320 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, May 23, 2017”

  1. “As the preceding analysis has shown, the ‘knowledge-based bio-economy’ (KBBE) has divergent narratives, whose dominant one is a new strategy for sustainable capital.

    What preceding analysis is being referred to? Is there a link missing?

    Btw , before even discussing the merits of the content. I would suggest that someone take some time to format the text with a bit more care. Perhaps leaving line spaces between paragraphs to make the overall legibility a bit better and the content easier to follow. Especially since the entire body of text is italicized. It just makes it harder on the eyes, IMO.

  2. Sustainable Capital? The Neoliberalization of Nature and Knowledge in the European ‘Knowledge-based Bio-economy’

    “As the preceding analysis has shown, the ‘knowledge-based bio-economy’ (KBBE) has divergent narratives, whose dominant one is a new strategy for sustainable capital. This promotes bio-technoscience as the means to reconcile environmental and economic sustainability. It frames the sustainability problem as an inefficiency to be overcome through a techno-knowledge fix, especially through molecular-level changes. Here ecological sustainability means a benign eco-efficient productivity through resources which are renewable, reproducible and therefore sustainable— by contrast to inanimate nature (e.g., minerals), which lacks those characteristics. This imaginary of cornucopian living resources encourages political and financial investment in a techno-knowledge fix.

    Within this imaginary, mechanical-informatic metaphors (e.g., cell factories) are invested in Nature— which thus represents human qualities usually ascribed to industrial activities, entities and products. These metaphors narrowly define the social, economic and ecological potential of natural resources— as intensified productivity seeking commercial products suitable for global markets. The techno-knowledge fix fetishizes specific social forms of natural resources (and of knowledges) as inherent characteristics, thus naturalizing their potential privatization and commodification.

    This technoscientific imperative is embedded in global market demands that extend the continuing (over-)consumption of natural resources. As a response, techno-knowledge fixes are meant to expand resource availability, while also competing globally in ‘bio-based’ sectors. This solution requires changes in policy goals, agendas and frameworks so that they can be adapted to commercial imperatives of sustainable capital.

    All this forms the basis for sustainable capital as a politico-economic strategy to sustain capital accumulation through proprietary knowledge of nature’s productivity. Sustainability is framed as knowledge that enables the intensification of natural resource productivity, to be unlocked with new knowledge embedded in technoscientific innovation…

    Many natural resources otherwise would be freely reproducible for re-use and exchange, e.g., seeds and enzymes. As a valuable resource, nature has to be protected from competitors. Or, more precisely, knowledge of natural resources has to be protected, since the capture of market value from knowledge depends upon intellectual property rights (IPRs).

    As a political-economic strategy, sustainable capital combines the formal and real subsumption of nature in new ways, while also going beyond them. Real subsumption redesigns nature for intensified production, while formal subsumption identifies and extracts components for recomposing them in new products with higher market value. As a distinctive feature, this dual subsumption emphasizes natural resource functions, rather than specific forms which could fulfill those functions. The intensification of ‘natural’ processes through new knowledge reorients policy frameworks to the demands of capital accumulation.

    Sustainable capital has novel features in recasting the resource problem. Earlier regimes sought to increase labour productivity through mechanical energy from fossil fuels, thus causing enormous ecological damage. As a novel diagnosis, the KBBE agenda frames the problem as energy and other resource shortages, resulting from their inefficient use and consequently wasting resources. This waste is framed as both a problem and opportunity— not simply as a ‘negative side-effect’ to be managed.

    As a remedy, research seeks ways to make capital itself renewable through a techno-knowledge fix that goes beyond the current dependence upon inanimate natural resources such as oil and gas, metals, minerals etc. Research agendas promise sustainable resource usage through intensified, more efficient biological activity of renewable resources. This promises a dual benefit— ensuring the renewable replacement of natural resources for the foreseeable future, as well as shortening the timescale that is currently necessary for the geological formation of ‘non-renewable’ resources.

    Renewable replacements need to be found not only throughout the value chain (e.g., to replace resource inputs, machinery, energy etc.), but also within a broader shift in ‘ecological regime’. This regime shift invests great expectations for unlocking the productive potential of natural resources. In this cornucopian resource imaginary, technoscientific innovation will develop new forms of ‘fixed’ bio-capital (e.g., plants or plant cells as bio-factories), new forms of non-human ‘labour’ (e.g., micro-organisms as bio-catalysts), new forms of energy supply (e.g., biomass and biofuels) and new forms of ‘life’ with greater biological productivity, as the basis for new forms of surplus value.

    Defined as ‘the eco-efficient transformation of renewable biological resources’, the KBBE is sometimes equated with biological productivity, implicitly distinct from labour productivity. For those cornucopian resource imaginaries to gain commercial success, however, a techno-knowledge fix also depends upon exploiting new combinations of “living” and “dead” labour. These include the following: expertise in lab research, fixed capital in bio-refineries and conventional agri-industrial labour for providing large-scale biomass, especially in the global South.

    As a divergent imaginary of a bio-economy, agro-ecological approaches have been promoted for enhancing farmers’ knowledge of natural resources. Recently this has been elaborated as a means to increase on-farm biological productivity, e.g., through eco-functional intensification, dependent upon expanding a knowledge commons. Dominant biotechnological agendas have generally locked out agro-ecological approaches. Nevertheless such alternatives can achieve gains through well-organized stakeholder networks, as this case study illustrates.

    The stakes have been raised by the Europe 2020 strategy, which promotes ‘smart, sustainable and inclusive growth’, especially through ‘resource efficient technologies’. The European Commission plans to launch European Innovation Partnerships to speed up the development of the technologies needed to meet societal challenges, especially for ‘building the bio-economy by 2020’. In this new policy context of the KBBE, alternative versions could either be marginalized or else become counter-hegemonic. Here lies a strategic question: ‘how do counter-hegemonic forces challenge routinized categories and naturalized institutions, generate new subject positions and social forces, and struggle for new projects and strategies?’. As a related question: Can alternatives be more effectively promoted by representing them as complementary to the dominant agenda—or else as contradictory?

    Biomimicry: New Natures, New Enclosures
    (Abstract)

    “Advocates of biomimicry encourage a new industrial paradigm that ostensibly leaves behind the crude violence of Francis Bacon, the domination of nature-as-machine, and a history of toxic production processes that have given rise to a present and coming climate crisis. As part of a broader trend towards the conceptualization and development of a ‘bioeconomy’, we argue here that biomimicry produces ‘nature’ in new ways. At face value, these new approaches to valuing nature may seem less violent and exploitative. Yet, new natures can and are tortured in new ways. We argue that biomimicry produces ‘nature’ through well-worn logics of resource enclosure and privatization, focusing upon two fundamental shifts in how nonhuman life is figured and put to work: (1) the production of nature as intellectual property (as opposed to raw materials); (2) the production of nature as an active subject (as opposed to a passive receptacle or vehicle).”

    Relevant quote from my previous comment:

    ” ‘Mimicking biology’ (the water) has been around for a very long time;

    ‘Biomimicry™’ (the sewage) is a status-quo brainwash…

    Keep the baby and use the proper water and be wary of any bad water…”

    1. “… cornucopian resource imaginary, technoscientific innovation will develop new forms of ‘fixed’ bio-capital (e.g., plants or plant cells as bio-factories), new forms of non-human ‘labour’ (e.g., micro-organisms as bio-catalysts), new forms of energy supply (e.g., biomass and biofuels) and…”

      do they think they can do better than “trees” producing “wood”?

      1. Are they sociopathic?
        Maybe we should be more concerned, especially about certain players with certain vested interests, about a relatively-sociopathic culture in the initial throes of energy depletion, looking at nature and certain fundamentals the way it appears.

        Speaking of babies and this kind of stuff, I wrote a short poem, roughly 30 years ago, whose subject was about the insanity behind much technology and manufactured consumer products, and in the context of the environment and their effects on it, as well as the apathy of people to that and in general, glazed over and pacified by that kind of society.

        The metaphor used was a hypothetical bib for babies that had lasers on the sides of it that ‘atomized’ the food as it fell, so there was no mess to clean up or bib to wash. I’ll dig it up…

        ~ Laserbib™ ~

        The greenhouse effect is a hot topic

        And our baby’s got a Laserbib™

        Radio news on dangerous radioactivity

        But out baby’s got a Laserbib™

        Unknown species knowingly becoming extinct

        Laserbib™!

        Acid rain extinguishing life…

        Mysterious Amazon vanishing…

        Refridgerants causing sunburn…

        Recycled plastics discarded…

        Dead lakes alive with disease…

        Floating oil spills sink wildlife…

        But our baby’s got a Laserbib™!

        And yours can too!

        Get one!

        While world-supplies last!

        Along with the poem, I even made a simple drawing of a somewhat vicious and insane-looking baby with the bib on, food on its face and haphazardly clutching a fork.

        This comment is brought to you by Laserbib™. When little baby messes come calling, Laserbib™ answers them!

        1. **We regret to inform our loyal customers that Laserbib™ has been temporarily recalled due to dangers of laser-burns, eye-damage, and fires and will now come with a warning not to be worn by babies under 18 years old.

      2. “new forms of non-human ‘labour’ (e.g., micro-organisms as bio-catalysts)”

        This is scientific nonsense, a catalyst DOES NOT change the equilibrium, there is no energetical gain! A catalyst can not replace labour/energy.

        1. A catalyst lowers the activation energy of the reaction, thus reducing the energy necessary.

  3. Here’s a more recent paper that discusses the same subject matter based on an Austrian model:

    A Transition to Which Bioeconomy? An Exploration of Diverging Techno-Political Choices
    Daniel Hausknost 1,2,*, Ernst Schriefl 3, Christian Lauk 2 and Gerald Kalt 4
    Received: 7 March 2017 / Accepted: 18 April 2017 / Published: 23 April 2017

    http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/4/669/html

    Abstract: To date the concept of the bioeconomy—an economy based primarily on biogenic instead of fossil resources—has largely been associated with visions of “green growth” and the advancement of biotechnology and has been framed from within an industrial perspective. However, there is no consensus as to what a bioeconomy should effectively look like, and what type of society it would sustain. In this paper, we identify different types of narratives constructed around this concept and carve out the techno-political implications they convey. We map these narratives on a two-dimensional option space, which allows for a rough classification of narratives and their related imaginaries into four paradigmatic quadrants. We draw the narratives from three different sources: (i) policy documents of national and supra-national authorities; (ii) stakeholder interviews; and (iii) scenarios built in a biophysical modelling exercise. Our analysis shows that there is a considerable gap between official policy papers and visions supported by stakeholders. At least in the case of Austria there is also a gap between the official strategies and the option space identified through biophysical modelling. These gaps testify to the highly political nature of the concept of the bioeconomy and the diverging visions of society arising from it.

    Bold mine, but a statement with which I wholeheartedly agree!

    Since I am personally somewhat more familiar with both the political and agricultural landscapes of Austria and Germany, where I have family in an agricultural region and where my bother in law owns apple, pear and plum orchards, just a hop skip and a jump away. Also not all that far away is Hungary where my grandparents were land owners and farmers and I have visited there as well, even though our family lost that land after the communist revolution, the farming there continues, C’est la vie, but I digress.

    The main point being, bioeconomics like any other economics is first and foremost a funamentally political enterprise. And all politics is local.

    Now I personally tend to be more comfortable and in my element discussing soil science, agronomy, ecosystems science and biology than when I am discussing politics, economics, philosophy and social science, all of which I think lack the rigor of the hard sciences. A Chlorophyll molecule, or the process of photosynthesis, is not open to philosophical interpretation or legal debate.

    However, what I take home from the discussion and conclusions in both the paper that you link and the one I link here, is that there is currently a shifting political playing field, and societies everywhere are moving away from what many of us tend to call BAU, (which I believe, most people here would agree, is unsustainable), to something that is still in the process of being shaped and is as yet very much undefined. Things are very much in a transitional phase.

    I’m also pretty sure that true sustainability will at the end of the day, have to depend on natural laws that govern energy flows and these will by definition supercede ideological political discussions. Experiments such as Lysenkoism have tended to fail rather catastrophically!

    I admit this somewhat circuitously, brings me to the political framework for the ‘Circular Economy’ which has been adopted by the European Union.
    http://ec.europa.eu/environment/circular-economy/index_en.htm

    I know that in the past you have criticized the Macarthur foundation and the concept of the circular economy solely on the basis that some major corporations have begun to incorporate some of these ideas into their modus operandi.

    The Ellen Macarthur Foundation
    https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy

    And The Disruptive Innovation Festival, promoted by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation which I have followed for the last two years:

    The video at the top of that linked page is a really good example as to why I think your criticism is not based on an understanding of what the Circular Economy Concept is, what it isn’t and what it proposes. Case in point:

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGTihW_G4y7LKWTkmtXphVA

    Is this the Future of Global Food Systems?
    3,152 views 1 year ago
    Leontino Balbo Jr has developed an approach to organic sugar cane production with the potential to disrupt the whole agricultural sector itself.

    In 1986, Leontino began experimenting with “ecosystems revitalising agriculture”, a new approach that he believed could increase crop yields, reduce pest numbers and restore

    Now by coincidence my cousins have a farm not too far from Leontino Balbo Jr’s sugarcane plantation. They are also scientists in the biosciences fields and one of them is an agronomist like Leontino and studied at the same university. Many of the farms in that region employ soil science techniques like those in the video to keep the local watersheds pristine and keep the rivers from becoming sewers.

    On the other hand I’m sure that someone could argue that sugar is intrinsically bad and shouldn’t be produced in the first place. While I drink my cafezinho black, no sugar, I’ll still occasionally have a ‘caipirinha’, which definitely needs a little sugar and we wouldn’t have aguardente or cachaca without the sugarcane.

    Cheers!

    1. Here in Albuquerque we can experience some real big extremes in the temperature, from day to day, month to month or year to year. Except overall I would say the weather is still just acting like it always has for as long as I’ve lived here, which is going to be coming up on about 45 years soon. So I guess I could say going along with my own personal observations, I don’t really think we’ve experienced much extreme climate change here. Summers are sill hot, winters still cold, spring and fall still somewhere in between and so on. I guess Europe people could be having a somewhat different experience but I wouldn’t know without talking to some.

      1. So I guess I could say going along with my own personal observations, I don’t really think we’ve experienced much extreme climate change here.

        So I guess your fellow citizens disagree.
        https://www.cabq.gov/cap

      2. People aren’t geared inside their heads to notice slow gradual change in such matters as the weather, especially people in places where they are prosperous enough to stay inside most of the time, and ride around in air conditioned automobiles when they do venture outside, lol.

        I wouldn’t have noticed the gradual slow increase in the average temperature where I live, either, except for the fact that I’m a farmer, and therefore pay the same sort of close attention to the weather as stock traders pay to the headline news.

        What’s happening here where I live that’s of the most immediate importance is that we are now getting a LOT more warm weather during the late winter than we used to, which results in fruit trees breaking their winter dormancy sooner than usual. Then we get a hard frost at the usual time, with the result being we lose our crop.

        This used to happen back in my great grand parents time one in a couple of decades or so, it was once every ten or fifteen years when I was a kid, now it’s once every five or ten years in my old age.

        It’s happening, it’s gradually getting a little warmer every year. The average length of the growing season has increased at least a week. This is not necessarily happy news, although it can be SPUN as happy news.

        We need a week of zero F weather in my specialty to wipe out most of the overwintering bugs that would otherwise play hell the following year ya see, etc etc.

        Millions of acres of ever green forest are dead or dying because bugs that used to be kept in check by cold weather are running wild and free now. Fire seasons are longer and drier and hotter than usual, and will get worse as time passes.

        And we have every reason to believe that the warming process is going to speed up as time passes. Many undesirable things that come to pass start out slowly, like rust in the family car, or the the infirmities associated with old age. As time passes, such problems get worse, faster.

        Maybe the fact that your spouse is buying a LITTLE MORE beer or booze than usual doesn’t mean anything. Or maybe it means you are on the road to being the spouse of an alcoholic.

        It will have to get only a little hotter and a little drier than it is already before it gets so hot and dry that people in some places will have no choice but to move.

        Water, or rather the lack thereof, is already a major issue in your neck of the woods.

        1. As the saying goes ” A ship floats until it sinks”. People will not really recognize change until it drives them from an area. Even then they will be thinking the change is only temporary, soon to be reversed.

    2. Survivalist – you’re someone who likes real data, I think so I wonder if you have seen these two sites from MACC and Copernicus (I think part of the European Space Agency). They give forecasts of GHGs, aerosols etc. both globally and regional, and also have some relevant presentations and papers.

      http://www.gmes-atmosphere.eu/services/aqac/
      (click on today’s forecasts and analysis menus to the left)

      http://macc.copernicus-atmosphere.eu/d/services/gac/nrt/nrt_fields_ghg/
      (click on parameter and area menus on the left)

      1. Thanks! I really appreciate it George. I had not seen those links before. One of the things that I really like about the comments section of both the petroleum and non-petroleum threads is the shared links. This is surely the most civilized comments section of any website on the Internet.

  4. Interesting piece on Jared Kushner. I did not realize he was a slum lord.

    http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/jared-kushner%E2%80%99s-other-real-estate-empire/ar-BBBssv3?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

    If the case was confounding to Warren, it was not unique. Hundreds like it have been filed over the last five years by JK2 Westminster and affiliated businesses in the state of Maryland alone, where the company owns some 8,000 apartments and townhouses. Nor was JK2 Westminster quite as anonymous as its opaque name suggested. It was a subsidiary of a large New York real estate firm called Kushner Companies, which was led by a young man whose initials happened to be J.K.: Jared Kushner.

    The garnishing started that month. Warren was in the midst of leaving her job, but JK2 Westminster garnished her bank account too. After her account was zeroed out, a loss of about $900, she borrowed money from her mother to buy food for her children and pay her bills. That February — five years after she left Cove Village — Warren returned to court, this time with the housing form in hand, asking the judge to halt garnishment. “I am a single mom of three and my bank account was wiped clean by the plaintiff,” she pleaded in another handwritten request. “I cannot take care of my kids when they snatch all of my money out of my account. I do not feel I owe this money. Please have mercy on my family and I.” She told me that when she called the law office representing JK2 Westminster that same day from the courthouse to discuss the case, one of the lawyers told her: “This is not going to go away. You will pay us.”

    1. Interesting piece on Jared Kushner. I did not realize he was a slum lord.

      So is, or supposedly was, Trump!

      On a slightly different note it seems there is evidence that his, Trump’s that is, mental acuity has been showing significant signs of decline.

      https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/23/donald-trump-speaking-style-interviews/

      It was the kind of utterance that makes professional transcribers question their career choice:

      … there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself — and the Russians, zero.

      When President Trump offered that response to a question at a press conference last week, it was the latest example of his tortured syntax, mid-thought changes of subject, and apparent trouble formulating complete sentences, let alone a coherent paragraph, in unscripted speech.

      While I’m not big on conspiracy theories, given his total apparent lack of awareness of the implications of some of his recent actions, I’m becoming more and more convinced that he is seriously cognitively impaired and is being deliberately manipulated by a group of WH insiders with a nefarious agenda. Who will probably throw him under the bus, as soon as he has outlived his usefulness.

      1. I’m willing to believe Trump is a nut case, it’s hard to conclude otherwise, all things considered.

        http://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/trumps-damning-responses-to-the-russia-investigation

        http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/in-the-heart-of-trump-country

        http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/29/why-sally-yates-stood-up-to-trump

        Now my old friend HB will surely rake me over the coals one more time, accusing me of personally putting Trump in the WH, lol, but the DIFFERENCE is that I tell it like it is, as best I can, regardless of which faction is fucking up.

        I didn’t need to detail the Trump side before the election, everybody else here together nailed that down pretty tight. I just made a regular point of acknowledging he would be worse than Clinton.

        Any body interested in actually seeing the D’s return to power would do VERY well to read the “heart of trump country ” New Yorker link VERY carefully, making a REAL effort to understand why so many frustrated, scared, pissed off and angry working class people voted for him.

        And PLEASE try to remember that this is a NEW YORKER link, the New Yorker being universally acknowledged as one of the most important, influential, and trustworthy publications aligned with the overall Democratic Party agenda, excepting maybe that part of it having to deal with banksters.

      2. Trump is taking statins. Statins have been known to cause transient amnesia and other lovely brain scrambling conditions.

    1. Maybe the climate can give the US some leeway and exceptions. It only seems fair. Make it God’s will that He overlooks some of the worst of anthropogenic climate change for the US, home of the brave and bringers of democracy to the rest of the world, as they say…

      Lets us join our hands together in unison as one global community, plus the US, and pray that it will be spared from much of God’s human-activity-caused climate-change wrath.

      If His spared climate wrath absolutely must be transferred and dissipated somehow, then make it Bangladesh and places like that…

      Let the effects of anthropogenic climate change be things that can be lessened for those who have the most money to lessen them. Let God offer lines of credit to this great cause, and acknowledge and legitimize the realities of such things as profit, industrialism, debt, the petrodollar, The American Way, and, my personal favorite, the crony-capitalist plutarchy.

      Love, American Style

      “Good Luck to All! And may that Star Spangled Banner yet wave upon the early morning light of a new world. A world connecting people to people with all the benefits of technology and helping us better understand and help each other.

      Happy Fourth of July!” ~ Fred Magyar

    1. This was discussed in the May 15th thread.

      This analysis has a basic flaw: it only looks at very capital intensive energy storage. Chemical batteries are fine for daily buffering, but far too expensive for seasonal buffering. The same is true for pumped storage: the capital costs are prohibitive for seasonal storage. And…it’s a “straw man” – no one is proposing that.

      But…there are perfectly good solutions for seasonal storage: Germany’s “wind-gas” is the basic model. You use surplus power during most of the year to store cheaply for seasonal needs.

      1. Actually Nick, they got into the biophysical realities in details (if you read the article).
        You need to update your analysis.
        There is currently no solution, (other than pumped hydro, which needs very specific conditions).

        “In Germany, for example, the ambitious and subsidized push for renewables in recent years as part of the so-called Energiewende (‘Energy Transition’) has boosted solar and wind power generation, which represented 18.2% of the gross power generation mix in 2016 (5.9% for solar and 12.3% for wind). It has however caused a steep drop in wholesale power prices and contributed to push massive losses on the country’s largest utility companies, which still generate most of their power from coal and gas and find themselves at risk of falling into what some have called a ‘death spiral’.

        Higher penetration levels of variable renewables, even as they push down the costs of electricity generation, thus potentially bring higher system costs, as the overall power system needs to be able to accommodate more intermittent energy sources while also ensuring that it can keep functioning despite the dwindling profits and investment capacities of traditional utilities. ”

        Storage technologies that would enable a full displacement of conventional generation capacity and 100% penetration of VRE at the current system reliability level are, as of today, unavailable.

        1. Yeah, they say that. But, I don’t see any sign they’ve analyzed the actual strategies that the Germans are planning to use. German engineers are really pretty good – they haven’t missed this problem.

          If you could find where they’ve looked at anything besides chemical batteries and pumped storage, that would be very helpful. You’d be looking for something like “wind-gas”, where surplus power is used to create H2 or Ch4 (methane) for storage against seasonal shortfalls.

          The problem of power pricing that they point out is a temporary problem of the structure of wholesale power markets, mostly in Europe. For example, Europe doesn’t have capacity payments, as discussed in a comment in the non-oil thread (search for “PJM”).

          1. They looked at it all.
            We have biophysical constraints that may not solvable.
            But lets hope– the Japanese commercialized lithium ion in the early 1990’s.
            It has been a while.

            1. Hi Nick,

              I don’t have access to my notes at the moment, but a hell of a lot is being done on the flip side of the energy storage coin, which helps to render storage unnecessary, or, if you prefer to express it differently, simply lessen the need for energy while maintaining the same quality of life.

              Germans for instance build new houses these days that are so energy efficient that the heat thrown off by the lights and appliances is often enough to keep the house warm in cold weather. And they use VERY efficient lights and appliances, etc.

              It’s my opinion that within a few more years, a much larger percentage of new buildings will be built with ground sourced heat pumps, in just about every prosperous country.

              If there is no better immediate use for any surplus wind and solar electricity, it will be possible to divert it into the ground as either stored heat, or stored “coolth”.

              There ought to be a better word than “coolth” to use as shorthand for energy storage in the form of ice or cold water, etc, but I haven’t run across it.

              And when it becomes necessary, if it becomes necessary, it will be possible to run a hell of a lot of industries on an intermittent basis, at times when wind and solar power are abundant, and simply shut those industries down at times when renewable energy is in short supply. This will surely be a costly solution, but it will be cheap compared to doing without the products of such industries due to a lack of affordable energy to run them.

              I also fore see tax laws gradually being changed to encourage less energy use in the form of throw away packaging for food, processing convenience foods, etc.

              Mandates can be put in place requiring the manufacturers of appliances to not only reduce their product’s energy consumption, but to guarantee that their products are easily and economically repairable for at least ten or twenty years, by which time a new generation of MUCH more efficient appliances would be available, etc.

              Throw away goods in general may eventually be subjected to a serious throw away tax.

              We already pay an automobile tire disposal tax in some states. I don’t see any reason why there shouldn’t be such a tax on beer and soft drink containers……… as a matter of fact, we do so already in some places by way of a mandatory return for deposit.

              I would be fine with extending deposit laws to the styrofoam and paper containers used for fast foods, making the tax high enough that fewer people would toss these containers out of car windows, lol, and that the ones on the roadsides would be picked up by people who need the money.

            2. I agree: the consumption/demand side is extremely important.

              Greater efficiency helps a lot. So does Demand Side Management: sending price signals so that appliances, EVs, etc., adapt their consumption to supply.

              There are a wide variety of tools for dealing with “load following” (the traditional term for matching supply with demand. If we use them all properly it won’t really be hard or expensive to manage renewable energy’s variance (aka intermittency).

            3. This is soooo old I don’t understand why people have so many problems with it. My parents had a ‘White Meter’ back in the oh so long ago that allowed you to use electricity, at a lower cost, during certain hours – night. We ran storage heaters off this but you could use it for washer/dryers or anything else for that matter. So simple, so straightforward.

              NAOM

            4. Yes, Demand Side Management is very old, very well proven, cheap, effective, etc.

              Why isn’t it used more? At least in the US, utilities have been incentivized to build generation by regulatory models of guaranteed Return on Capital Investment.

              If they build stuff, they make money. And then, we’re surprised when they build too much stuff…

            5. The states of Texas and California should provide useful case studies going forward see:

              Wind hits new monthly record for share of ERCOT energy

              More than one in four megawatt-hours consumed in March in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas was supplied by wind power — the biggest share ever for renewables in the Lone Star State’s main grid operator, a report released Monday shows.

              ERCOT’s monthly Demand and Energy Report shows the grid used almost 26 TWh in March, of which wind supplied about 6.6 TWh, equal to about 25.4% of the total, which beat the previous record, 23.3%, set in February. In March 2016, the percentage was 15.5%.

              Wind’s total in March was less than 2 percentage points below that of coal-fired generation, which supplied the second-largest share, 7.1 TWh or 27.2%.

              and

              CAISO: Renewables served 42% of California demand on May 16, setting record

              Dive Brief:

              The California ISO hit a new renewable energy record this week, with wind, solar, hydro and other renewables serving nearly 42% of electricity demand on May 16, according to CAISO data.

              During peak renewables production over the 2 p.m. hour, renewables supplied nearly 72% of the ISO’s electricity. Thermal generation (mostly gas-fired), unspecified power imports and nuclear power made up the balance.

              The record comes just days after the previous one on was set on Saturday, May 13, when renewables supplied 67% of the ISO’s power over a one-hour period.

              AFAIK the levels of renewable penetration on the California grid rival if not exceed the levels in Germany. In both cases the grids have ample avenues for the export of excess power and power imports to alleviate shortages.

              Texas is interesting from the point of view that wind turbine installations are continuing apace while solar is just getting started and wind is already contributing as much as 45% of power demand. See:

              New record set for most wind-power used in Texas

              AUSTIN (KXAN) — A new record for wind generated power used in the ERCOT system was set this past weekend.

              KXAN’s Natalie Ferrari looks into how wind farms are playing a big part in serving the state’s electricity demands. The most recent cold front brought incredibly breezy conditions all across the Lone Star State.

              According to ERCOT, “wind generation” set a new record last Sunday afternoon for the most wind power used. This usage represented about 45 percent of the state’s total power demand at the time.

              Wind farms from all across north, west and south Texas can be thanked for producing this record setting usage.

              Going in-depth on just how much power was used, ERCOT says over 15,000 megawatts of electricity was used just on Sunday afternoon. Comparing that to the last output record, which was over 14,000 megawatts on Nov. 17.

              The current record for percentage of load served from wind generation is a little over 48 percent, last set on March 23, 2016. While there is more than 17,000 MW of installed wind generation capacity serving the ERCOT system, they say their total is expected to top 19,000 MW by the end of the year.

              We live in interesting times!

            6. They looked at it all.
              We have biophysical constraints that may not solvable.

              While it may indeed be that for a planet with projections of a population of 9 to 10 billion inhabitants in the not too distant future, biophysical constraints of one form or another will more than likely be encountered.

              However, to glibly claim that: They looked at it all”. Seems to me to be one of those rather extraordinary claims that require extraordinary evidence!

              In any case I don’t how much time you spend in Europe but there are so many things happening there that I would think it safe to say they have definitely not looked at it all. For example just in a small farming town in Germany where my sister lives every house and building is covered with solar panels, they have an integrated smart grid with back up from gas produced in biodigestors using diverse streams of agricultural biowaste, pumped hydro and some battery back up as well. That’s just one town.

              At least in that part of Southern Germany the general population seems to have a pretty high level of education and they are very disciplined when it comes to things like recycling.

              In a slightly more urban environment you have projects such as this one in the Netherlands:

              http://www.appm.nl/en/news/the-dutch-revolution-smart-charging-electric-vehicles/

              How the Netherlands are using electric vehicles to store peak power production of sustainable resources. By turning itself into one huge Living Lab for Smart Charging of electric vehicles, the Netherlands are fast becoming the international frontrunner for smart charging EV’s, using them to store peak power production of solar and wind. Already 325 municipalities (including Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague) have joined the Dutch Living Lab Smart Charging representing 80 percent of all public charging stations. It’s also supported by the Dutch government. APPM took care of the projectmanagement.

              Adding to this some large players on private and semi-private charging stations such as The New Motion and EV-Box have joined. Very soon all Dutch charging stations will be open for tests and research projects. The Living Lab Smart Charging is an open platform where companies (from multinationals to small tech start-ups, both national and international), universities, local and regional governments and grid operators cooperate.

              Here’s a Youtube video of that project in action back in 2015 and things are happening very fast over there.

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFyb0JLeyqQ
              Smart Solar Charging Lombok Utrecht

              Published on Jun 7, 2015
              Smart Solar Charging starts in Lombok with the first sunpower-controlled charging station en V2G-system. A project of GE, Vidyn, Nissan, Stedin, LomboXnet, LastMileSolutions, Upp Energy, NewSolar, Economic Board Utrecht en de Gemeente Utrecht.

              More info on: http://www.lomboxnet.nl/smart-solar-c..

              As I have traveled around Europe I see lot’s of things happening and I’d say that there is an energy revolution underway at many different levels. The Europeans are highly aware that energy storage is essential but there are some pretty intelligent and innovative people tackling this issue on multiple fronts.

            7. “…there are some pretty intelligent and innovative people tackling this issue on multiple fronts.” ~ Fred Magyar

              There are some ‘pretty intelligent and innovative people tackling the issue on multiple fronts’ of how to trash the planet.

              Kick my door in with your biomimicked weapons-grade AI RoboBoots™ when the supposedly ‘complicated science of equability and ethics and the like’ and their integrations are headwrapped by these and other ‘pretty intelligent and innovative people’.

              Until then, they’re all just pissing into the wind while you and company blissfully cheerlead downwind.

              Recommendation: Take a hot soapy shower, rinse well, change your clothes, and then stand upwind.

            8. Kick my door in with your biomimicked weapons-grade AI RoboBoots™ when the supposedly ‘complicated science of equability and ethics and the like’ and their integrations are headwrapped by these and other ‘pretty intelligent and innovative people’.

              Ethics is not complicated science!
              Ethics consists of the standards of behavior that a society accepts. Ancient Mayans for example considered it ethical and moral to offer human sacrifices to their gods… Times change!

              And while we are on the topic of intelligence… There’s a new study out.

              https://www.nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ng.3869.html

              Genome-wide association meta-analysis of 78,308 individuals identifies new loci and genes influencing human intelligence.

              Intelligence is associated with important economic and health-related life outcomes1. Despite intelligence having substantial heritability2 (0.54) and a confirmed polygenic nature, initial genetic studies were mostly underpowered3, 4, 5. Here we report a meta-analysis for intelligence of 78,308 individuals. We identify 336 associated SNPs (METAL P < 5 × 10−8) in 18 genomic loci, of which 15 are new. Around half of the SNPs are located inside a gene, implicating 22 genes, of which 11 are new findings. Gene-based analyses identified an additional 30 genes (MAGMA P < 2.73 × 10−6), of which all but one had not been implicated previously. We show that the identified genes are predominantly expressed in brain tissue, and pathway analysis indicates the involvement of genes regulating cell development (MAGMA competitive P = 3.5 × 10−6). Despite the well-known difference in twin-based heratiblity2 for intelligence in childhood (0.45) and adulthood (0.80), we show substantial genetic correlation (rg = 0.89, LD score regression P = 5.4 × 10−29). These findings provide new insight into the genetic architecture of intelligence.

              And I'm willing to bet good money that at some point this knowledge will be used to genetically enhance or modify future generations of super intelligent hominids who will consider this to be culturally and ethically acceptable. Homo sapiens will become just as extinct as our close cousins the Neanderthals did at the hands of Cro-Magnon man.

              They might even look back at some of the practices of our industrial civilization and think them just as barbaric as the human sacrifices of the ancient Mayans.

              Until then, I'd say that the intelligent Europeans working on the energy transition in Europe and elsewhere are definitely operating in an ethical manner and well within current cultural norms.

              Cheers!

            9. The ‘complicated science of equability and ethics and the like’ in single quotes is offered as a kind of ‘shorthand sarcastic criticism’.

              If the Mayan, etc., civilizations were still around today, they’d probably have a lot to teach about ethics, sustainability, resilience, science and technology, etc..
              But they’re not. They’re ‘extinct’.
              They couldn’t manage that part, as ‘pretty intelligent’ as they were, like their European counterparts, ‘tackling their own issues on multiple fronts’.

              Species-unrelated ecological threats to extinction aside, a species with a very limited capacity to adapt and evolve, such as with regard to forms of intelligence, such as to environmental and systemic pressures and changes, may not be a species for very long– self-engineered superduper or otherwise.

              At the end of the day, ‘human intelligence’ may very well prove to be a paradox that does humans in– perhaps, in part, by dumbing them down, through relatively myopic, detaching and disempowering scientific and technological overspecialization and overcomplexity.

              Slowly quicksanded in a self-reinforcing techointellectual sludge, where neurons and synapses atrophy in a collective Alzheimer’s, like yeast’s ferment in the artificial environment of a petri-dish.

              Walmart, Textron, Microsoft and Monstanto…

            10. Caelan, sometimes after slogging through the quagmire of your rhetoric I actually agree with you. Human intelligence will be the downfall of humans and probably many of the species on the planet. The “smarter” they make their machines and themselves the further down the rabbit hole they may go.
              Now with the New American Victorians and New Global Victorians actually running the show, the odds of a successful transistion are falling fast.
              The New Gilded Age has far more suffering than the old one. The economic expansion is non-American/European and the economic depression of the lower classes is global as money is concentrated in fewer hands.

            11. That’s why I’m working on Permaea. The current money system and how it operates and is managed appears as one serious potential fracture-point among a series that exposes extreme vulnerability. We need an alternative society with alternative ethics, land, community, people and trade networks and associations, and so forth, along those lines, such as to help avoid something of a global Venezuela.

              I have been looking into WordPress’ mapping directories to see what can be found and figured out. If anyone reading this knows anything about it and wants to look into it with me and consider lending a hand, please feel free to let us know. The site is linked to my name.

              “One way to promote local [‘glocal/trans-local’] spending is to introduce a local [‘glocal/trans-local’/ethics-based?] currency… Eventually, in a period of sufficient upheaval, a money monopoly may be impossible to sustain, then local currencies would be freer to operate… Any initiative which reduces our dependence on national currency in circulation is going to be useful in this regard… Holmgren points out that holding cash under one’s own control, outside of the banking system can greatly increase resilience by reducing dependency on the solvency of middle men. This is very much in accordance with our position at TAE [The Automatic Earth], as cash is king in a period of deflation…” ~ Nicole Foss (my parentheses/emphasis)

      2. “But…there are perfectly good solutions for seasonal storage: Germany’s “wind-gas” is the basic model. You use surplus power during most of the year to store cheaply for seasonal needs.”

        But ironically, Germany has as better alternative pumped storage as SEASONAL storage in Norway. 🙂

    1. Yep. The same thing happened with Toyota’s Prius. The first generation lost money.

      Of course, Toyota’s making a lot of money on their Prius line now. You just have to think long-term. The Japanese and Chinese seem to be better at that…

      1. Long term? How long?

        Making money at what cost? Is that factored into the equations?

        Take out the ceaseless coerced-taxpayer subsidies for the roadway infrastructure and let’s see what happens.
        Mind you, that may actually happen and already be happening, as I seem to recall previously posting something along the lines of a crumbling roadway infrastructure. And this is only at the beginning. Ever seen images of Detroit?

        I also recall something about export of some metals from Japan being turned down due to some radioactivity detected, presumably due to Fukushima. Japan does radiation well too. China? Hands down absolutely fabulous at pollution and population in general.

        From where do you write your comments, Nick? Where does your experience come from? A squat in Detroit?

        Tell you what: Let’s you and I spend a summer– four months– in Detroit, maybe squat in an abandoned place or work for Walmart or McD’s and rent a cheap place from a slumlord. We could try one of the abandoned downtown highrises, and write and video some of our experiences and post them to POB and You Tube, respectively, and reflect on any changes within us at the end of it, including anything from being shot, hit or stabbed, etc..

        Detropia
        The Abandoned Skyscrapers of Detroit

    2. FIAT
      Meh.
      Fix it Again Tony!
      Now if was an Electric Alfa Romeo, maybe. 😉

      1. I had a 128.
        It was a interesting experience.
        (although not like owning British Sports Car, which you need two, so you will have one to drive when the other is being fixed.)

        1. Yup, had the same experience with a Fiat. Nice little red sports car, but it had to be sold – it wouldn’t run when it was raining, and no one could find and fix the problem.

        2. I have a good friend, Sicilian, who only relatively recently retired and closed his shop which was called Ital Auto… While he specialized in Italian cars he worked on everything else too, so I know quite well, that of which you speak.

          I would occasionally help him restore some vintage cars. British sports cars especially, seemed to spend significantly more time in the shop, than on the road.

          Back in the day I owned a couple of Milanos, one of them , a 3.o Verde and the best little car I ever owned a was an 89 Spider Quadrifoligio. I was smart enough to get out of the Alfas a few years before my friend closed his shop…

        3. I had a Plymouth Valiant and blew the engine on it. Apparently, the big end bearing came loose and the rod flew out the bottom. To be fair, my friend and his father had worked on the engine, possibly right down to the valve seats, etc..
          Like how it goes in general, when it really doesn’t.
          I promptly replaced the engine with another from a bad body, sold one, scrapped the other, and never looked back.
          Don’t ask me about my RD350. ;P

          Take it away, Cubes…

          Motorcrash

          Walkabout

          “Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” ~ Aldous Huxley

      2. Ya better watch out Fred, or you will get yourself branded as an insensitive right wing lout for cracking a mild joke which nevertheless is without a doubt based on reality, ask just about any body who ever owned an Italian car, lol. Probably the only cars of the modern era that were more troublesome were the ones out of the old soviet block, but I never had the misfortune of working on one of THOSE. Some guys I know who worked mostly on imports say even British cars were more reliable than Italian cars.

        I take that back, Chevy Vegas might have been as bad as typical Italian cars of that period. I never knew of one actually wearing out though, they all broke in half due to rust before they had miles enough on them to be worn out, except for the piston rings, which only lasted about thirty to forty thousand miles max.

        1. Reminds me of a true story, from a friend:

          Driving a new Jaguar on the highway, family starts to smell smoke. New, proud owner at the wheel, says nah. Family starts to complain more loudly…driver can be heard saying “but, it’s can’t be…it’s a Jaguar!”.

    3. Sounds like sour grapes from a CEO that hasn’t figured it out. People say the same thing about Tesla, but it’s not really true. Yes, Tesla isn’t currently profitable because of the investments they are making in factories and I’ve seen people calculating that loss as a similar per car loss. But that’s pretty misleading, Tesla has a 27% margin on each car, and with an average price of over 100,000 that’s about 30,000 per car in margin. I’ll bet fiat is similar and the CEO just hates having to invest in battery factories.

  5. CONSTRAINING CLIMATE SENSITIVITY AND CONTINENTAL VERSUS SEAFLOOR WEATHERING USING AN INVERSE GEOLOGICAL CARBON CYCLE MODEL

    https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15423

    Another research paper indicating that earth climate sensitivity is much higher than previously assessed. This is one of the highest recent estimates at 5.6 K. The work looks at weathering of rocks, which provides a negative feed back, but not as big a one as previously thought.

    We find that 15–31 °C (1σ) surface warming is required to double the continental weathering flux, versus 3–10 °C in previous work. In addition, continental weatherability has increased 1.7–3.3 times since 100 Myr ago, demanding explanation by uplift and sea-level changes. The average Earth system climate sensitivity is 5.6 (+1.3/-1.2) K (1σ) per CO2 doubling, which is notably higher than fast-feedback estimates. These conclusions are robust to assumptions about outgassing, modern fluxes and seafloor weathering kinetics.

    This is a short commentary on the paper:

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170523082009.htm

    1. The weathering of rock absolutely does play a dominant role in planetary climate change.
      But it works on a time scale that makes the slowest glacier look like a speeding bullet, so in terms of our current climate problems, it’s relevant only in terms of helping us understand the big picture.

      1. Hi OFM,

        The paper makes great strides though in my opinion, the previous understanding was that rock weathering would reduce atmospheric CO2 over the long term (100 kyr), but this effect is much weaker than previously thought. It might take maybe 300 kyr to reduce atmospheric CO2 by 50% through rock weathering (a WAG on my part) rather than 100 kyr, or something to that effect.

    2. Hi George,

      Excellent paper, thanks.

      One caveat that they make is that the climate sensitivity they find is very dependent on the assumption that the proxies for temperatures and atmospheric CO2 are accurate. Also this estimate is quite broad with a 2 sigma range of 3.2K to 8.2K for earth system sensitivity, older estimates that I am familiar with are roughly 2.2K to 6.8K with a mean of about 4.5K.

      In contrast, climate sensitivity results are less robust to proxies. If temperature constraints are omitted from the Bayesian analysis, then climate sensitivity is constrained to deltaT2x=4.5  K (+2.1 K, -1.9 K), whereas if CO2 constraints are omitted, then deltaT2x=3.7  K (+1.5 K, -1.1 K). When both temperature and CO2 proxy constraints are omitted, the posterior distribution for climate sensitivity becomes approximately flat. Thus, our conclusions regarding climate sensitivity are closely tied to temperature and pCO2 proxies, as one might expect.

      Our result is broadly consistent with previous estimates of Earth system climate sensitivity based on palaeoclimate data (52,53), and supports the view that the long-term climate sensitivity of the Earth system is greater than the fast-feedback Charnay sensitivity captured by Global Circulation Models (GCMs).

      All of our conclusions—to varying degrees—depend on the fidelity of proxies. We have attempted to minimize this source of error by adopting the broadest possible range of proxy estimates for pCO2, temperature, saturation state, pH and the seafloor weathering sink (see Methods). The sensitivity analysis in the results section shows that the low-temperature sensitivity of continental weathering and the large weatherability increase since 100 Myr ago are robust. Even if current estimates of two proxies are highly uncertain or flawed, the remaining proxies tell a mutually consistent story on continental weathering. However, the same is not true for climate sensitivity. If proxies overestimate global mean temperatures in the Cretaceous, then Earth system climate sensitivity may be lower than our inverse analysis suggests. The same is true if real Cretaceous pCO2 was much higher than proxy estimates.

      Bold was added by me.

  6. Interesting reading here about the Seth Rich case in Washington D.C. Evidently more and more signs are pointing toward an assassination meant to cover up funny business dealings by the DNC prior to last year’s election. Furthermore, investigators getting way too close to the truth are apparently the reason for the distracting talk about impeaching President Trump.

    http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/05/breaking-complete-panic-set-highest-levels-dnc-seth-rich-murder-investigation/

    1. That’s an old, discredited story.

      Even Hannity has been told by his bosses at Fox that it’s fake news, and that he should stop repeating it.

      1. That’s exactly the type of thing you would expect “bosses” to say, though.

        1. At Fox??? The original home of fake news, that was invented by none other than the bosses at Fox??

      2. Yes, it’s likely not true. BUT, Julian Assange has offered a reward for info and he has always denied that the Podesta emails were leaked by the Russians. Fox definitely made up evidence of a Wikileaks / Seth connection and that has all been debunked but still, Julian did make it sound like something was there.

    2. Evidently more and more signs are pointing toward an assassination meant to cover up funny business dealings by the DNC prior to last year’s election.
      .

    3. Hillary did it.
      Borrowed a helicopter from The Queen of England, and hid the gun in Lenin’s Tomb (don’t tell anyone).

      1. Good Evening Hightrekker,

        Hillary Clinton was also involved in a great deal of questionable activities preceding last year’s election if one takes some time to do a bit of private investigation into the matter. Further, my own belief at this point is the ONLY reason why Democrats have been pushing so hard to keep the mainstream media talking about President Trump’s supposed scandals is in an attempt to mask the truly scandalous things Hillary is guilty of. In truth, there is very little credible evidence out there to tie Mr. Trump to any suspicious activities, but there is a continually growing body of evidence pointing to the complete guilt on the part of Ms. Clinton.

        To wit:

        1. There is undeniable evidence of collusion between CNN and the Clinton Campaign by way of DNC chair Donna Brazile.

        2. The Clinton Foundation last year received $millions in bribes from various foreign governments, including Russia (most notably).

        3. Ms. Clinton set up a private e-mail server with which she conducted official government business, including the delivery and receipt of classified messages. Each and every one of the classified messages that passed through this unsanctioned server represents a felonious action.

        In total, Hillary Clinton, her campaign team, people, handlers and enablers (The NWO) are incontrovertibly GUILTY of thousands of individual violations of US law. Mountains of publicly available data can PROVE this beyond reasonable doubt. I am Canadian, but if I were instead a US citizen, I would be out in the streets with the patriots calling for the far-left biased mainstream media to lay off the non-stories involving Trump and instead get the Clinton Camp to do some hard time for their actions.

        Be well,
        Walt

    1. Germany cares more about eliminating nuclear than it does about reducing CO2 emissions. And, they have the same problems with legacy power producers having a lot of political power:

      not only are the coal plants used to even out periods when wind and solar aren’t available, they’re also lucrative and thus politically hard to shut down. Because German law requires renewable energy to be used first on the German grid, when Germany exports excess electricity to its European neighbors it primarily comes from coal plants.

      The primary lesson from Germany is that if you want to reduce CO2 emissions, don’t shut down nuclear while at the same time building coal plants…

        1. Furthermore,

          Surplus from and storage of electricity generated by intermittent sources

          “As the German energy transition replaces one CO2-free electricity supply system by another one, no major reduction in CO2 emission can be expected till 2022, when the last nuclear reactor will be switched off…The continuation of the economic response –to replace expensive gas fuel by cheap lignite– causes an overall increase in CO2 emission. The German GHG emission targets for 2020 and beyond are therefore in jeopardy.”

          https://www.epj.org/images/stories/news/2017/10.1140–epjp–i2016-16445-3.pdf

          1. “As the German energy transition replaces one CO2-free electricity supply system by another one, no major reduction in CO2 emission can be expected till 2022”

            That is nonsense. If you account for the exports then of course there is a reduction of around 8%. Your “stagnation” only comes form the fact that you count CO2 in Germany and forget that the exported “green” electricity is substituting coal or NG in other EU countries.

            “The continuation of the economic response –to replace expensive gas fuel by cheap lignite– causes an overall increase in CO2 emission.”

            Again wrong:

            1) Lignite does not replace NG, hard coal does. Actually, NG gains now ground again.

            2) The failure to achieve the national goals for 2020 is NOT a result of the elctricity generation – here Germany is actually more than on track, but of the overoptimistic assumptions in respect to biofuels -they are a complete failure- in the past and lower than expected reduction of space heating due to stagnating or increasing population. 2008 everybody expected that the German population would decrease by 3% until 2020.

            The political question is whether these deficits should be compenstaed by additional savings in electricity generation until 2020, e.g. replacing lignite power plants with NG turbines or more REs (offshore wind is obvious solution) until 2030, which would quite “naturally” destroy the economic base (FLH) of coal power plants.

      1. I beg to differ.
        The primary lesson is to elect politicians who actually want to reduce emissions.

        The current conservative federal government (in power since 2005) does not give a flying fuck about emissions, CO2 or other.

        And they’d really like to shut down Energiewende. But they can’t do it openly because it’s too popular with the voters.

        P.S.
        Net electricity export this far in 2017 is at 20 TWh. About 20% of the total electricity production from coal.

        This overproduction depresses wholesale electricity prices, which – due to devious legislation introduced by the conservative federal government – increases household electricity prices (but not those of large industrial customers).
        I’m pretty sure this has not been done to make Energiewende unpopular with voters /sarcasm

        https://energy-charts.de/energy.htm

  7. I didn’t realize until reading this link that adding such a small additional amount of protected land to nature preserves would pay such a big dividend in preserving diversity.

    http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/conservationists-could-be-saving-more-biodiversity-in-less-space?intcid=mod-latest

    So far as I know there are no endangered species of birds or mammals living on my property, year round or seasonally, but there are probably some relatively rare insects,etc, including a few that haven’t even been named yet. I’m thinking about ways to make sure my place is maintained long term as a wild life refuge to the extent possible consistent with a family living on it and continuing to operate it as a working farm. People are always going to have to eat, and people who have an ownership interest as well as a love of nature are apt to make the best caretakers, in my estimation. The question is how you make sure things continue long term, when the NEXT owners die, or retire and sell out and move elsewhere. What will the second and third next owners do? Will the law even allow easements and restrictions placed on the property to stand, long term?

    Any links to articles about other people who have made arrangements along this line will be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance.

    1. Just google nature conservancy. You can negotiate exactly what you need, and it will stand up legally.

    2. but there are probably some relatively rare insects,etc, including a few that haven’t even been named yet.

      Any chance you have some pictures of them you could post?

      1. Hi Fred,

        My knowledge of entomology is severely limited, just a couple of intro level courses dating back to the dark ages, so any pictures I might post would be based on guesswork, and I don’t own a sophisticated enough camera to get good close up shots.

        But it’s generally accepted that there are many species of insects still undiscovered in the southern mountains, and there’s as good a chance that some of them live on my place as anywhere, and better than most, due to my having a large range of micro habitat from lower elevation to high, streamside to high and dry hill top, rock outcroppings, etc, plus there is National Park Service and other land nearby that has been undisturbed by farming or logging for close to a century, meaning no insecticides or pesticides of any sort have ever been used on this land.

    1. I have a nagging feeling that socioeconomic feedback effects that are not being included in the projections, whether deliberately or not, are going to throw a lot of projections off.
      One reason for this has to do with how this kind of transition will likely undermine the very systems that are attempting the transition. This includes those with a myriad of vested interests in areas of the economy that are powered, whether directly or indirectly, by fossil fuel. This includes large-scale, centralized, high-energy government, itself.
      I suspect that it may be game over faster than we realize, maybe even along an exponential curve.
      According to articles I’ve read, as well as our own Watcher next door in the Petroleum thread, the so-called economy lost much of its conventional functioning since maybe 2008, and has been operating increasingly on ‘financial instrumentation’ of various sorts, thus masking, distorting and detrimentally affecting what’s really happening, and will happen.
      This is not to even mention that the whole system is corrupt to begin with anyway.

      1. It’s a curious feature of American culture that as the nation approaches collapse The People™ adopt the belief that all may be saved by simply embracing a new method of driving around.

      2. One reason for this has to do with how this kind of transition will likely undermine the very systems that are attempting the transition. This includes those with a myriad of vested interests in areas of the economy that are powered, whether directly or indirectly, by fossil fuel.

        I still get the impression that you really don’t understand how disruptive transtions work.

        As an example, at the end of the 19th century horses and carriages comprised the bulk of personal means of transport and cargo within urban centers. The ‘system’ at the time did not suddenly make any plans whatsoever to transition to automobile based transport. There was simply a perfect storm of converging events social, economic and technological that allowed a completely different system to emerge and basically supercede the old way of doing things.

        In a period of a little over a decade it completely undermined the economic system and livelyhoods of many with vested interests in the old system and eliminated scores of jobs such as stable hands, blacksmiths and carriage builders just to name a few.

        Now, We don’t know yet, if the current energy transition will ultimately fail because we have run out of time and it is a case of too little too late. It is indeed highly possible that we as an industrial civilization have already pushed ourselves over the edge due to things like climate change, overpopulation, ecological destruction and excessive resource consumption.

        Only in hindsight will history give us the full story of what actually happened after the fat lady sang!

        One thing is 100% for certain, a transition to a new paradigm which is moving us away from fossil fuels at an accelerating speed is already underway and it will most definitely undermine the old system. That’s just the way disruption works.

        As for:
        This is not to even mention that the whole system is corrupt to begin with anyway.

        Some of our ‘systems’ have better checks and balances than others. All of our ‘systems’ are composed of individual human beings behaving according to their intrinsic biologically evolved natures. Sometimes the results are satisfactory, in some circumstances they can be unfavorable.

        1. ☛ Ragtime ☚

          Disruption can mean you, as the system, take your newfangled disrupter gun and shoot yourself in the foot. Your disruption creates own disruption. Or, better still, you take your newfangled disrupter gun and turn it to your head. “Hm, I wonder what effect this will achieve?”, you say to yourself just before pulling the trigger. Maybe you collapse to the ground, along with your disruption, and it’s curtains, or maybe it kind of misses and you’re like our old friend, Phineas Gage.

          “Now, We don’t know yet, if the current energy transition will ultimately fail because we have run out of time and it is a case of too little too late.” ~ Fred Magyar

          The current energy transition is likely to ‘fail’ (depending on how success and failure are defined of course) not because we have ‘run out of time’ per se, but because, or if, it is a stupid energy transition owned and operated by the so-called 1%, inspired, perhaps, by the likes of Tony Seba and Janine Benyus, and facilitated by the likes of Elon Musk, the governpimps– AKA government– and their prostitutes– AKA, taxpayers– whether they like it or not.

          I’ve Been Working On The Railroad

          1. I’ve Been Working On The Railroad

            LOL!

            Obviously it’s gone to your head!

  8. People like my great friend and helper HB wonder why Clinton lost, without ever stopping to wonder why DEMOCRATS as a party have been losing more and more seats year after year in recent times.

    If they were to make a real effort to open their minds to political realities, rather than insisting they already know the answer to every question, much like the religious folks they so enjoy mocking, there’s a possibility they might gain a measure of political wisdom.

    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-democrats-battle-for-montana-w482375

    Anybody other than HB and his ilk will notice that when I post links to articles that are about politics, they are almost invariably articles from leftish liberalish leaning sites and publications with excellent reputations, I’m not quoting right winger sites, no siree.

    Any body who reads this Rolling Stone piece carefully can learn a few things, one of them being that the D Party apparatus is still controlled by the bau / Clinton faction which would rather remain in power within the party and see a Republican win a congressional seat, than to support a candidate aligned with the Sanders faction.

    “The Democratic Party lost power in Washington, D.C., because it lost touch with rural America – where voters who felt abandoned by the party returned the favor. As recently as 2008, Democrats earned 45 percent of the rural vote nationally; in 2016, that fell to just 34 percent. ”

    “You might assume the national Democratic Party would also be zeroed in: Montana presents a critical test of the party’s renewed “50-state strategy” and a crucible for reconnecting with rural voters in advance of the 2018 elections. But you’d be mistaken.”

    “Responding to the threat, the GOP has launched a multimillion-dollar attack-ad blitz, and Donald Trump Jr. is en route to Montana to campaign against Quist. “They’re worried,” says Nancy Keenan, head of the state Democratic Party. “They know they have a race on their hands.”

    “Despite capturing the hearts and minds of the Democratic grassroots, Quist is getting no love from the national party.

    The indifference from Washington, D.C., is hard to square against the party’s stated ideals for reviving its political fortunes: Quist is seeking statewide election in the fourth-largest state in the union – campaigning in towns that haven’t seen this kind of attention from Democrats in decades. But he has not received a phone call from new Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez, who won office in February vowing to compete “in every ZIP code” across the country, and insisting Democrats must invest in “rural outreach.”

    “And Quist is one of just a handful of Democrats to campaign for a House seat in 2017. But he also hasn’t heard from Ben Ray Luján, the New Mexico congressman who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – whose job it is to expand the ranks of House Democrats. Quist strains to recall any official party contact. “I guess I’ve spoken to the regional director for the DCCC – just briefly in the primary,” he says. “Really, that’s it.”

    Now anybody who is willing to get his head out of his ass long enough to consider the actual political map, to look at who holds the power in this country, just might conclude that the problem with the Democratic Party has one HELL OF A LOT to do with the fact that the party, as things stand NOW, and have stood for some years, is owned and operated by the Clinton/ BAU / banksters / corporate money faction, rather than the people who are the real heart and core of the party.

    Of course a true blue Clinton type hard core true believer is about as incapable of dealing with these facts as the most ignorant backwoods Baptist is of dealing with the reality of biological evolution and acknowledging that he shares a common grandfather with gorillas, chimps and monkeys, lol.

    But like that preacher, who’s out there trying to save one sinner at a time, I’m out there trying to enlighten one voter at a time.

    And I think maybe I am getting thru to one or two, here and there, once in a while.

      1. An unplanned four hour erection is a minor rescheduling problem.

  9. From the Washington Post:
    Trump administration has new energy buzzword https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2017/05/25/the-energy-202-trump-administration-has-new-energy-buzzword/5925c045e9b69b2fb981db8a/?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-politics%3Ahomepage%2Fcard&utm_term=.850041e8706d
    In the Trump administration, “energy dominance” has replaced “energy independence” as the go-to phrase for describing the federal government’s broad energy goals — in President Trump’s case, to promote as much oil, gas and coal development as possible.
    This makes sense…if you’re fighting World War Two. The problem is, we finished that fight 72 years ago.

    -Lloyd

    1. Let’s see. They want as much gas and oil and coal on the market as possible, thus keeping prices below a profitable level in the short term.

      And then how do they plan to juggle competition for the same markets by coal and natural gas? The administration wants an expansion of both?

      Given they those within these industries are pivoting away from increased production, is this just political BS to feed voters who don’t know any better?

      And as China lends countries to buy more energy infrastructure, much of it renewable, the US is going to compete how?

    2. “We stand by the numbers,” Trump budget director says of $2,000,000,000,000 error that uses same money twice.

      1. seems rosy, but there’s plenty of biofuels, yeast-to-oil, nuclear, and other angles that dominate the research in and around Lawrence Livermore Lab UCB that I’m not super hopeful for a game changer that can scale up in time to come out of that. no one I’ve met at the research level at berkeley has ever expressed a concern about peak oil, though climate change began striking a nerve once yosemite burned to a crisp and at the height of the drought.

    3. I don’t think the Trump administration is capable of planning for the future. They only seem to be able to plan for the past.

  10. Awfully underwhelming, don’t you think?

    IBM unveils quantum upgrade Numerous researchers have had their first chance to practise with quantum programming since IBM’s rudimentary Quantum Experience service went online a year ago. On 17 May, the company announced that it has upgraded the freely available service from 5 superconducting qubits (quantum bits) to 16. It has also launched a second processor, twice as powerful, which is available for a fee. IBM is one of several companies and academic labs racing to build the first quantum machine that could outperform any existing classical computer — a threshold expected to be passed at around 50 qubits.

    1. So was a 1977 TRS-80 with 4K of RAM and a list price of $600.00, if you compare it to a cheap $400.00 off the shelf laptop from today.

      IBM was among those who seriously underestimated the disruption caused by the desktop PC revolution. Maybe they learned a thing or two and don’t want to get caught with their pants down again.

    2. Creative Destruction Lab is launching a quantum machine learning accelerator in Toronto
      https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/25/creative-destruction-lab-quantum-machine-learning/
      A new accelerator program being run by Canada’s Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) is hoping to find technologists in the quantum machine learning field who want to become founders and give them access to cutting-edge equipment to make their projects into companies. The program will be run out of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, and will include investment from venture funds Bloomberg Beta, Data Collective and Spectrum 28.

      -Lloyd

    3. Oh goodie. Maybe eventually I can get a faster laptop or tablet or whatever thingy as a research benefit to run my Bloatmeister software on that essentially did the same thing almost as fast, if not sometimes faster, decades ago.

  11. Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of ultraconfidence lies a fragile self-esteem that’s vulnerable to the slightest criticism.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvdrOdwHKSo
    TRUMP pushes Montenegrin PM aside at NATO summit in Brussels 25.05.2017

    1. I know you will not like this Fred, but I think you got this backwards… with all do respect!

      Montenegro is a made up, minute country of less than 1 million people of 3-4 nationalities who HATE each other.
      The very existence of Montenegro depends on structures such as NATO (and by that I mean US) and EU (by witch I also mean US – if one was a good enough student of modern history and IMPARTIAL fact analyzer).
      It was “included” into NATO just to piss off the Russians and make happy zionist/neo-con/neo-lib warmongers.

      If there was narcissism at the photo op you refer to, Montenegrin PM “daring” to be in front of the US president would be the definition of a “narcissist”.
      …but I digress.

      No, I am not Republican.
      No, I did not vote for Drumpf.
      Just my 2 cents…

      Be well,

      Petro

      1. Regardless of whether or not the PM of Montenegro is also a narcissist, Trumps posturing and body language pretty much speaks for itself.
        We are of course, each entitled to our own opinions! 😉

        Cheers!

        1. There’s a great play by Brecht called “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui”, which equates the rise of the Nazi’s with Chicago gangsters. One of the funniest bits is when the Ui/Hitler character gets taught to strut about with his chin up and hands over his crotch. Trump looks exactly like he went to the same teacher.

        1. Are you fucking kidding?! This is the guy that just told Germany that they were very bad because: “Do you see many Chevrolets in Germany?” I wonder if he even knows what an Opel is? or that GM had anything to do with that.

          He doesn’t even know that he can’t negotiate deals directly with Germany because, there’s this thing called the European Union, which Germany is a part of! And that’s despite the fact that Angela Merkel tried to explain that to him on numerous occasions!

          He doesn’t know that BMW, Mercedes and Audi all manufacture cars in the US!

          The guy is an absolute imbecile and I highly doubt he knows anything at all about the history of Montenegro.

          Heck this is a guy that publicly stated he didn’t know why there was a civil war in the US.

          Please, somebody, somewhere put this man in a padded cell, give him a full frontal lobotomy and pump him full of drugs, before he does irreparable harm to the planet.

  12. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/maduro-venezuela/528003/

    Fernando Leanme is no longer posting comments here, I guess he decided he was unwelcome, since a number of regulars took to describing him as a right winger, meaning not worthy of being heard. According to the left liberal religion, anybody who ever has anything positive to say about any thing the USA has ever done in Central and South America is a fool or a shill.

    He has been vindicated by the Atlantic, which is one of the most respected publications in the country.

    “And yet … Maduro doesn’t really matter. He is simply a useful idiot, the puppet of those who really control Venezuela: the Cubans, the drug traffickers, and Hugo Chavez’s political heirs. Those three groups effectively function as criminal cartels, and have co-opted the armed forces into their service; this is how it is possible that every day we see men in uniform willing to massacre their own people in order to keep Venezuela’s criminal oligarchy in power.”

    The truth, when it comes to politics, seems to play second fiddle to tribal loyalties even in a forum where scientific truths are held sacred.

    1. Hi OFM,

      He still comments occasionally. I think he is focused on what is happening in Venezuela.

      I don’t think there have been a lot of comments here in support of Maduro, or none that I have seen. The US has done a lot of bad stuff in Latin America, supporting right wing dictators and their death squads.

      Fernando’s belief that US changing tactics on Cuba (a failed 65 year old policy) is somehow responsible for what has happened in Venezuela, is a pretty big stretch in my view.

      In any case I hope Maduro is removed from power, preferably through free elections, but that is up to the people of Venezuela.

      Not much appetite in the US for solving problems in Latin America, and it would probably make matters worse in any case.

      1. Fernando escaped from a privileged place in a Right Wing Dictatorship in Cuba, and then fled to Fascist Spain under Franco.
        His politics are clear.
        But he does know a lot about oil, and I appreciate his insight.

        1. Maybe he wasn’t expecting the equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition on POB… 🙂

          1. Might be time to bring back the much maligned Inquisition.
            I’m sure Cheeto Jesus would give it a thumbs up.

    2. “And yet … Maduro doesn’t really matter. He is simply a useful idiot, the puppet of those who really control Venezuela: the Cubans, the drug traffickers, and Hugo Chavez’s political heirs.

      While I agree that Maduro is an idiot and a puppet, and I believe Cuba’s influence, economic or otherwise, is highly exaggerated. One should definitely not underestimate the economic clout and influence of the Global narco trafficking business, which in Mexico alone easily has annual revenues that rival Cuba’s entire GDP.

      This TED talk is about the Narco Traffickers economic stranglehold on Mexico but it serves to give a pretty good insight on the resulting social and political influence of these organizations.

      I’d be willing to bet that compared to economic forces such, as these the influence of the communists is pretty much irrelevant.

      https://www.ted.com/playlists/262/talks_for_understanding_the_dr
      Playlist (5 talks)
      Talks for understanding the drug trade
      The global drug trade is complex. These talks offer nuanced reframes on an issue which is so often thought about in absolutes.

  13. All this fussing and moaning about politics and techno wonders, it’s sad. Even with all the wonders of modern science and communication that gives many people in the world a view of their circumstances people don’t seem to have a world view that fits reality.
    This thin skin of life region on a small rocky planet in the outer regions of a galaxy may be the only life and viable living region in a thousand light years or further. This is it folks, life is not teeming through the universe and buzzing our space. It’s empty and dead out there.
    If nothing else the past century should have burned in a lesson to be very careful about what we invent and how we act. Yet all that education, all that effort and knowledge has produced little in the way of real change in the human species. We still run amok like it’s super sale day at Planet Earth Shopping Center.
    I guess the two horsemen of disaster and natural selection will have to run among the earthlings to make any real change.
    But how does one select the winners in this end game and what will they be like? Stay tuned if you can.

    You can bet that there will a lot of fossil fuel burned this coming weekend from travelers and lots of malls filled with shoppers. Is Memorial Day really Fossil Fuel Day? That extra 1.5 billion gallons burned will hardly raise any notice at all. It’s just part of the scene and hardly anyone thinks about it.
    Maybe I will go out and burn an extra gallon myself or maybe just some charcoal. Not worth getting on the highways, too crowded and jammed.

    1. I’m guessing that the humans who survive will be the most adaptable to changing conditions.

      Some people will have the right physical characteristics to survive changes. Others will have the right intelligence to adapt. Others will have the right temperaments to adapt.

      I expect a percentage of Homo Sapiens to survive as long as Earth is inhabitable by mammals. It may be a vastly different life than what we have come to expect in today’s United States, but I think as a species we have shown remarkable survival skills during our existence on Earth.

      1. I think the probability that humans will survive the next million years is almost zero. On the other hand, almost 100 percent that rats and mice will still be scurrying.
        Perhaps only in thousands of years, all humans will have entered the nothingness of eternal death. But hey, have a nice day.

      2. With only 200,00 years on the planet, and only 40,000 with the modern toolkit, homo
        sapiens seem to have placed themselves in ecological jeopardy.
        I would not bet on survival in the medium term.

      3. The odds are very high in my opinion that Boomer’s right, our species is almost sure to survive a very long time, unless the entire planet becomes uninhabitable by mammals of any sort.

        We are easily able to travel to any land mass except Antarctica with relatively primitive boats, we can clothe ourselves to survive any degree of cold weather, we have no real problems living with even the worst of today’s tropical heat and humidity. We can eat as wide a range of food as about any larger animal, due to the relatively simple technologies of fire and cooking, which will not be lost.

        A contagious disease will never get all of us, we are too widely dispersed. Intra species competition almost for sure won’t get all of us, unless maybe it morphs into a totally flat out CBN WWIII, and even then, a few people are apt to survive in some remote spots.

        There are already people who have prepared bug out or doomer homesteads in some very remote locations, and while they cannot expect to maintain high tech lifestyles for more than a very few years, a few years will be long enough for the worst of any hot new diseases to burn themselves out, the worst of radiation and hot fallout levels to drop back to survivable levels, etc.

        And in the event that a flat out NBC war does occur, the short term survivors will have ready access to enough artifacts of modern civilization to make survival a piece of cake, compared to being reduced to stone age technology.

        The average middle class home in a country such as the USA probably has at least six nice stainless steel kitchen knives, with at least one of them big enough to use it to make a first class spear, half a dozen large stainless pots with lids, at least one large closet full of clothing made mostly out of synthetic fabric that will not rot or wear completely out even in ten or twenty years, etc etc.

        My masonry farm house with metal roof and wood stove will be at habitable as shelter, barring fire, for at least fifty years with ZERO maintenance. There are lots of comparably durable houses and buildings almost anywhere in civilized countries.

        There will be plenty of firearms around, and ammo enough to last for decades, and people who are able and willing to use them, and also able and willing to get on with the job of providing themselves with food will be reasonably safe from raiders who would rather raid than farm.

        And there will be enough farm machinery and fuel enough to be salvaged to run it for at least a few years, allowing survivors time to learn how to get along without it.

        Diesel fuel stores easily for ten years or even twenty years, and it’s not at all unusual for a diesel farm tractor to go ten years without a breakdown of any sort, when used only a few weeks out of the year for plowing and hauling in crops. I could easily do everything I would HAVE to do to grow food for half a dozen people with twenty five gallons a year here in the southeastern USA.

        There are PLENTY of people just about everywhere who will have a shot at survival, assuming they can make it thru an immediate crisis. A few of them will almost surely make it.

        Now some people argue that we are fucking up the environment to such an extent that we cannot possibly survive long term . I recognize that this is a possibility.

        But my opinion, for what it’s worth, is that industrial civilization is far more apt to crash and burn, and most of us, maybe even ninety nine point nine percent of us, will die, WELL BEFORE we damage the environment to the extent that the last one tenth of one percent of us can’t make it.

        The last one tenth of one percent of us are pretty tough customers, physically and mentally.

        SO- My opinion is that wide scale economic collapse is extremely likely sometime over the next century or so, due to overpopulation, environmental degradation, and resource depletion, but that a few pockets of modern civilization, perhaps large ones, might survive. Fortress North America might survive as a more or less civilized and industrial society for instance.

        A few years back I thought collapse would be more or less universal, planet wide, but the technologies having to do with sustainability are moving so fast, and birth rates have dropped so fast, that I am now cautiously hopeful that the USA and Canada, in particular, might skinny thru, given a great deal of luck.

        1. Yes, homo sapiens can adapt to changes better than many species. So if there is enough on Earth to sustain mammals, homo sapiens will likely have enough resources to survive.

          Modern civilizations may collapse, but homo sapiens have never needed those for survival.

          We know that Earth has a finite existence. And various species have an even shorter existence. Homo sapiens will disappear. But they won’t be the first species to go.

          1. Thinking about what might put homo sapiens at most risk, I’d say it might be wiping out species like bees that pollinate plants.

            1. I think it highly likely that natural and artificially induced evolution of Homo sapiens will produce a more evolved and better adapted Homo species that will replace sapiens sapiens. Much as we exterminated some and interbred with others of our Neanderthal cousin species.

              That assumes of course that the earth doesn’t get hit by a major asteroid or that we ourselves don’t create some equally devastating catastrophe wiping out most life forms on the planet.

              While I won’t be able to come back and collect on my bet, I’m betting that 200,000 years from now there will not be any living members of Homo sapiens anywhere on the planet.

            2. Neanderthals lasted longer than we have so far, so I thinks it questionable whether we can be considered better adapted or more highly evolved. Homo Erectus lasted longer than either I think, by quite a big margin.

              Neanderthals never discovered farming which, if your main criteria for success is species longevity, was a highly evolved move.

            3. Yeah about that long, though there are some schools of thought that think there were multiple overlapping species in Africa and Asia instead of one single species. But that is a quibble.

              In any case hominids and their ancestors have been around for about 4 million plus years. Lucy the famous Australopithecus afarensis fossil being a good example.

              Though more modern humans like our Neanderthal cousins were around for about 350,000 years and we helped push them to extinction about 40,000 years ago give or take.

              Our own species Homo sapiens has only been around for maybe 200,000 years if you consider prehistoric but anatomically modern humans.

              We have now developed technology that could allow us to significantly accelerate human evolution. Assuming we survive at all, the next couple hundred thousand years could conceivably produce some interesting variants or even new species or at least a subspecies of the genus Homo.

            4. humans need about 10+ years after birth before they can reproduce, which has worked up to now in the evolutionary survival-of-the-fit-enough. But I think that constraint vastly increases the odds of extinction. Mice begin to reproduce in about 2 months. I bet on them.
              Not only that, but tens of millions of years after human extinction, I would bet on descendants of mice climbing the evolutionary ladder to become the next self-conscious species.

            5. Not only that, but tens of millions of years after human extinction, I would bet on descendants of mice climbing the evolutionary ladder to become the next self-conscious species.
              .

            6. not too seriously. after all, I won’t be there to collect my winnings.
              maybe squirrels, or rats.
              yeah, that’s it, the rats.

        2. Just about nearly every person in America who leans in any way to the right side of the political scale is armed and knows how to use the capabilities in an effective way. This is mostly based on my personal experience living in the south and west my entire life, but I have no reason to believe it’s not true everywhere. Just going off of my own circle of family/friends, every male and female adult owns at least one firearm.

          Anyway, sure I could see things getting really nasty in the ways you imagine, but I have more doubt than certainty in this regard. Again, going to my circle of family/friends, I can count more than 65 combined years of time spent in active duty. There’s Air Force, Army, Navy, but not any Marine experience, interestingly. But the important thing though is that not a single one of us would ever willingly suppress American citizenry. Such is in no way the purpose of having Armed Forces, which are there to keep our country the shining beacon of freedom against evil forces present in most the rest of the world.

          There’s a law in the books anyhow that could be appropriate for our visions of the future. Look up the Posse Comitatus act. Additionally keep in mind how most of the folks our federal government might want to suppress have some kind of military experience, so good luck getting the government to be successful in that regard, I suppose.

          Anyway, again going back to my own opinions, what’s more likely to happen in a complete collapse scenario is that the 95+% of the urban inner city folk, almost all holding completely liberal left wing opinions anyhow, will just riot, loot, and burn everything up by generally peeing the nest. Very little of the rest of us back here in the hard-working parts of America would take notice, other than to make sure we avoid the inner cities at all cost, which isn’t hard now to do anyhow. Yes we will see all the troubles on the news, and it’s going to look pretty bad, but IMO the urban inner city folks who would be doing this stuff would have never contributed to the nation anyhow, being mostly parasitic in nature.

          To conclude, I just have a hard time seeing any civil unrest moving out of the areas under full Democrat control. There are so many logistical or territorial hindrances for such a thing to happen. On the other hand I do wonder what might happen if the unlawful masses trapped within the cities manage to destroy enough of their own rural taxpayer funded infrastructure that their own survival within the cities comes into doubt. After all, you can’t use EBT Cards at your grocery store if you looted and burned down the store the night before.

          1. Just about nearly every person in America who leans in any way to the right side of the political scale is armed and knows how to use the capabilities in an effective way.

            LOL! Guns?! seriously?!
            Not every conservative is stupid but all stupid people are conservative.

            I bet they don’t have the slightest clue as to how to create and release a synthetic pathogen while at the same time immunizing themselves against it… Ever try shooting a lethal virus with a gun?

            Most microbiologists and geneticists who specialize in synthetic biology lean left and live in urban centers. They’ll just fly swarms of artificially intelligent micro drones out to your neck of the woods to deliver cocktails of lethal viruses and you’ll never even know what hit you!

            You can go down to your local shooting range and practice hitting targets all day long, if things really get ugly you won’t stand a chance. I suggest you start studying biochemistry and microbiology, good luck!

    2. No need to be so gloomy and pessimistic. The fish not biting or something? ??????

  14. Posted this in the comments section under your most recent entry to your blog but I’m unsure it went through:

    https://ecovillage.org/projects/

    https://ecovillage.org/project/aldeas-de-paz/

    https://ecovillage.org/project/ekobius-eco-pioneering-guayana/

    https://ecovillage.org/project/ekobius-end-road-ecovillage/

    https://ecovillage.org/project/ecoaldea-alborada/

    https://ecovillage.org/project/ecoaldea-aurora/

    https://ecovillage.org/project/ecoaldea-amazonia/

    https://ecovillage.org/project/ecoaldea-fronteriza-el-pauji/

    https://ecovillage.org/project/good-view-farm/

    http://www.ic.org/directory/ecovillages/

    Fernando, I haven’t had time to proof the links, but for what they’re worth, there they are.

    I am about to look into a map based geodirectory for Permaea’s own site for this kind of geolocation eco stuff. I’ll try to let you know when/if it is up and running.

    Permaea’s supposed to be a safety net for this kind of thing; when States fail.

  15. The folk singer Democrat was unable to pull it off and lost, but if he hadn’t been open to attack due to some past tax problems, enabling the R’s to spend millions attacking him on this basis, he might well have won.

    It’s best by a mile for D’s to run squeaky clean candidates. The political calculus in terms of attack politics on ethical issues works out better for R’s than it does D’s. People who are opposed to taxes in principle are less likely to hold tax problems against an R than they are against a D, because the D’s stand for social safety nets, etc, which of course require additional taxes beyond those needed to pave the highways and build up the MIC.

    1. Hey maybe in Montana beating up a reporter is considered a desirable characteristic in a candidate.

      1. You are unfair, Dennis, it was a reporter of an liberal newspaper. 🙂

          1. Coaches tell their players how to win.

            I didn’t criticize the guy for having tax troubles. I never criticized HRC fro having tax troubles, specifically, but she did, you know. I take that back, you probably don’t.

            My point is that the R’s were able to mount a full frontal millions of dollars assault on this D saturating the airwaves and papers with attack ads which might have been the difference.

            The thing about R type voters is that they are mostly far more forgiving about such shortcomings if the candidate is one of their own. They see minimizing the old income tax bill by any means as fair, so long as you don’t get caught you see.

            Don’t I remember you bragging about having big investment bucks in the oil biz, making a killing, and paying a pittance in capital gains taxes?

            Real progressives believe in progressive income tax rates , lol.

            When a progressive has tax problems, a typical R type voter sees this is a MORAL shortcoming, as hypocrisy. It might sound a little odd at first thought, but anybody who thinks about it a little will get it.

            Some of the people who campaign against drinking on moral grounds have been outed as drinkers.. That’s hypocrisy, and hypocrisy does more to light the fires of indignation in a voter than outright crookedness.

            Try to remember that I am trying to get the D establishment to truly take a good look at itself, and ACCEPT the fact that it IS in the electoral dog house, that the R’s are riding high in the saddle, nationally, and that unless the D’s change their R Lite ways, they are not going to get back into power anytime soon, barring one huge stroke of luck.

            Trump and his homies may well turn out to be so incompetent and so lacking ethically that they manage to get themselves thrown out of office and maybe even into jail.

            You ought to have a few positive things to say about Comey, along about now. He would, if he had not been fired, have in my estimation brought ten times the amount of troubles to the Trump camp he ever brought to the Clinton camp.

            And while you may prefer not to think about it, if Clinton had had better sense than to have her incredibly risky and politically stupid secret email system , and had really had nothing to hide , and turned over the contents thereof, etc, well there wouldn’t have BEEN any email problems, ya see.

            And IF you were a right winger or middle of the roader, or Trump voter, anybody but a Clinton fan, you would recognize that when EVEN MORE emails were discovered in places they had NO BUSINESS being at all, well, the public is ENTITLED to know about that sort of thing.

            And it is well known, at least among people with a certain measure of political acumen, that the very rich, and the very powerful, and the very well connected, are seldom prosecuted for breaking or bending the law into pretzels, the way Clinton did with her email system.

            Things that would get you or me thrown into jail and the key thrown away are brushed aside when it comes to the rich and powerful. This is understandable enough, considering the overall implications of going forward with a prosecution.

            In this case, the Obama administration didn’t prosecute any banksters, although the evidence of fraud on a super massive scale was overwhelming. Why should we expect his Justice Dept to have prosecuted his Sec of State, and the heir apparent of his party crown?

            I will say this for him, in this respect, he had infinitely better sense than Trump, who thankfully may have managed by firing Comey to shoot off enough of his own toes to permanently cripple himself politically, and open a shorter path back to power for the D’s.

            A Comey type running the investigation wouldn’t quit, and that ought to please the hell out of YOU. It pleases the hell out of me, and the new guy has the rep of being entirely straight laced and humorless and I’m hoping he comes up with the goods to put a whole slew of Trump’s homies in jail, and maybe even get Trump impeached.

            That’s still a long shot, but the odds are looking better every day.

            1. OFM Trumpster uses Republican code to justify racism and misogyny –

              “The thing about R type voters is that they are mostly far more forgiving about such shortcomings if the candidate is one of their own”

              Trumpster is a conman

      2. …just as “desirable” as not letting a public persona of a different point of view being safe while speaking (or not speaking at all!) is considered at the “cradle” of free speech Berkeley….
        http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/milo-yiannopoulos-speech-at-berkeley-canceled-amid-violent-protests_us_58911132e4b02772c4ea10d0

        http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/24/opinions/ann-coulter-berkeley-free-speech-randazza-opinion/index.html

        … or just as “desirable” as taking a LIBERAL professor hostage because he opposes to a “white free” campus day….
        http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/may/25/evergreen-state-students-demand-professor-resign-f/

        Be very careful what you wish for…
        …if the color revolution that the “liberal” chosen ones (i.e.: soros/hitlery/zionistFucks..) have planned for America realizes (thanks to the brainwashed, snowflake dummies …), it will be a catastrophe beyond any of your imagination…. far beyond the color revolution they accomplished in the midddddle eeast and ukraine (which you and your liberal buddies with their limited knowledge of the facts, praise so much…).

        What you and others fail to realize is that this country is much closer to CivilWar than it was in 1858…
        This time the consequences shall be of the “end of time” kind….
        I do not expect you to comprehend this, but just a thought to consider before calling for Drumpf being locked up in a padded room, or lobotomized….

        Be well,

        Petro….

        1. What you and others fail to realize is that this country is much closer to CivilWar than it was in 1858…
          This time the consequences shall be of the “end of time” kind….
          I do not expect you to comprehend this, but just a thought to consider before calling for Drumpf being locked up in a padded room, or lobotomized….

          Tsk, tsk, tsk… are you suggesting that I and others here are of weak mind and suffering from acute Dunning–Kruger effect?

          While there is no absolute guarantee that a global hot conflict might not again occur, the available data and the analysis of long term historical trends tell us it isn’t a very high probability. Personally I think the Trump era will be short lived and is just a slight tremor on the long term trend line.

          <The United States Is Not an Apocalyptic Wasteland, Explains Steven Pinker

          https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/steven-pinker-talks-about-donald-trumps-victory-long-term-progress-and-wheth

          The Harvard cognitive scientist tells us how life is always getting better, despite what Trump has said.

          Donald Trump’s rise to power was driven in part by an apocalyptic narrative according to which, in a phrase, you are in grave danger. This is consistent with many people’s intuitions about the world, given the ongoing threat of global terrorism, the US’s slow recovery from the Great Recession, and a sense that the Washington establishment is corrupt and doesn’t care about the average citizen’s needs. Is Trump’s apocalypticism right? Are we living in an exceptionally dangerous period of human history? Are these the desperate times that call for desperate measures?

          According to the Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, the answer is a resounding No. In his 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker presents a mountain of evidence showing that violence has been declining for millennia—a trend that has continued through the twentieth century and up to the present. For example, since World War II there have been no major wars between the world’s great powers, a phenomenon dubbed the “Long Peace,” and Pinker argues that the end of the Cold War inaugurated a “New Peace” that’s marked by a worldwide decline of “organized conflicts of all kinds—civil wars, genocides, repression by autocratic governments, and terrorist attacks.”

          I could be wrong but I don’t think even the Russians or the Chinese are all that interested in starting hot wars willy nilly. The Europeans I suspect aren’t either. The Middle East certainly is a quagmire and potential conflicts between say India and Pakistan are certainly not to be discounted out of hand. There are always wild cards and Jokers like North Korea. There are local instances of nastiness in South America places like Venezuela and even currently in my country of birth, Brazil. Africa is no model of tranquility either, but I don’t see the world erupting in all out nuclear war anytime soon.

          I do still worry about Trump’s mental state but perhaps my worries are unfounded and he will be kept in check somehow and they can allow him to sit out in the courtyard for a little sun on occasion.

          Peace! 😉

          1. Why would countries drop bombs when they can use propaganda and cyber warfare like Russia, and economic incentives like China? The US can spend its money on weaponry, while other major powers can use their resources to accomplish their goals without the hassle of warfare.

            So I agree that it’s unlikely that countries will intentionally draw the US into war.

          2. The Harvard cognitive scientist tells us how life is always getting better, despite what Trump has said.

            Pinker: “Third, with the internet and inexpensive travel, there will be no stopping the flow of people and ideas.”

            so he has absolutely no clue about peak oil and other diminishing resources?

            wow

            1. so he has absolutely no clue about peak oil and other diminishing resources?

              What makes you think he doesn’t?

              BTW, Have you ever traveled by train through Europe? taken a trip on a river barge? Or sailed across the ocean? In any case why would people stop using the internet or stop travelling because of peak oil. My brother who lives in Germany is right now on a 4 day bike trip through the Alps. My family in Europe often take long trips by bike 60-80 km during the day then meet up with a barge down the river spend the night on board cruising then continue by bike the next day to the next town. All of the above constitutes relatively inexpensive travel.

              Pinker might not be as naive as you might think. Anyways here’s some data.

              https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/yes-trump-is-scary-but-don-t-lose-faith-in-progress/

          3. Pinker needs to go walk around America a bit. Maybe check out some mini malls in Alabama, take in a live WWE event, go for a walk through Camden NJ,or take a coast to coast Grey Hound ride. Pinker hasn’t stepped outside of his gated community in quite sometime. While Pinker’s analysis of history is quite good, his predictions for the future, aka extrapolate the last 60 years into the next 60 years, is pure uncut Grade A hopium.

            1. But seems like he is talking about international violence versus global economic conditions.

              The world could get progressively worse and yet not result in WWIII. Dropping bombs on people may not be the best way to utilize limited resources.

              I don’t pay much attention to his theories, but it doesn’t strike me as contradictory that we might have simultaneous worsening of conditions and less violence.

            2. Pinker hasn’t stepped outside of his gated community in quite sometime.

              And you know that for a fact?

            3. Pinker is one of the smartest guys around these days, and whatever he puts in his books, you can take to the bank, in terms of statistics, etc.

              Now some people will and do attribute words and positions to him he has never uttered, and positions he has not endorsed.

              I have read most of his popular books, and when he says the world is statistically safer for the average person these days than ever before, he’s telling it like it is.

              This is not to say that there aren’t huge and growing pockets of violence, etc, but simply that they are smaller, relative to the total world population, than ever before.

              I suppose Petro is engaging in a little hyperbole in when he talks about this country being close to civil war. We may be getting pretty close to a hot political war, though, sure enough.

              As some comedian or another said, Trump himself is the biggest Trump joke of all, and we may indeed soon find out who will run this country for the next few generations, the moneyed class or the people.

              If the Sanders camp succeeds in returning control of the D party to the people, things could turn out quite well, or at least ok, for us, and maybe with a great deal of luck, for some other parts of the world as well. Maybe even most of the rest of the world.

              I’m no cornucopian, I don’t believe in any particular technical miracle solving all our problems, but it does look as if there is a REAL possibility that birth rates are falling fast enough and that renewable energy technologies, etc, are progressing at such a fast pace that we CAN turn the corner on overshoot, without the entire world going to economic and ecological hell in a hand basket.

              We don’t have to have a new BELCH FIRE SUV every other year to fetch our beer, lol. We don’t HAVE to eat highly processed, nutritionally stripped junk food, we don’t HAVE to build houses that suck energy, we don’t HAVE to have four or five kids.

              We don’t HAVE to work on one side of town, and live on the other side, lol.

              We don’t HAVE to buy new clothes every few weeks because the ones we bought a few weeks back are no longer the ones advertised in the pages of slick magazines, lol.

              A lot of people, including at least one or two in this forum, have laughed at me because I make a point of pointing out that I drive old cars and old trucks.

              The amount of money I have saved over the years by driving old vehicles has been more than ample to allow me to purchase a few nice things ………. like an additional thirty acres of beautiful mountain land with a trout stream running thru it……….. land that I intend to sell someday, but with deeded restrictions that will ensure it is always maintained in as near a state of nature as possible while still allowing somebody to live on it, and grow a little food, and harvest a few trees and deer occasionally, etc.

              The amount of money that the stereotype gotta have it NOW spend it faster than he makes it consumer spends on UNNEEDED new cars alone is more than ample to allow him to upgrade his existing home ( or up the purchase price of a new one) to the point that he will never have to pay more than a pittance for electricity to heat and cool his home, do his laundry, take a hot shower, charge up his car , meaning he won’t have to buy any gasoline………

              And for every job lost in the conventional auto industry, a new one will spring up in the renewable energy and home remodeling industries………..

            4. ‘War! What is it good for?’ By Ian Morris is a good follow up to Pinker’s ‘Angels of our better nature’. ‘Why the west rules, for now’ an earlier book by Ian Morris is quite good too.

              According to Fred what is written in the article linked below must not be happening. The past trend forbids its. And trends can never reverse, of course. That is unheard of. ‘The civilizing process’ by Norbert Elias was published, in Germany, in 1939, and yet WW2 still happened. WTF?! Didn’t anybody read the book?!

              http://www.dw.com/en/global-peace-deteriorating-as-world-violence-hits-new-all-time-high/a-19313212

          4. No, Fred!
            I do NOT think you are of a weak mind and suffer from any syndrome.

            My comment was in response to Dennis’ comment about the dummy, Montana Rep.
            As you know, I do not vote neither Democlicans, nor Republicrats for I consider them the same monkey (and I say that as insult to monkeys, whom I love!)
            However, there is an OBVIOUS bias on this site (and sadly everywhere) in quoting Reps from Montana, but not Berkeley thugs whom Janet Napoletano (another Clitoris/Obumer beauty) made professors at Berkeley and who HATE our glorious Bill of Rights and think is/are justified to send people into coma:
            http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/25/police-arrest-berkeley-professor-accused-of-bike-lock-assault/

            By CivilWar – I literally meant CivilWar here, not WWlll.
            We are headed for WWlll because of our big predicament which we discuss (used to, anyway) here at POB.com, but as things are going in this country, we will see the 1860-1865 first…. but on Crack!

            Whether you like them or not, If the white, rough necks in this country have an “epiphany” and decide they had enough with Soros/Clitoris/Zionist funded and stirred black lives matter shit and antifa thugs, and decide to make a stand – contrary to what idiot, Harvard professors think – what will happen here will be nothing short of the “Rupture”.

            November 8 told us that we are really, really close.
            Not only there is ABSOLUTELY 0.0000 truth to Russia/Trump thing, which is pushed daily by MSM to cover Clitoris’ treason, but EVEN if there was – removing Drumpf will be the Alamo for the rough necks…

            That is what you and the professors fail to realize.
            This will NOT be like ’60s “hand in hand”, “black and white”, “I have a dream” love fest.
            This will be not like Nixon/watergate!
            What Clitoris did, makes Watergate a squirt gun fight… literally!
            Rough necks believe that… and with good, factual, unmistakable reason, I might add.

            If we continue in the current path of the fake Russiagate and impeachment;
            if you (and millions like you) continue to be represented by ugly idiots like MaxineWaters and allow zionist evils like Soros control what you hear and/or read daily on screens and paper – we are headed for a cataclysm….
            …and much, much earlier than you, Dennis and/or idiotic Harvard experts think.
            WWlll will be a nice addition, a side dish – if you will- to that!

            Be well,

            Petro

            1. This will NOT be like ’60s “hand in hand”, “black and white”, “I have a dream” love fest.

              Petro, with all due respect, the civil rights movement in the US was anything but a love fest. There was plenty of violence.

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aja1D0Dk3Mw
              Martin Luther King assaulted in Selma. Archive film 91911

            2. Fred,
              do not insult me, please!

              If after reading my comments (past and present) you think I do not know what happened to MLK … then we have nothing to discuss.

              I know history like few, very few others

              It is not arrogance – is an observation!
              Upthread you wrote that we are entitled to our own opinions.
              I concur.
              We are indeed!

              With all do respect,

              Petro

            3. No insult intended! I was just making the point that calling the civil rights movement a ‘love fest’, was shall we say, a slight mischaracterization?

              Now if you are saying that you believe we are headed for a period of civil war and violence, that will make the violence that occurred during civil rights movement seem peaceful by comparison, then you are entitled to that opinion but I see no evidence to support that view. So I will politely disagree!

              Cheers!

            4. 2 fatally stabbed on Oregon train after trying to stop man’s anti-Muslim rants, police say
              https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/05/27/man-fatally-stabs-2-on-portland-ore-train-after-they-interrupted-his-anti-muslim-rants-police-say/?tid=pm_pop&utm_term=.86849973ef96

              The U.S. has a homegrown terrorist problem — and it’s coming from the right
              https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-has-a-homegrown-terrorist-problem–and-its-coming-from-the-right/2017/05/26/10d88bba-4197-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-e%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.d49dc4a95a64
              It would be good to hear a presidential condemnation of the kind of hate being investigated as behind Collins’s death.

              Or hear Trump express outrage at the March stabbing of an African American man in New York, allegedly by a white supremacist from Maryland who police say admitted traveling to the Big Apple to indulge his long-harbored hatred of black men. He wanted to trigger a killing spree against African Americans, police said.

              Those individual hate crimes apparently don’t rise to presidential attention, at least not like Manchester’s multiple deaths, which tend to focus the mind. But solitary attacks add up.

              What to make of these viral racist tirades?
              http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/26/us/racist-rants-viral-videos/index.html
              President Donald Trump “tapped into seething anger” that was already boiling in those who couldn’t accept an African-American President, Darby said. Trump “legitimized bigotry by the way he campaigned.”

              Not fire, but certainly smoke.

              -Lloyd

            5. Trump couldn’t do more damage to American democracy if he were a Russian agent. The problem is that Republican politics is a lined closely with Russian politics. Such as oil, greed, racism, lies, fear, oligarchy, misogyny and propaganda.

              The idiots handed over the hen house to the fox. OldMacDonald aka KGB Trumpster is a good example of the problem.

              For good measure, another example of an idiot:

              “I do not vote neither Democlicans, nor Republicrats for I consider them the same monkey”

            6. Petro, thanks for making clear the white working class dream of rebellion. Not going to happen, just have to leave some cases of beer in front of them and they wouldn’t get very far.
              What the hell are you fighting for, the right to further devastate the world and turn it into a total wasteland? That is where both “sides” are headed. I am sure any who are left will fully appreciate the effort.
              The civilized world reminds me of a bus full of people fighting each other while the bus careens toward a cliff. Everybody loses.
              So maybe someone here can tell me about the prize at the end of the ride.

            7. There is no prize at the end of the ride Fish and there will be no one left to “…appreciate the effort…”, as you eloquently put it.

              We are screwed!
              It is a matter of timing only, not the certainty of the outcome.
              I am trying to convey the idea that by “impeachments” and “black shit matters” movements, we bring that day of reckoning closer.

              I am proposing that we should and must keep things steady. The system is so fragile that does not tolerate any “shocks”.
              While “impeachments” and “russiagates” sound revolutionary and enthusiastic, they bring the “end” closer.

              I am not very fond of big guy’s in the sky afterlife proposals…. I am of the school of thought that :
              “…everyday above ground is a good day…”

              We are at the end of our rope…. literally!
              Revolutionary enthusiasm and “impeachments” – even justified ones, which in this case is NOT – unsettle the system.

              I would like to enjoy a little more of what we have…
              That is all.

              Be well,

              Petro

            8. I know you have your stuff together Petro. I have heard the undercurrent of frustration and the term “blood in the street” comes up quite often. It is not an organized rebellion but more of an angry outburst that would happen, everyone would be in jeopardy. A mob fest.

              So why is everyone so bent on trashing each other and fighting over the last of the last? Seems like a waste of time to me.

              Just drove past a business I had patronized a few months ago, just a hole in the ground now. No building, nothing left. Something else will be built there. Same plan, same thing over and over. No real change. Just some new gadgets and some new energy supply to do the same stupid things over and over.

              It’s like they are afraid to change for fear the whole thing will grind to a halt. The Hamster Wheel of Civilization with the Red Queen right behind.

  16. In other news, a notice to climate change deniers and right wing populists the world over, you know who you are… Your views are definitely wrong and fortunately you are in the minority and support for your myopic vision is diminishing by the day!

    http://news.trust.org/item/20170523230148-a90de

    The survey of more than 8,000 people in eight countries – the United States, China, India, Britain, Australia, Brazil, South Africa and Germany – found that 84 percent of people now consider climate change a “global catastrophic risk”.

    That puts worry about climate change only slightly behind fears about large-scale environmental damage and the threat of politically motivated violence escalating into war, according to the Global Challenges Foundation, which commissioned the Global Catastrophic Risks 2017 report.

    But it indicates that many people now see climate change as a bigger threat than other traditional or rising concerns such as epidemics, population growth, use of weapons of mass destruction and the rise of artificial intelligence threats.

    On climate and environmental issues, “there’s certainly a huge gap between what people expect from politicians and what politicians are doing. It’s stunning,” said Mats Andersson, vice chairman of the Stockholm-based foundation, in a telephone interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

    1. The only “survey” that counts is the one otherwise known as Election Day. Your side of extreme liberals, socialists and environmentalists clearly lost that one last year and just keep on with the losing this year. If I was on your team’s bench I would try different propaganda techniques…your current ones definitely aren’t convincing anybody of anything.

      1. Dear George,
        Fred was not talking about libs or socialists, you misunderstood him.
        He was talking about climate change.

        ONLY A MORON WOULD DENY CLIMATE CHANGE!!!!
        …and judging by your comment, I am sad to say that you fit the “moron” part of my above written sentence quite nicely.
        It is not republicrat or democlican!
        It is not contard or libtard!
        It is undeniable, unmistakable hard core science!
        While the empiric observations are not reference science as we understand it today, they are the only thing that people akin to you understand.

        Our beautiful Planet is dying!
        Look at the amount of storms, weather events and ice.
        We used to experience those hundred of years apart…. now we experience them daily.

        We are driving 150-200 species a day – YES, a day – to extintion!
        Stick it through your thick, thick head:
        it is not a liberal issue or a idiot Gore tax.
        It is your children and grand children… you brilliant one, you!

        The Planet is dying because of 7-8 billion parasite, morons like you and me enjoy driving Suburbans, using Styrofoam MacDonald/Starbucks shit and buy the next iShit gadget.

        If you are moron enough to call me a “liberal commie” for replying like this (and I would not put that past you!), read some of my up thread comments before.

        Climate catastrophe is not a Democrat conspiracy you and rough necks like you “defeat” on the ballot box or Election Day- it is a scientific fact…. you lovely one, you.

        Be well,

        Petro

        1. I don’t think your a liberal commie, just severely misguided by all the fake news flooding the leftist mainstream media and government propaganda mouthpieces like NPR, PBS. The truth here is our planet has flip-flopped between cold cycles to warm cycles and wet cycles to dry cycles ever since it was created. It will continued to do so independent of CO2 or other so-called greenhouse gases. Actual climate science is leaning towards a cooling world over the coming decades (see the figure below).

            1. I’d mention a certain name but don’t want to jinx the relative peace and quite we’ve had around here since that individual has decided to no longer grace this site with their presence… 😉

              But just in case, I’m planning on opening a little business here in South Florida, selling snow blowers, the kind that are powered by gasoline… I’m setting up a go-fund-me page where believers in global cooling can invest in my business! No donation is too small!

            2. Yeah, I was planning on hiring him to head up the marketing department of my South Florida snow blowing company. I seem to have misplaced his contact information… 😉

          1. 1 source please

            2 you are showing a change of 0.4 % – not a lot

            3 if we are warming with a lower irradiance then we are in even worse shit especially if irradiance increases

            4 why do you guys have to come up with a different story each time, you can never agree on your denial

            NAOM

            1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Public_Policy_Institute

              The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) is a public policy organization which promotes climate change denial.

              http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Science_and_Public_Policy_Institute

              The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) is a global warming skeptics website and blog
              Although in March 2011 SPPI’s webpages described it as “a nonprofit institute of research and education dedicated to sound public policy…”, in early 2011 Ferguson said SPPI had not been granted nonprofit status from the IRS[5], 3+ years after it was formed.

              NAOM

            2. George H,

              This theory has been falsified by observations.

              TSI has failed to decline by 1.5W/m^2, as shown by the growing mismatch between your chart and current TSI measurements. See overlain charts below.

              Get back to us when TSI actually DOES decline… the predicted 1.5W/m^2 fall would have reduced the 2016 temperature record by a tenth of a degree K or so.

              I, for one, would welcome a bit of luck in the form of a solar Grand Minimum to reduce the impact of AGW.

              WHF

      2. George, I’m not sure who you think my side is but for the record I’m not a member of either major political party and tend to vote as an independent. I think that most people who know me would identify my views as being more liberal than not, so guilty as charged.

        I would certainly be more comfortable under a socialist democratic state as practiced in Nordic countries as opposed to some form of authoritarian military regime and I have personally lived under both those types of government so I know the difference first hand.

        While the environmentalist label has certainly gotten a bad rap in recent times and in some cases deservedly so, I’m certainly more in tune with the ideas of E.O. Wilson than say Myron Ebell or Scott Pruit.

        Now having said all that I’m not sure what the results of the recent US election have had on basic laws of physics, chemistry and biology on the rest of the planet but I’m going to venture out on a limb here to say, not a heck of a lot!

        I’m also pretty sure that despite the constant drumbeat of US exceptionalism and the peculiarly American notion of how everything in the US is so much better than anywhere else. I would venture to guess that general views and opinions of citizens living in countries such as China, India, Britain, Australia, Brazil, South Africa and Germany are not all that much influenced by public opinion in the US or the results of American elections.

        I believe there are 175 independent countries that are signatories of the Paris Climate Agreement so most of the citizens of those countries probably are going to move ahead with scientific research, developing new technologies, putting in place economic policies and incentives that reflect the scientific realities of climate change. I’m sure they would welcome a US government that is willing to take a seat at the head of the table in a leadership role in this global endeavor. However if the US is going to abdicate it’s responsibilities then it will be sidelined and isolated and the rest of the world will just move ahead and leave the US in the dustbin of history’s failed experiments.

        I remain somewhat optimistic that that is not what will happen!

        Cheers!

        1. Fred, the US and other countries will go where the money leads. It has become obvious that our fossil fueled societal structure is too costly and harmful to continue on. However, the invested infrastructure and invested companies are a big anchor to the past. As new tech gets blatantly cheaper it will be integrated into society by new business and in some cases will be aided by government programs where the public is aware of the advantages.
          I don’t see an overall “let’s do what is right”. I see an awareness of danger seeping into the minds of citizens and politicians. Fear is a great motivator, one of the strongest for humans. The problem is that this situation provides only a low level fear at best which can be ignored short term. Thus the whole position will move slowly while the effects accelerate. Of course in most cases the fear will never be admitted. No problem as long as the actions occur.
          Maybe fear will set in more strongly in the future, well after the fact.

          I am concerned with the focus on unnecessary and distracting endeavors such as autonomous systems and profit making geo-engineering. It takes away from the more direct line to a biological based society versus a machine based society. Maybe, just maybe, the two will merge successfully. I don’t know the odds on that one.
          The toughest challenge is removing national boundaries and becoming earth citizens bent on making this very rare place into a growing system again. Not one where we are removed from the system but one where we are part of it again. That may not be within the grasp of the current state of the species.
          Giving up war and competition for peace and cooperation seems far fetched for humans, yet it happens every day, just not for the right reasons.

          1. World military spending totaled more than $1.6 trillion in 2015. The U.S. accounted for 37 percent of the total. U.S. military expenditures are roughly the size of the next seven largest military budgets around the world, combined. U.S. military spending dwarfs the budget of the #2 country – China.

        2. If you believe climate change can be caused by humans, then your completely on the Democratic party’s team. That’s all there is to it. Although I can see why a liberal wouldn’t want to be called a liberal. There’s basically no good selling points to it, plus the team is filled with a bunch of illegals, thugs, cheats and liars.

          1. Whereas republicans believe it is perfectly OK to commit assault.

            NAOM

  17. U.K. solar shatters generation record on year’s hottest day

    With the temperature reaching 29.5 degrees Celsius, solar panel installations across the U.K. generated a record amount of electricity on Friday, overtaking nuclear for the first time ever.

    At midday London time, the U.K. solar sector set a new record, generating 8.75 GW, show data compiled by National Grid Plc and Sheffield University, whereas the Solar Trade Association (STA) announced that this was the first time that solar had generated more than nuclear, second only to gas.

    Based on the data gathered from almost 600 sites around the country, Friday’s output satisfied 24 % of electricity demand and showed an increase on 8.49 GW reached earlier this month.

  18. More solar and hydro brings California gas use to five-year low

    As renewable energy breaks new output records in California, both the need for and availability of gas in California have both declined.

    It’s been a big spring for renewable energy in California. A very wet winter has meant a high level of hydro generation, but this is not the only factor. Due to rising wind and solar production, on May 13 the state hit a new record with renewables excluding large hydro peaking at 67% of electric demand on a Saturday.

    This combination of increased hydroelectric, solar and wind generation has in turn resulted in the lowest levels of natural gas use for electricity generation in five years, according to an analysis by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA).

  19. Columbia ENSO ensemble probability for El Nino is back to around 60%. La Nina chance looks pretty much gone now. The interdecadal pacific oscillation index has been stuck on -0.11 for about 7 years now but the theory is it should go positive soon, in which case we could be back to 1998 type conditions with an El Nino on top of a positive IPO, but add on top the 20 years of warming trend since then. The expected warming from a positive IPO cycle looks a bit difficult to know – it has a long cycle time so not so much data – but seems to be similar to an average El Nino versus neutral (though I wouldn’t be surprised if I got that wrong).

    1. Although it is a modeled inference from rock based stations, the results are quite astounding. Experiments should be run over the next few years to verify this system and possibly add more ground sensing sites to track glacial movement.

  20. While I think there will be continued polarization in the US, I don’t think the guns folks would likely have the resources, population density, or military organization to mount an actual civil war.

    Rural America Is the New ‘Inner City’ – WSJ: “A Wall Street Journal analysis shows that since the 1990s, sparsely populated counties have replaced large cities as America’s most troubled areas by key measures of socioeconomic well-being—a decline that’s accelerating.”

  21. G7 LEADERS BLAME US FOR FAILURE TO REACH CLIMATE CHANGE AGREEMENT IN UNUSUALLY FRANK STATEMENT

    “In an unusual admission, Group of Seven (G7) leaders have said in their final communique from a summit in Italy that they had failed to bridge differences over climate change with US President Donald Trump – and America was unable to join other countries in committing to the Paris Agreement.”

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-g7-summit-latest-climate-change-consensus-paris-agreement-angela-merkel-a7759231.html

    1. We never saw that one coming, did we? 🙁

      At least he is consistent, do to the whole world what he is doing to the American people.

      1. NASA says 2016 global mean temperature is 0.99c above the 1951 to 1980 average. That is one degree in fifty years. Looks like the current slope is about 0.3C rise per decade.

        1. The scary part is the slope for the last five years is 0.8C per decade.

            1. I think the time to try these people for high crimes against humanity is past due! We need to have these people tried and convicted in an International Court of Justice such as the International Criminal Tribunal.

              https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/25/great-barrier-reef-2050-plan-no-longer-achievable-due-to-climate-change-experts-say

              Great Barrier Reef 2050 plan no longer achievable due to climate change, experts say

              Michael Slezak
              Wednesday 24 May 2017 16.00 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 24 May 2017 19.25 EDT

              The central aim of the government’s plan to protect the Great Barrier Reef is no longer achievable due to the dramatic impacts of climate change, experts have told the government’s advisory committees for the plan.

            2. If the high rate holds we cross two degrees within a decade. If the rate increases, well hold onto your hats and wallets folks.

            1. Yep, even large amounts of aerosol pollution can’t hold it back anymore. Just think, there is a time lag involved too so we are not seeing the current effects yet.
              Everybody south of 40N better get skinny or suffer the heat.

        2. the main reason I thought PO Dynamic would unravel modern industrial civilization faster than climate change is because I was very confident our financial and economic system could not withstand a slow grinding halt to growth. what i misunderestimated was the CB/global elite ability to toss out their sacred cow faster than a dissected chickens crop and install whatever it is we have now. and since it seems clear that americans are willing to accept an ever-declining standard of living (minus the occasional trump and collapse of all our institutions built over centuries), it looks increasingly likely that Climate Change will be the next horseman to breach the line.

          1. Humans are amazingly flexible and stupid. See how the American frustration with declining wages and opportunity against a backdrop of rising prices was used to put the billionaires in political control. Push their buttons and they get caught. Hook, line and sinker.
            One is born every minute.

            Climate change will eat away the old economy from many directions, already is doing that. The smart money will go into new tech and new energy but they will find a doughnut hole economy within a decade.

      2. Being represented by a man child is embarrassing.
        Eventually someone is going to say”Get me Rumsfeld on the phone”.
        The Neocons know how to pull the levers, and where they are located.
        The current ignorant clowns don’t yet.

        1. It’s magic (meaning big con). Distract the public with extreme policy from the executive branch which takes the focus off the Congress where the real action is occurring.

          1. But Petro says:

            “As you know, I do not vote neither Democlicans, nor Republicrats for I consider them the same monkey (and I say that as insult to monkeys, whom I love!)”

            1. Since they have two very different agendas and actions in certain areas, they are not the same.
              And your point is?

            2. “they are not the same”

              I thought it was obvious. Why would the executive branch matter if the parties are the same ?

            3. Hopping the fence again HB. Watch you don’t catch something important on the barbs.

    2. Could Europe and China begin some sort of economic sanctions/boycott against the US?

  22. ALASKA’S SEA ICE IS MELTING UNUSUALLY EARLY, ‘ANOTHER SIGN ARCTIC IS UNRAVELING’

    “The sea ice meltdown was just mapped in the past few days. Scientists suspect it was caused by a combination of factors, including an inflow of relatively warm Pacific Ocean water through the Bering Strait and record warmth across the entire Arctic region that persisted most of 2016 and early 2017… Sea ice conditions were so unusual in late 2016 that NSIDC lead scientist Ted Scambos called it a black swan event in December, after reporting record low ice extent in the Arctic and Antarctica, far below natural historic variations. In mid-November 2016, much of the Arctic—spanning an area as large as the lower 48 states—was 30 to 35 degrees above average.”

    https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25052017/arctic-sea-ice-disappearing-alaska-climate-change-warm-winter-chukchi-sea

    1. More Liberal Lies!
      It was cold inside the beer cooler at the Monster Truck Rally.
      Don’t you know the truth!

    2. Obviously this is not a short term trend. The ice is going and albedo in the summer will plummet, further warming the Arctic Ocean. Add the warm water currents and the warm air from the south to get a nice open Arctic Ocean for summer visitors.

      Meanwhile, DT wants to increase flood insurance dramatically and cut flood mapping funds which are key to determining insurance claims.
      “The flood program, intended to be self-sustaining, has a $25 billion debt because of catastrophic storms that hit Gulf states in 2005 and Superstorm Sandy in 2012, and it cannot repay the amount. Congress is trying to come up with a way to address that before the law’s authorization expires Sept. 30.”
      So our government response to rising costs and problems from increasing storms is to hang our states and citizens out to dry (or should I say wet). When the program goes underwater and more people never get their insurance money after the next big storm, maybe the citizens will stop funding the GOP or at least voting for them.

      1. Raising flood insurance is actually something I approve of. It might discourage people from building in flood prone areas.

        1. How do you feel about fulfilling the previous commitments to flood victims that were never paid? Katrina, Sandy and others were the learning curve to those who ignored the warning. Apparently the insurers screwed up and did not take increased risks into account even though other parts of the world were getting hit harder and bigger.
          Increasing rates is only viable if the insurance carrier has to cover areas that have higher risks.
          If you want to discourage building in certain areas, just make them outside the insurable region. That means new mapping which is the current administration wants to defund.
          I am sure there are ways to make a gradient of charges for areas dependent upon increased risk. But reality will eventually strike and areas will have to be abandoned. The details should be worked out in a humane way if possible. Waiting too long and crippling the system makes for inhumane and cruel results.

          1. I am more inclined to help the poor who are displaced by flooding (and to move them to different areas) than to allow the rich to continue to build along beachfront and other environmentally sensitive areas.

            1. I am more inclined to have nature preserves along the coastal areas and help many species at once.

          2. FEMA rates the flood zones and the National Flood Insurance Program underwrites the coverage. High risk areas are required coverage by the Federal Government to issue and maintain a mortgage.

            1. Trump is running a scorched earth policy and sees American democracy as the enemy. Cutting taxes for the rich and running up national debt is simply a transfer of power from the masses to the few. It’s a lot more beneficial to loan your money than give your money. When you have the power to back it up.

              He doesn’t give a flying crap who drowns in a rising tide, except for himself. Doing the “right thing” has never been on his agenda. He’s a conman.

    1. I think this is the key.

      “The company’s goal has always been to make the best vehicle possible that just happens to be electric.”

      That’s how you build a car brand.

      1. It’s too bad that physics and engineering constraints make the cars all look similar to achieve the “best vehicle”. Back in the old days one could really shine with style. Hopefully a few designs will come out that don’t look like clones.

        1. Just can’t understand why they don’t build them like they use too

  23. http://www.valuewalk.com/2017/05/jared-kushner-russia-probe-donald-trump/

    Trump has always been able to get away with his crooked and borderline crooked affairs because he was in the private sector, and knew just when to stop just short of being prosecuted.

    In politics, it’s different. His victims aren’t trying to fight back one at a time like little helpless financial Davids, no sling, no money, against a super rich crook with dozens of lawyers.

    The free press may not be quite what it should, these days, given that advertising revenue is key to survival, and less than savory businesses and individuals buy so much advertising.

    But it’s still capable of getting the job done, and there are PLENTY of reporters and investigators out there eager to break the next big Trump scandal.

    It could be thatt the Trump administration is already a dead man walking, in a manner of speaking, like a guy who knows he has heart trouble, but doesn’t really believe he will have a killer heart attack. Something so explosive may come out soon that a number of Republicans in competitive districts and states may find it necessary to abandon the Trump camp in order to protect themselves by the time midterm elections get close.

    Some of the things that have come out already may be sufficient.

    1. In politics the art of “deny everything” and “attack your attackers” can do wonders for obfuscating ones degraders and continuing in position. However, it works best when one does not constantly say too much or contradict oneself. 🙂
      Will the GOP survive this?

    2. OFM Trumpster, your a about a year late with this post now. You were to overwhelmed with your hate for HRC when it mattered. The Russian’s and Republicans played you for a fool. The damage has been done. Now you and your poor friends will pay the price. But, you gotta love the stock market, if you get out before the crash.

      1. I consistently post the truth as I see it. I have not and will never pretend anybody is ethically or otherwise qualified for office if their record indicates otherwise.

        The D LITE version of the D Party has to go, it’s just a little brother wannabe Republican Party, with the exception of a few issues such as abortion and gun control. Better on the environment, true, but NOT NEARLY GOOD ENOUGH.

        I didn’t have any need in this forum to point out Trump’s shortcomings, everybody else did that, leaving the shortcomings of the Clinton camp untouched, for all intents and purposes.

        You and the rest of the people who blindly supported Clinton are to blame for picking a fucking loser, acting like goddamned kids, sticking up for one of the clique, utterly REFUSING to even CONSIDER that Clinton had the worst polling numbers of any D candidate ever, etc.

        You acted like the parents who bought the uniforms and bats and balls, and then insisted that your kid be put on the field, when a BETTER candidate was available, one that actually set people’s hearts on fire.

        You are so politically naive and so blinded by your own lack of political FEEL that you and your ilk can’t even understand WHY so many people detest the shit out of HRC.
        Here’s an example.

        https://www.rt.com/usa/389960-clinton-sanders-excessive-contributions-complaint/

        She flipflopped YET AGAIN on a matter of principle, campaign financing, in the middle of the race, going for her fucking SUPER PAC money after campaigning for just about forever on getting the super donor money out of politics.

        SHE accepted Super Pac help by the millions, and has her fucking bankster buddies filing complaints over less that ten grand in excess contributions from mere mortals, people like me, who funded Sanders at less than a hundred bucks a pop for the most part.

        And how many tens of millions did she accept in contributions to her family slush fund from people with business with the state department? We won’t ever really know, because the Obama Justice Department didn’t really WANT to know. You and I would have been jailed for destroying half the contents of her secret and monumentally dangerous and stupid email system, had we done the same.

        We have had Obama described as a saint, when he failed to prosecute any banksters for fraud on the super scale, and presided over the D Party’s loss of seats in government on the grand scale ranging from dog catcher to the Senate.

        I have consistently described Obama as a pretty decent president,everything considered, at the very least marginally better than the R’s who might have been president during his terms. But I will never pretend he’s a saint.

        Saints in politics are even scarcer than chicken teeth.

        I don’t give up on matters of principle, and sometimes the thing to do is to stick to your guns.

        I stuck to mine. I will continue to stick. Sometimes you lose a battle, that does not mean you give up on winning the war.

        It’s rather unlikely that I convinced anybody in this forum to vote for Trump, the audience has proven it is just as cohesive, and just as willing to ignore facts, when it comes to politics, as any of the religious folks the brainy types here love to poke fun at.

        There are many mathematically literate members of this forum. I am the ONLY one who has faced up to the truth, publicly, that HRC was running a scam even back in Arkansas, with the help of highly influential businessmen with business with the state, while her husband was governor.

        I don’t expect any other regular mathematically literate member who has been posting here to ever say publicly, here in this forum, that he believes otherwise. Political solidarity has been proven to trump the truth, in this case at least. One of my goals was to find out if I could pry such an admission out of any member, other than one or two occasional drop in members who might actually be Republicans. They seldom post much.

        Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe I am having some success, considering how much I post in so many places, in terms of convincing Democrats who are capable of at least a minimal level of critical thinking, to think harder about supporting future candidates who are burdened by a lifetime of baggage of various sorts, including flip flopping on major ethical issues, according to which way the wind is blowing any given year or decade.

        And no, I don’t post as OFM any place other than here.

        Within the next year or so, I will be organized technologically, to really roll with my little personal campaign tearing down the BAU /R LITE / Clinton machine faction of the D Party, and putting some REAL Democrats in charge. I have been getting some training to that very effect just recently.

        You supported the worst possible D candidate, a loser who really didn’t have any thing going for her except that she was a female and that she WAS NOT TRUMP. She lost. It’s as simple as that. She got the nomination not because the people of this country wanted her, but because she built up her control of the party machinery via old school machine politics to the point she owned the party machinery, and used that control to rig the primaries.

        And everybody who is willing to speak the truth knows this is true, and says so. Winning trumped principles for her. That’s why she flipflopped on the super pac money, she was pissing in her drawers afraid she would lose, and threw ethics and her word out the window one more time.

        She was so politically WOODEN she made Al Gore look like Reagan, or paradoxically, her husband Bill, in terms of having the common touch. She was so arrogant she fucking didn’t even show up in states crucial to her winning, expecting life long Democratic working class voters to stick with her while she campaigned on identity politics, bankster money, and globalism.

        It’s not MY fault she lost, and it’s not my fault she got the nomination, and it’s not my fault that the D Party is refusing to face up to reality, due to the fact that it is still controlled by her homies.

        But Trump was (is ) so bad I expected her to win, most days.

        1. Trumpster, you need to grow up

          You can fairly argue that HRC is Republican lite. Clearly further to the right than Sanders. But your statement that HRC was the worst candidate ever is just plain bullshit. She got more votes than Sanders in the primary and Trump in the general. On Nov 8th, if you were to the left of HRC and HRC is clearly to the left of Trump. In addition, Sanders supported HRC in the general. Your actions that day were childish because of your hate for her.

          Your “politically WOODEN” comment is just another immature action on your part. What’s important was her position on issues like Climate change. Not would I like to have a “Bush” beer with her.

          Adult don’t always get the choice between good and bad. They have to make a decision between two options they don’t like. Your hate overwhelmed you like a child.

          1. Sounds like its political catnip for Clinton loyalists desperate to erect scapegoats for Hillary Clinton’s election loss to Donald Trump.

            1. Trumpster has his big boy pants on. He doesn’t need any help from the Fox News Heart Land.

  24. If there’s one thing climate scientists have taught me, it’s that one day in one year is weather, but four days out of four years is climate. So I guess we can say that there’s been some unexpected Memorial Day climate change going on?

    Memorial Day Getting Much Cooler In The US

    Posted on May 25, 2017 by tonyheller
    This year will mark the fourth consecutive cool Memorial Day in the US.

    1. No real conclusions, but interesting examination.

      You might be interested in Sam Harris’s follow up podcast to his previous conversation with Charles Murray author of the Bell Curve. Lot’s of food for thought.

      https://www.samharris.org/podcast

      The Moral Complexity of Genetics
      A Conversation with Siddhartha Mukherjee
      In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Siddhartha Mukherjee about the human desire to understand and manipulate heredity, the genius of Gregor Mendel, the ethics of altering our genes, the future of genetic medicine, patent issues in genetic research, controversies about race and intelligence, and other topics.

      BTW, Budapest even today, under the current neo-fascist Hungarian regime, is still a very vibrant intellectual hub.

      1. I recommend it highly.
        Mukherjee is a excellent writer and scientist, but come across as a apologist at times during the podcast.

  25. Within a few generations, all seabirds are going to be intelligent enough to not eat plastics. This is due to the Darwinism Concept in action.

  26. I had occasion to take a long drive a couple of days ago, one that lasted well over an hour each way, to look at a machine one of my old line socially and politically conservative friends is thinking about buying for his business.

    This guy happens to be well educated, and very well read.

    We went in my car, and my radio is set on eighty eight five, the NPR station that covers most of northwest North Carolina. I seldom ever change the station, unless in the evening when they may broadcast music that is not to my taste, then I switch to a blue grass and folk music station, or turn it off.

    So for an hour or so, we listened to a steady stream of talk about how good Ocare is, and how many people will lose coverage if it is repealed, and how bad the R party replacement will be, and finally my friend says, paraphrased,

    You know, I know a hell of a lot of hard core liberals, including my wife and daughters, and at least a quarter of the people I work with.

    And not a damned one of them has brains and sensitivity enough to understand that NPR is a partisan organization. They all see NPR as being totally reasonable. I’m not arguing for or against Ocare, that’s not my point.

    My POINT is that there is just about ZERO coverage on NPR from the point of view of the people who are opposed to Ocare for various reasons. They get about ten seconds once in a while, that’s about it.

    Otherwise, any coverage from the opposition camp is always in presented in terms of telling the listener how rotten I am for being opposed.

    Incidentally this guy got hit by his company changing the rules so that he lost the coverage he had had for years and years as part of his bennies package.

    There’s virtually no coverage on NPR about how the supposedly cheap premiums would stay cheap, because they have been going up like rockets. There’s no coverage about the fact that unless you have a gold package, you are still apt to be bankrupted or at least garnisheed if you have a major illness or accident with one of the more basic packages, etc.

    The coverage is for all intents totally one sided. And the other side doesn’t even REALIZE it’s totally one sided.

    As I said, my radio is preset to NPR, and the only time this Trumpster listens to anything else is when the organ music comes on. But then I’m not all that hardcore a Trumpster, lol. I support strong environmental law, renewable energy, single payer health care, etc etc.

    I just don’t support the Clinton / BAU faction of the D Party.

    1. That’s right, keep working on the small stuff. Obamacare cost is 13. 3 billion dollars per year in a 4 trillion dollar federal budget.
      https://www.thebalance.com/cost-of-obamacare-3306050

      Then there is the welfare system which costs about 1 percent of the budget.
      When will the people start realizing that the Republicans just hate people in general. They act like these programs are big and meaningful, but it’s just an act. They are willing to let people including children starve and die so they can have a few more pennies in their accounts.

      1. “Republicans just hate people in general”

        You see GoneFishing, we can find common ground. But, I don’t think it’s really fair to say the ACA only cost 13.3 billion. There are taxes that off set other costs to bring the annual treasury liability down to 13.3.

        The healthcare problem in this country is huge and almost everyone in this country is never going to speak with someone who understands it at a law making level. I don’t believe most the lawmakers understand the problem. The ACA is only the base or beginning of what is needed to fix the problem. The Republican plan would only set the little improvement we got from the ACA back to square one.

        I’m not convinced that single payer is the end all answer. But I do believe that personal responsibility and the elimination of the current capitalistic profit system have to be part the answer.

  27. NASA DISCOVERS A NEW MODE OF ICE LOSS IN GREENLAND

    “A new NASA study finds that during Greenland’s hottest summers on record, 2010 and 2012, the ice in Rink Glacier on the island’s west coast didn’t just melt faster than usual, it slid through the glacier’s interior in a gigantic wave, like a warmed freezer pop sliding out of its plastic casing. The wave persisted for four months, with ice from upstream continuing to move down to replace the missing mass for at least four more months.”

    “Intense melting such as we saw in 2010 and 2012 is without precedent, but it represents the kind of behavior that we might expect in the future in a warming climate. We’re seeing an evolving system.”

    https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-discovers-a-new-mode-of-ice-loss-in-greenland

    1. Meanwhile,

      TRUMP PRIORITY: OPENING ALASKA’S ARCTIC REFUGE TO OIL DRILLING

      “The White House budget will be delivered to Congress on Tuesday, and as part of President Trump’s plans to help balance the federal budget is a proposal to open the coastal plain (Area 1002) of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling…When you get right down to the nitty-gritty, Trump sees us swimming in “black gold,” and to hell with global warming, OPEC and anything else that gets in the way of his America First policy. And this mindset does indeed, raise serious questions…”

      http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/environment/trump-priority-opening-alaska-s-arctic-refuge-to-oil-drilling/article/493677

      1. Trump’s plans to help balance the federal budget is a proposal to open the coastal plain (Area 1002) of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling…

        Let’s put aside caring about the planet or denying climate science for a moment and just focus on this purely from an economic policy point of view. It is simply put, an absurd proposition!

        1. Absurdity seems to be in fashion. World military spending totaled more than $1.6 trillion last year, which seems absurd to me, but maybe it’s necessary to keep we peasants in line.

          1. If we don’t clean up our own mess, nature will do it for us. It won’t be pretty and it will be very painful.

    1. “For model year 2015, the required fuel economy standards averaged about 35 miles per gallon (mpg) for passenger cars and about 27 mpg for light trucks after taking into account the footprint mix of vehicles sold within each category. The standards for each category are currently required to increase over time so that the standards for model year 2025 vehicles are expected to reach about 53 mpg and 38 mpg, respectively.”

      from the article. i’m not sure what fancy-math they are using for the “footprint mix” but i can guarantee this is bullshit. i drive a 2015 corolla and it only averages 31 mpg with about 50% highway.

      1. from the article. i’m not sure what fancy-math they are using for the “footprint mix” but i can guarantee this is bullshit. i drive a 2015 corolla and it only averages 31 mpg with about 50% highway.

        It does kinda depend on how you drive…

        I usually average better than 35 mpg on my old beater with a 2L engine and a five speed manual transmission. Hint, my brake pads and rotors seem to last quite a lot longer than most people’s. Car has over 160,000 miles on it and still has the original clutch.

        Cheers!

        1. Soon there will be two billion cars on the road.
          Two billion Corrolas equals 1.3 billion SUV’s.

          1. You’re forgetting all those electric eggs that are about to hatch… 😉

    1. Yeah, that kind of large scale development has certainly happened in my previously laid back and friendly beach side town. The kind of tourism we had in the past benefited the local economy. What we have now benefits only a few big developers.

      Finally, the “shareholders” are the movers and shakers, the developers, the investors, even local governments that spend taxpayer money…

      BTW, That is a profoundly mistaken notion! Having to pay dividends to shareholders shackles the economy on so many levels! It is actually bad for business and in the long run it’s even bad for the shareholders because since it is not possible for any company to continue growing for ever, it ends up destroying the goose that lays the golden eggs.

      Douglas Rushkoff: Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus
      How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFTGyvAwg5U

  28. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170525131245.htm

    There will be a lot of progress made in reducing the cost and upping the performance of wind turbines over the next couple of decades.

    The research project described in this link may result in lowering the levelized cost of wind juice as much as ten percent, and allow the wind industry to expand its foot print into large areas where the wind resource has until now not been economic.
    From time to time I see articles claiming that the wind industry is getting away with claiming it’s less costly than it actually is, by ignoring the cost of decommissioning wind farms at the ends of their life cycle.

    But I can’t see that a wind farm necessarily should EVER be decommissioned. Some will be, no doubt, because they were poorly sited to begin with, but there’s no reason to believe the wind will ever quit blowing at any given site, lol.

    And there’s no reason I can see that all the machinery at a wind farm can’t be replaced or refurbished economically as it wears out. A substantial part of the expense of building a new wind farm consists of the permitting and design process, more money is needed to get it connected into the grid, etc. Roads must be built, sometimes,etc.

    Refurbishing will require only the replacement of turbine blades, generators, gearboxes, and maybe towers, which will be substantially cheaper than starting from scratch at a new site.

    So why would a well sited wind farm ever be abandoned?

  29. Happy Memorial Day, All! Remember on this day to give your thanks to the Vets who fought so bravely to keep America the freest Country our world has ever known. God Bless America!

    1. Yeah, while we are on the subject, let’s also not forget how easy it is, for ordinary people, supposedly good patriotic citizens, caught up with the idea of making their country ‘Great Again’ to end up committing unspeakable atrocities against their fellow human beings! let’s learn from history and make sure it doesn’t happen here!

      What the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive wants the world to know
      At 97, Ben Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive and he has a far-reaching message for today’s world

      http://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-the-last-nuremberg-prosecutor-alive-wants-the-world-to-know/

      War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people. All wars, and all decent people.”

      Benjamin Ferencz: Of course, is my answer. These men would never have been murderers had it not been for the war. These were people who could quote Goethe, who loved Wagner, who were polite–

      Lesley Stahl: What turns a man into a savage beast like that?

      Benjamin Ferencz: He’s not a savage. He’s an intelligent, patriotic human being.

      Lesley Stahl: He’s a savage when he does the murder though.

      Benjamin Ferencz: No. He’s a patriotic human being acting in the interest of his country, in his mind.

      Here is an example of what otherwise good patriotic citizens engaged in the process of making their country ‘Great Again’ can actually look like!

      Warning not for the faint of heart!

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF0Hvb8a28E

      EINSATZGRUPPEN 2 FILM RARE

      1. America may call itself the “Land of the Free,” but it’s hardly the freest nation in the world, according to a new report from the Legatum Institute, a London-based think tank. The group’s annual prosperity index, which ranks the prosperity of 142 countries, has ranked Canada the best country in the world for “personal freedom.” According to the study, Canada is the most tolerant of people from other countries, with 92 percent of Canadians thinking the country is a good place for immigrants. In addition, about 94 percent of Canadians believe that they have the freedom to choose the course of their own lives, the study says. America, on the other hand, ranks 15th for freedom, just behind Costa Rica and the Netherlands.

        The best countries for personal freedom are:

        1. Canada
        2. New Zealand
        3. Norway
        4. Luxembourg

        1. BTW I’ve traveled and worked in many countries (currently dividing my time between Canada and Norway) and though my opinions on the matter are, of course, subjective this seems like a reasonable assessment. As for what is the greatest country, that’s rather more difficult. I’ve been in Chile on a number of occasions and most Chileans would say their country is the greatest in the world but you could say the say the same about Vietnam, a country that defeated America in a war not that long ago. Maybe it all depends on what you’ve been programmed to believe.

          1. Well according to the good country index:
            https://goodcountry.org/index/results
            The goodest country in the world is Sweden 😉
            The US doesn’t even make the top 10 in this list. It ranks 20th overall.

            We’re not making moral judgments about countries. What we mean by a Good Country is something much simpler: it’s a country that contributes to the greater good of humanity. A country that serves the interests of its own people, but without harming – and preferably by advancing – the interests of people in other countries too.

            1. Dang! Sweden has a female climate minister and we in the US get Scott Pruit?!
              This absolutely proves once and for all that there really is no god!

              https://www.ecowatch.com/un-ocean-conference-trump-2426944838.html

              America has taken a drastic fall as an international climate leader ever since last year’s election. Trump, who believes that global warming is a hoax and has been dismantling regulations that protect the environment since taking office in January, will announce next week if the U.S. will withdraw from the landmark Paris climate agreement.

              Lovin, who is also Sweden’s climate minister, has taken a dig at Trump and his climate denial before. In February, she posted a photograph on Twitter of her signing a bill that requires Sweden to phase out greenhouse gas emissions by 2045, one of the most ambitious plans by any developed country.

              The photo featured an all-female staff—a stark contrast to a photo of Trump signing an executive order restricting access to abortion while surround by men.

              “You can interpret it as you want,” Lovin’s spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “It’s more that Sweden is a feminist government and this is a very important law that we just decided on … And to make the Paris agreement happen we need climate leadership.”

    2. O Lord,on this-Memorial day-grant eternal rest unto the fallen soldiers of this bless`d nation,and let Your everlasting light shine upon them,.Amen/

  30. Tariffs on Solar PV from China? And meanwhile getting closer to the expiration of solar tax credits.
    Just what is the nations energy plan anyway?
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-solar-wto-idUSKBN18P1JL

    On this memorial day- I will pause often to thank those three in Portland who stood up to one of Trumps/Hilters Supremacists on this past Thursday, and gave there life for the sake of human rights.

    1. But the Trump administration can’t have it both ways, can it?

      Some people point to solar bankruptcies as proof that the industry can’t sustain itself. But if the issue is that they can’t compete with foreign companies and if tariffs were added they would be fine, that’s another matter. From the article:

      ___________________

      “The petition alleges that increasing imports have taken market share from domestic producers and have led to bankruptcies, plant shutdowns, layoffs, and a severe deterioration of the financial performance of the domestic industry,” the U.S. filing said.

      Suniva itself filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 17.

      While imports have risen, U.S. producers have seen business shrivel, with 1,200 manufacturing jobs lost and a 27 percent wage decline in the four years to 2016. U.S. solar cell plants went from running at 81.7 percent of capacity in 2014 to 28.9 percent in 2016, the filing said.

      “Data in the petition also indicates that (U.S. producers’)domestic market share fell from 21.0 percent in 2012 to 11.0 percent in 2016, despite a $4 billion growth of the U.S. market over the same period.”

      1. The Goldman Sachs appointees are making Wall Street safe for the continued asset-stripping of the USA. The last time I checked, Hillary’s gang did not oppose either of these endeavors.

        1. Goldman Sachs, once described as ‘a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,’ is serving as fertile ground for Trump appointees

          Donald Trump has selected yet another Goldman Sachs executive to fill a senior role in his administration, naming the firm’s current managing director, James Donovan, to serve as deputy Treasury secretary.

          Donovan would be the sixth member of Trump’s team with ties to Goldman

          https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/03/15/anyone-left-goldman-sachs-trump-picks-another-alum-treasury-deputy

          1. http://www.factcheck.org/2012/02/obama-white-house-full-of-wall-street-executives/

            https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/business/dealbook/goldman-sachs-goverment-jobs.html?_r=0
            http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/goldman-sachs-power-white-house-231998

            A fast google reveals that Gold in Sacks has had tons of people in top positions in government right along, regardless of who is in the WH, a Republican Lite Democrat, or a Republican.

            It’s do or die, when it comes to who will control this country. If the D party continues on the path it has been on in recent times, playing wanna be Republican, taking the big money from the big donors, etc, it’s not really going to matter very much whether a so called Democrat, or a so called Republican, is in the WH, or which socalled party controls Congress.

            Yep, the fucking banksters are the foxes in charge of the chicken house. Obama didn’t prosecute any of them that I remember. I suppose the simplest explanation for this failure is that doing so would have been political suicide for the R Lite D Party, since it is funded by big money.

            Note the Sanders camp did not and does not run on bankster’s money. But the HRC faction got so scared that it flip flopped right in the middle of the primary season and went back on a commitment not to do so, lol.

            It’s no wonder enough D’s in Congress virtually always hold hands with the R’s to prevent really effective and politically viable reform in the health care industry , etc. For most purposes, they might as well BE Republicans.

            Either way, the country will be run by and for the banksters, the people with big money, big power. The rest of us will be more or less the equivalent of sharecroppers.

            This is not to say the D’s aren’t substantially better than the R’s in some respects, but in terms of the big picture…….. Republican Lite Democrats aren’t going to take care of you, unless you happen to be one of the elite.

            Ya keep on making my case for me, I and really appreciate the help.

            Our only real hope is that the D Party gets it’s act together, meaning it gets back to putting the people of this country first.

            There are lots more working class people in this country than there are investor class people, and anybody with brains enough to understand first grade politics must understand that the large majority of people who are important politically due to being members of one or another minority, such as sexual orientation, race, cultural background, religion, or whatever are ALSO members of the working classes.

            The D’s are WAY WAY better, incomparably better, on some issues, especially on the environment, but UNLESS they get back into power, they aren’t going to be setting environmental policy.

            They aren’t going to be setting health care policy, or foreign policy, or drug war policy, until they get back to representing the working classes of this country.

            It wasn’t ME who said he couldn’t remember his party having anything to say about working class people, last election, HB.

            That was Joe Biden.

            Ya reckon Joe Biden is a trumpster?

            1. “The D’s are WAY WAY better, incomparably better, on some issues, especially on the environment”

              Trumpster, I have no problem with trying to push the Democrats back to the left. My favorite Democrat is FDR. I wanted Sanders to push HRC to the left. I even donated to him early to try to help get his campaign off the ground. I knew who he was for years from his regular appearances on MSNBC. But, when it became time for California to vote. It’s was time for HRC and almost everyone I knew around here felt the same way. She took California 2 to 1 over Sanders. They knew she was prepared for the job, she was overwhelmingly better liked in congress by fellow Dem’s, she had been preparing for it much longer than Sanders, she wasn’t going to be called a Communist by the Republicans like Sanders would have been, it was time for a woman to get the opportunity and I didn’t believe 98% of the lies you fell for. That the Republicans have painted on her for the last 25 years. Had Sanders won the primary, I would have completely supported him too. But he didn’t and you need to get over it. Sanders was a poor looser and failed to help unite the party after he lost. Your a good example of that.

              To be honest, I think the biggest reason you hate her so much is because you were afraid. She was going to take away your guns.

              Democrat are always on the moral high ground compared to Republicans

              Also, you need to get over your hate for bankers. Their just part of a capitalist system. They just need to be regulated, which Trump is trying to undo. Pull your head out !

            2. Sure, OBAMA AND HIS JUSTICE DEPARTMENT LOCKED UP SO MANY BANKERS THEY HAD TO BUILD SOME NEW PRISONS, JUST FOR BANKERS, LOL.

              R I G H T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

              You certainly do have a tendency to read everything literally. Most people with a few working synapses between their ears interpret my comments about banksters to include people like the Koch brothers, etc. When I talk about banksters, I’m talking about the people who BUY the government they want.

              The banksters more or less OWN the Republican Party, and the banksters more or less own the Clinton /bau faction of the Democratic Party, and you can poll the hardest of hard core progressive academic types, writers and editors at publications such as Mother Jones, etc, and you will find that the large majority of them agree with me.

              And no, I’m not afraid the D’s will take away my guns, at least not during my remaining lifetime, but there IS a very real possibility that within another generation or so, the gun culture that prevails in many rural areas and some cities in this country will fade out with the passing of the older generations.

              I see it happening already, but it won’t happen real soon.

              I maintain that maybe you need to get yours out.

        2. Jim Kunstler, is that you…?

          … oh, I guess you “forgot” to use quotes….

          Well, maybe next time Hightrekker.

          Be well,

          Petro

    2. More nuances to the situation.

      Chinese Solar Makers Shown $55 Million Path to Avoid Tariffs – Bloomberg: “An investment firm that’s financing a trade complaint against cheap imported solar cells said that case would disappear if Chinese companies bought $55 million in manufacturing equipment.”

      “‘Suniva’s petition appears to be less of an effort to protect a U.S. industry and jobs than a desire by speculators to recoup their failed investment,’ solar contractor Swinerton Renewable Energy, which submitted the SQN letter, said in its filing to the commission. ‘They are fully prepared to shut Suniva as soon as they have their money.'”

      “Outside trade lawyers say the letter may undermine Suniva’s case at the ITC by helping the company’s critics prove it’s not ‘representative’ of the larger domestic industry — a key threshold for such cases to advance. If the case will collapse without Suniva’s backing, that wider support may not exist.

      ‘There’s a relationship between their willingness to make the case go away — their ability to make it go away — and the reluctance of the ITC to start a war over one little company having a problem,’ said Lewis Leibowitz, a Washington-based trade and customs lawyer.

      The Solar Energy Industries Association casts Suniva as an outlier, arguing to the ITC that no other domestic producers support its tariff push and the company’s output is too small to be considered representative of the industry.”

  31. ‘HEAT ISLAND’ EFFECT COULD DOUBLE CLIMATE CHANGE COSTS FOR WORLD’S CITIES

    “The urban heat island occurs when natural surfaces, such as vegetation and water, are replaced by heat-trapping concrete and asphalt, and is exacerbated by heat from cars, air conditioners and so on. This effect is expected to add a further two degrees to global warming estimates for the most populated cities by 2050. Higher temperatures damage the economy in a number of ways — more energy is used for cooling, air is more polluted, water quality decreases and workers are less productive, to name a few.”

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170529133714.htm

    1. Why not just use solar PV on the buildings to run heat pumps and underground heat storage? Will cool the buildings and put the heat underground to be used in the winter to heat the buildings.
      In fact the buildings can be designed as giant heat pumps.

      However there is some natural relief coming as the cooler water from oceans and rivers flow over the cities keeping them cool and dropping their energy usage dramatically.

    2. I have always had a gut feeling that climate modelers have failed to appreciate just how important land use issues are. It’s not just urban heat islands, it’s millions of acres of rural roads and roofs, millions of acres that used to be forest that is now wheat and cornfield, etc.

      https://phys.org/news/2017-05-hotspots-vegetation-climate-percent.html#nRlv

      Ya can trust a farmer to KNOW that while it may be about ninety five in the hayfield, it will be only about eighty under the big trees fifty yards into the woods, and that those big old trees will be buffering both atmospheric humidity and temperature in a far more consistent manner than that hayfield. The roots go deeper, there’s a lot less runoff, the transpiration of water is steadier , and falls off a lot less during dry spells.

      Most people appreciate the fact that once you are well inland from the oceans, and moist ocean air coming ashore, a very large part of rainfall is RECYCLED rainfall. What falls evaporates, is blown some distance by the prevailing winds, and when cooler air is encountered, or when the air moves up and over a mountain range, etc, it condenses again as rain.

      In other words, wet weather begets wet weather, and dry weather begets dry weather, to a very substantial degree, depending on regional geography and the prevailing winds.

      From what I read, if the Amazon ever once turns REALLY dry, it might not recover, due to this phenomenon of recycling rain.

    3. For example, a scholarly article (link below) released just this month suggests the recent reduction in Arctic ice is most likely just a natural correction to a build-up that occurred from the 1940s to the 1970s. Scientists with the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) produced a lengthy review of the literature in 2014 that essentially found the same thing. But how many people subscribe to Hydrological Sciences Journal or want to read 1,000-page tomes?

      http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02626667.2017.1324974

      This is very confusing. Any way to explain this?
      Because the ozone hole has shrunk, the Arctic is returning to its pre-1970 level?
      Is that true? Not just a coincidence that the decades fit exactly?

      1. This is very confusing. Any way to explain this?
        Because the ozone hole has shrunk, the Arctic is returning to its pre-1970 level?
        Is that true? Not just a coincidence that the decades fit exactly?

        For starters, It is absolutely NOT true that there is conclusive evidence of a trend indicating that Arctic sea ice extent is returning to its pre-1970 level! There are most certainly natural cycles for ice extent but the overall trend continues to be down and shows no signs of any significant rebounding, natural cycles notwithstanding. The repair of the ozone hole, while good news in terms of reducing harmful UV radiation may actually make things worse for Antarctic sea ice loss.

        Climate scientists are well aware of natural cycles and are not confused by them. If you are interested, I plugged your linked paper into a science AI search engine called IRIS.ai and found some relevant papers. 164 papers on first blush and if you wish you can read all of them here:

        https://the.iris.ai/map/414207c0-bd86-4910-ba3c-6e9c16136074

        Here’s one paper’s Abstract:

        Robust seasonal cycle of Arctic sea ice area through tipping point in amplitude
        Ditlevsen, Peter D.
        GO TO LINKBROWSE PAPER
        Abstract

        The variation in the Arctic sea ice is dominated by the seasonal cycle with little inter-annual correlation. Though the mean sea ice area has decreased steadily in the period of satellite observations, a dramatic transition in the dynamics was initiated with the record low September ice area in 2007. The change is much more pronounced in the amplitude of the seasonal cycle than in the annual mean ice area. The shape of the seasonal cycle is surprisingly constant for the whole observational record despite the general decline. A simple explanation, independent of the increased greenhouse warming, for the shape of the seasonal cycle is offered. Thus the dramatic climate change in arctic ice area is seen in the amplitude of the cycle and to a lesser extend the annual mean and the summer ice extend. The reason why the climate change is most pronounced in the amplitude is related to the rapid reduction in perennial ice and thus a thinning of the ice. The analysis shows that a tipping point for the arctic ice area was crossed in 2007.Comment: 9 pages,

        As for the so called ozone hole, it is above the Antarctic and not the Arctic.
        http://www.theozonehole.com/ozonehgood.htm

        Antarctica may heat up dramatically as ozone hole repairs

        The first comprehensive review of the state of Antarctica’s climate and its relationship to the global climate system is published this week (Tuesday 1 December) by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR). The review – Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment – presents the latest research from the icy continent, identifies areas for future scientific research, and addresses the urgent questions that policy makers have about Antarctic melting, sea-level rise and biodiversity.

        Based on the latest evidence* from 100 world-leading scientists from eight countries, the review focuses on the impact and consequences of rapid warming of the Antarctic Peninsula and the Southern Ocean; rapid ice loss in parts of Antarctica and the increase in sea ice around the continent; the impact of climate change on Antarctica’s plants and animals; the unprecedented increase in carbon dioxide levels; the connections between human-induced global change and natural variability; and the extraordinary finding that the ozone hole has shielded most of Antarctica from global warming.

        It may not be very good news but it certainly isn’t confusing.

        1. Thanks for your reply. Okay, it does seem unlikely that the (Antarctic) ozone hole would effect the Arctic sea ice.
          But did you dodge the 1940 to 1970 claim?
          I don’t see a clear answer.
          Did Arctic sea ice grow for those three decades or not?

          1. The 1940 to 1970 reduction in warming was due to extreme atmospheric pollution reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the surface. Once pollution reduction was put in place and catalytic convertors were installed on cars the warming trend accelerated.

      2. An interesting paper, thanks. My summary would be:
        1) They only looked at extent – there is no data for volume before recent times. Volume decline is about twice as fast as extent.
        2) Part of what they did was predict expected extent from the temperature records and check against observations and found (no surprise) extent goes up if it gets colder. Thus the cooling after WWII, which I think has been mostly explained due to increase in atmospheric aerosols as industry grew, led to an increase in extent.
        3) There are lags and noise in the system.
        4) The start of satellite measurement happens to have correspondent to a change in the rate of melt, possibly due to changes in circulation patterns.
        5) Even the best models still have deficiencies in predicting the ice behaviour (not in the paper but given current trends the models look like they are seriously underestimating the melt rate – i.e. at one time predicting ice free by 2100, but it now looks likely in less than 10 years).
        6) The final chart is pretty conclusive for me, and I think this year or next it will be clear that there is no overlap of recent highs and previous lows (i.e. no statistical chance that we are not on a rapid decline). Given that they equate ice extent with temperature and the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the world, probably no surprise.
        7) Their work is aimed at understanding hydrology – historically and for future impacts – i.e. where the water goes and what it does.

        If your interested in the Arctic ice but find the scientific papers heavy going then the following sites are good viewing:

        https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov
        (choose Arctic and zoom in – all the remaining thick multiyear ice along the northern coast of Greenland and the Canadian archipelago that used to keep the pack together is currently getting smashed to pieces, the next 2 to 6 weeks might see fast declines in volume and extent.)

        https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/board,3.0.html
        (various discussions)

        https://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/arctic.html
        (US Navy site – obviously shipping through there is of importance to them – showing ice movement etc.; they predicted an ice free Arctic would be possible starting from about last year I think, they may be about right)

        1. 1) They only looked at extent – there is no data for volume before recent times. Volume decline is about twice as fast as extent.
          2) Part of what they did was predict expected extent from the temperature records and check against observations and found (no surprise) extent goes up if it gets colder.

          Exactly!

          1. thank you, George and Fred…
            that’s a great graph showing the growth in extent from 1943 to 1970-ish.
            “1) They only looked at extent – there is no data for volume before recent times. Volume decline is about twice as fast as extent.”
            This is disturbing, that there is no volume data before recent times. I suppose I will have to keep on reading.

            1. Yep keep reading – better get a move on though, because I think the comforting, confirmational denier bullshit you are looking for is running out of steam. You look at that graph and the thing you note is the “warming” to 1970!? Try looking a bit further to the right and/or coming up with some ideas of your own.

            2. That graph was very helpful. I wanted to know if the 40s to 70s growth in extent was real or bullshit. I knew the recent 30 year extent was shrinking and not bullshit. I particularly like to see the big picture, whether or not it is “comforting”.

            3. ARCTIC WARMING

              Since the 1970s the northern polar region has warmed faster than global averages by a factor or two or more, a process referred to as ‘Arctic amplification’ which is linked to a drastic reduction in sea ice.

              “But then how to explain a similar rapid warming that occurred during the early 20th century, when the effects of greenhouse gases were considerably weaker than today? And what can we prove about the period, given the scarcity of usable data and observations prior to the 1950s?”

              Scientists from Kyoto and UC San Diego have discovered this phenomenon occurred when the warming phase — ‘interdecadal variability mode’ — of both the Pacific & Atlantic Oceans coincided… Using observations and model simulations, they’ve demonstrated that rising Pacific-Atlantic temperatures were the major driver of rapid Arctic warming in the early 20th century.

              https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170530144802.htm

            4. “they’ve demonstrated that rising Pacific-Atlantic temperatures were the major driver of rapid Arctic warming in the early 20th century. ”

              Ok, one part of the puzzle, but since the oceans are not energy sources what caused the Pacific and Atlantic to warm up?

            5. Good question! Maybe a global-average decrease in the mixing of warm surface waters and cold deep waters with the two systems being in phase from time-to-time???

            6. So on average there would be no overall effect, just an oscillation since the source, the sun, is stable. The major changes are atmospheric (GHG) and albedo. Those two will account for the overall warming.

              Since the ocean oscillation is very short term and tends to negate itself somewhat, I think there are other factors.
              We have a strong record from the late 40’s to the 70’s of strong global dimming. There may have been dimming in the early part of the 20th century also since even though less coal was burned it was burned inefficiently and there was no attempt to reduce SOx. Towns and cities were smog laden. Areas near iron production were sometimes dark in the middle of the day.
              Even in the 1960’s the pollution was highly visible everywhere and with visible domes of pollution around cities.

              We are talking on order of 10 percent less sunlight at the surface. That is large enough to slow the temperature rise.
              Apparently, despite burning more coal than ever, dimming can no longer stop the warming. We would need volcanic activity in conjunction with our fossil fuel activity to slow the temperature rise.
              As the Arctic and Northern Hemisphere become more ice and snow free, I doubt if aerosols will be enough to stop the warming.

              For London, the consequences were dire. In the 18th century it had 20 foggy days a year, but this had increased to almost 60 by the end of the 19th century: this meant that London got 40% less sunshine than the surrounding towns, and the number of thunderstorms doubled in London from the early-18th to the late-19th century.

              We have data for air pollution in London since 1585, estimated from coal imports till 1935 and adjusted to measured pollution from the 1920s till today. This shows how levels of smoke and sulphur pollution increased dramatically over the 300 years from 1585, reaching a maximum in the late 19th century, only to have dropped even faster ever since, such that the levels of the 1980s and1990s were below the levels of the late 16th century.

              https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2001/aug/15/physicalsciences.globalwarming

            7. Isn’t there a theory also that there are no aerosols in the atmosphere over the Arctic, presumably because the air is too cold? So part of the “acceleration” is more dimming effect on the lower latitudes. Of course that would be somewhat counter to the argument that the ice grew through the 60’s because of global aerosol dimming, but maybe it’s depends on the relative size of the factors, or maybe the cleaner air since then has been seen more rapidly in the Arctic.

            8. This is disturbing, that there is no volume data before recent times. I suppose I will have to keep on reading.

              Then maybe start by reading a few of the related papers that IRIS.ai pulled up, that should keep you busy at least for a little while…

              https://the.iris.ai/map/414207c0-bd86-4910-ba3c-6e9c16136074

              Re-calibration of Arctic sea ice extent datasets using Arctic surface air temperature records: Hydrological Sciences Journal: Vol 0, No 0
              I’ve identified 164 related papers and grouped them by concept.

              BTW here’s an idea, read this pdf on how they use old data to create a gridded database of Arctic sea ice extending back to the 1800s

              https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/star/documents/meetings/Ice2013/dayTwo/Walsh_Wed.pdf

              Who knows, maybe you can find a way to correlate sea ice concentration data pre 18oos, with sea ice volume based on what we know from current satellite data and actual field measurements of sea ice volume decline.

              Good luck!

            9. May I suggest this?

              “To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind earth together.”
              Barry Lopez

  32. ChargePoint to deploy 200 of its ‘up to 400 kW’ electric vehicle charging stations in the UK

    “Well, the company announced today the first major deployment of those stations as InstaVolt in the UK announced that they signed a contract to purchase “more than 200 ChargePoint rapid charge systems.”
    The news comes just 2 months after Daimler led a $82 million investment in ChargePoint to expand in Europe.”
    https://electrek.co/2017/05/09/chargepoint-400-kw-electric-vehicle-charging-stations-uk/

    They compare 400kW to the amount of power a Costco uses. It supports charging in 15 minutes or so.
    https://youtu.be/iV-ogzoSNdg

    1. This one too, for YOU, HB

      http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-people-vs-goldman-sachs-20110511

      “They weren’t murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.

      Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn’t leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.”

      1. Anybody who bothers to check will find that I have generally described Obama as a pretty decent guy, and a passable president, or a good president, and at the worst, marginally better than whichever R might have held the WH during his terms, had he lost.

        But a saint? Not quite, in my estimation.

        Damned few people who are hard core Democrats are willing to admit it, and even fewer Republican hard core types, because admitting a Democrat is bought and paid for is tantamount to admitting the same about Republicans.

        But his Justice Department failed to do anything other than slap a few wrists, which in effect amounted to a minor loss of ill gained profits, about bank fraud on the grandest of scales.

        Now if we start with the assumption that Obama is basically a decent man, especially considering that he’s a politician, and that his heart is basically in the right place, then we have come up with a viable reason why he DIDN’T do something about all the shit the bankers pulled, and got away with.

        The only reason that stands the smell test, imo, is that his hands were effectively tied because the BANKERS ( meaning also a large portion of the OTHER the big money donors who finance the bau , R Lite D Party) were in a position to prevent him from doing the right thing. Nobody has to actually say anything in that sort of situation, publicly.

        The word easily gets around, without making the front page, that the donations that keep the D Lite politicians in office will dry up.

        Considering he was the party leader, Obama had no real choice, it was either let the banksters slide, or sacrifice the R Lite D party.

        Decent people, and decent politicians, sometimes have to do the best they can, even when that’s not nearly good enough.

        The Sanders faction proved that it’s possible to have a real Democratic Party, a real party of the people, one that is controlled by the people, rather than the big money elite.

        1. You seem to take everything black or white. Take that to mean what ever you want.

          Trumpster says: “You certainly do have a tendency to read everything literally. Most people with a few working synapses between their ears interpret my comments about banksters to include people like the Koch brothers, etc”

          Sorry, I don’t understand RedNeck

          1. True believers never understand anything that threatens their belief systems, and partisan cynics never admit anything that contradicts their message for the sheep who are their unthinking followers.

            Lots of people believe it’s ok to lead the masses around by their noses, including the BAU R Lite D Party establishment.

            The R party establishment, and preachers and priests of all stripes believe and operate on the same basis. Lie to the simple minded, just keep them in line and on board by any means possible.

            Avoid hard truths.

            Of course you wouldn’t understand, you are either incapable, or unwilling to admit you do.

            Here’s another link for you in PARTICULAR.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JzRX-y9sWQ

            Any body who looks no further than your calling me trumpster is simple minded, but name calling works quite well, in terms of keeping the simple minded , unthinking mass of people in line.

            But in a forum such as this one, it doesn’t work very well.

            A little at a time, I am getting my points across. D Lite politics aren’t going to fix our problems, because D Lite politics are too closely aligned with Republican politics, and because the banksters, meaning moneyed interests, control the current day R Lite D party.

            The arithmetic is simple. There are more working class people in this country who would rather give the straight middle finger to the R Lite D establishment than to vote for it.

            Other than giving up democracy, and elections, the only way to fix this problem is for the D party to return to its roots.

            Obama and Clinton aren’t really all that much into the people who are the roots of the D party, and the people who are THE ROOTS understand that, and have come to the conclusion that they have no choice but to force change.

            That change is well started.

    1. Great talk! What strikes me is that not a single thing he mentioned in his talk was news. I have know about most of it for well over a quarter of a century!

      However the problem that I see is this. The people who are currently running the US government have managed to pull off a what for all intents and purposes is practically a Coup d’état. 63 million people were manipulated into helping pull it off. These are ignorant, angry people who feel they have been wronged and they fully believe that the intellectual elite and specifically scientists like Dr Lewis Ziska are the enemy. I find it highly unlikely that they can be educated!

      I have been following a lot of right wing American populist reaction to world events.
      Here are just two typical random comments, in this case about the Paris Climate Accord and Trump administration’s decision to pull out of it :

      Rock 6 minutes ago
      The USA elected a leader who is there for his country first. The Paris agreement is a totalitarian dream from non-Americans, Barrack Hussein included. The USA will do just fine I am sure.

      CharlieK 18 minutes ago
      “UN leader: US leaving Paris accord will harm global influence” The odious civil servants of the UN are panicking, they know that the fraudulent global warming accord would be dead meat without our support.

      I don’t see this ending well!

      1. We are being voluntarily drawn back into a medieval state by people believing in the middle-class dominant era. As China and the rest of Asia becomes dominant once again the US and Euros will grasp at any carrot placed in front of them to achieve their position again, or at least a more equal one. Problem is they don’t see the wolves under the sheep’s skins.

        Believe me, some of the angry right are not stupid. Quite the opposite, they are extremely intelligent with minds like bear traps for details. They choose a belief system that is different than the left, thinking that increasing business brings increasing prosperity and freedom.
        Check with any worker from the late 1800’s into the early twentieth century about that load of bull.

        1. Believe me, some of the angry right are not stupid. Quite the opposite, they are extremely intelligent with minds like bear traps for details.

          I’m sure that is true! However it doesn’t seem to be the case for the majority of those who make comments like the one above.

          1. Everybody can have their opinion. Some may seem stupid or even out of their minds but overall the opinions should even out to at least reasonable.
            So one institutes political parties to polarize opinion and belief. Then the results can oscillate to far ranges of the bell curve at times. That is very useful to powerful people who wait to take advantage each time the pendulum swings far enough in their direction.

            Yes, their vote equals your vote. Doesn’t equality suck Fred?
            You spend all that time, all that ability learning about the world and trying to change some of it toward a better way, then along comes some smuck who has spent no effort and who knows little but what is fed to him by a partisan group and his vote cancels yours.

Comments are closed.