222 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, May 23, 2020”

  1. Regarding the ‘no seasonality’of covid-19 (posted off topic on “OPEC April 2020 production data”)

    That’s because many or the majority of transmissions take place from human to human, where in most of the cases the viruses don’t stay for long outside cells.
    Equador is an example of a tropical country where many cases exists, though it has highlands where also Quito is situated. Daily average temperature is 18-20 degrees Celsius there, year round.
    An ever better example is Saudí Arabia. In Riyadh day time temperature from May-Sept is about 40 degrees C. Last 24 hours new registered covid-19 cases in the entire country almost 2500.

    One of the reasons that the flu is seasonal is that in the winter we spend more time indoors and have closer contact with each other, which makes it easier for the virus to spread.
    Covid-19 seems to be more contagious and nobody has (had) even the smallest amount of immunity against it.
    So, generally speaking for all countries, during warm weather we could see cases diminish as long as we respect physical distancing (but many don’t)
    How long will it take for the WHO to strongly advice the whole world to wear masks or face cloth covering in certain circumstances ? The CDC changed its guidance already on 6th April

      1. Most people don’t respect the 2 meter distancing from other’s.
        With laserlight has been shown that only a small part of the aerosols go through a simple mask when talking, and what goes through lost most of its speed.
        When coughing within minutes droplets/aerosols travel 12 feet when not wearing a mask.
        Wearing masks is in the first place to prevent that infected people infect other people. Because of the high number of asymptomatic people everyone has to wear masks where people are together; that gives a double barrier.
        Apart from all these considerations: is it a coincidence that countries like Austria, Taiwan, Singapore and others with mask obligation have much less daily registered cases and the economy running again at higher speed ?

        1. And really, is it such a hardship? A small act of community mindedness to benefit one’s country.

          I echo the words of the patriot Nathan Hale: I only regret that I have but one mask to don for my country.

          Really. I only have one, and I have to clean it and try to keep it sterilized as best as possible. It’s getting a bit ragged. I wish we had enough real N95 masks to go around and provide much better protection for everyone.

          1. Bob,

            The N95 protects the wearer but not others, the surgical masks or face coverings protect others from those who wear it.

            In short N95 is advisable for the very old ot those who are immunocompromised. Everyone else should not use them, unless they are a healthcare provider or first responder as N95 masks should be reserved for those folks who are dealing with known COVID19 positive patients in many cases and are not easily replaced.

            1. What you say is true of N95 masks that have a front valve. My understanding is that those are not approved for medical use. A medical grade N95 mask protects both the wearer and others, but proper fitment is essential.

              And yes, I understand that in the current circumstances medical grade masks should be reserved for medical professionals. I donated 40 surgical masks that I had on hand for construction use to ER nurses that I know, but that’s the point of the snark in my comment. We are one of the wealthiest countries that has ever existed, and we can’t even provide top notch commercially made masks to anyone who wants them.

              Sure seems like a failure of industrial civilization to need to resort to ordinary folks donning homemade tea towel masks and bandannas, looking like banditos ready to hold up the stagecoach, because we can’t even adequately equip the most expensive medical system on the planet, let alone the citizenry.

              https://www.healthline.com/health-news/certain-type-n95-mask-harm-covid19-spread

          2. The local Chamber Of Commerce right now is having a big debate within itself over if it’s members can have ‘no masks’ policies. Having customers wearing masks goes against the personal beliefs of some local business owners. Its similar to other debates the Chamber has had in the past,like allowing gay couples into businesses or saying ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’.

            Because wearing a mask in a store pretty much identifies you as a liberal around my area, I think the problem is going to solve itself. I only see around 20% of all people in any store wearing a mask. Not surprising is that’s more or less the % of votes the average Democrat Party candidate gets here. I assume these 20% will just start staying home sooner or later if they really are so fearful about catching the virus.

            1. Because wearing a mask in a store pretty much identifies you as a liberal around my area, I think the problem is going to solve itself.

              Yeah, that just might happen. In some places, where most people wear masks and practice social distancing, the virus is on the decline. But places where they just mix and spread the virus like there was no tomorrow, the virus is on the increase.

              Yeah, the problem might just take care of itself in places where it is allowed to spread like wildfire. But things just opened up around the nation so it will be two or three weeks before we see a spike in those right-wing areas.

            2. “Its similar to other debates the Chamber has had in the past,like allowing gay couples into businesses or saying ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’.

              Because wearing a mask in a store pretty much identifies you as a liberal in my area…”

              Is it just me, or does this strike many as profoundly disturbing? As someone who has visited the USA many times and has many American friends of both political stripes, who are wonderful people, I view this attitude as what will prevent the USA from ever being “great again” in the eyes of the rest of the world. Please, look for opportunities to unite rather than divide.

            3. It is not just disturbing, it is absolutely sickening. All those who claim they want to Make America Great Again, really want to Make America White Again. They want to return to the times before integration and before gays could openly declare their sexual preference.

              Not wearing a mask is not just discourtous, it just shows a person’s contempt for their fellow human beings. And…. it is my firm opinion that one’s political leanings say something very profound about one’s intelligence.

              Democratic professors outnumber Republicans 10 to 1, study shows

              Two military colleges, West Point and the Naval Academy, had relatively balanced Democrat-to-Republican ratios, 1.3 to 1 and 2.3 to 1, respectively. When the military colleges were excluded from the sample, the overall imbalance ballooned to 12.7 Democratic professors for every Republican.

            4. Ron

              Just goes to show Republicans are willing to fight and die for their country. Democrats sit in safe well paid jobs and talk about a better world but never willing to fight for one.

              You ever been in the forces?

            5. Even at West Point, Democrat military professors outnumber Republicans 1.3 to 1. At the Naval Academy it’s 2.3 to 1. For the rest of the academic world, it is 12.7 to 1.

              All this says is the smarter a person is, the more likely he/she will be a democrat.

              But Republicans with money can say they have bone spurs and not have to fight at all.

            6. Just goes to show Republicans are willing to fight and die for their country.

              Then how do you explain Trump requiring everyone around him to be tested and wear masks?

              I suspect he’s pretty happy that bozos like you are willing to get infected unnecessarily and die for him.

            7. The level of intelligence does not depend on political preferences.
              Political preferences depend on what preferences prevail in a particular team.
              Otherwise, if you differ from the majority, you will be an outcast.
              Examples:
              -In Germany in the years 1933-1945 it was fashionable to be a nationalist.
              -In the United States, it wasn’t fashionable to be homosexual until the 1950s; they were also persecuted.
              It does not depend on intelligence, people get used to imitate each other, do not want to be different from the majority. In addition, the media forms consciousness.
              Ron, your hypothesis is not scientific.
              Caused by your political beliefs and dislike of the Republicans.

            8. Hmmmm. I’d guess that it’s more simple observation of US Republicans: they are unusual in their tendency to believe things that are highly unrealistic, and many of those things are contrary to their self interest, but they believe them anyway.

            9. The level of intelligence does not depend on political preferences.

              Of course it doesn’t. Who would make such a stupid claim that your political preference affects your intelligence? It’s the other way around. Your intelligence has an overwhelming effect on your political preference. To quote John Stuart Mill:

              “Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.”

              Yes, ideology can cause people to believe very stupid things, even very intelligent people. But absent constant brainwashing, from birth, by one’s authority figures, intelligent people tend to be more liberal than less intelligent people. That is not a hypothesis Opritov, that is an observable fact.

            10. I have a hypothesis that in Germany in 1937, 99 out of 100
              professors at universities (with the exception of Jews, of course)
              supported
              Adolf Schicklgruber (Hitler) But that’s nothing to say.
              Propaganda and stereotypes create a reputation for politicians, regardless of personal qualities.

            11. “There were…a number of Christian German professors who left their teaching posts for similar reasons after the Nazi assumption of power in 1933. Thus, a celebrated mathematician, said to be one of the few who at that time was able to keep pace with Albert Einstein, resigned his univer­sity post as protest against the removal of Jewish faculty members from all German universities. Another prominent member of the philosophic faculty of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin gave up his career as a protest against the practice of Hitlerian authorities of removing professors for any but scholastic reasons. Another professor at the University of Rostock demanded from the German government, which controlled all univer­sities, that he be given a clear guarantee that an oath requiring all faculty to support the principles of the National Socialist government leave unimpaired his freedom to seek and teach the truth. Despite his prominence in his field, he was ousted from his position.

              Still others left because they would not subject their conscience to the dictates of the National Socialist ideologies as preached by the govern­ment. Since all German professors were public employees, responsible to the Minister of Science, Art and Public Education at Berlin, the following letter of resignation is a good example of the motivation of those who left voluntarily.”

              http://jbuff.com/c013102.htm

            13. My pleasure, Ron. It’s always nice to be able to clarify destructive misinformation.

              I just read a book I think you’d like. It’s called “What is Real?: the Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics”. by Adam Becker, about the history of quantum theory. It happens to deal with the history of scientists under Nazi Germany fairly extensively.

            15. In 1930–40, there were many decent people in Germany.
              But their numbers are vanishingly small in front of those who embrace the NSDAP ideology.
              It was beneficial to them.
              Hitler promised to rob other nations and give all the wealth to the Germans.
              This ideology is the continuation of the ideology of absolute evil conducted by Genghis Khan.
              Here is the statement attributed to him: “The greatest joy for a man is to defeat enemies, drive them in front of him, take their property from them, see their loved ones cry, ride their horses, squeeze their daughters and wives in their arms.”
              The Nazis did the same.

            16. Yeah, theft and genocide were pretty common parts of imperial expansion throughout history, including for the European powers, Russia and the US.

              The remarkable thing is that this is changing. The US could have “won” the Vietnam war if it had used the usual inhuman tactics, but in part because the new medium television Americans saw what the war was like, and stopped supporting it. Similarly, the UK chose not to try to keep their Indian empire post WWII – non-violent resistance would never have worked against the usual pre-WWII imperial tactics.

            17. tyranny begins with taking away small freedoms.. wifey an me are refusing to wear any mask for that reason..

            18. I would have thought wearing a mask is common courtesy towards your fellow humans. Do you refuse to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks as well?

            19. Doug,

              Unfortunately, common courtesy is rather uncommon in the US these days.

            20. You’re like people who would refuse to black out their windows during WWII bombing raids. Your fucktardedness endangers everyone.

              Me me me!

    2. Seasonality probably has far more to do with sun exposure than temperatures. I read a neat rule of thumb about making vitamin D from sun exposure recently. If your shadow is longer than you are tall, sun exposure is probably not doing you any good. The reasoning is that the attenuation of UVB rays passing through the atmosphere when the incident angle is greater than 45° is such that no vitamin D will be formed in the skin. When the incident angle is 45° your shadow is exactly as long as you are tall.

      How many people are exposed to sunlight with an angle of incidence less than 45° for any length of time? Even where I live at 18° north the lowest angle of incidence at the December solstice is 41°! With a largely dark skinned population, it is easy to imagine low vitamin D levels even here in the tropics in the spring. At this time the sun is almost exactly overhead at mid day. The angle of incidence was lowest around here on the 11th of May (0.11°) according to a calculator at the following link:

      https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/solcalc/

      I went for a short walk, to check for mangoes on a nearby mango tree at mid day today. The temperature was 32°C(89°F) in the shade and I could tell it was mid day because my shadow was extremely short. Many people will avoid going out in the sun under such conditions unless they have no choice or enjoy walking around in sweat drenched clothes! Most people prefer to spend the hottest hours of the day in the shade because, you get very hot within a few minutes of exposure to the sun.

      The studies emerging recently suggest that vitamin D deficiency is a global problem and is only somewhat seasonal with many people use lots of sunscreen on the advice of dermatologists. Dr Michael Holick of the Boston University School of Medicine has been preaching about this (sensible sun exposure) for at least a decade! The recent studies are finding very strong correlation between low vitamin D levels and high mortality rates. The vitamin D angle also makes for an elegant explanation for worse outcomes for African Americans and other dark skinned folks. It also explains the increased risk factors with obesity since circulating blood levels of vitamin D decrease with increasing obesity.

      Doug might find the following interesting (or not!):

      Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group

      The group includes Dr. Paul Marik of the Eastern Virginia Medical school and at least four other professors of Medicine and is advocating a modified version of “the Marik Protocol”. From the web site:

      “Our MATH protocol is designed for use in hospitals, to counter the body’s overwhelming inflammatory response to the virus. It is this hyper-inflammation, not the virus itself, that damages the lungs and other organs, and ultimately kills. We have found the MATH protocol to be the most effective way to bring down this extreme inflammatory response. The steroid Methylprednisolone is key. Many studies (see Resources) have now proved its effectiveness, which is made more potent when administered intravenously with high doses of the antioxidant Ascorbic acid (Vitamin C). We added Thiamine (Vitamin B1) as it helps protect the heart and boost the immune system. The anticoagulant Heparin is important for preventing and breaking up blood clots that have appeared in advanced cases. The sign indicates that doctors may want to add to the formula for patients who present with different pre-existing conditions. It also notes that we will continue to tweak the formula as new data emerges.”

      Let’s see how long that web site lasts before it is labelled “fake”!

  2. ” The Earth system has been unstable across multiple timescales before, under relatively weak forcing caused by changes in Earth’s orbit. Now we are strongly forcing the system, with atmospheric CO2 concentration and global temperature increasing at rates that are an order of magnitude higher than those during the most recent de-glaciation… Atmospheric CO2 is already at levels last seen around four million years ago, in the Pliocene epoch. It is rapidly heading towards levels last seen some 50 million years ago — in the Eocene — when temperatures were up to 14 °C higher than they were in pre-industrial times.”

    Here’s more Doyle:

    ” Since the last International Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report AR5 was published… All of this has come to light since then. We’ve realized that we have been living in a fool’s paradise, thinking that nice gentle reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and maybe changing to electric cars should see us over the bump. This is simply not the case.”

    We shall see comrades—-

    1. In my opinion, I thunk while climate change could be occurring geologically fast its going to take many more generations to start seeing effects that could really start destroying the economy.

      1. Zooks,

        You should turn to people who know more than you do — particularly for topics that are complex (i.e., climate change). How you FEEL about it is more likely to reflect wishful thinking than reality. Almost all climate scientists, and there are thousands of them, are telling us climate change is an impending disaster, perhaps second only to population overshoot in the scheme of things.

    2. Important factors, often omitted from consideration, are changes in geomagnetism.
      It is not a coincidence that cold and magnetic poles go together.
      The South Magnetic Pole (~64° S) currently is driving towards Tasmania, whereas the North Magnetic Pole (~86° N) speeds towards the middle of Siberian coast.
      So it will be a bit hotter over Greenland and a bit colder over Siberia, and generally over Europe.
      Down under, Australia will get colder.

      1. OneofEu —

        Accepting your premise that cold and magnetic poles go together, what happens during a magnetic reversal? Humans (and their ancestors) have been on the Earth for several million years, during which there have been many reversals and no obvious correlation between human development, to my knowledge. And, reversal patterns don’t match patterns in species extinction during geological history.

        1. No one really knows.
          The basic controversy is whether magnetic reversal last hundreds, thousands of years, or has a character of a short, sudden catastrophe.

          However, as the poles are shifting , the orientation of Earth magnetic field should change and thus its interaction with other magnetic fields. I suppose this could create some additional forces (visible as Earth’s wobble), which would ultimately change the Earth rotational axis in order to preserve torque due to Dzhanibekov effect (there is also a theory that only the crust will move). Moreover, the idea of poles ‘flipping’ seem to be well illustrated by Dzhanibekov effect.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-l-SbCFhL0

          https://www.livescience.com/earth-magnetic-north-passes-prime-meridian.html

          ‘As of February 2019, magnetic north was located at 86.54 N 170.88 E, within the Arctic Ocean, according to the NCEI. (Magnetic south similarly does not line up with geographic south; it was at at 64.13 S 136.02 E off the coast of Antarctica as of February 2019.) ‘

          It is pretty bad that at the moment both magnetic pole are already in the Eastern Hemishphere, since from now any external magnetic forces will be overproportionally exercised here, which may even invite additional momentum which could cause ‘flip’. One kicks the ball on one side to move it. This side- in the case of the Earth ball – has been now fixed (also taking into account that both poles are travelling towards each other. They have just circa 150 degrees in latitude line to meet up.)

          On the account of current changes in the geomagnetism, the standard theory of Earth magnetism (rotation of molten iron inside) seems to be questionable since Earth speed of rotation has not changed. Even more as Earth is not the only celestial body where the rotational speed does not generate the observovable magnetism (Sun is another, for example).

          As for humans, we do not know, really. The human developmenet wasn’t really significant before the last pole shift, so this cannot be a measure. Some say the legends of Deluge are a reflection of catastrophy which could be connected to pole shift. Certainly, not all life dies. But naturally, marine life would be priviliged in such a case, since it can move with its own envrionment, namely, water.
          And, yes, marine life is much older than land life.

          There might be positive effects, too: if geology changes, maybe new deposits of oil will be available. And not only of oil.
          We will be able to start again.

          By the way of an analogy with oil production (to stress the non-linear character of the process), as kind of quasi-natural dynamics, namely the fact that the original flow declines when 40% of original oil is out, the magnetic reversal/flip has started, since in the area of South Atlantic Anomaly the loss of original strength of magnetic field is more than 40%. Maybe 40% is some kind of tipping point in Nature’s dynamics.

          Should such a catastrophe happen, the safest place would be in space. So maybe Musk and others who suddenly got interested in builiding spacecrafts might have a clue. Maybe Musk’s SpaceX was planned as a kind of ‘Arc’ like from ‘2012’ movie, with selling outrageously expensive tickets, of course (this ticketing idea kind of tipped me off). Obviously the best idea wouldn’t be to build some big water tin, but to go straight to the orbit ! And yes, what we see is a sudden revival of the space flight idea. Since we cannot go further than Moon, what for?
          Maybe the magnetic reversal is the answer.

          2. OneofEu –

            I really hesitate to say this, but you are talking gibberish, cherry picking obsolete ideas about geology and geophysics. As a start, you need to read some elementary accounts about plate tectonics of which there are many floating around. And you should stop confusing magnetic field shifts with spin axis movements. Spin-axis movements are properly referred to as “polar motion”. Measurements for the 20th century show that the spin axis has drifted roughly 10 centimeters per year; over the course of a century, that becomes about 10 meters. These movements have been related to three broadly-categorized processes: mass loss (primarily) in Greenland, glacial rebound, and mantle convection. I could go on but can’t be bothered.

            2. Ignoring OneOfEU, who appears to be an idiot, there is an interesting issue with understanding the origin of the Chandler wobble, which is the wobble in the earth’s rotational axis.

              I am of the contention that the moon is responsible for the measured cycle, but this is not accepted at all. This is a simple model, where the numbers for the lunar nodal cycle are just punched in:

            4. Spin-axis movements due to local changes of mass are limited, of course, and I wasn’t meaning that. You are completely right about local changes in Greenland’s mass, too.

              Wobble could be created by external forces, too. You can observe that on the simulation under the link above. Also, the Dzhabenikov effect in void has been discovered pretty recently.

              Without Dzhabenikov effect, no sudden changes of axis orientations.

              The previous idea was that ice would somehow move Earth polar, iced crust down. Not really clever, I must admit.

      2. It is not a coincidence that cold and magnetic poles go together.

        The cold at the poles is due to the fact that the sun shines at such a tremendous angle to the terrain. At the equator the sun shines, most of the year, at an almost 90-degree angle to the terrain. That is, it shines directly upon the earth. At the poles, one square meter of earth gets far less energy from the sun than one square meter further south.

        The magnetic poles are not responsible for the weather. If the magnetic poles wander further south that does not affect the weather in Siberia, Greenland, or Siberia.

        1. This is one of the factors. But it cannot be the only one since this mechanics does not function in case of Uranus. Uranus is tipped on its side, so it should have one warm pole, colder equator, and one cold pole. But it is Uranus’ equator that is warmer than its poles. Also speaking about inner heat which overpowers Sun’s radiation imbalances to explain it does not make much sense, since it is a very cold planet in general, much colder than Earth.

          Coming back to Earth, magnetic poles are responsible for cicrculation of air, or the fact that the cold air stays there: famous polar vortex, and traditional ozone holes over poles.
          If you look on the map, you will notice that the ozone hole is tilted towards the South Pole (which had already left Antarctica), and Australia.

          https://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/Scripts/big_image.php?date=2020-05-24&hem=S&section=HOME

          Also, the area of South Atlantic Anomaly somehow coincides with the drought (lower precipitation) in Amazonia now.
          It looks like both the areas of high and low magnetism block the air circulation, somehow.

          Here is one article on the influence of South Atlantic Anomaly on weather:

          https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2008JA013052

          It states

          ‘ Comparing directly changes in both quantities, we
          find that the sea-level pressure is increasing as the magnetic
          field is decreasing.’

          Less rain, then. Less rain, more drought, more fires.

          Now put it all together: recent great fires in Amazonia (2019), recent great fires in Russian taiga (2019), recent great fires in Sweden (2018), bush fires in Australia (2019), millenial drought currently ongoing in Central Europe….

          Amazonia, Siberia, northern Europe, Australia – areas most directly influenced by changes in geomagnetism.

          1. Yes, the earth gets about half its heat from the internal decay of radioactive materials within the earth. This heat is what causes volcanos and plate tectonics. But this heat is not distributed by the magnetic fields. It is relatively constant over the surface of the earth. It is the sun that creates the great difference in temperature between the poles and the equator.

            All gas giants are at great distances from the sun and get almost all of their heat from decay of radioactive materials within the planet. And the great winds found on all gas giants move most of this heat toward their equators. You cannot compare weather on the gas giants and say the weather on earth should behave in a similar manner.

            But weather on Uranus functions much as it does on other gas giants. Like Jupiter and Saturn, the planet has bands of zones and belts that orbit parallel to the equator, which is warmer than the poles. The warm temperatures that drive the planet’s weather come from the interior of the planet, rather than from the sun.

            1. Are you sure that radioactive decay is a source of Earth internal heath? How much fuel would be needed? Isn’t Earth a bit too old to still have it?

              Earth natural radioactivity is pretty small, as evidenced by the fact that we need to get non-radioactive steel, known as low-background steel, from pre-Hiroshima wrecks. In other words, even relatively small nuclear explosion changed a lot.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

              Also, even if granted, here this Earth internal heath is really conveyed by volcanoes only. The numbers of active ones changes. Also, they should be a bit radioactive….?

              Electromagnetic field can be converted into mechanical energy, as evidenced by our civilization. I suppose the legendary iron core of Earth could be energized by Sun’s magnetic field, for example.

            2. Are you sure that radioactive decay is a source of Earth internal heath? How much fuel would be needed? Isn’t Earth a bit too old to still have it?

              What Are the Three Main Sources of Earth’s Internal Heat?

              The Department of Geological Sciences at San Diego State University names extraterrestrial impacts, gravitational contraction and radioactive decay as the three main sources of Earth’s internal heat. However, Earth’s internal heat is much lower now than it was at the early period of the solar system’s existence.

              Extraterrestrial impacts mean residual heat leftover from when the earth was formed 4.54 billion years ago.

              Also, even if granted, here this Earth internal heath is really conveyed by volcanoes only.

              No, no, no, I did not say that. I said the earth’s internal heat is what causes volcanos and plate tectonics. The internal heat is dissipated in a number of ways. The mid-oceanic ridges dissipate a tremendous amount of heat because they are always spreading and pushing lava up. Also, there are many hot vents spread over the deep oceans. And some heat is just dissipated through the earth’s crust.

              Electromagnetic field can be converted into mechanical energy, as evidenced by our civilization.

              I really don’t think so. How do you make that connection?

              I suppose the legendary iron core of Earth could be energized by Sun’s magnetic field, for example.

              I had no idea that the earth’s iron core was legendary. But no, I don’t think it gets any energy from the sun’s magnetic field.

              The earth’s core is only (approximately) 85% iron, 10% nickel and 5% silicon.

            3. No one really knows about Earth core composition.
              All what is, is speculation. What if they are unknown elements, for example, which make up the core?!
              And Jules Verne claimed it is a hollow place 😉

              ‘There is still no direct evidence about the composition of the inner core. ‘

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_inner_core#Composition

              I find this idea of nuclear quasi-‘Eternal Fire’ hardly credible. Earth is not massive giant like Sun. Also should be some emission of byproducts, fast neutrons etc… From time to time should be some explosion/collapse etc..

              I am afraid some covert anthropomorphism is in play: since nuclear reactions are the most powerful of the known to humans, we tend to think that all powerful things must hide a nuclear motor.

              Isn’t an idea of a metallic core heatened by eletromagnetic field much more simpler, and more elegant too?

              Electromagnetic energy into mechanical energy
              – electric trains?

              It goes from thermal (fossil fuels in power plants) by mechanical into electromagnetic back to mechanical and thermal (waste heat). Nice reminder that at the beginning was temperature, so to say.

            4. No one really knows about Earth core composition. All what is, is speculation.

              They do not really know the exact percentages but they know the general composition. There are meteorites that are the remains of rocky planets that once circled a star that blew them apart. They are mostly silicon rock but some are nickel-iron. They come from the core of the planet that was destroyed by a supernova. Speculation has little to do with it.

              What if they are unknown elements, for example, which make up the core?!

              There is no such thing as an unknown element. If you knew anything about chemistry you would have known that well-known fact. The periodic table of elements is completely full, there are no empty spaces.

              I find this idea of nuclear quasi-‘Eternal Fire’ hardly credible. Earth is not massive giant like Sun. Also should be some emission of byproducts, fast neutrons etc… From time to time should be some explosion/collapse etc..

              Oh bullshit. The sun is powered by fusion. What is happening inside the earth if fission. You obviously haven’t a clue about anything you are trying to talk about. I will not discuss this subject with you anymore because you do not know enough about the subject to carry on an intelligent conversation.

            5. @ Ron

              You are rather dogmatic.

              Sun creates heavier elements than He, too.
              Besides, the entire fusion concept until now is purely theoretical. The fact that Sun’s corona is hotter than deeper layers of Sun seems to speak against it.

              Meteorities come from Solar System, they oribit Sun too, and there is an idea that the meteorite belt is a remnant of a planet. No one said it was Earth’s twin, though. Oort Cloud is another place of asteroid origin. But never heard about intergalactic meteorities reaching Earth.

              The end of elements table is also theoretical, too. I find a bit strange that some elements are artificial: they look like children in vitro, in other words, children of concept, and not of Nature.
              The newest element, Oganesson, was created in 2002 (I was already out of school then) in only 5 atoms, and recognized as a part of the Table in 2015. So pretty recently.

              BTW, I do have all this knowledge you mentioned in our discussions, just do not find it always relevant (like fussion-fission distinction). When I have no idea about things – like in the case of covid – I do not discuss at all.

            6. Sun creates heavier elements than He, too.

              I am assuming you mean He².

              Besides, the entire fusion concept until now is purely theoretical. The fact that Sun’s corona is hotter than deeper layers of Sun seems to speak against it.

              Bullshit. You are just crammed full of bullshit. There is nothing theoretical about how the sun is powered. Elements are not created in the upper layers of the sun, they are only created much deeper, near the core. All elements heavier than helium, as well as a lot more helium, are created, via fusion, inside the sun. All elements heavier than iron are created only in supernova explosions. That is simply no question about this. Fusion is the only way heavier elements can possibly be created.

              Is the core hotter than the corona?
              If we examine our own sun, then we see that on average the core is about 15 million degrees Celsius while the Corona is only 1 to 2 million degrees. However, there are occasionally highly active parts of the corona called solar flares where temperatures can go above 20 million degrees Celsius.

            7. For the the gas giants like Saturn and Jupiter scientists don’t know exactly where it does come from. They think that the major heat source is the fall of elements in the gas giant cores, it there is any : actually, Jupiter and Neptune are still contracting. For Saturne, which is not contracting, or less than the previous, scientists think to the fall of helium droplets to explain the excess of energy emitted. Uranus is emitting as much energy as it receives from the sun. They don’t exactly why : a result of the collision received earlier and which tilted of 90° or so the rotation axis of the planet?

          2. OneOfEU:

            If you look online you can find that changes in the direction and polarity of the earth’s magnetic field are geologically common.

            Is there any record anywhere of changes to the distribution of plant and animal fossils coinciding with the changes to the magnetic field, and which would indicate climate effects? I took a look and apparently not.

            There is also no good theoretical basis to assume changes in the magnetic field would have an effect on meteorology or climate.

            Some researchers have speculated that cosmic rays, which are affected by magnetic fields, might affect cloud cover, but the speculation was quickly shown to be unsupported by any data, and was also theoretically feeble.

            Coincidences occur all the time. I think the interactions you’re proposing aren’t supported by any theoretical or experimental evidence. Just speculation.

            1. I suppose the record is in the process of creation, neither we do have large geographic atlases of past flora and fauna, nor paleomagnetism research is very advanced, too.

              What fauna and flora could be met in Lemuria, for example?

              In the end, yes, coincidences. But maybe lawlike coincidences?

              The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

              The clouds may be created but they do not seem to travel anymore. Just compare the record snowfall of this winter in Norway (long oceanic coast) with the meager precipitation in Central Europe. The water which fell in Norway did not fall in Europe.

            2. OneofEu,

              Lemuria. By the tinseled trumpets of glory: Lemuria.

              Ron, DougL: The facts and explanations you supply are useful for other readers but not for OneofEu. Spare yourselves.

              Time for Port, oh yes

  3. Report 23: State-level tracking of COVID-19 in the United States

    Our estimates suggest that the epidemic is not under control in much of the US: as of 17 May 2020, the reproduction
    number is above the critical threshold (1.0) in 24 [95% CI: 20-30] states. Higher reproduction numbers are geographically
    clustered in the South and Midwest, where epidemics are still developing, while we estimate lower reproduction numbers
    in states that have already suffered high COVID-19 mortality (such as the Northeast). These estimates suggest that caution
    must be taken in loosening current restrictions if effective additional measures are not put in place.

    https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/mrc-gida/2020-05-21-COVID19-Report-23.pdf

    1. Gone fishing,

      Excellent comment, an example of expert opinion that is likely accurate in my humble opinion (it agrees with what I have heard from medical professionals personally, as I know many in my community.) Thanks.

    2. Oh boy, here we go again. The data that’s come out since then is showing in spite of the fearmongers saying bodies would be piling up in the streets, the virus is fading away fast like coronaviruses usually do this time of year. The massive spikes we kept being promised since April if we reopened haven’t materialized here in the US and aside from some countries in South America and Africa it looks like the rest of the world is in the clear though people in power don’t want to admit it. I think the Democrats are going to have to ask themselves, is wrongful fearmongering really the hill we want to die on just to lose the election?

      1. the virus is fading away fast like coronaviruses usually do this time of year.

        Total absolute bullshit. Total cases are increasing by almost 100,000 per day. Total deaths are increasing by over 4,000 per day. On some days it has hit 5,000 deaths. And they are showing no sign of slowing down. COVID-19 CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

        Just where do you right-wing idiots get off by saying the virus is fading away? Do you not know how to read? Just click the link above and check the new cases and new deaths. The data is updated hourly and new cases will be near 100,000 by the end of the day and deaths over 4,000. Click “Yesterday” just below: ‘Report corona virus cases”. Here is what you will get:
        World Total Cases 5,397,950 New 99,938 Total Deaths 343,608 New Deaths 4,183.

        Then check the country with the worst outbreak, the USA.
        USA Cases 1,666,828 New 21,929 Total deaths 98,683 New deaths 1,036

        New cases and new deaths in the USA are not slowing down, they are increasing.

        1. Ron, the graphs you’re presenting show the worldwide situation which includes the flare ups in parts of South America and Africa I mentioned but neglects the fading away in Europe, North America, and Oceania. Also graphs on a linear scale are misleading because it looks like the cases/deaths are increasing exponentially, but turn the logarithmic scale on and you will see that’s not the case at all. The logarithmic curve is flattening. If it was increasing exponentially the logarithmic curve would be linear.

          Also, the US only data on that website clearly shows the daily number of new cases and new deaths just confined to the US is on a downwards trend.

          Daily number of new US cases:

        2. Daily number of US deaths (this one is even more clearly going down):

          2. In reply to Right-Wing-Idiot, the decline in cases and deaths were largely due to the preventive measures, masks, social distancing, restaurant closures, and other austerity measures ordered by state governors. But the opening-up of beaches, restaurants, salons, churches and other places of business is causing and will cause, a huge spike in cases and deaths.

            Only in New York, where the safety measures were strictly enforced by Governor Cuomo, are the cases and deaths going down. Everywhere else they are going up and up. And after this Memorial Day Weekend…. you ain’t seen nothing yet.

            You are just like Trump, believing that if we just ignore it, the virus will just go away. Why, dear God why, are right-wingers such goddamn fucking idiots?????

        3. Also, you should check out all the data and charts @EthicalSkeptic has been presenting. Especially how he’s comparing the trajectory of COVID19 aligning to that of SARS but on a compressed time scale where 1 day of COVID19 cases is equivalent to 40 days of SARS cases. He’s also showing how the number of confirmed COVID19 cases in the US is going down even though the number of tests is going up.

          https://twitter.com/EthicalSkeptic

    4. Weeks ago, Georgia was one of the first states to open back up (after not even being shut down as completely as other states)…yet the “secondary wave” some were hyperventilating never came. What gives?

  4. For the virus to disappear, humans have to disappear. It could however mutate to a much less virulent one which may give it a selective advantage over other strains.
    The sentence ‘coronavirus disappearing so fast vaccine has only 50% chance of working’ is misleading. A virus disappearing (temporarily) in humans has no connection with if a vaccine works or not. But again: covid-19 won’t disappear, that is until at least 70% of the population has immunity. We know already that warm weather doesn’t make covid-19 to go away, because of the easy transmission from humans to humans. Just look at the daily new registered cases on covid19info.live and choose your favorite tropical country with many millions of inhabitants where wearing simple masks is NOT mandatory
    There are now 8 vaccine candidates in first phase trial on humans. Oxford is not alone. In the U.S. ‘they’ will start mass production of at least one candidate before FDA approval, with the risk of losing hundreds of millions of dollars. Regarding the enormous health and economic damage of this pandemic it is worth the risk.

    1. Herd immunity or a vaccine.
      Both are at least a year away, if everything goes perfectly.

    2. It could however mutate to a much less virulent one which may give it a selective advantage over other strains.

      Okay, there is a very serious misunderstanding here. A virus can mutate, but that just means that another form of the virus is now being spread among the population. But the original virus does not disappear. The original virus has already spread around the world. That original virus will not disappear, it will not change, it will continue to do what it has always done, it will continue to infect and kill people.

      Because a virus mutates, it does not affect the original virus whatsoever. That just means there is a new virus out there. The original virus does not disappear just because a new virus appears on the scene.

      Gracious guys, think about what you are saying. Just because a virus springs into, somewhere in the world, a new kind of virus, that does not affect the original virus in any manner whatsoever. We must deal with this virus. Believing it will change into something less dangerous, well that is never going to happen. Just because another virus appears does not mean this one will disappear.

      1. Ron,

        I got that from an article:

        https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/scientists-discover-unique-mutation-of-new-coronavirus

        “Researchers have identified a mutation in the genetic code of SARS-CoV-2 that mirrors changes scientists saw in the 2003 SARS outbreak.

        SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes the illness COVID-19. In the mutation, 81 letters in the virus’s genome had been deleted.

        Viral mutations are a normal part of a virus’s evolution and can alter the severity of the disease they cause.

        In the case of SARS-CoV-2, the finding is of interest because the nature of the mutation suggests it may have an association with a less severe form of the disease. A less virulent virus may have a selective advantage over other strains.

        The research, by a team of scientists at the Arizona State University (ASU), United States, is now a correspondence piece in the Journal of Virology.”

        1. Hint:
          SARS 2 has 29000 base pairs.
          81 letters is noise in the system, and unless in a VERY strategic place, of no consequence.
          RNA viruses mutate with almost every replication.
          Hep C, polio, Ebola , SARS, influenza, measles, retrovirus, etc are all RNA viruses, some quite stable.

          1. Hightrekker,

            Maybe the mutation happened in a VERY strategic place.
            Maybe the mentioned comparable mutation in SARS helped in stemming that outbreak, in the way of not falling ill after getting infected (in combination with mentioned selective advantage for whatever reason that may be).
            The noise of the 81 letters was sufficiently loud to get it published in the Journal of Virology, for what it is worth.

            1. My virology friends in NY doing daily work to save patients in hospital situations, say it is noise.
              Of course, they say anyone who doesn’t say “I don’t know” isn’t working on the problem.
              When you have 4 patients die before 9 AM, it puts reality in the forefront.

            2. A mutation is usually a DISADVANTAGE for the virus. A wildtype is a wiltype for some reasons. As long as most members of the human population are immunologically naive against the virus, the current wildtype will spread.

              The virus mutates of course, but that does not really change the phenotype. 81 mutations is not much, using the mutations to explain something is a product you can sell in journals.

              The situation changes if the people have herd immunity, then a new phenotype with less infectiosness gets an advantage and becomes the new wildtype. This new wildtype is, however, most likely less infectious than the former…

    3. The Sars-2 virus is globally distributed, there is according to experts a good chance that there are other hosts in which the virus will survive and may reappear again, even in population with no infected humans for longer time.

      Sars-2 in much more infectious than Sars-1, which simply disappeared due to low infectiousness.

      70% immunity only means that there is no longer exponential growth for a virus with R0 = 3, not more. It is a save bet that more than 90% of the people will get infected if the virus spreads.

  5. If you intend to say many billions of vaccine doses available: yes
    If one or more of the 8 mentioned candidates results to be effective and safe in the third phase trials starting in one of the next months, we could see 3-4 hundreds of millions of doses before end of this year. Then the problem arises: how to divide them fairly over the countries and the risk groups.

  6. I consulted the Profit:

    They will have a vaccine out in October to much fanfare. Start jabbing people. Rumors will start in late October that people who got the vaccine are falling ill. “Well even the flu vaccine isn’t 100% effective” lots of double talk. Then late November after the election, “Well, maybe we have a problem with this one, but there are lots of others in the pipeline!”

  7. Food for thought for when post virus politicians rush to stimulate the economy.

    HIGH-SPEED RAIL ON AUSTRALIA’S EAST COAST WOULD INCREASE EMISSIONS FOR UP TO 36 YEARS

    In Australia bullet trains are back on the political agenda. As the major parties look for ways to stimulate the economy after the COVID-19 crisis, Labor is again spruiking its vision of linking Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane with high-speed trains similar to the Eurostar, France’s TGV or Japan’s Shinkansen. So, where’s the problem? It lies in construction. A bullet train along Australia’s east coast would take about 15 years of planning, then would be built in sections over about 30 years. This construction would generate huge emissions. In particular, vast emissions would be released in the production of steel and concrete required to build a train line from Melbourne to Brisbane. These so-called “scope 3” emissions can account for 50-80% of total construction emissions.

    Scope 3 emissions are sometimes not counted when assessing the emissions impact of a project, but they should be. There’s no guarantee the quantities of concrete and steel in question would have been produced and used elsewhere if not for the bullet train. And the long construction time means it would be many years before the train actually starts to take planes out of the sky. This, combined with construction emissions, means a bullet train would be very slow to reduce emissions. In fact, we found it would first increase emissions for many years.

    https://phys.org/news/2020-05-high-speed-rail-australia-east-coast.html

    1. “At the bidding of a Peter the Hermit millions of men hurled themselves against the East; the words of an hallucinated enthusiast such as Mahomet created a force capable of triumphing over the Graeco-Roman world; an obscure monk like Luther bathed Europe in blood. The voice of a Galileo or a Newton will never have the least echo among the masses. The inventors of genius hasten the march of civilization. The fanatics and the hallucinated create history.”
      — Gustave Le Bon

      There is never an accurate accounting when trainloads of money are at the end of the line.

  8. “The factors mediating fatal SARS-CoV-2 infections are poorly understood. Here, we show that cigarette smoke causes a dose-dependent upregulation of Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2), the SARS-CoV-2 receptor, in rodent and human lungs.”
    Wouldn’t 24×7 intake of particles and VOC’s from petrol combustion be even a bigger factor than Smoking? All Urban CBU’s (Carbon Based Units) are directly exposed to ICE Exhaust.
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1534580720304019?via%3Dihub

    1. Excellent point. Pollution and toxins in our food/water/households in reduction of our response to disease through damage and inflammation is not generally considered, as it is fairly normal to our existence. I guess it would be considered a pre-existing morbidity.
      Are there any really healthy humans, since mothers and their milk are already compromised by environmental conditions? Plus as soon as they are born, they are subject to all those negative synthetic and combustive inputs.

      1. Many levels of exposure are localized. Blood tests in people living or working near traffic lights show the same elevated tracers as in heart attack victims. Major stop and go intersections are megaton exaust concentrators. People are blind to this and are just too frighten to demand roundabouts. Perhaps all the fumes have F#@k too many brains. VOC’s and toxins from fossil fuel combustion hammer the lungs and cardiovascular systems. An old Duke coal plant where I used to live had stacks only 120 feet high or so. Now the stacks can be seen from 30 miles away.

  9. Hydropower dams: What’s behind the global boom?
    Many thousands of hydropower dams are either planned or under construction – across South East Asia, South America, the Balkans and Africa.

    Laos has joined the construction race, with an ambition to become the “battery of South East Asia”.

    “Energy-hungry countries are demanding cheap and clean energy,” says Julian Kirchherr, a researcher at the University of Utrecht.

    The anti-dam movement is now contending with an industry that was temporarily written off by some, but is now making a comeback.

    More than 3,500 hydropower dams are being planned or built around the world, according to a database maintained by Christiane Zarfl (and others) at the University of Tubingen. This could double by 2030.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-45019893

    So how much energy does hydropower actually provide globally?

    A record 4,185 terawatt hours (TWh) in electricity was generated from hydropower last year, according to the 2018 Hydropower Status Report, published today.

    The worldwide installed capacity of commissioned hydropower plants rose to 1,267 gigawatts (GW) in 2017, according to the flagship report of the International Hydropower Association (IHA). Some 21.9 GW of capacity was added including 3.2 GW of pumped storage, bringing global pumped storage capacity to 153 GW.

    https://www.hydropower.org/news/2018-hydropower-status-report-shows-record-rise-in-clean-electricity

    As the march of propagating air-cons, microwaves, and EV’s cover the globe, the rivers are being dammed at an increasing rate, destroying river systems and the life that has been using them for countless millenia.
    Around here, after much effort, one small old hydropower dam has been removed and the stream “restored” to it’s natural condition. It took a lot of money and two years to accomplish. The next one upstream is under heavy consideration and might be removed in the near future (both were old and probably would become failure problems). However the third, even further upstream and the largest (not a power facility but for recreation) has been fought by locals and is now not under consideration. So the migratory fish will not have access to the headwaters in the anywhere near future. (when it fails, century old now, and the downstream town is wiped, who will be held to blame?).
    Plus there is no guarantee that new dams will not be built in the future as demand for power and the renewable movement proceeds forward. Does back-up mean dams back up?

  10. Our cloudy future.

    Not often discussed is the “cloud conundrum”, or, the way Earth’s hydrological cycle, which includes the evaporation, condensation and movement of water, will react to our warming planet. To quote: “One of the key problems is how clouds adjust to warming. If low-level cloud cover increases, and high-level cloud decreases, then clouds will offset the warming effect of increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations and thereby act as a negative feedback, or damper, on climate change, buying us some breathing space. By contrast, if there is positive cloud feedback — that is, if low-level clouds decrease with warming and high-level clouds increase — then, short of rapid and complete cessation of fossil-fuel use, we might be heading for disaster.” For a detailed discussion of this see:

    SHORT-TERM TESTS VALIDATE LONG-TERM ESTIMATES OF CLIMATE CHANGE
    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01484-5

    1. Yeah, in a recent interview Derrick Jensen said he thought it was great. So it will grate upon the nerves of the technocrats and plutocrats.

        1. So do you two think the film was good, accurate? It sure is catching a lot of shit. I have no qualifications to evaluate it, but I was moved by it and not the least surprised by its claims.

          1. The film was accurate. No doubt about that. However, there is a huge Wall Street movement to label the film as propaganda or something to that effect. The fact that it is being censored is a testament to their power.

            The voice of reason, the voice of logic as well as the voice of the man on the street is being censored. I am not at all shocked. I knew this was coming. Wall Street rules. End of story.

            1. When Monbiot made his stupid claim that the film was racist eugenics, I figured the fix was in for Gibbs, et al.

            2. The film was accurate for about ten years ago but misleading on several fronts. I wasn’t able to find it on YouTube but, it’s still available at Brighteon (https://www.brighteon.com/c954954e-7ea0-48e0-8f38-aa5afe77976d). I will repeat my earlier criticism that it spends an inordinate amount of time on projects and technologies that are fast becoming obsolete or irrelevant. For example:
              1)Ivanpah Solar (thermal) Generating Station
              2)Wind Farms in the mountains of Vermont
              3)The Chevrolet Volt
              4)8% efficient solar panels

              Solar thermal technology cannot compete with the rapidly falling cost of solar PV and storage. As I have pointed out before, there are no plans to build any more such facilities in the US and even in South Australia plans for a new facility there have stalled.

              Why focus on a relatively tiny (63 MW, 21 turbine) wind farm at Lowell Mountain in Vermont if not to tug on your heartstrings? 21 wind turbines located on a mountain range does not compare even remotely to mountain top removal for coal in terms of environmental destruction.

              The fact is that for the month of February 2020. Vermont was number 33 in terms of electricity production from wind. The top ten states for wind power were Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Illinois, North Dakota, California, Minnesota, Colorado and Nebraska in that order with Texas producing almost three times a much electricity from wind as second place Iowa and more than 200 times as much as Vermont! The wind power project highlighted by the film is irrelevant in the larger scheme of wind projects at 63 MW of capacity out of a total of over 105 GW (105,000 MW). See:

              https://www.awea.org/resources/news/2020/wind-is-now-america’s-largest-renewable-energy-pro

              The Chevrolet Volt is now discontinued and the new halo car from GM is the Chevrolet Bolt, an all (battery) electric car. In the ten years since the Volt was released, Tesla has become the leading manufacturer of electric vehicles in the US by a very wide margin and based on the cost curves, it should be obvious to most that the days of the internal combustion engine are numbered.

              The most efficient PV modules available are almost three times as efficient as the 8% efficient ones shown in the film. The same facility, equipped with the latest modules would produce almost three times as much power.

              Finally, if a transition away from fossil energy is to be attempted, how is this to be done without the involvement of capitalists (Wall Street)? The graph below shows how the mix of US renewable electricity has changed since 2005.

            3. Thanks, but this doesn’t even begin to address the issues in the film. You’re selectively downplaying issues and making excuses. At least you didn’t called Moore a eugenicist.

            4. mikeb,

              Pretty clear that islandboy was pointing to the part of the film he disagreed with, I think it is safe to assume that Islandboy would agree that destroying the environment to produce biofuel is bad policy.

              I believe he has said as much in the past, biofuels are not a viable solution, wind and solar may be, combined with power to natural gas, pumped hydro, hydro, geothermal, vehicle to grid, batteries, and even nuclear power as backup.

              Also a widely distributed wind and solar power generating capacity at about 3 times average load, might be the cheapest solution requiring relatively little backup power. In addition better building design using passive solar and passivhaus building standards would likely require very little energy input, especially when combined with heat pumps and thermal storage, energy efficiency for space and water heating can be improved quite a bit from the existing building stock.

            6. Ahh, yes, the 3X power solution, mostly with wind turbines covering the land area equivalent to California plus Texas to power the world.
              Goodbye birds. Goodbye bats. Goodbye to many insects. Hello lots of coke, iron ore, and oil products (plus balsa wood cores for all the blades). Oh, lots and lots of concrete and steel rebar too, plus lots of holes in the ground to put them.
              Hello to covering a New Jersey sized region packed with wind towers every year from here to infinity, just talking replacements with no growth of energy demand.

              How long will all this take to happen?

              Not going to happen anyway. Far too much money in storage technology. plus it’s not going to happen anyway (more fantasy projections during a climate disaster and extinction event to name a couple of disruptors).

            7. Gonefishing,

              The 2013 paper probably used costs for solar PV that might have been too high, so the cheapest solution called for more wind power.

              Studies of bird and bat mortality from wind power and those species most at risk can inform the siting of new wind power to minimize the risk.

              https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2017.0829

              I agree it is a problem.

              When you find a solution with no negative consequences, by all means let us know. 🙂

            8. Dennis, why push a “solution” that you think is far out date? I just bring to light the scale and improbability of such an arrangement. The land use and negative effect on multiple species is something you are willing to accept. That however is a dead end.

              “When you find a solution with no negative consequences, by all means let us know”

              Your worldview boundaries are narrow and your anthropocentric techno civilization assumptions make that above false statement appear true. The bimodal view (yin-yang, black and white, left and right) is woven through the psychology of mass media driven thought. The actual world set is far broader with a much finer gradient within a greater set of possibilities.
              In reality, due to the extremely dysfunctional nature of society and human action/endeavor it is very easy to do good and make vast improvements with little effort. Good on an omni-species level. Good and beneficial for all life. Modern civilization is not a fixed point in the time stream, to be protected at all cost or die trying.
              The typical human view is exclusionary of the actual world through delusional stories and beliefs. It is at the far end of possible views and actions, leaving open huge territory to be helpful rather than continuance of harm.
              Example: As soon as one hears that adding solar and wind will merely add to the energy available rather than substituting it (a Jevons paradox as touted in the documentary Planet of Humans), that idea, being outside of “normal” view, is immediately dismissed and not seriously discussed. Instead they focus on the fact that the panels shown were less efficient. As if more efficient panels cure the problem and toss aside the logic presented.

              We are entering a time of economic and physical austerity, not one of excess energy/food/materials that occurred in the previous century (and was wasted). On top of that are major geophysical stressors.
              So 3X of anything is highly improbable.
              The more likely scenario is that much of the developed world will start “functioning” at a much lower energy level and material level aside from technology. In other words it will get poorer in modern human terms. There will still be the rich, but there will be many more poor, sick and starving. America is just months from being a third world country, within a pseudo rich and powerful country.

            9. Gone fishing,

              Jevons paradox only applies under very specific conditions. It assumes energy becomes cheaper, it is quite likely that fossil fuel will become more expensive and the cost of renewables will be cheaper than fossil fuel, it does not necessarily mean that renewables will be cheaper than a fossil fuel energy system is today. In fact you argue (correctly I believe) that when available storage solutions are included, that a renewable system will result in energy that is more expensive than fossil fuels. From the perspective of Jevons paradox (which implicitly assumes that demand for energy can never be satisfied, which is not correct in my view) a higher cost of energy should result in lower consumption of energy.

              If the cost of energy was about the same, there would be no Jevons paradox (lower price drives the increased demand for energy).

              Another basic problem of the Jevons model is it assumes wants are unlimited.

              Don’t know about you, but if I find an item I want at half the price I expect, I do not buy twice as much as I need. I just buy what I intended. Everyone is different though, perhaps I am different than most.

              I note that you propose that their alternative solutions to what I propose, and note there is nothing fixed about the 2013 paper, it used assumptions based on available knowledge at the time.

              One could suggest more recent proposals by Jacobson et al (2017)

              https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/CountriesWWS.pdf

              Also consider

              https://archive.thinkprogress.org/debunking-the-jevons-paradox-nobody-goes-there-anymore-its-too-crowded-7fec531b1411/

            10. Hi Dennis, I think you are overstating this application of Jevons Paradox. The premise is that the “replacement” will merely add on top of the current demand.
              That makes sense when we are adding 80 million people a year and also moving more up the energy use ladder. Eventually that would peter out but there are other factors concurrent with population/consumption growth.

              However, also adding to this demand is the increased destruction of the environment, vanishing water supply, vanishing soil, increased intensity of droughts, storms, rising oceans and storm surges, soil loss, heat demand increasing air conditioning, etc. All of which increase demand as these conditions are fought instead of mitigated and retreated from.
              So the demand for energy and materials could skyrocket.
              There is also the increasing demand from electronic communication and control, energy greater than used by aircraft.
              So as far as replacing energy, it’s very possible that civilization will demand much greater energy in it’s attemp to maintain and grow the status quo.

              If energy generations is overbuilt, it will get very cheap at times, encouraging production and use.

              But the real crime is that all this focus and replacement and growth through industry diminishes focus on reduction, degrowth and more natural replacements. Just as the growth of natural gas has greatly slowed the growth of wind and solar power.

              Just saying the optimum path is not likely and their is such a variety of agendas and attitudes that there is no clear goal or checking that directions are even worth the effort.

              BTW, there is a huge corporate contingent offering flashy tech solutions (for huge profits of course) that has lulled the general public into false beliefs without stringent oversight and fact-checking (which is usually overridden if it actually does occur). The populace is so used to flash and hype plus ignoring massive downsides that I think it is hyper-unaware at this time.

              I could sum it all up in a few sentences, but I like other people to start thinking and stop accepting at face value, what they are hyped. Or to stop grasping at profit making schemes disguised as life boats.

            11. Gone fishing,

              I think you brought up Jevons paradox, my point was simply that it may not apply.

              I agree that the best policy is to reduce energy and material use as much as possible and to utilize natural solutions as much as possible if unintended negative consequences can be minimized by so doing.

              The 3 times overbuild of wind and solar was proposed as a possible solution to the problem of expensive battery storage that you brought up in an earlier comment, I agree with your criticism, that paper did not fully consider the negative environmental consequences.

              I appreciate you pointing that out. Thanks.

            12. As best I can tell, the Gibbs film makes the following arguments:

              1-burning of biomass to reduce GHGs is destructive and ineffective.

              2-wind and solar power to reduce GHGs is destructive and ineffective.

              3-The leaders of the major environmental organizations generally support burning of biomass as one of the major, primary solutions for reducing GHGs.

              4- The leaders of the major environmental organizations generally support wind and solar power as one of the major, primary solutions for reducing GHGs.

              5- The fact that these leaders support destructive and ineffective solutions means that they’ve been bought out by Wall Street.

              Is that a fair summary of the film’s arguments?

            13. 6. And behind it all is population. 7.6 G people is a lot of shit & destruction.

            14. How about:

              6-Reducing population numbers is the most important way to reduce GHG emissions.

              Is that fair?

            15. Accurate?

              please, blatent lies abound. A few of them:

              “mountain top removal for wind” – see the aerial/satellite pics at
              https://ketanjoshi.co/2020/04/24/planet-of-the-humans-a-reheated-mess-of-lazy-old-myths/
              down towards the end.
              Jeff Gibbs films in the fog, so one cannot see the scale/perspective.

              All the fear-mongering about destroying the forest due to the wind farm – turns out the forest is preserved BECAUSE of the wind farm.
              http://thingsidlikepeopletoknow.blogspot.com/2020/04/review-of-documentary-planet-of-humans.html
              see links after 18:19 timestamp

              Blatant misrepresentation of Bill McKibbon’s position on biomass and taking credit for him changing.
              https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/bill-mckibbens-response-to-planet-of-the-humans-documentary/

              more reviews here (and a mirror copy).
              https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/michael-moore-presents-planet-of-the-humans/

              Note the post by Michael Moore’s ex-fact checker.

            16. I tried to summarize the film’s main arguments, above. Does the summary seem reasonably accurate?

              It seems to me that it’s very useful to agree on what the film is saying, before we argue about it’s accuracy.

            17. ‘forest saved by windfarm’
              Interesting – I’ve witnessed lots of forest areas removed for solar farms over the past few years. I don’t understand how these renewables are preserving forests on which they stand when the forests are completely removed and replaced by fenced-in areas.

            19. Perhaps the idea is that fewer forests will be burned down as biomass in order to produce energy.

              This makes us aware that tradeoffs are not only between fossils and renewables, but among different kinds of renewables.

              For example, should we save forests (more windmills), or birds (less windmills)…?

              In a way, it is a reminder that Nature is the world of things eating each other.

            21. One of EU,

              Forests get cut down mostly for paper and construction materials in the US, 200 years ago a lot of trees were cut down for farming, not much of that these days.

              Some trees are likely cut down for fuel as well, not a great idea in my opinion.

            22. “Wind power vs birds is greatly exaggerated by the forces of “business as usual”.”

              Hey Nick G. I am sure you can provide some peer reviewed articles to back up that nebulous statement.

            23. Well, the Audubon Society is generally recognized as an advocate for birds: did you read what they had to say? They make it clear that if you care about birds, you want your power to come from renewables.

              As to the exaggeration of bird mortality from wind turbines, here’s some info:
              https://www.sibleyguides.com/conservation/causes-of-bird-mortality/

              The impact of wind turbines on birds and bats is significant in a few places, but it’s tiny, overall.

              If you care about birds, then start campaigning to eliminate free-range house cats: they kill about 5 thousand times as many birds than wind turbines.

              “The American Bird Conservancy estimates estimates that more than 500,000 birds are killed each year by collisions with wind turbines.”

              “In the United States alone, outdoor cats kill approximately 2.4 billion birds every year. Although this number may seem unbelievable, it represents the combined impact of tens of millions of outdoor cats. Each outdoor cat plays a part.”

              https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/

            24. Yes Nick, bird populations, bat populations, and flying insect populations are falling fast. Your Sibley chart is before wind power became “the thing to do”. It is supposedly to grow many times more than now which is far higher than 2003. Plus the high tension lines and power lines that lead from them.
              Just because there are other things that kill life on the planet does not justify a large and growing threat that will cover many of the landscapes around the world .
              Maybe instead we could think, use that supposed brain, instead of just accepting every thing that is shoved at the world by big money and big power. Maybe we can find ways to reduce our need for power, use other systems.
              There are very few wind turbines now in most places, now is the time to curb them, not when there are 10 million of them. No cure then, the hamster wheel of power will be complete until we can’t keep replacing them. By then the devastation will be complete.
              Audobon, I gave up supporting them a while ago. Most of the big environmental NGO’s are compromised.
              In 2012, breaking the European omerta on wind farm mortality, the Spanish Ornithological Society (SEO/Birdlife) reviewed actual carcass counts from 136 monitoring studies. They concluded that Spain’s 18,000 wind turbines are killing 6-18 million birds and bats yearly.

              Extrapolating that and similar (little publicized) German and Swedish studies, 39,000 U.S. wind turbines would not be killing “only” 440,000 birds (USFWS, 2009) or “just” 573,000 birds and 888,000 bats (Smallwood, 2013), but 13-39 million birds and bats every year!

              However, this carnage is being covered up by self-serving and/or politically motivated government agencies, wind industry lobbyists, environmental groups and ornithologists, under a pile of misleading studies paid for with more taxpayer money
              http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/new/us-windfarms-kill-10-20-times-more-than-previously-thought.html

              Yep, as the onslaught of wind turbines rises across the land, you can count your kWh in dead bodies. At least the local four legged predators will be well fed at night, no evidence in the morning.
              “How many birds did we kill today Mommy?” “Birds? None, honey, not us. Look outside, no birds in sight. Now turn on the TV, Mommy is busy drying her hair. ”

              Maybe you can start a campaign to cover all those high rise windows with bird warning devices.

            25. Gone fishing,

              I agree wind turbines are a problem. Did you look at the peer reviewed paper I linked elsewhere on the affect of wind power on bird and bat populations?

              My guess is that there are much environmental damage by humans leading to a fall in bird, bat, and insect populations, pollution and land use are no doubt important factors, wind turbines might be an important factor as well, though there might be strategies that can reduce the problem.

            26. aaaa,

              Where I live, solar utility scale is constucted in areas where the forest was removed in the past for farms, and in one case a small airport (for small Cessna type planes.) There are lots of these areas, though one could argue it would be better to plant trees. I have never done the math on which removes more carbon (for solar the carbon “removed” is the carbon that would be emitted by a coal fired power plant to produce the electricity provided by the solar PV over the course of a year.)

  13. Here’s one for those who think debt is a problem.

    “FISCAL FIREHOSE”: JAPAN APPROVES RECORD 117 TRILLION STIMULUS PACKAGE

    The record stimulus of 117 trillion yen, which as Reuters reported, will be funded partly by a second extra budget, followed another 117 trillion yen package rolled out last month. The new package takes Japan’s total spending to combat the virus fallout to 234 trillion yen ($2.18 trillion), or about 40% of gross domestic product, and will send its already world-record debt load into the stratosphere. The combined spending ranks among the world’s largest fiscal packages to deal with the coronavirus, approaching the size of the United States’ $2.3 trillion aid programme.

    “WE MUST PROTECT BUSINESS AND EMPLOYMENT BY ANY MEANS IN THE FACE OF THE TOUGH ROAD AHEAD,” Abe told a meeting of ruling party lawmakers. “WE MUST ALSO TAKE ALL NECESSARY MEASURES TO PREPARE FOR ANOTHER WAVE OF EPIDEMIC.”

    To fund the costs, Japan will issue an additional 31.9 trillion yen in government bonds under the second supplementary budget for the current fiscal year ending in March 2021. That record double-stimulus will push new JGB issuance this fiscal year to a record 90 trillion yen. Inclusive of issuance to roll over debt maturing during the year, Japan’s total calendar-base annual market issuance would hit a record 212 trillion yen, further straining already tattered finances.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/fiscal-firehose-japan-approves-record-117-trillion-stimulus-package

    .

    1. The Republican Senate in the US keeps trying to push a bill that will make the stimulus for individuals a loan from their future Social Security benefits. Talk about cheap.

  14. I guess filling the oceans with plastic isn’t enough. And, to Hell with astronomers and those who enjoy an uncluttered view of the heavens.

    THE COSTLY COLLATERAL DAMAGE FROM ELON MUSK’S STARLINK SATELLITE FLEET

    The aim is to create a satellite network called Starlink. If Musk has his way, by 2025 no less than 11,943 of his satellites will circle the Earth, and if permission is granted, the ultimate result would be a staggering 42,000. This mind-boggling number must be compared to the 8,000 satellites sent into orbit since the Soviet Sputnik, of which 2,218 are still in operation. Why such outsized ambitions? To implement his dream of a “multiplanetary” society, and to fund it by providing all (solvent) Earthlings with high-speed Internet access.

    Whatever the potential benefits of such a system, one of the disastrous consequences would be light pollution. As they travelled across the skies, thousands of Starlink satellites would effectively make astronomical images useless by leaving long luminous trails. Musk’s declaration ends on an ominous note, in essence saying “My clients will be able to do whatever they want, just as I am able to do whatever I want”.

    https://phys.org/news/2020-05-costly-collateral-elonmusk-starlink-satellite.html

    1. Maybe this is a secret plan to create artificial geomagnetic field if the real one disappears…

      Concentric orbital energy directed towards Earth iron core…. who knows?

      Obviously, a sign of desperation.

      This plan is really strange on its official surface, though, that’s for sure.

      1. “artificial geomagnetic field”? “concentric orbital energy”? I can only presume you’re being sarcastic?

        1. I don’t know.

          But it reminded me about my favourite cartoon from childhood, ‘The Mysterious Cities of Gold’. You need to be creative 😉

          The mirrors in cirlces there had superpowers when focused in one point, a kind of soral furnace.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhajoEy6zGo (go to 15th minute)

          Compare reality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odeillo_solar_furnace

          Maybe Elon Musk is a modern Esteban, The Child of The Sun.

          How many Watts are they going to beam down actually?
          Also, the satellites could be in contact with each other, which would probably create some toroid around Earth, which could be an attempt at ersatz field. Each satellite would only have to extend its field to the next one. But we cannot get a big field from solar panels meager output – probably the reason why Musk wants to have 42000 of those satellites.

          Strangely, it is hard to find photos of the satellites, but they do appear to have overgrown solar panels, and 16 antennas each, instead of 1-2 antennas per satellite as usual. With such a huge number of antennas, some will be always going on, and the resultant field will be more heterogenic.

          Taking into account how faulty the satellite phones can be, it really does not make much sense as Internet highway.
          Also, the South Atlantic Anomaly already hampers satellites… how are we going to go around this problem…? With more data to distort?

          1. Hi again OneOfEU:

            What’s your background?

            Are you located in the EU?

            Thanks

            1. Philosophy and physics (I studied both).
              And both make you good at problem framing. Yet some people here do not seem to appreciate this simple truth that all progress comes from uncoventional thinking. Otherwise China would be already ruling the world.

              Yes, in EU, where the packet of 6 simple chirurgical cloth masks from China does cost 5.99 Euros in a supermarket as of today. Outrageous, before covid you could buy 50 for this price. It looks that China does make money here (but that is not a reason to wage a war). For comparision, what’s the price of such a small masks packet in USA?

              I did not study Covid, so I don’t say anything about it 😉

            2. OneOfEU:

              Yes, from your comments i could see you didn’t have a technical background.

              Almost all the people on this site have technical skills and are familiar with the science, the data, and the range of well-founded speculations regarding the future.

              Your ‘unconventional thinking’ ignores all that science, so I’m not surprised it isn’t finding fertile ground on this site.

              I concede that I don’t find that unconventional thinking interesting or informative either, and my eyes tend to glaze over when i run into it.

              I know there are communities that discuss those speculations, but I’m not familiar with them so can’t provide any suggestions or recommendations of who you might consult to flesh out your thinking.

              Good Luck.

            3. “Almost all the people on this site have technical skills and are familiar with the science, the data, and the range of well-founded speculations regarding the future.”

              That may be very well true in the oil thread, but here I see much speculations sold as knowledge. The discussed subjects – global warming, climate change, covid – belong more to the domain of science than technics. Technical may be the discussion about solar panels (I do not participate).

              Also, you are pretty dogmatic here, and yet, for example, the newest element, Oganesson, was recognized only recently in 2015 (look up to my discussion with Ron for the context).

              There was not one thing of proven falsity that I said. Some may be of more hypothetical charater, but that is what others do here, too.

              You are at least polite. Thanks, GerryF.

            4. Oganesson was synthesized in 2002. It also only exists for nanoseconds before decaying. If you had any actual knowledge of chemistry you would know that there is a huge difference between natural elements and those man made ones appearing at the end of the periodic table. The existence of man made elements at the end of the periodic table in no way indicates that there are more natural elements to be discovered. The opposite in fact, as all the man made elements decay rapidly and cease to exist, indicating that they are inherently unstable and can’t exist in nature.

    2. Many very intelligent people are not very smart.

      Yes, and there are some really dumb people who think they are very smart. I know of one dumb as dirt individual that thinks he is a “very stable genius”.

      1. Sun produces heavier elements than He too.

        That no new elements are possible is a theoretic corollary, no empiric truth. The artificial elements seem to be like in vitro children, kind of. My idea of element is that it is a necessary brick of Universe. There may be different bricks and tales, but they are all necessary and pass somewhere. Not so sure about artificial elements.

        The fusion idea is suspicious because kind of ignores electromagnetic reactions. We are asked to believe that somehow sheer power of greavity will lead to nucleosynthesis. The fusion is still a theoretical and not an empirical concept.
        Besides, Sun’s corona is hotter than inner layers of Sun: Puts fusion in question, kind of.

        Meteorities from some other planets and asteroids do not come from Earth twin copies and do not directly testify to Earth composition.

        I am jealous, Ron, that you do know so much 😉

    3. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. At his least destructive Musk is a con man who uses a flair for media to make people think he’s saving the world. At his most destructive he’s a billionaire intent on capturing as much of the world’s wealth as possible with no regard for who or what he destroys in the process. Mark my words, his mass produced technology, and the massive further increases to it that he plans on, will ultimately be just as destructive as the fossil fuels he is replacing. His recent conflict with the California government, and his reopening of his factory against safety orders, and his forcing of his workers back into a dangerous situation, should leave no one in doubt about where his priorities lie.

      Now he wants to destroy the stars so that he can monopolize global internet. And there are intelligent, educated people on this website that will defend him.

      1. “Now he wants to destroy the stars so that he can monopolize global internet.”

        There’s some really stupid shit written in the comments.

        Around here a single Starlink satellite would need to provide internet to about 11 million people (310 per km²).
        How exactly is SpaceX going to achieve this?

        With ever increasing volume of data being transmitted?

        Sheeesh, he’s just another sociopathic tech billionaire, not some kind of Bond villain…

      2. You may be right. The man certainly has an enlarged Ego and it’s kind on ominous when he says: “My clients will be able to do whatever they want, just as I am able to do whatever I want”. Does that mean, regardless of the consequences?

        1. Doug,
          do you have his exact quote where he said this, and in context?

          The Phys.org article, as also included in your quote, says: “in essence he is saying”. Well, what did he actually say?

          It appears from the article that his comments come from the video. Although I have not had time to sit down and watch the entire program, I did watch the entire StarLink segment, and I didn’t hear anything like that.

            1. Right. That’s where the phys.org quote is, but it’s not a direct quote of what Musk said. That’s the author’s interpretation of what he said: ‘in essence’.

              What did he actually say, and where did he actually say it?

              There’s a huge difference whether he was saying he can do whatever he likes and no authority can stop him, or that StarLink will provide full broadband capability to its customers allowing them to do whatever they like with the connection, such as stream HD movies, or that he was saying SpaceX launch customers can deploy their own satellite arrays, just like he is, if they want.

              If it is the middle thing, what’s so ominous?

            2. Bob, I apologize if my quote is misleading. My main interest these days is astrophysics and articles in New Scientist, Physics.org, etc. frequently alert me to news I find interesting. In which case, I always track down the original paper. Astrophysical papers tend to be filled with esoteric math and consequently results often don’t make their way into the popular news. But, if you want the facts, you MUST go to the source and I don’t have enough interest in Elon Musk, or anything he says, to do the kind of follow-up you’re looking for. However, I am, or will be, concerned if his satellites interfere with astronomical observations (or views of the night sky).

            3. Understood, and agreed.
              I don’t know that the quote is misleading or not, but the way it was written raised a red flag for me. I wanted to find what Musk actually said, but that proved to be more difficult than it should be. I don’t want to watch the entire 45 minute video (I hate video), just to determine if Roland Lehoucq and François Graner were writing in good faith or not, especially when I’m not even certain that’s where the quote came from. I’ve exceeded my give a shit threshold too. Thanks for your replies Doug. Much appreciated.

        1. Thanks, seems like a balanced assessment. I suppose the night sky will become yet another victim of “progress” like so many things we grew up with. Tree swallow population here is currently down to roughly 20% of previous years.

  15. @ Niko McManus

    Above I have mentioned that there is something suspicious in all those artifcial elements (children of concept, not of Nature).

    Ron did not qualify his statements on impossibility of discovering new elements in any way. There is nothing in the Table which would point to the fact that artificial elements are not on par with natural ones.

    So, what’s the point of creating artifical elements for chemists?

    1. OneofEU:

      I thought at first that you might have been a student, but i think you’re older than that. (~40 yrs?)

      What do you do for a living?

      1. Yes, I am in the interzone between 30 and 40. I am of the last generation who yet may remember pre-digital world.

        I used to be a researcher, but now without a grant. But I don’t think that academia has a future in the current climate.

        I also kept a watchful eye over a group of coders, so a program manager (used to be a part of open software community). I am not a coder myself, but I used to work a lot with these guys. I liked their ‘let’s try’ attitude which here is lacking, for example.

        Currently I am mulling joining paleo-community of my friend; paleo lifestyle is a second life for many software developers of my generation. But I am not a rugged type, a year ago I was planning to sell everything and get a yacht to live on , since in 2019 I thought we had yet circa 3 years to a serious crisis as of now. I thought I had yet 3 years to prepare, 2 years too much…

        In 2019 I thought we only had peak oil problem before us, but now I see converging crises, the geomagnetism problem and the solar minimum… It seems tropics may be the best choice for future.

        Europe faces serious problems; with solar minimum our last big global advantage (food exports) is getting lost… . I thought we will engage in food-for-oil trade in future 😉 But now even masks here are imported from China (the fact that they are so expensive here clearly points to the fact that EU has almost no production capacity here).

  16. Somebody may have beaten me to this but things ARE changing.
    https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/28/business/coal-renewable-energy-solar-wind/index.html

    Of course Islandboy keeps us up to date with his great work, but not that many people read this site.

    Tens of millions of people watch and read CNN on a regular basis.

    It makes me really tired to see some of the smartest people who hang out here pee and moan about renewables not being able to save us, as if that means we might as well just forget about saving ourselves and the rest of the biosphere and go whole hog flat out on fossil fuels and dump all our trash into the air and water.

    Giving up is not an option, except for losers. There’s no way we can know what will or won’t happen over the next few decades. The world wide birth rate might for instance decline far faster than expected, meaning the population would be peak a lot sooner.

    There might be breakthroughs in various technologies that will result in our adopting them whole hog as fast as they can be deployed, or the vagaries of history might push us to make changes in a decade that might otherwise take three or four decades.

    A hot war which results in long gas lines for a few months could speed up the adoption of electric cars almost beyond belief.

    There may be a virus out there already that will wipe out half of the world population.

    In any case, there’s no reason to believe that some parts of the world won’t still be habitable a century or two down the road, or that some people will pull thru the coming troubles and manage to maintain something in the way of a dignified and comfortable life style.

    The business as usual crowd might even turn out to be right, to the point that there won’t be any sudden hard crash. We might just muddle along for the next couple or three generations until depletion does in most of the fossil fuel industry until the population declines due to falling birth rates.

    Sensible women might even take control of the reins of power in some countries, and pass legislation that makes it well worth while for their fellow women to have only one baby, or none.

    The public might come to understand that eternal growth is NOT necessarily the same thing as prosperity, or ESSENTIAL to prosperity.

    Good things can happen sooner than you might expect. I thought it would take another decade for Virginia to enact sensible marijuana laws. The D’s swept into control last election, and starting July first, getting busted for minor possession is going to be less trouble that getting a couple of parking tickets.

    1. OFM,

      Unlike some I appreciate the skeptics, as there are many ways to skin a cat. Renewable energy does have negative consequences, those should be pointed out so they can be minimized.

      The best approach is to use less energy, use nature as much as possible to remove carbon from the atmosphere ( trees and better land use in agriculture and livestock) and wind, solar, and geothermal energy plus energy backup that has the minimal possible amount of environmental damage.

      Such a policy combined with wide availability of post secondary education for women will reduce total fertility rate and population growth.

      1. Yes, some people like to blow hot air while denigrating others. Mostly they just blow it up their own skirts which reveals their continued errors and agendas. (backfired again). They do not even see their own actions let alone the greater reality.

        “The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.”
        — Gustave Le Bon

        Dennis, hope you are getting out in this beautiful weather. Been kayaking the last couple of days, one sunny and warm, the next cloudy with warm rain. Great time to observe plants and animals. Need an upside down periscope to see what is causing those big swirls as I approach. Snappers? Carp? A mystery.

        1. Yes, the continued personal attack on this site. Too afraid to face any challenge or rational criticism of their beloved techno-religions or shameful ways, they try to divert any and all discussion with innuendo and direct attacks on the person, not the topic.

  17. UK Ecologist: ‘Wind Farms Driving Birds, Bats to Extinction’

    Hambler cites some distressing statistics from sources around the world. Between 6-18 million birds and bats are killed by Spanish wind farms each year Hambler says, including 400 griffon vultures per year just at Navarro. German wind turbines kill at least 200,000 bats per year, depressing populations up to 2,000 miles away. Wind turbines in the U.S. have been estimated to kill 70 bats per installed megawatt per year, on average, says Hambler. That would work out to about 320,000 bats per year in California.

    Hambler’s assessment of the reasons for wind power’s popularity among environmentalists is rather unsparing:
    “Why is the public not more aware of this carnage? First, because the wind industry (with the shameful complicity of some ornithological organisations) has gone to great trouble to cover it up — to the extent of burying the corpses of victims. Second, because the ongoing obsession with climate change means that many environmentalists are turning a blind eye to the ecological costs of renewable energy. What they clearly don’t appreciate — for they know next to nothing about biology — is that most of the species they claim are threatened by ‘climate change’ have already survived 10 to 20 ice ages, and sea-level rises far more dramatic than any we have experienced in recent millennia or expect in the next few centuries. Climate change won’t drive those species to extinction; well-meaning environmentalists might.”

    https://www.kcet.org/redefine/uk-ecologist-wind-farms-driving-birds-bats-to-extinction-0

    1. Wind farms and abuse of statistics: bird edition
      When “wind farms are dangerous” really just means “there are a lot of birds”.
      BY ALEX HERN

      When dealing with large numbers, it helps to have an idea of the expected order of magnitude. That way, you can know whether it is merely the number which is large, or the thing it’s describing as well.

      For instance, if I tell you of a country with 140,000 people in long-term unemployment, it’s rather important for you to know if I’m talking about the US (population 280 million) or Luxembourg (population 525,000).

      That’s a test a Spectator article, Wind farms vs wildlife, failed quite badly this week.
      The author, Clive Hambler, is a lecturer in biological and human sciences at Oxford university, and quotes a number of statistics to demonstrate how dangerous wind farms are to wildlife. For instance:

      Every year in Spain alone — according to research by the conservation group SEO/Birdlife — between 6 and 18 million birds and bats are killed by wind farms. They kill roughly twice as many bats as birds. This breaks down as approximately 110–330 birds per turbine per year and 200–670 bats per year. And these figures may be conservative if you compare them to statistics published in December 2002 by the California Energy Commission: ‘In a summary of avian impacts at wind turbines by Benner et al (1993) bird deaths per turbine per year were as high as 309 in Germany and 895 in Sweden.’

      Similar claims are made throughout. Apparently the annual death toll of bats in the US and Canada is “up to three million”, “Norwegian wind farms kill over ten white-tailed eagles per year”, and so on.

      What is missing is any context through which we can examine these numbers. It might change our interpretation of the figures to know that:

      Domestic and feral cats have also been considered a major source of anthropogenic-caused mortality with estimates near 100 million annual bird deaths [in the US].

      Or that, on roads near wetlands in Canada:

      223 birds were killed per mile per year.

      Power lines in the US are estimated to kill:

      …approximately 130 million birds per year.

      While we’re banning things, we may want to keep an eye out for that scourge of the avian world, windows:

      97.6 to 976 million bird deaths per year in the U.S. due to collisions with windows… based on an estimated 1 to 10 bird deaths per structure per year from a fatality study in New York.

      All those figures come from a 2005 paper by the US Department of Agriculture.

      In other words, even with the massive figures from Spain – figures which show deaths per turbine per year two orders of magnitude higher than equivalent figures cited in the above paper, which are based on an assumption that for every confirmed death, there’s nineteen uncomfirmed, and which come from a set of guidelines which explicitly concludes wind farms are OK for birds if built correctly (pdf) – wind farms kill fewer birds than cats, power lines, roads or windows. That comparison would have been rather useful to include in the original piece. With that in mind, the numbers in the piece become less a demonstration of the awesome mortality of wind farms, and more a confirmation that yes, there are a lot of birds in the world.

      https://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/2013/01/wind-farms-and-abuse-statistics-bird-edition

      1. When “wind farms are dangerous” really just means “there are a lot of birds”.
        Whooee, let’s do the math.
        About 1000 deaths per turbine per year (not counting insects or the effect on the rest of the ecosystem). 10 million times 1000 is 10 billion per year. Regions with wind power will have local extinctions within a short time. Of course that number will fall each year.

        Yep, keep killing them and the problem will go away. The problem being most of the life on the earth. Agreed.

        1. Or Hambler was exaggerating. His piece was published in the Spectator, a climate denier publication. The American Bird Conservancy uses an estimate of 500,000 bird kills per year, which for about 40,000 turbines means about 12 per year per turbine.

          Let’s discuss the larger issue. We have a lot of coal or gas generation in the US. Should we just leave it in place, or should we replace it with wind and solar? Are you suggesting we should just eliminate all utility scale generation, and go with greater efficiency combined with customer-based PV, or just no power at all?

          2. I was involved in installing and operating a wind farm (5 turbines) for about 10 years.

            Our bird mortality was 2.2 birds/turbine/year. At the time i worked there, that was apparently close to the published national average for bird/turbine mortality.

            In this Canadian Government report, http://www.ace-eco.org/vol8/iss2/art10/ , turbine mortality ranged from 0 to 26.9 birds/turbine/year, and the authors note this is far less than other human sources like windows, power lines etc.

            1. Mindless quoting of statistics will not help.
              The key question, not addressed here, is how we define the death by wind turbine?

              A death bird with trauma lying in the radius of 500 m, 1km of a wind turbine?

              I suppose we could get some comparable data, if we knew how to count the birds and the deaths. Obviously density of birds per km2 should be a factor. Besides that, average monthly working time of a wind turbine, split between day and night (daylight and night birds should provide us with a bit different data).

              However, I am rather shocked by the high rate of death among bats… bats are supposed to have almost perfect echolocation?
              After all, turbines aren’t exremely fast, it should be easy to take a life saving turn for bats….

            2. “After all, turbines aren’t exremely fast.” What do you call fast?

              THE WORLD’S BIGGEST WIND TURBINE BLADES ARE SO LONG THEIR TIPS SPIN AT 180 MPH

              The B75 turbine blade itself is 75 meters long, while the entire rotor assembly measures 154 meters in diameter. As it spins, the blades cover an area of 18,600 square meters—that’s roughly two and a half soccer fields—at a brisk 80 meters per second, or 180 MPH at the tips.

              https://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-biggest-wind-turbine-blades-are-so-long-thei-5930272

            3. I have seen a lot of turbines in Europe when travelling and they never were so fast so I could not distinguish their single blades.

            4. OneOfEU said:
              “I have seen a lot of turbines in Europe when travelling and they never were so fast so I could not distinguish their single blades.”

              Hard to find someone as mindless as Trump, but this guy may be a winner.

            5. This is 6 MW turbine. Really big one.
              Surely not the average one.

              But it gives me idea that maybe bats have problems with the facts that the speed of blade will increase with its length. There are no comparable natural phenomena.

            6. OneOfEU:

              There’s a science grown up around these measurements.

              The paper cited describes how bird mortality is measured.

              They’re not mindless statistics.

              You seem uninformed.

              I think it’s intellectually lazy to comment on data without any familiarity with either the subject, the data, or the protocol used to measure it. Perhaps you’re hoping to learn something??

              It would be much more useful if you did some reading and research beforehand – i think you’d be surprised at what you’d learn.

            7. Ok, I skimmed over the article you linked and the methodology seems to be skewed towards lower mortality. This is because the proposed radius is very small, 50m. Such radius will only take into account birds killed almost immediately, no wounded which land several hundreds meter away to die in few days. Moreover, not even this small radius is thourghly searched.

              “Ps = proportion of area searched within a 50 m radius of turbines (assuming a uniform distribution of carcasses within the 50 m radius)”

              Two other values are extremely felixble, too flexible.
              “There was substantial variation in the estimated values for searcher efficiency (range 0.30 to 0.85) and scavenger removal rates (range 0.10 to 0.91) highlighting the importance of using site-specific values whenever possible. ”

              In the last statement they highlight the importance of site-specific data. But they themselves almost never do that! They have two other variables who are fixed on few sites which were thoroughly researched.

              “To extrapolate estimates to an annual total (Py), we used data from four wind farms in Alberta and one in Ontario that were surveyed for up to two years throughout the annual cycle, and for which mortalities were reported for each month. Using these data, we estimated the monthly distribution of mortality throughout the year. ”

              Then they get their equation:

              “C = c / (Se * Sc * Ps * Pr * Py) (1)

              where, C = corrected number of bird mortalities, c = number of carcasses found, Se = proportion of carcasses expected to be found by searchers (searcher efficiency), Sc = proportion of carcasses not removed by scavengers over the search period (scavenger removal), Ps = proportion of area searched within a 50 m radius of turbines (assuming a uniform distribution of carcasses within the 50 m radius), Pr = proportion of carcasses expected to fall within the search radius, and Py = proportion of carcasses expected during the times of year that surveys took place.”

              In this equation, rxcept Ps, NOT ONE DATA FACTOR HAS RAW CHARACTER, ALL ARE STATISTICS-DEPENDENT, even the number of carcasses.

              Frankly, as Ron likes to say, this is shit.

            8. OneofEU:

              Once you look at wind farms, you see that they are very diverse.

              The wind farm i operated was in field grass (searcher efficiency very high), with no scavengers (scavenging rate very low). Affected bird types had distinctive coloration, making carcasses visible from a significant distance.

              Based on the height of our turbines, we used the accepted radius for searching, which i believe was 50 meters, but i can’t remember for sure. We had herbivores grazing around the turbines, so there was no high vegetation and it was very easy to conduct a site survey.

              As i mentioned before, our measured mortality was 2.2. birds/turbine/year.

              See https://tethys.pnnl.gov/publications/recommended-protocols-monitoring-impacts-wind-turbines-birds

              Similar protocols are in place in Scotland, the USA, etc.,

              If you can design a better protocol, you should write one up and submit it. I think they’d really appreciate your analysis.

            9. Not even knowing protocols etc, the very fact that the data are so divergent makes them suspicious.

              Supervising IT projects made me suspicious of hype and “ifs”.
              Will work If… if…if…

            10. Yep, and every time there is a discussion about human deaths from pollution or covid, we must list all the other causes of death. That way we can ignore any given cause because other things add up to more.
              Also, birds, insects and bats have lost population in major ways. Maybe it’s more critical to consider not adding more ways to kill those living creatures.
              So you Nick and others can justify all day long with your windows, cats. Poisons etc. Any human action can be justified with words.

            11. Not at all. I think any human action has consequences and it’s important to keep them in context, and have good data to weigh the pros and cons.

              Wind turbines affect birds, bats, and the local ecology. It’s important to study that and mitigate. There has been some success at deterring birds and bats, but the bigger issue seems to be properly siting them in the first place. Some wind farms were placed on migratory highways since no one thought to consider that beforehand. I don’t know if the environmental assessment process is getting better as time goes by.

              But solar panels, nuclear plants, fossil fuel emissions, hydro power, all have their effects as well.

              Trying to stick handle through these power sources and their consequences will never be simple.

              My personal preference would be modular thorium-based nuclear reactors, but i don’t think that’s ever likely to happen in my lifetime!

            12. This time you must read something to be up to date.

              Thorium has been tried, and it is a failure. Norway will not have replacement exports ready after oil runs out.

              In 2012 we read:

              https://singularityhub.com/2012/12/11/norway-begins-four-year-test-of-thorium-nuclear-reactor/

              But then in 2016 the tone has changed:

              https://www.dw.com/en/radioactive-leak-at-norway-nuclear-reactor/a-36150661

              https://europeannewsweekly.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/the-halden-nuclear-reactor-in-norway-a-danger-to-all-of-europe-by-pierre-fetet/

              We don’t hear about thorium anymore, really.

            13. I haven’t been involved in this for a while, but if i remember correctly, there is current research in thorium reactors in China, Canada, India, Norway, and Germany I think.

              Not long ago, there was a media flurry over Bill Gates investing in China’s thorium reactors.

              The MSR seems to be the most popular design, but there are others on the drawing board as well.

              Germany was leading the way in the pebble-bed HTGCR, and i was a fan of that, but I’m not sure of the status there either.

              We’ll see.

            14. Germany ran one of the few commercial thorium reactors in the PAST, but it was closed due to corrosion which seems to be endemic problem of thorium reactors.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300

              All those stories about thorium were simply too good to be true.

            15. OneofEU:

              That THTR you refer to was about 40 years ago, and i thought there were design flaws that made it unsatisfactory, but it confirmed that the pebble-bed design was good.

              More recently, I thought there was a research centre in Karlsruhe looking at advanced nuclear cycles, specifically the MSR-thorium cycle.

              Since Fukushima, i think a number of countries have reviewed/rescinded their nuclear plans, but some countries are pushing ahead.

              I know people who are investing money convinced that China will succeed first.

              We’ll see.

            16. “Yep, and every time there is a discussion about human deaths from pollution or covid, we must list all the other causes of death.”

              Good point. When you integrate all the various ways natural habitats have, and are, being decimated it’s a crisis, period. Saying windows or cats kill more birds to deflect arguments is duplicitous. I have enjoyed watching wildlife all my life. The first disaster I witnessed was DDT which permanently wiped out bird and insect populations from the (formerly) richest bird region in Western Canada. Now I live in a relatively pristine area, because it is a relatively pristine area, and I sit here watching bird (and bat) populations deteriorate year after year; the reason, it seems, our bug population is in “exponential” decline. I don’t know why.

              One big problem with this, the way I see it, is every new generation lives in a “new normal” with progressively less and less idea of what a healthy environment looks like – and so little, if any, incentive to repair the damage.

            17. The “new normal” is very true.

              This is why paleo and ancestral way of living movement have started.

              No one has yet created synthesis.

              There is something paradoxical/warped when healthy living, according to some standards at least, becomes a luxury. Healthy living is no more about becoming a peasant/farmer.

              It is a displacement of luxury. In past it was to have servants, today it is eating grass feed ecological beef every day.

              In fact, the former are cheaper than the latter.

            18. I agree there is a climate and environmental crisis.

              But my point was that there are lots of problem with wind technology, and to pick bird mortality as the big issue is ingenuous in itself, as there are far larger (1000x) sources of bird mortality that no one seems to care about.

              There are some wind farms that have very little bird mortality, and some that have severe mortality. It seems to be a consequence of siting.

              In Altamont Pass in California, the turbines were installed on lattice towers, and raptors tried to make nests in those towers, and many were killed. If there are 3 raptors/turbine/year killed, that doesn’t sound too bad, but there were about 8000 turbines. Is that 240000 raptors killed every year? That’s a different picture altogether.

              In Virginia (I think), there was a wind farm on a mountain ridge which happened to be in a migratory flyway, and during migration season, a significant number of birds would be killed.

              I once took part in a study of bird mortality from tall office buildings. Many different places around the world tried different things to reduce bird mortality (reducing lights, window decals, non-reflective windows), and they all had some significant and measurable effect.
              Edit: the buildings i was involved with had 200 fatalities per day during migration season.

              But building owners didn’t want to pay the costs, and cities didn’t want to add it to the local regulations, and most of the citizenry weren’t really bothered by it.

              The hard part seems to be making people aware of the negative consequences. But there are so many, and they require education, and money. I’m not optimistic.

            20. The real world we live in is all about possibilities, rather than behavioral absolutes.

              We absolutely ( pun!) aren’t about to quit mining and burning coal, or drilling for oil and gas and burning both.

              So the real question is not whether we should be building wind and solar farms, or whether we should just piss and moan about the costs of wind and solar power, in a vacuum, without duly acknowledging the cost of mining, drilling, and burning fossil fuels.

              Now I could be wrong, but as far as I have been able to see based on reading quite a lot, plus knowing a good bit of biology, wind and solar farms are BARGAINS in terms of the preservation or destruction of the environment in general and birds in particular ………

              by comparison to the ONE actual real world alternative…. using even more fossil fuels.

              Failure to acknowledge and deal with such obvious facts puts us in the same position as priests debating the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin, or some other such foolishness.

              I can realistically either support renewable energy production, or I can accept the one day to day real world default, fossil fuel.

              Of course I should and do also support using energy as efficiently as possible, and using as little as possible, as a day to day practical matter.

              But going overboard and insisting that wind and solar farms etc, are as bad or worse than fossil fuels is UTTERLY STUPID, because doing so provides plenty of ammo for the propaganda grist mill of the enemy…….. the political right wing and the fossil fuel industries.

              I swear to SKY DADDY that a lot of otherwise very intelligent liberal people have about as much in the way of political street smarts as a fence post.

  18. Just trying to get people to start thinking, remembering this is a living planet, including us. If the rest of life goes down, the energy will not save us.
    Energy mix, not up to me. Although it looks like the US and much of the world will still be powered by FF in the future.
    Here is what the pros at PJM grid and spglobal think where we are headed and where we should be.

    Read about the energy glut and how it does not affect profit that much.
    https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/overpowered-pjm-market-rules-drive-an-era-of-oversupply-54111666

    All sounds a bit irrational to me. But it’s business.

  19. So how is wind power doing, now after 4 decades of subsidies and being sold as a cure for climate change. Starting with the New England and Mid Atlantic states. Installed capacity is rounded to nearest integer percent.

    1. If you don’t want electricity, just disconnect the from grid, and refrain from deploying a replacement.
      Your choice. I respect one who practices what they preach.
      If so, was nice to know you, from a great distance.

      Some people do want electricity. Most, in fact.
      People have learned
      it is good to deploy hydroelectric energy near flowing water,
      and solar where it is very sunny,
      and wind where it is is very windy.
      If you want electricity that doesn’t come from burning forests, coal and other fossils, that is.

      With that in mind
      Iowa got over 37% of its electricity from wind last year, for example.
      https://www.iaenvironment.org/webres/File/Iowa Wind Energy Fact Sheet.pdf

      In related news-
      Ohio has approved a construction certificate to a Norwegian-backed Cleveland company to build a six-turbine, 20.7 MW demonstration wind farm in Lake Erie , with a condition that would require the company, Icebreaker Windpower, to feather the wind turbines from dusk to dawn March 1 through November 1 to ensure the safety of migrating birds and bats. Feathering entails a way of manipulating the turbines so they no longer turn in the wind.
      We shall see.

      Also- the Massachusetts DOER disallowed solar installations on land designated majority “priority habitat, core habitat or critical natural landscape,” in the interest of protecting more of the state’s land for conservation…The areas newly closed off to development, plus areas of the state already unavailable, mark up to 90 percent of the state’s land as off-limits for ground-mounted solar development.
      I consider this to be good land use management.

      1. Well, feathering should be popular with birds, bats, not so much. ?

        1. Good one Doug.
          I have come to respect bird brains far more than most human brains.
          Just watched the launch of two people up to ISS. Not sure why, but after huge amounts of time, money, material, energy and thousands supporting the effort, two guys are now on their way to be a few hundred miles away in a place you can’t live, except in a very specialized can.
          Nice to study space and stars but wouldn’t want to live there. Too bad most people are trying to make this place into a wouldn’t want to live there kind of world.
          Funny how easily the human mind gets comfortable with the non-living yet detests the living world to a high degree.

  20. The removal of airports and refineries will hopefully begin in this decade.
    La Guardia and JFK would be a great place to start with restoration to marshland/wet forest. Top priority.
    I can hear the frogs already.
    Fear not, the world of humanity will push on. No need to spend money on airplane rides. There are nice places to walk, and wave or tip a hat to someone.
    And of course there is the huge refinery/airport complex at the confluence of the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers. Incredible habitat to restore!
    So many ripe locations to begin the removal of concrete. Think of all the artificial reefs that can created as habitat out on the shelf.

    I figure we can remove about half the refineries over the next 20 years, as ICE begin to fade.
    And we could surely do without 80 or 90% of the airports in the same timeframe.
    Is nice to find something that GF and I can agree on.

    1. I’m all for cutting back on things such as air travel.. but here’s a thought.

      Suppose we just get rid of the nasty chemicals, etc, and leave all that concrete alone.
      This is far less than ideal of course…… but leaving a hectare of concrete such as parking lots, sidewalks, building floors, etc, would save enough money, most likely, to buy anywhere from ten to fifty or more hectares of OTHER LAND worthy of protection, adding it to park systems, nature reserves, etc, BEFORE it gets to be highly developed.

      About a couple of million bucks was spent on cleaning up a couple of acres near and converting them into something approaching a small wetland a while back.
      Nothing significant was accomplished by doing so. That same two million would have bought a hundred acres of really nice unspoiled land with streams, mature trees, etc, half a mile away, to be preserved in it’s natural state forever. Now it’s full of houses on five acre lots, roads everywhere,etc. Septic systems and wells now, water lines probably being laid within a few more years, etc.

      1. Reasonable discussion points. I’ve been amazed at how powerful Ailanthus altissima is as a pioneering tree in the rustbelt zone, growing up through any little crack in the concrete. If you’ve worked or wandered in any of the alleys, loading docks, rail yards, ports or warehouse districts, then you know that tree as the dominant species in that ecosystem. Remember how the broken stems smell kind of like peanut butter, on those steamy summer days.
        Later on oaks, maples, ash, and hickory will join the party.

  21. There are many reports of unrest and looting in the USA – what’s up? Does anybody know how is it on a scale of a beginning civil war or a media hyped few actions?

    1. These riots and looting are and will remain very localized. Bad where it happens, but not even one thousandth of one percent of our urban communities are rioting.

      I’m personally glad for the riots. Riots are apparently the only way to get sufficient public attention focused on such problems as police abuse to get any substantial corrective action underway.

      So the pain is temporary, but if it gets results, the gain is long term. Sort of like getting cavity fixed. It hurts getting it fixed for a little while but the toothache goes away long term.

      1. what police abuse.

        So often if a black person is stopped by police they embark on a torrent of abuse and if the officer tries to arrest them they assault that officer.
        If people have done nothing wrong and talk to the officer politely then the officer cannot arrest them as they would face a charge of wrongful arrest.

        The disgusting rioters are destroying the homes of innocent people, I hope they burn yours to the ground. and I bet you will phone the police for help.

        You epitomize the intelligent left

        1. Wayne you have your head so far up your ass you will never see daylight.

          I’m a redneck born and bred, and all that sort of shit, own an arsenal, was taught all about Jesus, Heaven and Hell from the time I was old enough to talk, own an arsenal, you name it.

          But I AM intelligent and well informed, even though I come from that background. I actually know a few things about evolution, physics, mathematics, classic literature, history, and reality in general.

          You, obviously, know nothing at all about the day to day reality of life as a minority member of our society.

          It’s true that most of the cops in this country are basically honest and professionally qualified for their positions as law enforcement officers.
          But we have maybe ten to twenty percent that ought to be summarily fired, and out of that lot, maybe every fourth or fifth one ought to be in jail.

          Most of these bad cops seem to be concentrated in larger cities and towns nationwide or else in smaller rural southern counties and towns.

          I know a dozen or so cops on a first name basis. They’re all local and all competent professionals. I’ve met a couple that were corrupt along the way
          over the years. If I were living in say NYC, a place I used to visit quite often,I would know a maybe eight reasonably ethical cops out of that dozen. The others would as likely as not cover up a murder on the part of their personal friends hiding behind their uniforms and badges, and even participate in that murder, just as the cops in this last murder just stood there watching.

          It’s perfectly OBVIOUS they thought they would get away with it, and they would have, except for a bystander recording it happening.

        2. Wayne, you are in the U.K., yes?

          Last year in the U.K., your police killed 3 people. In the U.S., ours killed 933, placing us fifth in the world by total body count. We look a little better if compared per capita, where we then drop to 33rd place globally with a death rate of 28.4 per 10 million people, but we are not in good company. Contrast that figure with the U.K. where it is .5 persons per 10 million. Your police aren’t killing you guys like ours are killing us.

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

          So often if a black person is stopped by police they embark on a torrent of abuse and if the officer tries to arrest them they assault that officer.

          It’s interesting that you emphasize that black people do this. Do white people not do this? Do they do it less, or is there a disparity of response? Is there a disparity of demeanor of the police towards whites vs ethnic minorities? Unequal enforcement of drug laws, and sentencing outcomes by race demonstrate clearly that the law is unequally applied. The argument can be made that the system is working as designed.

          If you break it down by race in the U.S., in 2019, cops shot 370 white people, and 235 blacks, which means that per capita, black people are shot by police 3.62 times more often. Granted, the numbers are very low, .000001478 vs .000005360. (370/250,308,000 vs 235/43,844,800).

          I don’t condone riots. Peaceful civil disobedience is more effective, for one thing, but can you honestly say, based on the public evidence thus far, that the police treatment of George Floyd was justifiable? He was handcuffed during all of this. He appears reasonably compliant.

          Policing is not equally applied in the U.S.. Would John Crawford III have been shot dead while innocently shopping in a Wal-Mart if he’d been white? No. The cops wouldn’t have even been called. He was doing nothing wrong. He was given no chance at self defense.

          Statistically, it is a very small problem, but clearly, from a public relations standpoint, it is not. This is speculation on my part, but that the unrest continues though the officers involved were fired and Chauvin charged with murder, may be due to the additional stresses that people are under due to the pandemic.

    2. At this point, nearly every city in the country with more than 100,000 people has seen some sort of unrest in the form of smashed windows, looted stores, and graffiti. Arson and gun play have been problems in some areas.

      I bet some of the behavior is just due to people letting out their pent up frustration and anger at the covid lockdowns taking away their jobs, entertainment, stores, and freedoms.

      1. I should have made it clear in an earlier comment that I meant only a very few people, out of all of us, are rioting. I should have said one thousandth of one percent of all of our people, not of our urban communities.

  22. I wonder, is wind power cheap? With PPA’s starting out in 2009 at $100 per megawatt, and now in the heartland (windy places) as low as $20 per megawatt, some lower, it seems to be in the range of other power production costs. There is a lot of variation depending upon subsidies, local wind sourcing and installations.

    Wind power purchase agreement prices are at historical lows. After topping out above $70 per
    MegaWatt-hour (MWh) for PPAs executed in 2009, the national average levelized price of wind PPAs
    within the Berkeley Lab sample has dropped to below $20/MWh—though this nationwide average is
    admittedly focused on a sample of projects that largely hail from the lowest-priced Interior region of the
    country, where most of the new capacity built in recent years is located. Focusing only on the Interior
    region, the PPA price decline has been more modest, from around $57/MWh among contracts executed
    in 2009 to below $20/MWh in 2017 and 2018. Today’s low PPA prices have been facilitated by the
    combination of higher capacity factors, declining installed costs and operating costs, and low interest
    rates documented elsewhere in this report; the PTC has also been a key enabler over time.
    • Recent wind power purchase agreements have been priced in the mid-teens in some cases. There are
    a growing number of sub-$20/MWh PPAs. Within our full PPA sample there are 16 projects (all in the
    Interior region) with levelized pricing below $20/MWh. This subset totals 2,468 MW and sells its output
    through 22 different PPAs signed since early 2015. The levelized prices of these 22 PPAs range from
    $9.3/MWh to $19.7/MWh.
    • Despite ultra-low PPA prices, wind faces stiff competition from solar and gas. The once-wide gap
    between wind and solar PPA prices has narrowed considerably in recent years, as solar prices have fallen more rapidly than wind prices. With the support of federal tax incentives, both wind and solar PPA prices are now below the projected cost of burning natural gas in existing gas-fired combined cycle units.
    (bold mine)
    But PPA prices don’t reflect the costs of subsidizing wind power, so let’s look at a project up in Massachusetts, off shore wind power.

    The first-year PPA price for delivery of offshore wind generation and renewable energy
    certificates for the Vineyard Wind LLC project is $74/megawatt-hours (MWh) ($2022)3 for
    facility 1 (400 MW) and $65/MWh ($2023) for facility 2 (400 MW). The PPA (and first-year
    PPA price), however, does not reflect the entire 20-year price schedule or the complete set of
    expected revenue sources and tax benefits available to the Vineyard Wind LLC project. An
    extensive accounting of the 20-year price schedule and expected revenue sources and tax
    benefits inclusive of those that are exogenous to the PPA is conducted in this study to estimate
    the project’s LROE. This metric allows for a more accurate comparison with (unsubsidized)
    bottom-up levelized cost of energy (LCOE) estimates than comparing with the PPA price alone.
    The reader should note that this analysis solely reflects the opinions of the authors and was
    conducted independently of the ongoing evaluation by the Massachusetts Department of Energy
    Resources (DOER) of the PPA between Vineyard Wind LLC and Massachusetts electric
    distribution companies as filed on July 31, 2018. As such, the analysis and conclusions described
    herein do not in any way reflect actual cost data, which are confidential to Vineyard Wind LLC
    and its partners.
    The long-term contractual agreement between Vineyard Wind LLC and Massachusetts EDCs
    was made against the backdrop of declining pricing in recent European offshore wind tenders
    and past offshore wind awards that were made in the United States. The first PPA in the United
    States was signed in 2010 for the 30-MW Block Island Wind Farm between Deepwater Wind
    and National Grid. The contract duration is 20 years, with a starting price of $244/MWh and a
    3.5% annual escalation factor. Subsequent commercial projects include the 90-MW South Fork
    project (reported PPA price of $160/MWh with the Long Island Power Authority), the 120-MW
    Skipjack project (Maryland offshore renewable energy credit [OREC] of $132/MWh)

    Result, offshore wind power is costing about $98 per megawatt-hour.

    Is it economically sustainable? From my chart above, we get approximately 2 GWh production/year/installed MW capacity. Cost to install land based is 1.4 million dollars per MW. Add about 20 percent for maintenance and other costs, making 1.7 million dollars/MW. Lifetime production (25 years) might be 50 GWh. That gives $34 per MWh is needed to pay back the original cost. With royalties, etc. one might say $40 to $45 per in the East and less in the windy Midwest.

    Below is an LCOE chart comparing various power sources. Be aware though that the wind and solar costs do not include the cost of storage or adaptable systems.

    1. GF- “I wonder, is wind power cheap?”

      Lets keep it simple- Yes

      if you are comparing it to the alternatives
      and if you put the turbines in the windy areas.

      For anyone who wants to digest the comparative analysis for themselves (without all the spin),
      here is the 2019 report-
      https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019

      1. Yes, listen to the strawman and follow and follow him down the yellow brick road.

      2. “Lets keep it simple.” Okay, wind farms produce intermittent energy, and there is no storage capacity for such a large amount of electricity. Hence, fossil fuel power plants must be kept operating in back up mode 24/7, burning fuel for nothing. Then, when the wind slackens they must be ramped-up, burning large amounts of fuel. At the end of the day, counting all the EXTRA energy used to manufacture this EXTRA generating capacity, wind farms can cause as much, or MORE, fossil fuels to be consumed than if they did not exist. Did someone mention doing your homework?

        2. Hi Doug,
          Have you really thought this through?
          “Hence, fossil fuel power plants must be kept operating in back up mode 24/7..”

          Lets walk through it. Iowa has lots of wind, and lots of wind turbines.
          From 2001 to 2017 wind energy went from less than 2% up to 37% of total electricity generated.
          At the same time Nat gas went from 1% up to 8%, and
          Coal went from 85% down to 44% of total!
          https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/24/climate/how-electricity-generation-changed-in-your-state.html

          The net effect of adding that wind energy was to offset about 1/3rd of the total coal consumption of the state. And Nat Gas offset 5-10 % of total coal use as well.

          So no- “At the end of the day, counting all the EXTRA energy used to manufacture this EXTRA generating capacity, wind farms can cause as much, or MORE, fossil fuels to be consumed than if they did not exist.”

          That is not how the whole thing shakes out.
          Someone has fed you a false narrative on this.

          At this point, every wind and solar generated joule produced is directly offsetting fossil fuel use.
          btw- the USA net electrical generation grew rapidly in the 20th century, but a strong shift in trend began at 2007- flat since then.

        3. “Burney estimated that the shutdown of coal-fired units over the 12-year timeframe saved 26,610 lives and 570 million bushels of corn, soybeans, and wheat in the immediate vicinities.”

          “On average, counties that had a coal-fired unit shut down either within the county or within about 25 [kilometers] of the county saw a 0.9% drop in local mortality rates after the shutdown.”

          https://www.powermag.com/a-closer-look-at-coal-power-plant-impacts/

          “A modern, natural gas power plant — like the new Huntington Beach Energy Plant — can better control and adjust output and be started and stopped within minutes, enabling a consistent, dependable supply of electricity to balance renewable energy.”

          http://www.renewaeshuntington.com/cleanerfuture.php

          Here comes the bullshit:

          “Hence, fossil fuel power plants must be kept operating in back up mode 24/7, burning fuel for nothing.”

          http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-23-2020/#comment-703676

        4. Doug,

          No need to keep the backup producing power 24/7.

          Peaker plants can be brought online very quickly. There are also weather forecasts which are pretty accurate 24 hours out, so a good estimate of wind power output for the next 24 hours can be made.

          1. Follow on to Dennis’s six one six fifty three.

            Plus gas peaker plants don’t take all that long to ramp up. I’m thinking a couple of hours notice ahead is ample, in terms of the weather forecast.

            Plus the more long distance transmission lines put into service, and the more wind and solar farms tied into the grid, the STEADIER the output of wind and solar power, meaning less hot spinning reserve is needed as a percentage of the total load on the grid.

            This is the first time I’ve seen the hot spinning reserve argument trotted out in quite some time. It USED to be one of the favorite talking points of the fossil fuel camp, but they gave it up a few years back when it became obvious that gas turbine plants can ramp up and down pretty fast. So once gas got to be a big factor compared to coal it got to be easy to fire up one more at a time as needed. It wasn’t necessary to keep a lot of coal fired steam plants hot and ready to go anymore.

            And beyond THAT, nukes CAN ramp up and down, as the French proved on a REGULAR basis, pretty much day in, day out for years, but it’s apparently easier and cheaper for the operators to just run them at a steady pace. Nuclear fuel has been pretty cheap as a rule, and running a plant steady and hard actually puts less wear and tear on it than ramping it up and down.
            American nukes to the best of my knowledge haven’t been operated this way.

            But European countries have been doing so quite some time. The antinuclear camp has been quite successful in preventing the general public from understanding the truth about nuclear ramping possibilities and actualities.

            I don’t advocate building new nukes these days, because renewables have gotten to be so much cheaper and faster to build, but facts are facts. I don’t have access at the moment to my notes on this matter, but I posted a bunch of links about the French nukes being ramped on a daily basis at the old TOD site.

            Here’s one quickie.

            https://www.powermag.com/flexible-operation-of-nuclear-power-plants-ramps-up/

            Flexibility Is a Growing Nuclear Trend

            The decision to boost operational flexibility at nuclear plants is often complicated, the IAEA noted, however. “Technically, newly built nuclear power plants have an advantage in that the planning and design of a plant have generally had flexible operation in mind. However, these systems need to be validated during initial startup testing, and any limitations have to be determined at the beginning of operations. Additionally, the operating license application (safety case) could be developed to support flexible operation.”

            On the other hand, existing nuclear plants that have operated only in baseload mode may need to consider modifications to support frequency control and load-following operations that are dependent on plant design and extent of flexibility requirements. “Licensing changes may also be required, and existing operation and maintenance philosophies may need adjustment to support flexible operation. Commercially, the deviation from baseload operation has to be considered within the electricity market framework, to minimize, eliminate or compensate for the impacts of flexible operation on the efficient use of capital investment while serving the overall energy structure needs.”

            However, according to FORATOM, the Brussels-based trade association for the nuclear energy industry in Europe, the feat isn’t impossible. In countries like France, Germany, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Finland, Switzerland, and Hungary, nuclear power plants (NPPs) have consistently demonstrated that they have actual and noticeable load-following and flexibility maneuvering capabilities. “When combining the different capabilities, power variations of up to 10,000 MW could be absorbed by German NPPs in 2010. In France, with an average of 2 reactors out of 3 available for load variations, the overall power adjustment capacity of the nuclear fleet equates to 21,000 MW (i.e. equivalent to the output of 21 reactors) in less than 30 minutes. In addition, it is also possible to disconnect units temporarily from the grid, and then restart them later. If kept in ‘hot stand-by’ mode, full load can then be resumed within a couple of hours,” FORATOM said in a May 2018 position paper.

            These reactors are compliant with European Utilities Requirements, a set of documents developed by European utilities in 2014 to harmonize design specifications for safe and reliable operation of future nuclear plants. “Actually, nuclear energy appears as being the only large scale, non-weather dependent low carbon technology that is capable” of demonstrating on a grand scale that it can contribute to the stability of the electrical system by adapting to changes in demand and balancing the intermittency of variable renewables, it said (Figure 1).

  23. Do wind turbines kill a lot of birds? Depends what you mean by a lot.

    According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service- the numbers are trivial when compared to other anthropogenic causes of bird kill.
    For example- death due to collision with motor vehicles is about 1000 times more common (where is the outrage?), and death due to cats is more than 10,000 times more likely.
    https://www.statista.com/chart/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-killing-fields-for-birds/

    Lets at least try to be real and honest about these issues.
    Just what is the hidden agenda being pushed onto readers here?

    1. “Wind turbines kill an estimated 140,000 to 328,000 birds each year in North America, making it the most threatening form of green energy. And yet, it’s also one of the most rapidly expanding energy industries: more than 49,000 individual wind turbines now exist across 39 states.”
      Audobon Society 2015 (when there were far less wind turbines)

      What will happen when there are 5 million turbines? That is more than 30 million dead birds per year, 15 million bats and trillions of insects. Some people advocate 3X that, so 100 million dead a year and so on. When they are put in the most convenient and economic places, ignoring environmental cautions, as they will be, then closer to 1 billion per year.
      Humans can beat climate change to the punch if they go all renewable, high energy.

      Cancer grows too and eventually kills all the cells in a body. It’s a growing problem.

      To quote Doug Leighton “Good point. When you integrate all the various ways natural habitats have, and are, being decimated it’s a crisis, period. Saying windows or cats kill more birds to deflect arguments is duplicitous. “

      1. Stop and breathe- think for a moment.

        Coal pollution does so much more damage to the environment in every way, by huge magnitudes.
        Every Joule of electricity produced by wind (and solar) offsets coal use.

        Its not super complex, unless for some reason (?) you are on a mission to make it so.

        1. “Stop and breathe- think for a moment.” Troll language implying I am hyperventilating or hypoxic and that I don’t think.

          “Every Joule of electricity produced by wind (and solar) offsets coal use.”
          False statement, it most likely just promotes growth , overconsumption and implements a vast array of harmful activities. As evidenced by the continued growth of consumption, population, energy, production, development, pollution, etc. Also, see Doug’s response above (http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-23-2020/#comment-703676)
          I have cut my power use for decades, that actually reduces not only coal, natural gas, wind,solar, but all the build and associated industrial activity that goes with it. If people had cut power use by as much as I have, we would have eliminated more than 60 percent of the coal plants long ago (or their equivalent). That is just residential use. If similar practices had extended into the commercial, industrial and government sectors, there would be no need for more than half the power we use.
          So stop with the gizmo tech fixes. If people in the US and elsewhere had been serious about saving energy and reducing general harm, the US could have been running on half energy since 2000 or so and no need of grand future schemes.
          People moan and complain about population and energy, well the range is more than 100 to 1 in energy use per capita in world. Guess who is sucking most of the energy? Let’s face it, all they want is more energy and more stuff.
          Guess who is promoting high energy expensive “tech fixes” to keep their premium lifestyles running a little longer?

          Your holier than thou attitude is more full of holes than Swiss Cheese. Although your latest cherry pick of windy Iowa having so much wind power is kinda cute. It’s a whole state with less than 1 percent of the population of the US and consumes about 1 percent of electric production. But it also burns 3 percent of the US coal consumption. Imagine that. Sure there is a lot of money in subsidized energy production, along with much of it’s farmland running the “renewable” ethanol fuel con game. Just one more subsidized money maker.

          To compare, Iowa’s population had grown to about 3.13 million people in 2016. Statewide energy consumption that year climbed to nearly 1.53 quadrillion Btus — or more than 488 million Btus per Iowan.

          So while the state population grew by about 13 percent over those 56 years, energy consumption per resident more than doubled.

          In 1960, natural gas led the three resources, with the state consuming about 194 trillion Btus, Coal provided 116 Btus. Wind was largely nonexistent as a significant energy source until the 1990s.

          Coal and natural gas first swapped places in 1982, when the state began consuming more coal than natural gas. That trend would hold true until 2016 after years of declining coal use paired with growth in natural gas.

          Coal, despite being the state’s top energy source for decades, has fallen nationwide, due in large part to the cost of natural gas coming down because the supply went up because of increased fracking. What’s more, many Iowa utilities are pursuing more renewable energy resources.
          See here for Iowan energy use, a growing concern.
          https://www.thegazette.com/iowaideas/stories/energy-environment/iowans-use-a-lot-of-energy-heres-how-much-20190503

          1. When you have gone so far down a false path, it gets very hard to make it back to the rational surface.
            Best thing is to release the personal stake you have in the position, and let it fall away.
            Kind of like hitting the refresh on your browser.

          2. “it most likely just promotes growth , overconsumption and implements a vast array of harmful activities”

            Since when is “most likely just promotes” a scientific analysts ?

            Now for a scientific economic analysts:

            “In economics, demand is the quantity of a good that consumers are willing and able to purchase at various prices during a given period of time.[1]

            The relationship between price and quantity demanded is also known as the demand curve. Demand for a specific item is a function of item’s perceived necessity, item’s price, item’s perceived quality, convenience of item, available alternatives, purchasers’ disposable income, purchasers’ tastes, and many other factors.”

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

            ******

            “I have cut my power use for decades”

            But yet you have increased your “power use””with the gizmo tech” blog you continue to post on over the last decade. You can’t have it both ways. So why is your use of “gizmo tech” acceptable and you condemn others for their use?

            ” Your holier than thou attitude is more full of holes than Swiss Cheese.”

            hypocrite- a person who indulges in hypocrisy.

            Go fish BirdBrain

            1. HB – third grade taunting. Stunted maturity is a major problem in developed countries.

      2. “Anywhere between 37 and 120 billion fish are killed on commercial farms each year, with another trillion fish caught and killed in the wild.”

        https://sentientmedia.org/how-many-animals-are-killed-for-food-every-day/

        “Yes, some people like to blow hot air while denigrating others. Mostly they just blow it up their own skirts which reveals their continued errors and agendas. (backfired again). They do not even see their own actions let alone the greater reality.”

        http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-23-2020/#comment-703580

        “destroying river systems and the life that has been using them for countless millenia.”

        http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-23-2020/#comment-703400

        “Good and beneficial for all life. Modern civilization is not a fixed point in the time stream, to be protected at all cost or die trying.”

        http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-23-2020/#comment-703535

        hypocrite- a person who indulges in hypocrisy.

        Go fish BirdBrain

        1. That is so cute, attempting to defend OFM. Maybe next time you could get beyond illogical fallacy and write a coherent statement.

    2. To keep thing straight, I will reaffirm a few simple things on this subject-
      – I do not think that any energy production source is “clean’, just that some are a hell of a lot less damaging than others. Choices come down to the lesser of evils, as long as people exist.
      – The most important energy policy is to simply use less. Hear that all you 7.8B people?
      – I have no vested interest in these discussions, however I do have a strong interest in seeing non-partisan, non religious, reality based perspectives receiving at least a little attention here on this site.
      -It is not relevant to the next 30 years of transition from peak fossil fuel era, to engage in theoretical discussions about just how much energy can be supplied by wind and solar. You just start to work on it (hard) and see how much energy you still have available as you go. It is a false expectation to assume or assert that these fossil fuel alternatives can somehow save the world and allow perpetual growth.
      These efforts of adaptation we undertake all boil down to a managed retreat.

      as a side note- I do not understand the agenda of those who harp continually on the shortcomings of wind and solar, as if it their primary mission in life. Are they paid?, are they bitter?, are they feeling as though they are missing the party?
      Or, do they just not want to see a managed retreat, rather they would prefer a hard and fast crash of humanity as fossil fuels deplete?
      I will point out that a hard and fast crash will involve environmental destruction on a grand scale. If humanity finds itself without adequate fuel, it will go after every bit of coal it can up with, no matter how poor the grade. And it will cut down every single tree on the earth, even twigs. Just to cook some food or heat the hovel. It will be a rapid mass extinction event. Hard stop.

      1. Hickory,

        I think it comes down to a difference in emphasis, you (I do this as well) tend to focus on how we can ramp up wind and solar to replace fossil fuel. Gone fishing tends to focus on using less energy, I doubt very much that he expects that all fossil fuel energy use can be eliminated with lower energy use, but I think his position is that we need to focus on reducing environmental damage by using less of everything, materials, energy, soil, water, etc, I agree with him on that point (and I may have it wrong as he lays out his position in bits and pieces and his position shifts a bit over time as he reads more and gathers more information, true of all of us I hope.)

        Seems to me that we can minimize consumption as much as is feasible, while also trying to replace any remaining fossil fuel use with wind and solar.

        The positions are by no means at odds from my perspective.

        The biggest misunderstanding seems to be that some people seem to believe that the aim is to replace business as usual with some alternative business as usual with wind and solar power replacing all current fossil fuel use, so the bits about changing buildings and appliances to use less energy, building appliances, tools, furniture, and other durable goods so that they will last 100 years or more, designing towns and cities so that neighborhoods are designed for walking and riding bicycles, and widespread availability of post secondary education for women as well as equal right s for women so that total fertility rate falls and population peaks and start to decline by 2050.

        Another factor not considered is that building out a grid to 3 times average load with wind and solar is the least cost solution, but only when environmental costs are ignored, a different analysis that takes account of environmental damage would likely give a different result. Also average load could be reduced with efficiency measures.

        The work of Jacobson et al suggests end use energy would be reduced by 40% for his wind, water, solar plan, end use energy is about 30% of primary energy use, so end use energy would be about 18% of current primary energy use for that plan, by eliminating fossil fuel much of the energy waste in the current system is eliminated.

        Also batteries are not the only storage system, pumped hydro and power to hydrogen or natural gas are also options for storage, along with demand management, which can be as simple as posting electricity prices on a web page (updated hourly) so consumers can manually adjust their energy use.

        1. I have no significant disagreement with you on matters of energy and environmental policies Dennis.
          I obviously do have a dramatically different viewpoint from some others here, and it is certainly more than just a difference in emphasis. I’m not going to sugarcoat it.

          btw- I have no disagreement with the need for using less energy, all around. I purposefully eat much farther down the food chain than most Americans. I traveled an average total combined 6000 miles by motor vehicle (air land and sea) in the past 2 years. And I am a net electricity exporter (photovoltaic). Its more than just words for me.

          1. Everyone,

            My guess is that when people insult each other, communication level decreases. Sometimes if an insult seems necessary maybe wait reread and see if there is a way to get the point across without insults.

            The blog would be better for it.

            1. I wholeheartedly agree with this.
              Anyone- please point out to me if/when I breach this behavior pattern.

              And I will feel free to do the same.
              Best to focus on the issues, and not make/take it personal.

              It seems to me that all are trying to wrap their mind around these various big problems, and that there is no great answer or any particular ‘right’ approach.

      2. Well said Hickory.
        ”These efforts of adaptation we undertake all boil down to a managed retreat. ”

        This is pretty much what I’ve been saying all along, that while most of the world is headed for a very hard crash, some people in some places MIGHT pull thru while preserving some of the better parts of our modern way of life, such as having stores with food, water and sewer, cops, hospitals, maybe even an electric car.

        I wish I had thought of describing our situation as a “managed retreat” myself. It’s a thoughtful expression that will come in handy, and I’m planning on hijacking it, lol. But I thank ya for it, lol. And this comment is my acknowledgement I got it from you.

  24. While we bicker about the relative efficiency of wind power etc. Rome burns.

    LOSS OF LAND-BASED VERTEBRATES IS ACCELERATING

    In 2015, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich coauthored a study declaring the world’s sixth mass extinction was underway. Five years later, Ehrlich and colleagues at other institutions have a grim update: the extinction rate is likely much higher than previously thought and is eroding nature’s ability to provide vital services to people.

    Human pressures, such as population growth, habitat destruction, the wildlife trade, pollution and climate change, critically threaten thousands of species around the world. Ecosystems ranging from coral reefs and mangrove forests to jungles and deserts depend on these species’ long-evolved relationships to maintain their functioning and make them resilient to change. Without this robustness, ecosystems are less and less able to preserve a stable climate, provide freshwater, pollinate crops and protect humanity from natural disasters and disease.

    https://phys.org/news/2020-06-loss-land-based-vertebrates.html

    1. Agreed, like the protesters on the streets the last few nights. We all feel pretty f’n powerless unless we’re f’n someone else. Which is the root of the problem. Ok, I’m going to say it.

      OVERSHOOT, maybe this site should be renamed PeakPeopleF’n. Because the real problem is looking at us in the mirror(and not the backside of one on the ceiling). Maybe we can all agree nothing is going to stop Rome from burning until we get our reproduction under control.

      Make love, not babies

      Peace

    2. If we have entered a mass extinction event, most likely it will proceed.
      However:
      There are multiple factors in the reduction of species populations as well as the increase in the rate of extinctions. Those currently point right back at the activity one species, homo sapiens.
      Concerning the effects of rapid climate change due to global warming, you may want to watch or read the conclusions of this professor of Biosphere and Climate Impacts. It is a field data driven view of how rapid climate changes cause or don’t cause extinction.

      Professor of Biosphere and Climate Impacts Iain Colin Prentice on the history of climate changes, the ways of dealing with changes in climate, and the role of overhunting in extinction of mammalian species.

      ‘People are often surprised when I tell them how many species we know about, how many plant species went extinct at the end of the last ice age. So, the total is one. Plants apparently were very well able to cope.’

      Iain Colin Prentice, Ph.D. in Botany, Cambridge University, AXA Professor of Biosphere and Climate Impacts, Imperial College London

      Rapid Climate Change and Species — Ian Colin Prentice / Serious Science
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFI2ILmM0uY&t=4s

      Read the full text
      http://serious-science.org/rapid-climate-change-and-species-8789

  25. As previously requested, fresh news about wendelstein 7-x project. Apparently, they finished discarding the old divertors and they received the new water cooled ones. Now they are installing them in the device and they think begin a new phase of high temperature plasma formation tests at the end of … 2021. Without doubts, the next thriller tv series is going to be filmed in the Wendelstein 7-x facility… https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Upgrade-of-Wendelstein-7-X-continues

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