situations. But, “This paper suggests that an animal species can rapidly invade a large geographical area despite reproducing without sex and being clonal,” Danchin says.

          When I get a chance I’ll try to read the paper in Nature.

          https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0467-9

          Abstract
          The marbled crayfish Procambarus virginalis is a unique freshwater crayfish characterized by very recent speciation and parthenogenetic reproduction. Marbled crayfish also represent an emerging invasive species and have formed wild populations in diverse freshwater habitats. However, our understanding of marbled crayfish biology, evolution and invasive spread has been hampered by the lack of freshwater crayfish genome sequences. We have now established a de novo draft assembly of the marbled crayfish genome. We determined the genome size at approximately 3.5 gigabase pairs and identified >21,000 genes. Further analysis confirmed the close relationship to the genome of the slough crayfish, Procambarusfallax, and also established a triploid AA’B genotype with a high level of heterozygosity. Systematic fieldwork and genotyping demonstrated the rapid expansion of marbled crayfish on Madagascar and established the marbled crayfish as a potent invader of freshwater ecosystems. Furthermore, comparative whole-genome sequencing demonstrated the clonality of the population and their genetic identity with the oldest known stock from the German aquarium trade. Our study closes an important gap in the phylogenetic analysis of animal genomes and uncovers the unique evolutionary history of an emerging invasive species.

          There are still a few unknown unkowns out there… 😉

          Edit:

          I have now skimmed the Nature paper and here are two noteworthy statements from the discussion section:

          Interestingly, triploidy and heterozygosity might provide a significant evolutionary advantage for marbled crayfish as they could buffer the effects of deleterious genetic mutations (Muller’s ratchet33) and also increase the capacity for rapid adaptation34. Evolution of the marbled crayfish genome towards effective haploidy, as predicted by the Meselson effect35,36, was not detectable. This is probably explained by the very young evolutionary age of marbled crayfish and represents an important difference from the genomes of other asexually reproducing animals, such as Meloidogyneincognita19 and A. vaga23…

          …The rapid invasion of diverse habitats is particularly noteworthy, as it appears to be independent of genetic variants, which are generally considered to be the major determinants of ecological adaptation47. This suggests that alternative mechanisms, such as stochastic epigenetic variation and/or epigenetic plasticity48,49, play a prominent role in the rapid adaptation of marbled crayfish.

          Certainly a story worth following closely.

          1. That sounds like they have a few preprogrammed options that they can kind of choose from for different environments and then all individuals within that environment would pick the same option and be essentially identical; but would that necessarily work against a new parasite, where they don’t have as much chance to create new gene variants that would be resistant (versus sexual reproduction I mean).

  29. https://news.agu.org/press-release/scientists-find-massive-reserves-of-mercury-hidden-in-permafrost/

    Another unanticipated disaster in the making.

    There will be at least a few more nasty surprises associated with forced climate change.

    I guess most of this mercury will eventually wind up in the sea, where it will be consumed and concentrated as it passes up the food chain, but I know very little about mercury in the environment, other than that it’s one of the nastiest possible poisons and that there’s a lot of it in coal.

    Hopefully somebody who knows more will have something to say about this issue.

    1. Can anyone throw light on why there is so much mercury there?

      NAOM

      1. Good question!
        From the article:

        Natural mercury found in the atmosphere binds with organic material in the soil, gets buried by sediment, and becomes frozen into permafrost, where it remains trapped for thousands of years unless liberated by changes such as permafrost thaw.

        Next question, what is the source of natural mercury in the atmosphere?

        https://www.epa.gov/international-cooperation/mercury-emissions-global-context

        Natural sources of mercury include volcanoes, forest fires and emissions from the oceans. ( emissions from the oceans surprised me!) will need to look into that a bit more.

        Some of the mercury circulating through today’s environment was released years ago. Land, water, and other surfaces can repeatedly re-emit mercury into the atmosphere after its initial release into the environment

        I’m still curious about the mechanism for re-emission of mercury from the ocean.

        Anthropogenic emissions due to burning of coal and mining seem to be major current sources.

        1. Mercury from Coal
          Though mercury is a natural element, most of the mercury that winds up in the atmosphere is released by people, through coal combustion, incinerators, industrial boilers and gold mining operations. This anthropogenic mercury represents 70% of the mercury added to the global atmosphere in the past 100 years1. Coal combustion is the single highest contributor in the US, responsible for almost 50% of atmospheric mercury emissions.

          http://www.groundtruthtrekking.org/Issues/AlaskaCoal/CoalMercury.html

        2. Busted! Goddamittalltohellandback, guess it’s time to ‘fess up. I’m responsible, at least partly responsible for the damn mercury getting loose! Acually, it was cousin’s fault, he did it first, then told me about it, and we did it again. We were prolly about 12 years old, give or take a year or so. He showed me what mercury from a broken thermometer was. Man, that stuff will splatter into tiny droplets, then you can rake it back together again with your pocketknife and it joins back into one big drop! I can only remember doing this a couple times, then lost interest and went on to other things. Not sure if the “playing with mercury” caused me to not remember, or if we really did move on. Pretty sure I never swallowed any. Now I wonder if I’m carrying any aftereffects of that stupid time, or if I’m just like this because of heredity and other effects of my raising. Oh well, what the fuck does it matter now?

          BTW, I’ve not chirped here for awhile. Been traveling a bit. Burning my part of that precious diesel fuel. In a self-built RV. Death Valley was cool. Big Bend NP as well….Quartzsite, lots of snowbirds. Intended to go way down in Mexico, but got talked out of it. Seems the cartels are acting up, and lots of folks a bit upset by Stump’s stupid shit. Locals from Brownsville to Nogales advised against my plans to go. So, with the she being afraid to risk it, I decided to stay on this side of the border. Except for a brief excursion at the Bouquillas crossing. Yep, a Mexican rowed us across in a flat-bottomed boat to Bouquillas Del Carmen for an enjoyable afternoon.

          State department updated travel advisories to include large parts of where I wanted to go as well. Oh well, as often happens, day late and a dollar short! Should have gone a couple years ago.

          I did get to see that solar-thermal plant mentioned earlier here, somewhere in southern CA, just east of the mountains. Also stopped in Nipton, CA for a bit. They are hoping to start the first weed resort in the country, since CA legalized rec pot. Had a good convo with a cool girl at the store there. We might enjoy the benefits of the same herb, but she and her brother are on a whole nuther level economically speaking. Speaking of level, it seems that the level is lower now than a while ago. Gotta go now. Thanks again for all the good education from a bunch of smart fellers. See momma, I didn’t say “fart smellers”!

          Later,
          Stan

        3. Fred, and others,

          While mercury compounds are in general toxic, the elemental metal is not especially so. Bear in mind its use in dental amalgam and in the compound thiomersal, a vaccine preservative. Pathogenic bacteria clearly find it even more disagreeable than us!

          I think the best way to think about mercury toxicity is to consider the alkyl compounds (methyl, ethyl etc.) that may be formed following ingestion by living organisms as being an order of magnitude (or more) dangerous than its inorganic compounds, such as mercury chlorides. (Mercuric chloride was once used as a treatment for syphilis.)

          Alkyl mercury, of which dimethyl mercury stands out with appalling toxicity, is formed in the sea after ingestion by shellfish and fish. The Minamata disaster in Japan, which resulted from mercury waste discharge, was caused by mono-methylmercury ions being consumed from fish.

          The total quantity of mercury entering the atmosphere annually is only a few thousand tons worldwide. It is a rare element, but because of its low reactivity with the rocks that host it mercury ores can be of high concentration, up to 2%.

          Despite its high density, mercury compounds have relatively high vapour pressures and so can sublimate into the atmosphere before subsequent redeposition elsewhere by rainfall. I agree that understanding how it leaves the oceans in any quantity, other than in fish being eaten, is a little difficult.

          If ever you have a mercury spill at home, then sulphur is your man! It has a great affinity for it, both for elemental ‘flowers of sulphur’ and for certain sulphur compounds such as mercaptans (‘mercury capture’), which of course would never be used domestically, being the basis of skunk spray.

          I am not in the slightest bit worried by mercury contamination through rain and snowfall deposition from coal burning etc. The concentrations are far too small and the mercury compounds of relatively low toxicity. Most will be removed by scrubbing that removes sulphur from the combustion gases.

  30. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/02/06/fda-ramps-up-warnings-about-kratom-calling-unregulated-herb-an-opioid/?utm_term=.ebaa00ff8b59

    This is ninety nine percent about politics and protecting big pharma and one percent about public safety.

    I know at least a couple of superbly well educated people who won’t drink over one glass of wine at a time, out of concern for the health consequences associated with alcohol use, people who avoid even being in the same room as a person with a lit cigarette……… who use kratom for the relief of chronic pain.

    Their substantial research into this substance has lead them to conclude that it’s probably the safest thing available for chronic pain. It’s for damned sure safer than a lot of over the counter drugs such as aspirin and Tylenol.

    1. Yeah, the “war on drugs” seems like it always comes up with a new drug to attack. This is particularly low on the part of the drug warriors, however — they’re attacking ill people who need pain medication for using a non-addictive drug which doesn’t give a high.

  31. https://www.scientificamerican.com/sustainability/

    About nitrogen oxides released from farms.
    Much bigger problem than previously thought.

    We aren’t going to be using any less nitrate fertilizer in total going forward. To the contrary, we will be using more and more so long as we can afford it. And this is one of the cases where you can virtually always afford it, because food is the last thing, except water, that you can do without.

    Fortunately modern commercial farmers these days are mostly acutely aware of the cash costs of fertilizers, as well as gradually tightening regulations intended to reduce agricultural pollution. The natural consequence is that they are finding ways to get the same production with a little bit less fertilizer year after year.

    There’s reason to believe that as various sensors used to measure field values in real time get cheaper, and the machinery used to apply fertilizer get to be more sophisticated, there’s a good bit of room to maintain yields using quite a bit less fertilizer, maybe as much as forty to fifty percent less in some cases. The profit motive alone ensures real interest on the part of the farmer, but it’s not enough.

    Regulations are obviously necessary, and are in place in modern countries, in terms of agricultural pollution and public waters.

    Air pollution regulations are also obviously advisable, at least in certain geographical areas. It’s reasonable to expect California to enact such regulations, but I don’t see any likelihood of progress on the federal front within the next couple of years, lol.

  32. Someone to pick up the (accelerator) baton,

    ACCELERATOR BOOM HONES CHINA’S ENGINEERING EXPERTISE

    In raising the curtain on the China Spallation Neutron Source, China has joined just four other nations in having mastered the technology of accelerating and controlling beams of protons. The $277 million facility, set to open to users this spring in Dongguan, is expected to yield big dividends in materials science, chemistry, and biology. More world class machines are on the way, as China this year starts construction on four other major accelerator facilities. The building boom is prompting a scramble to find enough engineers and technicians to finish the projects. But if they all come off as planned, the facilities would position China to tackle the next global megaproject: a giant accelerator that would pick up where Europe’s Large Hadron Collider leaves off.

    http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6375/507

    1. 5 SUPERSIZE SCIENCE PROJECTS THAT PUT CHINA ON THE MAP

      “China hopes that by becoming a world leader in ocean science it will attain advanced scientific capabilities in many other areas, too. By pushing the boundaries of exploration in space and the subatomic-particle level, it is already transforming itself into one of the most scientifically developed nations in the world.”

      https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/china-supersize-science-projects/

      1. FAST RADIO TELESCOPE OPEN FOR BUSINESS

        FAST will probe the universe at radio wavelengths, hunting for faint pulsars, mapping neutral hydrogen in distant galaxies, and searching for signs of extraterrestrial communications and intelligence. “Once completed, FAST will lead the world for at least 10 to 20 years,” says director general and telescope designer Yan Jun (National Astronomical Observatories of China) in a recent press release. FAST’s expected resolution is 2.9 arcminutes, which is pretty good for single-dish radio astronomy. Although its surface is spherical overall, FAST uses actuators to push and pull on the corners of a 300-m-wide subset of the individual panels to attain a near-paraboloidal shape to achieve this focus. The radio telescope now enters an extensive commissioning phase. FAST made its first observation of a pulsar 1,351 light-years away this past month [Sept., 2016].

        http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-blogs/astronomy-space-david-dickinson/fast-worlds-largest-radio-telescope-open/

      2. SLOW DOWN YOU MOVE TOO FAST!
        Speaking of ocean science, how about individual microbes living for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years in marine sediments?!

        https://www.ted.com/talks/karen_lloyd_this_deep_sea_mystery_is_changing_our_understanding_of_life/transcript

        Karen LloydatTED@BCG Milan
        This deep-sea mystery is changing our understanding of life

        So by combining measurements from many different places around the world, my colleagues at the University of Southern California, Doug LaRowe and Jan Amend, were able to calculate that each one of these deep-sea microbial cells requires only one zeptowatt of power, and before you get your phones out, a zepto is 10 to the minus 21, because I know I would want to look that up. Humans, on the other hand, require about 100 watts of power. So 100 watts is basically if you take a pineapple and drop it from about waist height to the ground 881,632 times a day. If you did that and then linked it up to a turbine, that would create enough power to make me happen for a day. A zeptowatt, if you put it in similar terms, is if you take just one grain of salt and then you imagine a tiny, tiny, little ball that is one thousandth of the mass of that one grain of salt and then you drop it one nanometer, which is a hundred times smaller than the wavelength of visible light, once per day. That’s all it takes to make these microbes live. That’s less energy than we ever thought would be capable of supporting life, but somehow, amazingly, beautifully, it’s enough.

        So if these deep-subsurface microbes have a very different relationship with energy than we previously thought, then it follows that they’ll have to have a different relationship with time as well, because when you live on such tiny energy gradients, rapid growth is impossible.

  33. I copied this from an article in the National Review, which is a hard core right wing publication, but the NR does nevertheless try to be rational about political analysis.

    The article is about an upcoming special election and what it might mean as a bellwether election.

    “Today, Democrats maintain a vestigial registration advantage of more than 70,000 people across the district. But over the decades, factories closed, taking union jobs with them as the old Democratic party lurched to the left. District Democrats started staying home on election day — or even voting Republican, picking the side they thought would defend their cultural prerogatives if not their economic interests. Though pride, toughness, and a reverence for industrial labor still remain here, the political tide has shifted.”

    Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/456126/pennsylvania-18th-district-special-election-bellwether-national-attention

    Translation into logic accessible to stupid liberal Democrats:

    If you don’t steer the D party back towards it’s real roots, the working class people of this country, you are apt to continue to lose a lot more elections than you win.

    Minorities of all sorts, racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender, are working class people TOO, as often, or more often, than not.

    You’ve got the environmentalists, and the people pissed about their own personal rights in bedrooms and all that sort of people on board already. This sort of people will NEVER vote R, as a rule.

    What you need to do, MUST DO, is win back the trust of working people.

    Running candidates who have ample time to make secret speeches to banksters, but not time to make a campaign stop in critical states, and say they’re broke when they have millions isn’t going to giterdone.

    Where are you, HB?

    1. Hello OldMacDonald aka KGB Trumpster,

      I’ve been busy enjoying my “wealthy coastal liberal” money. Unbelievable beautiful road trip touring the west coast in my XT5. Not always enough time in the day for my ignorant inland conservative fake news religious haters. Don’t worry, I will continue to point out your ignorance.

      The Democrats have been the party of all the people since before you were born. Some day you will pull your head out of your ass and figure it out. You get confused by your ignorance and manipulated hate. You are your own worst enemy.

      Your just penny wise and dollar foolish.

      1. Thanks HB,

        I couldn’t have done a better job myself making my case, lol. I knew I would be able to count on you.

        I forgot to point out earlier that your empress in waiting lost by a razor thin margin for a number of reasons, any one of which could have been THE one that cost her crown.

        One of them was making fun of people whose votes you need, lol.

        Keep it up, and help me remind everybody that you don’t support candidates with the worst negatives in the modern history of the party expecting them to win in a walk.

        Even the stupidest person alive generally understands when you’re making fun of him, and hates you for it.

        You can expect him to get back at you any way he can, and voting for the opposition is one of the easiest ways.

        1. “One of them was making fun of people whose votes you need, lol”

          Like I have said in the past, I don’t need your racist religious conservative gun loving voters. My stock portfolio is up 50% in the last 15 months. Now how are your friends doing with their $1.50 per week Ryan rise ? If you want to play your childish game. Next time I will buy a German made Audi Q5 and you can add another American factory worker to your unemployed conservative cry baby list.

          You and your friends need to get over your hate.

          1. “Now how are your friends doing with their $1.50 per week Ryan rise ?”

            Oh yeah cuz HRC was gonna be handing out raises and America lost out on that when she lost the election. You’re a fanatic dude.

            Should have gone with Sanders. Dims would be in the WH with President Sanders right now if they had.
            HRC was a disastrous Secretary of State and a crappy Senator. The only reason she made it that far in national politics is from riding on Bill’s coattails. Anyone who insults the electorate and campaigns on an act of war with Russia is poor politician. Good riddance.
            Trump is a moron; but hey, so are most Americans. I think he’s one of the best representatives of The People™ that America has ever had.
            People get the government they deserve, especially so in democracies.

            You must be a pretty sad excuse for a human being when all you got to brag about is your money. What has the Dimocrat Party become?

            1. The moron level is about 2 percent of the population in the US. The average IQ in the US is 98 ranking it at 9 in the world grouping. Britain and China come out at 100. South Korea and Singapore are 102.
              Now we do have a lot of assholes, conmen, jerks, blockheads druggies and delusional citizens but those are personality deficiencies not intelligence deficiencies.
              We also have a lot of angry citizens who even with good jobs and careers think that they deserve more and who do little or nothing to improve the situation. They are aged children. An emotional handicap, not intellectual.

              The major problem in the political arena is the inability of the citizens to discern between conmen/shysters and a dedicated public servant. If they were given some simple education in how to identify a conman or shyster, they might not vote for them.

              But as they say, the good guy finishes last.

            2. Oh Donny Trumpster Jr, it’s good to see you finally stepped out of the closet with your true allegiance. I’m sure OldMacDonald doesn’t think he needs any help wearing his Big Boy overalls from you. My Trumpdar has been flashing Jr. loser for a long time. No surprise.

              What I don’t understand is your hostility towards me reflecting on my current Trump economic tax cut success. Tell us about your weekly pay check increase you voted for. Because in a couple of years, when the grim reaper comes calling because of these ill advised tax cuts. We can all laugh at your 2016 Trump vote together. When the country is broke and there is no Social Security and Medicare money for you to retire.

              Penny wise, dollar foolish

          2. Hi HB,

            My PERSONAL asset portfolio is doing very well, thank you, although I don’t put my money in the stock market.

            “Like I have said in the past, I don’t need your racist religious conservative gun loving voters. My stock portfolio is up 50% in the last 15 months. Now how are your friends doing with their $1.50 per week Ryan rise ? If you want to play your childish game. Next time I will buy a German made Audi Q5 and you can add another American factory worker to your unemployed conservative cry baby list.”

            Talk like that and you couldn’t get a date in a whore house with a roll of hundreds in your hand.

            Do you have even brains enough to understand that most of the auto workers in the USA are big D Democrats ?

            Are you so STUPID you can’t understand that the reason Detroit is dead is that the car companies have been moving south…… where they can pay less? Now that’s just one step short of moving out of the country ENTIRELY, so as to pay EVEN LESS, lol.

            That in the last analysis, it’s altogether easy to argue that globalism has had as much or more to do with destroying high wage industrial work ( and the unions that have almost always supported the D’s ) than any other factor, excepting automation?

            If any other member of this forum is stupid enough to post a comment defending your remarks, I’ll be so surprised I’ll spit coffee all over my keyboard, and probably have to buy a new one, lol.

            Even the dumbest hillbilly I know knows better than to talk about people the way you do, and then expect them to vote the way you SAY you vote, lol.

            How about the taxes YOU EXPECT to pay this year coming up, considering you’re betting on the stock market, ??

            You sending Trump a thank you note and a contribution?

            Sounds sort of LIKELY to me, lol.

            Could you be a closet republican?

            Like some movie star a while back I read about who campaigned publicly against people being allowed to have guns, and then shot an intruder ?

            ( Sorry I don’t have a link, my old computer that I had a lot of stuff stored on crashed beyond hope. But the world is full of closet gays and lesbians and drunks and drug addicts, lol. I’m willing to believe in closet republicans too.)

            If I can get just a dozen people, among all the people who read my comments and stuff here and elsewhere to change the way they talk about poor people, working class people, social conservatives, religious people and so forth in derogatory terms, and use more neutral language IN PUBLIC, and keep their spite and contempt to themselves, I will have done my part in helping the D party regain control.

            Every time you open your mouth, you help me in this respect, in terms of the regulars here who are smart enough to understand you don’t make friends and allies out of your political enemies by making fun of them, or worse.

            But your sort of comments, along with those of some others who aren’t quite so offensive, are MORE than adequate to ensure that any body who sees things the way my neighbors who have lost their jobs see them will never follow this forum.

            And that’s BAD, because this forum is one where they could acquaint themselves with the real dope when it comes to renewable energy and the environmental problems we talk about here.

            The LESS they know, the more apt they are to believe in the talking points and bullshit put forth by the opposition.

            You win people over a little at a time, politically, as a rule.

            Go ahead and make fun of religious people who cut Roy Moore a lot of slack, and who cut Trump a lot of slack.

            Who here is so stupid that he can’t understand that when HRC cut Bill the same slack ( true with legal adult women but still….. ) and they voted for her, and for Bill, that they weren’t equally culpable, morally ?

            They cynically said one thing, pretended to believe in one thing, voted for something else.

            And the preachers and the people in church know that , it’s as obvious as the noonday sun. They feel justified because of YOUR cynicism, lol.

            Have you ever heard of DEFINING DEVIANCY DOWN?

            They have CONTEMPT for you, the same as you have contempt for them.

            No, you don’t need their vote, personally, because you have ( assuming you’re not actually living in your mom’s basement, lol ) lucked out in the lottery of life.

            But the COUNTRY needs their vote. The D party needs their vote.

            This is at another whole level than a fucking discussion of economic theory. It’s about the economic FUCKING SURVIVAL of the people who are losing due to globalism HERE in the USA. It’s about winning elections .

            It takes a goddamned fool, or an academic , to believe they will vote D until the D party takes them seriously again, or maybe until the R’s fuck up so bad they turn back to the D’s for the same reason they turned to the R’s in 2016 ………. being taken for granted and ignored.

            The French have a common sense saying about this sort of thing.

            In English

            ” Only a fool or an intellectual could possibly believe……….. ”

            If you weren’t real, I would have to invent you, to help me get my point across, lol.

            Thanks again.

            1. Stupid is what stupid Trumpster writes

              Let me make this perfectly clear again for those two standard deviations below average in mental capacity. “I don’t need your racist religious conservative gun loving voters” and let me add to that list Nazi sympathizers and child molesters. All better known as the Republican party(the party of Roy Moore). If you and your friends find that offensive, good.

              “Talk like that and you couldn’t get a date in a whore house with a roll of hundreds in your hand”

              Again let me make this perfectly clear. I don’t demean women for sex with money and you have a sick understanding of the definition of a date. This must explain why you sleep with your gun and divorced.

              “the reason Detroit is dead is that the car companies have been moving south…… where they can pay less? Now that’s just one step short of moving out of the country ENTIRELY, so as to pay EVEN LESS, lol.”

              My XT5 final assembly point was in Tennessee. My next vehicle will be built by union workers in Germany. Who aren’t racist Nazi sympathizer Republicans in a race to the bottom in the economic south of America.

              One last comment, insecure people have the need to write “lol” at the end of their comment.

            2. Thanks again.

              The whole point, from my pov, is to get people to understand how to win elections, and what they must do in order to win.

              The first thing, when you’re in a big hole, is to quit digging. Yes, I’m not only lol, laughing out loud, I’m rotfl, rolling on the floor laughing at you, since you’re too stupid to understand that every time you open your mouth, you alienate any working class voter or religious person or social conservative, pissing them off and so encouraging them to vote for the R party.

              I couldn’t possibly hope to find anybody else who does such a great job of impressing people with the importance of not GOING OUT OF THEIR WAY to offend people unnecessarily and thus motivate them to vote for the enemy.

              If anybody wants to bad mouth religious people, or social conservatives, or make fun of me because I’m a hillbilly and proud of it, that’s ok…… it ‘s a free speech country, and my skin is thick indeed.

              But they ought to at least think about the fact that when they do so in public, or in a forum such as this one, they drive away and drive out anybody who might be a new potential convert to their way of thinking about lots of very important things……. such as the environment and renewable energy.

              I have introduced at least a dozen reasonably well educated social conservatives to this site, people who understand very well that oil comes out of a hole in the ground and does not grow back like potatoes………. people who understand enough science that they could be persuaded to support renewable energy policies for instance.

              But not a single one of them has ever visited this site more than a few times, even though they might have a great deal of interest in some of the subject matter, such as wind and solar energy, or the depletion of oil, since they expect to be using oil for years to come.

            3. I’m not here to compromise with brain dead religious Nazi sympathizers and child molester Republicans. They have already sold their soul to the devil. I’m here to expose the devil and rally the good people of this country to vote for a better world without Trump. Trump’s 35% base of deplorable’s are never going to vote for anything but their religious evil racist Republican party. Don’t kid yourself and the religious references are only for the two standard deviations below average in mental capacity.

              Trump insults liberals everyday. His voters need to realize payback is going to be a bitch and grow a pair. When the blue tidal wave comes this November. There will be no mercy.

              Vote to empower congress to Impeach and remove the Russian asset from office in 2018. Make no mistake about it. The Republican congress has failing to protect America from an attack on our election process.

  34. A while ago I think George Kaplan asked about how much heating would occur for each month of ice loss in the Arctic Ocean. Couldn’t find my earlier calculations so I just gave him the “it will at least double the current global forcing when the Arctic Ocean loses it’s ice cover” or something like that.
    Since it started to snow again here (been alternating snow cover and open ground all winter here) I was reminded and recalculated with greater detail, taking insolation values all the way to the North pole and the amount of open water we currently have in each month. These values will be slightly low since I ignored Dec through Feb.

    The Arctic Ocean is bound by fully ice covered all year versus fully open water all year (or at least 9 months of the year). That radiation forcing change is 2.6 w/m2 global. My calculations show we are now experiencing 1.7 w/m2 of that change so there is only 0.9 w/m2 to go. Since most of the change happened in recent history and the rest will be soon, that means at least 2 w/m2 global change from Arctic ice loss in modern times.
    Individual months vary from June loss being 2.8 w/m2 global for the month to Sept with 1.7 w/m2 global for the month. That is what is already happening due to open water lately compared to fully covered. Regional heating is much higher of course which is what counts for ice and NH snow loss.
    This heating should cause snow cover loss in the NH to reach 1 to 2 w/m2 global heating difference within the next century or earlier. This will in turn accelerate the loss of permafrost and shallow methane clathrate bodies (uncovered water allows wave mixing to greater depths) at an unknown but accelerating rate. Warmer ocean water does not absorb as much CO2, shifting the carbon cycle toward the atmosphere. One thing leads to another, to another …

    The Arctic receives heat from three different sources. Southern winds, ocean currents and solar insolation. All this adds up to a much faster rise in temperature than the lower latitudes. How fast this will cause further melting of Greenland is not known, but the forcing is increasing.

    What most people don’t understand is that for one of those rare times in the history of the planet both the Arctic and the Antarctic are in warm stages. With both poles experiencing warming simultaneously, global warming sensitivity is difficult to determine but probably higher than suspected.

    My prediction: it will get warmer and skiing will get less in most places (except water and sand skiing) 🙂

    1. I guess no one has figured out the obvious or they are too afraid to believe the numbers (takes a small amount of thinking and simple math to get to the next step).

  35. Does anybody know just how deep and how far offshore you must go to find substantial methane ice deposits?

    I know from reading that even in the most powerful hurricanes submarines don’t have to go very much past a hundred feet to find calm water, but that’s well offshore to the best of my knowledge, in deep water.

    Ordinary tides and waves, never mind storms, probably stir the water constantly to at least fifty to a hundred feet near shore, for a wild ass guess.

    If anybody has links to sites about the basics of oceanography that I might have missed, please post them, and thanks in advance.

  36. Here it is folks, the cheerleaders and cornucopians predicting how sunny the future will be. Yep it was 1999 and this article in the Atlantic predicted the Dow would go way higher. It wasn’t long until the fall, then it took a decade for the DOW to reach the value on that day of the article. It’s all logical and all sunny. So next time somebody says things will be just fine, or even not so bad, quickly check how much you have on the line in the near future. If it’s your money, put it someplace safer. If it’s your world, well, hunker down, there is no place to hide.

    Dow 36,000>b/>
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/09/dow-36-000/306249/

    1. LOL! I especially loved their Wells Fargo example…

      Wells Fargo is hardly an adolescent, but a reinvigorated management and the merger with Norwest give it teenage vitality. So let’s start by assuming that Wells will maintain the 16.5 percent growth rate of its dividends of the past five years for another five years. Then let’s assume that it will abruptly mature and after that will grow at a rate about 0.5 percent slower than nominal GDP growth, or about 4.5 percent a year. Let’s also assume that the prevailing Treasury-bond rate is 5.5 percent, as it was in the spring of this year. This rate is really not so vital, as we will see.

      Under these assumptions we can easily total all the bank’s future dividends and calculate what those dividends are worth today—their discounted present value. The answer is $128 a share. Let’s call that our first estimate of the perfectly reasonable price, or PRP, for Wells Fargo. If last April the market had smartened up and correctly priced the stock immediately, the share price would have risen from $40 to $128. The P/E ratio, which at the time was 33, would have increased to 105.

      But this is just one scenario. Let’s try some others. If we assume that the company can stay adolescent for ten years instead of five—that is, maintain the 16.5 percent growth rate for a full decade before trailing off—then the PRP becomes $214.

      Of course their reinvigorated management and teenage vitality took a bit of a hit recently…

      https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-07/wells-fargo-downgraded-by-s-p-in-wake-of-new-fed-asset-limit

      Wells Fargo Downgraded by S&P in Wake of New Fed Asset Limit

      The bank’s credit rating had been on negative watch since October 2016, a month after a scandal erupted over employees opening millions of bogus customer accounts. That ultimately led to the ousting of Sloan’s predecessor and a shake-up of the bank’s board.

  37. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/06/trump-risks-surrendering-innovation-us-energy-dominance-commentary.html

    An issue such as this one isn’t as simple as it sometimes seems on the surface. This article is worth reading carefully to see how the cards have fallen so far, and to gain some insight into what’s likely to happen over the next few years.

    I always find it highly amusing when certain parties rant and rave about the loss of high wage ( very often union) jobs here in the USA, and blame it on REPUBLICANS, and then in more or less the same paragraph support globalization, where in it ‘s perfectly obvious there’s a race to the bottom, as far as wages and benefits are concerned.

    Now I understand the reasoning, and the arguments put forth by both extremes, the globalist free traders on the one side and the isolationists on the other, as well as anybody.

    Taken all around, depending on how big your intellectual box is, either side can have the stronger arguments.

    IF the box is sized in respect to winning elections here in the USA, and thereby determining what the social and economic policies of this country will be, for the most part anyway………..

    It’s very unfortunate that so many people who want the D party to control this country are stupid enough to support candidates who are in favor of allowing wages to fall in this country by sending ever more work overseas, thereby leaving a larger and larger surplus of workers here who are necessarily forced to work for whatever peanut wages they are offered, if they can find any work at all.

    It takes a goddamned outright FOOL to think that more than a very small fraction of the people who lose their jobs to globalism can be and WILL BE retrained to work in a new field that pays even close to what they used to make, on average.

    It’s one thing to apply for a job when five people, or fifty, are needed, and six or eight apply, or sixty or seventy apply. It’s another ball game altogether when ten or fifteen qualified applicants apply, or three times the fifty needed apply.

    Anybody who expects working people to vote D when the R candidate is promising to keep work at home, and the D candidate is talking globalism has his political head up his political ass, regardless of how much he may know about economic theory.

    How about it, HB?

    Are you HAPPY that so many of the the southern people you hate are hard up today because the industries that supported so many people in the south have been exported, holding back southern people, black, white, brown, even a few yellow ones, from moving up the economic ladder from one generation to the next?

    In my own family, we went from share croppers and coal miners to farmers over the course of one or two generations, and from farmers to manufacturing people over the next two generations, and from there to being teachers, engineers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, accountants, professors, military officers, and owners of substantial businesses over the last two generations or three generations.

    But my neighbors who were on the way up that same ladder have seen their (mostly ) poor white trash asses kicked all the way back to the bottom rung, and entirely off the ladder, in all too many cases. The same applies to the various minorities too of course, but most of the people I know these days are white working class people.

    Now I understand perfectly that the R’s had as much, and more to do with it, as the D’s.

    But it was the D candidate who was stupid enough to fail to understand the implications of such a simple problem, in terms of running a winning campaign.

    1. “The right to work is the concept that people have a human right to work.

      In many States of the United States of America, it is known as the Right To Work For Less, where it surrenders all rights of the worker, arguing that it protects societies right to work by denying all forms of tenure, rights to any benefits, minimum wage, rights to breaks and lunch, rights to maximum work times, rights to collective organization, and rights to report violations of federal law by the company to federal regulators, because undocumented immigrants will do the same work without the legal protection of the United States, meaning that U.S. companies are incentivized to hire non-Americans to perform all steps in the manufacture and inspection steps for pennies on the dollar while workers are held at risk for deportation if they report any of numerous violations of human rights.”

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

      1. Since the Civil War, the strong right arm of the federal government has stood as the guarantor that the states are subservient to that same federal government, and that the states collectively compose one single country, with federal law and policy being the policy and law of the land.

        It wasn’t always this way. Prior to the Civil War, the federal government barely existed, except for the post office and a few other such services, and the people in all the states mostly believed their states had the right to determine policy and law, except for the guarantee’s in the constitution.

        So….. for those of us who can HANDLE the concept……… HB’s car was built in Tennessee rather than Detroit or thereabouts because the car companies moved to Tennessee for the more favorable business climate.

        Lets’ just call it INTERNAL globalization, in relation to the USA, lol, to get the point across.

        Globalization in a very real sense is a race to the bottom, in terms of the people in any high wage country who are currently working in any industry that can be globalized.

        It didn’t have much effect on me, hardly any at all, when I was a teacher, because that’s a job that so far at least, can’t be exported. That may well change with changing technology. It didn’t bother me when I was working in a nuke, because I had all the right paperwork, and didn’t have to worry about being displaced by a recent immigrant without that paperwork. It didn’t bother a couple of people I know who were earning six figures, one doing computer programming, and the other reading medical images, until both of them found their work exported via the internet to India or someplace similar.

        I understand automation, I understand the Luddite story. I also understand American politics.

        For now, and for some time to come, the political balance beam scale in this country will be pretty evenly loaded. It’s going to take moving only a very few people, as few as one or two out of a hundred moving from one party to the other often being enough to determine the outcome of elections. Four or five out of a hundred is more than enough to determine which party will control the federal government.

        Old HB, my helper and champion of tolerance and understanding, which are supposedly foundation values of political liberals, doesn’t need the votes of working class people, because he’s rich… unless he’s actually living in his mom’s basement.

        But the rest of us need those votes. We REALLY need them. I ‘m not arguing that we can stop globalization, or reverse it. What I am arguing is that if they have sense enough, the D’s can pursue policies that will win back the working class voters, without at the same time TOTALLY pissing off middle of the roaders, such as the ones who got a royal dry fucking when they passed OCare. Good idea, the worst actual execution of any major law in my lifetime, as best I can remember.

  38. Copied a minute ago:

    “Tesla has had challenges hitting its production targets due to manufacturing difficulties.
    As CNBC has reported, current and former employees say the company may have further trouble ramping up production, due in part to problems at Tesla’s Gigafactory near Reno, Nevada. ”

    I have asked before if anybody knows if battery production capacity is really adequate to supply all the other manufacturers who are coming out with lots of new model and planning on selling them by the tens of thousands in the near future.

    I haven’t seen much in the news about any other battery companies doing a whole lot when it comes to building new battery factories, but it’s hard to imagine that Chevy can sell a whole lot of Bolts without the factories supplying the batteries for them ramping up production substantially. Ditto Ford, BMW, and every body else.

    1. Yes, it’s hard to take a company’s EV plans seriously without a plan for battery production. There are rumors about VWs plans and Mercedes but I don’t think they have broken ground on anything which puts them way behind. VW said they will need 40 gigafactores by 2025 https://electrek.co/2017/07/10/vw-gigafacrory-size-battery-factories-evs/
      but they have retracted that statement – they are getting push-back from their board on the capital expense…

      BTW, Tesla did ship a couple thousand model 3’s last month, and they are currently making about 1000 per week. The dual motor version should be out soon.

  39. According to this link, this nine point eight megawatt solar farm was just a business proposal as late as last summer. It will likely be finished within a few months.

    https://www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/news/2018/02/07/gallup-to-receive-solar-farm-later-this-quarter.html

    Awesome. It usually takes twice that long just to agree on a plan for a new city administration building or high school, lol.

    Somebody pointed out earlier that revenue starved Nebraska state government was threatening to start taxing the wind industry.

    Well, that’s bad , in that it will slow down the growth of the industry.

    But look at it like this. It also shows that the wind industry has grown up to the point at least in some states that it IS a legitimate source of possible new state tax revenues.

    It’s sort of amusing that wind advocates are so gung ho on pointing out that wind farms bring in lots of taxes to LOCAL governments, and lots of rental income to local landowners, and employ some local people, but then get their panties all in a bunch because the state is thinking maybe it’s time the wind industry pays taxes like just about all other industries in the state.

    That day MUST inevitably arrive.

    It’s a SIGN the wind industry IS approaching adult status in the big boy’s world of energy, lol.

  40. US Weather:

    “February is off to a rip-roaring start: the first three days of the month racked up a preliminary total of 151 daily record highs but not a single daily record low.”

    1. However by surface area more of the country has been in the extremely cold sector rather than the extremely warm one.

  41. EU will only make trade deals with nations that ratify Paris climate agreement
    The United States would be excluded.
    E.A. CRUNDENFEB 6, 2018, 5:01 PM

    The European Union will no longer make trade deals with the United States if President Trump follows through on withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, according to a French official whose comments were endorsed by the European Commission.

    Addressing the French parliament on Thursday, French foreign affairs minister Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne drew a line in the sand.

    “One of our main demands is that any country who signs a trade agreement with EU should implement the Paris Agreement on the ground,” said Lemoyne. “No Paris Agreement, no trade agreement. The [United States] knows what to expect.”
    https://thinkprogress.org/eu-paris-us-decd4aad9145/

        1. Well, that turned into a 1000+ point downturn.
          Two 1000 loses in the same week? Might be record—–

    1. ISTR? I Seem to Remember. Had to look it up! I find IIRC easier to remember 🙂

  42. OpenNEM: An open platform for National Electricity Market data

    The Energy Transition Hub is pleased to launch the OpenNEM project with the our new widget in RenewEconomy’s sidebar, and its landing page on RE, and the alpha’ release of our website.

    The OpenNEM project aims to make the wealth of public National Electricity Market (NEM) data more accessible to a wider audience.

    We hope that improved access will facilitate better public understanding of the market, improve energy literacy and help facilitate a more informed national discussion on Australia’s energy transition in the long term interests of consumers.

    As others have recently pointed out, accessing and analysing NEM data is not readily accessible to many, leaving the workings of the market relatively opaque.

    By providing a clear window on the data, we hope to address the information asymmetry between stakeholders and improve the productivity of those engaged in energy market discussions.

    A brand new, very neat and informative set of web pages on Australia’s electricity markets. A quick look allowed me to find out that at mid day Australia time on the second of February, the combination of solar and wind were producing 94% of the electricity demand in South Australia. Neat Stuff!

  43. It’s the windows and the leaks, plus that exposed uninsulated basement wall.
    Insulation is great, but to get the most bang for your buck and effort hit all the weak spots first then think about the rest. The graphs in this article tell the story very nicely. Balancing insulation to minimize heating/cooling demand (with the sun if possible) is critical to cost and comfort.

    https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/76941/The-Diminishing-Returns-of-Adding-More-Insulation

    To give you an idea, 200 square feet of R2 window in my area loses 16 million BTU per heating season.
    With oil heat that is about enough money spent heating the outdoors over a lifetime to buy an EV.
    Sad part is most people don’t even look out their windows much, they immediately cover them with curtains and shades. Might as well have a wall in many cases.

  44. Ain’t science wonderful?

    TRAPPIST-1: FINDINGS SHOW EXOPLANETS MADE OF ROCK AND WATER

    In 2016, a team of researchers led by EU-funded astronomer Michael Gillon at the University of Liege, Belgium, discovered three temperate Earth-sized planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1, an ultra-cool dwarf star just 40 light years from Earth. A few months later, Gillon surprised the world with the discovery of a whole planetary system made of a total of seven planets around this star. A set of new studies reveals today the nature and composition of the planets, shedding light on their potential habitability.

    https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-02/erc-tfs020518.php

        1. True, you could never hold my breath.
          Anyway, it would take a couple of hundred years to reach the star system even with some fusion super drive.
          Plenty to do here in our limited time.

            1. Hey guys, do the math.

              The fusion causes a massive explosion, ejecting the metal rings out of the rocket at 67,000 mph (108,000 kmh), generating thrust. This reaction would be repeated every 10 seconds, eventually accelerating the rocket to somewhere around 200,000 miles per hour — about 10 times the speed of Curiosity as it hurtled through space from Earth to Mars.

              Okay, 200,000 miles per hour would be 1/3348th the speed of light. At that speed, it would take over 13,000 years just to reach Alpha Centauri.

              Also, throwing the rings at 67,000 miles per hour would mean you would have to throw metal rings equal to three times the total weight of the spacecraft. That is three times the total weight of rings plus spacecraft. And just as much weight would have to be thrown to stop. Then if you wish to return….? And if you would wish to go faster than one 3348th the speed of light you would need to throw far more weight in rings.

              Hey, the first article is all about going to Mars. Going to deep space is another matter altogether. The second article is about exploring ways that we might achieve 10 percent of light. That would be 18,600 miles per second. A speed equal to 3/4 ths the circumference of the earth. Lots of luck with that one.

            2. Ron as usual is dead on.

              But I used to read a lot of old classic sci fi, and there’s a potential solution.

              That’s to have a scoop, probably a controlled magnetic field, that extends out in front of the ship, which collects the hydrogen present in minute quantities even in deep space.

              Now run that supply of hydrogen thru a fusion engine and exhaust helium, and you can go damned near anywhere, in principle ………… If you can build the scoop and the engine.

              It seems likely to me that the next biggest problem, if such a propulsion system can be built, would be collisions.

              There may be places even in deep space where there are some little bits, or big bits, of stone or even iron just floating along and around, and at speeds into the tens of thousands of miles per hour and up , detection and maneuvering will be next to impossible.

            3. Ahhh, you are talking about the infamous Bussard Ramjet.

              Finally, the Bussard ramjet will only work when the vehicle is moving fast enough to collect interstellar mass in usable amounts. Therefore a secondary propulsion system is needed to boost the spacecraft up to this critical speed – about 6% of the speed of light.

              6% of the speed of light would be 11,160 miles per second. That speed would take you almost halfway around the world in one second. If you think that is possible using any type of rocket thrust then you may still be a great science fiction fan. But as far as physics goes…naaaaaa!

            4. Hi Ron,

              I haven’t read any sci fi to amount to anything for at least thirty or forty years. Sci fi lost it’s charms for me at least that long ago, and I moved on to other genre’s history, politics, economics, nature, culture, almost anything except sports other such wastes of my time.

              Real technology is now far more interesting, and has been, for quite some time.

              There’s no doubt in my mind that the odds are pretty damned close to one hundred percent that we aren’t going to the stars anytime soon and probably never….

              But it may be possible to send some sort of probe that would send back a lot of useful information within the next few years….. send it on it’s way that is. Any data coming back would likely be a hell of a long time coming back, almost for sure most of a century, maybe longer, considering the transit time getting the probe THERE.

              But there’s a possibility the Bussard Ram or something equivalent can be made to work…..

              And there’s a possibility, however remote, that we will one day have space colonies in orbit that are pretty much self sufficient, once large enough and well enough stocked with all essential raw materials, because with solar energy available in nearly unlimited amounts, almost any thing can be recycled and reprocessed indefinitely. Sending down some rockets to pick up a few tons of minerals from time to time wouldn’t be out of the question.

              I don’t have any problems envisioning damned near ANY sort of work being automated, EVENTUALLY.

              So EVENTUALLY, we may achieve a God like material status, meaning we can have damned near unlimited quantities of just about anything imaginable….. unless we fuck everything up before this is possible……. and my opinion is that we WILL run short of time and resources before we can achieve such a god like level of sophistication.

              And neither would it be impossible to send a giant space ship, built to be self sufficient indefinitely, on a one way trip to another solar system, knowing in advance that such a system has planets with the right sort of minerals available for the harvesting of them. If it takes a thousand years to get there, there will still be plenty of people willing to be on it, people who believe their descendants will succeed in the new solar system.

              Chances of this actually coming to pass? One in a million but not ZERO.

              I used to believe a complete or near complete collapse of modern day industrial civilization is baked in, as you still do, to the best of my knowledge.

              But over the last decade or so I have changed my mind about that , and now believe that there is at least SOME chance of some people pulling thru the still real baked in collapse headed our way. No guarantee of course, just a possibility.

              But birth rates have fallen so fast in so many places I am encouraged to believe they will continue to fall as fast or faster in the future, and that population will peak sooner at a lower number than demographers expect, and that renewable energy and recycling technologies and efficiency improvements and WORLD WAR LEVEL sovereign state ACTION (, once the crisis is hitting hard enough to CONVINCE the people that nothing else will enable them to survive) all taken together mean some people in some parts of the world have a shot at coming thru with the lights on and food in stores and cops on the street and so forth.

              How long do you think it would take Uncle Sam to declare an emergency regulation making it a felony to drive a six thousand pound plus truck for personal transportation if gasoline is in such short supply as to threaten an actual short term economic collapse due to too many people not being able to get to work?

              Or force a company with lots of workers to schedule their hours so they can EASILY carpool, I’m thinking about a Walmart super store for instance.

              Or to pass a law making it entirely tax deductible if you install new windows, and more insulation, and solar panels, so as to save on depleting natural gas and oil?

              Leviathan hasn’t really been fully awake since WWII, except for baby Leviathans.

              It ain’t OVER till it’s over.

            5. But it may be possible to send some sort of probe that would send back a lot of useful information within the next few years….. send it on it’s way that is.

              “It’s” is a contraction for “it is”. “Its” is the word you should have used. That being said, I am all for gathering all the information we can get.

              But there’s a possibility the Bussard Ram or something equivalent can be made to work…..

              Bullshit, total bullshit. Science fiction and nothing more.

              and there’s a possibility, however remote, that we will one day have space colonies in orbit that are pretty much self sufficient, once large enough and well enough stocked with all essential raw materials, because with solar energy available in nearly unlimited amounts, almost any thing can be recycled and reprocessed indefinitely. Sending down some rockets to pick up a few tons of minerals from time to time wouldn’t be out of the question.

              And just why in the fucking hell would we do that? I mean really? Just why would we do that? The cost would be enormous and the gain would be nothing.

              And neither would it be impossible to send a giant space ship, built to be self sufficient indefinitely, on a one way trip to another solar system, knowing in advance that such a system has planets with the right sort of minerals available for the harvesting of them. If it takes a thousand years to get there, there will still be plenty of people willing to be on it, people who believe their descendants will succeed in the new solar system.

              Mac, you have got to stop reading that damn science fiction. It is really fucking up your brain. No, no one in their right mind would be willing to head out on a spaceship that would be in route for a thousand years. People worry about their children or grandchildren, but never about their descendants a thousand years from now.

              Anyway, a thousand years would not be even a start. It would take many thousands of years to reach the nearest possible habitable solar system.

            6. They say laser powered light sails are looking promising. You just build enormous lasers on earth, or in orbit, and have them all focus on a tiny lightweight sail. It can be pushed along by laser light alone, but it can do even better if it uses high power solar cells to power an ion drive. There are other ideas as well, cool to see at least a few people working on some of these ideas.

            7. You just build enormous lasers on earth, or in orbit, and have them all focus on a tiny lightweight sail.

              Errrr…. Just how the hell are you going to stop the damn thing when you get to Alpha Centauri, or wherever you are going?

              It takes just as much energy to decelerate a spacecraft as it does to accelerate it. The fact that some folks would propose such a thing, a spacecraft with no way to decelerate it, just proves they have not a fucking clue as to what distant space travel is all about.

            8. Yes, it’s not ideal but you don’t stop. It’s only good for a flyby. Of course, once you have the lasers, you can send a whole fleet of them.

          1. Ok, our resident rocketry experts don’t see a way that fuel density of 7 million times current rocket fuel can achieve good fractions of the speed of light.
            How about a fuel that is almost a billion times more dense with the rocket being driven by photonic emission drives (those photons leave at the speed of light). That “fuel” would be anti-matter collisions and would be expended from the rocket as focused beams of electromagnetic energy.
            Needing one billionth of the drive mass should do it. However, don’t be behind it and don’t be near it when the antimatter loses containment.:-)

            This is the preliminary research funded by NASA that was being done up until lately. However, in the new anti-science, anti-humanity environment of the US, other countries will have to take the ball on this one.
            In the meantime, we can go anywhere we want in the solar system using a fusion drive, within a very reasonable time.
            BTW, I have no desire to leave the Earth but am fully for other people leaving it. There are plenty of challenges and adventures right here.

            1. However Breakthrough Starshot has come up with a plan to send a cluster of small light sail probes to Alpha Centuri at 20 percent lightspeed. Driven by an array of ground based focused lasers.

              “Concept

              Breakthrough Starshot brings the Silicon Valley approach to space travel, capitalizing on exponential advances in key areas of technology since the beginning of the 21st century.

              Nanocrafts

              Nanocrafts are gram-scale robotic spacecrafts comprising two main parts:
              •StarChip: Moore’s law has allowed a dramatic decrease in the size of microelectronic components. This creates the possibility of a gram-scale wafer, carrying cameras, photon thrusters, power supply, navigation and communication equipment, and constituting a fully functional space probe.
              •Lightsail: Advances in nanotechnology are producing increasingly thin and light-weight metamaterials, promising to enable the fabrication of meter-scale sails no more than a few hundred atoms thick and at gram-scale mass.

              Light Beamer

              The rising power and falling cost of lasers, consistent with Moore’s law, lead to significant advances in light beaming technology. Meanwhile, phased arrays of lasers (the ‘light beamer’) could potentially be scaled up to the 100 gigawatt level.

              Breakthrough Starshot aims to bring economies of scale to the astronomical scale. The StarChip can be mass-produced at the cost of an iPhone and sent on missions in large numbers to provide redundancy and coverage. The light beamer is modular and scalable.”

            2. Thanks Ron. Check it out yourself, I did not write that (notice the quotes).

            3. By adding a small ion drive to the sail and converting some of the laser light to electricity to power it, the total power requirements can be dropped a huge amount – or a much larger craft sent. They aren’t talking about needing the entire power output of the US anymore, it’s not so crazy.

            4. My question is, why bother? We really have a lot to do here on Earth now.
              Also, why not build a huge telescope in space or an array of large scopes to investigate. Right now we are limited to stars that have planets orbiting in a plane that crosses their sun as we view it.
              Once we find out more we can then think about actually sending physical objects out there. The new knowledge gained from large space based scopes may give us a whole new perspective on things.
              Wasting a lot of time and energy on exoplanet observations during a critical time in the period of our civilization does not make much sense. We can do that later if we are still capable in the future. Later we may be able to do it much better.

            5. That laser network could be the basis of a future space highway providing power to all kinds of satellites and dramatically reducing the cost since they no longer need a lifetime supply of propellant.

              Yes, I’m all for what we can to with telescopes locally. But, it doesn’t hurt to spend a little money, even if it’s just a dream, it can inspire others.

              But you have a point, I guess we have an extra 160 billion for the military but science – why bother?

            6. Okay Fish, you have a view of telescopes that is just not possible. No, we cannot build a telescope or multiple telescopes, that are capable detecting if life exists on other planets orbiting distant stars. Even with the most powerful telescopes we have, the stars are just a point of light. We cannot even see the planets. They are far less than just a point of light, far less.

              So let’s not get carried away with science fiction. Telescopes are not just that powerful, and never will be. There are physical limitations. Learn to live with them.

            7. Ron, early on I studied to be an astrophysicist for several years before I changed over to chemistry. . I also have worked with spectrometers professionally for decades and was an amateur astronomer for decades also.
              I think you are going to be amazed at what we have done, are planning to do and when we do get really large scopes out in space we will be able to analyze an see planets circling distant suns. No sci-fi involved, we are on the edge of amazing discoveries, more engineering and economics at this point. Plus a good cheap space launch vehicle would help.

              Astronomers use spectroscopy to determine the composition of atmospheres of distant planets, not resolution. When their orbit crosses their sun, the atmosphere of the planet is now apparent in the spectrum. See? Not a problem in resolution limits. By increasing diameter (light gathering power) it could be possible to use the light from background stars to illuminate the atmosphere, thus allowing a spectroscopic view of planetary systems that are oriented at all angles. Also if we get enough light gathering power we may be able to determine the full chemistry of distant planetary atmospheres. It’s the chemistry of the atmosphere that will tell us a huge amount about the planet and it’s life potential.

              Secondly, merely calculate the diffraction limit of a pair of telescopes set a million miles apart in space and then use interferometry.
              We have observed the disk of Betelgeuse which is 500 light years directly with the small Hubble scope. Star discs the size of our sun have been observed using interferometry across two scopes set 1000 feet apart on earth. Imagine the resolution of a mile wide or multimile wide set of scopes in space with no atmospheric interference.
              It’s not a physical limit, it’s an engineering and economic problem.
              Feel free to calculate the diffraction limits then divide by about 25 to get the interferometer limits. If we can see star discs using small telescopes on earth and in space, we can see planets if we want to. Though I am not sure why one would need to see them directly to analyze atmospheres.

              However, let’s not go too far into the future. How about right now. Check out Star Shade, a NASA project to maybe launched with the next large space telescope. This expanding shade would float in front of the scope to block the light from the sun in the target system. Then they would be able to see those points of light directly orbiting a star. A huge advance with relatively small scopes in space.

              Here are a couple of sites on the subject, enjoy.

              https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/how-extremely-large-telescopes-will-reveal-exoplanets

              https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-nasa-s-next-big-telescope-could-take-pictures-of-another-earth/

              https://astrobob.areavoices.com/2014/06/06/can-we-really-see-other-stars-as-true-disks-you-betcha/

              StarShade and Coronograph Engineering at JPL
              https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLTiv_XWHnOZp2Wmmd3gVSiKAVyXk9Rh14&v=ALGI0ex0-ac

            8. Fish, I don’t doubt anything you say here. I am aware of the fact that we can gather a great amount of data about the atmosphere and size of planets that transit their star. However we will not be able to actually see the planet. And even if we did have a telescope that capable of seeing such a planet, the long exposure required would mean the planet would move many planet diamaters during that time. Do you think we would be able to track the planet at that distance?

              But that is all beside the point. No, we will never go to another solar system to see if there is a habitable planet circling that star. All proposed spaceships capable of doing that are pure science fiction and nothing more. That was my point.

            9. Ron, if you looked at the sites I sent you it would become obvious that we would be able to see the planets around stars very soon even with relatively small equipment. That means we could determine orbital dynamics and so yes, when we have the capability we will be able to track the planet. Not sure what an image would tell us, maybe the level of cloudiness or the albedo. The spectroscopy is the most important analysis tool so far.
              I expect the capability to occur within the century (if things don’t go belly up).
              More importantly we will be able to see those small bodies that narrowly miss our planet from time to time. Between that and active radar, we might be able to avert an asteroid collision in the future.
              That is one of the major reasons to go into space, take control of our space. 🙂
              The other is to watch our planet, which is being done somewhat now. The eyes in the sky can give us a lot of information about what is going on down here.

    1. Oh goody, some more potential Earths to fuck up. Now how to get there… Maybe drive over in the new Space Tesla. Nikola Tesla musk be rolling around in his grave.

  45. More Tesla news is that there are two more automated just built brand new assembly lines in Germany that have been built and apparently tested, for the Tesla battery factory. They are in the process of disassembling them for shipping as of yesterday.

    Some of the equipment supplied by other unnamed companies for use in the battery factories has failed to perform.

    There’s ample reason to believe that Tesla will be building a lot more cars within the next few months.

    1. The Tesla gigafactory produces the battery cells from raw materials and then assembles the cells into battery packs. The issues have been with the battery pack assembly, not the production of the cells. Doing pack assembly isn’t super high tech, it’s the easy part and something Tesla has done before. They say a subcontractor let them down and the pack assembly machines did not work. Reports were that Elon was camping out on the roof of the factory last November. Anyway, they fired the sub-contractor and built new machines.

      They have a couple of lines now running and are producing 1000 cars per week. They already are the best selling EV on the market – even beating the hybrids like the Prius. Once the additional lines are up, they plan to be at 5000 cars per week. It’s likely there will be other issues along the way, but they seem to be making steady progress.

  46. If anybody who knows the likely cause of it, I would like to know why my new computer won’t copy just what I highlight in this blog. It will copy the entire non petroleum thread. That’s no good.
    It copies only what I highlight most other places.

    It will drag and drop text within this thread.

  47. Way upthread, Hickory ask why I defend fake news.

    WHICH news have I posted, or defended, do you consider fake, Hickory?
    At least ninety percent of the news I post originates from sites and organizations well known as liberal leftish leaning.

    The rest is usually about some particular point well illustrated by something from the rightish leaning press.

  48. We often tend to get in a hurry, and paint with too broad a brush, too fast. This happens quite often when we pass judgement on people we don’t know well, or people who lived in times past.

    The actual truth is often very different from what we believe it is.

    Almost all of us, in a forum such as this one, know that the Quakers were in the forefront of the movement to abolish slavery in the US. But how many of us know the REST of the story about Quakers and slavery?

    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-42640782

    1. “We often tend to get in a hurry, and paint with too broad a brush, too fast. This happens quite often when we pass judgement on people we don’t know well”

      “We”, Trumpster do you have a mouse in your pocket, because you are worst on this website of passing judgement on others.

      1. Thanks again, HB

        You’re by a mile the best I have met in recent times when it comes to making a fool out of yourself over and over.

        When I point out that the D’s would be in control of the country NOW, if they were a little smarter over the last twenty or thirty years about not pushing social change half of the country DOES NOT WANT, quite so FAST, and a little smarter about actually paying attention to the working people of this country………

        This is what you have to say in reply:

        ““Like I have said in the past, I don’t need your racist religious conservative gun loving voters. My stock portfolio is up 50% in the last 15 months. Now how are your friends doing with their $1.50 per week Ryan rise ? If you want to play your childish game. Next time I will buy a German made Audi Q5 and you can add another American factory worker to your unemployed conservative cry baby list.”

        Maybe YOU don’t need the Democrats to be in power, lol. Maybe you really do have some money, maybe you’re living in your mother’s basement.

        All it takes to make money in the stock market is luck, no brains needed, especially when the market is rising.

        Maybe you’re actually a closet Republican, lol. You have bragged about making a ton of money in the oil biz, because working people are stupid, without working for it, so maybe you REALLY like the new R tax laws. You won’t have to pay nearly as high a rate as my neighbors who work with their hands, backs, and brains pay, doing something USEFUL, something that actually CONTRIBUTES to the welfare of the country.

        The new tax law is specifically tailored to the needs of the investor class. Are you REALLY an investor?

        No, YOU don’t need the votes of the working class people of this country……… IF you’re telling the truth about having it made.

        But if the Democratic Party is ever to come in from the wilderness, and take control of this country again, the Democratic Party NEEDS the votes of the working people of this country.

        I have been pointing out this utterly obvious truth for quite some time. You’re doing all you can to guarantee that people who are worried and scared for their vote for Republicans, who at least last election had sense enough to PRETEND they give a shit, by talking about the things working people worry about……. even when they’re lying, they had sense enough to at least PRETEND.

        HRC, arrogant and entitled, and looking down on the very people she needed the most, using the code word “deplorables” to describe the people who have traditionally been the heart of the party but who are now abandoning it, due to being IGNORED, and trashed, LOOKED DOWN ON, didn’t even have THAT much sense.

        No, you don’t need a laboring man’s vote, or the vote of a waitress, or the vote of somebody on an assembly line. YOU , dumb as you are, have made it perfectly clear that you’re a complete fraud, if you’re telling the truth about having money.

        Or else, you’re just about as stupid as stupid can be, and still be capable of posting a comment. You’re doing absolutely nothing to win voters over, but you’re doing so well at alienating them that you should be collecting a check from the Koch brothers.

        The COUNTRY, and the Democratic Party, needs the votes of the working people.

        The Democratic Party is going to have to decide whose side it’s on, it’s as simple as that. Running a candidate who makes secret speeches to banksters, and BRAGS about shutting down an industry, even if it NEEDS shutting down, as coal does, is about the biggest single mistake the D’s have made at least in MY lifetime.

        Sometimes it pays to take things a little easier, politically, taking a bite, and chewing it well, and swallowing it, without choking on it.

        The changes the liberal wing of the D Party wanted and got were basically good things, but they bit off too much, and choked on it, without being smart enough to figure out WHY the R’s have been slowly but steadily taking over local, state, and federal offices over this time frame, until they just about OWN the government in a hell of a lot of states, and currently control DC as well.

        As bad is Trump is for the country, it’s fortunate, for the D Party, that he’s as incompetent and as unethical as he is.

        He’s so bad I am optimistic that the D’s will regain control of the House, and maybe even the Senate in the upcoming midterms.

  49. http://pcl.stanford.edu/

    Why party identity causes voters to stand behind their politicians – no matter what, The Washington Post
    Strong party identification is what has allowed some politicians to survive questions about racism, sexism and other major character deficits.

    Basically this is pretty much the same thing as I’ve been saying all along. It’s culture war.

    The people that cut HRC and Bill Clinton plenty of slack over abusing women did EXACTLY the same thing they accuse others of that are willing to cut people like Roy Moore and Trump plenty of slack.. play the hypocrite.

    I may be a dumb old farmer, but Stanford is universally acknowledged to be a first class university.

    Fortunately the younger generation doesn’t seem to be as willing to play this sorry game as us older folks.

  50. Having just crossed 70 degrees F in the mountains near me (41N) this past week, I wondered how often this actually happens.
    This past Wednesday hit 70F/46F with 35/19 being the historical average at this station near 2000 feet altitude. Previous record high for that station in February was 65F in 1975, so this is a first. To give you an idea, 2000 feet asl is like being 600 miles north at sea level (well into Canada) as far as temperature goes. The highest temperature ever recorded there is 95F in June 2003.

    https://weather.com/news/weather/news/2018-02-19-how-rare-are-70s-in-february-in-northeast-map

  51. Greenland is a key to the climate system. Unlike Antarctica it shows a much higher sensitivity to climate change. Now one could concentrate on the albedo change due to ice loss and get a value which would be relatively small but significant. However, the height of the ice sheet will be lost as it melts. This height raises the wind hitting Greenland by up to 2 miles height. The air expands, moisture is removed and the temperature drops. Temperature drop is 25C or more and it is exposed to far less atmosphere and the air is dry, thus radiating heat better. It acts like a very large high mountain plateau over 2 million km2 in area.
    As it melts this cooling effect is lost to the planet, both from albedo change and altitude change. So beside the sea level rise, expect a significant warming factor from Greenland ice sheet loss.

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