All I can say is that I’m growing increasingly weary of a global economy that runs on fossil fuels!
I have been witness to way too many really stupid American military excursions and wars around the world. There has to be a better way to run the world! Meanwhile the basic planetary support systems are under constant assault. I’m not sure how much more they can take. If they start to fail in a big way, all of this never ending struggle for power will be moot forevermore!
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
–Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
Of course I mention pesticides vis-a-vis arthropods as a bit of an aside to the broader issue of industrial agriculture and, as per The Union of Concerned Scientists.
One would have thought that I wouldn’t need to mention, except I guess for people like Fred, that The Union probably understands very well that there’s more to agricultural effects beyond pesticides.
The ‘nuance’ that Fred mentions seems more, ironically, for his relatively-limited take on your comment’s limited point where industrial agriculture is concerned.
It also appears that he can’t help himself with the ignore button and seems to keep turning it off and on where I’m concerned, thus, if so and ironically again, potentially limiting his understanding of the ‘nuance’ and flow of the discussion, and therefore of a certain level of reality, at the very least where POB threads are concerned.
By the way, I just came up with a term that already is in use for another concept or concepts but nevertheless seems to apply well to industrial agriculture and other forms of human activity that go against the ecosystem;
Ecopathology.
“Caelan doesn’t have the capacity to understand the nuances of complex non linear dynamic systems. He seems to have a strictly black and white view of the world. He is the typical blind man tapping only one part of the elephant and unable to get the full picture. You’ll have better luck explaining this to a bright six year old!” ~ Fred Magyar
Where meaningless and infantile personal attacks are concerned, Fred (or Fernando G Magyar if you will) is without equal on POB.
Note the above quote for illustration, as well as the Peak Oil Barrel archives. This, no less, from someone who is apparently ~67 years old this year.
”Where meaningless and infantile personal attacks are concerned, Fred (or Fernando G Magyar if you will) is without equal on POB.”
Caelan, once upon a time, years ago, I tried to take you seriously.
But it’s as obvious as the sun at high noon that you are as dumb as a fence post, that you LITERALLY have NO understanding of the various physical three D world realities which determine what we can and cannot do to solve our economic and ecological problems.
I have never dealt with a person like you, personally, who is so apparently intelligent, well spoken, with a large vocabulary, etc, who is so obviously out to do SOMETHING…….. to further some goal or agenda …… but I have run across a few , in the political world. THEIR goals and agendas are typically easy to comprehend, and usually pretty simple. They’re out to sow FUD, and cultivate a following among those dumb enough to mistake their big words for wisdom.
It’s impossible to visualize you being the sort who might actually go off someplace and give up the comforts of modern life and live with a little band of worshipers, shitting in an outhouse built out of sawmill slabs, as I did as a small child, in a one or ( TWO room in my case ) shack without running water, as I did as a small child, actually WORKING in the dirt, getting all sweaty and callused, aching so bad you can’t sleep without getting drunk, as so many people I know even today must do. So that possibility is out.
And unless you ARE literally retarded, intellectually challenged as they used to say in my former PROFESSIONAL line of work, you can’t possibly believe anybody at all takes you seriously here in THIS forum.
Fred is BEYOND well respected by the readership here. He’s looked up to as a role model who knows what can or at least might be done to improve our situation.
LOL! Have I been outed? What am I going to do?
Yep, all my official personal documents have Fernando on them. So I guess that is my real name. It is a funny story. My Hungarian name and the name of my father is Nandor.
At some point while transiting through France during WWII due to some misunderstanding he was issued documents where his name was listed as Fernand. Given that Nando is short for Fernando in many Latin speaking countries it’s really not that much of a stretch.
When my father arrived in the US he was given the nickname Fred, apparently easier than Fernand or Nandor. As for myself, that name was soon applied to me as well! All my friends an family have called me Fred since I was about two years old, even my mother. I have on many occasions tried to use my real name only to find that once people have become acquainted with my other friends and family they usually end up calling me Fred as well.
Side note: One of my best friends is a Sicilian American auto mechanic, also known as Fred, (not his real name) we have often worked together on classic car restoration projects. We are known as Fred 1 and Fred 2, a reference to Dr. Seuss’ Thing One and Thing Two!
Anyways, I should probably just just go by the short form of my Hungarian name which is Nandi! Pronounced N’ah n dee.
Now everyone knows! 😉
You have my sympathy. For reasons lost in the dimness of time my parents started calling me “Jim”, apparently only weeks after officially naming me “Joseph” on my birth certificate. I’ve been making up stories to explain it for most of my 75 years.
ROFL!
Were your parents Jamaican by any chance? It is fairly common practice in Jamaica to put a name on a child’s birth certificate and then proceed to use a totally unrelated “pet” name for the rest of their lives. I have at least two female cousins who were like that, Paula/Betty and Grace/Camille. Sometimes if you refer to a person by the name on their birth certificate lots of people don’t know who you’re referring to ! Never could figure it out.
Names, here, like Pancho/Franciso cause me brain warps as I cannot see the link 🙁
NAOM
I got curious about that so I did a little research. This explanation sounds plausible. I assume you can read Spanish so you will be able to read the embedded links.
Amando de Miguel briefly states some theories in this article. I tend to favour the one pointing at the abbreviation of Phranciscus (the latinised version of Francisco de Asís’s nickname) as Ph.co in signs and inscriptions. This explains Paco which, relaxing the /k/ sound, becomes Pacho and, mixing this with the original n in the full name, gives Pancho. Versions in other language, such as the Aragonese Francho or the Italian Franco, can be explained also through abbreviation, including or not the relaxation of the /k/ sound.
The blog post ¿Cómo se llega de Francisco a Paco? expands a bit on the explanation, adding an interesting parallel between the proposed Ph.co or Phco and the current Fco., which we use in names such as Francisco Javier (usually abbreviated nowadays as Fco. Javier in writing).
Muchisimo gracias, muy interesante.
NAOM
muchísimas gracias (feminine plural; English is so easy – many is always many!)
Around here, muchisimo is used rather than muchisimas. Online translators seem to agree.
NAOM
NAOM, true, no hay reglas fijas 🙂
(there are no fixed rules)
La verdad.
Frankly, I don’t really give a shit. I found the ‘Fernando G Magyar’ site by accident (since we both occupy two different forums) via some sort of XML file if recalled and just thought to post it, figuring, rightly so in retrospect, that it might gain some traction, if only as navel-gazing material for the subject-in-question.
In any case, quite a lot of threaded hullaballoo from some hereon who are supposed to have me ignorance-buttoned, ay? It’s like crashing a granny digestive biscuits and Metamucil tea club or something and then the sudden clucking and smell of urine.
“you can’t possibly believe anybody at all takes you seriously here in THIS forum. ” ~ OFM
While this forum is a pale version of its former self, with many good commenters having left, including myself at least where the frequency of my viewing and comments are concerned…
“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
…
“I enjoy making a fool of myself in public jousting with Caelan, but I do not think he is foolish…
Every once in a while he makes a point worthy of carving it in stone.” ~ OFM
…I’m unsure you realize that it would be complimentary to not be taken seriously by some of the leftovers on this forum, including you.
I mean, come on.
Ironically, it would appear that many, if not most, so-called and/or self-described farmers, or agronomists or whatever have you don’t know how to farm.
The word, incompetent, which comes to mind, comes nowhere near close to describing a lot of it.
I don’t care if you have 30+ years of ‘experience’ doing what you call farming:
People spend their entire lives doing things ass-backwards, as well as entire societies.
And suggesting, or insinuating, along with Michael B, that, to paraphrase, we are stuck with industrial agro doesn’t do anyone or the planet any favors, such as for getting off industrial agro and exploring other superior forms.
“I love you all, like brothers, and nobody should take me TOO seriously when I make a comment…
Once in a while, I really LIKE to jerk some chains, and provoke some fiery responses…” ~ OFM
Ohhkeedohhkee… Someone might need to get out more… or something.
I’m a misfit. I want in!
(…..though I stay pretty busy misfitting things.)
So you want to fit in, then, Ghung?
Hi Caelan,
I am a bit confused if you are replying to my comment in the previous thread, or if you are replying to Fred Magyar.
But if I assume the former, then I think I would agree with you that there is more to it than just pesticides. I am pretty sure that many would single out pesticides, but it’s an important point in the PNAS paper. Hence my reason for quoting that section.
Otherwise, I am not really sure what you mean. Maybe you could clarify your point if I am mistaken.
Both, chilyb, if both links there lead to the same comment here.
You and I would appear to agree.
As for the apparently still-chafing Fred/Fernando/WhoeverTheFuck character, he just decided, as per chased (see the archives if you really must) by myself to run away and, from behind his door within his ignorance-buttoned room, (rather than, sportingly, face-to-face, so to speak) to continue his incessant nonsensical whining/blubbering ‘oh boo-hoo’ about Caelan this and Caelan that.
“Fred, whenever we go over this kind of thing, I too often inevitably end up feeling like I’ve somehow schooled you or flipped you over, duct-taped your legs together, and mopped the floor with your head with some sort of mop that conveniently attaches and detaches…
If you want to have a better-quality dialogue, or at least offer greater effort toward it, I might still consider it, time permitting, but you might need to guarantee to make better attempts. Either that or I supppose you could always direct-deposit a generous sum into my bank account, before money and banking fails of course. I promise to apply it to good causes.” ~ Caelan MacIntyre
Yeah, the data is slowly trickling in from all over the world and it is not looking good.
The foundation of basically all terrestrial food webs are plants and insects. If you take them out you have pretty much pulled the rug out from under most ecosystems that ultimately support humans.
Having grown up in the tropics, to me it is especially scary, that tropical insects are the ones that seem to be most negatively affected by even relatively slight increases in global average temperatures.
Iron mike, for some people, evidence doesn’t matter, and for others, despite their token greenwashed ‘concerns’ for nature, when it comes to their actions and/or philosophy (like mining for materials to make solar panels or electric cars for example, or pouring pesticides all over everything), nature doesn’t matter, either.
“But there’s no way, for now or for the easily foreseeable future, that we can do away with farming on the industrial scale, for reasons economic, political and technical.” ~ OFM
You’ll notice that natural is missing from those ‘reasons’.
I STRONGLY recommend that all the super liberal dickheads of this world who go around bashing Ayn Rand as a nut case actually READ her books, rather than acting precisely like the CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN DICKHEADS who insist the Mueller report exonerates Trump, without having reading it.
I guarantee that if you are a super liberal dickhead who knows even a little bit about science, politics, technology, and human nature, you will come away from reading Atlas Shrugged with a profound respect for her insights into REALITY, into the ways governments can be subverted by special interests, left wing in her case, as is the current case today in Venezuela, and as was the case for most of the last century in the old USSR and China. Her PERSONAL background, and her time and place in history pretty much guaranteed her NOVELS would be focused on catastrophically incompetent left leaning governments.
But what she said about the left applies equally to the right, NOW, at OUR time and OUR place in history right here today in the USA. Corruption, cronyism, abuse of power, and dictatorial ambitions are just as likely to manifest on the right wing as on the left.
The political mess that constitutes our federal executive in the USA today bears a REMARKABLE resemblance to the government as painted in the NOVEL titled ” Atlas Shrugged”. Catastrophically incompetent, controlled by special interests, willing to do anything to maintain, increase, and consolidate power.
Of course in her novel the outcome is that the productive element of society withdraws, retreats to a secret world, leaving the old order to collapse, but it’s JUST a novel.
Novels shouldn’t be used as blueprints to construct a society, any more than collections of religious dogma should be used for that purpose. A novel should be used as an intellectual tool to help you THINK, a tool to help you expand your intellectual horizons.
The collection of CONSERVATIVE DICKHEADS , the ones who want unbridled and unregulated capitalism, are as ignorant as my pet rooster, who thinks the sun comes up because he commands it do so by crowing don’t know any more than a little child.But THEY do have a goal……. that being to get rich and stay rich at the expense of the us.
The political left long ago decided to trash Rand, because she saw thru the realities of communism. BIG mistake. Even the farthest left of lefties nowadays generally realizes that communism worked only for the elite who were in positions of power, and not very well even for THEM.
Capitalism, unregulated, isn’t working any better today for the people of the world, than communism worked for the people behind the Iron Curtain for most of the last century. Communism fell, to be replaced by something all too similar to what’s taking control of the government and economy in the western world today…… oligarchs, strong men, generals, bankers, politicians who understand how to lead people around by their prejudices and their ignorance.
What the fuck brought this on? Who mentioned Ayn Rand? No, I haven’t read the complete Atlas Shrugged. Only about a quarter of it. I just couldn’t plow through that much bullshit. I haven’t read The Fountainhead either but I did see the movie. More bullshit.
But for the record, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are good examples of liberal governments. Venezuela is a dictatorship, not a representative government. There is nothing liberal about Venezuela.
I would never defend corrupt capitalism any more than I would defend corrupt communism. Capitalism is the economy, not the government. Norway, Denmark, and Sweden have capitalist economies and liberal governments.
Fascism is the opposite of communism, not capitalism. Capitalism just means laissez-faire economics. Laissez-faire just means “left alone”. But some things cannot be left alone. Regulations are sometimes an absolute necessity. Corporations simply cannot dump their waste products in the rivers. But some dickhead republicans cry “Communism” when the government tries to regulate industries like coal-fired power plants, or chemical companies, or banks. That is Libertarian bullshit. We must have regulations.
Libertarianism, that is Ayn Rand and Rand Paul government/economics, is pure bullshit.
Signed, Ron Patterson, Liberal Dickhead
Ayn Rand understood the role of energy. She had John Galt invent a source of infinite energy.
Well, I did read all of Atlas Shrugged. The idea of the title was that “Atlas” was the .1%, and Rand believed that the .1% created all the value in the economy, and that the average working person was a parasite, living off the value created by the .1%.
I could be wrong, but I understood her to believe that democracy was fatally flawed because only the .1% was smart enough to run things, and that if John Galt disappeared into his mountain refuge then the rest of society would collapse.
Another thought: my understanding is that the USSR was not communist. They called themselves a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. A dictatorship. They thought communism was something that would arrive in many decades later – they weren’t all that clear how that would happen. Marx thought that communism would arrive after centuries of capitalism – he didn’t anticipate the extraordinary incompetence of the Russian royal family, which brought on a premature revolution.
If I got that wrong, I’m sure someone will correct it…
… didn’t stop her from claiming her Old Age Security and Senior’s Health Benefits in her old age.
Ayn was Russian bourgeois born in St Petersburg 1905. I’d suggest that somewhat explains why she wrote what she did.
Communism is outstanding at a family or small group level.
But almost as bad as christianity, as soon as it becomes a big organization,
it has the potential to become the greatest of tyrannical vehicles.
Another liberal dikehead….I hate labels.
And yes I completely agree OFM- “Capitalism, unregulated, isn’t working any better today for the people of the world, than communism worked for the people behind the Iron Curtain for most of the last century”
When I visited Jay Hanson in Hawaii we discussed whether or not a free market existed in nature and would eventually prevail.
In Biology. Definition: Stability (of ecosystem) refers to the capability of a natural system to apply self—regulating mechanisms so as to return to a steady state after an outside disturbance. Source Publication: Glossary of Environment Statistics, Studies in Methods, Series F, No. 67, United Nations, New York, 1997.
In economics, a free market is a system in which the prices for goods and services are ….. Advocates of the free market contend that government intervention hampers economic growth by disrupting the natural allocation of resources…
Source Wikipedia
As I have often argued continual growth is not compatible with long term stable systems, be they natural, such as ecosystems or artificial such as economic. Growth if not controlled, ultimately leads to collapse!
Cheers!
HI Everybody, and ESPECIALLY RON,
I love you all, like brothers, and nobody should take me TOO seriously when I make a comment such as this one.
Once in a while, I really LIKE to jerk some chains, and provoke some fiery responses, but not just for the fun of it.
Ron, you are a thoroughly decent human being, without a doubt, and most assuredly not a dickhead of any sort.
But you DO tend to see things as black and white, and the filter you use seems to consist solely of your political convictions, which by the way, are actually much the same as my own.
You have just proven it by making it obvious that you are not able to read a novel without interpreting it as either pro or con, in terms of your political convictions.
Now insofar as her prose style is concerned, etc, Rand is a hack. But she’s right up there, if you are willing to set aside your liberal prejudices, as an anti utopian writer.
You don’t seem to realize that bad governments can arise from EITHER wing, or any faction, of the people who hold positions as leaders or bureaucrats or technocrats in just about ANY system of government.
Rand came along at a time when such august liberally oriented publications as the NEW YORK TIMES were running articles describing the old USSR as humanity’s best hope and salvation. Look it up. If she were young again, and happened to be the child of let us say a couple of high school teachers in New York City, she would likely have written a novel equally as hard on free marketers and conservative types as she was in her day on socialists. We tend to be fruits of the vine on which we are born, you know.
Liberals can be as obstinate and as stupid as conservatives.
A novel is JUST a novel. It’s NOT a political blueprint, unless you choose to make it so. THAT’ S up to the individual reader…… unless he lets somebody else do his thinking for him.
Anybody with an OPEN mind can read a novel, or a short story, for the lessons and insights to be gained by doing so, without immediately either interpreting it as holy writ ( hardcore conservative dickheads ) or sacrilege from the devil….( hard core liberals ).
But it’s also up to the establishment, long term, to say what happens to a writer, and the leftish liberal establishment long ago decided to demonize Rand. The rightish conservative establishment decided to elevate her to sainthood.
Both sides, in this respect, have their heads up their ass so far they will NEVER see daylight, because both sides insist on a partisan interpretation of her books. NEITHER side is interested in reading them for what’s to be learned from them.
If you want to know why some fairly serious Christian men say it’s ok for Trump to abuse women, well, they say you liberals defended Clinton when he did so, for partisan reasons, so why shouldn’t they do the same……. for THEIR OWN partisan reasons? In the old KJB, they call that sort of behavior an eye for an eye, you know.
The truth, if any objective truth can be said to exist, virtually always lies between the positions held by the political extremes.
Socialists, PURE SOCIALISTS, have their heads as far up their asses as the pure tooth and claw no regulation capitalists. History has amply proven that neither extreme will work, because PEOPLE are in charge.
What DOES work is socialism in terms of basic human services and needs, and regulated capitalism in terms of actual production of goods and services. Western Europe has done pretty well taking that middle road……. better than the USA, mostly, even though we have a huge advantage in terms of natural resources of almost any description, plus our enemies are far away. We haven’t had to fight a war on our own turf since the mid eighteen sixties.
Caelan is right that our industrial agricultural system is unsustainable, long term. I agree with him about that. But he’s too stupid, or maybe just to boneheaded, to actually acknowledge I’m right about us being STUCK with it for now.
This is NOT to say that there aren’t LOTS of things we can do to make it last without it collapsing until perhaps we can come up with technologies that will enable us to produce food sustainably… sometime down the road. I will have more to say about this general topic later tonight, most likely.
Rand came along at a time when such august liberally oriented publications as the NEW YORK TIMES were running articles describing the old USSR as humanity’s best hope and salvation. Look it up.
No, I will not look it up. Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged in 1957, a time when cold war worries were at its height. Many schools were practicing “Duck and Cover” in case the Soviet Union sent a nuclear weapon our way. I simply do not believe, that in that atmosphere, the New York Times was actively supporting the former USSR. That would be akin to treason.
Mac, you cannot just willy-nilly make such a claim without one iota of evidence to back it up.
But if you have a link to any such article I would be glad to read it.
Not sure if this is what OFM is getting at, but this is something that could fit what OFM is talking about.
Walter Duranty, wrote in the New York Times, in 1932,“any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda”, and that “there is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.”
1932 no less. Ayn Rand wrote in the late 1950s, a quarter of a century later. No, this had not one damn thing to do with what Mac was talking about.
That is not to mention the fact that “widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition” is a perfect definition of starvation.
“ ‘any putz can write a book’
Old Farmer Mac, a read of a particular work or works risks predisposing them toward a bias for it, to the exclusion of other works, such as to their contrary.
Incidentally, as an aside, I seem to recall reading something along the lines that humans have been doing agriculture wrong for the past 7000 years. Unsure humans can do it right, but whatever.” ~ Caelan MacIntyre
The quote above is from the archives, but links are currently not working.
Bit of trivia to go with your morning coffee.
GREENLAND LOST 2 BILLION TONS OF ICE YESTERDAY
Over 40% of Greenland experienced melting yesterday, with total ice loss estimated to be more than 2 gigatons (a gigaton is equal to 1 billion tons).
“All signs seem to be pointing to a large melt season.” Jason Box, an ice climatologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, predicted in late May that “2019 will be a big melt year for Greenland.” Box pointed out that this year had unusually early season melt days in April, and the melt season was “happening about three weeks earlier than average, and earlier than the record-setting melt year of 2012.” In addition to the early season melt, the snow cover is already lower than average in Western Greenland and combining these factors “mean that 2019 is likely going to be a very big melt year, and even the potential to exceed the record melt year of 2012.”
How about this? Speaking of (for) Professor Box I quote: “In Oct. 2018, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a shocking warning that we have just 12 years to avoid climate catastrophe. But is it already too late? When we lose the reflective cover of the arctic sea ice, when we lose Greenland, the climate system globally unravels. And it’s going to create the kind of problems that will make it pretty hard to govern society: the migrations, the droughts. What’s at risk here is practically civilization.”
A THEORY OF SAPIENCE:
Using Systems Science to Understand the
Nature of Wisdom and the Human Mind
George Mobus
Okay Fred, I’ll read Professor Mobus’ full book. But I fear it will only depress me (even more). Wouldn’t it be better to just spend my morning playing Solitaire? No, don’t bother answering that. 😉
LOL!
“Facts are stupid things.”
— Ronnie Reagan, 1988
And people question my apparent obsession with EVs and renewables? I am in full panic mode. I just can’t show it or they’ll put me in the insane asylum! Most people seem content to just carry on with BAU. Gautam Adani wants to mine more coal in Australia, The Chinese are building new coal fired plants all over the developing world as part of their Belt and Road Initiative, the vehicle manufacturers are continuing to make record numbers of ICEs and the folks involved in the oil business are only too happy to supply the fuel. Then people will say I’m nuts because I see a opportunity to supply electricity and transport with huge reductions in CO2 emissions.
I have installed PV and reduced my resource use as low as I can without withdrawing from society and some people in my neck of the woods think I’m strange. It will bring me no satisfaction to say, “See, that’s what I was worried about” when TSHTF.
Yesterday evening I witnessed a school leaving ceremony for some 13th graders leaving an all boys school that, is the alma mater of many political and business leaders in my neck of the woods. So much hope for the future and no inkling of any resource or other limits. Party on!
I am in full panic mode. I just can’t show it or they’ll put me in the insane asylum!
I’m no longer in the closet about being in full panic mode. I have come out to my closest friends and family and I have made it clear that I think anyone who is not in full panic mode is the one who should be put in the insane asylum!
Perhaps they are just being kind but they seem to be slowly coming around to my way of seeing things! 😉
Cheers!
My friend,
I believe one has to be as objective as possible. Blind optimism never helped anything (except the stock market).
One should never report based on feelings.
If it happens to be more negativity then that’s what it is.
My criticism of you was that one has to report what’s actually happening in the world even it is genocidal, suicidal actions or whatever. Your advocation of EVs and renewables tells me, you are still in support of people consuming. You want BAU as long as it is “green”. Correct me if i am wrong, but that’s what i’ve gathered from your posts. I think the root of the problem is human consumption. You’ll never have your cake and eat it too, you can’t fight against the laws of nature.
Our existence is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. So if we are biologically programmed to self destruct, then that’s what will happen. Again fighting against nature is futile. That is my worthless opinion.
Your advocation of EVs and renewables tells me, you are still in support of people consuming. You want BAU as long as it is “green”. Correct me if i am wrong, but that’s what i’ve gathered from your posts.
Not quite sure if you are responding to me or Islandboy.
However advocating for EVs and renewables does not necessarily mean one is in favor of BAU and continuation of consumption. I see EVs and renewables as the basis for a potential radical systemic, economic, political and social transformation with far reaching implications. Think distributed peer to peer power generation, no personal ownership of transport vehicles just for starters.
BAU got us to this point. It may be an alcoholic drug addicted mother but we can’t just throw the baby out with the bath water while both the baby and the water are still in the birth canal!
I don’t think mother BAU can or should be saved but we need to make some kind of plan as to how to save the baby and make sure it doesn’t turn into just another little monster.
And no, I don’t have the slightest clue as to how that can be achieved, we’re all just winging it at this point.
Cheers!
Sorry Fred I should’ve made it clear i was addressing islandboy.
I hear what you are saying. I don’t want to generalize but look at the country i reside in Australia. People keep voting in political parties who don’t even believe in climate change but believe the earth is 6000 years old, and god associated miracles. Look at the adani mine, the political party voted in fast tracked its approval. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic. Bottom line, people in general don’t give a shit about things unless it directly affects them in the extreme near term. That’s what i see. Not saying what i see is fact, but it seems to be the general way the world is going.
I believe this consumption drug as you put it, is part of our biological programming. Only with proper education could we curb it slightly. But to be honest people in power do the opposite. The whole economic system is a bloodthirsty beast, reflective of our inner nature multiplied by orders of magnitude. Look at what’s happening in western countries whose birthrates have flat lined. To keep economic growth rolling, they are importing migrants so the bloodthirsty beast can continue its consumption. I have read that even Japan whose population growth is negative started to importing migrants. So politicians can boast about GDP numbers and “positive” economic data.
I believe the system is built to grow endlessly, like a ponzi scheme. Failure of such a system for the scientifically literate is inevitable.
Mike,
People care a lot about things, even things very far from them. Ask anyone what they think of Trump, or Obama, or Iran, or abortion rights. You’ll get an impassioned, long reply.
The problem, of course, is that many of them are misinformed. Badly misinformed. That’s a problem of media ownership and management, and corporate and governmental leadership.
But…people care!
Did you read the part of my post about the school leaving ceremony? Experiences like that give me the impression that very, very few people know or care about the stuff we discuss every day on this web site. Declining insect populations, who cares, increasing Greenland ice melt, ditto, declining bio-diversity, what does that matter?
I don’t have any children and if I have no hope for humanity, why should I participate in the continuation of what I view as an existential problem? My experience with PV has brought an epiphany with it. Our ability to harness solar energy in real time, as opposed to using millions of years of solar energy in the form of FF and biomass, is limited by the amount of technology (solar PV and Wind) we can deploy. If one wants to consume a lot of energy, one ought to deploy a commensurate amount of renewable energy resources or one really ought not to have the right to consume energy. Right now some of the most profligate energy consumers don’t know and/or don’t care where their energy comes from.
At the moment access to energy is determined by wealth as we know it. Wealth as we know it currently is determined by who can best make money out of the current economic system, no matter how far removed from energy production an entity is. In this system entertainers, lawyers, bankers and CEOs can do quite well for themselves despite not having a clue about energy.
Having your own little piece of the energy harvesting pie gives one a different perspective. What if wealth was determined by how much renewable energy one produces instead of how much FF one consumes? If civilization does not collapse, a situation not far from that is likely to arise within the next decade. What happens when oil goes into decline? What happens when EVs cost less than conventional cars? What happens if the cost of electricity from renewable sources falls significantly below the cost of the incumbents? We will find out over the next decade or so!
Since I believe that most of the population of the world does not know or care about the destruction being wreaked on the planet (Greta Thundberg and her ilk excepted), why not introduce technology that will result in reduced CO2 emissions on a massive scale if nothing else? The only alternative I’m seeing is a continuation of BAU until our global civilization hits one brick wall or another.
Something needs to be done if we even want to pretend to care and I’m all in on Green New Deals and such the like, even if they turn out to be futile. I’d like to think that the human race is capable of attempting to forestall what at least some people have been warning about.
Maybe I have way too much faith in the human race!
“Maybe I have way to[o] much faith in the human race!”
Maybe you do! I believe “your Island” is Jamaica, Jamaica with one of highest murder rates in the world, Jamaica with an energy intensive Aluminum industry, Jamaica with God only knows how many tourists flying in-and-out every day. If you can be an optimist in such an environment, I’m impressed.
Cheers,
I posted a version of the graph below in a comment responding to Iron Mike in the previous petroleum thread (Oil Shock Model Scenarios). The version below adds a line for total petroleum consumption and vertical grid lines.
The graph shows what happened to Bauxite processing (into aluminum oxide, not aluminum) during the GFC. Petroleum consumption for that activity plummeted when three of the four bauxite to alumina processing plants were shut down by the majority shareholder, UC Rusal. The plant that did not shut down was jointly operated by Alcoa and a state owned entity. Information on the plants can be found at the link below:
Two of the three plants has been reopened with the largest plant in the island changing hands from UC Rusal to a Chinese company JISCO. The plant that was not shut down is having a NG fired plant built to supply power instead of using petroleum based fuel.
All in all, Jamaica has an economy that is extremely dependent on a healthy global economy, tourism being the other big contributor to economic activity, apart from the bauxite/alumina industry.
Included in the areas that tourists don’t get to see, are areas with extreme, desperate poverty, areas that contribute significantly to population growth, with very high unemployment. These areas produce individuals that see very little value in human life unless it is a direct benefit to them. In such places, life is definitely not precious, hence the high murder rates.
On the other hand the island has gone from no utility scale wind power in 2004 to 100 MW in 2016. Solar PV has gone from virtually nothing in 2007 to at least 87 MW, probably close to 100 MW with the start of operations of the latest 37 MW solar farm.
There are 12 Nissan EVs in the island that I am aware of and hopefully more EVs will come with the announcement by the local electric utility that they are going to be installing public charging points every 30 km along major routes. Just a cursory look at a map of the eastern half of the island, about 20 locations would be sufficient to cover the entire eastern half of the island.
Based on what I’ve witnessed over the past fifteen years or so, there is a glimmer of hope and I’ll take anything I can get!
Hi Iron Mike,
This wasn’t addressed to me, but I’m in the same boat as Island Boy on it I believe.
“Your advocation of EVs and renewables tells me, you are still in support of people consuming. You want BAU as long as it is “green”. Correct me if i am wrong”
I don’t see it this way.
I would like to see a brisk, but gradual downsizing of the human imprint on the world. That includes population most certainly. By any stretch of the imagination, this is not business as usual. There is no blueprint or economic plan for this kind of downsizing transition.
But I do hope it is gradual, and that monstrosity events such holocaust and famine can be avoided. I am not optimistic on this, however. I am not optimistic that humanity will conduct itself wisely or with restraint, based on past performance.
And humanity has grossly failed to embark on this downsizing project in time. To have a high chance of a smooth transition, downsizing should have started in the 1970’s. One family-one child should have been a global initiative for 50 years, prior to being re-evaluated. That would not have been business as usual, but would have been a good first step.
But humans are not about to just disappear in timestep with oil, and the other fossil fuels.
People will be around. Lets talk about the next 30 years- Many billions of people, and they will do their best to have and use energy.
The way I see it, best to have the energy come from as much non-wood renewables as possible. Better than coal and wood in just about every way. If Europe has no alternative, they will strip that continent bare of trees within 30 years, just to keep warm.
And the the more we get around and move stuff with EV’s the less damage we do, mile for mile, to the environment.
But this is no argument for BAU. We will need to get by with much less than half the miles we do now, per capita, I estimate. We will need to be much more local in our consumption.
We will not come close to replacing lost peak fossil fuel energy over the next 30 years. Surely not at the current pace.
But if we transition hard [full scale development of solar, wind, EV’s for example], there will be quite a lot of energy for available for critical aspects of living, in many places.
Depends on the level of effort. Depends on the level of urgency.
But it will not be business as usual.
Things we take for granted will be given up because of cost, scarcity, or perhaps regulation.
The human footprint will decline, one way or another. Nothing usual about it.
Hickory,
The US average MPG is only 23 (for existing vehicles on the road, not the average new car, which is around 25MPG). So, the US could reduce it’s passenger fuel consumption by 50% by getting to 46MPG – that’s less efficient than a Prius.
The US average number of vehicle occupants is only 1.2. So, the US could reduce it’s passenger fuel consumption by 50% by raising that average number of occupants to only 2.4. That’s not that hard to do with carpooling.
Carpooling. OMG! Well, 11% of commuters carpool today. That’s more than use mass transit. That number could easily be raised with smartphone apps that match people up: about 80% of all US adults now have smart phones, not far behind the number that have TVs.
Or, the US could go to an average of 32MPG, and an average vehicle occupancy rate of 1.7. Not to mention a wide range of other efficiency and conservation strategies like online shopping, mass transit, staycations, etc., etc., etc.
Most of this could be done very quickly. We could relatively painlessly reduce oil consumption by 25% in months; 50% in 10 years; and 80% in 20 years, if we really got organized about it. That, of course, would require good leadership, something we don’t have right now.
But…from a technical and economic point of view, it wouldn’t be that hard to do!
There is a tendency to understate or take average probabilities for the future effects of climate chaos and other predicaments we face. Time and again the physical and biological world has surprised most of the scientists. Meantime many people and their leaders just burrow their heads deeper into the sand.
I expect we will be blindsided again and again over the next couple of decades, with the general human response being limited until backed against a wall. When panic sets in wrong decisions are made.
Even now society has made massive error after massive error during good times, even when presented with knowledge that refutes such choices.
Hi Nick,
Agree with the gist of what you are saying. Lots of things could get done. Humanity could eat lower on the food chain. And give up frivolous use of energy. And treat soil with respect.
But I do not think the earth can handle the mass of humanity that built up by burning a huge slug of stored up fossil fuel. And I do not think we can keep up the business as usual regime, at this scale.
Its unsustainable.
Deep into overshoot.
And the damage to the biosphere too great.
We have no panacea. Other than to downsize. Rapidly.
We have no panacea. Other than to downsize. Rapidly.
And that is exactly what we will do. And it will not be voluntary.
It’s been holding steady between 30 and 45 % for a few days now.
Hint:
Capitalism, from its origins in the 14th Century among the Italian City States, has never existed without a strong central state to enforce its rules.
It is the difference between user value (which is produced) and exchange value (what it is sold for).
The capitalist takes that sum. He (or she) does none of the work.
I could go on, but won’t.
Why not?
I liked Rand when I was 16- being a dick head asshole is cool when you are 16– however as life and reality moves on, one gains knowledge (sometimes), and one adapts to it.
Right, markets are inherent unstable, because it isn’t in the interest of the participants to maintain it. For example, it is in the interest of the supply side to work together to increase prices. So with out government intervention, there is no market.
Another issue that naive market fanboys ignore is that property rights are imaginary (ho can you “own” a mountain or an idea?) but enforced by government. You hear them rambling on about the evils of fiat currency, but property also exists by government fiat. And without that government fiat, there is no market.
I don’t think people are ready for that kind of disclosure. The fact that their whole culture and society is a pretend world, enforced by hired thugs.
If they ever found out how much of the population is actually disposable they would just ignore it and think it was a crazy idea.
“I don’t think people are ready for that kind of disclosure. The fact that their whole culture and society is a pretend world, enforced by hired thugs.”
It brought to mind the supposed Orwell quote which probably is not a true quote, which I first read as ” Good mean sleep peacefully in their beds because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
Orwell is generally and rightfully considered to be the best and foremost anti utopian writer, period. I think so myself, and I have read every antiutopian novel I have ever heard of, excepting ones written within the last decade or two.
A lot of people near and dear to me have worn the uniform of my country, and while our leaders have often abused their positions AS our leaders, by misusing these men and women, one should think carefully and long before describing them as thugs. ( This remark is not aimed at you, GF, but at people in general who are as Kipling put it, ” I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’beer,
The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
…
O makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken sodgers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.”
It’s Tommy this, and Tommy that, until you NEED Tommy.
Incidentally, you ( the rhetorical you ) are not really well read in respect to antiutopian literature until you have read Rand.
Of course you have to be able to set aside your political prejudices, taught to you ( rhetorical you again ) to benefit from reading her.
If you want to understand Rand, read this. Of course if you have MADE YOUR MIND UP, and don’t WANT to learn anything new that might contradict what you currently believe, as ( rhetorical ) liberal dickhead, you won’t read it, anymore than a Trump supporter will read the Mueller report.
All of us, MYSELF INCLUDED, know a LOT of things that just aren’t true, which brings the classic med school graduation speech joke to mind. The speaker tells the new docs that half of what they’ve been taught is wrong…. but nobody knows WHICH half.
I will be back in a few minutes with something that is apt to surprise the SHIT out of most of the regulars here….. and most of the regulars here are technically literate.
Ha, no one guards me while I sleep except my dog. Either I or someone else would be long dead if my house was broken into at night. The police would arrive to log the scene and gather their evidence. Someone would be blamed after the fact. No protection, only threat and process.
Short circuiting natural selection is not a good thing.
You are right though, OFM, I should not try to bring forward advanced concepts on this forum.
Back to climate chaos and ecological pap.
I seriously doubt that even half the people who claim to have read Ayn Rand actually have. It’s unreadable.
@Hightrek and others,
I laughed at your Aynie R comment as I too, read AR when I was in the high school dickhead search phase. Now, on the verge of 64 please just give me some good old entertainment like Thomas Perry, or straight non-fiction about almost anything.
However, what I am sceptical about are other people’s agendas, especially when they tell me the oughts…not the zero oughts, but the we/you oughta do this or that. Or, as Bob Dylan once coined 50? years ago….”everybody wants you to be just like them”. Which brings me to EVs, solar, and Island Boy saying, (paraphrase) “isn’t it a good idea to remove a bunch of FF from the environment”?, infering that those who can do solar should for the sake of everyone else. I guess…….. But here is the rub in my books. “Most people tend to think of energy in terms of heat and light and transport,” said Toby Peters, visiting professor of power and the cold economy at the University of Birmingham. “But more and more, it’s going to be about cold. Demand for cold is already huge, it’s growing fast, and we’re meeting it in basically the same way we’ve been doing for a century. Cold is the Cinderella of the energy debate. If we don’t change the way we do it, the consequences are going to be dramatic.”
And this little gem, “The US uses more energy to keep their buildings cool, than the energy used in all of Africa.”
“The growing use of air conditioners in homes and offices around the world will be one of the top drivers of global electricity demand over the next three decades, according to new analysis by the International Energy Agency that stresses the urgent need for policy action to improve cooling efficiency.”
I live on the BC west coast. In my parochial world, solar does not work as needed or advertised. EVs don’t have the range. Sure, a panel and batt bank will keep some LEDs lit up at night, but in the summer I get up at 4:00am and it is already getting light, and light enough until bedtime. In winter, when lighting might be needed, solar doesn’t produce worth a tinker’s damn. Lighting doesn’t use much energy, anyway. Heat? Super insulation, good windows, and an excellent woodstove takes care of that. Cooling? Screened windows and a westerly. Food supply? We have huge gardens and greenhouses, but let’s face it I drive right by the local goat and pork producer at the summer market on my way to town in order to buy what we can afford. Our local boutique/slum grass fed beef producer charges double what the sales flyer advertise of industrial ag. Fish? Well, I can get my own salmon because of where I live, and I do, but I just got back from the west coast of the Island where I watched people fishing in their $100,000 dollar sporties. You can buy a lot of fish for 100k in my books. Plus, they all had 200-300 hp of 4 stroke outboards pushing smoke to get to where the fish are.
I’m sick of the oughts and oughtas and guilt. It’s getting to the point where just being human is inferred to be a curse, especially on this blog. Scourge. EVs? Last week I drove my restored 38 year old Westfalia for a 3 day trip to the remote beaches. I ran it on refined Alberta bitumen at $1.529/L Canadian. My trip cost $115. I lit a campfire at night and had a few drinks with my wife in the evening. When the no-see-ums and mossies started to emerge I thought of you guys, this blog, and the latest mantra of declining insect populations. Well, they aren’t declining around here, just ask my swallows and bats.
There is a point to this rant, and it’s this. I am reserving judgement. I am reserving judgement on others and on myself. I am not going to feel guilt for being human and for being alive; consuming. Okay, we limit our town trips and we don’t buy a whole bunch of stuff, but I am choosing to go my own way and find my own truth. ‘My’ river (I live on a river) is too low, and I worry and hope for the forecasted rain next week. And, most likely it will come and the fish runs will spawn a week or two later than years past. But for now I will live simply and learn to accept this life as a gift for where we are lucky enough to have ended up. I am not a scourge, nor are my 2 children. I refuse to pound the pedantic guilt drum like a bitter cranky old man, and see only the wrongs. This year we have 5 houses of nesting swallows, had hundreds of hummers, and the insects are alive and well, “Just ask the bats and every bird working all day long being alive”. That’s how I will live going forward, like a bird (maybe), and not always believing everything I read or do what I am told to do by others.
respectfully, Paul S (have a great day…I plan to 🙂
Good day Paulo,
Yeh, if I lived up your way, solar would be way down on my list of purchases as well, way below insulation.
“I live on the BC west coast. In my parochial world, solar does not work as needed or advertised. EVs don’t have the range.”
But further south, it is very useful. Regarding cooling, it is very convenient that peak heating load comes when the sun is streaming in, fairly well matched. Teams up with a heat pump very well, since they work as air conditioners in addition to heating.
And regarding EV range, well for the vast majority of trips in the daily life of people, 200 miles is plenty. Sure beats a donkey when the petrol gets scarce, or expensive.
You are in a rare zone. Hydroelectricity, plentiful petrol produced in the country, plenty of clean water, low population density, salmon out the wazoo.
Not many people have the wonderful combination of factors that you do.
Enjoy!
By all means, we should all live our lives to the best of our abilities and circumstance! So enjoy!
As for:
When the no-see-ums and mossies started to emerge I thought of you guys, this blog, and the latest mantra of declining insect populations. Well, they aren’t declining around here, just ask my swallows and bats.
Enjoy them while you can. BC is not immune to insect decline! So do everything in your power to protect them!
Because many insect populations are declining in BC due to agricultural and pollutant stresses, bats have been negatively impacted. One-half of BC bats are considered species at risk including Townsend’s big-eared bat, Corynorhinus townsendii; bats are protected under the Wildlife Act but this protection does not necessarily extend to their habitat or food sources.
I take no offense but, would like to point out part of what my “crusade” is all about:
“And this little gem, “The US uses more energy to keep their buildings cool, than the energy used in all of Africa.”
That is almost the whole point of the graph below that I post in each edition of the report I post on the EIA’s Electric Power Monthly every month. Every year there are two peaks in electricity demand in the US, one in January and one between July and August. The mid-winter peak in January is as a result of heating and lighting over the long winter nights while the midsummer peak is mostly air conditioning.
Now if one looks at the bump in solar production in the summer months, observing the difference in scale of the right axis, the difference in winter and summer yield from solar was roughly 5 TWh. The difference between overall demand in spring and summer is a little over 100 TWh so for solar to supply all of the difference in electricity demand between spring and summer it would have to generate about 20 times as much as it did in 2019.
Looking at it through the lens of exponential growth, four doublings would take the amount generated to 80 TWh with 160 TWh after five doublings. Solar output has been doubling every two to three years in the US and with costs continuing to fall as much as they have recently, it should be safe to assume that adoption rates would not decline. This would mean that in less than ten years solar will be generating 100 TWh more energy in summer than it does in winter. Based on that logic, I will stick my neck out and predict that by 2030, the entire additional demand due to air conditioning will be satisfied by solar energy.
The fact is, for that to happen solar will be producing a lot more electricity in winter as well. If it were to produce twenty times as much as it does now, we would be looking at roughly 100 TWh per month. That amount is roughly the same amount that coal contributed to the US grid in January 2019.
The coal lobby will do everything in their power to see that this does not happen. IMO it is unlikely they will meet with much success in the face of unfavorable market forces. We will see.
Regarding air conditioning. I read this paper a while ago.
Anthropogenic heating of the urban environment due to air conditioning
“I live on the BC west coast. In my parochial world, solar does not work as needed or advertised”
Paulo you live well north of my latitude yet have a much warmer and milder climate. Much less snow. I am glad there are places for the swallows to eat bugs, my local population has dropped below 10 percent of what it was a decade ago. All the hummingbirds are gone. No bats anymore.
I don’t quite see why PV does not work in your area since you have a similar, slightly better, insolation level as my area. It works well here.
I have few mosquitos now in an area known for it’s population. I was talking to a fellow the other day who lives a few miles north of me. His back yard is part of a swamp and due to the excessive rains has apparently hatched some mosquitos. He told me he called the county to come spray the swamp. Such is the way of people. They kill the geese with guns and kill the nests too around here. People will not be inconvenienced.
Last year there were ten goslings on the lake. This year none.
After I was done talking to him he got a funny look on his face and became quiet. Maybe he realized his mistake but most likely will bury the information and continue his ways. My tax dollars at work.
The problem with “nature looks good to me so there is nothing to worry about” is that people have short memories and are poor observers.
Bird populations, for example, are significantly down in North America compared to what they were when I was growing up. In those days my father, who counted bird populations for decades, was already sounding the alarm.
The world ecology is crashing, but by human standards it is a slow motion crash. We are like the Easter Islanders, who deforested their island to build those giant heads. Whoever cut down the last ree of the now extinct species that used to cover the island had no memory of the island being covered with trees.
People forget quickly. I’m in a Facebook group for my home town, and there was a lot of shock when someone published an old picture of the town with streets lined with elm trees. They had been completely forgotten. And who remembers the mighty American chestnut?
Unless one actively works at observation, the memory fades in a year or two. The exception is very extreme events where memory might last a generation or more.
I doubt if people in my area even notice that the spider population has crashed to near zero.
However, with all these examples in our faces so to speak, why do people think they are immune to such events?
Problem is seasonality- its hard to find a place with such huge variation between summer and winter, without going to the poles.
Hickory, the “problem” is not seasonality, the problem is trying to map it onto the current human designed paradigm of a 24/7 civilization. Once one realizes that northern living has to be different than mid-latitude or equatorial living than the “problem” scales back.
In other words the problem is generated in the human mind not wanting to deal with the reality of the location.
Did people living in Canada or northeastern American colonies in 1750 live the same in winter as they did in summer? Of course not, they lived with the seasons but still spent much energy during the summer storing food and fuel for the winter.
If one wants to level out the seasons, the technology and infrastructure must be designed for that. Still, there is a point where the gains are not worth the effort, as is exemplified by our current system.
Doubling insulation halves the energy loss of a building, year after year with no added effort. Adding solar thermal or PV plus heat pump adds energy and heat year after year with no additional effort. Thermal mass and/or battery storage levels out the day to day variations.
Wood or fossil fuels needs additional effort and funds each year to provide heat and light.
It’s a matter of practical sourcing and level of effort required as to how much one wants to level out the seasonality or daily variations. It’s also a matter of how much the external cost to the ecosystems that leveling of seasonality/weather for human activity/convenience entails.
Would it be better for more northern climes to curtail or reduce activity in the winter and increase it in the summer?
Or would it be better for industries and people to move to where the sun and wind are more even and greater so they can increase production rates of whatever it is they produce?
Much thought and many choices need to be made to form a society that conforms to the realities of the planet it lives upon.
My personal method is to let the temperature swing a lot in the house in summer and winter. I find other ways to keep warm, such as clothing and hot drinks, and to keep cool in the hot part of the summer.
The problem is the society attempts to ignore and Band-Aid all the variations with a large cost in effort, materials, energy and pollution just to produce more stuff cheaper and live a hamster wheel existence.
Sounds good.
But in the meantime people are going to fight hard to keep the heat, lights and industry going year round.
For these northern places,whether it is Toronto, Moscow, or all the places of similar dark and cold, they are going to burn coal, or wood, or nat gas, as best they can whenever the alternatives such as hydro, solar, wind or nuclear doesn’t keep up.
Just is.
Solar (locally produced) is not the dark winter solution in the cloudy spots, like Seattle, Vancouver and environs.
Most winter days up there you could put your hand under a 3 ft magnifying glass at high noon and it wouldn’t even get warm (or some such thing).
I am sure that some smart people will figure out how to use the 500 billion kwh of sunlight/day that hits the ground in Washington state every January. Might find a good way to assist all that hydro power.
Enjoy the warmth.
Eastern WA is a whole different climate- pretty decent solar there, although you’d still struggle to even warm yourself in the winter, let alone operate a vehicle.
Wood, hydro and wind are are good combo there however.
Just being [inconveniently] real about it.
How much fossil fuel is dug up in your neighborhood, or your part of your state? My point is that fossil fuels are imports, for almost all people, while solar can be local.
OTOH, we seem to apply a double standard: we compare the practicality of *local* solar to that of *imported* fossil fuels.
IOW, why do we *require* solar to be local?
Why not allow solar electricity to be imported from a nearby state (or country) that has more sun??
Solar photovoltaic panels and their batteries and/or other assorted related paraphernalia are far from local when one considers the mined resources (including fossil fuels), manufacturing, corporate locations and transportation for them, etc..
Hi Nick.
I have no problem with importing solar. I think its great. I’m very happy to have a functional, robust and redundant grid to hook up to. Makes the whole prospect of living on renewables much more viable.
And I’d much rather spend money putting PV where it very sunny.
And wind turbines where it is windy.
That was my original message [along the lines of what Paulo was saying], that solar isn’t a strong option up in the very cloudy neck of the woods where he lives- Vancouver Island. Summer yes, long winter no. They have about 4 bright months up there.
Ah. I see what you mean. I think what you’re saying is that it would be difficult to rely on off-grid solar in the north. I would agree.
It is going to be very intersting when there are tens of thousands of car batteries deployed in an area, interposed between the home o r business and the grid. Sometimes getting charged from the grid, or from the roof solar. And sometimes contributing charge back to the home or grid.
All managed by an interconnected network with time of use pricing.
Eventually, it will work incredibly well I suspect.
Hickory, Amory Lovins proved over a decade ago that a house can be built at 7000 feet in the Canadian Rockies and stay warm all winter using only passive solar collection. Grows bananas in it and has a fish pond. Uses about 4 inches of foam insulation.
Those thermal solar collector warmed homes in Maine and Massachusetts work also. Done quite a while ago.
So you can keep promoting BAU if you wish but the convenient truth is that it is not needed.
Poor thinking and poor design are a massive problem.
Hi GF,
Yes I am familiar with that house in Colorado from way back.
I’m glad you have a house like that.
You must have saved alot of money your heating and cooling bills over the years.
Do you give tours?
Gonefishing,
Seems that Hickory was pointing out that electrical needs are difficult to meet in a cloudy area in winter that is not connected to the grid. At 7000 feet in the Rockies this would be less of a problem because there are few long periods of low insolation.
There is a difference between considering practical problems on the road to getting from here (BAU) to there (future new BAU), and “promoting” BAU.
BAU is in constant flux, not the same today as 50 years ago and will not be the same in 50 years as it is today.
“Most winter days up there you could put your hand under a 3 ft magnifying glass at high noon and it wouldn’t even get warm (or some such thing).”
Diffuse light does not focus.
brilliant GF
I must be even worse than a Liberal Dickhead. I’ve read Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead , We the Living and Anthem. I came away thinking that she was a Fascist Dickhead. I’ve always compared her to Edward Teller (the model for Dr. Strangelove), having lived under a communist dictatorship both of their brains were fried beyond reason. They came to think that caring for those less capable then themselves was evil, confusing communism with that concept and thinking, like Trump himself, that only those capable of grabbing the goods were of any value.
I think her writing was boorish and trivial. If she happened to get right the idea that bad governments are bad it was sheer luck squeezed out through a fog of hatred. Any damned fool could figure that out after a couple of beers in cozy company. A good high school essayist could improve on her prose.
She never understood is that governments by “the 0.1%” are as bad as mob rule. How do you improve a government by allowing the descamisados to participate? The answer is subtle and beyond the reach of Rand or her cult following (or Rand Paul): you need an elite to run things and they need the fear of pitchforks to make them behave. that’s the secret sauce of democracy. All elites become corrupt without fear of the mob. All of them.
I rest my case. JJHMAN proves it perfectly. He is unable to see what’s there and useful, in her books, preferring to focus entirely on the Rand’s many and obvious short comings. His strategy is to attack her personally.
I can’t remember the details, without looking them up, but once upon a time, a young and upstart scientist dared to question an older man, pointing out errors he made. The old guy didn’t want to discuss science, he just attacked the messenger , condemning him, AVOIDING a discussion of the facts the young guy brought to the attention of the society. His response was that his name was unimportant, but what he had to say was NOT.
“She never understood is that governments by “the 0.1%” are as bad as mob rule.”
JJ may be correct on this point, but could not possibly be further wrong, in terms of understanding and critically reading a book with the intention of furthering his own understanding of power politics.
Atlas Shrugged, if Rand were to write it today, as a young woman growing up in our current society, would be about Trump and capitalists as the bad guys. JJ has a zero appreciation of her cultural and personal history, which determined her word view, when she was writing her novels.
But that’s to be expected, maybe. If somebody really IS a liberal dickhead, he will ALWAYS condemn anybody or anything held dear by the right wing. Dickheads are always partisans first and foremost, left or right, liberal or conservative. Always ready to lie, attack, if it suits their partisan agenda.
If JJ will answer these three questions, I will know , if he is, or is not, a liberal dickhead.
Are you, JJ, mathematically literate, do you believe the NYT and the Washington Post published the basic facts about Cattle Gate, and do you believe that HRC was in essence running a scam with the help of her broker?
If you are mathematically literate, and you read the accounts of this scandal in the two biggest and most important liberal papers in the country at that time, and you deny that she was running a scam, then you are accusing those two bedrock foundation of the liberal tradition in this country of lying about HRC……. If you deny that she was running a scam, well then, you are a liberal dickhead, because partisanship comes before truth, in your case. You cannot possibly be rational and mathematically literate and believe what these papers published, and believe she honestly invested in cattle futures, lol. THAT sort of cognitive dissonance is possible only if a person is mathematically illiterate.
If anybody wants to know why the country is so bitterly divided, it’s because hardcore partisans on both sides are totally ready and willing to ignore the truth, to pretend it doesn’t exist if it’s inconvenient for their side.
Religious people are fighting fire with fire, saying ok, if Trump does abuse women, it’s ok, because it’s ok with Democrats when a Democrat abuses women. Oh, except that hard core partisans on the R side don’t believe Trump abuses women…… if they have low enough iq’s. Ditto hard core intellectually challenged partisans on the D side…… they don’t believe Bill Clinton abused women. The ones on both sides with normal or above intellectual qualifications know both of them are serial abusers of women…. right or left, they share one thing in common……. hypocrisy.
I have yet to hear a well known liberal admit that HRC ran a scam, or that she took many millions of dollars in donations to her family slush fund, I mean foundation, from unsavory people who had business interests touching on her duties as secretary of state. So why should conservatives not defend Trump…… ? Partisanship is partisanship.
Tens of millions of people, including countless health care professionals with advanced degrees from well respected universities don’t actually know shit from apple butter about food and pesticide residues and health risks.
Here’s what Richard Muller has to say about pesticide residues, and health risks associated with eating industrially raised versus organically raised food. I bring this up to point out how easy it is to MISS the truth, how easy it is for huge numbers of people to be brainwashed by special interest groups , many of which are very well respected, and hardly ever questioned, in respect to their agendas.
Richard Muller, Prof Physics, UCBerkeley, author “Now – The Physics of Time”
Answered Feb 11, 2016
Organic vegetables are much higher in carcinogens than are vegetables grown sprayed with pesticides. This fact was discovered by Bruce Ames who was, at that time, the chair of biochemistry at UC Berkeley.
The discovery was easily understood. To grow foods without pesticides, you have to pick those subspecies that are “naturally resistant” to insects and fungus. That invariably means that they have higher levels of “natural” poisons in their skin and in their flesh. So those farmers who picked the plants that didn’t need pesticides were picking plants that (to use Ames’ terminology) were surviving by engaging in chemical warfare.
Non-organic foods are grown using pesticides that are extensively tested by the FDA to be non-cancer inducing (or at least minimally so). Moreover, they are on the outside of the skin, not in the meat itself, and so can be washed off easily.
I eat many organic foods because they often taste better; they are frequently grown by farmers who care more about taste than appearance. I don’t delude myself into thinking that they are healthier.
Bruce Ames, by the way, is the inventor of the “Ames test” — the most widely used method to determine if materials are mutagenic.
His professional publication describing what I just said is Science, Volume 236, Issue 4799 (Apr. 17, 1987), 271-280. Nobody disputes his scientific findings, but those who favor organic food often ignore them. They fool themselves into thinking that natural poisons are somehow better than mild human-manufactured pesticides.
He’s dead on, except when he says nobody disputes Ames scientific findings, because what he actually means is that nobody who is truly technically literate disputes these findings. People such as physics professors suffer from a failing altogether too common, so common as to be near universal, among well educated people. They are collectively unable to conceive of just how little the typical man or woman on the street actually KNOWS about the world he or she lives in. Such people simply cannot understand the breadth and depth of a typical persons ignorance.
Unfortunately countless health industry professionals aren’t all that well informed when it comes to such questions as pesticide residues.
The large majority of environmental movement foot soldiers don’t have a CLUE as to what the truth is, in respect to organic foods, and in the large majority of cases, neither do the leaders of the environmental movement. Nor are they interested in teaching the truth to their followers, even if they know it themselves…….. foot soldiers, from their pov, are not to be trusted with such truths, for fear they may go over to the other side.
We have met the enemy, and they is us.
We are in one hell of a fix. Ron and Fred and GF are all dead right about this one thing at least, even if they occasionally disagree on some other points. I’m with them, I agree that we are in one hell of a fix, and I don’t see any way out, except maybe for a lucky few of us.
But as Ron and some others occasionally point out, I’ll probably be safely dead before the shit is REALLY hitting the fan hard and fast.
The biggest single question I have left to answer is this. Why should I waste my very limited remaining time and energy even worrying about it?
Maybe I should be eating and drinking and making merry, rather than stressing myself out floundering around looking for something to do that might make a difference.
CLIMATE CRISIS: ALASKA IS MELTING AND IT’S LIKELY TO ACCELERATE GLOBAL HEATING
“Every year there’s a new temperature record, it’s getting worse and worse and you feel like a broken record saying it. This should be the number one urgent conversation happening right now because it’s not just going to be Alaska, it’s going to be other communities all over the US.”
I’m from Alaska. The polar bears are really hurting. On the other hand, there’s a sustainable market for now for hides because wealthy folks enjoy quality polar bear rugs.
What a perfectly bad place to build a town! On the inside of a loop in the river that WILL cut off the town and create a new oxbow lake. Check out Akiak on Google maps.
NAOM
True. Typical of so many places.
Nationally, we need a policy of 10 feet.
All infrastructure, all housing and businesses need to be relocated
10 feet above the FEMA plain, and/or sea level.
Whichever is higher.
It will be [beyond] massively expensive.
But much cheaper than doing it under duress.
Talk about an ‘inconvenient truth’.
Not gong to get many votes for this kind of thinking.
All infrastructure, all housing and businesses need to be relocated
10 feet above the FEMA plain, and/or sea level.
Whichever is higher.
LOL! elevation of Miami Florida, 6.562′ Where do you suggest we move it to, and how much do you suppose that will cost. Same question for most of the South Eastern coast of Florida.
LOL! I took my father on a trip to the US with me a couple years before he died. While driving around he asked me, “Where are the hills?”. I should have taken him to see one of the highest points in Miami, The landfill just south of NW 74th St. on the west side of NW 87th Ave. 😉
“Where do you suggest we move it to”
Macon Georgia
“and how much do you suppose that will cost”
Less is it is done slowly, then suddenly. Slowly, some materials and valuable items could be salvaged. Like the pumps at the sewage treatment centers, and the MRI’s, and some of the museum contents.
Ok! Got any room for Aventura, Hallandale, Hollywood, Dania Beach and Ft. Lauderdale… That would at least kinda cover my general home turf area. BTW, where can I get a good Cuban coffee in Georgia?! 😉
Cheers!
No more coffee.
Get used to Chickory.
Fred, maybe you could have some fun going around with a sharpee, and putting high water marks on street posts and sides of buildings, like
-Sea Level year 2041
-Hurricane Evangelina Storm Surge Sept 18 2036
LOL! I just might do that!
Americans have no concept of what flood means in ‘flood plain’.
NAOM
Floods near coasts occur from two different directions simultaneously.
Just adjusting for storm swell and sea level rise is inadequate.
Yeah, given we already have the Severn Boar, I am just wondering what a tide on a storm surge, with rising sea level, meeting a flood from the river Severn will do for Hinkley C.
NAOM
For most American “flood plain” is the same as “federal money to rebuild in the same place”
And I bet those are Republicans who want to reduce gubernment spending.
NAOM
I am so increasingly nervous about the state of our sick dying world. I will continue praying for Our Heavenly Father to intercede.
“I will continue praying for Our Heavenly Father to intercede.”
Perhaps your Heavenly Father is interceding as you speak. Does sea level raise qualify? I believe this god of yours once made a decision to return the Earth to its “pre-creation state of watery chaos” and then remake it in a reversal of creation, or something like that.
If I were Him I might go the once popular plague and petulance route even though that would be messy given the seven billion plus souls currently living living here. That said, plague and petulance certainly would get population overshoot under control then a few worthy survivors could have another shot at “Being fruitful and multiplying” — hopefully with better results next time.
How do you think He might effectively intercede this time round? Nuclear war is always an option I suppose? Personally I hope He won’t (doesn’t) choose the “Cleansing Fire” route.
If you are praying for intervention I would strongly advise revising Genesis 6 et seq and Genesis 19. You might not get the intervention you were hoping for.
NAOM
@Doug, here’s an well written article form the Miami Herald that covers most of the bases and may explain why you might see me as optimistic:
Meanwhile, Starbucks coffee shops selling Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee are popping up along with new luxury highrises, and Hilton has announced a new ROK Hotel by its Tapestry Collection. The 168-room hotel will be located in downtown Kingston, where the rapidly changing skyline is already being dominated by the towering new headquarters of food and finance giant GraceKennedy, a new 11-story Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and recently opened waterfront dining and entertainment options.
“I was born in 1966 and I’ve never seen an optimistic, positive economy in Jamaica before,” said Mark Myers, managing director of Restaurants of Jamaica. “Jamaica was always tough, headed in the wrong direction. Now, the environment is such that I actually see opportunity, real opportunity.”
Myers is so bullish on the economy that he’s planning to aggressively expand his family’s empire of 48 Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants, by opening 10 more KFCs across Jamaica over the next two years. “Stability brings across an environment where people are willing to treat themselves,” he said.
The quoted section describes BAU on steroids, as does the rest of the article when it describes new dealerships for BMW and Porsche as “investments in Jamaica”. On the other hand the former head of the college I went to managed to get an article published in both of the major newspaers, very critical of the amount of money (often credit) that Jamaicans are spending on cars:
We need to take a look at the impact of the car on the individual in the Jamaican economy. The Jamaican economy is bombarded with advertisements about cars for which many people are willing to pay high prices. The nation suffers in that people spend money on luxury items rather than on projects for national development.
The country cannot afford the cost and individuals should not get trapped into debt. The average Jamaican cannot afford these high prices without going into debt, with the expenditure on cars at the expense of other priorities. The personal priorities would include housing, education, insurance, health and much more.
Banks and financial institutions are competing with each other to provide loans to purchase cars. Can the Jamaican community afford the high-priced cars that are being offered? The high prices move down to the used car market.
Fleets of cars awaiting purchase are parked in open spaces in the city capital lying idle. The millions of dollars changing hands is a wasteful national expenditure, and the society needs to practise disciplined care for the ownership of a car and the priority of financial planning.
Everyone has the option of making a choice between saving and spending in some discretionary areas of their lives. A car purchase is one such area. Savings produce a return, or at a minimum, attempts to preserve/grow the value of the resources you have. Spending for consumer items retains only the depreciating asset value each year, and this value is even lower if the purchase is financed with expensive consumer debt.
I have a great deal of respect for the former head of the college I went to. I wonder what he would think of my assertion that the trend in petroleum for road and rail transport in Jamaica is worrisome?
Can you ask him?
Myers is so bullish on the economy that he’s planning to aggressively expand his family’s empire of 48 Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants, by opening 10 more KFCs across Jamaica over the next two years.
WOW! What an unmitigated fucking disaster that will be! Talk about the most unhealthy food possible!
Couldn’t he at the very least least promote mom and pop restaurants where they would serve free range home grown Jamaican Style Jerk Chicken?!
Fred, I can’t tell you how many times I have offered to take people to Island Grill, a fast food type chain that serves “Jamaican Style Jerk Chicken”, with a choice of fries, festival (fried dumplings made from a mixture of flour and cornmeal), rice, steamed vegetables or raw vegetables and been told that they would rather have KFC. The result of this preference for KFC, especially among the younger generations is that the Myers family is quite wealthy by Jamaican standards, despite having to pay significant franchise fees to KFC/Pizza Hut. This situation is similar with the Burger King/Popeye’s/Little Caesar’s and the Wendy’s/Dominoes franchise holders.
That the pundits point to the introduction and expansion of such Franchises as investments in the nation, speaks to the point I made in a comment is response to Iron Mike further up. This wealth is related to the holders ability to mobilize energy and other resources to provide fast food to a willing population. These franchise holders don’t really care about the energy inputs needed to produce the meat, flour and potatoes they use and they only care about the energy used in their operations in as much it is a cost of doing business and can affect their sales volumes and profitability. Do any of the produce even a little bit of the energy they exploit to create their wealth? ? Do they care about the carbon footprint of their enterprises? Guess which one of the franchises mentioned in this comment has a 100 kW PV array on the roof of their central operations warehouse?
I tell you, on the most part it, looks like party on, pedal to the metal as we draw closer and closer to the edge of the cliff. I suspect this is the case all over the world. Thelma and Louise all the way Baby!
Fred, I can’t tell you how many times I have offered to take people to Island Grill, a fast food type chain that serves “Jamaican Style Jerk Chicken”, with a choice of fries, festival (fried dumplings made from a mixture of flour and cornmeal), rice, steamed vegetables or raw vegetables and been told that they would rather have KFC.
OK! that clinches it, there is absolutely no hope whatsoever left for humanity!
Fortunately for me, I have a Jamaican restaurant just 5 mins walking distance from my condo. I try to eat as little meat as possible but they serve a superb goat curry, makes my mouth water just thinking of it. Plus they even have live music at least 5 nights a week! KFC is Trump food, ugh!
I used to have the occasional burger from McDs when I was in the UK, though it was more the convenience when working, but I haven’t eaten McDs since I came to Mexico, can’t even stand the smell of the places anymore. On the other hand a good taco or birria yeah! That goat curry sounds right up my street.
NAOM
Eat fast food chicken, cut down the Amazon rain forest.
We don’t think the Amazon should be cut down for chicken feed.
Our investigative report, ‘Eating up the Amazon’ showed how soya beans grown in the Amazon were going into McDonald’s McNuggets.
Well guess what? Soy grown by clearing the Amazon is also going into the making of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). And some people don’t want us to do anything about that.
In my locale I have observed a number of people losing their houses, a number of abandoned houses, small to large shopping centers with empty storefronts and increasing automation to replace retail workers.
On top of this is an increase in storm related damage on a regular basis.
We have many empty shop units in malls … then they are building more malls!!!!!!!!!!!! WTF
NAOM
Talk about mass OCD!
“GREENLAND LOST 2 BILLION TONS OF ICE YESTERDAY”
With this rate should Greenland ice sheet be lost in a short time?
Let’s do some computation. 2BT/day means 2km^3/day in volume. The total volume of the ice sheet is 2850000 cubic kilometers, so in 1425000 days ( about 4000 years from now) all the ice sheet will be lost.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet
But, wait a moment. The bulk of melting occurs just in 3 months ( June to August ) , about a quarter of the year.
See: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/14/us/greenland-sudden-ice-melt-wxc/index.html
So, by this seasonal correction, all the ice sheet will be lost in 16000 years, if we don’t take in consideration the snow falling over Greenland. That may delay the fateful event another 4000 years or more.
The Greenland ice melting is monitored daily: http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/
We see a spike in melting for last days. It’s mainly about weather.
But, what if? What if Greenland ice sheet slides suddenly into ocean? Is this possible?
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland
and look for Greenland bedrock. The ice sheet is trapped by mountain chains at East, West and North. So, it won’t escape into the ocean. Could it have happened , it would have occurred 10000 years ago, at the same time with North American and Scandinavian ice sheets.
It’s about summer time and Greenland has in average a frozen temperature, although a lot over expected average for these days. https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2max
And, surprise, Hudson Bay is still icy past mid June. https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#seaice-snowc-topo
I am very concerned about climate change, but Greenland seems to me to be a marginal issue in this complex. Loss of ice in Arctic Ocean and West Antarctic Ice Cap seem to me to be more cause for concern.
I am very concerned about climate change, but Greenland seems to me to be a marginal issue in this complex.
Your concerns are duly noted!
I wouldn’t worry about it, I’m pretty sure that particular Canary in the Coal Mine, either died of natural causes or old age! As for the other 450 canaries that have also dropped dead. I guess we’re just going to have to wait for the postmortem toxicology reports…
And there is no real rush, given that by your calculations it will be at least another 20,000 years before there is no ice left in Greenland.
Just about the only thing we can count on taking more than 10,000 years is the rise of Greenland after the ice melts.
Alex, a few more variables to add to your equation.
Increasing global temperature with time
Increasing longwave downwelling energy from GHG
Lapse Rate
Fast warming Arctic Ocean
Fast warming Arctic Land Surfaces
Warming Ocean temperatures
Increases in black carbon deposition as temperate and northern forests burn
Increasing black carbon depositions as new growth in Arctic regions goes into cyclic burn
Decreasing snow and ice albedo on the ice sheet
Increasing biological growth on snow surfaces
Increasing rainfall events.
Increase in solar radiation as transistion to new energy sources occur
Linear extrapolations in a complex non-linear world are woefully inaccurate.
Most of the ice was gone in the Eemian, The insolation over Greenland is now on the increase due to orbital changes. In other words, the ice is melting at a solar energy input minima.
Historical and logical overview of nonlinear dynamics. The structure of the course: work our way up from one to two to three-dimensional systems. Simple examples of linear vs. nonlinear systems. 1-D systems. Why pictures are more powerful than formulas for analyzing nonlinear systems. Fixed points. Stable and unstable fixed points. Example: Logistic equation in population biology.
Reading: Strogatz, “Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos”, Chapter 1 and Section 2.0–2.3.
Note: Prerequisites for the intro course overview above, include basic college level calculus, differential equations, non linear algebra, and a general familiarity with graphing curves and functions.
BTW, should someone wish to brush up on their math skills, there are plenty of excellent calculus and non linear algebra courses on line and on Youtube.
Fred
In no way I am arguing against non-linearity of climate system and the danger of passing tipping points. But Greenland gains or loses 2GT of ice per day as a trivial matter.
See: http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/
By the way, 2GT on the ice sheet per day is about change in thickness of one millimeter per day. That’s not a big deal. The average loss of ice in summer exceeds this number, as a matter of yearly balancing, not linked with climate change.
The headline about this matter on CNN was wrong: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/14/us/greenland-sudden-ice-melt-wxc/index.html
In the headline they present 2GT per week, last week, inside the article we see those 2GT occured in a particular day.
In the Danish Greenland portal: http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/mass-and-height-change/
we may see that that in the last 15 years or so Greenland gains about 100GT in 9 months (September to May) and loses about 300GT in just 3 months (June to August) of every year.
Forty-six years of Greenland Ice Sheet mass balance from 1972 to 2018
Conclusions Using improved records of ice thickness, surface elevation, ice velocity, and SMB, we present a 46-years reconstruction of glacier changes across Greenland that reveals a dominance from ice discharge over the entire record and a sixfold increase in mass loss from the 1980s. The largest mass loss is from NW, SE, and CW, which are controlled by tidewater glaciers. Several glaciers, including Humboldt, Steenstrup-Dietrichson, and Køge Bugt C. North Greenland (NO, NE) have played a stronger role in the total mass loss than reported previously, hence illustrating the value of an extensive time series of mass balance that includes all of the large glaciers. We also find that the ice sheet as a whole was near balance over the time period 1972–1990. In the future, we expect the mass changes in the northern part of Greenland to become of greatest importance to sea level rise, because of the large reserve of ice above sea level and the potential for manyfold increase in ice discharge.
Of course, somewhere among the avalanche of various opinions, the actual point was buried.
The point is that for this early date in the melt season the loss of Greenland ice was exceptionally high. An example of an extreme event.
An in depth look at California and relevant western US drought.
“Megadroughts and MegaFires” with Dr. Glen MacDonald, UCLA Professor Dr. MacDonald discusses his groundbreaking research on droughts lasting decades and even centuries in California and how MegaFires like the Thomas Fire will become the new norm. Glen M. MacDonald is the John Muir Memorial Chair of Geography, Director of the White Mountain Research Center and a UCLA Distinguished Professor. His research focuses on climate change, its causes and its impact on the environment and society.
This state has a hell of time deciding what kind of place it is to live in.
Is it a place of redwoods and huge reservoirs filled with water, and a great valley with tens of thousands of fertile irrigated acres. For example right now, the state reservoirs are full, after two good winters.
Or is it a place of megadrought, like it was feeling for the preceding 3-5 years. More like AZ or west Texas.
Huge fires happened under both conditions in past few years.
Variability is baked in the cake here. Some years easily twice as wet as others.
That is normal.
Some decades too.
Its hard to plan. Just what is the water carrying capacity for nature and humans in this kind of scenario.
Certainly less than if the rains were more uniform.
People are slow to understand that.
side note on variability- we had a high of 99 clear blue degrees last Monday, and high of 62 windy fog degrees just 3 days later, right here.
Long term droughts in the Colorado River basin are not uncommon (https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2004/3062/).
Rising temperatures dry soil faster, increasing fire hazards.
I got to finish with that presentation by MacDonald.
Very sobering.
He is a good messenger.
What we need are big grids with big, central generators, right? Makes for reliable, dispatchable power, right?
The sunspots have been very low even zero for weeks affecting how the ionosphere heats up or cools. HF radio depends on a warmed up ionosphere because that causes such radio signals to bounce back to earth rather than escape into space. Talk to a ham radio operator, they will explain that the very low number of sunspots means that earth is rapidly cooling.
Oh, don’t be an idiot. Sunspots are on an 11-year cycle and have nothing to do with climate change.
Of course the ionosphere cools slightly during the solar minimum. But it just heats right back up again when the solar maximum follows, on average, five and a half years later.
The duration of the sunspot cycle is, on average, around eleven years. However, the length of the cycle does vary. Between 1700 and the present, the sunspot cycle (from one solar min to the next solar min) has varied in length from as short as nine years to as long as fourteen years.
This cycle’s minimum has had an unusually low sunspot count.
Sunspots come and go with an 11-year rhythm called the sunspot cycle. At the cycle’s peak, solar maximum, the sun is continually peppered with spots, some as big as the planet Jupiter. But for every peak there is a valley, and during solar minimum months can go by without a single sunspot.
The sunspot cycle has absolutely nothing to do with climate change. Just what the fuck are you trying to pull. The earth is warming, not cooling, in spite of us being right in the middle of a solar minimum.
“Just what the fuck are you trying to pull.”
He wants to be Trumps science advisor.
fyi
What a meaning free chart. Whoever is sending us trolls, please send some better quality ones.
fi, fi, fi
Looking at that page it tries to avoid up to date data. As for the Met office stuff, I have not found that chart on the Met office site but the following 2 charts firmly refute that
“Meat and dairy companies are on track to be the world’s biggest contributors to climate change, outpacing even the fossil fuel industry, according to a new report.”
“Industrial agriculture is currently the dominant food production system in the United States. It’s characterized by large-scale monoculture, heavy use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and meat production in CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations). The industrial approach to farming is also defined by its heavy emphasis on a few crops that overwhelmingly end up as animal feed, biofuels, and processed junk food ingredients.”
“Incidentally, I have read in more than a few places that the use of chemicals in agriculture is part of what is threatening arthropods (and by association, other species of course).” ~ Caelan MacIntyre
‘Now a new global study of the drivers of insect decline says habitat loss by conversion to intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines. Agrochemical pollutants, invasive species and climate change are additional causes.
A rethinking of current agricultural practices, in particular a serious reduction in pesticide usage and its substitution with more sustainable, ecologically based practices, is urgently needed to slow or reverse current trends, allow the recovery of declining insect populations…’ ” ~ Fred Magyar Magyar
Thanks for the elaboration, Fred.
“I can also say that I would NOT be able to grow… without the following:
But we are not necessarily stuck with it in the shape and form and on the scale we know it today, in the long term.
IF the economy holds up, we can adopt some rather radical new methods, soon to be realities, of producing food, methods that are far safer in terms of environmental disruption.
There is a good deal of progress being made in terms of using less water, fertilizer, pesticides, etc, per unit of production, and over time, we can teach ourselves to eat better, even as we are teaching ourselves it’s better to give up smoking, etc.
If the well intentioned but ill informed ecological dickheads don’t prevent it, we will within a decade or less have some varieties of staple crops that need damned little in the way of pesticides to produce like crazy.
Sure they may pose a minor, probably trivial health care risk. But in terms of the BIG PICTURE, accepting that risk will be a world class bargain. NOTHING is completely safe. The idea is to move from high risk behaviors to low risk behaviors, in terms of one’s overall safety.
And (safety tested and approved by appropriate professionals) gene modified foods are absolutely a HUGE step in that direction, considering the many problems associated with using pesticides.
If the well intentioned but ill informed ecological dickheads don’t prevent it, we will within a decade or less have some varieties of staple crops that need damned little in the way of pesticides to produce like crazy.
Dunno, I have my doubts, though it certainly won’t be for lack of scientific or technological know how! I think we will just run out of time to make the necessary changes at the political and social engineering level. A decade is but the blink of an eye with regards the big picture. Perhaps if we had started back in the 1950s.
“In the year 2030 I will be 26 years old. My little sister Beata will be 23. Just like many of your own children or grandchildren. That is a great age, we have been told. When you have all of your life ahead of you. But I am not so sure it will be that great for us. Now we probably don’t even have a future any more. Because that future was sold so that a small number of people could make unimaginable amounts of money. It was stolen from us every time you said that the sky was the limit, and that you only live once. You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to. And the saddest thing is that most children are not even aware of the fate that awaits us. We will not understand it until it’s too late. And yet we are the lucky ones. Those who will be affected the hardest are already suffering the consequences. But their voices are not heard. Is my microphone on? Can you hear me?
I agree, a decade is only an eye blink, in historical terms. You’re right again as usual, it’s probably too late to create new varieties fast enough, and get them into production on the grand scale, to matter very much in BIG PICTURE terms.
I can’t save the world, but I’m still interested in saving individuals and communities , to the extent that’s possible.
We probably will have some varieties of some crops that can resist a troublesome particular pest quite well, without using any chemicals, within the easily foreseeable future, which could make all the difference in the world to some local and even regional communities.
If I were to somehow gain the ear of a super rich person, I would try to convince them to PAY poor people to give up having kids after the first two, or even one or none.
Something tells me that many tens of millions of women and men would be glad to accept such a bargain, and would line up to take advantage of it.
Suppose a one time birth control pill could be invented, which wouldn’t have any major side effects, other than permanent sterility, for either men or women?
There are probably drugs already in production, for other purposes, that would do the trick, other than possible serious side effects.
If somebody were to fly an old airliner over a big city in some desperately poor country, and dump about a million such pills, individually packaged, with labels on them promising that the guy who swallows one will get erections as good as he had when he was sixteen again……… lol.
I have talked to older, poorer women who had large families about their lives as mothers. Half of them told me that they would have taken such a pill, if available, without telling a soul, after they had had their second or third child. They knew by then how hard the remainder of their lives would be, raising one kid after another, working themselves into an early grave, and not being able to take GOOD care of any of them…
Education is the key of course, but education is so damned slow, in terms of individual lives……….
I’m passing the link around. Thanks, it’s one of the very best ones I’ve seen. Unfortunately, except for on the net, or by phone, I hardly ever even speak to anybody with brains enough to understand just how desperate the big picture is.
But I’m making good progress with at least one person, a local woman who understands that we are in a hell of bad spot. She has three little kids. She can see the big picture, but so far only with major gaps. I may sell part of my farm to her, owner financed. I can’t take it with me and I will need more cash as I get to be less and less able to do things for myself.
“Caelan is right that our industrial agricultural system is unsustainable, long term.” ~ OFM
It’s already unsustainable, like, as in right now.
“But we are not necessarily stuck with it in the shape and form and on the scale we know it today, in the long term.” ~ OFM
Oh look, a backpeddle or, to be charitable, a qualification.
The advent of agriculture was a watershed moment for the human race. It may also have been our greatest blunder.
Very interesting article. Makes some good points. No going back now i think.
Maybe the survivors will be the current hunters and gatherers that still live in this world.
This farmer totally agrees with Diamond. It’s one of the great articles of our times.
But there’s nothing to be done about it at this point. We’ve inherited the whirlwind.
In the meantime, I love my pesticidal potatoes & apples :>
You don’t seem to do farming, Michael, but then, my concept of it seems less fast and loose.
“But there’s nothing to be done about it at this point. We’ve inherited the whirlwind.” ~ Michael B
There are plenty of people around the globe ‘doing things about it’, like getting off of it, rather than making excuses for it.
Diamond doesn’t seem to realize that we no longer live in a world dominated by agriculture. He says that life expectancy for hunter-gatherers was 26 years. Life expectancy is now 71 years.
Life expectancy for hunter-gatherers was 26 years
I think that is a misconception. During that period, there was a high-birthrate high-deathrate. But the children which survived and were genetically high quality, would have lived possibly around 50+ years. It is only when we take the averages of birth and death rates we get the ~26 year figure.
We know specific details about modern hunter-gatherer lifespan from a few well-studied groups: the !Kung, Aché, Agta, Hadza, and Hiwi (Gurven and Kaplan 2007). Work on these groups show that approximately 60% of hunter-gatherer children live to age 15. Of those who reach 15, around 60–80% of them will live to age 45. If an individual lives to age 45, then on average they will live for approximately two more decades. However, not all modern hunter-gatherer groups show the exact same lifespan profiles. The average life expectancy at birth among these groups varies from 21 to 37 years, and the proportion of individuals living to 45 years old varies between 26% and 43% of the population. These individuals who live to age 45 then have a continued life expectancy between 14 and 26 years.
The earth carrying capacity for hunter/gatherer human beings is well less than 1 billion.
Once we get closer to the number, we should consider a reversion.
I would miss fruit from other climates, and seafood (I don’t live on the seashore).
Hi Hickory,
I don’t think most of us if any, living in industrial civilization can go back. We don’t have the genetic quality nor the skills. Nature will chew us up and spit us back out, in my worthless opinion.
I would miss fruit from other climates, and seafood (I don’t live on the seashore).
I love fish! Live, swimming in the sea, I like catching them, spearing them, having them in an aquarium and most of all I like to cook and eat them!
Having said that, our oceans are being depleted of fish and there is no way that increasing human population growth and their appetite for sea food will not completely devastate fish stocks the world over. We will leave the climate change and ocean acidification debate for another day!
High-tech meat alternatives are grabbing a lot of headlines these days. Last month, the Impossible Burger marked a meatless milestone with its debut as a Burger King Whopper. Meanwhile, Lou Cooperhouse was in a San Diego office park quietly forging plans to disrupt another more fragmented and opaque sector of the food industry: seafood.
His company, BlueNalu (a play on a Hawaiian term that means both ocean waves and mindfulness), is racing to bring to market what’s known as cell-based seafood — that is, seafood grown from cells in a lab, not harvested from the oceans.
BlueNalu is aiming for serious scalability — a future where cities around the globe will be home to 150,000-square-foot facilities, each able to produce enough cell-based seafood to meet the consumption demands of more than 10 million nearby residents.
But unlike Impossible Foods, BlueNalu is not creating a plant-based seafood alternative like vegan Toona or shrimpless shrimp. Instead, Cooperhouse and his team are extracting a needle biopsy’s worth of muscle cells from a single fish, such as a Patagonian toothfish, orange roughy and mahi-mahi.
I’m not sure I very much like the picture of the future that is emerging. It most definitely is no longer the world that I enjoyed so much growing up in.
If I had my way, I’d like transform this pathetic excuse for a human being into shark bait!
“The earth carrying capacity for hunter/gatherer human beings is well less than 1 billion.” ~ Hickory
Says who? I don’t think so. Yes I’ve seen that number quoted many times (‘so that it’s accepted for truth’), but, like a lot of things, it depends. It depends on how we define things and what kind of lifestyle we want and how integrative and enhancing it is to the ecosystem and so forth.
How humans do many things makes them abusers of Mother Earth. This includes the processes behind crony-capitalist plutarchy-derived solar PV panels, industrial windmills, and industrialization in general. Do you hit your mothers?
I’ll leave you with a quote along these lines:
“The Eden that Europeans described when they reached North America was not a wilderness, but a well-managed resource, a complex combination of nature and culture, ecology and economy, a system so subtle and effective that it eluded the settlers who saw only natural wealth free for the taking. The result of this land grab in North America is that only 2% of the land is now wild, its major rivers are polluted, its lakes have caught fire, and its forests are dying from the top down. The tragedy of this commons was that it never really was a commons after colonization, but was surrendered to plunder, privatization, and exploitation in the name of Manifest Destiny and progress.” ~ Joline Blais
World population in 1500 was less than half a billion. Trying to double that without the aid of fossil fuels would have been a very serious problem.
Well, it’s true that the term “life expectancy” is sometimes misunderstood. It includes child mortality, which some people don’t expect. But, that’s not important here.
What’s important is that 1) child mortality was much higher than today: at least 40% (and probably more like 80%) died before age 15 compared to roughly 1% today; and 2) adult life expectancy was much shorter: a 15 year old as described in the article above might live on average to age 55. On the other hand, a 15 year old today could expect to live into their 70’s (using the world average), and in the OECD it can be the 80’s.
So…conditions today are much better than they were for hunter-gatherers.
Diamond’s work (including the work on “collapse”) applies to agricultural societies , not modern ones. He does note that occasionally, but it’s not highlighted and it’s not generally understood.
Yes without a doubt todays modern society is much easier for humans to survive in hence the population explosion.
The downside is deleterious gene accumulation in the gene pool. Hunter and gatherer societies would not have that problem, since natural selection would have been at it’s peak in those harsh environments.
Natural selection is very slow, inefficient and painful.
I’d rather use genetic testing. I’d rather have GMO kids than have 3/4 die before adulthood…
I don’t agree. What you said is human arrogance at it’s finest. We’ve been making this mistake historically ad-nauseam. The world is very complex and non-linearity is king.
It is impossible to predict the outcome of an action that we assume is “good”. Is actually “good” except in the near term. Long term consequences of human action is almost always unseen.
I understand. But…we have centuries to get genetic modification right. In the meantime we can screen for the simple, obvious genetically inherited diseases.
Seriously: we’re going to reduce the human population by 99%, and leave the rest to 75% child mortality and short nasty adult lives, because of a theoretical worry about natural selection?
I’d say that a concern about a loss of selective pressure is also a kind of arrogance: we don’t know nearly enough about genetics to know just how civilization has changed our genes.
I don’t know Nick, i don’t quite see it that way.
We can look at deep time, and conclude that death is the rule, survival the exception. I mean I think this is a law of nature. A law of nature which we have been at war with for a brief period of time, relatively speaking (we are currently winning).
Industrial civilization is essentially a war on many fronts with nature. I don’t see us winning. Nature is a strong force, oddly enough a force which we are a part of, so in a way we are fighting ourselves. In my opinion it comes down to genes vs entropy at the very root of existence.
I am more in tune with eastern philosophies of submitting and excepting the inevitable, rather than fighting the losing battle.
That’s how i see it. I am not saying i am right by any stretch of the imagination. Just a worthless opinion.
Nice discussion guys.
I point out that we no longer have natural selection, so the point is kind of mute.
In the old days when there still was natural selection, trump would have been killed in his early teens for being an asshole, rather than becoming a leader, or having offspring.
But now, we are the verge of a huge technological genetic leap, and trait selection for children will be routine in the 2030’s. Many will be ‘incubated’ in surrogate mothers who live in specific colonies optimized for maternal well-being.
And the offspring will love solar grilled lab-grown shrimp meat that is in the shape of lizards.
hmmm. I dunno. On a practical level: let’s say your child has a life-threatening bacterial pneumonia which a simple antibiotic can cure.
Do you give your child the antibiotic and save their life, or “accept the inevitable”?
Death is absolutely necessary. Living too long would end the species very quickly.
Yes GoneFishing, and it is something those who dream of immortality don’t appear to understand… Reminds me of Logan’s Run.
GF,
Well, I’d ask the antibiotic question again, but I guess the answer is obvious.
Actually, death isn’t necessary. It would be very easy to prevent overpopulation: simply have the Total Fertility Rate be less than replacement. If, for instance, the TFR was 1.0, each generation would be half the size of the previous generation (Countries like Japan, Italy and Russia are pretty close to this path, BTW). The tenth generation would be .1% as large as the current one. The 20th generation would be .0001% as large, and so on. It’s a simple mathematical series: the total population would only be twice the size of the current generation, and that’s assuming no mortality at all, absolutely zero deaths.
With any kind of mortality at all (which would happen from accidents, if not from “programmed” mortality) population would decline pretty quickly.
Dennis has shown some charts showing such population declines, BTW.
That is a fine calculation Nick. However you have not taken into account the biology of the planet. No one would ever make it past 1000 years old and since the replication rate is shrinking the whole species becomes more vulnerable despite age.
Even the most genetically advanced society would soon realize they are fighting a losing battle.
Let me just ask you, how many generations of clones would survive, given a normal initial lifespan and a replication rate of greater than one?
That series was just a simple example to illustrate the basic dynamics of restraining population growth while also reducing mortality.
I think you could develop a structure that would be stable (i.e., births equal deaths in the long run) and resilient, keeping in mind that reducing mortality also means reducing morbidity and disability (and involuntary infertility).
Does that make sense? I’m not clear on your “clone argument”, so am I missing a genetic element here?
“Actually, death isn’t necessary. It would be very easy to prevent overpopulation: simply have the Total Fertility Rate be less than replacement.”
Hey, simply have total fertility rate be less than replacement. Damn! Why didn’t I think of that?
Yes Nick, you are missing a series of genetic systems in your views and calculations.
Extending life span is a dangerous endeavor.
You also are missing the bottom end. Ever ask yourself why those children died young or even more important why some survived childhood disease? What is the effect?
What is the effect of that not happening now?
Ron,
I’m surprised to hear you say that: you’ve heard many times, I’m sure, that the majority of the world has already achieved TFR below replacement, and the rest of the world is moving there fast. For instance, the US is at 1.73, well below replacement of 2.1.
GF,
Yes, reducing random selective pressures from disease and famine will affect human genetics – we’ve already discussed this above. If you have some more, please add it..
Well, what really got me was this part: It would be very easy to prevent overpopulation:
No, no, no, no… You cannot prevent something that has already happened. Just try preventing WW2. See how that works out.
The world has been vastly overpopulated for many decades. The population of the world has more than tripled in my lifetime. More than anything else it is the vast human population that is destroying the earth.
Nick G asked “Yes, reducing random selective pressures from disease and famine will affect human genetics – we’ve already discussed this above. If you have some more, please add ”
I gave you all the clues needed Nick. It’s up to you now.
Ron,
That’s a reasonable thing to talk about, but…it’s not what we’re talking about in this discussion.
GF,
As far as I can tell, we’ve already discussed the issue that you’re…ummm…hinting at.
So, if you feel you have something to add, please do. But spell it out…
No Nick, you spell it out. You cannot simply say it would be easy to prevent overpopulation in a world that is already desperately overpopulated.
However, you may have meant something different with that statement, you may not have meant overpopulation at all. If so, spell it out!
Ron.
Nick was saying that further growth in population can be remedied by lower total fertility ratios. Half of the World’s population has a total fertility ratio(TFR) less than replacement level (2.1 live births per woman on average over there life). The average World TFR fell from 5 in 1965 to 2.5 in 2005, if it falls to 2.1 population stabilizes (after a lag of 20 years or so), if it falls below 2.1 as is already the case in half the World, then World population starts to decrease.
This was already spelled out by NickG.
A chart with assumed life expectancy topping out at 90 years for various TFR levels. Click on chart for larger view.
With all due respect Dennis, Nick did not say “growth in population can be remedied by….” What he said was: It would be very easy to prevent overpopulation…
Preventing further growth in our already vastly overpopulated earth and preventing overpopulation are two totally different things. The former is possible. The population of the earth will likely level out at around 9 to 10 billion people. The latter happened several decades ago.
I know, many people think we will reach a happy medium of 9 to 10 billion people and live happily ever after. And they believe there is no such thing as human overpopulation.
I beg to differ.
“So…conditions today are much better than they were for hunter-gatherers.” ~ Nick G
No they are not, at all.
Conditions today are nowhere near as good as they were for hunter-gatherers.
It appears that you haven’t done the math or are well aware of it and conveniently omitting it where it doesn’t suit your particular slant.
It’s the myth of progress and you appear to be leaning on it over and over again.
“Well, it’s true that the term ‘life expectancy’ is sometimes misunderstood.” ~ Nick G
Statistical manipulation– something Iron Mike appears to have caught you doing– is very well understood by those who want to railroad through particular agendas for example, rather like what Javier et al. ostensibly does for denying/FUD’ing anthropogenic global warming.
“Diamond doesn’t seem to realize that we no longer live in a world dominated by agriculture.” ~ Nick
Ag is only a small % of GDP. If we got rid of it all together it’d be no big deal. Sarc :/ Nick, you are either incredibly inarticulate or you live in a fantasy universe. Or both. Are you one of those silicone valley rapture of the nerds singularity types? Perhaps Nick is working on a new app to replace agriculture.
Yes, I’m afraid I didn’t fully convey my point. The problem is that this isn’t a full blown book, so it’s hard to cover all the detail that’s needed. Here’s a beginning:
Diamond did his work on societies in which 95% or more of the population worked in subsistence agriculture. This is a stagnant world. Things didn’t change. There wasn’t a large number of knowledge workers (maybe some people guarding the food warehouses, which became temples and they became priests). There were no agricultural universities. Labor productivity grew by perhaps .01% per year. The only way for rulers to gain more wealth and income was not by organic growth, but by theft: stealing a portion of wealth and production from neighboring territories. Empires would grow as Ponzi schemes until they became too large to rule and then they’d collapse.
This is a world of…futility. Despair. Nothing changes, nothing improves. Growth only begets collapse. Have you ever read Ecclesiastes? It captures this mood of futility and despair perfectly. “There is nothing new under the sun. All is vanity, and a striving after wind”.
So, that’s Diamond’s worldview. But, that’s not the world we live in. So, when he talks about hunter-gatherers having a life expectancy of 26, he compares it to the world he knows, which may have had an expectancy of 19, and he sees decline.
But…he neglects the actual present, where expectancy is 72.
Limit of Human Survivability at High Temperature, Humidity Conditions Leading to Uninhabitability
Beckwith is interesting.
He is getting bit distressed on non action by the proletariat.
Hey, 200,000 years was not bad—–
During the early 1950’s I wrote a required pediatric term paper on infant deaths due to vomiting and diarrhea in the hot humid Houston climate. Cholera in India was also mentioned.Water loss and electrolyte imbalance were the main culprits. My primary conclusion was that the Jefferson Davis Charity Hospital diarrhea ward needed air conditioning.
There appears to be no safe place which seems to go along with the global label. Speaking of global labels”
I think that every gasoline and diesel fuel dispenser should have a warning label on it.
“Use of this product will help destroy the ecosystems of this planet, that means you and your descendants”
Maybe Fred can come up with a graphic for the gas station pumps.
Every time the computers are turned on and smart phones used a pop up label should also appear warning of the hazards to the planet.
I think that every gasoline and diesel fuel dispenser should have a warning label on it. “Use of this product will help destroy the ecosystems of this planet, that means you and your descendants”
Hmm, I’ll think about it. Might work like a peel and stick label. Maybe a group like Extinction Rebellion could actually go around and apply them at gas stations.
.
It’s amazing what a small layer of reconfigured brain matter overlaid on a functioning brain can make things go horribly wrong, while thinking they are horribly right.
Let’s quit demonizing what are natural substances. For those unaware, gas, oil, and coal are but the naturally decayed remnants of deceased plants and animals. The “fossil” in fossil fuels is already a misnomer … but that’s a relatively minor issue. The bigger issue is that they are natural as they come from nature.
DimaondJoe [sic]: Arsenic is natural, too. As is shit. Eat some if you don’t believe me.
Joe,
Just because something is natural doesn’t mean its not harmful. umm.tornado, umm poison mushroom….
Crude is nice. But when you take it out of the ground, and refine it, and burn, it can get poisonous real fast.
Ever thought about living at a refinery. Lets talk again after you do that for ten years. See if you still like the ‘natural’ aspect of it.
As the world grapples with plastic, the U.S. makes more of it — a lot more
Jamie Smith Hopkins
Jace Tunnell shuffled forward near the water’s edge, head bent. He was hunting for something that shouldn’t be on this beach near Corpus Christi, and he kept finding it. Hidden in the sand — white, tan, nearly translucent — were tiny plastic pellets.
These are the products of plastics producers, intended to be turned into bottles, bags and countless other items. As much as anything one-tenth of an inch across could sum up the modern world, they do. A marvel of chemical engineering. A convenient material that will long outlast us. A global waste predicament of daunting scope.
Microscopic plastic particles are in our oceans, the fish we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink.
Against this backdrop, the United States is about to make a whole lot more of the stuff.
Production of the most common plastic, polyethylene, is on track to jump more than 40 percent by 2028 in the U.S., according to research firm S&P Global Platts. That’s 8 million metric tons per year more than in 2018 — roughly the amount, coincidentally, that scientists estimate is annually flowing into the oceans now.
In the last two years alone, companies such as ExxonMobil and Dow have built or started construction on at least 17 new U.S. polyethylene plants and lines, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of corporate plans. It’s a surge largely centered along the coasts of Texas and Louisiana.
The extra polyethylene is far beyond what the plastic-heavy U.S. market can use. Analysts expect it will mostly be exported to Asia — where countries are already so overwhelmed with plastic waste that they can’t handle the levels they have now.
The International Energy Agency warned last fall that the world is on pace to double the amount of this waste in the oceans by 2030 and more than quadruple it by 2050.
The American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents manufacturers in sectors including plastics, said the new U.S. production is needed to serve a rapidly increasing population worldwide.
“Most of this growth will occur in less affluent parts of the globe. This means there will be a critical need to get more food and goods safely to more people in more places,” the group wrote in a statement. “Second, more people will move out of poverty, creating increased demand for more medicines, personal care products, clean water, fuel-efficient automobiles, and energy-efficient homes — and all of these things rely on plastics.”
The booming plastics industry made possible by the explosive growth in Texas’ oil and nat gas output means a lot of well-paying new jobs and economic development coming to regions of the Gulf Coast that have been in need of both for a long time.
LOL! That’s a load of BS! There is no explosive growth in Texas’ oil and nat gas! And even if there were it provides the wrong kinds of jobs and development! All petroleum products need to be phased out and eventually banned, especially plastics!
Texas’s Gas Glut Is So Bad Drillers Are Pumping It Down Wells
Went to buy milk, a while back, but they didn’t have the 1l plastic baggies so I made do with a 1/2l plastic bottle. Weighed them both. You could make 2 1/2 1l baggies from 1 1/2l bottle. 5 times more plastic for bottles than baggies! Ban plastic milk bottles and only sell it in baggies.
Plastic egg cartons and veg containers could be recycled at the same supermarket and returned, in the empty lorries, upchain. A bit of smart design of the package and recycling could mean the plastic can be reused without passing through the whole ‘ship it around the world’ system.
“Most of this growth will occur in less affluent parts of the globe. This means there will be a critical need to get more food and goods safely to more people in more places,” the group wrote in a statement. “Second, more people will move out of poverty, creating increased demand for more medicines, personal care products, clean water, fuel-efficient automobiles, and energy-efficient homes — and all of these things rely on plastics.”
So what is wrong with that picture?! Pretty much everything!
I have posted this link many times… But much like Islandboy’s fellow young Jamaicans who prefer KFC
People are really stuck in this paradigm and don’t get it! It’s time to start arresting the people who make and sell products made from petroleum! I just don’t see any other solution!
The old line monopoly provider model is alive and well in Florida, but it IS moving in the direction of building solar farms on the grand scale….. eventually.
The prediction was made by South Australia energy and mining minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan during his speech at the Australian Energy Week in Melbourne late last week, in which he also flagged new developments to be announced soon to encourage grid-based storage and electric vehicles.
But it is the stated aim of reaching “net” 100 per cent renewables by 2030 – this in a state that has been criticised condemned in many circles for its shift to wind and solar – that is stunning in a number of ways.
Firstly, it signals that despite the change of government from Labor to Liberal last year, the pace of the clean energy transition will accelerate over the next decade and not decline.
Secondly, it confirms that the state government is actually looking to go far beyond the already remarkable predictions by the Australian Energy Market Operator that the state could deliver the equivalent of 100 per cent of its annual demand from wind and solar by 2025 or 2026 – effectively a “gross” 100 per cent renewables target.
South Australia now expects to produce vastly more wind and solar generation than it needs for its domestic needs, and it intends to export its surplus of cheap renewables to neighbouring grids, and then maybe overseas.
“Interconnection and storage will allow South Australia to become a renewable energy exporter,” van Holst Pellekaan said.
Can someone in Australia explain this to us? How can someone who is a member of the same party as Angus Taylor and Scott Morrison talk like this and not be pushing a pro FF agenda? How is it that the renewable energy aspirations of the territory of South Australia have not been smothered by the Murdoch media machine?
Just as remarkable is this:
He also noted that demand management trials are also in final selection, and these will demonstrate how distributed resources- particular rooftop solar, where South Australia leads the world in per capita penetration – can be integrated in a way that reduces cost, unlocks liquidity, and empowers consumers.
“The successful trials will unlock the value of a two-way distribution system, and also address the challenges that will bring,” he said.
And, he noted, the impact of rooftop solar meant that “we’re no longer in a world where there is a baseload of demand with a predictable daily peak”, and because of this grids need to be smarter and more flexible, and new loads such as batteries and electric cars used to soak up supply at the right times.
“That’s why electric vehicles will be another major focus area for us this year,” he said.
EVs are also a target of the Murdoch media machine’s smear campaign. Surely there are some lessons here.
Can someone in Australia explain this to us?
I think it has a lot to do with a war of ideas and ideologies.
While not about Australia, I think this essay comes close to nailing some of the tensions in play!
The Soviet Union of Capitalism
How The Last Two Capitalist Countries on Earth are Making a Suicide Pact
My hope is that the common people, who were manipulated into supporting the owners of the capitalist system, against their own best interests, wake up before it is too late.
On the other hand, given that Rupert Murdoch is 88 years old, maybe he will do the world a favor and just drop dead of natural causes, sooner rather than later…
Cheers!
Maybe offshore accounts for Angus Taylor and Scott Morrison need to be investigated.
NAOM
Trump directs agencies to cut science advisory boards by “at least” one-third – “It’s no longer death by a thousand cuts. It’s taking a knife to the jugular.”
(The order gives agencies until 30 September 2019 to terminate, at a minimum, one-third of their committees.)
Science is Satan!
“the White House has come to resemble a kind of bastard combination of deregulated capitalism & Soviet-style perversion of language, an American version of the politburo.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk says that it won’t be long before the pioneering electric car company will be making cars with nearly 650 kilometres of real driving range.
“It won’t be long before we have a 400-mile range car,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said during the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Mountain View, California, on Tuesday.
The quickest, easiest and most cost-effective way to increase production rate is to run the lines faster. But, not all battery-manufacturing equipment allows this luxury. Sometimes, you need to get multiples of the same equipment versus just cranking up the speed. It’s analogous to a toaster. You can’t just crank up the heat if you want more pieces of toast per hour. You need to buy more toasters.
In our estimation, based on studying the solvent-drying process and an Argonne paper referenced later, the traditional solvent-drying process is like the toaster analogy. If you want to increase thruput, you need to buy more solvent-evaporating ovens. More solvent-evaporating ovens cost money and occupy large areas of the production floor.
Tesla’s cells are high energy density. This implies a thicker electrode coating. The thicker the coating, the more time it takes to drive off the solvent. Thick electrode coatings compound the drying problem.
“Maxwell’s dry battery electrode offers significantly higher loading and produces a thick electrode that allows high energy density.” -Maxwell
“16X Production Capacity Increase.” -Maxwell
Also, in our estimation, the production capacity potential of Maxwell’s process is at least as important or possibly MORE important than the potential energy density increase.
Therein may lie the cause for Musk’s optimism!
O.F.M. You may find this of interet?
EARTH IS MOVING TOWARD THE SAME METEOR SWARM THAT SCIENTISTS BELIEVE CAUSED THE 1908 TUNGUSKA EVENT
Over the next several weeks, our planet will have a close encounter with the Taurid meteor swarm. It will be the closest that we have been to the center of the meteor swarm since 1975, and we won’t have an encounter this close again until 2032. So, for astronomers, this is a really big deal.
We should probably have more geophysics posts and discussion on this blog. There is probably enough built-in interest because the subject matter all ties together — geology, geophysics, climate.
For example, consider this intriguing geophysics pattern correlation — nowhere in the geophysics research literature has it been reported that the lunar declination cycle is responsible for the details in the Earth’s polar axial wobble.
This is just a starting point, as there are other climate behaviors that show synchronization with lunisolar cycles.
I once thought about doing a post on seismic interpretation — stress waves in solids with applicable math (especially Fourier analysis). Then I came to my senses realizing no one would be interested. Descriptive Geology is probably more applicable and understandable to the diverse audience here.
Actually that would be quite gneiss! 😉
It’s funny you would say that as I was about to respond to Dim Joe Aond’s comment upthread, about fossil fuels being natural, with the observation that asteroids, meteorites, earthquakes, tsunamis and such were also natural, so to speak. Not to mention King Cobra neurotoxin… but he probably, quite naturally, wouldn’t want one to bite him in the ass!
Doug said: “I once thought about doing a post on seismic interpretation — stress waves in solids with applicable math “
Doesn’t have to be that detailed. Yesterday I posted at the supposedly physics-based blog “And Then There’s Physics” about the possibility of lunisolar tidal triggering of earthquakes. It was not outlandish at all, yet the control freak moderator deleted it while calling it “peddling”. I happened to save the comment in a tweet:
The context of this was in the possibility of fracking-caused earthquakes, and why the Monterey shale formation near the San Andreas fault would never be exploited.
I read your comment a couple of times. I probably should go to “And Then There’s Physics” site to see if if within the context of the discussion in that thread it makes more sense.
Your tweet by itself left me at a loss as to why that might constitute ‘Peddling’?! I even went so far as to check the meaning in a couple of online dictionaries.
Oh, well!
Cheers!
LOL! the very first thing I came across on the “And Then There’s Physics” site, was this little tweet:
Janelle Shane
@JanelleCShane
There’s now a subreddit that’s populated entirely by neural nets who are themselves simulating other subreddits.
I think I might really need to go spend some time in a cave with no internet access!
Cheers!
Fred,
Thanks for the feedback! I think that blog is evolving from a Physics blog to a MetaPhysics blog, as they are more concerned about style in argument than in substance. Their preference is in maintaining familiar strawmen that they can then comfortably beat down. I think “peddling” by the moderator’s definition is in swaying discussion away from consensus. But the problem with that is that any advancement in physics comes about from “peddling” new results or theories. So that is a no-no.
So I am finally coming to the realization that they are more interested in the sport of science discussion, what they call “ClimateBall” than the science itself.
I think we can do better here, as Dennis moderates with a much lighter touch.
Doug also said: “Descriptive Geology is probably more applicable and understandable to the diverse audience here.”
What is also interesting is that I had my comment removed in a b;og post thread concerning the benefits of a storyline approach versus hard quantitative science in getting science ideas across.
A storyline is to climate science as descriptive geology is to geology. One storyline in climate science is that global warming will contribute to more extreme weather events. The analogous storyline for geology is that fracking near seismically active regions can lead to the triggering of earthquakes. So the idea is that one can discuss these in the absence of or in combination with hard attribution.
I’m currently involved in a twitter discussion with some NASA guys that are proponents, and one of them has written about creating a space elevator. This is nutty stuff, and in the context of what is discussed on this blog, it may need a dose of realistic expectations
If someone wants to colonize the moon, I say go for it! However to think of that as a way to save Earth is more than a bit of a stretch!
If we can’t find a way to live in harmony with nature on a planet that has everything we need already, then we are just fooling ourselves that we will be able to recreate what we need somewhere else!
.
Maybe only the 1% will be able to afford to make the move to the moon, then we cancel the return ticket.
NAOM
@Fred
Just got the local council to remove a load of rubbish bags and loose rubbish from the side of the road above the river. Took a few goes but was eventually able to drop in and give the office a thumbs up.
It would be nice to get Bezos attention, and refocus the efforts to earth. Alas, the grass is always greener on the other side of the solar system.
Not to worry, soon the mini-satellites and space debris will make it too perilous to launch manned missions to outer space.
“Cleanup in orbital path 3!”
that would be quite gneiss! ?
I used to bicycle in the Rockies, past the cuts showing various eras, singing “gonna take a sedimental journey”…
Thanks Doug,
I’ve always been one to think about how often events that are considered to be very unlikely nevertheless happen, which to indicates that our knowledge of some natural phenomena is perhaps less comprehensive than we think.
Take volcanoes for instance. We have an excellent historical record of eruptions in most parts of the world going back centuries to thousands of years, and plenty of evidence derived from the hard sciences about eruptions in prehistory, going back into deep time. So if a geophysicist says there’s a significant possibility that there will, or will not be , an eruption someplace, any place, we can be reasonably sure that his estimate is probably at least in the ball park.
But we don’t, so far as I know, have any way of knowing how many really big solar storms have happened, except for the last couple of centuries or so, when we first had reliable ways of detecting them…. such as burned out telegraph lines!
So maybe on the average there’s been a solar super storm every couple of hundred years, or every thousand years…… we don’t KNOW what the odds are, because we don’t have a record of them going back far enough to make a serious estimate. Maybe the last couple were flukes, and there won’t be another for hundreds of years…….. or maybe the last couple of hundred years were flukes in that there were only a FEW…. maybe the odds are good that there will be one within the next couple of decades.
Most of us are acquainted with the story of Lord Kelvin, an extraordinarily brilliant physicist back in the nineteenth century……. the man who laid the foundations of engineering thermodynamics, so I’ve read, etc. He proclaimed that Darwin had to be wrong, because based on his own calculations, the earth simply was not old enough to have evolved life as we know it.
But he didn’t know anything about nuclear physics. Nor did anybody else, at that time. Knowledge of fission and fusion came later.
Sometime back in the early sixties, I read a book about Tunguska, and decided it was pretty much conclusive proof that an alien space ship crashed there. Of course back then I knew approximately nothing about astronomy, beyond the basics taught in high school, but I had already read dozens of science fiction novels.
I still believe in Little Green Men, lol.
Considering the size of the known universe, it’s just about dead certain in my opinion at least that they are out there somewhere…… lots of them, all different shapes and colors……
But the odds are that even the nearest ones live thousands or tens of thousands or maybe even millions of light years away, in another galaxy.
So we will almost for dead sure NOT be in touch with any of them anytime soon, if ever.
The odds of a space rock big enough to cause some real trouble hitting us may be higher than we think, based on what we know from the historical record.It’s not at all unlikely that some as big or bigger than Tunguska have hit in the sea over the last few thousand years, or Antarctica , where the evidence would soon be hidden by blowing snow, etc.
Now here’s a question for you, or anybody else with the expertise needed to answer it.
Suppose an alien civilization is equal to ours, in terms of detecting artificial electromagnetic signals, sent deliberately or inadvertently.
How far away could they be, and still detect the radio and television signals we have been broadcasting for the last century plus, assuming they are deliberately listening for such signals?
“How far away could they be, and still detect the radio and television signals we have been broadcasting for the last century plus, assuming they are deliberately listening for such signals?”
I don’t have the faintest idea. However, one thing to bare in mind when discussing so-called intelligent species (little green men) in far away places, and talking to them, is how incredibly short the time is where we’ve had radio, TV, etc. compared to Earth’s existence. The oldest known fossils are roughly 3.5 billion years old. Single-sideband and frequency modulation (FM) radios were invented by amateur radio operators in the early 1930s. My Dad had the second amateur radio license issued in BC. The first pulsar was discovered in 1967. We’ve been listening for less than the blink of on eye and perhaps in another blink (or three) we may be extinct. So, not much time to devote to intergalactic phone calls. 😉
OFM — Hot off the press!
TWO POTENTIALLY EARTH-LIKE ALIEN PLANETS FOUND AROUND NEARBY STAR
“There are even more potentially habitable planets near Earth than we ever imagined. A research team discovered two Earth-like planets in our cosmic backyard, and they’re located in the perfect zone for water to form on their presumably rocky surfaces. The planets orbit a sun known as “Teegarden’s star,” which is only 12.5 light-years from Earth. (A light-year is the distance that light travels in a year, or roughly 6 trillion miles or 10 trillion kilometers.) The two planets look an awful lot like Earth and our neighboring worlds, the researchers said.”
Ha! I knew you’d sneak pulsars in there. I was waiting.
Time for well-earned Port.
The first answer is annoyingly simple: less than 100 light years away, because that’s how long they’ve had to travel.
Alpha Centauri is the closest star, and IIRC it’s about 4.5 light years away. If that’s the average spacing, calculate the number of stars in a sphere with radius of 100 light years: it will be far, far smaller than the likely number of stars needed to find intelligent life.
The second answer, the one you probably were thinking of, depends on the sensitivity of the receivers. Someone here must know that answer, but I suspect the theoretical maximum is much longer distance than 100 light years. But still: it will take a pretty long time to get to anyone who can hear…
Suppose an alien civilization is equal to ours, in terms of detecting artificial electromagnetic signals, sent deliberately or inadvertently.
How far away could they be, and still detect the radio and television signals we have been broadcasting for the last century plus, assuming they are deliberately listening for such signals?
The answer is 100 light years maximum radius assuming 100 years of broadcasting. Since radio frequencies travel at the speed of light.
With regards to intelligent life in the universe, calculate the probability of a protein forming, and then over geological time turning into intelligent life. It is quite rare if not impossible.
Iron Mike,
If one defines homo sapiens sapiens as “intelligent”, perhaps not impossible. 🙂
Rare, yes.
Lol that’s true. I was using the term intelligence loosely.
And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. Genesis 9:1
UN: WORLD POPULATION EXPECTED TO RISE TO 9.7 BILLION IN 2050
“The new population projections indicate that nine countries will be responsible for more than half the projected population growth between now and 2050. In descending order of the expected increase, they are: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Indonesia, Egypt and the United States.”
I’ve always thought of this as the most Darwinian line in the bible (Old Testament).
More than that…I never thought of it as a curse before, but it quite obviously is.
If it is a curse, it goes back thousands of millions of years. A bit late to revoke.
I really really hate to say anything that can be interpreted as supporting Trump type politicians, but facts ARE facts, and I flat out refuse to avoid them simply because they are not conducive to furthering some body’s political agenda, be that somebody a Republican, or a Democrat.
We have , to the best of my knowledge, have passed the point already that women in this country are having few enough children that our population would stabilize and shrink….. except for the fact that we allow in a lot of immigrants.
Of course my own family is descended from immigrants who seem to have been starving political refugees for the most part, and I’m not in favor of turning away little kids, or their mothers, but I’m not so sure I want to endorse allowing a whole lot of young men who grew up in places where the rule of law means the law of the local strongman, and the primary ethic is to do unto others before others do unto you.
But I don’t have any real idea how to decide which young men will become productive citizens, and which ones will continue to live the only way they know…. violently. I doubt anybody else does, as a practical matter.
Reality is a harsh taskmaster, is she not?
One thing is sure, in respect to our own immigration debate, this being that while we will allow some people in, and some will find their way in no matter what, the VAST majority of people in the world who will be climate, economic, or political refugees over the coming century or so aren’t going to have a snowball’s chance in hell of making it to the USA, or Canada, or even to the Central and South America. The Atlantic and Pacific are awesomely effective barriers to immigration, unless the target country is willing to peacefully accept them.
The farmer’s perspective is that people in a country such as Indonesia will mostly starve or die from violence and disease, etc, IN PLACE……. just as a farmer’s cattle die in place on his own farm if he is unable to feed them, and they are unable to break thru the fences that hem them in.
As a matter of fact, starving cattle don’t generally even seriously TRY to break out of their pastures. A few manage it, in the process of sticking their heads thru the fence trying to reach something edible just on the other side, and if there’s once a breach….. they all take off. But there’s seldom a deliberate effort to break out.
I believe most or maybe nearly all of the people in places such as Indonesia and the Congo will just suffer and die in place until the local population crashes back to a point that the remaining local people can once again survive on whatever local resources are available to them.
Some countries in really bad trouble will resort to attacking their neighbors, no doubt. But such countries are generally incapable of projecting power very far past their own borders. So when the shit hits the fan, HARD, only their nearest neighbors will be at very much risk in terms of either an organized invasion by troops, or an unorganized invasion of refugees.
But there’s a chance that such wars between smaller and militarily inconsequential countries might morph into larger scale regional wars, and that such a regional war might result in some of the larger and more powerful countries getting involved, in unpredictable ways. WWIII is not out of the question, as the result of such escalation, but personally I believe it’s unlikely, unless a major power decides to take advantage of its potential victims’ weaknesses, and engage in a war of conquest. In that case, all bets would be off.
Clean out the sand in the ears and listen to at least the first part of this.
From your link: “Scientists have issued a new warning that greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost in the North could be twice what we thought, as the world warms.”
Fuck, why is it always worse than we thought?
Because ‘worst case scenarios’ are more salable?
Seems to be a popular name for doctors.
Nope, it has nothing to do with salability!
It has to do with humans being really lousy at grasping the the consequences of fat tails and being really poor at properly assessing risk! Then being blindsided when reality turns out to be worse than what they wishfully expected to happen by willfully ignoring worst possible case scenarios!
…The answer is that we can’t be sure. And that’s okay. Because in life you rarely know for certain what’s going to happen next. You plan for a range of outcomes and try to mitigate your exposure to the worst possible risks. There’s an entire economic discipline on this subject. It’s called risk management.
Risk management is not about discerning the optimal response to the most likely outcome. It is about discerning the appropriate response to the most likely distribution of possible outcomes. That means incorporating the possibility that climate change, either by a bad roll of the geophysical dice or a large and unexpected societal vulnerability to warming, turns into a bigger problem than we expect.
BTW, even talking about ‘worst case scenarios’ being more salable comes across as ignorant denialist trolling! So please educate yourself about the issues, unless you want to be know for spouting nonsense!
“why is it always worse than we thought”
Because until the numbers are in they are not counted, known unknowns are ignored. Secondly, previous results have been diluted to be non-scary and looking at best case scenarios. Now, the gloves are off.
NAOM
Well worth five minutes, and if I say so myself, I’ve been saying demographics rule, long term, and that my old fogey generation will soon be gone, and with it….. the core of the Republican party.
1972 — US: CREEP(y) break-in Watergate complex, Washington DC. Five clowns (ie, CIA-related pros), in this their fourth attempt to get into Democratic Party headquarters, are rudely arrested. This badly bungled burglary (BBB) was the beginning of the end for the dreaded Tricky Dick ‘I Am Not a Crook’ Nixon gang.
Yep, the end is near——
The core of the Republican party are white males. The best thing that could happen to Trump and the Republican party is for him to be impeached. Pence can pardon Trump and the Republican party can start the process of moving on. Nancy wants to drive a stake between his eyes. No Nixon option this time.
I agree, Trump should be jailed, but I think maybe Pelosi is just playing her cards so as to delay the start of impeachment for a while yet. With the evidence the D’s will be able to put on TV and on the net and on the radio, not to mention the front pages of newspapers, it’s altogether possible, even highly probable, that the D’s can engineer not just a blue wave, but rather a blue tsunami, if they play their cards right. Playing them right may mean delaying playing them for a while yet.
The Trump CORE is more or less solid and fixed in it’s beliefs and opinions, but there are millions of people who will vote D this next time around, who did not want to vote for HRC, seeing her as more of the same old same old D party that was taking them for granted, ignoring them, and hoped to see some change as the result of voting for Trump.
They got change, but not the change they wanted, lol.
The D’s made the mistake of running their most unpopular possible candidate, in terms of the opinion of the entire voting public, with the possible exception of a hard core leftie such as Sanders, and the one candidate that Trump could most easily vilify.
They won’t make that mistake again, but if the R’s can’t get rid of Trump, they are going to be stuck with the one possible R candidate with the worst possible reputation among the electorate as a whole.
I’ve been saying this same thing, as Will says, for a long time now. My generation is on the way out.
The church is fast losing its hold on southern political power, but this is not yet clear to people who aren’t paying close attention.
Sea changes of this sort take a few years to become obvious unless you are looking for them. In 2040 , even sooner, most of the people who grew up in the legally segregated south, people who went to segregated schools, etc, will either be dead or in nursing homes, and of the ones that remain, most of them won’t be voting.
Even the worst informed hillbilly now knows that he could get his needed meds in Canada for a rather minor fraction of what they cost him here…… but the political implications of such facts haven’t yet filtered thru the concrete cultural barriers around his brain that keeps him voting R.
But given time, water wears away even the hardest stone…….
Every time I visit “MAYBERRY” literally the small town next door to methe stereotypical old time southern town where everything is all hunky dory, and the black people just stay out of sight, on tv, anyway, without causing any problems, or even wanting to be able to go to good schools or vote , etc,MT AIRY NC ……
Every time, I see at least a one or two mixed race couples walking together, sometimes hand in hand…… and only one person out of a hundred frowns at the sight. That one person knows better than to say anything out loud in public.
When I was a kid, such a couple would have been at risk of being ridden out of town on a rail, or worse.
I once believed that television would destroy civilization. Now I have come to understand that television, or it’s new incarnation, the internet, can destroy religion, at least in a country such as the USA. Watch SNL, or any movie with dinosaurs and tsunamis and aliens. The church no longer controls the imagination of the kids. Watch any music video.
TV and the net control the minds of the kids these days.
The church is on the way out…… a lot sooner than most people think, in terms of controlling voters in the south. It’s already out, in the larger cities and college towns, in the richer local communities, etc, as it is out in the larger cities all over the country. Twenty more years…..
But only four or five voters out of each hundred total need to switch their vote to bring about a landslide change ,locally in many places and nationally. The D’s are positioned to win that landslide. The R’s are not.
And what good would the impeachment do if the ‘Grim Reaper’ refused to hold the trial? What if there are not enough votes in the Senate for a conviction? Waste of a good debate.
NAOM
I thought I’d post a very short synopsis of US Presidential history from 1789 to the present!
.
I doubt if there is one Democrat Senate or House representative who believes Trump shouldn’t be impeached. It’s the American people that are not on board holding back congress. Ignorance is bliss with a six pack, religion and smartphone in hand.
Orlando is Trump Country and the Orlando Sentinel has traditionally supported Republican candidates for president.
Donald Trump is in Orlando to announce the kickoff of his re-election campaign.
We’re here to announce our endorsement for president in 2020, or, at least, who we’re not endorsing: Donald Trump.
This non-endorsement isn’t defaulting to whomever the Democrats choose. This newspaper has a history of presidential appointments favoring Republicans starting in the mid-20th century. Except for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, the Sentinel backed Republican presidential nominees from 1952 through 2004, when we recommended John Kerry over another four years of George W. Bush.
As recently as 2012 we recommended Republican Mitt Romney because of what seemed at the time to be Obama’s failure to adequately manage the nation’s finances.
I’m sure if a viable Republican candidate for president had the cojones to challenge Trump, The Orlando Sentinel would be more than happy to support him or her!
It was a incredible rally. Trump and the VP made the case for how they are God’s messengers on this planet, busy doing His work to keep America the most amazing country this world has ever known. Four more years, baby! We got to whoop the socialists out of this country. Trump & Pence both talked about how under socialism we would lose our God-given freedoms forever like the Second Amendment and protection of the unborn and Energy Independence. “America will never be a socialist country” – Pres. Donald J. Trump. Me and my family here in Florida are all fried up to keep this state Red next year.
Pres. Donald J. Trump. Me and my family here in Florida are all fried up to keep this state Red next year.
LOL! You are right. You are FRIED all right! BTW, in the old days RED used to be for Russian Commies! Voting for Trump is the same as voting for Putin!
Hey, maybe you can upgrade your Studebaker to an Amish Horse and Buggy! The Tesla, also pictured, is for the anti RED socialists among us… Just kidding because you wouldn’t know what socialism even means.
.
People like you are the reason i sometimes want civilization to collapse.
Afterwards you can pray to your god(s) all you want and hopefully wake up to reality.
Fed said: “LOL! You are right. You are FRIED all right!”
See, we actually read what you Trump-bots write, which is more than can be said about Trump.
hey studebaker.
you on medicare yet?
social security?
did you go to public school?
That is socialism.
Quit living off the system if you don’t like it.
you believe in following the US constitution?
there are provisions called ‘separation of church and state’. Live up to it.
– Highest temperature ever recorded in the world in March: 48.1°C (118.6°F) on 10 March at Roebourne, Australia.
More global cooling—–
Really? According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the highest registered air temperature on Earth was 56.7 °C (134.1 °F) in Furnace Creek Ranch, California, located in the Death Valley desert in the United States, on July 10, 1913. But, you did say in March! 😉
In March.
DV had that temp in July.
Impressive, for sure.
Hightrekker,
March would be more like early Fall in Australia. Even more impressive.
Nature adapts. In times gone by, I seldom saw a rabbit in the immediate vicinity of the house.
The hawks have made a major comeback, along with the rabbits themselves. I see hawks almost daily now, and around here, rabbits are their primary food. Then there’s the wily coyote…….. the newcomer that’s the joker in the deck.
They virtually eliminated the groundhogs for a while, along with the rabbits. But both the rabbits and groundhogs have modified their behaviors and are thriving again. The rabbits have moved right into the yard, along with squirrels. Our country squirrels have gotten civilized, losing their fear of people, just like the rabbits. Half a dozen rabbits at least are making happy homes within fifty yards of the porch, feeding on the lawn, mostly, but venturing farther afield as necessary. The squirrels come every day to chow down at the bird feeders. It’s not just rats that can adapt to living in close proximity to us.
I don’t see any real reason that in a country short of agricultural land that a solar farm couldn’t be fenced, and the grounds used to raise free range chickens, turkeys, or rabbits, so long as rainfall is adequate. The biggest problem would probably be to keep predators such as hawks out.
A number of people who went into fish farming had to give it up because various predators are protected by law, and they couldn’t come up with a viable way to protect their fish.
I believe that grass and clover forage production, even with rather closely spaced panels, could be at least a third compared to the same land in full sun. That’s enough to feed a lot of small animals.
And while it would take a good bit of extra material to mount panels high up on strong posts, I really don’t see any reason why a small solar farm that would fit on let us say ten acres couldn’t be spread out over a hundred acres, with the panels in rows, closely spaced within the rows, but with the rows a good distance apart, say thirty or forty feet. In this scenario, a farmer could continue to use his conventional equipment to grow a number of different crops, or graze larger animals from sheep to cows on the same land. Aluminum cable is cheap, and could be used to tie all the panels together and conduct the juice to a central junction location for feeding it into the grid.
Industrial agriculture, meaning simply farming conducted with machinery and purchased inputs, can work and does work on a relatively small scale, in a lot of cases. You don’t necessarily have to have a two hundred horsepower tractor and hundred acre fields to compete.
We will never grow potatoes in my neighborhood as cheaply as people up north can grow them on the grand scale, but I have friends who are making a go of potatoes… because they are selling into local markets thereby avoiding long distance shipping and warehousing costs.
I believe that a lot of small solar farms will be built by farmers themselves in times to come, if they can secure financing and regulatory approval, and that eventually both the financing and regulatory problems will be solved, as a matter of NECESSITY.
My hypothetical farmer could make more money with his combination of panels and crops than he could with either alone, while maintaining as much as eighty percent, maybe even more, of his original productive capacity on the land.
Maintaining food production will go a LONG way toward overcoming objections from various anti solar factions. This could make all the difference in political terms, in winning passage of the necessary regulations involving permits, grid tie in, etc.
It will be a good while yet before such scenarios come to pass, except perhaps as experimental models.
Good points. I already see many farms devoting a small acreage to PV here in Calif.
Should be a go in the whole southern half of the country, atleast.
Raising the panels up higher enough for grazers, and spacing them widely enough for rain and sun is a viable scenario.
What has really bothered me to no end, is when I see buildings with big roof area oriented the wrong way (solar wise), when there is no constraint. This applies to literally thousands of farm buildings in just this state, and an incredibly number of home throughout the country. Any building built since the late-70’s should have had this in mind. It was obvious of the need by then.
California has always been top dog in terms of U.S. solar and record headlines. Every quarter, the Golden State has topped rankings and the questions were only ever how much bigger California would be than rival markets, and which states would come in second and third.
But this year marks a departure from that path. According to the latest numbers in the quarterly Solar Energy Industries Association/Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables Solar Market Insight report, a whopping 860 MWdc was installed in Florida in Q1, compared to California’s 538 MW – the first time since 2012 any state has bettered California on a quarterly basis.
The United States experienced its best first quarter ever for new solar installations over the first three months of 2019, installing a record 2.7GW of new capacity, the most new solar ever installed in a first quarter.
Further, Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables expects 2019 to see 25 per cent growth over last year, with more than 13GW of new capacity expected to be installed by year’s end.
BOSTON, Mass. AND WASHINGTON D.C., (June 18, 2019) – In the first three months of the year, the U.S. installed 2.7 gigawatts of solar photovoltaics (PV), making it the most solar ever installed in the first quarter of a year. With the strong first quarter, Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables forecasts 25% growth in 2019 compared to 2018, and it expects more than 13 GWdc of installations this year.
When discussing state level renewable energy achievements, we should remember that it’s per capita measures that really matter.
It’s no surprise to anybody with a working brain, and no especial credit to the USA, that my country consistently wins a disproportionate share of medals at the Olympics, etc.
With three hundred million plus people, we have ten times the potential to produce world class athletes as a country with thirty million.
And because we are a rich country, any given individual here probably has a five to ten times, maybe a hundred times, better chance of having the support necessary to spend his or her early years in intensive training, than a randomly selected athletic individual from the rest of the world.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/06/18/the-sunshine-state-is-finally-living-up-to-its-billing/
Florida still imports > 98%+ of Energy requirements but we are making progress in Distributed Generation. Self financed Rooftop PV Power is ~ now just a Nickel a kWh. The majority of deployed kW is Centralized Generation in Front of the Meter deployment by the wonder boys @ DUK and NEE. Tragically this forces subjects of the state to pay thousands $$$ more for each PV Panel worth of energy. A failure in resiliency and leaves subjects of the state vulnerable to Nat Gas Price Normalization, dwelling mold flash-over and Frying like eggs in their own dwelling each and every grid outage. Trusting your life support to central generation is well, Fuelish. The Grid IS War Target #1 and centralized sourced electrons are even more negatively polarized. It’s all over every time poles falls down. Choices are rapidly evolving – https://www.flenergychoice.com/
dwelling mold flash-over
Uhmmm…what’s that?
Leave a house over 100F @ greater than 80% humidity for any time and mold grows inside everywhere. The majority of houses will stabilize way over 120F much of the year in Sunny Florida without energy to remove thesolar gain. J
Just use solar thermal collectors to cook the house up over 140 when uninhabited. That will kill the mold.
It’s not only that old fogeys are dying off at an ever increasing rate, including the boomers, and even some of their older children.
Older people have finally come to understand that draconian pot laws result in THEIR grandchildren going to jail, and being locked out of the job market, and consequently millions of them have changed their minds about legalization.
Ditto Republican political policies.
Even the dumber ones who believe in little or no regulation of industry, etc, are gradually coming to understand that when an industry dumps it’s wastes into a river, people down stream have to pay more to clean the water up that it would have cost to KEEP it clean in the first place.
Farmers I know who are still working understand that it’s not tighter environmental regulations that are putting them out of business, but rather ever more intensive competition. They understand that they pass along their fertilizer and pesticide bills to their customers, just as any other industry passes along its costs to its customers. The dumber ones, the ones who were forced out, generally don’t get it, most likely because they don’t WANT to get it. People generally blame their failures on any handy scapegoat.
And I daresay that quite a few older people who read the news in some depth are taking the R party’s rhetoric about cutting back on spending on social programs seriously……. and understand that such cuts, if enacted, will hit THEM. Such individuals will either stay home or vote D next time around. It’s impossible to guess how many there are in this category, but it probably totals at least a few million, nationally.
There’s a real possibility, a VERY real possibility, of a BLUE TSUNAMI in 2020.
Good way to do it-
A solar farm owned by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District in California, … The utility sells SolarShares in the solar farms to its ratepayers so that they may harvest a monetary return from the renewable energy revolution in California.
Best way to get people [blue or red or color neutral/ambiguous] to love renewable energy,
is to give them a financial stake in the energy production. Arizona would become a solar powerhouse overnight. They’d put up a statue of Al gore.
Good way to do it-
A solar farm owned by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District in California, … The utility sells SolarShares in the solar farms to its ratepayers so that they may harvest a monetary return from the renewable energy revolution in California.
Best way to get people [blue or red or color neutral/ambiguous] to love renewable energy,
is to give them a financial stake in the energy production. Arizona would become a solar powerhouse overnight.
Rare June heat wave grips San Francisco as triple-digit heat stifles West
Mother Nature cranked up the heat across the West during the first half of this week, with dozens of record highs shattered.
San Francisco was among the cities to shatter record highs as the temperature throttled to 92 F on Sunday, up to the triple-digit mark Monday and 98 F on Tuesday.
“Temperatures in San Francisco reached 100 F on Monday, which was 3 degrees higher than the maximum temperature at Las Vegas and equaled the high at Sacramento, California,” according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dan Pydynowski. Monday’s high beat the old daily record of 94 set back in 1994, and Tuesday’s high shattered the old daily record of 88 set in 1985.
The combination of a slight offshore breeze and intense sunshine this time of the year pushed temperatures to record high levels along the coast.
The core of the heat shifted into the northwestern United States on Wednesday.
The mercury soared to 97 in Portland, Oregon, on Tuesday, breaking the old record of 95 set way back in 1941. Wednesday’s high of 98 shattered the old record of 93 set in 2002.
Similarly, in Seattle, the high of 87 on Tuesday broke the old record of 84 set in 1989. The city reached 95 on Wednesday, which crushed the old record of 85 from 1999.
Nothing to see here, move along, it’s just weather!
/sarc
Records constructed from finite time-series are made to be broken. They can never be un-broken. So probably the right thing to do is keep track of the ratio between the number of high-temperature records and number of low-temperature records.
“Records constructed from finite time-series are made to be broken”
Obviously implying the record high temperatures will continue to rise. 🙂
We already know the average temperatures are on the rise and the distribution is skewed toward the high end. The extremes cause biological damage and physical changes (permafrost thawing which unleashes biological activity for example).
The key is not tracking but determining the effect on life and soil moisture.
Ground temperatures can exceed air temperatures by 30C to 50C. Many plants and animals are sensitive to heat and are damaged or die when temperatures exceed the normal high range for the region. Drying of soils increases, causing stress on plant and animal life as well as increased risk of wildfire (converting living plants to gases and ash).
Rock, dirt and air do not care what temperature they are at. Life has temperature limits and length of time at temperatures near their limits is also important.
It is the multi-day heat waves and back to back heat waves that do the most damage.
Here in the northeast we have the opposite problem lately. Not heat waves but persistent and repetitive rains. Last year was excessively wet and this year my county is 30 percent above normal in rainfall for the year so far.
The dramatic shifts of precipitation and temperature combined with increasing time for which these shifts occur test the resilience of life forms and most likely shift natural balances.
The term rainy season can morph into rainy years. The term drought can stretch from a few weeks or months into years and decades.
The time factor is extremely important.
It was probably not worth it, but I was just trying to point out the subtly in reporting records. Say we first started keeping track of extremes this year. We would report lots of records the first few years, independent of whether there was warming or cooling. But as time goes on, that number tends to go down. There will always be the occasional record due to this natural process. So that’s why you keep track of the ratio between hot extremes and cold extremes — that will tell you which way the extremes are headed.
Of course it was worth it. I mentioned an extreme weather event. You added the dimensions of high and low event tables (range comparisons). I then added the dimensions of ecological effects, duration and multiplicity.
We keep this up and eventually we have a solid way to view and track these events. That is if anyone takes the time to pull it all together.
You gotta love an interactive world. If it was easy to describe it probably wouldn’t be alive.
BTW The reason I say that the biological effects are key is that is not only what is most important but also least monitored.
BTW The reason I say that the biological effects are key is that is not only what is most important but also least monitored.
I happen to be personally acquainted with a couple of biologists who might disagree about the monitoring part. The fact that the average layperson, is woefully unprepared to grasp the incredible complexity of living systems, is a whole nother can of nematodes.
😉
I am glad we have such omniscient scientists out there. Maybe they could take a small amount of time to shed some light to the governments and the people about the incredible devastation to the incredibly complex living systems so we mortals could at least attempt to comprehend.
Maybe have cartoons and comic strips produced as learning vehicles for the common man or even commoner politician.
Maybe they could take a small amount of time to shed some light to the governments and the people about the incredible devastation to the incredibly complex living systems
I think the problem is more on the governments and the people’s side rather than on the biologists …
,
E FredM,
I’ve been wondering for a long time why every time you post an image I see only a small white question mark in a little blue box. Can you elucidate?
@Synapsid, I see his images fine, have you tried following the link?
notanoilman,
I just tried clicking on the white question mark in the little blue box. Is that what you mean? Got a whole blank page with the white question etc. at top center.
They’re all against me.
Hmm!
E. Synapsid,
Interesting but difficult to answer without a lot more information. I’m pretty sure my images comply with POB’s file size and type requirements.
Anyways once I post a comment it is no longer under my control. If others can see the image then it probably isn’t the image or this site but more likely some issue with settings on whichever browser you are using.
Cheers!
This might be a start:
Scientists’ warning to humanity: microorganisms and climate change
At the Cubs game on Wednesday, it was raining and 55 degrees. On June 19th. Global warming must of skipped Chicago once again and shifted over to the West Coast.
Um, Chicago is not the Globe. What you experienced was weather. Incidentally, the cold came to you from the Arctic via the meandering jetstream caused by global warming creating high pressure in the Arctic (BTW that is weather too).
NAOM
“must of”?
And you want readers to take you seriously?
More Arctic extremes in the news.
As the June 13, 2019, NASA Worldview satellite image (underneath, right) shows, snow and ice in many coastal areas has melted away.
Four nullschool images are added below. The first one shows air temperatures over Greenland as high as 22.7°C or 72.9°F on June 13, 2019, at 1000 mb. Also note the high temperatures visible over East Siberia and the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS).
A second nullschool image shows that a temperature of 0.9°C or 33.5°F was recorded at the North Pole on June 15, 2019. Temperatures above the melting point of ice have been recorded at the North Pole for some time now.
Upper atmosphere effects of CO2/methane..clouds now top at 60K, not 50K in 1980s.. colder… downdrafts significantly higher… witness tornadoes… rainfall due to China coal dust… more than all rest planet pollution combined. UV intensity due to above much higher now, ionizes coal and water fallout. Jet stream off mark versus 1980s.. END GAME: no seasons, all mixed.
followup? Basic idea of new ice age is two fold: 1) reduce solar output during solar minimum 2) CO2 induced cloud height increases and storm size increases (superstorm aka unknowncountry.com) creating extreme storms. Fix? we used to have a 360 day year, seems a binary star system with magnetic dwarf star would throw orbit out to 365 every 3600 years (history).. so next movement is year of 370…so colder due to farther fr0m sun. Keep in mind 1980s storm fronts couple hundred miles, now thousand mile fronts normal. Estimate is storms reaching 100K height would be able to do the unknowncountry superstorm simulation.
last idea: 1980: CO2… 337ppm; 2019: CO2 415.. difference: 78ppm… If exponential increase in altitude cloud height due to CO2 increases.. then 100K cloud height might be CO2 of 450? CO2 increase worldwide all sources is 3PPM/year… so in how many years? 15? good luck
Fix? we used to have a 360 day year, seems a binary star system with magnetic dwarf star would throw orbit out to 365 every 3600 years (history).. so next movement is year of 370…so colder due to farther fr0m sun.
Bullshit! A binary star system with a magnetic dwarf star throws the orbit out to 365every 3600 years? Good gravy, where do you climate idiots get this goofy stuff? Distant stars cannot possibly affect the rotational speed of the earth. And the rotational speed has nothing to do with the distance from the sun.
According to new research, a day on Earth 1.4 billion years ago lasted just 18 hours. Tidal drag gradually slows down the rotational speed of the earth. Roughly every 100 years, the day gets about 1.4 milliseconds, or 1.4 thousandths of a second, longer.
Planet X? A planet is not a distant star. Are all climate deniers so fucking stupid that they don’t know the difference between a planet and a star?
And no planet can affect the rotational speed of the earth. Especially one that is so far out that we have not even discovered it yet.
Probably!
Probably what? That planet X cannot affect the rotational speed of the earth? Are you joking?
Probably that climate deniers are so fucking stupid that they don’t know the difference between a planet and a star. I thought that was clear?
Sorry for the misunderstanding. But no, it was not that clear.
Andromedia galaxy nearby has many binary red dwarfs systems… Idea for a son/binary neutron star the size of a planet is simply…local area supernova in the sirus system… 4th star… binary is size planet but magnetic and neutron. Neutron is magnetic enough to oscillate the moon 90 degrees as it spins (this is viewable now and has been since 2000 so no real panic). Outcomes for weather are below..:
Planet X and cloud planets?
a) UV source…kills plants, affect weather clouds rain much more…
b) magnetic, twists poles planets, warms interior heating..magma, volcanoes, CO2..
c) tail comet, not sterile, much disease, sweeps planets, kills much
d) eclipse? tail…in way sun
e) movement: 40 years, exodus: 5 year before pass worst, 5 years after worst
f) historically comes ever 3600 years or so…a lot depends upon constellation enters from..some are worst outcomes (pole shifts) than others.
g) plate tensions? earth wobble like top… quakes, especially Alaska
h) season..all a mix…messed up jet stream, excessive water, volcanic issues, ect
i) Exodus, all the plagues
j) fix? UV-C from sun (30 minutes) once clouds clear…sterilize
k) reason no rain water collection
l) cities? disease countries
m) pryrons?
n) crops? local farms like Russians’
o) wars: OT…many, target opportunity
p) inner planets, large elliptical orbits…mars crossing Earth… see moons like Greeks did
q) solar storms< Corona holes track magnetic neutron Star…rubber band, can reverse orbits
r) solar ejections when band breaks (remote viewing)…Korean war
s) left overs? Himilyans sink, magma warmed, Movie 2012, Lemuria rises… was past pole shift flyby…raised mountains…
t) catastrophe disruptions long geological progress..new theory
That whole post is nothing but stupid gobbly gook. Andromeda Galaxy? You are nothing but a fucking idiot. I will respond no more to such an idiot. Bye now.
Neutron stars the size of planets? No fucking way. Neutron stars cram roughly 1.3 to 2.5 solar masses into a sphere perhaps 20 km (12 miles) across. You’re ‘way over your head here man.
c. conacher-
That poem would be great recited in public.
Maybe out in front of the post office or polling station.
Or at a poetry slam event.
Try to make it rhyme.
Maybe play a tambourine or ukulele while you perform it.
You can wear a tutu and clown shoes for full effect.
Go for it!
cameron conacher has everything from Velikovskiy to Graham Hancock in there, and more. And presents it as a Gish Gallop.
I think we have a True Believer here. Don’t disparage the fellow, read it (if you do) as entertainment.
Been a long time since I’ve seen Lemuria mentioned. Classy!
Thanks to Trump, the United States isn’t just energy independent but on the way to pure energy dominance for generations.
Thanks to Trump??? What the fuck did he do? Did he start the shale revolution?
Eastcoast Chuck, you are the perfect example of why people think Trump supporters are such goddamn idiots. Trump had nothing to do with US energy production. And you are a damn fool for thinking he did.
And any US energy dominance will be over just as soon as the shale boom is over, which will be quite soon. Energy dominance for generations? Where will all that energy come from then?
Well I was just saying what my friend who moved him, his wife, and five kids to Texas for work in the oil fields was saying. He was watching the rally last night and texted me about it.
Oh, I’m sorry. It’s your friend who is the fucking idiot, not you. Please accept my apologies.
Wow! You have to be a completely brainwashed moron to believe even a single word of the malarkey! But, what else is new?!
Energy independence has become a regular talking point on Fox TV. We are said to be a net exporter of oil.
The sad thing is that the US could probably be largely energy independent for generations for real but, without even clicking on the link Robert provided, I doubt it is talking about what I have in mind. The USA ans several other places have a good shot at becoming truly energy independent but, the way things are going , it would be despite Trump, not thanks to him.
Robert,
Perhaps Fox says we are a net energy exporter, if we take all fossil fuels such a statement may in fact be correct. It might even be correct for Petroleum (where I believe both Natural gas and C+C+ NGL would be included), for example in 2018 the average level of natural gas net exports was 330 kboe/d and in February 2019 the average level of net imports of crude and petroleum products was 176 kb/d, so we were a net exporter of natural gas and crude and petroleum products of 154 kboe/d in Feb 2019 (if natural gas net exports remained at the average 2018 level).
As far as energy “dominance”, not so much. 🙂
When tight oil peaks in 2023 to 2027 (depending on future oil prices), this dominance will quickly subside unless there is a transition to other forms of energy in the transportation sector along with greater energy efficiency.
A good reason to get off fossil fool … er … fuel right now
Given that Florida has not been living up to it’s name recently and we have been having what seems like weeks of torrential rains, I assume this guy swam down the street from a nearby pond and ended up hiding under my car in a parking lot. A friend of mine noticed him and we placed him in a bucket and returned him to the pond. This story had a happy ending! At least for now.
.
In the rainy season, I pick them up frequently. Some are migrating to look for new territories to occupy, others are picked up by local children and dumped when they are tired of playing with them. I had one dumped in my front that was way too large to get in by itself, almost too big for a 19l bucket. Another was happy in a large puddle, in front of the house, had to use a broom to move it out before it became a flattened crusty meat pie.
California squeaked by last time around, and would have had to sacrifice only the state’s agricultural industry to have survived a drought twice as long and twice as dry. People would still have had drinking water, although getting it to some of them might have required laying some new pipelines.
If any major portion of India suffers a severe long term drought, people there are going to either die or migrate, by the millions, barring a relief effort an a scale never before seen. I don’ know how big the average farm there is now, but not many years ago, most farmers there were consuming half or more of their own production.
This pattern of later and lesser monsoon rains may or may not be the result of global warming. If the trend continues, it’s more likely every year that forced warming is involved…
And Sky Daddy alone knows how many millions of people depend on the rivers fed by the Himalayan glaciers for their water…… and they’re melting fast.
There seems to be little if any real doubt that this melting is the result of global warming.
“And Sky Daddy alone knows how “…
what is that you refer to?
is it a fabricated superhero, like spiderman or something?
4 crops use 50% of California’s water- cotton, rice, almonds, alfalfa– residential use is only 8-12% depending on the year. Those 4 crops are a minor part of the economy- CA has the 5th largest GDP on Earth- larger than the UK.
How disease changes the human condition.
New study sheds light on survivors of the Black Death
DeWitte’s analysis has revealed several important findings. Most notably that:
•the 14th-century Black Death was not an indiscriminate killer, but instead targeted frail people of all ages;
•survivors of the Black Death experienced improvements in health and longevity, with many people living to ages of 70 or 80 years, as compared to pre-Black Death populations;
•improvements in survival post-Black Death didn’t necessarily equate to good health over a lifespan, but revealed a hardiness to endure disease, including repeated bouts of plague; and
•the Black Death, either directly or indirectly, very powerfully shaped mortality patterns for generations after the epidemic ended. >I/>
I have encountered a theory that prosperity increased post-black death as agricultural carrying capacity reduction less than population reduction..
ARCTIC’S STRONGEST SEA ICE BREAKS UP FOR FIRST TIME ON RECORD
The oldest and thickest sea ice in the Arctic has started to break up, opening waters north of Greenland that are normally frozen, even in summer. This phenomenon – which has never been recorded before – has occurred twice this year due to warm winds and a climate-change driven heatwave in the northern hemisphere. One meteorologist described the loss of ice as “scary”. Others said it could force scientists to revise their theories about which part of the Arctic will withstand warming the longest. The sea off the north coast of Greenland is normally so frozen that it was referred to, until recently, as “the last ice area” because it was assumed that this would be the final northern holdout against the melting effects of a hotter planet. But abnormal temperature spikes in February and earlier this month have left it vulnerable to winds, which have pushed the ice further away from the coast than at any time since satellite records began in the 1970s.”
NO SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT DESIGNED BY HUMAN BEINGS CAN SURVIVE WHAT THE CLIMATE CRISIS WILL BRING
“The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero, with 75 to 80 percent of permanent ice having melted already in the last 35 years.
Now now, let’s not get carried away. It might not be that way until 2024. 🙂
WTF, this incredible news isn’t even among the top 15 search terms on Google for today. Why is that? Here are Google’s top 15 search terms for today.
1. Slack
2. Iran
3. Child’s Play
4. What is the summer solstice?
5. Mila Kunis
6. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite
7. Australia vs. Bangladesh
8. Anna Duggar
9. First day of summer 2019
10. Space Jam 2
11. Cat-fox
12. Etika
13. Ja Morant
14. Granger Smith
15. TORNADO WARNING
US warhawks should be very wary of an opponent that can take down aircraft at 60,000ft.
“The loss of the Global Hawk drone is significant. These huge birds, with a wingspan larger than a Boeing 737, are considered strategic assets. They were build as replacements for the infamous U-2 spy planes. They carry highly classified sensors and cost more than $120 million a piece.”
I wonder what the US would do if Iran started flying spy drones near the US. Probably shoot down every one and not give a damn if they were or were not in our “airspace”.
The bullies of the world are playing tag with each other right now. Who will flinch first?
“look, anyone that can take aircraft out at 60000 feet is going to cause you considerable pain if you attack them.”
yep– but I don’t think even the fat orange guy is that stupid.
(There is no way that Americans, in their exceptional arrogance, would imagine the Iranians could possibly shoot such an expensive piece of hardware down.)
… “all peace-loving countries to stand by the United States in its effort to stop Iranian aggression. Israel stands by US on this.”. So Israel is in. Not a surprise.
Iran is guilty by association. No real proofs yet.
And this sly formulation,”all peace-loving countries ” blah blah. Bombard the media the first 24 hours after an event with a story and it doesn’t matter whether the story is authentic or fake. You will win the story, the media will have new deadlines and poor budgets to investigate what’s really true. In addition, the US, NATO ++ is bombarding the media with biased news. Do US, NATO have their own media centre spittingbout propaganda? Of course. And it takes years before the truth is revealed. Oops, it was a mistake. Humans are so honest and nice to each other. Not.
Yep, Nut and Yahoo is always grasping for”all peace loving countries” to attack Iran.
Yeah. There are indications that even before the drone was shot down, US have considered to attack Iran.
In this interesting articles, note Trump’s speech where he lies about Iran. I suggest to replace the two first “Iran” with “US” and the story becomes more correct.
Now, excuse me again for all these comments, but I’m scared. And to all Americans in this site: No offense, nothing personal. Really.
Just to fuel your paranoia, the USA now thinks their 1st use of nucular weapons would be justified.
NAOM
I’m literally at this moment listening to Dvorak’s Symphony from the New World, second movement, and am near tears.
We’ve become a basket case of a nation. You should offend us, as often as possible.
“1) I don’t think the FA-18 Super Hornet can go high enough to run escort for Global Hawks.
2) I don’t think the US Navy has any more Global Hawks to be escorted.
That’s their one and only example, and it’s now been terminated with extreme prejudice.”
Time for a new plan?
My guess is USA is getting close to having it’s “Suez Moment”. Israel should probably start working on plans to evacuate the non-combatants, if there are any. (If you search engine the term “Suez Moment”, in quotes, it returns some rather interesting articles).
Attention God (or, Please come up with a different strategy this time.)
WHY NOAH’S ARK WON’T WORK
“For ocean species to survive climate change, large populations needed.”
Oh goody! That means there will be plenty humans left.
At least the planets in other systems are safe from us, for now.
Well, no GoneFishing.
The first soft lander on Mars was a Soviet one. It unlimbered its camera and transmitted twenty seconds of featureless grey and then went dark. A friend and colleague at NASA’s Chemical Evolution Lab said there was no question that a Martian walked up and switched it off.
My bet is that there was someone’s sandwich left somewhere in the innards of the thing, and the bacteria in it have survived and quite possibly mutated, and they may harbor a grudge at being dumped there on Mars. We should be very, very careful about landing humans there.
By “other systems” I meant other stellar systems.
GoneFishing,
Oh. My goof.
We wouldn’t have landed anything on those yet, true. Unless (dons tinfoil cap) They Aren’t Telling Us.
Of course they are not telling us, telling people anything is generally a waste of time. 🙂
I have been screaming about this for years, now the shit is hitting the fan.
At least 21 cities in India, including capital New Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad, will run out of groundwater by 2020, affecting around 100 million people.
India’s news network NDTV said 40 percent of India’s population will have no access to drinking water by 2030, according to a report by the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) – the country’s principal planning organisation.
One of the worrying predictions of climate change has been a weakening monsoon season in South Asia. For the last five years, rainfall in the region has been below average, with 2015 being the worst at 86 percent.
New Delhi — Millions of people in the South Indian city of Chennai, the country’s sixth largest metropolis, are facing an acute water shortage as the main reservoirs have dried up after a poor monsoon season. Some schools in the city have cut working hours and dozens of hotels and some restaurants have reportedly shut down due to the shortage.
The city of more than 4.5 million has been left to rely on wells and water brought in by truck. Thousands of wells dug across the city are leading to a rapid drop in the ground water level, and raising even further the concerns of environmentalists.
New wells are being dug as deep as 1,000 feet. Much of the water they produce isn’t even fit to drink.
At the risk of sounding callous, isn’t India the poster child for overpopulation? Just took a glance at some population data at the following link”
It looks like if the populations of India and China keep growing at the current rate, India will overtake China as the world’s most populous nation within the next decade.
Other depressing statistics are that many of the fastest growing populations are in nations that don’t seem particularly well prepared for it. Many, if not all of these countries having negative net migration, in other words, people are leaving. Where are they going to? The countries with the highest net positive migration are mostly wealthy developed countries with fertility rates less than 2 children per woman. Of course there are lots of exceptions but, it seems people from countries with high fertility rates are heading for countries with low fertility rates.
At the risk of sounding like a Trump supporter, it seems ta little unfair that the reward for keeping your population in check and running your country well, is an influx of immigrants.
At the risk of sounding callous, isn’t India the poster child for overpopulation?
Yes, they are, and so is Bangladesh, Pakistan, most of North Africa, all of Sub-Sahara Africa, most of South America, all of Central America, most of Indochina, Indonesia, Philippines and… Wherever you find poor desperate people you will usually find massive overpopulation.
Overpopulation is killing the earth.
At the risk of sounding like a Trump supporter, it seems a little unfair that the reward for keeping your population in check and running your country well, is an influx of immigrants.
Yes, it’s all those bastards fault in all those overpopulated countries. They should not have been born.
Yes, they are, and so is Bangladesh, Pakistan, most of North Africa, all of Sub-Sahara Africa, most of South America, all of Central America, most of Indochina, Indonesia, Philippines and… Wherever you find poor desperate people you will usually find massive overpopulation.
There is a lot of poverty in South and Central America and overpopulation is definitely a problem there. However it is still quite a stretch to compare over population in South America to, say, most of Asia…
Popoulation of USA 327.2 million (2018) Area of USA 3.797 million mi²
Popoulation of Brazil 209.3 million (2017) Area of Brazil 3.288 million mi²
Popoulation of India 1.339 billion (2017) Area of India 1.269 million mi²
Popoulation of China 1.386 billion (2017) (2017) Area of China 3.705 million mi²
Then we have this prediction!
Many consider Africa’s population growth a bit frightening, with predictions placing the continent’s population at 2.4 billion by 2050. By 2100, more than half of the world’s growth is expected to come from Africa, reaching 4.1 billion people by 2100 to claim over 1/3 of the world’s population.May 11, 2019 http://worldpopulationreview.com/continents/africa-population/
Good Luck Folks!
Note: I just can’t think of any way that Africa, will reach 4.1 billion people by 2100. The population will have to crash long before then if even half of the dire scenarios regarding climate change, ecological overshoot, droughts, floods, pestilence and famine etc… come to pass and it looks like we are well on track for all of the above…
BTW, Lethal wet bulb temperatures will probably compound problems in the Indian and Pakistani regions, adding to the lack of clean aresenic free drinking water! I would assume that sooner rather than later it will help jump start the population reduction process.
Despite its popularity and its distribution in places such as Flint, Michigan, bottled water might not be as safe as you think.
A test conducted by California nonprofit Center for Environmental Health finds that two bottled water brands — Peñafiel, owned by Keurig Dr. Pepper and Starkey, owned by Whole Foods — contain levels of arsenic that are higher than tap water, violating state guidelines as a result.
High levels of arsenic, California law states, can cause reproductive harm and cancer. Products that violate recommended state levels of arsenic have to be labeled with a warning.
“Customers typically purchase bottled water at exorbitantly high costs with the assumption that it is safer and healthier to drink than tap water, unaware that they are ingesting an extremely toxic metal linked to birth defects and cancer,” said Michael Green, the organization’s CEO, in a statement.
On the other hand maybe it is part of the global plan to control world population numbers…
Cheers!
It’s the way nature works. We’re a successful ape, practicing our success. Nature. Doesn’t. Care.
I see it in my orchard: species reproduce madly–until they can’t.
Men will realize, in the end, that they can’t escape nature.
I’ll pop this anecdote in for the record. When times change people can look back to how things were.
Many years ago I was told this by someone who had spent part of WWII in India. It was approaching the monsoon season. Given the heat and humidity he asked when the monsoon would start. ‘Next Tuesday’ was the reply. Tuesday came and no rain. He asked what had happened to the rain. ‘It will come at 4pm’ was the reply. At 4pm it rained.
I may not have got the day and time exactly right but it was sworn as a true account. I guess this doesn’t happen any more.
NAOM
The same kind of thing used to be true of afternoon showers in Belem mouth of the Amazon. It was literally like clockwork, you could pretty much set your watch by the afternoon showers when I worked there back in the late 1970s. Definitely no longer the case! And now we have Bolsonaro to make things even worse!
My point is, I find it frustrating that overpopulation appears to be a really tough subject to bring up. How many people, apart from you, are pointing a finger at (over) population as one of the root causes of global problems? How many people with a bully pulpit are making the call? I haven’t heard any celebrities making that call.
I firmly believe it is a huge part of the problem, whether any high profile leaders want to acknowledge it or not!
No, it is not just a huge part of the problem, it is the problem, Every environmental problem, every supply problem, and almost all human conflict can be traced to overpopulation.
But it is nobody’s fault. Every species multiplies to the limit of its existence. It is just part of nature. We will multiply until nature crashes our population.
Most people are afraid to call out the biggest proponent of overpopulation- the Pope.
“Francis said the answer wasn’t to reduce the world’s population but rather to better manage the planet’s abundant resources and prevent waste. Francis called the population control argument — which the Catholic Church has long opposed — a “false solution.”
“Pope Francis denounced the right to die movement on Saturday, saying that euthanasia is a sin against God and creation.”
Might be time for a-
Pope on a Rope?
Don’t want to insult any of my Cabbages For Christ friends, but I also want to survive a few more years.
Education is something the Catholic Church has supported in recent times, and it’s that very education that has bitten a HUGE and maybe even fatal ( over another century or so) chunk out of it’s ass.
The world’s supposedly most Catholic countries now generally have birth rates well below replacement , excepting in such places as education has not yet taken hold.
The moral of this story is that many an organization has within it the seeds of it’s own destruction.
It’s a slow process, in terms of our individual perceptions, but birth rates are crashing in a very encouraging fashion in such parts of the world as universal education is taking hold. In historical terms, the adoption of birth control measures to control family size is moving like a wind driven wildfire.
And while a couple of decades back I didn’t consider ( being blinded by my own prejudices) that television might play a critical role in improving the world, except possibly via dedicated educational programming , this has turned out to be the case.
Maybe I’m wrong, but if so I’m wrong in good company, in believing that once poor and or uneducated women once get to spend an hour here and there watching soap operas, where in the women have jobs, some money of their own, some nice clothes, electricity, and above all only one or two kids and some power in the household….
Well, they catch on QUICK, once it sinks in that their own lives CAN change for the better.
I don’t know a lot of Catholics these days. They’re scarce around these parts. But of the ones I do, the younger ones have only one or two kids as a rule.
And my own fundamentalist backwoods Baptist neighbors and relatives are having kids at WAY less than the usual 2.2 accepted replacement rate.
None of this is to say that religion doesn’t continue to play a major role in their ethics and politics, but as the older ones die off, the younger ones replacing them are far more liberal politically and culturally.
Religion is poison
It will be fixed. The only issue is how, but be reassured, overpopulation will not last long.
NAOM
Lots of people are bringing it up, just not framed quite that way.
Women all over the world are having more children than they want: the solution is freeing them from forced child-bearing. That means education, ability to work outside the home, and access to contraception to abortion.
Those are enormous fights, and they’re taking place *right now*.
Happy Summer Solstice (for those of us in the northern hemisphere). For those of us in the southern hemisphere, it’s Happy Winter Solstice!
DISCOVERY OF A ‘HOLY GRAIL’ WITH THE INVENTION OF UNIVERSAL COMPUTER MEMORY
“In the home, energy savings from efficient lighting and appliances have been completely wiped out by increased use of computers and gadgets, and by 2025 a ‘tsunami of data’ is expected to consume a fifth of global electricity. But this new device would immediately reduce peak power consumption in data centers by a fifth….
A new type of computer memory which could solve the digital technology energy crisis has been invented and patented by scientists from Lancaster University in the UK.”
That’s based on an intricate MBE fabrication process. The jury is out if they can get it to scale in mass production.
“The jury is out if they can get it to scale in mass production.”
So true Paul. The large number of so-called “revolutionary technologies” announced each year that come to naught makes one wonder if they are worth mentioning. New battery technology reports are a good example of this but the list seems endless. I think I was more impressed by the statement: “energy savings from efficient lighting and appliances have been completely wiped out by increased use of computers and gadgets.”
True Doug. Any improvement in storage density will be sucked up by archiving of questionable data with increasing resolution.
It is hard irony that it took high technology, a vast industrial system and scientific knowledge to even partially determine the damage and change to the global environment that the high technology and the vast industrial system has caused.
If we were stupider we would just keep mushing along wrecking things slowly and not worrying about it. If we were smarter we would have stopped wrecking things. Just smart enough to get in trouble fast and then start realizing it, but slow to do much about it.
The bean counters have a way of catching up with the technicians that are wasting the bosses money, eventually.
Sooner or later, most of the data being stored now will be discarded, as worth less to the owners of the database than the cost of maintaining it.
Government agencies will be the major exceptions. Security managers and cops can justify any expense by pushing the fear button.
2019 New Energy Outlook by Bloomberg
estimates global peak coal consumption in year 2026.
Seven years.
How rapid will be the downslope after?
Depends primarily on policy/prosperity in Asia.
The chart at your link shows global electricity production from coal falling by half from 2026 to 2050 and an average annual decline rate of 2.73% per year (if we assume a simplistic constant exponential decline rate).
Note that Bloomberg tends to be a bit conservative in their estimates. The falling cost of wind and solar will likely lead to electricity production from coal to fall at twice this rate, in my opinion. Note that electricity production from natural gas is also likely to fall at a minimum rate of 3% per year from 2030 to 2050 and then may accelerate to 6% per year from 2050 to 2090. Fossil fuel use might continue in air and water transportation for a while, but hopefully falling population after 2070 and improved efficiency might reduce fossil fuel use to nearly zero by the 22nd century.
That’s all fine. Except I don’t think there are any guarantees that industrial civilization as we know it, will still be functioning in 2030, let alone 2050!
We are already seeing lethal wet bulb temperatures in Pakistan today!
I think it is a serious mistake to discount the possibility of RCP 8.5 by 2050, as we are on track for that now! I know you have mentioned that you don’t watch videos but That lecture I recently posted on Climate Change, Insect Biology, and the Challenges Ahead is an eye opener!
.
We could fall over the cliff at any time.
I’m thinking Pakistan will be first of the majors (energy, food, weather major problems, plus population overshoot ruled by religious fanatics), but it could be India or Indonesia.
2050 is awfully optimistic (the survivors, if any, will be trading with the tribe in the next valley.)
Meanwhile, areas of the Canadian Arctic permafrost are thawing rapidly, 70 years ahead of when scientists previously believed, as the climate crisis continues to push the planet towards dangerous tipping points.
These are the good times. Yet there are 9 million people dying of pollution each year and untold millions stunted and harmed by it. Reducing coal use is a good thing, yet reduction is nowhere near enough. Dropping the CO2e in the future from 1200 to 1050 will change little.
If one adds up all the people killed by modern pollution it far surpasses the black death of Europe of the 14th century.
The best is yet to come.
Sigh. Sorry Greta. Maybe it’s time to arm your followers?
TRUDEAU DECLARES CLIMATE EMERGENCY… THEN APPROVES MAJOR OIL PIPELINE
“Canada declared a national climate emergency on Monday. The next day, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave the green light to a massive oil sands pipeline.”
The number of people driving cars for hire has exploded over the last few years.
For sure a huge part, maybe most of this growth is the result of lots of people doing anything they can to earn a living.
But it’s also pretty much a foregone conclusion that a lot of people have discovered that they can now more easily afford a hired ride than they can a car of their own.
It’s likely autonomous cars will displace conventional cars as taxis within the next ten to twenty years.
In the meantime, another ten or twenty million people in the USA may conclude that it’s cheaper to call a conventional cab than it is to own a car, given that delivery services are getting to be ridiculously cheap and so many trips are for shopping and shopping alone.
I’ve had three packages dropped off this week, with the shipping costing me less than it would have cost me in gasoline to go to town.
It costs an arm and a leg to own a car these days, unless you have a place to work on it and know how, and can drive an old car.
You can buy a lot of rides for five hundred bucks per month, which is about as little as most people can expect to pay out to own a reasonably reliable car, including all the costs associated with ownership.
A hell of a lot of people are paying twice that much in depreciation alone.
“I’ve had three packages dropped off this week, with the shipping costing me less than it would have cost me in gasoline to go to town. ”
Bingo, that is one side of the equation few are taking into account. Not only that but a van full of packages is far more fuel efficient than a bunch of road ragers driving around and getting frustrated in traffic. These days nearly every time I go to a supermarket I see one of their staff filling a trolley from a list ready to be sent out. A couple of years ago I never did.
NAOM
Not only that but a van full of packages is far more fuel efficient than a bunch of road ragers driving around and getting frustrated in traffic.
Yep, and most of the major couriers are investing in electric vans… 😉
A interesting view on Iran and oil supply;
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/06/iran-decided-to-put-maximum-pressure-on-trump-here-is-how-it-will-do-it.html
We shall see—-
All I can say is that I’m growing increasingly weary of a global economy that runs on fossil fuels!
I have been witness to way too many really stupid American military excursions and wars around the world. There has to be a better way to run the world! Meanwhile the basic planetary support systems are under constant assault. I’m not sure how much more they can take. If they start to fail in a big way, all of this never ending struggle for power will be moot forevermore!
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
–Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
Ecopathology
Continued from here…
Of course I mention pesticides vis-a-vis arthropods as a bit of an aside to the broader issue of industrial agriculture and, as per The Union of Concerned Scientists.
One would have thought that I wouldn’t need to mention, except I guess for people like Fred, that The Union probably understands very well that there’s more to agricultural effects beyond pesticides.
The ‘nuance’ that Fred mentions seems more, ironically, for his relatively-limited take on your comment’s limited point where industrial agriculture is concerned.
It also appears that he can’t help himself with the ignore button and seems to keep turning it off and on where I’m concerned, thus, if so and ironically again, potentially limiting his understanding of the ‘nuance’ and flow of the discussion, and therefore of a certain level of reality, at the very least where POB threads are concerned.
By the way, I just came up with a term that already is in use for another concept or concepts but nevertheless seems to apply well to industrial agriculture and other forms of human activity that go against the ecosystem;
Ecopathology.
Where meaningless and infantile personal attacks are concerned, Fred (or Fernando G Magyar if you will) is without equal on POB.
Note the above quote for illustration, as well as the Peak Oil Barrel archives. This, no less, from someone who is apparently ~67 years old this year.
”Where meaningless and infantile personal attacks are concerned, Fred (or Fernando G Magyar if you will) is without equal on POB.”
Caelan, once upon a time, years ago, I tried to take you seriously.
But it’s as obvious as the sun at high noon that you are as dumb as a fence post, that you LITERALLY have NO understanding of the various physical three D world realities which determine what we can and cannot do to solve our economic and ecological problems.
I have never dealt with a person like you, personally, who is so apparently intelligent, well spoken, with a large vocabulary, etc, who is so obviously out to do SOMETHING…….. to further some goal or agenda …… but I have run across a few , in the political world. THEIR goals and agendas are typically easy to comprehend, and usually pretty simple. They’re out to sow FUD, and cultivate a following among those dumb enough to mistake their big words for wisdom.
It’s impossible to visualize you being the sort who might actually go off someplace and give up the comforts of modern life and live with a little band of worshipers, shitting in an outhouse built out of sawmill slabs, as I did as a small child, in a one or ( TWO room in my case ) shack without running water, as I did as a small child, actually WORKING in the dirt, getting all sweaty and callused, aching so bad you can’t sleep without getting drunk, as so many people I know even today must do. So that possibility is out.
And unless you ARE literally retarded, intellectually challenged as they used to say in my former PROFESSIONAL line of work, you can’t possibly believe anybody at all takes you seriously here in THIS forum.
Fred is BEYOND well respected by the readership here. He’s looked up to as a role model who knows what can or at least might be done to improve our situation.
LOL! Have I been outed? What am I going to do?
Yep, all my official personal documents have Fernando on them. So I guess that is my real name. It is a funny story. My Hungarian name and the name of my father is Nandor.
At some point while transiting through France during WWII due to some misunderstanding he was issued documents where his name was listed as Fernand. Given that Nando is short for Fernando in many Latin speaking countries it’s really not that much of a stretch.
When my father arrived in the US he was given the nickname Fred, apparently easier than Fernand or Nandor. As for myself, that name was soon applied to me as well! All my friends an family have called me Fred since I was about two years old, even my mother. I have on many occasions tried to use my real name only to find that once people have become acquainted with my other friends and family they usually end up calling me Fred as well.
Side note: One of my best friends is a Sicilian American auto mechanic, also known as Fred, (not his real name) we have often worked together on classic car restoration projects. We are known as Fred 1 and Fred 2, a reference to Dr. Seuss’ Thing One and Thing Two!
Anyways, I should probably just just go by the short form of my Hungarian name which is Nandi! Pronounced N’ah n dee.
Now everyone knows! 😉
You have my sympathy. For reasons lost in the dimness of time my parents started calling me “Jim”, apparently only weeks after officially naming me “Joseph” on my birth certificate. I’ve been making up stories to explain it for most of my 75 years.
ROFL!
Were your parents Jamaican by any chance? It is fairly common practice in Jamaica to put a name on a child’s birth certificate and then proceed to use a totally unrelated “pet” name for the rest of their lives. I have at least two female cousins who were like that, Paula/Betty and Grace/Camille. Sometimes if you refer to a person by the name on their birth certificate lots of people don’t know who you’re referring to ! Never could figure it out.
Names, here, like Pancho/Franciso cause me brain warps as I cannot see the link 🙁
NAOM
I got curious about that so I did a little research. This explanation sounds plausible. I assume you can read Spanish so you will be able to read the embedded links.
https://spanish.stackexchange.com/questions/17631/why-is-paco-the-equivalent-of-francisco
Amando de Miguel briefly states some theories in this article. I tend to favour the one pointing at the abbreviation of Phranciscus (the latinised version of Francisco de Asís’s nickname) as Ph.co in signs and inscriptions. This explains Paco which, relaxing the /k/ sound, becomes Pacho and, mixing this with the original n in the full name, gives Pancho. Versions in other language, such as the Aragonese Francho or the Italian Franco, can be explained also through abbreviation, including or not the relaxation of the /k/ sound.
The blog post ¿Cómo se llega de Francisco a Paco? expands a bit on the explanation, adding an interesting parallel between the proposed Ph.co or Phco and the current Fco., which we use in names such as Francisco Javier (usually abbreviated nowadays as Fco. Javier in writing).
Muchisimo gracias, muy interesante.
NAOM
muchísimas gracias (feminine plural; English is so easy – many is always many!)
Around here, muchisimo is used rather than muchisimas. Online translators seem to agree.
NAOM
NAOM, true, no hay reglas fijas 🙂
(there are no fixed rules)
La verdad.
Frankly, I don’t really give a shit. I found the ‘Fernando G Magyar’ site by accident (since we both occupy two different forums) via some sort of XML file if recalled and just thought to post it, figuring, rightly so in retrospect, that it might gain some traction, if only as navel-gazing material for the subject-in-question.
In any case, quite a lot of threaded hullaballoo from some hereon who are supposed to have me ignorance-buttoned, ay? It’s like crashing a granny digestive biscuits and Metamucil tea club or something and then the sudden clucking and smell of urine.
While this forum is a pale version of its former self, with many good commenters having left, including myself at least where the frequency of my viewing and comments are concerned…
…I’m unsure you realize that it would be complimentary to not be taken seriously by some of the leftovers on this forum, including you.
I mean, come on.
Ironically, it would appear that many, if not most, so-called and/or self-described farmers, or agronomists or whatever have you don’t know how to farm.
The word, incompetent, which comes to mind, comes nowhere near close to describing a lot of it.
I don’t care if you have 30+ years of ‘experience’ doing what you call farming:
People spend their entire lives doing things ass-backwards, as well as entire societies.
And suggesting, or insinuating, along with Michael B, that, to paraphrase, we are stuck with industrial agro doesn’t do anyone or the planet any favors, such as for getting off industrial agro and exploring other superior forms.
Ohhkeedohhkee… Someone might need to get out more… or something.
I’m a misfit. I want in!
(…..though I stay pretty busy misfitting things.)
So you want to fit in, then, Ghung?
Hi Caelan,
I am a bit confused if you are replying to my comment in the previous thread, or if you are replying to Fred Magyar.
But if I assume the former, then I think I would agree with you that there is more to it than just pesticides. I am pretty sure that many would single out pesticides, but it’s an important point in the PNAS paper. Hence my reason for quoting that section.
Otherwise, I am not really sure what you mean. Maybe you could clarify your point if I am mistaken.
Both, chilyb, if both links there lead to the same comment here.
You and I would appear to agree.
As for the apparently still-chafing Fred/Fernando/WhoeverTheFuck character, he just decided, as per chased (see the archives if you really must) by myself to run away and, from behind his door within his ignorance-buttoned room, (rather than, sportingly, face-to-face, so to speak) to continue his incessant nonsensical whining/blubbering ‘oh boo-hoo’ about Caelan this and Caelan that.
Further evidence of insect extinction:
https://scroll.in/article/926667/in-india-insects-are-slowly-disappearing-and-that-is-a-cause-for-worry
Yeah, the data is slowly trickling in from all over the world and it is not looking good.
The foundation of basically all terrestrial food webs are plants and insects. If you take them out you have pretty much pulled the rug out from under most ecosystems that ultimately support humans.
Having grown up in the tropics, to me it is especially scary, that tropical insects are the ones that seem to be most negatively affected by even relatively slight increases in global average temperatures.
Iron mike, for some people, evidence doesn’t matter, and for others, despite their token greenwashed ‘concerns’ for nature, when it comes to their actions and/or philosophy (like mining for materials to make solar panels or electric cars for example, or pouring pesticides all over everything), nature doesn’t matter, either.
You’ll notice that natural is missing from those ‘reasons’.
I STRONGLY recommend that all the super liberal dickheads of this world who go around bashing Ayn Rand as a nut case actually READ her books, rather than acting precisely like the CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN DICKHEADS who insist the Mueller report exonerates Trump, without having reading it.
I guarantee that if you are a super liberal dickhead who knows even a little bit about science, politics, technology, and human nature, you will come away from reading Atlas Shrugged with a profound respect for her insights into REALITY, into the ways governments can be subverted by special interests, left wing in her case, as is the current case today in Venezuela, and as was the case for most of the last century in the old USSR and China. Her PERSONAL background, and her time and place in history pretty much guaranteed her NOVELS would be focused on catastrophically incompetent left leaning governments.
But what she said about the left applies equally to the right, NOW, at OUR time and OUR place in history right here today in the USA. Corruption, cronyism, abuse of power, and dictatorial ambitions are just as likely to manifest on the right wing as on the left.
The political mess that constitutes our federal executive in the USA today bears a REMARKABLE resemblance to the government as painted in the NOVEL titled ” Atlas Shrugged”. Catastrophically incompetent, controlled by special interests, willing to do anything to maintain, increase, and consolidate power.
Of course in her novel the outcome is that the productive element of society withdraws, retreats to a secret world, leaving the old order to collapse, but it’s JUST a novel.
Novels shouldn’t be used as blueprints to construct a society, any more than collections of religious dogma should be used for that purpose. A novel should be used as an intellectual tool to help you THINK, a tool to help you expand your intellectual horizons.
The collection of CONSERVATIVE DICKHEADS , the ones who want unbridled and unregulated capitalism, are as ignorant as my pet rooster, who thinks the sun comes up because he commands it do so by crowing don’t know any more than a little child.But THEY do have a goal……. that being to get rich and stay rich at the expense of the us.
The political left long ago decided to trash Rand, because she saw thru the realities of communism. BIG mistake. Even the farthest left of lefties nowadays generally realizes that communism worked only for the elite who were in positions of power, and not very well even for THEM.
Capitalism, unregulated, isn’t working any better today for the people of the world, than communism worked for the people behind the Iron Curtain for most of the last century. Communism fell, to be replaced by something all too similar to what’s taking control of the government and economy in the western world today…… oligarchs, strong men, generals, bankers, politicians who understand how to lead people around by their prejudices and their ignorance.
What the fuck brought this on? Who mentioned Ayn Rand? No, I haven’t read the complete Atlas Shrugged. Only about a quarter of it. I just couldn’t plow through that much bullshit. I haven’t read The Fountainhead either but I did see the movie. More bullshit.
But for the record, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are good examples of liberal governments. Venezuela is a dictatorship, not a representative government. There is nothing liberal about Venezuela.
I would never defend corrupt capitalism any more than I would defend corrupt communism. Capitalism is the economy, not the government. Norway, Denmark, and Sweden have capitalist economies and liberal governments.
Fascism is the opposite of communism, not capitalism. Capitalism just means laissez-faire economics. Laissez-faire just means “left alone”. But some things cannot be left alone. Regulations are sometimes an absolute necessity. Corporations simply cannot dump their waste products in the rivers. But some dickhead republicans cry “Communism” when the government tries to regulate industries like coal-fired power plants, or chemical companies, or banks. That is Libertarian bullshit. We must have regulations.
Libertarianism, that is Ayn Rand and Rand Paul government/economics, is pure bullshit.
Signed, Ron Patterson, Liberal Dickhead
Ayn Rand understood the role of energy. She had John Galt invent a source of infinite energy.
Well, I did read all of Atlas Shrugged. The idea of the title was that “Atlas” was the .1%, and Rand believed that the .1% created all the value in the economy, and that the average working person was a parasite, living off the value created by the .1%.
I could be wrong, but I understood her to believe that democracy was fatally flawed because only the .1% was smart enough to run things, and that if John Galt disappeared into his mountain refuge then the rest of society would collapse.
Another thought: my understanding is that the USSR was not communist. They called themselves a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. A dictatorship. They thought communism was something that would arrive in many decades later – they weren’t all that clear how that would happen. Marx thought that communism would arrive after centuries of capitalism – he didn’t anticipate the extraordinary incompetence of the Russian royal family, which brought on a premature revolution.
If I got that wrong, I’m sure someone will correct it…
… didn’t stop her from claiming her Old Age Security and Senior’s Health Benefits in her old age.
Ayn was Russian bourgeois born in St Petersburg 1905. I’d suggest that somewhat explains why she wrote what she did.
Communism is outstanding at a family or small group level.
But almost as bad as christianity, as soon as it becomes a big organization,
it has the potential to become the greatest of tyrannical vehicles.
Another liberal dikehead….I hate labels.
And yes I completely agree OFM- “Capitalism, unregulated, isn’t working any better today for the people of the world, than communism worked for the people behind the Iron Curtain for most of the last century”
When I visited Jay Hanson in Hawaii we discussed whether or not a free market existed in nature and would eventually prevail.
In Biology.
Definition: Stability (of ecosystem) refers to the capability of a natural system to apply self—regulating mechanisms so as to return to a steady state after an outside disturbance. Source Publication: Glossary of Environment Statistics, Studies in Methods, Series F, No. 67, United Nations, New York, 1997.
In economics, a free market is a system in which the prices for goods and services are ….. Advocates of the free market contend that government intervention hampers economic growth by disrupting the natural allocation of resources…
Source Wikipedia
As I have often argued continual growth is not compatible with long term stable systems, be they natural, such as ecosystems or artificial such as economic. Growth if not controlled, ultimately leads to collapse!
Cheers!
HI Everybody, and ESPECIALLY RON,
I love you all, like brothers, and nobody should take me TOO seriously when I make a comment such as this one.
Once in a while, I really LIKE to jerk some chains, and provoke some fiery responses, but not just for the fun of it.
Ron, you are a thoroughly decent human being, without a doubt, and most assuredly not a dickhead of any sort.
But you DO tend to see things as black and white, and the filter you use seems to consist solely of your political convictions, which by the way, are actually much the same as my own.
You have just proven it by making it obvious that you are not able to read a novel without interpreting it as either pro or con, in terms of your political convictions.
Now insofar as her prose style is concerned, etc, Rand is a hack. But she’s right up there, if you are willing to set aside your liberal prejudices, as an anti utopian writer.
You don’t seem to realize that bad governments can arise from EITHER wing, or any faction, of the people who hold positions as leaders or bureaucrats or technocrats in just about ANY system of government.
Rand came along at a time when such august liberally oriented publications as the NEW YORK TIMES were running articles describing the old USSR as humanity’s best hope and salvation. Look it up. If she were young again, and happened to be the child of let us say a couple of high school teachers in New York City, she would likely have written a novel equally as hard on free marketers and conservative types as she was in her day on socialists. We tend to be fruits of the vine on which we are born, you know.
Liberals can be as obstinate and as stupid as conservatives.
A novel is JUST a novel. It’s NOT a political blueprint, unless you choose to make it so. THAT’ S up to the individual reader…… unless he lets somebody else do his thinking for him.
Anybody with an OPEN mind can read a novel, or a short story, for the lessons and insights to be gained by doing so, without immediately either interpreting it as holy writ ( hardcore conservative dickheads ) or sacrilege from the devil….( hard core liberals ).
But it’s also up to the establishment, long term, to say what happens to a writer, and the leftish liberal establishment long ago decided to demonize Rand. The rightish conservative establishment decided to elevate her to sainthood.
Both sides, in this respect, have their heads up their ass so far they will NEVER see daylight, because both sides insist on a partisan interpretation of her books. NEITHER side is interested in reading them for what’s to be learned from them.
If you want to know why some fairly serious Christian men say it’s ok for Trump to abuse women, well, they say you liberals defended Clinton when he did so, for partisan reasons, so why shouldn’t they do the same……. for THEIR OWN partisan reasons? In the old KJB, they call that sort of behavior an eye for an eye, you know.
The truth, if any objective truth can be said to exist, virtually always lies between the positions held by the political extremes.
Socialists, PURE SOCIALISTS, have their heads as far up their asses as the pure tooth and claw no regulation capitalists. History has amply proven that neither extreme will work, because PEOPLE are in charge.
What DOES work is socialism in terms of basic human services and needs, and regulated capitalism in terms of actual production of goods and services. Western Europe has done pretty well taking that middle road……. better than the USA, mostly, even though we have a huge advantage in terms of natural resources of almost any description, plus our enemies are far away. We haven’t had to fight a war on our own turf since the mid eighteen sixties.
Caelan is right that our industrial agricultural system is unsustainable, long term. I agree with him about that. But he’s too stupid, or maybe just to boneheaded, to actually acknowledge I’m right about us being STUCK with it for now.
This is NOT to say that there aren’t LOTS of things we can do to make it last without it collapsing until perhaps we can come up with technologies that will enable us to produce food sustainably… sometime down the road. I will have more to say about this general topic later tonight, most likely.
Rand came along at a time when such august liberally oriented publications as the NEW YORK TIMES were running articles describing the old USSR as humanity’s best hope and salvation. Look it up.
No, I will not look it up. Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged in 1957, a time when cold war worries were at its height. Many schools were practicing “Duck and Cover” in case the Soviet Union sent a nuclear weapon our way. I simply do not believe, that in that atmosphere, the New York Times was actively supporting the former USSR. That would be akin to treason.
Mac, you cannot just willy-nilly make such a claim without one iota of evidence to back it up.
But if you have a link to any such article I would be glad to read it.
Here’s a reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor#Denial_outside_the_USSR
Not sure if this is what OFM is getting at, but this is something that could fit what OFM is talking about.
Walter Duranty, wrote in the New York Times, in 1932, “any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda”, and that “there is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.”
1932 no less. Ayn Rand wrote in the late 1950s, a quarter of a century later. No, this had not one damn thing to do with what Mac was talking about.
That is not to mention the fact that “widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition” is a perfect definition of starvation.
The quote above is from the archives, but links are currently not working.
Bit of trivia to go with your morning coffee.
GREENLAND LOST 2 BILLION TONS OF ICE YESTERDAY
Over 40% of Greenland experienced melting yesterday, with total ice loss estimated to be more than 2 gigatons (a gigaton is equal to 1 billion tons).
“All signs seem to be pointing to a large melt season.” Jason Box, an ice climatologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, predicted in late May that “2019 will be a big melt year for Greenland.” Box pointed out that this year had unusually early season melt days in April, and the melt season was “happening about three weeks earlier than average, and earlier than the record-setting melt year of 2012.” In addition to the early season melt, the snow cover is already lower than average in Western Greenland and combining these factors “mean that 2019 is likely going to be a very big melt year, and even the potential to exceed the record melt year of 2012.”
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/14/us/greenland-sudden-ice-melt-wxc/index.html
Yeah! I had just seen that…
How about this? Speaking of (for) Professor Box I quote: “In Oct. 2018, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a shocking warning that we have just 12 years to avoid climate catastrophe. But is it already too late? When we lose the reflective cover of the arctic sea ice, when we lose Greenland, the climate system globally unravels. And it’s going to create the kind of problems that will make it pretty hard to govern society: the migrations, the droughts. What’s at risk here is practically civilization.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2019/06/climate-hackers-190613105804336.html
Perhaps a somewhat OT response to your post but George Mobus has posted a link to his latest book. Well worth a read!
https://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/theory-sapience-using-systems-science-understand-nature-wisdom-human-mind/
A THEORY OF SAPIENCE:
Using Systems Science to Understand the
Nature of Wisdom and the Human Mind
George Mobus
Okay Fred, I’ll read Professor Mobus’ full book. But I fear it will only depress me (even more). Wouldn’t it be better to just spend my morning playing Solitaire? No, don’t bother answering that. 😉
LOL!
“Facts are stupid things.”
— Ronnie Reagan, 1988
And people question my apparent obsession with EVs and renewables? I am in full panic mode. I just can’t show it or they’ll put me in the insane asylum! Most people seem content to just carry on with BAU. Gautam Adani wants to mine more coal in Australia, The Chinese are building new coal fired plants all over the developing world as part of their Belt and Road Initiative, the vehicle manufacturers are continuing to make record numbers of ICEs and the folks involved in the oil business are only too happy to supply the fuel. Then people will say I’m nuts because I see a opportunity to supply electricity and transport with huge reductions in CO2 emissions.
I have installed PV and reduced my resource use as low as I can without withdrawing from society and some people in my neck of the woods think I’m strange. It will bring me no satisfaction to say, “See, that’s what I was worried about” when TSHTF.
Yesterday evening I witnessed a school leaving ceremony for some 13th graders leaving an all boys school that, is the alma mater of many political and business leaders in my neck of the woods. So much hope for the future and no inkling of any resource or other limits. Party on!
I am in full panic mode. I just can’t show it or they’ll put me in the insane asylum!
I’m no longer in the closet about being in full panic mode. I have come out to my closest friends and family and I have made it clear that I think anyone who is not in full panic mode is the one who should be put in the insane asylum!
Perhaps they are just being kind but they seem to be slowly coming around to my way of seeing things! 😉
Cheers!
My friend,
I believe one has to be as objective as possible. Blind optimism never helped anything (except the stock market).
One should never report based on feelings.
If it happens to be more negativity then that’s what it is.
My criticism of you was that one has to report what’s actually happening in the world even it is genocidal, suicidal actions or whatever. Your advocation of EVs and renewables tells me, you are still in support of people consuming. You want BAU as long as it is “green”. Correct me if i am wrong, but that’s what i’ve gathered from your posts. I think the root of the problem is human consumption. You’ll never have your cake and eat it too, you can’t fight against the laws of nature.
Our existence is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. So if we are biologically programmed to self destruct, then that’s what will happen. Again fighting against nature is futile. That is my worthless opinion.
Your advocation of EVs and renewables tells me, you are still in support of people consuming. You want BAU as long as it is “green”. Correct me if i am wrong, but that’s what i’ve gathered from your posts.
Not quite sure if you are responding to me or Islandboy.
However advocating for EVs and renewables does not necessarily mean one is in favor of BAU and continuation of consumption. I see EVs and renewables as the basis for a potential radical systemic, economic, political and social transformation with far reaching implications. Think distributed peer to peer power generation, no personal ownership of transport vehicles just for starters.
BAU got us to this point. It may be an alcoholic drug addicted mother but we can’t just throw the baby out with the bath water while both the baby and the water are still in the birth canal!
I don’t think mother BAU can or should be saved but we need to make some kind of plan as to how to save the baby and make sure it doesn’t turn into just another little monster.
And no, I don’t have the slightest clue as to how that can be achieved, we’re all just winging it at this point.
Cheers!
Sorry Fred I should’ve made it clear i was addressing islandboy.
I hear what you are saying. I don’t want to generalize but look at the country i reside in Australia. People keep voting in political parties who don’t even believe in climate change but believe the earth is 6000 years old, and god associated miracles. Look at the adani mine, the political party voted in fast tracked its approval. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic. Bottom line, people in general don’t give a shit about things unless it directly affects them in the extreme near term. That’s what i see. Not saying what i see is fact, but it seems to be the general way the world is going.
I believe this consumption drug as you put it, is part of our biological programming. Only with proper education could we curb it slightly. But to be honest people in power do the opposite. The whole economic system is a bloodthirsty beast, reflective of our inner nature multiplied by orders of magnitude. Look at what’s happening in western countries whose birthrates have flat lined. To keep economic growth rolling, they are importing migrants so the bloodthirsty beast can continue its consumption. I have read that even Japan whose population growth is negative started to importing migrants. So politicians can boast about GDP numbers and “positive” economic data.
I believe the system is built to grow endlessly, like a ponzi scheme. Failure of such a system for the scientifically literate is inevitable.
Mike,
People care a lot about things, even things very far from them. Ask anyone what they think of Trump, or Obama, or Iran, or abortion rights. You’ll get an impassioned, long reply.
The problem, of course, is that many of them are misinformed. Badly misinformed. That’s a problem of media ownership and management, and corporate and governmental leadership.
But…people care!
Did you read the part of my post about the school leaving ceremony? Experiences like that give me the impression that very, very few people know or care about the stuff we discuss every day on this web site. Declining insect populations, who cares, increasing Greenland ice melt, ditto, declining bio-diversity, what does that matter?
I don’t have any children and if I have no hope for humanity, why should I participate in the continuation of what I view as an existential problem? My experience with PV has brought an epiphany with it. Our ability to harness solar energy in real time, as opposed to using millions of years of solar energy in the form of FF and biomass, is limited by the amount of technology (solar PV and Wind) we can deploy. If one wants to consume a lot of energy, one ought to deploy a commensurate amount of renewable energy resources or one really ought not to have the right to consume energy. Right now some of the most profligate energy consumers don’t know and/or don’t care where their energy comes from.
At the moment access to energy is determined by wealth as we know it. Wealth as we know it currently is determined by who can best make money out of the current economic system, no matter how far removed from energy production an entity is. In this system entertainers, lawyers, bankers and CEOs can do quite well for themselves despite not having a clue about energy.
Having your own little piece of the energy harvesting pie gives one a different perspective. What if wealth was determined by how much renewable energy one produces instead of how much FF one consumes? If civilization does not collapse, a situation not far from that is likely to arise within the next decade. What happens when oil goes into decline? What happens when EVs cost less than conventional cars? What happens if the cost of electricity from renewable sources falls significantly below the cost of the incumbents? We will find out over the next decade or so!
Since I believe that most of the population of the world does not know or care about the destruction being wreaked on the planet (Greta Thundberg and her ilk excepted), why not introduce technology that will result in reduced CO2 emissions on a massive scale if nothing else? The only alternative I’m seeing is a continuation of BAU until our global civilization hits one brick wall or another.
Something needs to be done if we even want to pretend to care and I’m all in on Green New Deals and such the like, even if they turn out to be futile. I’d like to think that the human race is capable of attempting to forestall what at least some people have been warning about.
Maybe I have way too much faith in the human race!
“Maybe I have way to[o] much faith in the human race!”
Maybe you do! I believe “your Island” is Jamaica, Jamaica with one of highest murder rates in the world, Jamaica with an energy intensive Aluminum industry, Jamaica with God only knows how many tourists flying in-and-out every day. If you can be an optimist in such an environment, I’m impressed.
Cheers,
I posted a version of the graph below in a comment responding to Iron Mike in the previous petroleum thread (Oil Shock Model Scenarios). The version below adds a line for total petroleum consumption and vertical grid lines.
The graph shows what happened to Bauxite processing (into aluminum oxide, not aluminum) during the GFC. Petroleum consumption for that activity plummeted when three of the four bauxite to alumina processing plants were shut down by the majority shareholder, UC Rusal. The plant that did not shut down was jointly operated by Alcoa and a state owned entity. Information on the plants can be found at the link below:
http://www.jbi.org.jm/pages/bauxite_alumina_plants
Two of the three plants has been reopened with the largest plant in the island changing hands from UC Rusal to a Chinese company JISCO. The plant that was not shut down is having a NG fired plant built to supply power instead of using petroleum based fuel.
All in all, Jamaica has an economy that is extremely dependent on a healthy global economy, tourism being the other big contributor to economic activity, apart from the bauxite/alumina industry.
Included in the areas that tourists don’t get to see, are areas with extreme, desperate poverty, areas that contribute significantly to population growth, with very high unemployment. These areas produce individuals that see very little value in human life unless it is a direct benefit to them. In such places, life is definitely not precious, hence the high murder rates.
On the other hand the island has gone from no utility scale wind power in 2004 to 100 MW in 2016. Solar PV has gone from virtually nothing in 2007 to at least 87 MW, probably close to 100 MW with the start of operations of the latest 37 MW solar farm.
There are 12 Nissan EVs in the island that I am aware of and hopefully more EVs will come with the announcement by the local electric utility that they are going to be installing public charging points every 30 km along major routes. Just a cursory look at a map of the eastern half of the island, about 20 locations would be sufficient to cover the entire eastern half of the island.
Based on what I’ve witnessed over the past fifteen years or so, there is a glimmer of hope and I’ll take anything I can get!
Hi Iron Mike,
This wasn’t addressed to me, but I’m in the same boat as Island Boy on it I believe.
“Your advocation of EVs and renewables tells me, you are still in support of people consuming. You want BAU as long as it is “green”. Correct me if i am wrong”
I don’t see it this way.
I would like to see a brisk, but gradual downsizing of the human imprint on the world. That includes population most certainly. By any stretch of the imagination, this is not business as usual. There is no blueprint or economic plan for this kind of downsizing transition.
But I do hope it is gradual, and that monstrosity events such holocaust and famine can be avoided. I am not optimistic on this, however. I am not optimistic that humanity will conduct itself wisely or with restraint, based on past performance.
And humanity has grossly failed to embark on this downsizing project in time. To have a high chance of a smooth transition, downsizing should have started in the 1970’s. One family-one child should have been a global initiative for 50 years, prior to being re-evaluated. That would not have been business as usual, but would have been a good first step.
But humans are not about to just disappear in timestep with oil, and the other fossil fuels.
People will be around. Lets talk about the next 30 years- Many billions of people, and they will do their best to have and use energy.
The way I see it, best to have the energy come from as much non-wood renewables as possible. Better than coal and wood in just about every way. If Europe has no alternative, they will strip that continent bare of trees within 30 years, just to keep warm.
And the the more we get around and move stuff with EV’s the less damage we do, mile for mile, to the environment.
But this is no argument for BAU. We will need to get by with much less than half the miles we do now, per capita, I estimate. We will need to be much more local in our consumption.
We will not come close to replacing lost peak fossil fuel energy over the next 30 years. Surely not at the current pace.
But if we transition hard [full scale development of solar, wind, EV’s for example], there will be quite a lot of energy for available for critical aspects of living, in many places.
Depends on the level of effort. Depends on the level of urgency.
But it will not be business as usual.
Things we take for granted will be given up because of cost, scarcity, or perhaps regulation.
The human footprint will decline, one way or another. Nothing usual about it.
Hickory,
The US average MPG is only 23 (for existing vehicles on the road, not the average new car, which is around 25MPG). So, the US could reduce it’s passenger fuel consumption by 50% by getting to 46MPG – that’s less efficient than a Prius.
The US average number of vehicle occupants is only 1.2. So, the US could reduce it’s passenger fuel consumption by 50% by raising that average number of occupants to only 2.4. That’s not that hard to do with carpooling.
Carpooling. OMG! Well, 11% of commuters carpool today. That’s more than use mass transit. That number could easily be raised with smartphone apps that match people up: about 80% of all US adults now have smart phones, not far behind the number that have TVs.
Or, the US could go to an average of 32MPG, and an average vehicle occupancy rate of 1.7. Not to mention a wide range of other efficiency and conservation strategies like online shopping, mass transit, staycations, etc., etc., etc.
Most of this could be done very quickly. We could relatively painlessly reduce oil consumption by 25% in months; 50% in 10 years; and 80% in 20 years, if we really got organized about it. That, of course, would require good leadership, something we don’t have right now.
But…from a technical and economic point of view, it wouldn’t be that hard to do!
There is a tendency to understate or take average probabilities for the future effects of climate chaos and other predicaments we face. Time and again the physical and biological world has surprised most of the scientists. Meantime many people and their leaders just burrow their heads deeper into the sand.
I expect we will be blindsided again and again over the next couple of decades, with the general human response being limited until backed against a wall. When panic sets in wrong decisions are made.
Even now society has made massive error after massive error during good times, even when presented with knowledge that refutes such choices.
Hi Nick,
Agree with the gist of what you are saying. Lots of things could get done. Humanity could eat lower on the food chain. And give up frivolous use of energy. And treat soil with respect.
But I do not think the earth can handle the mass of humanity that built up by burning a huge slug of stored up fossil fuel. And I do not think we can keep up the business as usual regime, at this scale.
Its unsustainable.
Deep into overshoot.
And the damage to the biosphere too great.
We have no panacea. Other than to downsize. Rapidly.
We have no panacea. Other than to downsize. Rapidly.
And that is exactly what we will do. And it will not be voluntary.
It’s been holding steady between 30 and 45 % for a few days now.
http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/
probaly stay in the 30 to 45 % range for several days more.
https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx_frames/gfs/ds/gfs_arc-lea_t2max_10-day.png
Hint:
Capitalism, from its origins in the 14th Century among the Italian City States, has never existed without a strong central state to enforce its rules.
It is the difference between user value (which is produced) and exchange value (what it is sold for).
The capitalist takes that sum. He (or she) does none of the work.
I could go on, but won’t.
Why not?
I liked Rand when I was 16- being a dick head asshole is cool when you are 16– however as life and reality moves on, one gains knowledge (sometimes), and one adapts to it.
Right, markets are inherent unstable, because it isn’t in the interest of the participants to maintain it. For example, it is in the interest of the supply side to work together to increase prices. So with out government intervention, there is no market.
Another issue that naive market fanboys ignore is that property rights are imaginary (ho can you “own” a mountain or an idea?) but enforced by government. You hear them rambling on about the evils of fiat currency, but property also exists by government fiat. And without that government fiat, there is no market.
I don’t think people are ready for that kind of disclosure. The fact that their whole culture and society is a pretend world, enforced by hired thugs.
If they ever found out how much of the population is actually disposable they would just ignore it and think it was a crazy idea.
“I don’t think people are ready for that kind of disclosure. The fact that their whole culture and society is a pretend world, enforced by hired thugs.”
Anybody with an attention span longer than sixty seconds might enjoy this link. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/07/rough-men/
It brought to mind the supposed Orwell quote which probably is not a true quote, which I first read as ” Good mean sleep peacefully in their beds because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
Orwell is generally and rightfully considered to be the best and foremost anti utopian writer, period. I think so myself, and I have read every antiutopian novel I have ever heard of, excepting ones written within the last decade or two.
A lot of people near and dear to me have worn the uniform of my country, and while our leaders have often abused their positions AS our leaders, by misusing these men and women, one should think carefully and long before describing them as thugs. ( This remark is not aimed at you, GF, but at people in general who are as Kipling put it, ” I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’beer,
The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
…
O makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken sodgers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.”
It’s Tommy this, and Tommy that, until you NEED Tommy.
Incidentally, you ( the rhetorical you ) are not really well read in respect to antiutopian literature until you have read Rand.
Of course you have to be able to set aside your political prejudices, taught to you ( rhetorical you again ) to benefit from reading her.
If you want to understand Rand, read this. Of course if you have MADE YOUR MIND UP, and don’t WANT to learn anything new that might contradict what you currently believe, as ( rhetorical ) liberal dickhead, you won’t read it, anymore than a Trump supporter will read the Mueller report.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella)
Is it as good as Brave New World or 1984?
No….. but she beat Huxley to it.
All of us, MYSELF INCLUDED, know a LOT of things that just aren’t true, which brings the classic med school graduation speech joke to mind. The speaker tells the new docs that half of what they’ve been taught is wrong…. but nobody knows WHICH half.
I will be back in a few minutes with something that is apt to surprise the SHIT out of most of the regulars here….. and most of the regulars here are technically literate.
Ha, no one guards me while I sleep except my dog. Either I or someone else would be long dead if my house was broken into at night. The police would arrive to log the scene and gather their evidence. Someone would be blamed after the fact. No protection, only threat and process.
Short circuiting natural selection is not a good thing.
You are right though, OFM, I should not try to bring forward advanced concepts on this forum.
Back to climate chaos and ecological pap.
I seriously doubt that even half the people who claim to have read Ayn Rand actually have. It’s unreadable.
@Hightrek and others,
I laughed at your Aynie R comment as I too, read AR when I was in the high school dickhead search phase. Now, on the verge of 64 please just give me some good old entertainment like Thomas Perry, or straight non-fiction about almost anything.
However, what I am sceptical about are other people’s agendas, especially when they tell me the oughts…not the zero oughts, but the we/you oughta do this or that. Or, as Bob Dylan once coined 50? years ago….”everybody wants you to be just like them”. Which brings me to EVs, solar, and Island Boy saying, (paraphrase) “isn’t it a good idea to remove a bunch of FF from the environment”?, infering that those who can do solar should for the sake of everyone else. I guess…….. But here is the rub in my books. “Most people tend to think of energy in terms of heat and light and transport,” said Toby Peters, visiting professor of power and the cold economy at the University of Birmingham. “But more and more, it’s going to be about cold. Demand for cold is already huge, it’s growing fast, and we’re meeting it in basically the same way we’ve been doing for a century. Cold is the Cinderella of the energy debate. If we don’t change the way we do it, the consequences are going to be dramatic.”
And this little gem, “The US uses more energy to keep their buildings cool, than the energy used in all of Africa.”
“The growing use of air conditioners in homes and offices around the world will be one of the top drivers of global electricity demand over the next three decades, according to new analysis by the International Energy Agency that stresses the urgent need for policy action to improve cooling efficiency.”
I live on the BC west coast. In my parochial world, solar does not work as needed or advertised. EVs don’t have the range. Sure, a panel and batt bank will keep some LEDs lit up at night, but in the summer I get up at 4:00am and it is already getting light, and light enough until bedtime. In winter, when lighting might be needed, solar doesn’t produce worth a tinker’s damn. Lighting doesn’t use much energy, anyway. Heat? Super insulation, good windows, and an excellent woodstove takes care of that. Cooling? Screened windows and a westerly. Food supply? We have huge gardens and greenhouses, but let’s face it I drive right by the local goat and pork producer at the summer market on my way to town in order to buy what we can afford. Our local boutique/slum grass fed beef producer charges double what the sales flyer advertise of industrial ag. Fish? Well, I can get my own salmon because of where I live, and I do, but I just got back from the west coast of the Island where I watched people fishing in their $100,000 dollar sporties. You can buy a lot of fish for 100k in my books. Plus, they all had 200-300 hp of 4 stroke outboards pushing smoke to get to where the fish are.
I’m sick of the oughts and oughtas and guilt. It’s getting to the point where just being human is inferred to be a curse, especially on this blog. Scourge. EVs? Last week I drove my restored 38 year old Westfalia for a 3 day trip to the remote beaches. I ran it on refined Alberta bitumen at $1.529/L Canadian. My trip cost $115. I lit a campfire at night and had a few drinks with my wife in the evening. When the no-see-ums and mossies started to emerge I thought of you guys, this blog, and the latest mantra of declining insect populations. Well, they aren’t declining around here, just ask my swallows and bats.
There is a point to this rant, and it’s this. I am reserving judgement. I am reserving judgement on others and on myself. I am not going to feel guilt for being human and for being alive; consuming. Okay, we limit our town trips and we don’t buy a whole bunch of stuff, but I am choosing to go my own way and find my own truth. ‘My’ river (I live on a river) is too low, and I worry and hope for the forecasted rain next week. And, most likely it will come and the fish runs will spawn a week or two later than years past. But for now I will live simply and learn to accept this life as a gift for where we are lucky enough to have ended up. I am not a scourge, nor are my 2 children. I refuse to pound the pedantic guilt drum like a bitter cranky old man, and see only the wrongs. This year we have 5 houses of nesting swallows, had hundreds of hummers, and the insects are alive and well, “Just ask the bats and every bird working all day long being alive”. That’s how I will live going forward, like a bird (maybe), and not always believing everything I read or do what I am told to do by others.
respectfully, Paul S (have a great day…I plan to 🙂
Good day Paulo,
Yeh, if I lived up your way, solar would be way down on my list of purchases as well, way below insulation.
“I live on the BC west coast. In my parochial world, solar does not work as needed or advertised. EVs don’t have the range.”
But further south, it is very useful. Regarding cooling, it is very convenient that peak heating load comes when the sun is streaming in, fairly well matched. Teams up with a heat pump very well, since they work as air conditioners in addition to heating.
And regarding EV range, well for the vast majority of trips in the daily life of people, 200 miles is plenty. Sure beats a donkey when the petrol gets scarce, or expensive.
You are in a rare zone. Hydroelectricity, plentiful petrol produced in the country, plenty of clean water, low population density, salmon out the wazoo.
Not many people have the wonderful combination of factors that you do.
Enjoy!
By all means, we should all live our lives to the best of our abilities and circumstance! So enjoy!
As for:
When the no-see-ums and mossies started to emerge I thought of you guys, this blog, and the latest mantra of declining insect populations. Well, they aren’t declining around here, just ask my swallows and bats.
Enjoy them while you can. BC is not immune to insect decline! So do everything in your power to protect them!
https://conservancy.bc.ca/2018/07/why-be-bat-friendly/
Because many insect populations are declining in BC due to agricultural and pollutant stresses, bats have been negatively impacted. One-half of BC bats are considered species at risk including Townsend’s big-eared bat, Corynorhinus townsendii; bats are protected under the Wildlife Act but this protection does not necessarily extend to their habitat or food sources.
I take no offense but, would like to point out part of what my “crusade” is all about:
“And this little gem, “The US uses more energy to keep their buildings cool, than the energy used in all of Africa.”
That is almost the whole point of the graph below that I post in each edition of the report I post on the EIA’s Electric Power Monthly every month. Every year there are two peaks in electricity demand in the US, one in January and one between July and August. The mid-winter peak in January is as a result of heating and lighting over the long winter nights while the midsummer peak is mostly air conditioning.
Now if one looks at the bump in solar production in the summer months, observing the difference in scale of the right axis, the difference in winter and summer yield from solar was roughly 5 TWh. The difference between overall demand in spring and summer is a little over 100 TWh so for solar to supply all of the difference in electricity demand between spring and summer it would have to generate about 20 times as much as it did in 2019.
Looking at it through the lens of exponential growth, four doublings would take the amount generated to 80 TWh with 160 TWh after five doublings. Solar output has been doubling every two to three years in the US and with costs continuing to fall as much as they have recently, it should be safe to assume that adoption rates would not decline. This would mean that in less than ten years solar will be generating 100 TWh more energy in summer than it does in winter. Based on that logic, I will stick my neck out and predict that by 2030, the entire additional demand due to air conditioning will be satisfied by solar energy.
The fact is, for that to happen solar will be producing a lot more electricity in winter as well. If it were to produce twenty times as much as it does now, we would be looking at roughly 100 TWh per month. That amount is roughly the same amount that coal contributed to the US grid in January 2019.
The coal lobby will do everything in their power to see that this does not happen. IMO it is unlikely they will meet with much success in the face of unfavorable market forces. We will see.
Regarding air conditioning. I read this paper a while ago.
Anthropogenic heating of the urban environment due to air conditioning
Very interesting as the demand rises.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2013JD021225
“I live on the BC west coast. In my parochial world, solar does not work as needed or advertised”
Paulo you live well north of my latitude yet have a much warmer and milder climate. Much less snow. I am glad there are places for the swallows to eat bugs, my local population has dropped below 10 percent of what it was a decade ago. All the hummingbirds are gone. No bats anymore.
I don’t quite see why PV does not work in your area since you have a similar, slightly better, insolation level as my area. It works well here.
I have few mosquitos now in an area known for it’s population. I was talking to a fellow the other day who lives a few miles north of me. His back yard is part of a swamp and due to the excessive rains has apparently hatched some mosquitos. He told me he called the county to come spray the swamp. Such is the way of people. They kill the geese with guns and kill the nests too around here. People will not be inconvenienced.
Last year there were ten goslings on the lake. This year none.
After I was done talking to him he got a funny look on his face and became quiet. Maybe he realized his mistake but most likely will bury the information and continue his ways. My tax dollars at work.
The problem with “nature looks good to me so there is nothing to worry about” is that people have short memories and are poor observers.
Bird populations, for example, are significantly down in North America compared to what they were when I was growing up. In those days my father, who counted bird populations for decades, was already sounding the alarm.
The world ecology is crashing, but by human standards it is a slow motion crash. We are like the Easter Islanders, who deforested their island to build those giant heads. Whoever cut down the last ree of the now extinct species that used to cover the island had no memory of the island being covered with trees.
People forget quickly. I’m in a Facebook group for my home town, and there was a lot of shock when someone published an old picture of the town with streets lined with elm trees. They had been completely forgotten. And who remembers the mighty American chestnut?
Unless one actively works at observation, the memory fades in a year or two. The exception is very extreme events where memory might last a generation or more.
I doubt if people in my area even notice that the spider population has crashed to near zero.
However, with all these examples in our faces so to speak, why do people think they are immune to such events?
The American Chestnut is still around but exists only as a sapling until it gets hit by the blight. It may yet make a comeback https://www.americanforests.org/magazine/article/revival-of-the-american-chestnut/
Nice energy site for Canada.
https://energyhub.org/british-columbia/
Looking at the global solar mapping, Campbell river gets about the same annual solar as Paris and the best sites in southern Germany.
https://globalsolaratlas.info/?c=42.455888,-113.643584,5
Problem is seasonality- its hard to find a place with such huge variation between summer and winter, without going to the poles.
Hickory, the “problem” is not seasonality, the problem is trying to map it onto the current human designed paradigm of a 24/7 civilization. Once one realizes that northern living has to be different than mid-latitude or equatorial living than the “problem” scales back.
In other words the problem is generated in the human mind not wanting to deal with the reality of the location.
Did people living in Canada or northeastern American colonies in 1750 live the same in winter as they did in summer? Of course not, they lived with the seasons but still spent much energy during the summer storing food and fuel for the winter.
If one wants to level out the seasons, the technology and infrastructure must be designed for that. Still, there is a point where the gains are not worth the effort, as is exemplified by our current system.
Doubling insulation halves the energy loss of a building, year after year with no added effort. Adding solar thermal or PV plus heat pump adds energy and heat year after year with no additional effort. Thermal mass and/or battery storage levels out the day to day variations.
Wood or fossil fuels needs additional effort and funds each year to provide heat and light.
It’s a matter of practical sourcing and level of effort required as to how much one wants to level out the seasonality or daily variations. It’s also a matter of how much the external cost to the ecosystems that leveling of seasonality/weather for human activity/convenience entails.
Would it be better for more northern climes to curtail or reduce activity in the winter and increase it in the summer?
Or would it be better for industries and people to move to where the sun and wind are more even and greater so they can increase production rates of whatever it is they produce?
Much thought and many choices need to be made to form a society that conforms to the realities of the planet it lives upon.
My personal method is to let the temperature swing a lot in the house in summer and winter. I find other ways to keep warm, such as clothing and hot drinks, and to keep cool in the hot part of the summer.
The problem is the society attempts to ignore and Band-Aid all the variations with a large cost in effort, materials, energy and pollution just to produce more stuff cheaper and live a hamster wheel existence.
Sounds good.
But in the meantime people are going to fight hard to keep the heat, lights and industry going year round.
For these northern places,whether it is Toronto, Moscow, or all the places of similar dark and cold, they are going to burn coal, or wood, or nat gas, as best they can whenever the alternatives such as hydro, solar, wind or nuclear doesn’t keep up.
Just is.
Solar (locally produced) is not the dark winter solution in the cloudy spots, like Seattle, Vancouver and environs.
Most winter days up there you could put your hand under a 3 ft magnifying glass at high noon and it wouldn’t even get warm (or some such thing).
I am sure that some smart people will figure out how to use the 500 billion kwh of sunlight/day that hits the ground in Washington state every January. Might find a good way to assist all that hydro power.
Enjoy the warmth.
Eastern WA is a whole different climate- pretty decent solar there, although you’d still struggle to even warm yourself in the winter, let alone operate a vehicle.
Wood, hydro and wind are are good combo there however.
Just being [inconveniently] real about it.
How much fossil fuel is dug up in your neighborhood, or your part of your state? My point is that fossil fuels are imports, for almost all people, while solar can be local.
OTOH, we seem to apply a double standard: we compare the practicality of *local* solar to that of *imported* fossil fuels.
IOW, why do we *require* solar to be local?
Why not allow solar electricity to be imported from a nearby state (or country) that has more sun??
Solar photovoltaic panels and their batteries and/or other assorted related paraphernalia are far from local when one considers the mined resources (including fossil fuels), manufacturing, corporate locations and transportation for them, etc..
Hi Nick.
I have no problem with importing solar. I think its great. I’m very happy to have a functional, robust and redundant grid to hook up to. Makes the whole prospect of living on renewables much more viable.
And I’d much rather spend money putting PV where it very sunny.
And wind turbines where it is windy.
That was my original message [along the lines of what Paulo was saying], that solar isn’t a strong option up in the very cloudy neck of the woods where he lives- Vancouver Island. Summer yes, long winter no. They have about 4 bright months up there.
Ah. I see what you mean. I think what you’re saying is that it would be difficult to rely on off-grid solar in the north. I would agree.
It is going to be very intersting when there are tens of thousands of car batteries deployed in an area, interposed between the home o r business and the grid. Sometimes getting charged from the grid, or from the roof solar. And sometimes contributing charge back to the home or grid.
All managed by an interconnected network with time of use pricing.
Eventually, it will work incredibly well I suspect.
Hickory, Amory Lovins proved over a decade ago that a house can be built at 7000 feet in the Canadian Rockies and stay warm all winter using only passive solar collection. Grows bananas in it and has a fish pond. Uses about 4 inches of foam insulation.
Those thermal solar collector warmed homes in Maine and Massachusetts work also. Done quite a while ago.
So you can keep promoting BAU if you wish but the convenient truth is that it is not needed.
Poor thinking and poor design are a massive problem.
Hi GF,
Yes I am familiar with that house in Colorado from way back.
I’m glad you have a house like that.
You must have saved alot of money your heating and cooling bills over the years.
Do you give tours?
Gonefishing,
Seems that Hickory was pointing out that electrical needs are difficult to meet in a cloudy area in winter that is not connected to the grid. At 7000 feet in the Rockies this would be less of a problem because there are few long periods of low insolation.
There is a difference between considering practical problems on the road to getting from here (BAU) to there (future new BAU), and “promoting” BAU.
BAU is in constant flux, not the same today as 50 years ago and will not be the same in 50 years as it is today.
“Most winter days up there you could put your hand under a 3 ft magnifying glass at high noon and it wouldn’t even get warm (or some such thing).”
Diffuse light does not focus.
brilliant GF
I must be even worse than a Liberal Dickhead. I’ve read Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead , We the Living and Anthem. I came away thinking that she was a Fascist Dickhead. I’ve always compared her to Edward Teller (the model for Dr. Strangelove), having lived under a communist dictatorship both of their brains were fried beyond reason. They came to think that caring for those less capable then themselves was evil, confusing communism with that concept and thinking, like Trump himself, that only those capable of grabbing the goods were of any value.
I think her writing was boorish and trivial. If she happened to get right the idea that bad governments are bad it was sheer luck squeezed out through a fog of hatred. Any damned fool could figure that out after a couple of beers in cozy company. A good high school essayist could improve on her prose.
She never understood is that governments by “the 0.1%” are as bad as mob rule. How do you improve a government by allowing the descamisados to participate? The answer is subtle and beyond the reach of Rand or her cult following (or Rand Paul): you need an elite to run things and they need the fear of pitchforks to make them behave. that’s the secret sauce of democracy. All elites become corrupt without fear of the mob. All of them.
I rest my case. JJHMAN proves it perfectly. He is unable to see what’s there and useful, in her books, preferring to focus entirely on the Rand’s many and obvious short comings. His strategy is to attack her personally.
I can’t remember the details, without looking them up, but once upon a time, a young and upstart scientist dared to question an older man, pointing out errors he made. The old guy didn’t want to discuss science, he just attacked the messenger , condemning him, AVOIDING a discussion of the facts the young guy brought to the attention of the society. His response was that his name was unimportant, but what he had to say was NOT.
“She never understood is that governments by “the 0.1%” are as bad as mob rule.”
JJ may be correct on this point, but could not possibly be further wrong, in terms of understanding and critically reading a book with the intention of furthering his own understanding of power politics.
Atlas Shrugged, if Rand were to write it today, as a young woman growing up in our current society, would be about Trump and capitalists as the bad guys. JJ has a zero appreciation of her cultural and personal history, which determined her word view, when she was writing her novels.
But that’s to be expected, maybe. If somebody really IS a liberal dickhead, he will ALWAYS condemn anybody or anything held dear by the right wing. Dickheads are always partisans first and foremost, left or right, liberal or conservative. Always ready to lie, attack, if it suits their partisan agenda.
If JJ will answer these three questions, I will know , if he is, or is not, a liberal dickhead.
Are you, JJ, mathematically literate, do you believe the NYT and the Washington Post published the basic facts about Cattle Gate, and do you believe that HRC was in essence running a scam with the help of her broker?
If you are mathematically literate, and you read the accounts of this scandal in the two biggest and most important liberal papers in the country at that time, and you deny that she was running a scam, then you are accusing those two bedrock foundation of the liberal tradition in this country of lying about HRC……. If you deny that she was running a scam, well then, you are a liberal dickhead, because partisanship comes before truth, in your case. You cannot possibly be rational and mathematically literate and believe what these papers published, and believe she honestly invested in cattle futures, lol. THAT sort of cognitive dissonance is possible only if a person is mathematically illiterate.
If anybody wants to know why the country is so bitterly divided, it’s because hardcore partisans on both sides are totally ready and willing to ignore the truth, to pretend it doesn’t exist if it’s inconvenient for their side.
Religious people are fighting fire with fire, saying ok, if Trump does abuse women, it’s ok, because it’s ok with Democrats when a Democrat abuses women. Oh, except that hard core partisans on the R side don’t believe Trump abuses women…… if they have low enough iq’s. Ditto hard core intellectually challenged partisans on the D side…… they don’t believe Bill Clinton abused women. The ones on both sides with normal or above intellectual qualifications know both of them are serial abusers of women…. right or left, they share one thing in common……. hypocrisy.
I have yet to hear a well known liberal admit that HRC ran a scam, or that she took many millions of dollars in donations to her family slush fund, I mean foundation, from unsavory people who had business interests touching on her duties as secretary of state. So why should conservatives not defend Trump…… ? Partisanship is partisanship.
Tens of millions of people, including countless health care professionals with advanced degrees from well respected universities don’t actually know shit from apple butter about food and pesticide residues and health risks.
Here’s what Richard Muller has to say about pesticide residues, and health risks associated with eating industrially raised versus organically raised food. I bring this up to point out how easy it is to MISS the truth, how easy it is for huge numbers of people to be brainwashed by special interest groups , many of which are very well respected, and hardly ever questioned, in respect to their agendas.
Richard Muller, Prof Physics, UCBerkeley, author “Now – The Physics of Time”
Answered Feb 11, 2016
Organic vegetables are much higher in carcinogens than are vegetables grown sprayed with pesticides. This fact was discovered by Bruce Ames who was, at that time, the chair of biochemistry at UC Berkeley.
The discovery was easily understood. To grow foods without pesticides, you have to pick those subspecies that are “naturally resistant” to insects and fungus. That invariably means that they have higher levels of “natural” poisons in their skin and in their flesh. So those farmers who picked the plants that didn’t need pesticides were picking plants that (to use Ames’ terminology) were surviving by engaging in chemical warfare.
Non-organic foods are grown using pesticides that are extensively tested by the FDA to be non-cancer inducing (or at least minimally so). Moreover, they are on the outside of the skin, not in the meat itself, and so can be washed off easily.
I eat many organic foods because they often taste better; they are frequently grown by farmers who care more about taste than appearance. I don’t delude myself into thinking that they are healthier.
Bruce Ames, by the way, is the inventor of the “Ames test” — the most widely used method to determine if materials are mutagenic.
His professional publication describing what I just said is Science, Volume 236, Issue 4799 (Apr. 17, 1987), 271-280. Nobody disputes his scientific findings, but those who favor organic food often ignore them. They fool themselves into thinking that natural poisons are somehow better than mild human-manufactured pesticides.
He’s dead on, except when he says nobody disputes Ames scientific findings, because what he actually means is that nobody who is truly technically literate disputes these findings. People such as physics professors suffer from a failing altogether too common, so common as to be near universal, among well educated people. They are collectively unable to conceive of just how little the typical man or woman on the street actually KNOWS about the world he or she lives in. Such people simply cannot understand the breadth and depth of a typical persons ignorance.
Unfortunately countless health industry professionals aren’t all that well informed when it comes to such questions as pesticide residues.
The large majority of environmental movement foot soldiers don’t have a CLUE as to what the truth is, in respect to organic foods, and in the large majority of cases, neither do the leaders of the environmental movement. Nor are they interested in teaching the truth to their followers, even if they know it themselves…….. foot soldiers, from their pov, are not to be trusted with such truths, for fear they may go over to the other side.
We have met the enemy, and they is us.
We are in one hell of a fix. Ron and Fred and GF are all dead right about this one thing at least, even if they occasionally disagree on some other points. I’m with them, I agree that we are in one hell of a fix, and I don’t see any way out, except maybe for a lucky few of us.
But as Ron and some others occasionally point out, I’ll probably be safely dead before the shit is REALLY hitting the fan hard and fast.
The biggest single question I have left to answer is this. Why should I waste my very limited remaining time and energy even worrying about it?
Maybe I should be eating and drinking and making merry, rather than stressing myself out floundering around looking for something to do that might make a difference.
CLIMATE CRISIS: ALASKA IS MELTING AND IT’S LIKELY TO ACCELERATE GLOBAL HEATING
“Every year there’s a new temperature record, it’s getting worse and worse and you feel like a broken record saying it. This should be the number one urgent conversation happening right now because it’s not just going to be Alaska, it’s going to be other communities all over the US.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/13/climate-crisis-alaska-is-melting-and-its-likely-to-accelerate-global-heating
I’m from Alaska. The polar bears are really hurting. On the other hand, there’s a sustainable market for now for hides because wealthy folks enjoy quality polar bear rugs.
What a perfectly bad place to build a town! On the inside of a loop in the river that WILL cut off the town and create a new oxbow lake. Check out Akiak on Google maps.
NAOM
True. Typical of so many places.
Nationally, we need a policy of 10 feet.
All infrastructure, all housing and businesses need to be relocated
10 feet above the FEMA plain, and/or sea level.
Whichever is higher.
It will be [beyond] massively expensive.
But much cheaper than doing it under duress.
Talk about an ‘inconvenient truth’.
Not gong to get many votes for this kind of thinking.
All infrastructure, all housing and businesses need to be relocated
10 feet above the FEMA plain, and/or sea level.
Whichever is higher.
LOL! elevation of Miami Florida, 6.562′ Where do you suggest we move it to, and how much do you suppose that will cost. Same question for most of the South Eastern coast of Florida.
LOL! I took my father on a trip to the US with me a couple years before he died. While driving around he asked me, “Where are the hills?”. I should have taken him to see one of the highest points in Miami, The landfill just south of NW 74th St. on the west side of NW 87th Ave. 😉
“Where do you suggest we move it to”
Macon Georgia
“and how much do you suppose that will cost”
Less is it is done slowly, then suddenly. Slowly, some materials and valuable items could be salvaged. Like the pumps at the sewage treatment centers, and the MRI’s, and some of the museum contents.
Ok! Got any room for Aventura, Hallandale, Hollywood, Dania Beach and Ft. Lauderdale… That would at least kinda cover my general home turf area. BTW, where can I get a good Cuban coffee in Georgia?! 😉
Cheers!
No more coffee.
Get used to Chickory.
Fred, maybe you could have some fun going around with a sharpee, and putting high water marks on street posts and sides of buildings, like
-Sea Level year 2041
-Hurricane Evangelina Storm Surge Sept 18 2036
LOL! I just might do that!
Americans have no concept of what flood means in ‘flood plain’.
NAOM
Floods near coasts occur from two different directions simultaneously.
Just adjusting for storm swell and sea level rise is inadequate.
Yeah, given we already have the Severn Boar, I am just wondering what a tide on a storm surge, with rising sea level, meeting a flood from the river Severn will do for Hinkley C.
NAOM
For most American “flood plain” is the same as “federal money to rebuild in the same place”
And I bet those are Republicans who want to reduce gubernment spending.
NAOM
I am so increasingly nervous about the state of our sick dying world. I will continue praying for Our Heavenly Father to intercede.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2kZ0lRW9Ls
The Divine Plan
Does praying cure the nervousness?
“I will continue praying for Our Heavenly Father to intercede.”
Perhaps your Heavenly Father is interceding as you speak. Does sea level raise qualify? I believe this god of yours once made a decision to return the Earth to its “pre-creation state of watery chaos” and then remake it in a reversal of creation, or something like that.
If I were Him I might go the once popular plague and petulance route even though that would be messy given the seven billion plus souls currently living living here. That said, plague and petulance certainly would get population overshoot under control then a few worthy survivors could have another shot at “Being fruitful and multiplying” — hopefully with better results next time.
How do you think He might effectively intercede this time round? Nuclear war is always an option I suppose? Personally I hope He won’t (doesn’t) choose the “Cleansing Fire” route.
When I think of our “Heavenly Father” interceding I wonder where he was when that vulture was walking towards the starving baby.
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/vulture-little-girl/
If you are praying for intervention I would strongly advise revising Genesis 6 et seq and Genesis 19. You might not get the intervention you were hoping for.
NAOM
@Doug, here’s an well written article form the Miami Herald that covers most of the bases and may explain why you might see me as optimistic:
maica once couldn’t pay its light bill. Now its economy is welcoming Porsche and BMW
The quoted section describes BAU on steroids, as does the rest of the article when it describes new dealerships for BMW and Porsche as “investments in Jamaica”. On the other hand the former head of the college I went to managed to get an article published in both of the major newspaers, very critical of the amount of money (often credit) that Jamaicans are spending on cars:
Alfred Sangster | The car in Jamaica’s economy
The car in Jamaica’s economy
I have a great deal of respect for the former head of the college I went to. I wonder what he would think of my assertion that the trend in petroleum for road and rail transport in Jamaica is worrisome?
Can you ask him?
Myers is so bullish on the economy that he’s planning to aggressively expand his family’s empire of 48 Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants, by opening 10 more KFCs across Jamaica over the next two years.
WOW! What an unmitigated fucking disaster that will be! Talk about the most unhealthy food possible!
Couldn’t he at the very least least promote mom and pop restaurants where they would serve free range home grown Jamaican Style Jerk Chicken?!
Fred, I can’t tell you how many times I have offered to take people to Island Grill, a fast food type chain that serves “Jamaican Style Jerk Chicken”, with a choice of fries, festival (fried dumplings made from a mixture of flour and cornmeal), rice, steamed vegetables or raw vegetables and been told that they would rather have KFC. The result of this preference for KFC, especially among the younger generations is that the Myers family is quite wealthy by Jamaican standards, despite having to pay significant franchise fees to KFC/Pizza Hut. This situation is similar with the Burger King/Popeye’s/Little Caesar’s and the Wendy’s/Dominoes franchise holders.
That the pundits point to the introduction and expansion of such Franchises as investments in the nation, speaks to the point I made in a comment is response to Iron Mike further up. This wealth is related to the holders ability to mobilize energy and other resources to provide fast food to a willing population. These franchise holders don’t really care about the energy inputs needed to produce the meat, flour and potatoes they use and they only care about the energy used in their operations in as much it is a cost of doing business and can affect their sales volumes and profitability. Do any of the produce even a little bit of the energy they exploit to create their wealth? ? Do they care about the carbon footprint of their enterprises? Guess which one of the franchises mentioned in this comment has a 100 kW PV array on the roof of their central operations warehouse?
I tell you, on the most part it, looks like party on, pedal to the metal as we draw closer and closer to the edge of the cliff. I suspect this is the case all over the world. Thelma and Louise all the way Baby!
Fred, I can’t tell you how many times I have offered to take people to Island Grill, a fast food type chain that serves “Jamaican Style Jerk Chicken”, with a choice of fries, festival (fried dumplings made from a mixture of flour and cornmeal), rice, steamed vegetables or raw vegetables and been told that they would rather have KFC.
OK! that clinches it, there is absolutely no hope whatsoever left for humanity!
Fortunately for me, I have a Jamaican restaurant just 5 mins walking distance from my condo. I try to eat as little meat as possible but they serve a superb goat curry, makes my mouth water just thinking of it. Plus they even have live music at least 5 nights a week! KFC is Trump food, ugh!
I used to have the occasional burger from McDs when I was in the UK, though it was more the convenience when working, but I haven’t eaten McDs since I came to Mexico, can’t even stand the smell of the places anymore. On the other hand a good taco or birria yeah! That goat curry sounds right up my street.
NAOM
Eat fast food chicken, cut down the Amazon rain forest.
We don’t think the Amazon should be cut down for chicken feed.
Our investigative report, ‘Eating up the Amazon’ showed how soya beans grown in the Amazon were going into McDonald’s McNuggets.
Well guess what? Soy grown by clearing the Amazon is also going into the making of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). And some people don’t want us to do anything about that.
https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/tell-kfc-and-cargill-stop-cutting-down-amazon-chicken-feed
In my locale I have observed a number of people losing their houses, a number of abandoned houses, small to large shopping centers with empty storefronts and increasing automation to replace retail workers.
On top of this is an increase in storm related damage on a regular basis.
We have many empty shop units in malls … then they are building more malls!!!!!!!!!!!! WTF
NAOM
Talk about mass OCD!
“GREENLAND LOST 2 BILLION TONS OF ICE YESTERDAY”
With this rate should Greenland ice sheet be lost in a short time?
Let’s do some computation. 2BT/day means 2km^3/day in volume. The total volume of the ice sheet is 2850000 cubic kilometers, so in 1425000 days ( about 4000 years from now) all the ice sheet will be lost.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet
But, wait a moment. The bulk of melting occurs just in 3 months ( June to August ) , about a quarter of the year.
See:
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/14/us/greenland-sudden-ice-melt-wxc/index.html
So, by this seasonal correction, all the ice sheet will be lost in 16000 years, if we don’t take in consideration the snow falling over Greenland. That may delay the fateful event another 4000 years or more.
The Greenland ice melting is monitored daily:
http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/
We see a spike in melting for last days. It’s mainly about weather.
But, what if? What if Greenland ice sheet slides suddenly into ocean? Is this possible?
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland
and look for Greenland bedrock. The ice sheet is trapped by mountain chains at East, West and North. So, it won’t escape into the ocean. Could it have happened , it would have occurred 10000 years ago, at the same time with North American and Scandinavian ice sheets.
It’s about summer time and Greenland has in average a frozen temperature, although a lot over expected average for these days.
https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2max
And, surprise, Hudson Bay is still icy past mid June.
https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#seaice-snowc-topo
I am very concerned about climate change, but Greenland seems to me to be a marginal issue in this complex. Loss of ice in Arctic Ocean and West Antarctic Ice Cap seem to me to be more cause for concern.
I am very concerned about climate change, but Greenland seems to me to be a marginal issue in this complex.
Your concerns are duly noted!
I wouldn’t worry about it, I’m pretty sure that particular Canary in the Coal Mine, either died of natural causes or old age! As for the other 450 canaries that have also dropped dead. I guess we’re just going to have to wait for the postmortem toxicology reports…
And there is no real rush, given that by your calculations it will be at least another 20,000 years before there is no ice left in Greenland.
Just about the only thing we can count on taking more than 10,000 years is the rise of Greenland after the ice melts.
Alex, a few more variables to add to your equation.
Increasing global temperature with time
Increasing longwave downwelling energy from GHG
Lapse Rate
Fast warming Arctic Ocean
Fast warming Arctic Land Surfaces
Warming Ocean temperatures
Increases in black carbon deposition as temperate and northern forests burn
Increasing black carbon depositions as new growth in Arctic regions goes into cyclic burn
Decreasing snow and ice albedo on the ice sheet
Increasing biological growth on snow surfaces
Increasing rainfall events.
Increase in solar radiation as transistion to new energy sources occur
Linear extrapolations in a complex non-linear world are woefully inaccurate.
Most of the ice was gone in the Eemian, The insolation over Greenland is now on the increase due to orbital changes. In other words, the ice is melting at a solar energy input minima.
Alex, thanks for putting things into perspective. Then there is also the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation which seems to turn negative https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-11046-x
@Tom @Alex
The melt rate is not X it is X^n
Fred has a YouTube for the exponential.
NAOM
To add a bit to GF’s comment:
Linear extrapolations in a complex non-linear world are woefully inaccurate.
That might be the understatement of the century! 😉
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/2011WCAS1081.1
The nature of nonlinearity
Beyond the Tipping Point: Understanding Perceptions of Abrupt Climate Change and Their Implications
See also:
http://www.colby.edu/mathstats/wp-content/uploads/sites/81/2017/08/2017-Manning-Thesis.pdf
Chaos: The Mathematics
Behind the Butterfly Effect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycJEoqmQvwg
MAE5790-1 Course introduction and overview
Historical and logical overview of nonlinear dynamics. The structure of the course: work our way up from one to two to three-dimensional systems. Simple examples of linear vs. nonlinear systems. 1-D systems. Why pictures are more powerful than formulas for analyzing nonlinear systems. Fixed points. Stable and unstable fixed points. Example: Logistic equation in population biology.
Reading: Strogatz, “Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos”, Chapter 1 and Section 2.0–2.3.
Note: Prerequisites for the intro course overview above, include basic college level calculus, differential equations, non linear algebra, and a general familiarity with graphing curves and functions.
BTW, should someone wish to brush up on their math skills, there are plenty of excellent calculus and non linear algebra courses on line and on Youtube.
Cheers!
Strogatz has an excellent new book explaining calculus titled Infinite Powers. https://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Powers-Calculus-Reveals-Universe/dp/1328879984
Love the cover!!
Fred
In no way I am arguing against non-linearity of climate system and the danger of passing tipping points. But Greenland gains or loses 2GT of ice per day as a trivial matter.
See:
http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/
By the way, 2GT on the ice sheet per day is about change in thickness of one millimeter per day. That’s not a big deal. The average loss of ice in summer exceeds this number, as a matter of yearly balancing, not linked with climate change.
The headline about this matter on CNN was wrong:
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/14/us/greenland-sudden-ice-melt-wxc/index.html
In the headline they present 2GT per week, last week, inside the article we see those 2GT occured in a particular day.
In the Danish Greenland portal:
http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/mass-and-height-change/
we may see that that in the last 15 years or so Greenland gains about 100GT in 9 months (September to May) and loses about 300GT in just 3 months (June to August) of every year.
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/19/9239
Forty-six years of Greenland Ice Sheet mass balance from 1972 to 2018
Conclusions
Using improved records of ice thickness, surface elevation, ice velocity, and SMB, we present a 46-years reconstruction of glacier changes across Greenland that reveals a dominance from ice discharge over the entire record and a sixfold increase in mass loss from the 1980s. The largest mass loss is from NW, SE, and CW, which are controlled by tidewater glaciers. Several glaciers, including Humboldt, Steenstrup-Dietrichson, and Køge Bugt C. North Greenland (NO, NE) have played a stronger role in the total mass loss than reported previously, hence illustrating the value of an extensive time series of mass balance that includes all of the large glaciers. We also find that the ice sheet as a whole was near balance over the time period 1972–1990. In the future, we expect the mass changes in the northern part of Greenland to become of greatest importance to sea level rise, because of the large reserve of ice above sea level and the potential for manyfold increase in ice discharge.
http://sciencenordic.com/how-greenland-ice-sheet-fared-2018
Interesting to follow next days:
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/polarportal/surface/SMB_curves_LA_EN_20190615.png
Of course, somewhere among the avalanche of various opinions, the actual point was buried.
The point is that for this early date in the melt season the loss of Greenland ice was exceptionally high. An example of an extreme event.
An in depth look at California and relevant western US drought.
“Megadroughts and MegaFires” with Dr. Glen MacDonald, UCLA Professor
Dr. MacDonald discusses his groundbreaking research on droughts lasting decades and even centuries in California and how MegaFires like the Thomas Fire will become the new norm. Glen M. MacDonald is the John Muir Memorial Chair of Geography, Director of the White Mountain Research Center and a UCLA Distinguished Professor. His research focuses on climate change, its causes and its impact on the environment and society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw7vdyBwrv8
This state has a hell of time deciding what kind of place it is to live in.
Is it a place of redwoods and huge reservoirs filled with water, and a great valley with tens of thousands of fertile irrigated acres. For example right now, the state reservoirs are full, after two good winters.
Or is it a place of megadrought, like it was feeling for the preceding 3-5 years. More like AZ or west Texas.
Huge fires happened under both conditions in past few years.
Variability is baked in the cake here. Some years easily twice as wet as others.
That is normal.
Some decades too.
Its hard to plan. Just what is the water carrying capacity for nature and humans in this kind of scenario.
Certainly less than if the rains were more uniform.
People are slow to understand that.
side note on variability- we had a high of 99 clear blue degrees last Monday, and high of 62 windy fog degrees just 3 days later, right here.
Long term droughts in the Colorado River basin are not uncommon (https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2004/3062/).
Rising temperatures dry soil faster, increasing fire hazards.
I got to finish with that presentation by MacDonald.
Very sobering.
He is a good messenger.
What we need are big grids with big, central generators, right? Makes for reliable, dispatchable power, right?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-48652686
NAOM
The sunspots have been very low even zero for weeks affecting how the ionosphere heats up or cools. HF radio depends on a warmed up ionosphere because that causes such radio signals to bounce back to earth rather than escape into space. Talk to a ham radio operator, they will explain that the very low number of sunspots means that earth is rapidly cooling.
Oh, don’t be an idiot. Sunspots are on an 11-year cycle and have nothing to do with climate change.
Of course the ionosphere cools slightly during the solar minimum. But it just heats right back up again when the solar maximum follows, on average, five and a half years later.
The duration of the sunspot cycle is, on average, around eleven years. However, the length of the cycle does vary. Between 1700 and the present, the sunspot cycle (from one solar min to the next solar min) has varied in length from as short as nine years to as long as fourteen years.
This cycle’s minimum has had an unusually low sunspot count.
Sunspots come and go with an 11-year rhythm called the sunspot cycle. At the cycle’s peak, solar maximum, the sun is continually peppered with spots, some as big as the planet Jupiter. But for every peak there is a valley, and during solar minimum months can go by without a single sunspot.
The sunspot cycle has absolutely nothing to do with climate change. Just what the fuck are you trying to pull. The earth is warming, not cooling, in spite of us being right in the middle of a solar minimum.
“Just what the fuck are you trying to pull.”
He wants to be Trumps science advisor.
fyi
What a meaning free chart. Whoever is sending us trolls, please send some better quality ones.
NAOM
fi
fyi
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/holocene-context-for-catastrophic-anthropogenic-global-warming/
fi, fi, fi
Looking at that page it tries to avoid up to date data. As for the Met office stuff, I have not found that chart on the Met office site but the following 2 charts firmly refute that
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/monitoring/index.html
Better quality trolls PLEASE!
NAOM
PS As for the coming ice age COUGH!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/18/arctic-permafrost-canada-science-climate-crisis
Why is the permafrost melting, eh?
There’s some tough competion out there…
.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/climate/climate-change-solar-minimum/
Meat and dairy companies to surpass oil industry as world’s biggest polluters, report finds
Hidden Costs of Industrial Agriculture
“Incidentally, I have read in more than a few places that the use of chemicals in agriculture is part of what is threatening arthropods (and by association, other species of course).” ~ Caelan MacIntyre
Thanks for the elaboration, Fred.
^^ ‘Ecopathology’ ^^
But we are not necessarily stuck with it in the shape and form and on the scale we know it today, in the long term.
IF the economy holds up, we can adopt some rather radical new methods, soon to be realities, of producing food, methods that are far safer in terms of environmental disruption.
There is a good deal of progress being made in terms of using less water, fertilizer, pesticides, etc, per unit of production, and over time, we can teach ourselves to eat better, even as we are teaching ourselves it’s better to give up smoking, etc.
If the well intentioned but ill informed ecological dickheads don’t prevent it, we will within a decade or less have some varieties of staple crops that need damned little in the way of pesticides to produce like crazy.
Sure they may pose a minor, probably trivial health care risk. But in terms of the BIG PICTURE, accepting that risk will be a world class bargain. NOTHING is completely safe. The idea is to move from high risk behaviors to low risk behaviors, in terms of one’s overall safety.
And (safety tested and approved by appropriate professionals) gene modified foods are absolutely a HUGE step in that direction, considering the many problems associated with using pesticides.
If the well intentioned but ill informed ecological dickheads don’t prevent it, we will within a decade or less have some varieties of staple crops that need damned little in the way of pesticides to produce like crazy.
Dunno, I have my doubts, though it certainly won’t be for lack of scientific or technological know how! I think we will just run out of time to make the necessary changes at the political and social engineering level. A decade is but the blink of an eye with regards the big picture. Perhaps if we had started back in the 1950s.
Did you watch this video I posted in the last thread?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emFGiIJvce8
Climate Change, Insect Biology, and the Challenges Ahead
‘YOU DID NOT ACT IN TIME’: GRETA THUNBERG
“In the year 2030 I will be 26 years old. My little sister Beata will be 23. Just like many of your own children or grandchildren. That is a great age, we have been told. When you have all of your life ahead of you. But I am not so sure it will be that great for us. Now we probably don’t even have a future any more. Because that future was sold so that a small number of people could make unimaginable amounts of money. It was stolen from us every time you said that the sky was the limit, and that you only live once. You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to. And the saddest thing is that most children are not even aware of the fate that awaits us. We will not understand it until it’s too late. And yet we are the lucky ones. Those who will be affected the hardest are already suffering the consequences. But their voices are not heard. Is my microphone on? Can you hear me?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/23/greta-thunberg-full-speech-to-mps-you-did-not-act-in-time”
Your link is broken
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYNM4rsnNFM
Greta Thunberg full speech to UK Parliament | Climate strikes
Thanks Fred.
Hi Fred,
I agree, a decade is only an eye blink, in historical terms. You’re right again as usual, it’s probably too late to create new varieties fast enough, and get them into production on the grand scale, to matter very much in BIG PICTURE terms.
I can’t save the world, but I’m still interested in saving individuals and communities , to the extent that’s possible.
We probably will have some varieties of some crops that can resist a troublesome particular pest quite well, without using any chemicals, within the easily foreseeable future, which could make all the difference in the world to some local and even regional communities.
If I were to somehow gain the ear of a super rich person, I would try to convince them to PAY poor people to give up having kids after the first two, or even one or none.
Something tells me that many tens of millions of women and men would be glad to accept such a bargain, and would line up to take advantage of it.
Suppose a one time birth control pill could be invented, which wouldn’t have any major side effects, other than permanent sterility, for either men or women?
There are probably drugs already in production, for other purposes, that would do the trick, other than possible serious side effects.
If somebody were to fly an old airliner over a big city in some desperately poor country, and dump about a million such pills, individually packaged, with labels on them promising that the guy who swallows one will get erections as good as he had when he was sixteen again……… lol.
I have talked to older, poorer women who had large families about their lives as mothers. Half of them told me that they would have taken such a pill, if available, without telling a soul, after they had had their second or third child. They knew by then how hard the remainder of their lives would be, raising one kid after another, working themselves into an early grave, and not being able to take GOOD care of any of them…
Education is the key of course, but education is so damned slow, in terms of individual lives……….
I’m passing the link around. Thanks, it’s one of the very best ones I’ve seen. Unfortunately, except for on the net, or by phone, I hardly ever even speak to anybody with brains enough to understand just how desperate the big picture is.
But I’m making good progress with at least one person, a local woman who understands that we are in a hell of bad spot. She has three little kids. She can see the big picture, but so far only with major gaps. I may sell part of my farm to her, owner financed. I can’t take it with me and I will need more cash as I get to be less and less able to do things for myself.
It’s already unsustainable, like, as in right now.
Oh look, a backpeddle or, to be charitable, a qualification.
The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race
http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race
The advent of agriculture was a watershed moment for the human race. It may also have been our greatest blunder.
Very interesting article. Makes some good points. No going back now i think.
Maybe the survivors will be the current hunters and gatherers that still live in this world.
This farmer totally agrees with Diamond. It’s one of the great articles of our times.
But there’s nothing to be done about it at this point. We’ve inherited the whirlwind.
In the meantime, I love my pesticidal potatoes & apples :>
You don’t seem to do farming, Michael, but then, my concept of it seems less fast and loose.
There are plenty of people around the globe ‘doing things about it’, like getting off of it, rather than making excuses for it.
Diamond doesn’t seem to realize that we no longer live in a world dominated by agriculture. He says that life expectancy for hunter-gatherers was 26 years. Life expectancy is now 71 years.
Life expectancy for hunter-gatherers was 26 years
I think that is a misconception. During that period, there was a high-birthrate high-deathrate. But the children which survived and were genetically high quality, would have lived possibly around 50+ years. It is only when we take the averages of birth and death rates we get the ~26 year figure.
I believe this article explains it better than i have:
https://condensedscience.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/life-expectancy-in-hunter-gatherers-and-other-groups/
And another article:
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-3-319-16999-6_2352-1
We know specific details about modern hunter-gatherer lifespan from a few well-studied groups: the !Kung, Aché, Agta, Hadza, and Hiwi (Gurven and Kaplan 2007). Work on these groups show that approximately 60% of hunter-gatherer children live to age 15. Of those who reach 15, around 60–80% of them will live to age 45. If an individual lives to age 45, then on average they will live for approximately two more decades. However, not all modern hunter-gatherer groups show the exact same lifespan profiles. The average life expectancy at birth among these groups varies from 21 to 37 years, and the proportion of individuals living to 45 years old varies between 26% and 43% of the population. These individuals who live to age 45 then have a continued life expectancy between 14 and 26 years.
The earth carrying capacity for hunter/gatherer human beings is well less than 1 billion.
Once we get closer to the number, we should consider a reversion.
I would miss fruit from other climates, and seafood (I don’t live on the seashore).
Hi Hickory,
I don’t think most of us if any, living in industrial civilization can go back. We don’t have the genetic quality nor the skills. Nature will chew us up and spit us back out, in my worthless opinion.
I would miss fruit from other climates, and seafood (I don’t live on the seashore).
I love fish! Live, swimming in the sea, I like catching them, spearing them, having them in an aquarium and most of all I like to cook and eat them!
Having said that, our oceans are being depleted of fish and there is no way that increasing human population growth and their appetite for sea food will not completely devastate fish stocks the world over. We will leave the climate change and ocean acidification debate for another day!
Enter, lab grown fish flesh…
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/05/05/720041152/seafood-without-the-sea-will-lab-grown-fish-hook-consumers
High-tech meat alternatives are grabbing a lot of headlines these days. Last month, the Impossible Burger marked a meatless milestone with its debut as a Burger King Whopper. Meanwhile, Lou Cooperhouse was in a San Diego office park quietly forging plans to disrupt another more fragmented and opaque sector of the food industry: seafood.
His company, BlueNalu (a play on a Hawaiian term that means both ocean waves and mindfulness), is racing to bring to market what’s known as cell-based seafood — that is, seafood grown from cells in a lab, not harvested from the oceans.
BlueNalu is aiming for serious scalability — a future where cities around the globe will be home to 150,000-square-foot facilities, each able to produce enough cell-based seafood to meet the consumption demands of more than 10 million nearby residents.
But unlike Impossible Foods, BlueNalu is not creating a plant-based seafood alternative like vegan Toona or shrimpless shrimp. Instead, Cooperhouse and his team are extracting a needle biopsy’s worth of muscle cells from a single fish, such as a Patagonian toothfish, orange roughy and mahi-mahi.
I’m not sure I very much like the picture of the future that is emerging. It most definitely is no longer the world that I enjoyed so much growing up in.
If I had my way, I’d like transform this pathetic excuse for a human being into shark bait!
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/world/asia/record-tuna-price-japan.html
Japan’s ‘King of Tuna’ Pays Record $3 Million for Bluefin at New Tokyo Fish Market
/rant!
Thats pretty fascinating, but freaky too.
Whats next- lab grown people?
The Nature-Integrative & Nature-Enhancing Human
Says who? I don’t think so. Yes I’ve seen that number quoted many times (‘so that it’s accepted for truth’), but, like a lot of things, it depends. It depends on how we define things and what kind of lifestyle we want and how integrative and enhancing it is to the ecosystem and so forth.
How humans do many things makes them abusers of Mother Earth. This includes the processes behind crony-capitalist plutarchy-derived solar PV panels, industrial windmills, and industrialization in general. Do you hit your mothers?
I’ll leave you with a quote along these lines:
World population in 1500 was less than half a billion. Trying to double that without the aid of fossil fuels would have been a very serious problem.
Well, it’s true that the term “life expectancy” is sometimes misunderstood. It includes child mortality, which some people don’t expect. But, that’s not important here.
What’s important is that 1) child mortality was much higher than today: at least 40% (and probably more like 80%) died before age 15 compared to roughly 1% today; and 2) adult life expectancy was much shorter: a 15 year old as described in the article above might live on average to age 55. On the other hand, a 15 year old today could expect to live into their 70’s (using the world average), and in the OECD it can be the 80’s.
So…conditions today are much better than they were for hunter-gatherers.
Diamond’s work (including the work on “collapse”) applies to agricultural societies , not modern ones. He does note that occasionally, but it’s not highlighted and it’s not generally understood.
Yes without a doubt todays modern society is much easier for humans to survive in hence the population explosion.
The downside is deleterious gene accumulation in the gene pool. Hunter and gatherer societies would not have that problem, since natural selection would have been at it’s peak in those harsh environments.
Natural selection is very slow, inefficient and painful.
I’d rather use genetic testing. I’d rather have GMO kids than have 3/4 die before adulthood…
I don’t agree. What you said is human arrogance at it’s finest. We’ve been making this mistake historically ad-nauseam. The world is very complex and non-linearity is king.
It is impossible to predict the outcome of an action that we assume is “good”. Is actually “good” except in the near term. Long term consequences of human action is almost always unseen.
I understand. But…we have centuries to get genetic modification right. In the meantime we can screen for the simple, obvious genetically inherited diseases.
Seriously: we’re going to reduce the human population by 99%, and leave the rest to 75% child mortality and short nasty adult lives, because of a theoretical worry about natural selection?
I’d say that a concern about a loss of selective pressure is also a kind of arrogance: we don’t know nearly enough about genetics to know just how civilization has changed our genes.
I don’t know Nick, i don’t quite see it that way.
We can look at deep time, and conclude that death is the rule, survival the exception. I mean I think this is a law of nature. A law of nature which we have been at war with for a brief period of time, relatively speaking (we are currently winning).
Industrial civilization is essentially a war on many fronts with nature. I don’t see us winning. Nature is a strong force, oddly enough a force which we are a part of, so in a way we are fighting ourselves. In my opinion it comes down to genes vs entropy at the very root of existence.
I am more in tune with eastern philosophies of submitting and excepting the inevitable, rather than fighting the losing battle.
That’s how i see it. I am not saying i am right by any stretch of the imagination. Just a worthless opinion.
Nice discussion guys.
I point out that we no longer have natural selection, so the point is kind of mute.
In the old days when there still was natural selection, trump would have been killed in his early teens for being an asshole, rather than becoming a leader, or having offspring.
But now, we are the verge of a huge technological genetic leap, and trait selection for children will be routine in the 2030’s. Many will be ‘incubated’ in surrogate mothers who live in specific colonies optimized for maternal well-being.
And the offspring will love solar grilled lab-grown shrimp meat that is in the shape of lizards.
hmmm. I dunno. On a practical level: let’s say your child has a life-threatening bacterial pneumonia which a simple antibiotic can cure.
Do you give your child the antibiotic and save their life, or “accept the inevitable”?
Death is absolutely necessary. Living too long would end the species very quickly.
Yes GoneFishing, and it is something those who dream of immortality don’t appear to understand… Reminds me of Logan’s Run.
GF,
Well, I’d ask the antibiotic question again, but I guess the answer is obvious.
Actually, death isn’t necessary. It would be very easy to prevent overpopulation: simply have the Total Fertility Rate be less than replacement. If, for instance, the TFR was 1.0, each generation would be half the size of the previous generation (Countries like Japan, Italy and Russia are pretty close to this path, BTW). The tenth generation would be .1% as large as the current one. The 20th generation would be .0001% as large, and so on. It’s a simple mathematical series: the total population would only be twice the size of the current generation, and that’s assuming no mortality at all, absolutely zero deaths.
With any kind of mortality at all (which would happen from accidents, if not from “programmed” mortality) population would decline pretty quickly.
Dennis has shown some charts showing such population declines, BTW.
That is a fine calculation Nick. However you have not taken into account the biology of the planet. No one would ever make it past 1000 years old and since the replication rate is shrinking the whole species becomes more vulnerable despite age.
Even the most genetically advanced society would soon realize they are fighting a losing battle.
Let me just ask you, how many generations of clones would survive, given a normal initial lifespan and a replication rate of greater than one?
That series was just a simple example to illustrate the basic dynamics of restraining population growth while also reducing mortality.
I think you could develop a structure that would be stable (i.e., births equal deaths in the long run) and resilient, keeping in mind that reducing mortality also means reducing morbidity and disability (and involuntary infertility).
Does that make sense? I’m not clear on your “clone argument”, so am I missing a genetic element here?
“Actually, death isn’t necessary. It would be very easy to prevent overpopulation: simply have the Total Fertility Rate be less than replacement.”
Hey, simply have total fertility rate be less than replacement. Damn! Why didn’t I think of that?
Yes Nick, you are missing a series of genetic systems in your views and calculations.
Extending life span is a dangerous endeavor.
You also are missing the bottom end. Ever ask yourself why those children died young or even more important why some survived childhood disease? What is the effect?
What is the effect of that not happening now?
Ron,
I’m surprised to hear you say that: you’ve heard many times, I’m sure, that the majority of the world has already achieved TFR below replacement, and the rest of the world is moving there fast. For instance, the US is at 1.73, well below replacement of 2.1.
GF,
Yes, reducing random selective pressures from disease and famine will affect human genetics – we’ve already discussed this above. If you have some more, please add it..
Well, what really got me was this part: It would be very easy to prevent overpopulation:
No, no, no, no… You cannot prevent something that has already happened. Just try preventing WW2. See how that works out.
The world has been vastly overpopulated for many decades. The population of the world has more than tripled in my lifetime. More than anything else it is the vast human population that is destroying the earth.
Nick G asked “Yes, reducing random selective pressures from disease and famine will affect human genetics – we’ve already discussed this above. If you have some more, please add ”
I gave you all the clues needed Nick. It’s up to you now.
Ron,
That’s a reasonable thing to talk about, but…it’s not what we’re talking about in this discussion.
GF,
As far as I can tell, we’ve already discussed the issue that you’re…ummm…hinting at.
So, if you feel you have something to add, please do. But spell it out…
No Nick, you spell it out. You cannot simply say it would be easy to prevent overpopulation in a world that is already desperately overpopulated.
However, you may have meant something different with that statement, you may not have meant overpopulation at all. If so, spell it out!
Ron.
Nick was saying that further growth in population can be remedied by lower total fertility ratios. Half of the World’s population has a total fertility ratio(TFR) less than replacement level (2.1 live births per woman on average over there life). The average World TFR fell from 5 in 1965 to 2.5 in 2005, if it falls to 2.1 population stabilizes (after a lag of 20 years or so), if it falls below 2.1 as is already the case in half the World, then World population starts to decrease.
This was already spelled out by NickG.
A chart with assumed life expectancy topping out at 90 years for various TFR levels. Click on chart for larger view.
With all due respect Dennis, Nick did not say “growth in population can be remedied by….” What he said was: It would be very easy to prevent overpopulation…
Preventing further growth in our already vastly overpopulated earth and preventing overpopulation are two totally different things. The former is possible. The population of the earth will likely level out at around 9 to 10 billion people. The latter happened several decades ago.
I know, many people think we will reach a happy medium of 9 to 10 billion people and live happily ever after. And they believe there is no such thing as human overpopulation.
I beg to differ.
No they are not, at all.
Conditions today are nowhere near as good as they were for hunter-gatherers.
It appears that you haven’t done the math or are well aware of it and conveniently omitting it where it doesn’t suit your particular slant.
It’s the myth of progress and you appear to be leaning on it over and over again.
Statistical manipulation– something Iron Mike appears to have caught you doing– is very well understood by those who want to railroad through particular agendas for example, rather like what Javier et al. ostensibly does for denying/FUD’ing anthropogenic global warming.
“Diamond doesn’t seem to realize that we no longer live in a world dominated by agriculture.” ~ Nick
Ag is only a small % of GDP. If we got rid of it all together it’d be no big deal. Sarc :/ Nick, you are either incredibly inarticulate or you live in a fantasy universe. Or both. Are you one of those silicone valley rapture of the nerds singularity types? Perhaps Nick is working on a new app to replace agriculture.
Yes, I’m afraid I didn’t fully convey my point. The problem is that this isn’t a full blown book, so it’s hard to cover all the detail that’s needed. Here’s a beginning:
Diamond did his work on societies in which 95% or more of the population worked in subsistence agriculture. This is a stagnant world. Things didn’t change. There wasn’t a large number of knowledge workers (maybe some people guarding the food warehouses, which became temples and they became priests). There were no agricultural universities. Labor productivity grew by perhaps .01% per year. The only way for rulers to gain more wealth and income was not by organic growth, but by theft: stealing a portion of wealth and production from neighboring territories. Empires would grow as Ponzi schemes until they became too large to rule and then they’d collapse.
This is a world of…futility. Despair. Nothing changes, nothing improves. Growth only begets collapse. Have you ever read Ecclesiastes? It captures this mood of futility and despair perfectly. “There is nothing new under the sun. All is vanity, and a striving after wind”.
So, that’s Diamond’s worldview. But, that’s not the world we live in. So, when he talks about hunter-gatherers having a life expectancy of 26, he compares it to the world he knows, which may have had an expectancy of 19, and he sees decline.
But…he neglects the actual present, where expectancy is 72.
It’s late – I’ll try to add more tomorrow.
Paul Beckwith discusses wetbulb temperatures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLiKPGr1NNI
Limit of Human Survivability at High Temperature, Humidity Conditions Leading to Uninhabitability
Beckwith is interesting.
He is getting bit distressed on non action by the proletariat.
Hey, 200,000 years was not bad—–
During the early 1950’s I wrote a required pediatric term paper on infant deaths due to vomiting and diarrhea in the hot humid Houston climate. Cholera in India was also mentioned.Water loss and electrolyte imbalance were the main culprits. My primary conclusion was that the Jefferson Davis Charity Hospital diarrhea ward needed air conditioning.
There appears to be no safe place which seems to go along with the global label. Speaking of global labels”
I think that every gasoline and diesel fuel dispenser should have a warning label on it.
“Use of this product will help destroy the ecosystems of this planet, that means you and your descendants”
Maybe Fred can come up with a graphic for the gas station pumps.
Every time the computers are turned on and smart phones used a pop up label should also appear warning of the hazards to the planet.
I think that every gasoline and diesel fuel dispenser should have a warning label on it. “Use of this product will help destroy the ecosystems of this planet, that means you and your descendants”
Hmm, I’ll think about it. Might work like a peel and stick label. Maybe a group like Extinction Rebellion could actually go around and apply them at gas stations.
.
It’s amazing what a small layer of reconfigured brain matter overlaid on a functioning brain can make things go horribly wrong, while thinking they are horribly right.
Let’s quit demonizing what are natural substances. For those unaware, gas, oil, and coal are but the naturally decayed remnants of deceased plants and animals. The “fossil” in fossil fuels is already a misnomer … but that’s a relatively minor issue. The bigger issue is that they are natural as they come from nature.
DimaondJoe [sic]: Arsenic is natural, too. As is shit. Eat some if you don’t believe me.
Joe,
Just because something is natural doesn’t mean its not harmful. umm.tornado, umm poison mushroom….
Crude is nice. But when you take it out of the ground, and refine it, and burn, it can get poisonous real fast.
Ever thought about living at a refinery. Lets talk again after you do that for ten years. See if you still like the ‘natural’ aspect of it.
As the world grapples with plastic, the U.S. makes more of it — a lot more
Jamie Smith Hopkins
https://publicintegrity.org/environment/pollution/pushing-plastic/as-the-world-grapples-with-plastic-the-u-s-makes-more-of-it-a-lot-more/
Jace Tunnell shuffled forward near the water’s edge, head bent. He was hunting for something that shouldn’t be on this beach near Corpus Christi, and he kept finding it. Hidden in the sand — white, tan, nearly translucent — were tiny plastic pellets.
These are the products of plastics producers, intended to be turned into bottles, bags and countless other items. As much as anything one-tenth of an inch across could sum up the modern world, they do. A marvel of chemical engineering. A convenient material that will long outlast us. A global waste predicament of daunting scope.
Microscopic plastic particles are in our oceans, the fish we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink.
Against this backdrop, the United States is about to make a whole lot more of the stuff.
Production of the most common plastic, polyethylene, is on track to jump more than 40 percent by 2028 in the U.S., according to research firm S&P Global Platts. That’s 8 million metric tons per year more than in 2018 — roughly the amount, coincidentally, that scientists estimate is annually flowing into the oceans now.
In the last two years alone, companies such as ExxonMobil and Dow have built or started construction on at least 17 new U.S. polyethylene plants and lines, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of corporate plans. It’s a surge largely centered along the coasts of Texas and Louisiana.
The extra polyethylene is far beyond what the plastic-heavy U.S. market can use. Analysts expect it will mostly be exported to Asia — where countries are already so overwhelmed with plastic waste that they can’t handle the levels they have now.
The International Energy Agency warned last fall that the world is on pace to double the amount of this waste in the oceans by 2030 and more than quadruple it by 2050.
The American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents manufacturers in sectors including plastics, said the new U.S. production is needed to serve a rapidly increasing population worldwide.
“Most of this growth will occur in less affluent parts of the globe. This means there will be a critical need to get more food and goods safely to more people in more places,” the group wrote in a statement. “Second, more people will move out of poverty, creating increased demand for more medicines, personal care products, clean water, fuel-efficient automobiles, and energy-efficient homes — and all of these things rely on plastics.”
The booming plastics industry made possible by the explosive growth in Texas’ oil and nat gas output means a lot of well-paying new jobs and economic development coming to regions of the Gulf Coast that have been in need of both for a long time.
LOL! That’s a load of BS! There is no explosive growth in Texas’ oil and nat gas! And even if there were it provides the wrong kinds of jobs and development! All petroleum products need to be phased out and eventually banned, especially plastics!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-07/texas-s-gas-glut-is-so-bad-drillers-are-pumping-it-down-wells
Texas’s Gas Glut Is So Bad Drillers Are Pumping It Down Wells
Went to buy milk, a while back, but they didn’t have the 1l plastic baggies so I made do with a 1/2l plastic bottle. Weighed them both. You could make 2 1/2 1l baggies from 1 1/2l bottle. 5 times more plastic for bottles than baggies! Ban plastic milk bottles and only sell it in baggies.
Plastic egg cartons and veg containers could be recycled at the same supermarket and returned, in the empty lorries, upchain. A bit of smart design of the package and recycling could mean the plastic can be reused without passing through the whole ‘ship it around the world’ system.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/17/united-states-of-plastic-series-about-america-waste-crisis
NAOM
“Most of this growth will occur in less affluent parts of the globe. This means there will be a critical need to get more food and goods safely to more people in more places,” the group wrote in a statement. “Second, more people will move out of poverty, creating increased demand for more medicines, personal care products, clean water, fuel-efficient automobiles, and energy-efficient homes — and all of these things rely on plastics.”
So what is wrong with that picture?! Pretty much everything!
I have posted this link many times… But much like Islandboy’s fellow young Jamaicans who prefer KFC
People are really stuck in this paradigm and don’t get it! It’s time to start arresting the people who make and sell products made from petroleum! I just don’t see any other solution!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wHT-FsCJjM
The Biggest Revolution in 3D Printing is Yet to Come
.
The old line monopoly provider model is alive and well in Florida, but it IS moving in the direction of building solar farms on the grand scale….. eventually.
https://electrek.co/2019/06/17/florida-solar-court-challenge/
NY Fed: Manufacturing “Business activity took a sharp turn downward in New York State”
https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2019/06/ny-fed-manufacturing-business-activity.html
The margins are starting to come apart? Time will tell.
This beyond odd in terms of Australian politics:
South Australia’s stunning aim to be “net” 100 per cent renewables by 2030
Can someone in Australia explain this to us? How can someone who is a member of the same party as Angus Taylor and Scott Morrison talk like this and not be pushing a pro FF agenda? How is it that the renewable energy aspirations of the territory of South Australia have not been smothered by the Murdoch media machine?
Just as remarkable is this:
EVs are also a target of the Murdoch media machine’s smear campaign. Surely there are some lessons here.
Can someone in Australia explain this to us?
I think it has a lot to do with a war of ideas and ideologies.
While not about Australia, I think this essay comes close to nailing some of the tensions in play!
https://eand.co/the-soviet-union-of-capitalism-493788f73612
The Soviet Union of Capitalism
How The Last Two Capitalist Countries on Earth are Making a Suicide Pact
My hope is that the common people, who were manipulated into supporting the owners of the capitalist system, against their own best interests, wake up before it is too late.
On the other hand, given that Rupert Murdoch is 88 years old, maybe he will do the world a favor and just drop dead of natural causes, sooner rather than later…
Cheers!
Maybe offshore accounts for Angus Taylor and Scott Morrison need to be investigated.
NAOM
Trump directs agencies to cut science advisory boards by “at least” one-third – “It’s no longer death by a thousand cuts. It’s taking a knife to the jugular.”
https://desdemonadespair.net/2019/06/trump-directs-agencies-to-cut-science-advisory-boards-by-at-least-one-third-its-no-longer-death-by-a-thousand-cuts-its-taking-a-knife-to-the-ju.html
(The order gives agencies until 30 September 2019 to terminate, at a minimum, one-third of their committees.)
Science is Satan!
“the White House has come to resemble a kind of bastard combination of deregulated capitalism & Soviet-style perversion of language, an American version of the politburo.”
Musk says not long before Tesla makes electric car with 650km
Tesla / Maxwell: It Seems Mainstream News Coverage Has Missed The Mark
Therein may lie the cause for Musk’s optimism!
O.F.M. You may find this of interet?
EARTH IS MOVING TOWARD THE SAME METEOR SWARM THAT SCIENTISTS BELIEVE CAUSED THE 1908 TUNGUSKA EVENT
Over the next several weeks, our planet will have a close encounter with the Taurid meteor swarm. It will be the closest that we have been to the center of the meteor swarm since 1975, and we won’t have an encounter this close again until 2032. So, for astronomers, this is a really big deal.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-17/earth-moving-toward-same-meteor-swarm-scientists-believe-caused-1908-tunguska
We should probably have more geophysics posts and discussion on this blog. There is probably enough built-in interest because the subject matter all ties together — geology, geophysics, climate.
For example, consider this intriguing geophysics pattern correlation — nowhere in the geophysics research literature has it been reported that the lunar declination cycle is responsible for the details in the Earth’s polar axial wobble.
https://geoenergymath.com/2019/04/03/lunisolar-forcing-of-the-chandler-wobble/
This is just a starting point, as there are other climate behaviors that show synchronization with lunisolar cycles.
I once thought about doing a post on seismic interpretation — stress waves in solids with applicable math (especially Fourier analysis). Then I came to my senses realizing no one would be interested. Descriptive Geology is probably more applicable and understandable to the diverse audience here.
Actually that would be quite gneiss! 😉
It’s funny you would say that as I was about to respond to Dim Joe Aond’s comment upthread, about fossil fuels being natural, with the observation that asteroids, meteorites, earthquakes, tsunamis and such were also natural, so to speak. Not to mention King Cobra neurotoxin… but he probably, quite naturally, wouldn’t want one to bite him in the ass!
Doug said:
“I once thought about doing a post on seismic interpretation — stress waves in solids with applicable math “
Doesn’t have to be that detailed. Yesterday I posted at the supposedly physics-based blog “And Then There’s Physics” about the possibility of lunisolar tidal triggering of earthquakes. It was not outlandish at all, yet the control freak moderator deleted it while calling it “peddling”. I happened to save the comment in a tweet:
https://twitter.com/WHUT/status/1140309304291090432
The context of this was in the possibility of fracking-caused earthquakes, and why the Monterey shale formation near the San Andreas fault would never be exploited.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D9Mwk7EXsAA6b-b.png
Peddling?
I read your comment a couple of times. I probably should go to “And Then There’s Physics” site to see if if within the context of the discussion in that thread it makes more sense.
Your tweet by itself left me at a loss as to why that might constitute ‘Peddling’?! I even went so far as to check the meaning in a couple of online dictionaries.
Oh, well!
Cheers!
LOL! the very first thing I came across on the “And Then There’s Physics” site, was this little tweet:
Janelle Shane
@JanelleCShane
There’s now a subreddit that’s populated entirely by neural nets who are themselves simulating other subreddits.
They’re sometimes kind to each other, sometimes awful, and they keep trying to ban each other’s posts.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/search?q=flair_name%3A%22MIXED%22&restrict_sr=1 …
I think I might really need to go spend some time in a cave with no internet access!
Cheers!
Fred,
Thanks for the feedback! I think that blog is evolving from a Physics blog to a MetaPhysics blog, as they are more concerned about style in argument than in substance. Their preference is in maintaining familiar strawmen that they can then comfortably beat down. I think “peddling” by the moderator’s definition is in swaying discussion away from consensus. But the problem with that is that any advancement in physics comes about from “peddling” new results or theories. So that is a no-no.
So I am finally coming to the realization that they are more interested in the sport of science discussion, what they call “ClimateBall” than the science itself.
I think we can do better here, as Dennis moderates with a much lighter touch.
Doug also said:
“Descriptive Geology is probably more applicable and understandable to the diverse audience here.”
What is also interesting is that I had my comment removed in a b;og post thread concerning the benefits of a storyline approach versus hard quantitative science in getting science ideas across.
A storyline is to climate science as descriptive geology is to geology. One storyline in climate science is that global warming will contribute to more extreme weather events. The analogous storyline for geology is that fracking near seismically active regions can lead to the triggering of earthquakes. So the idea is that one can discuss these in the absence of or in combination with hard attribution.
And then there’s the plan by Bezos of Amazon to inhabit the moon as the only way to save the Earth.
https://interestingengineering.com/colonizing-the-moon-could-be-the-key-to-saving-the-earth-says-jeff-bezos
I’m currently involved in a twitter discussion with some NASA guys that are proponents, and one of them has written about creating a space elevator. This is nutty stuff, and in the context of what is discussed on this blog, it may need a dose of realistic expectations
If someone wants to colonize the moon, I say go for it! However to think of that as a way to save Earth is more than a bit of a stretch!
If we can’t find a way to live in harmony with nature on a planet that has everything we need already, then we are just fooling ourselves that we will be able to recreate what we need somewhere else!
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Maybe only the 1% will be able to afford to make the move to the moon, then we cancel the return ticket.
NAOM
@Fred
Just got the local council to remove a load of rubbish bags and loose rubbish from the side of the road above the river. Took a few goes but was eventually able to drop in and give the office a thumbs up.
It would be nice to get Bezos attention, and refocus the efforts to earth. Alas, the grass is always greener on the other side of the solar system.
Not to worry, soon the mini-satellites and space debris will make it too perilous to launch manned missions to outer space.
“Cleanup in orbital path 3!”
that would be quite gneiss! ?
I used to bicycle in the Rockies, past the cuts showing various eras, singing “gonna take a sedimental journey”…
Thanks Doug,
I’ve always been one to think about how often events that are considered to be very unlikely nevertheless happen, which to indicates that our knowledge of some natural phenomena is perhaps less comprehensive than we think.
Take volcanoes for instance. We have an excellent historical record of eruptions in most parts of the world going back centuries to thousands of years, and plenty of evidence derived from the hard sciences about eruptions in prehistory, going back into deep time. So if a geophysicist says there’s a significant possibility that there will, or will not be , an eruption someplace, any place, we can be reasonably sure that his estimate is probably at least in the ball park.
But we don’t, so far as I know, have any way of knowing how many really big solar storms have happened, except for the last couple of centuries or so, when we first had reliable ways of detecting them…. such as burned out telegraph lines!
So maybe on the average there’s been a solar super storm every couple of hundred years, or every thousand years…… we don’t KNOW what the odds are, because we don’t have a record of them going back far enough to make a serious estimate. Maybe the last couple were flukes, and there won’t be another for hundreds of years…….. or maybe the last couple of hundred years were flukes in that there were only a FEW…. maybe the odds are good that there will be one within the next couple of decades.
Most of us are acquainted with the story of Lord Kelvin, an extraordinarily brilliant physicist back in the nineteenth century……. the man who laid the foundations of engineering thermodynamics, so I’ve read, etc. He proclaimed that Darwin had to be wrong, because based on his own calculations, the earth simply was not old enough to have evolved life as we know it.
But he didn’t know anything about nuclear physics. Nor did anybody else, at that time. Knowledge of fission and fusion came later.
Sometime back in the early sixties, I read a book about Tunguska, and decided it was pretty much conclusive proof that an alien space ship crashed there. Of course back then I knew approximately nothing about astronomy, beyond the basics taught in high school, but I had already read dozens of science fiction novels.
I still believe in Little Green Men, lol.
Considering the size of the known universe, it’s just about dead certain in my opinion at least that they are out there somewhere…… lots of them, all different shapes and colors……
But the odds are that even the nearest ones live thousands or tens of thousands or maybe even millions of light years away, in another galaxy.
So we will almost for dead sure NOT be in touch with any of them anytime soon, if ever.
The odds of a space rock big enough to cause some real trouble hitting us may be higher than we think, based on what we know from the historical record.It’s not at all unlikely that some as big or bigger than Tunguska have hit in the sea over the last few thousand years, or Antarctica , where the evidence would soon be hidden by blowing snow, etc.
Now here’s a question for you, or anybody else with the expertise needed to answer it.
Suppose an alien civilization is equal to ours, in terms of detecting artificial electromagnetic signals, sent deliberately or inadvertently.
How far away could they be, and still detect the radio and television signals we have been broadcasting for the last century plus, assuming they are deliberately listening for such signals?
“How far away could they be, and still detect the radio and television signals we have been broadcasting for the last century plus, assuming they are deliberately listening for such signals?”
I don’t have the faintest idea. However, one thing to bare in mind when discussing so-called intelligent species (little green men) in far away places, and talking to them, is how incredibly short the time is where we’ve had radio, TV, etc. compared to Earth’s existence. The oldest known fossils are roughly 3.5 billion years old. Single-sideband and frequency modulation (FM) radios were invented by amateur radio operators in the early 1930s. My Dad had the second amateur radio license issued in BC. The first pulsar was discovered in 1967. We’ve been listening for less than the blink of on eye and perhaps in another blink (or three) we may be extinct. So, not much time to devote to intergalactic phone calls. 😉
OFM — Hot off the press!
TWO POTENTIALLY EARTH-LIKE ALIEN PLANETS FOUND AROUND NEARBY STAR
“There are even more potentially habitable planets near Earth than we ever imagined. A research team discovered two Earth-like planets in our cosmic backyard, and they’re located in the perfect zone for water to form on their presumably rocky surfaces. The planets orbit a sun known as “Teegarden’s star,” which is only 12.5 light-years from Earth. (A light-year is the distance that light travels in a year, or roughly 6 trillion miles or 10 trillion kilometers.) The two planets look an awful lot like Earth and our neighboring worlds, the researchers said.”
https://www.space.com/teegarden-star-two-earth-like-planets.html
DougL,
Ha! I knew you’d sneak pulsars in there. I was waiting.
Time for well-earned Port.
The first answer is annoyingly simple: less than 100 light years away, because that’s how long they’ve had to travel.
Alpha Centauri is the closest star, and IIRC it’s about 4.5 light years away. If that’s the average spacing, calculate the number of stars in a sphere with radius of 100 light years: it will be far, far smaller than the likely number of stars needed to find intelligent life.
The second answer, the one you probably were thinking of, depends on the sensitivity of the receivers. Someone here must know that answer, but I suspect the theoretical maximum is much longer distance than 100 light years. But still: it will take a pretty long time to get to anyone who can hear…
Suppose an alien civilization is equal to ours, in terms of detecting artificial electromagnetic signals, sent deliberately or inadvertently.
How far away could they be, and still detect the radio and television signals we have been broadcasting for the last century plus, assuming they are deliberately listening for such signals?
The answer is 100 light years maximum radius assuming 100 years of broadcasting. Since radio frequencies travel at the speed of light.
With regards to intelligent life in the universe, calculate the probability of a protein forming, and then over geological time turning into intelligent life. It is quite rare if not impossible.
Iron Mike,
If one defines homo sapiens sapiens as “intelligent”, perhaps not impossible. 🙂
Rare, yes.
Lol that’s true. I was using the term intelligence loosely.
And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. Genesis 9:1
UN: WORLD POPULATION EXPECTED TO RISE TO 9.7 BILLION IN 2050
“The new population projections indicate that nine countries will be responsible for more than half the projected population growth between now and 2050. In descending order of the expected increase, they are: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Indonesia, Egypt and the United States.”
https://phys.org/news/2019-06-world-population-billion.html
Be fruitful, and multiply.
I’ve always thought of this as the most Darwinian line in the bible (Old Testament).
More than that…I never thought of it as a curse before, but it quite obviously is.
If it is a curse, it goes back thousands of millions of years. A bit late to revoke.
I really really hate to say anything that can be interpreted as supporting Trump type politicians, but facts ARE facts, and I flat out refuse to avoid them simply because they are not conducive to furthering some body’s political agenda, be that somebody a Republican, or a Democrat.
We have , to the best of my knowledge, have passed the point already that women in this country are having few enough children that our population would stabilize and shrink….. except for the fact that we allow in a lot of immigrants.
Of course my own family is descended from immigrants who seem to have been starving political refugees for the most part, and I’m not in favor of turning away little kids, or their mothers, but I’m not so sure I want to endorse allowing a whole lot of young men who grew up in places where the rule of law means the law of the local strongman, and the primary ethic is to do unto others before others do unto you.
But I don’t have any real idea how to decide which young men will become productive citizens, and which ones will continue to live the only way they know…. violently. I doubt anybody else does, as a practical matter.
Reality is a harsh taskmaster, is she not?
One thing is sure, in respect to our own immigration debate, this being that while we will allow some people in, and some will find their way in no matter what, the VAST majority of people in the world who will be climate, economic, or political refugees over the coming century or so aren’t going to have a snowball’s chance in hell of making it to the USA, or Canada, or even to the Central and South America. The Atlantic and Pacific are awesomely effective barriers to immigration, unless the target country is willing to peacefully accept them.
The farmer’s perspective is that people in a country such as Indonesia will mostly starve or die from violence and disease, etc, IN PLACE……. just as a farmer’s cattle die in place on his own farm if he is unable to feed them, and they are unable to break thru the fences that hem them in.
As a matter of fact, starving cattle don’t generally even seriously TRY to break out of their pastures. A few manage it, in the process of sticking their heads thru the fence trying to reach something edible just on the other side, and if there’s once a breach….. they all take off. But there’s seldom a deliberate effort to break out.
I believe most or maybe nearly all of the people in places such as Indonesia and the Congo will just suffer and die in place until the local population crashes back to a point that the remaining local people can once again survive on whatever local resources are available to them.
Some countries in really bad trouble will resort to attacking their neighbors, no doubt. But such countries are generally incapable of projecting power very far past their own borders. So when the shit hits the fan, HARD, only their nearest neighbors will be at very much risk in terms of either an organized invasion by troops, or an unorganized invasion of refugees.
But there’s a chance that such wars between smaller and militarily inconsequential countries might morph into larger scale regional wars, and that such a regional war might result in some of the larger and more powerful countries getting involved, in unpredictable ways. WWIII is not out of the question, as the result of such escalation, but personally I believe it’s unlikely, unless a major power decides to take advantage of its potential victims’ weaknesses, and engage in a war of conquest. In that case, all bets would be off.
Clean out the sand in the ears and listen to at least the first part of this.
Abrupt Permafrost Thaw & Repetitive Heat Waves
https://www.ecoshock.org/2019/06/abrupt-permafrost-thaw-repetitive-heat-waves.html
From your link: “Scientists have issued a new warning that greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost in the North could be twice what we thought, as the world warms.”
Fuck, why is it always worse than we thought?
Because ‘worst case scenarios’ are more salable?
Seems to be a popular name for doctors.
Nope, it has nothing to do with salability!
It has to do with humans being really lousy at grasping the the consequences of fat tails and being really poor at properly assessing risk! Then being blindsided when reality turns out to be worse than what they wishfully expected to happen by willfully ignoring worst possible case scenarios!
https://thebulwark.com/what-changed-my-mind-about-climate-change/
…The answer is that we can’t be sure. And that’s okay. Because in life you rarely know for certain what’s going to happen next. You plan for a range of outcomes and try to mitigate your exposure to the worst possible risks. There’s an entire economic discipline on this subject. It’s called risk management.
Risk management is not about discerning the optimal response to the most likely outcome. It is about discerning the appropriate response to the most likely distribution of possible outcomes. That means incorporating the possibility that climate change, either by a bad roll of the geophysical dice or a large and unexpected societal vulnerability to warming, turns into a bigger problem than we expect.
BTW, even talking about ‘worst case scenarios’ being more salable comes across as ignorant denialist trolling! So please educate yourself about the issues, unless you want to be know for spouting nonsense!
“why is it always worse than we thought”
Because until the numbers are in they are not counted, known unknowns are ignored. Secondly, previous results have been diluted to be non-scary and looking at best case scenarios. Now, the gloves are off.
NAOM
Well worth five minutes, and if I say so myself, I’ve been saying demographics rule, long term, and that my old fogey generation will soon be gone, and with it….. the core of the Republican party.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYmJe7YM46k
1972 — US: CREEP(y) break-in Watergate complex, Washington DC. Five clowns (ie, CIA-related pros), in this their fourth attempt to get into Democratic Party headquarters, are rudely arrested. This badly bungled burglary (BBB) was the beginning of the end for the dreaded Tricky Dick ‘I Am Not a Crook’ Nixon gang.
Yep, the end is near——
The core of the Republican party are white males. The best thing that could happen to Trump and the Republican party is for him to be impeached. Pence can pardon Trump and the Republican party can start the process of moving on. Nancy wants to drive a stake between his eyes. No Nixon option this time.
I agree, Trump should be jailed, but I think maybe Pelosi is just playing her cards so as to delay the start of impeachment for a while yet. With the evidence the D’s will be able to put on TV and on the net and on the radio, not to mention the front pages of newspapers, it’s altogether possible, even highly probable, that the D’s can engineer not just a blue wave, but rather a blue tsunami, if they play their cards right. Playing them right may mean delaying playing them for a while yet.
The Trump CORE is more or less solid and fixed in it’s beliefs and opinions, but there are millions of people who will vote D this next time around, who did not want to vote for HRC, seeing her as more of the same old same old D party that was taking them for granted, ignoring them, and hoped to see some change as the result of voting for Trump.
They got change, but not the change they wanted, lol.
The D’s made the mistake of running their most unpopular possible candidate, in terms of the opinion of the entire voting public, with the possible exception of a hard core leftie such as Sanders, and the one candidate that Trump could most easily vilify.
They won’t make that mistake again, but if the R’s can’t get rid of Trump, they are going to be stuck with the one possible R candidate with the worst possible reputation among the electorate as a whole.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/george-will-republican-dumb-party_n_5d01d0ace4b0304a1209b01d
I’ve been saying this same thing, as Will says, for a long time now. My generation is on the way out.
The church is fast losing its hold on southern political power, but this is not yet clear to people who aren’t paying close attention.
Sea changes of this sort take a few years to become obvious unless you are looking for them. In 2040 , even sooner, most of the people who grew up in the legally segregated south, people who went to segregated schools, etc, will either be dead or in nursing homes, and of the ones that remain, most of them won’t be voting.
Even the worst informed hillbilly now knows that he could get his needed meds in Canada for a rather minor fraction of what they cost him here…… but the political implications of such facts haven’t yet filtered thru the concrete cultural barriers around his brain that keeps him voting R.
But given time, water wears away even the hardest stone…….
Every time I visit “MAYBERRY” literally the small town next door to methe stereotypical old time southern town where everything is all hunky dory, and the black people just stay out of sight, on tv, anyway, without causing any problems, or even wanting to be able to go to good schools or vote , etc,MT AIRY NC ……
Every time, I see at least a one or two mixed race couples walking together, sometimes hand in hand…… and only one person out of a hundred frowns at the sight. That one person knows better than to say anything out loud in public.
When I was a kid, such a couple would have been at risk of being ridden out of town on a rail, or worse.
I once believed that television would destroy civilization. Now I have come to understand that television, or it’s new incarnation, the internet, can destroy religion, at least in a country such as the USA. Watch SNL, or any movie with dinosaurs and tsunamis and aliens. The church no longer controls the imagination of the kids. Watch any music video.
TV and the net control the minds of the kids these days.
The church is on the way out…… a lot sooner than most people think, in terms of controlling voters in the south. It’s already out, in the larger cities and college towns, in the richer local communities, etc, as it is out in the larger cities all over the country. Twenty more years…..
But only four or five voters out of each hundred total need to switch their vote to bring about a landslide change ,locally in many places and nationally. The D’s are positioned to win that landslide. The R’s are not.
And what good would the impeachment do if the ‘Grim Reaper’ refused to hold the trial? What if there are not enough votes in the Senate for a conviction? Waste of a good debate.
NAOM
I thought I’d post a very short synopsis of US Presidential history from 1789 to the present!
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I doubt if there is one Democrat Senate or House representative who believes Trump shouldn’t be impeached. It’s the American people that are not on board holding back congress. Ignorance is bliss with a six pack, religion and smartphone in hand.
Orlando is Trump Country and the Orlando Sentinel has traditionally supported Republican candidates for president.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/editorials/os-op-sentinel-not-endorsing-donald-trump-2020-20190618-63ya7cyb5ngf3irllodwxnznui-story.html
Donald Trump is in Orlando to announce the kickoff of his re-election campaign.
We’re here to announce our endorsement for president in 2020, or, at least, who we’re not endorsing: Donald Trump.
This non-endorsement isn’t defaulting to whomever the Democrats choose. This newspaper has a history of presidential appointments favoring Republicans starting in the mid-20th century. Except for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, the Sentinel backed Republican presidential nominees from 1952 through 2004, when we recommended John Kerry over another four years of George W. Bush.
As recently as 2012 we recommended Republican Mitt Romney because of what seemed at the time to be Obama’s failure to adequately manage the nation’s finances.
I’m sure if a viable Republican candidate for president had the cojones to challenge Trump, The Orlando Sentinel would be more than happy to support him or her!
It was a incredible rally. Trump and the VP made the case for how they are God’s messengers on this planet, busy doing His work to keep America the most amazing country this world has ever known. Four more years, baby! We got to whoop the socialists out of this country. Trump & Pence both talked about how under socialism we would lose our God-given freedoms forever like the Second Amendment and protection of the unborn and Energy Independence. “America will never be a socialist country” – Pres. Donald J. Trump. Me and my family here in Florida are all fried up to keep this state Red next year.
Pres. Donald J. Trump. Me and my family here in Florida are all fried up to keep this state Red next year.
LOL! You are right. You are FRIED all right! BTW, in the old days RED used to be for Russian Commies! Voting for Trump is the same as voting for Putin!
Hey, maybe you can upgrade your Studebaker to an Amish Horse and Buggy! The Tesla, also pictured, is for the anti RED socialists among us… Just kidding because you wouldn’t know what socialism even means.
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People like you are the reason i sometimes want civilization to collapse.
Afterwards you can pray to your god(s) all you want and hopefully wake up to reality.
Fed said:
“LOL! You are right. You are FRIED all right!”
See, we actually read what you Trump-bots write, which is more than can be said about Trump.
hey studebaker.
you on medicare yet?
social security?
did you go to public school?
That is socialism.
Quit living off the system if you don’t like it.
you believe in following the US constitution?
there are provisions called ‘separation of church and state’. Live up to it.
– Highest temperature ever recorded in the world in March: 48.1°C (118.6°F) on 10 March at Roebourne, Australia.
More global cooling—–
Really? According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the highest registered air temperature on Earth was 56.7 °C (134.1 °F) in Furnace Creek Ranch, California, located in the Death Valley desert in the United States, on July 10, 1913. But, you did say in March! 😉
In March.
DV had that temp in July.
Impressive, for sure.
Hightrekker,
March would be more like early Fall in Australia. Even more impressive.
Permafrost melting escalating-
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/06/18/extreme-temperatures-are-melting-the-arctic/
Nature adapts. In times gone by, I seldom saw a rabbit in the immediate vicinity of the house.
The hawks have made a major comeback, along with the rabbits themselves. I see hawks almost daily now, and around here, rabbits are their primary food. Then there’s the wily coyote…….. the newcomer that’s the joker in the deck.
They virtually eliminated the groundhogs for a while, along with the rabbits. But both the rabbits and groundhogs have modified their behaviors and are thriving again. The rabbits have moved right into the yard, along with squirrels. Our country squirrels have gotten civilized, losing their fear of people, just like the rabbits. Half a dozen rabbits at least are making happy homes within fifty yards of the porch, feeding on the lawn, mostly, but venturing farther afield as necessary. The squirrels come every day to chow down at the bird feeders. It’s not just rats that can adapt to living in close proximity to us.
I don’t see any real reason that in a country short of agricultural land that a solar farm couldn’t be fenced, and the grounds used to raise free range chickens, turkeys, or rabbits, so long as rainfall is adequate. The biggest problem would probably be to keep predators such as hawks out.
A number of people who went into fish farming had to give it up because various predators are protected by law, and they couldn’t come up with a viable way to protect their fish.
I believe that grass and clover forage production, even with rather closely spaced panels, could be at least a third compared to the same land in full sun. That’s enough to feed a lot of small animals.
And while it would take a good bit of extra material to mount panels high up on strong posts, I really don’t see any reason why a small solar farm that would fit on let us say ten acres couldn’t be spread out over a hundred acres, with the panels in rows, closely spaced within the rows, but with the rows a good distance apart, say thirty or forty feet. In this scenario, a farmer could continue to use his conventional equipment to grow a number of different crops, or graze larger animals from sheep to cows on the same land. Aluminum cable is cheap, and could be used to tie all the panels together and conduct the juice to a central junction location for feeding it into the grid.
Industrial agriculture, meaning simply farming conducted with machinery and purchased inputs, can work and does work on a relatively small scale, in a lot of cases. You don’t necessarily have to have a two hundred horsepower tractor and hundred acre fields to compete.
We will never grow potatoes in my neighborhood as cheaply as people up north can grow them on the grand scale, but I have friends who are making a go of potatoes… because they are selling into local markets thereby avoiding long distance shipping and warehousing costs.
I believe that a lot of small solar farms will be built by farmers themselves in times to come, if they can secure financing and regulatory approval, and that eventually both the financing and regulatory problems will be solved, as a matter of NECESSITY.
My hypothetical farmer could make more money with his combination of panels and crops than he could with either alone, while maintaining as much as eighty percent, maybe even more, of his original productive capacity on the land.
Maintaining food production will go a LONG way toward overcoming objections from various anti solar factions. This could make all the difference in political terms, in winning passage of the necessary regulations involving permits, grid tie in, etc.
It will be a good while yet before such scenarios come to pass, except perhaps as experimental models.
Good points. I already see many farms devoting a small acreage to PV here in Calif.
Should be a go in the whole southern half of the country, atleast.
Raising the panels up higher enough for grazers, and spacing them widely enough for rain and sun is a viable scenario.
What has really bothered me to no end, is when I see buildings with big roof area oriented the wrong way (solar wise), when there is no constraint. This applies to literally thousands of farm buildings in just this state, and an incredibly number of home throughout the country. Any building built since the late-70’s should have had this in mind. It was obvious of the need by then.
https://energynews.us/2018/01/22/midwest/putting-the-farm-back-in-solar-farms-study-to-test-crop-potential-at-pv-sites/
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2014/09/11/solar-farms-increasingly-popular-with-uk-farmers_100016390/
https://smallfarms.cornell.edu/2015/10/05/energy-success-stories/
I posted this on the previous non-petroleum thread the day before this thread started. Not sure if OFM read it but, it sure sounds like he did!
Why solar parks should replace agricultural land
Hi Islandboy,
You can be sure I read everything you post!
And THANK YOU for all the work you put into doing so!
News out just ahead of the summer solstice on Friday:
The Sunshine State is finally living up to its billing
US installs record 2.7GW of solar in first quarter of 2019
Finally from the source, the SEIA:
U.S. Solar Market Sees Best Q1 in History
When discussing state level renewable energy achievements, we should remember that it’s per capita measures that really matter.
It’s no surprise to anybody with a working brain, and no especial credit to the USA, that my country consistently wins a disproportionate share of medals at the Olympics, etc.
With three hundred million plus people, we have ten times the potential to produce world class athletes as a country with thirty million.
And because we are a rich country, any given individual here probably has a five to ten times, maybe a hundred times, better chance of having the support necessary to spend his or her early years in intensive training, than a randomly selected athletic individual from the rest of the world.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/06/18/the-sunshine-state-is-finally-living-up-to-its-billing/
Florida still imports > 98%+ of Energy requirements but we are making progress in Distributed Generation. Self financed Rooftop PV Power is ~ now just a Nickel a kWh. The majority of deployed kW is Centralized Generation in Front of the Meter deployment by the wonder boys @ DUK and NEE. Tragically this forces subjects of the state to pay thousands $$$ more for each PV Panel worth of energy. A failure in resiliency and leaves subjects of the state vulnerable to Nat Gas Price Normalization, dwelling mold flash-over and Frying like eggs in their own dwelling each and every grid outage. Trusting your life support to central generation is well, Fuelish. The Grid IS War Target #1 and centralized sourced electrons are even more negatively polarized. It’s all over every time poles falls down. Choices are rapidly evolving – https://www.flenergychoice.com/
dwelling mold flash-over
Uhmmm…what’s that?
Leave a house over 100F @ greater than 80% humidity for any time and mold grows inside everywhere. The majority of houses will stabilize way over 120F much of the year in Sunny Florida without energy to remove thesolar gain. J
Just use solar thermal collectors to cook the house up over 140 when uninhabited. That will kill the mold.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-biggest-risk-2020-isn-t-losing-young-people-ncna1018216?cid=sm_npd_nn_fb_ma&fbclid=IwAR0rsINlvgKHptyfZcQr5v6ITV-NA1runLFqbvgnCYtDs5GzDlKWAsOGD_A
It’s not only that old fogeys are dying off at an ever increasing rate, including the boomers, and even some of their older children.
Older people have finally come to understand that draconian pot laws result in THEIR grandchildren going to jail, and being locked out of the job market, and consequently millions of them have changed their minds about legalization.
Ditto Republican political policies.
Even the dumber ones who believe in little or no regulation of industry, etc, are gradually coming to understand that when an industry dumps it’s wastes into a river, people down stream have to pay more to clean the water up that it would have cost to KEEP it clean in the first place.
Farmers I know who are still working understand that it’s not tighter environmental regulations that are putting them out of business, but rather ever more intensive competition. They understand that they pass along their fertilizer and pesticide bills to their customers, just as any other industry passes along its costs to its customers. The dumber ones, the ones who were forced out, generally don’t get it, most likely because they don’t WANT to get it. People generally blame their failures on any handy scapegoat.
And I daresay that quite a few older people who read the news in some depth are taking the R party’s rhetoric about cutting back on spending on social programs seriously……. and understand that such cuts, if enacted, will hit THEM. Such individuals will either stay home or vote D next time around. It’s impossible to guess how many there are in this category, but it probably totals at least a few million, nationally.
There’s a real possibility, a VERY real possibility, of a BLUE TSUNAMI in 2020.
Buses round here must be redesign for Super Duty obese humans to hump up the 3 steps in a reasonable time period. The obvious solution is Bicycles.
https://chargedevs.com/newswire/north-dakota-deploys-first-electric-school-bus/
Good way to do it-
A solar farm owned by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District in California, … The utility sells SolarShares in the solar farms to its ratepayers so that they may harvest a monetary return from the renewable energy revolution in California.
https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/electricity-generation/solar-farms
Best way to get people [blue or red or color neutral/ambiguous] to love renewable energy,
is to give them a financial stake in the energy production. Arizona would become a solar powerhouse overnight. They’d put up a statue of Al gore.
Good way to do it-
A solar farm owned by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District in California, … The utility sells SolarShares in the solar farms to its ratepayers so that they may harvest a monetary return from the renewable energy revolution in California.
https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/electricity-generation/solar-farms
Best way to get people [blue or red or color neutral/ambiguous] to love renewable energy,
is to give them a financial stake in the energy production. Arizona would become a solar powerhouse overnight.
Rare June heat wave grips San Francisco as triple-digit heat stifles West
Mother Nature cranked up the heat across the West during the first half of this week, with dozens of record highs shattered.
San Francisco was among the cities to shatter record highs as the temperature throttled to 92 F on Sunday, up to the triple-digit mark Monday and 98 F on Tuesday.
“Temperatures in San Francisco reached 100 F on Monday, which was 3 degrees higher than the maximum temperature at Las Vegas and equaled the high at Sacramento, California,” according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dan Pydynowski. Monday’s high beat the old daily record of 94 set back in 1994, and Tuesday’s high shattered the old daily record of 88 set in 1985.
The combination of a slight offshore breeze and intense sunshine this time of the year pushed temperatures to record high levels along the coast.
The core of the heat shifted into the northwestern United States on Wednesday.
The mercury soared to 97 in Portland, Oregon, on Tuesday, breaking the old record of 95 set way back in 1941. Wednesday’s high of 98 shattered the old record of 93 set in 2002.
Similarly, in Seattle, the high of 87 on Tuesday broke the old record of 84 set in 1989. The city reached 95 on Wednesday, which crushed the old record of 85 from 1999.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/san-francisco-hotter-than-vegas-as-it-shatters-record-high-amid-extreme-heat-wave/70008516
Nothing to see here, move along, it’s just weather!
/sarc
Records constructed from finite time-series are made to be broken. They can never be un-broken. So probably the right thing to do is keep track of the ratio between the number of high-temperature records and number of low-temperature records.
https://www.climatesignals.org/data/record-high-temps-vs-record-low-temps
“Records constructed from finite time-series are made to be broken”
Obviously implying the record high temperatures will continue to rise. 🙂
We already know the average temperatures are on the rise and the distribution is skewed toward the high end. The extremes cause biological damage and physical changes (permafrost thawing which unleashes biological activity for example).
The key is not tracking but determining the effect on life and soil moisture.
Ground temperatures can exceed air temperatures by 30C to 50C. Many plants and animals are sensitive to heat and are damaged or die when temperatures exceed the normal high range for the region. Drying of soils increases, causing stress on plant and animal life as well as increased risk of wildfire (converting living plants to gases and ash).
Rock, dirt and air do not care what temperature they are at. Life has temperature limits and length of time at temperatures near their limits is also important.
It is the multi-day heat waves and back to back heat waves that do the most damage.
Here in the northeast we have the opposite problem lately. Not heat waves but persistent and repetitive rains. Last year was excessively wet and this year my county is 30 percent above normal in rainfall for the year so far.
The dramatic shifts of precipitation and temperature combined with increasing time for which these shifts occur test the resilience of life forms and most likely shift natural balances.
The term rainy season can morph into rainy years. The term drought can stretch from a few weeks or months into years and decades.
The time factor is extremely important.
It was probably not worth it, but I was just trying to point out the subtly in reporting records. Say we first started keeping track of extremes this year. We would report lots of records the first few years, independent of whether there was warming or cooling. But as time goes on, that number tends to go down. There will always be the occasional record due to this natural process. So that’s why you keep track of the ratio between hot extremes and cold extremes — that will tell you which way the extremes are headed.
Of course it was worth it. I mentioned an extreme weather event. You added the dimensions of high and low event tables (range comparisons). I then added the dimensions of ecological effects, duration and multiplicity.
We keep this up and eventually we have a solid way to view and track these events. That is if anyone takes the time to pull it all together.
You gotta love an interactive world. If it was easy to describe it probably wouldn’t be alive.
BTW The reason I say that the biological effects are key is that is not only what is most important but also least monitored.
BTW The reason I say that the biological effects are key is that is not only what is most important but also least monitored.
I happen to be personally acquainted with a couple of biologists who might disagree about the monitoring part. The fact that the average layperson, is woefully unprepared to grasp the incredible complexity of living systems, is a whole nother can of nematodes.
😉
I am glad we have such omniscient scientists out there. Maybe they could take a small amount of time to shed some light to the governments and the people about the incredible devastation to the incredibly complex living systems so we mortals could at least attempt to comprehend.
Maybe have cartoons and comic strips produced as learning vehicles for the common man or even commoner politician.
Maybe they could take a small amount of time to shed some light to the governments and the people about the incredible devastation to the incredibly complex living systems
I think the problem is more on the governments and the people’s side rather than on the biologists …
,
E FredM,
I’ve been wondering for a long time why every time you post an image I see only a small white question mark in a little blue box. Can you elucidate?
@Synapsid, I see his images fine, have you tried following the link?
notanoilman,
I just tried clicking on the white question mark in the little blue box. Is that what you mean? Got a whole blank page with the white question etc. at top center.
They’re all against me.
Hmm!
E. Synapsid,
Interesting but difficult to answer without a lot more information. I’m pretty sure my images comply with POB’s file size and type requirements.
Anyways once I post a comment it is no longer under my control. If others can see the image then it probably isn’t the image or this site but more likely some issue with settings on whichever browser you are using.
Cheers!
This might be a start:
Scientists’ warning to humanity: microorganisms and climate change
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-019-0222-5
At the Cubs game on Wednesday, it was raining and 55 degrees. On June 19th. Global warming must of skipped Chicago once again and shifted over to the West Coast.
Um, Chicago is not the Globe. What you experienced was weather. Incidentally, the cold came to you from the Arctic via the meandering jetstream caused by global warming creating high pressure in the Arctic (BTW that is weather too).
NAOM
“must of”?
And you want readers to take you seriously?
More Arctic extremes in the news.
As the June 13, 2019, NASA Worldview satellite image (underneath, right) shows, snow and ice in many coastal areas has melted away.
Four nullschool images are added below. The first one shows air temperatures over Greenland as high as 22.7°C or 72.9°F on June 13, 2019, at 1000 mb. Also note the high temperatures visible over East Siberia and the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS).
A second nullschool image shows that a temperature of 0.9°C or 33.5°F was recorded at the North Pole on June 15, 2019. Temperatures above the melting point of ice have been recorded at the North Pole for some time now.
The third nullschool image shows that temperatures as high as 30.5°C or 86.8°F are forecast for June 19, 2019, near Tiksi, which is on the coast of Siberia where the Lena River flows into the Laptev Sea and the Arctic Ocean.
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/06/high-temperatures-over-the-arctic.html
All those politicians promising change were right! We are getting change way beyond their dominion.
https://www.iceagenow.info/feed/
Fake news.
Upper atmosphere effects of CO2/methane..clouds now top at 60K, not 50K in 1980s.. colder… downdrafts significantly higher… witness tornadoes… rainfall due to China coal dust… more than all rest planet pollution combined. UV intensity due to above much higher now, ionizes coal and water fallout. Jet stream off mark versus 1980s.. END GAME: no seasons, all mixed.
followup? Basic idea of new ice age is two fold: 1) reduce solar output during solar minimum 2) CO2 induced cloud height increases and storm size increases (superstorm aka unknowncountry.com) creating extreme storms. Fix? we used to have a 360 day year, seems a binary star system with magnetic dwarf star would throw orbit out to 365 every 3600 years (history).. so next movement is year of 370…so colder due to farther fr0m sun. Keep in mind 1980s storm fronts couple hundred miles, now thousand mile fronts normal. Estimate is storms reaching 100K height would be able to do the unknowncountry superstorm simulation.
last idea: 1980: CO2… 337ppm; 2019: CO2 415.. difference: 78ppm… If exponential increase in altitude cloud height due to CO2 increases.. then 100K cloud height might be CO2 of 450? CO2 increase worldwide all sources is 3PPM/year… so in how many years? 15? good luck
Fix? we used to have a 360 day year, seems a binary star system with magnetic dwarf star would throw orbit out to 365 every 3600 years (history).. so next movement is year of 370…so colder due to farther fr0m sun.
Bullshit! A binary star system with a magnetic dwarf star throws the orbit out to 365every 3600 years? Good gravy, where do you climate idiots get this goofy stuff? Distant stars cannot possibly affect the rotational speed of the earth. And the rotational speed has nothing to do with the distance from the sun.
According to new research, a day on Earth 1.4 billion years ago lasted just 18 hours. Tidal drag gradually slows down the rotational speed of the earth. Roughly every 100 years, the day gets about 1.4 milliseconds, or 1.4 thousandths of a second, longer.
https://yowusa.com/category/planetx/
Planet X? A planet is not a distant star. Are all climate deniers so fucking stupid that they don’t know the difference between a planet and a star?
And no planet can affect the rotational speed of the earth. Especially one that is so far out that we have not even discovered it yet.
Probably!
Probably what? That planet X cannot affect the rotational speed of the earth? Are you joking?
Probably that climate deniers are so fucking stupid that they don’t know the difference between a planet and a star. I thought that was clear?
Sorry for the misunderstanding. But no, it was not that clear.
Andromedia galaxy nearby has many binary red dwarfs systems… Idea for a son/binary neutron star the size of a planet is simply…local area supernova in the sirus system… 4th star… binary is size planet but magnetic and neutron. Neutron is magnetic enough to oscillate the moon 90 degrees as it spins (this is viewable now and has been since 2000 so no real panic). Outcomes for weather are below..:
Planet X and cloud planets?
a) UV source…kills plants, affect weather clouds rain much more…
b) magnetic, twists poles planets, warms interior heating..magma, volcanoes, CO2..
c) tail comet, not sterile, much disease, sweeps planets, kills much
d) eclipse? tail…in way sun
e) movement: 40 years, exodus: 5 year before pass worst, 5 years after worst
f) historically comes ever 3600 years or so…a lot depends upon constellation enters from..some are worst outcomes (pole shifts) than others.
g) plate tensions? earth wobble like top… quakes, especially Alaska
h) season..all a mix…messed up jet stream, excessive water, volcanic issues, ect
i) Exodus, all the plagues
j) fix? UV-C from sun (30 minutes) once clouds clear…sterilize
k) reason no rain water collection
l) cities? disease countries
m) pryrons?
n) crops? local farms like Russians’
o) wars: OT…many, target opportunity
p) inner planets, large elliptical orbits…mars crossing Earth… see moons like Greeks did
q) solar storms< Corona holes track magnetic neutron Star…rubber band, can reverse orbits
r) solar ejections when band breaks (remote viewing)…Korean war
s) left overs? Himilyans sink, magma warmed, Movie 2012, Lemuria rises… was past pole shift flyby…raised mountains…
t) catastrophe disruptions long geological progress..new theory
That whole post is nothing but stupid gobbly gook. Andromeda Galaxy? You are nothing but a fucking idiot. I will respond no more to such an idiot. Bye now.
Neutron stars the size of planets? No fucking way. Neutron stars cram roughly 1.3 to 2.5 solar masses into a sphere perhaps 20 km (12 miles) across. You’re ‘way over your head here man.
c. conacher-
That poem would be great recited in public.
Maybe out in front of the post office or polling station.
Or at a poetry slam event.
Try to make it rhyme.
Maybe play a tambourine or ukulele while you perform it.
You can wear a tutu and clown shoes for full effect.
Go for it!
cameron conacher has everything from Velikovskiy to Graham Hancock in there, and more. And presents it as a Gish Gallop.
I think we have a True Believer here. Don’t disparage the fellow, read it (if you do) as entertainment.
Been a long time since I’ve seen Lemuria mentioned. Classy!
Thanks to Trump, the United States isn’t just energy independent but on the way to pure energy dominance for generations.
Thanks to Trump??? What the fuck did he do? Did he start the shale revolution?
Eastcoast Chuck, you are the perfect example of why people think Trump supporters are such goddamn idiots. Trump had nothing to do with US energy production. And you are a damn fool for thinking he did.
And any US energy dominance will be over just as soon as the shale boom is over, which will be quite soon. Energy dominance for generations? Where will all that energy come from then?
Well I was just saying what my friend who moved him, his wife, and five kids to Texas for work in the oil fields was saying. He was watching the rally last night and texted me about it.
Oh, I’m sorry. It’s your friend who is the fucking idiot, not you. Please accept my apologies.
Energy independence?? https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/energy-independence-trump/
Wow! You have to be a completely brainwashed moron to believe even a single word of the malarkey! But, what else is new?!
Energy independence has become a regular talking point on Fox TV. We are said to be a net exporter of oil.
The sad thing is that the US could probably be largely energy independent for generations for real but, without even clicking on the link Robert provided, I doubt it is talking about what I have in mind. The USA ans several other places have a good shot at becoming truly energy independent but, the way things are going , it would be despite Trump, not thanks to him.
Robert,
Perhaps Fox says we are a net energy exporter, if we take all fossil fuels such a statement may in fact be correct. It might even be correct for Petroleum (where I believe both Natural gas and C+C+ NGL would be included), for example in 2018 the average level of natural gas net exports was 330 kboe/d and in February 2019 the average level of net imports of crude and petroleum products was 176 kb/d, so we were a net exporter of natural gas and crude and petroleum products of 154 kboe/d in Feb 2019 (if natural gas net exports remained at the average 2018 level).
As far as energy “dominance”, not so much. 🙂
When tight oil peaks in 2023 to 2027 (depending on future oil prices), this dominance will quickly subside unless there is a transition to other forms of energy in the transportation sector along with greater energy efficiency.
A good reason to get off fossil fool … er … fuel right now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=i915nt8c3yU
NAOM
Given that Florida has not been living up to it’s name recently and we have been having what seems like weeks of torrential rains, I assume this guy swam down the street from a nearby pond and ended up hiding under my car in a parking lot. A friend of mine noticed him and we placed him in a bucket and returned him to the pond. This story had a happy ending! At least for now.
.
In the rainy season, I pick them up frequently. Some are migrating to look for new territories to occupy, others are picked up by local children and dumped when they are tired of playing with them. I had one dumped in my front that was way too large to get in by itself, almost too big for a 19l bucket. Another was happy in a large puddle, in front of the house, had to use a broom to move it out before it became a flattened crusty meat pie.
NAOM
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, er, I mean on the OTHER side of the world,
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/india-running-water-fast-190620085139572.html
California squeaked by last time around, and would have had to sacrifice only the state’s agricultural industry to have survived a drought twice as long and twice as dry. People would still have had drinking water, although getting it to some of them might have required laying some new pipelines.
If any major portion of India suffers a severe long term drought, people there are going to either die or migrate, by the millions, barring a relief effort an a scale never before seen. I don’ know how big the average farm there is now, but not many years ago, most farmers there were consuming half or more of their own production.
This pattern of later and lesser monsoon rains may or may not be the result of global warming. If the trend continues, it’s more likely every year that forced warming is involved…
And Sky Daddy alone knows how many millions of people depend on the rivers fed by the Himalayan glaciers for their water…… and they’re melting fast.
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/19/733739909/i-spy-via-spy-satellite-melting-himalayan-glaciers
There seems to be little if any real doubt that this melting is the result of global warming.
“And Sky Daddy alone knows how “…
what is that you refer to?
is it a fabricated superhero, like spiderman or something?
4 crops use 50% of California’s water- cotton, rice, almonds, alfalfa– residential use is only 8-12% depending on the year. Those 4 crops are a minor part of the economy- CA has the 5th largest GDP on Earth- larger than the UK.
How disease changes the human condition.
New study sheds light on survivors of the Black Death
DeWitte’s analysis has revealed several important findings. Most notably that:
•the 14th-century Black Death was not an indiscriminate killer, but instead targeted frail people of all ages;
•survivors of the Black Death experienced improvements in health and longevity, with many people living to ages of 70 or 80 years, as compared to pre-Black Death populations;
•improvements in survival post-Black Death didn’t necessarily equate to good health over a lifespan, but revealed a hardiness to endure disease, including repeated bouts of plague; and
•the Black Death, either directly or indirectly, very powerfully shaped mortality patterns for generations after the epidemic ended. >I/>
https://www.sc.edu/uofsc/announcements/2014/05_sharondewitte_blackdeath_plosonejournal.php#.XQuHKbc1v9o
I have encountered a theory that prosperity increased post-black death as agricultural carrying capacity reduction less than population reduction..
ARCTIC’S STRONGEST SEA ICE BREAKS UP FOR FIRST TIME ON RECORD
The oldest and thickest sea ice in the Arctic has started to break up, opening waters north of Greenland that are normally frozen, even in summer. This phenomenon – which has never been recorded before – has occurred twice this year due to warm winds and a climate-change driven heatwave in the northern hemisphere. One meteorologist described the loss of ice as “scary”. Others said it could force scientists to revise their theories about which part of the Arctic will withstand warming the longest. The sea off the north coast of Greenland is normally so frozen that it was referred to, until recently, as “the last ice area” because it was assumed that this would be the final northern holdout against the melting effects of a hotter planet. But abnormal temperature spikes in February and earlier this month have left it vulnerable to winds, which have pushed the ice further away from the coast than at any time since satellite records began in the 1970s.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/21/arctics-strongest-sea-ice-breaks-up-for-first-time-on-record
And from:
NO SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT DESIGNED BY HUMAN BEINGS CAN SURVIVE WHAT THE CLIMATE CRISIS WILL BRING
“The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero, with 75 to 80 percent of permanent ice having melted already in the last 35 years.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a28102591/india-drought-chennai-climate-change-five-years-transform/
Now now, let’s not get carried away. It might not be that way until 2024. 🙂
WTF, this incredible news isn’t even among the top 15 search terms on Google for today. Why is that? Here are Google’s top 15 search terms for today.
1. Slack
2. Iran
3. Child’s Play
4. What is the summer solstice?
5. Mila Kunis
6. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite
7. Australia vs. Bangladesh
8. Anna Duggar
9. First day of summer 2019
10. Space Jam 2
11. Cat-fox
12. Etika
13. Ja Morant
14. Granger Smith
15. TORNADO WARNING
US warhawks should be very wary of an opponent that can take down aircraft at 60,000ft.
“The loss of the Global Hawk drone is significant. These huge birds, with a wingspan larger than a Boeing 737, are considered strategic assets. They were build as replacements for the infamous U-2 spy planes. They carry highly classified sensors and cost more than $120 million a piece.”
I wonder what the US would do if Iran started flying spy drones near the US. Probably shoot down every one and not give a damn if they were or were not in our “airspace”.
And then there is this:
https://thenewsrep.com/106870/senior-us-navy-officials-say-russian-and-chinese-subs-are-now-operating-near-americas-east-coast/
The bullies of the world are playing tag with each other right now. Who will flinch first?
“look, anyone that can take aircraft out at 60000 feet is going to cause you considerable pain if you attack them.”
yep– but I don’t think even the fat orange guy is that stupid.
(There is no way that Americans, in their exceptional arrogance, would imagine the Iranians could possibly shoot such an expensive piece of hardware down.)
Netanyahu comments:
http://www.naharnet.com/stories/261722-netanyahu-says-world-must-back-u-s-against-iran/print
… “all peace-loving countries to stand by the United States in its effort to stop Iranian aggression. Israel stands by US on this.”. So Israel is in. Not a surprise.
Iran is guilty by association. No real proofs yet.
And this sly formulation,”all peace-loving countries ” blah blah. Bombard the media the first 24 hours after an event with a story and it doesn’t matter whether the story is authentic or fake. You will win the story, the media will have new deadlines and poor budgets to investigate what’s really true. In addition, the US, NATO ++ is bombarding the media with biased news. Do US, NATO have their own media centre spittingbout propaganda? Of course. And it takes years before the truth is revealed. Oops, it was a mistake. Humans are so honest and nice to each other. Not.
Yep, Nut and Yahoo is always grasping for”all peace loving countries” to attack Iran.
Yeah. There are indications that even before the drone was shot down, US have considered to attack Iran.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/06/18/a-proactive-russia-and-china-could-prevent-us-war-with-iran/
In this interesting articles, note Trump’s speech where he lies about Iran. I suggest to replace the two first “Iran” with “US” and the story becomes more correct.
http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/one-click-closer-to-annihilation/
Now, excuse me again for all these comments, but I’m scared. And to all Americans in this site: No offense, nothing personal. Really.
Just to fuel your paranoia, the USA now thinks their 1st use of nucular weapons would be justified.
NAOM
I’m literally at this moment listening to Dvorak’s Symphony from the New World, second movement, and am near tears.
We’ve become a basket case of a nation. You should offend us, as often as possible.
“1) I don’t think the FA-18 Super Hornet can go high enough to run escort for Global Hawks.
2) I don’t think the US Navy has any more Global Hawks to be escorted.
That’s their one and only example, and it’s now been terminated with extreme prejudice.”
Time for a new plan?
My guess is USA is getting close to having it’s “Suez Moment”. Israel should probably start working on plans to evacuate the non-combatants, if there are any. (If you search engine the term “Suez Moment”, in quotes, it returns some rather interesting articles).
Attention God (or, Please come up with a different strategy this time.)
WHY NOAH’S ARK WON’T WORK
“For ocean species to survive climate change, large populations needed.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190612084337.htm
Oh goody! That means there will be plenty humans left.
At least the planets in other systems are safe from us, for now.
Well, no GoneFishing.
The first soft lander on Mars was a Soviet one. It unlimbered its camera and transmitted twenty seconds of featureless grey and then went dark. A friend and colleague at NASA’s Chemical Evolution Lab said there was no question that a Martian walked up and switched it off.
My bet is that there was someone’s sandwich left somewhere in the innards of the thing, and the bacteria in it have survived and quite possibly mutated, and they may harbor a grudge at being dumped there on Mars. We should be very, very careful about landing humans there.
By “other systems” I meant other stellar systems.
GoneFishing,
Oh. My goof.
We wouldn’t have landed anything on those yet, true. Unless (dons tinfoil cap) They Aren’t Telling Us.
Of course they are not telling us, telling people anything is generally a waste of time. 🙂
I have been screaming about this for years, now the shit is hitting the fan.
India is running out of water, fast
At least 21 cities in India, including capital New Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad, will run out of groundwater by 2020, affecting around 100 million people.
India’s news network NDTV said 40 percent of India’s population will have no access to drinking water by 2030, according to a report by the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) – the country’s principal planning organisation.
One of the worrying predictions of climate change has been a weakening monsoon season in South Asia. For the last five years, rainfall in the region has been below average, with 2015 being the worst at 86 percent.
Chennai water crisis in India leaves millions reliant on filthy wells and expensive trucked-in supply
New Delhi — Millions of people in the South Indian city of Chennai, the country’s sixth largest metropolis, are facing an acute water shortage as the main reservoirs have dried up after a poor monsoon season. Some schools in the city have cut working hours and dozens of hotels and some restaurants have reportedly shut down due to the shortage.
The city of more than 4.5 million has been left to rely on wells and water brought in by truck. Thousands of wells dug across the city are leading to a rapid drop in the ground water level, and raising even further the concerns of environmentalists.
New wells are being dug as deep as 1,000 feet. Much of the water they produce isn’t even fit to drink.
At the risk of sounding callous, isn’t India the poster child for overpopulation? Just took a glance at some population data at the following link”
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/
It looks like if the populations of India and China keep growing at the current rate, India will overtake China as the world’s most populous nation within the next decade.
Other depressing statistics are that many of the fastest growing populations are in nations that don’t seem particularly well prepared for it. Many, if not all of these countries having negative net migration, in other words, people are leaving. Where are they going to? The countries with the highest net positive migration are mostly wealthy developed countries with fertility rates less than 2 children per woman. Of course there are lots of exceptions but, it seems people from countries with high fertility rates are heading for countries with low fertility rates.
At the risk of sounding like a Trump supporter, it seems ta little unfair that the reward for keeping your population in check and running your country well, is an influx of immigrants.
At the risk of sounding callous, isn’t India the poster child for overpopulation?
Yes, they are, and so is Bangladesh, Pakistan, most of North Africa, all of Sub-Sahara Africa, most of South America, all of Central America, most of Indochina, Indonesia, Philippines and… Wherever you find poor desperate people you will usually find massive overpopulation.
Overpopulation is killing the earth.
At the risk of sounding like a Trump supporter, it seems a little unfair that the reward for keeping your population in check and running your country well, is an influx of immigrants.
Yes, it’s all those bastards fault in all those overpopulated countries. They should not have been born.
Yes, they are, and so is Bangladesh, Pakistan, most of North Africa, all of Sub-Sahara Africa, most of South America, all of Central America, most of Indochina, Indonesia, Philippines and… Wherever you find poor desperate people you will usually find massive overpopulation.
There is a lot of poverty in South and Central America and overpopulation is definitely a problem there. However it is still quite a stretch to compare over population in South America to, say, most of Asia…
Popoulation of USA 327.2 million (2018) Area of USA 3.797 million mi²
Popoulation of Brazil 209.3 million (2017) Area of Brazil 3.288 million mi²
Popoulation of India 1.339 billion (2017) Area of India 1.269 million mi²
Popoulation of China 1.386 billion (2017) (2017) Area of China 3.705 million mi²
Then we have this prediction!
Many consider Africa’s population growth a bit frightening, with predictions placing the continent’s population at 2.4 billion by 2050. By 2100, more than half of the world’s growth is expected to come from Africa, reaching 4.1 billion people by 2100 to claim over 1/3 of the world’s population.May 11, 2019
http://worldpopulationreview.com/continents/africa-population/
Good Luck Folks!
Note: I just can’t think of any way that Africa, will reach 4.1 billion people by 2100. The population will have to crash long before then if even half of the dire scenarios regarding climate change, ecological overshoot, droughts, floods, pestilence and famine etc… come to pass and it looks like we are well on track for all of the above…
BTW, Lethal wet bulb temperatures will probably compound problems in the Indian and Pakistani regions, adding to the lack of clean aresenic free drinking water! I would assume that sooner rather than later it will help jump start the population reduction process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4nud3-ncRI
Fatal Wetbulb Temperatures Reached at Pakistan-India Border
BTW, this is something that I have been screaming about because I could easily see it happening in South Florida.
Cheers!
Speaking of arsenic in drinking water… apparently it is not just a problem in India.
High levels of arsenic in bottled water sold at Whole Foods, Target, Walmart, study says
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/food/2019/06/20/penafiel-starkey-water-sold-target-whole-foods-has-high-arsenic/1513176001/
Despite its popularity and its distribution in places such as Flint, Michigan, bottled water might not be as safe as you think.
A test conducted by California nonprofit Center for Environmental Health finds that two bottled water brands — Peñafiel, owned by Keurig Dr. Pepper and Starkey, owned by Whole Foods — contain levels of arsenic that are higher than tap water, violating state guidelines as a result.
High levels of arsenic, California law states, can cause reproductive harm and cancer. Products that violate recommended state levels of arsenic have to be labeled with a warning.
“Customers typically purchase bottled water at exorbitantly high costs with the assumption that it is safer and healthier to drink than tap water, unaware that they are ingesting an extremely toxic metal linked to birth defects and cancer,” said Michael Green, the organization’s CEO, in a statement.
On the other hand maybe it is part of the global plan to control world population numbers…
Cheers!
It’s the way nature works. We’re a successful ape, practicing our success. Nature. Doesn’t. Care.
I see it in my orchard: species reproduce madly–until they can’t.
Men will realize, in the end, that they can’t escape nature.
I’ll pop this anecdote in for the record. When times change people can look back to how things were.
Many years ago I was told this by someone who had spent part of WWII in India. It was approaching the monsoon season. Given the heat and humidity he asked when the monsoon would start. ‘Next Tuesday’ was the reply. Tuesday came and no rain. He asked what had happened to the rain. ‘It will come at 4pm’ was the reply. At 4pm it rained.
I may not have got the day and time exactly right but it was sworn as a true account. I guess this doesn’t happen any more.
NAOM
The same kind of thing used to be true of afternoon showers in Belem mouth of the Amazon. It was literally like clockwork, you could pretty much set your watch by the afternoon showers when I worked there back in the late 1970s. Definitely no longer the case! And now we have Bolsonaro to make things even worse!
My point is, I find it frustrating that overpopulation appears to be a really tough subject to bring up. How many people, apart from you, are pointing a finger at (over) population as one of the root causes of global problems? How many people with a bully pulpit are making the call? I haven’t heard any celebrities making that call.
I firmly believe it is a huge part of the problem, whether any high profile leaders want to acknowledge it or not!
No, it is not just a huge part of the problem, it is the problem, Every environmental problem, every supply problem, and almost all human conflict can be traced to overpopulation.
But it is nobody’s fault. Every species multiplies to the limit of its existence. It is just part of nature. We will multiply until nature crashes our population.
Most people are afraid to call out the biggest proponent of overpopulation- the Pope.
“Francis said the answer wasn’t to reduce the world’s population but rather to better manage the planet’s abundant resources and prevent waste. Francis called the population control argument — which the Catholic Church has long opposed — a “false solution.”
“Pope Francis denounced the right to die movement on Saturday, saying that euthanasia is a sin against God and creation.”
Might be time for a-
Pope on a Rope?
Don’t want to insult any of my Cabbages For Christ friends, but I also want to survive a few more years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEn0px0uJZQ
Tim Minchin – Pope Song
Education is something the Catholic Church has supported in recent times, and it’s that very education that has bitten a HUGE and maybe even fatal ( over another century or so) chunk out of it’s ass.
The world’s supposedly most Catholic countries now generally have birth rates well below replacement , excepting in such places as education has not yet taken hold.
The moral of this story is that many an organization has within it the seeds of it’s own destruction.
It’s a slow process, in terms of our individual perceptions, but birth rates are crashing in a very encouraging fashion in such parts of the world as universal education is taking hold. In historical terms, the adoption of birth control measures to control family size is moving like a wind driven wildfire.
And while a couple of decades back I didn’t consider ( being blinded by my own prejudices) that television might play a critical role in improving the world, except possibly via dedicated educational programming , this has turned out to be the case.
Maybe I’m wrong, but if so I’m wrong in good company, in believing that once poor and or uneducated women once get to spend an hour here and there watching soap operas, where in the women have jobs, some money of their own, some nice clothes, electricity, and above all only one or two kids and some power in the household….
Well, they catch on QUICK, once it sinks in that their own lives CAN change for the better.
I don’t know a lot of Catholics these days. They’re scarce around these parts. But of the ones I do, the younger ones have only one or two kids as a rule.
And my own fundamentalist backwoods Baptist neighbors and relatives are having kids at WAY less than the usual 2.2 accepted replacement rate.
None of this is to say that religion doesn’t continue to play a major role in their ethics and politics, but as the older ones die off, the younger ones replacing them are far more liberal politically and culturally.
Religion is poison
It will be fixed. The only issue is how, but be reassured, overpopulation will not last long.
NAOM
Lots of people are bringing it up, just not framed quite that way.
Women all over the world are having more children than they want: the solution is freeing them from forced child-bearing. That means education, ability to work outside the home, and access to contraception to abortion.
Those are enormous fights, and they’re taking place *right now*.
Live now
https://www.space.com/?utm_source=notification
And after it happened:
https://www.space.com/ariane-5-rocket-launch-va248-success.html
Happy Summer Solstice (for those of us in the northern hemisphere). For those of us in the southern hemisphere, it’s Happy Winter Solstice!
DISCOVERY OF A ‘HOLY GRAIL’ WITH THE INVENTION OF UNIVERSAL COMPUTER MEMORY
“In the home, energy savings from efficient lighting and appliances have been completely wiped out by increased use of computers and gadgets, and by 2025 a ‘tsunami of data’ is expected to consume a fifth of global electricity. But this new device would immediately reduce peak power consumption in data centers by a fifth….
A new type of computer memory which could solve the digital technology energy crisis has been invented and patented by scientists from Lancaster University in the UK.”
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/lu-doa061819.php
That’s based on an intricate MBE fabrication process. The jury is out if they can get it to scale in mass production.
“The jury is out if they can get it to scale in mass production.”
So true Paul. The large number of so-called “revolutionary technologies” announced each year that come to naught makes one wonder if they are worth mentioning. New battery technology reports are a good example of this but the list seems endless. I think I was more impressed by the statement: “energy savings from efficient lighting and appliances have been completely wiped out by increased use of computers and gadgets.”
True Doug. Any improvement in storage density will be sucked up by archiving of questionable data with increasing resolution.
It is hard irony that it took high technology, a vast industrial system and scientific knowledge to even partially determine the damage and change to the global environment that the high technology and the vast industrial system has caused.
If we were stupider we would just keep mushing along wrecking things slowly and not worrying about it. If we were smarter we would have stopped wrecking things. Just smart enough to get in trouble fast and then start realizing it, but slow to do much about it.
The bean counters have a way of catching up with the technicians that are wasting the bosses money, eventually.
Sooner or later, most of the data being stored now will be discarded, as worth less to the owners of the database than the cost of maintaining it.
Government agencies will be the major exceptions. Security managers and cops can justify any expense by pushing the fear button.
2019 New Energy Outlook by Bloomberg
estimates global peak coal consumption in year 2026.
Seven years.
How rapid will be the downslope after?
Depends primarily on policy/prosperity in Asia.
Looks like excellent work went into this.
Great graphics.
https://about.bnef.com/new-energy-outlook/
Hickory,
The chart at your link shows global electricity production from coal falling by half from 2026 to 2050 and an average annual decline rate of 2.73% per year (if we assume a simplistic constant exponential decline rate).
Note that Bloomberg tends to be a bit conservative in their estimates. The falling cost of wind and solar will likely lead to electricity production from coal to fall at twice this rate, in my opinion. Note that electricity production from natural gas is also likely to fall at a minimum rate of 3% per year from 2030 to 2050 and then may accelerate to 6% per year from 2050 to 2090. Fossil fuel use might continue in air and water transportation for a while, but hopefully falling population after 2070 and improved efficiency might reduce fossil fuel use to nearly zero by the 22nd century.
That’s all fine. Except I don’t think there are any guarantees that industrial civilization as we know it, will still be functioning in 2030, let alone 2050!
We are already seeing lethal wet bulb temperatures in Pakistan today!
I think it is a serious mistake to discount the possibility of RCP 8.5 by 2050, as we are on track for that now! I know you have mentioned that you don’t watch videos but That lecture I recently posted on Climate Change, Insect Biology, and the Challenges Ahead is an eye opener!
.
We could fall over the cliff at any time.
I’m thinking Pakistan will be first of the majors (energy, food, weather major problems, plus population overshoot ruled by religious fanatics), but it could be India or Indonesia.
2050 is awfully optimistic (the survivors, if any, will be trading with the tribe in the next valley.)
Meanwhile, areas of the Canadian Arctic permafrost are thawing rapidly, 70 years ahead of when scientists previously believed, as the climate crisis continues to push the planet towards dangerous tipping points.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/19/canary-coal-mine-experts-warn-climate-tipping-point-scientists-find-permafrost
These are the good times. Yet there are 9 million people dying of pollution each year and untold millions stunted and harmed by it. Reducing coal use is a good thing, yet reduction is nowhere near enough. Dropping the CO2e in the future from 1200 to 1050 will change little.
If one adds up all the people killed by modern pollution it far surpasses the black death of Europe of the 14th century.
The best is yet to come.
Sigh. Sorry Greta. Maybe it’s time to arm your followers?
TRUDEAU DECLARES CLIMATE EMERGENCY… THEN APPROVES MAJOR OIL PIPELINE
“Canada declared a national climate emergency on Monday. The next day, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave the green light to a massive oil sands pipeline.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-21/trudeau-declares-climate-emergency-then-approves-major-oil-pipeline
https://www.vox.com/2019/6/21/18700741/oregon-republican-walkout-climate-change-bill
We now have actual and incontrovertible proof that at least some Republican politicians don’t believe in small d democracy.
This bunch has literally left the state to prevent the state government from voting on a proposed law.
https://www.thenation.com/article/mitch-mcconnell-and-elaine-chao-relax-at-the-pool/
For those of us particularly interested in the demise of the personal automobile,
https://qz.com/1647247/more-americans-are-driving-taxis-thanks-to-uber-and-lyft/
The number of people driving cars for hire has exploded over the last few years.
For sure a huge part, maybe most of this growth is the result of lots of people doing anything they can to earn a living.
But it’s also pretty much a foregone conclusion that a lot of people have discovered that they can now more easily afford a hired ride than they can a car of their own.
It’s likely autonomous cars will displace conventional cars as taxis within the next ten to twenty years.
In the meantime, another ten or twenty million people in the USA may conclude that it’s cheaper to call a conventional cab than it is to own a car, given that delivery services are getting to be ridiculously cheap and so many trips are for shopping and shopping alone.
I’ve had three packages dropped off this week, with the shipping costing me less than it would have cost me in gasoline to go to town.
It costs an arm and a leg to own a car these days, unless you have a place to work on it and know how, and can drive an old car.
You can buy a lot of rides for five hundred bucks per month, which is about as little as most people can expect to pay out to own a reasonably reliable car, including all the costs associated with ownership.
A hell of a lot of people are paying twice that much in depreciation alone.
“I’ve had three packages dropped off this week, with the shipping costing me less than it would have cost me in gasoline to go to town. ”
Bingo, that is one side of the equation few are taking into account. Not only that but a van full of packages is far more fuel efficient than a bunch of road ragers driving around and getting frustrated in traffic. These days nearly every time I go to a supermarket I see one of their staff filling a trolley from a list ready to be sent out. A couple of years ago I never did.
NAOM
Not only that but a van full of packages is far more fuel efficient than a bunch of road ragers driving around and getting frustrated in traffic.
Yep, and most of the major couriers are investing in electric vans… 😉
New posts up
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-june-21-2019/
and
http://peakoilbarrel.com/us-tight-oil-estimate-and-projection-to-dec-2019/