Open Thread Non-Petroleum, May 29, 2018

For anybody who regularly comments at Peak Oil Barrel, I am open to guest posts, just email me at peakoilbarrel@gmail.com.  Maybe a short outline or synopsis first, to see if I like the post, then just email the post after the outline/synopsis is approved.  Thanks.

Comments not related to oil and natural gas in this thread please.

Thank you.

284 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, May 29, 2018”

  1. Help, I Need Help

    Someone help me out here. I have a paradox that I just cannot solve.

    In 2013, the European Space Agency’s Planck space mission released the most accurate map of the universe’s oldest light. The map revealed that the universe is 13.8 years old. Planck calculated the age by studying the cosmic microwave background. It all began with the Big Bang. So far, so good, but here is the problem I have:
    Farthest Known Galaxy in the Universe Discovered

    The new record holder is the galaxy MACS0647-JD, which is about 13.3 billion light-years away. The universe itself is only 13.7 billion years old, so this galaxy’s light has been traveling toward us for almost the whole history of space and time.

    But the light from this newly discovered galaxy began its journey toward us 13.3 billion years ago. In other words, and this the important point, this galaxy was at the point where out telescope observe it now, 13.3 billion years ago, just 500 million years after the Big Bang.

    Okay, now suppose we turn our telescope in the exact opposite direction. I am sure we would find a galaxy, at least 13 billion light years distant in that direction also. In other words, we could turn our telescope in any direction and find a galaxy 13 billion light years distant, and we are seeing those galaxies as they were 13 billion years ago and where they were 13 billion years ago. As my Space.com link says: so this galaxy’s light has been traveling toward us for almost the whole history of space and time.

    Now here is the paradox. 13 billion years ago, just 800 million years after the Big Bang, our observable universe was already a sphere at least 26 billion light years in diameter. And the light from these distant galaxies has been traveling toward us for almost the whole history of space and time. How did they all get out there in less than one billion years? Even if the universe is expanding at the speed of light, it would have taken 13 billion years to get out there and 13 billion years for the light from that galaxy to travel back to us. That’s 26 billion years.

    So, you see the paradox. And no, it wasn’t cosmic inflation. That period was over at approximately 1×10-32 seconds after the big bang and the universe, immediately after inflation, was still just a gob of hot opaque plasma about the size of a grapefruit. There has to be another explanation. I know some astronomer or cosmologists has explained this somewhere, but I just cannot find it.

    1. Distance = time x speed doesn’t work in an expanding universe, you have to go to general relativity equations, and I’m staying here with Newton.

      1. Distance = time x speed doesn’t work in an expanding universe, you have to go to general relativity equations,…

        Oh for goodness sake, who said that? Got a link? The universe has always been expanding. And the fact that the universe is expanding doesn’t change the fact that it takes light one year to travel the distance of one light year. That is fundamental. And are you going to argue with the Space.com link I posted?
        so this galaxy’s light has been traveling toward us for almost the whole history of space and time.

        Your explanation is not an explanation at all George.

        1. No, it’s not a fundamental, it only works for ‘short’ times or distances. Time is not a constant, the speed of light is. You’d have to go through a general relativity course to see the differences, which I did many years ago. It’s still beyond me and most other people I think, but there it is.

          1. No, it’s not a fundamental, it only works for ‘short’ times or distances.

            It takes light one year to travel the distance of one light year. But you are saying that only works for short distances? Really George? And those folks at Space.com just haven’t gotten the word. Or perhaps they did not attend that course on general relativity.

            George, really? The sun is eight light seconds from earth. It takes light eight seconds for the light to get from the sun to us. Alpha Centauri is 4.37 light years away. It takes light exactly 4. 37 years to reach us from Alpha Centauri. The distance to the Andromeda Galaxy is 2,537,497 light-years. It takes light 2,537,497 years to reach us from Andromeda. And the average distance to galaxies in the Coma Cluster is 321,000,000 light years. And that is also how long it takes light from the Coma Cluster to reach us? At what distance out in space does the speed of light stop traveling at the speed of light and start traveling at some other speed? At what distance is the “only short times or distances” where the speed of light does not take one year to travel exactly one light year distance?

            so this galaxy’s light has been traveling toward us for almost the whole history of space and time.
            Is that statement true or false?

            1. It takes about eight of our seconds, it takes none of the light’s seconds. If you happen to be walking a a bit faster than me then it would be slightly shorter for you, but many many decimal points. That is relativity and why it took Einstein to figure it out. Actually that is special relativity, if the reference frames are accelerating like in an expanding universe it’s even more complicated and becomes general relativity.

            2. It takes about eight of our seconds, it takes none of the light’s seconds.

              George, I know that but that still does not explain the paradox. A galaxy is not a light wave. As a galaxy is expanding, like our galaxy is right now, time does not stand still and light still arrives at us, and leaves us, at exactly the speed of light. As that galaxy was expanding from the source of the Big Bang, light still left it at the speed of light. It did not experience “no time lapse” because of the speed it was traveling.

              You are apparently saying, and correct me if I am wrong, but you are saying that it did not take 13 billion years for that galaxy to travel 13 billion light years from the point of the Big Bang. How long do you think it took? Was it traveling faster than the speed of light?

            3. You can only say 13 billion years in terms of a given frame of reference. It means different things to different entities if they are moving at different speeds (standing still and the speed we move at through space are effectively the same for most calculations so Newton works on Earth), and more so if they are accelerating. I can just about get special relativity, but general relativity is really difficult. I think you are supposed to think about an expanding balloon and how something travelling at a constant speed on the surface travels a different distance depending on how expanded the balloon is. Effectively everything moves at the speed of light, you can move through time or space, so the faster you go the slower is time. But if space is expanding you’ve got another problem to deal with, but no matter what the speed of light stays the same, if I learnt nothing else it was that.

            4. Okay, whatever you say George. But when you wrote: it only works for ‘short’ times or distances., that was enough for me.

              Thanks for the exchange.

            5. It should have been enough, but not in the way you mean. There’s no paradox when your calculation is wrong. I tried to avoid maths terms but it’s not as simple as integrating c=dx/dt to give ct=x when x and t are interdependent, as they are in an expanding universe. Or if you do so you have to be certain the x and t you are talking about are in the same reference, or if distances and time are small (a few light years, millions rather than billions of years etc.) then it becomes delta x = c.delta t, and that works close enough.

            6. Ron, from what I skimmed of your comments, unsure what you are looking for exactly, but maybe you are already aware of some kind of ‘particle(/light) horizon‘, where apparently, space is expanding so fast that some things beyond some point can never be seen again.

              “Help, I Need Help” ~ Ron Patterson

              LOL

            7. Ron,

              Have you taken a course in General Relativity?

              Many undergraduates (myself included) never get more than a cursory understanding of General Relativity.

              Note that this is much more difficult to understand than “special” relativity, which most undergraduate physics and engineering majors (in the US) are familiar with.

              See

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

              https://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html

              I however do not understand General Relativity well enough to answer your question.

              Maybe Doug knows, he may understand General Relativity.

            8. Hi Dennis,

              “Maybe Doug knows, he may understand General Relativity.”

              Well to really understand General Relativity you must start with various mathematical structures and techniques. The main tools used in this are tensor fields defined on a Lorentzian manifold representing spacetime. Like many things, knowing the math and understanding it are two different things. I THINK I understand General Relativity. But……..

            9. Doug,

              You are way ahead of me as I don’t know that mathematics. Is it correct to say that the speed of light is only constant in non-accelerating frames of reference? I once knew special relativity (where c is a constant), but General Relativity is beyond me.

            10. An accelerating reference frame is a reference frame which is speeding up, slowing down, or changing direction. Inertial reference frames are reference frames which move at a constant velocity. An accelerating reference frame is no longer applicable to special relativity and is instead discussed with the more complicated set of mathematics called general relativity. Does this relate to your question?

            11. Doug,

              Yes that was my understanding. Thanks.

              It seems there are different interpretations of whether c is a constant in General Relativity.

              Supposedly according to Einstein’s original formulation of General Relativity (based on Wikipedia article on variable light speed), c is not fixed in General Relativity.

              Is that your understanding as well?

            12. No, the speed of light is a constant. Though recently some scientists have argued that the speed of light has changed, Einstein would definitely disagree. Bold mine in the quote below.

              Speed of light may have changed recently

              A varying speed of light contradicts Einstein’s theory of relativity, and would undermine much of traditional physics. But some physicists believe it would elegantly explain puzzling cosmological phenomena such as the nearly uniform temperature of the universe. It might also support string theories that predict extra spatial dimensions.

            13. Hi Dennis,

              You have posed an interesting question. I just finished a long discussion about this with my Daughter after looking for a non-mathematical answer. She reminded me that Einstein in his paper introducing special relativity stated, “Light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body.” Einstein specifically stated that light speed is only constant in the vacuum of empty space, using equations that only held in linear and parallel inertial frames. But, when he started to investigate accelerated reference frames, Einstein noticed that “the principle of the constancy of light must be modified” for accelerating frames of reference.” IOW the speed of light depends on position when measured by a non-inertial observer.

              You may recall the fact that the speed of light depends on position when measured by a non-inertial observer is an established fact routinely used by some types of laser gyroscopes. This is commonly referred to as the Sagnac Effect. There you have it.

              For an in-depth analysis of the speed of light in an accelerated frame, I recommend: “Explorations in Mathematical Physics” by D. Koks (Springer, 2006).

            14. Hightrekker, if you were just outside of a black hole’s event horizon, or somewhere within it, and shone light away from the black hole, would the light beam be going any slower? Also, how would time and space at that instant affect how you interacted with your light-device and your ability to operate it? I mean, would your ass be stretched out relative to your arm? If so, how would it feel? Lastly, how would an observer of your efforts in that regard on a distant-but-not-to-distant planet viewing your video transmission interpret things? Would they even see anything/receive the transmission? Or would they be tempted to pretend they don’t see anything?

              Incidentally, is a cluster of galaxies colliding with each called a ‘galaxy clusterfuck’?

              …Edit:

              Speed of light in a gravitational field?

              “In GR the speed of light is locally invariant, that is if you measure the speed of light at your location you’ll always get the value c. However if you measure the speed of light at some distant location you may find it to be less than c. The obvious example of this is a black hole, where the speed of light falls as it approaches the event horizon and indeed slows to zero at the event horizon.”

            15. An accelerating frame can also be one in a gravitational field – which is the usual way general relativity gets used. One of Einstein’s most important yet simple insights was that experiencing a gravitational field is indistinguishable from experiencing constant acceleration in free space (i.e. on Earth F=ma is exactly the same as F=mg).

            16. And then relative time starts messing up too, yes? If recalled, gravity slows time down relative to some point further outside of its influence, yes? I seem to recall reading, some time ago, an experiment with flying an atomic clock in a plane vis-a-vis another on Earth that was initially synchronous. If so, I suppose acceleration would do the same thing?

            17. Moving in an orbit is acceleration – the absolute speed doesn’t change but the direction does. Time runs differently depending on speed only, that is the fundamental stuff of special relativity, it may do so as well if acceleration/gravity changes but speed is matched (is that even possible to set up?), but that is a bit beyond my knowledge.

            18. Thanks Doug,

              Your knowledge of physics is quite a bit better than mine. I read that at the Wikipedia, usually Wikipedia is pretty good, if it’s wrong an expert corrects it.

              Most people (including me) never get beyond special relativity. From what I have been told, by my daughter who studied physics and philosophy at Oxford, General Relativity is quite a bit more challenging than special relativity, where as you know, the frame of reference is non-inertial (constant velocity, i.e. not accelerating).

          2. “Time is not a constant, the speed of light is.”

            Now there’s a paradox if I ever saw one! Speed is defined as distance traveled per unit time so, if a unit of time is not a constant, neither can any quantity that is defined by it be a constant. Anybody see what I am getting at here?

            To be honest, I consider this stuff way over my head and just marvel at the way things are what they are!

            1. The Grand Unification Theory might be a fool’s errand. ‘u^

            2. I never did learn general relativity properly, partly because it’s surprisingly unimportant; unless you do astronomy, you only need it occasionally, since the difference from non-general-relativity models is usually insignificant at less than astronomical scales. Quantum mechanics, by contrast, you need pretty much all the time for nearly any work on chemistry or materials science. I learned the very basics of that — not nearly enough, frankly.

            3. I also learned some Quantum Mechanics, but only at an introductory level. General relativity is indeed more relevant in astrophysics.

    2. Damn good question! Thats the only thing of relative certainty I know about the topic.

    3. Ron,

      Google “Why is the Universe Flat” (and not spherical) and I think you will quickly find the answer to your question. Here’s a quote from

      https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_shape.html

      “Recent measurements (c. 2001) by a number of ground-based and balloon-based experiments, including MAT/TOCO, Boomerang, Maxima, and DASI, have shown that the brightest spots are about 1 degree across. Thus the universe was known to be flat to within about 15% accuracy prior to the WMAP results. WMAP has confirmed this result with very high accuracy and precision. We now know (as of 2013) that the universe is flat with only a 0.4% margin of error.”

      There’s a You-Tube of Lawrence Krauss (of Physics of Star Trek fame) explaining this with cosmic microwave background data (from WMAP and earlier experiments) – where the CMB mapped on the sky represents one side of a triangle with you at its opposite apex looking out along its two other sides. The angles of the triangle can then be measured, which will add up to 180 degrees in a flat (Euclidean) universe, more than 180 in a closed universe and less than 180 in an open universe. Krauss: Why the universe probably is flat (video).

      BTW Finding, that the universe was remarkably flat, came at the turn of the century around the same time that the 1998 accelerated expansion finding was announced.

      “Also, given how little relevance conventional matter appears to have in our universe’s geometry, one might question the continuing relevance of the Friedmann equations in modern cosmology. There is more recent interest in the De Sitter universe, another Einstein field equation solution which models a universe with no matter content – its expansion and evolution being entirely the result of the cosmological constant. De Sitter universes, at least on paper, can be made to expand with accelerating expansion and remain spatially flat – much like our universe. From this, it is tempting to suggest that universes naturally stay flat while they undergo accelerated expansion – because that’s what universes do, their contents having little direct influence on their long-term evolution or their large-scale geometry.”

      Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2011-10-flat-universe.html#jCp

      1. Doug, thanks for the post and the link. I went to the link and found no answer to my paradox. It never even broached the subject. I also went to this 5.5 minute youtube video, Possible shapes of the universe – Ask a Spaceman!, and got a fantastic definition of what is meant by a flat universe. No, it does not mean that the universe is shaped like a pancake, it simply means that two parallel lines drawn into space, will never merge or move farther apart. They will remain parallel forever.

        I was not implying that the universe was a sphere. I simply meant that no matter in which direction we look we still see universe. It appears that we are in the center of a sphere, though the actual shape may not be a sphere at all. But it is definitely not a shaped like a pancake. And as I said, it was that way 13 billion years ago.

        The fact that the universe is flat does not even address my paradox. At least if it does I am at a loss to see where it does.

        1. It’s the speed of light versus the increasing speed (with distance) of the expanding universe. The speed of expansion equaling the speed of light is near the distance that galaxy was observed.

          1. Yes Fish, I agree 100% with all that. But even if the galaxy was expanding at the speed of light relative to the point of the Big Bang, it would still have taken it 13.3 billion years to reach the point where we observe it today. We are seeing that galaxy where it was 13.3 billion years ago. And that light hitting our telescopes today left that galaxy 13.3 billion years ago. Add them up.

        2. Ron,

          Try

          https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_accel.html

          There are a number of other observations that are suggestive of the need for a cosmological constant. For example, if the cosmological constant today comprises most of the energy density of the universe, then the extrapolated age of the universe is much larger than it would be without such a term, which helps avoid the dilemma that the extrapolated age of the universe is younger than some of the oldest stars we observe! A cosmological constant term added to the standard model Big Bang theory leads to a model that appears to be consistent with the observed large-scale distribution of galaxies and clusters, with WMAP’s measurements of cosmic microwave background fluctuations, and with the observed properties of X-ray clusters.

          1. Dennis, thanks for the reply. Yes, I have been reading a lot about the cosmological constant lately, in preparation for the chapter of my book about the fine-tuned universe. It is called Lambda. Martin Rees has it as one of his six numbers in his great book Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe The book is all about the fine-tuned universe. I actually bought the book, in hardback, about six months before I left for Mexico. But I could not bring all my books with me because of the weight. But I read it before I left.

            However, the cosmological constant is all about dark energy, and why the expansion of the universe is accelerating. It really does not address my paradox whatsoever.

            1. The paradox comes from assuming the speed of light is always constant. Try

              http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/speed_of_light.html

              And see especially the section on General relativity. Basically light that is far away in a non-inertial (aka accelerating) frame of reference is not well defined.

              So your paradox results from assuming that light in any frame of reference whether it is near or far is equal to c.

              That is incorrect, but let’s see what Doug and others think because they have actually studied this stuff, I have not.

            2. One more try, see the Einstein updated proposals 1905-1915 at

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

              Division by a vector is not defined, so there is no other way to interpret the velocity of light in this usage except as a variable scalar speed.

              Not everyone seems to agree on this point however, I’ll go with Einstein on this one. 🙂

        3. Ron,

          When light travels from a quasar to us it doesn’t travel through a snapshot of the universe at fixed time. Think of it as starting in the early universe, when things are much closer together, and arriving in the present, when things are further apart. Therefore, it doesn’t “see” the whole proper distance. You can calculate the “look back time” from the redshift as well. Of course calculating the proper distance, you must make some assumptions about what is in the universe (since that affects the expansion history).

          To calculate the look back time (you multiply the result by the inverse of the Hubble constant to get the final number).

          https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/10295/how-do-you-calculate-the-lookback-time-distance-to-a-given-galaxy

          https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Hogg/Hogg10.html

          1. Doug, thanks for the post. For starters, neither of your links works for me. I don’t have permission to view either, or at least that was the message I received.

            Yes, I am very familiar with redshift and all that. But I am still hung up on this phrase from Space.com: so this galaxy’s light has been traveling toward us for almost the whole history of space and time. And when I look in the exact opposite direction I will see another galaxy who’s light has been traveling toward us for almost the whole history of space and time. And from that, I can only come to one conclusion: I am looking at two galaxies who were 26 billion light years apart 13 billion years ago. There is just no way to bend those light rays back to a single starting point at, or very near, the Big Bang starting point.

            1. “For starters, neither of your links works for me.”

              Sorry Ron, I’ve replaced (and tested) them. I collect stuff and over time it disappears from the net.

            2. Ron, I’m unsure your paradox as you frame it is understood.

              “I can only come to one conclusion: I am looking at two galaxies who were 26 billion light years apart 13 billion years ago.” ~ Ron Patterson

              Why would two galaxies 13 billion years ago be 26 billion light years apart? They should be roughly .77 x 2 billion year apart, yes?

              How has light from 13 billion years ago not passed us by?

            3. Radius, Or A Slice of Universe Pie for Ron

              “And that light hitting our telescopes today left that galaxy 13.3 billion years ago. Add them up.” ~ Ron Patterson

              The universe expands around a central Big Bang point, but for distance from the central point to the ‘middle’ (where we are) we would only appear to need to concern ourselves with the radius, rather than diameter, yes? This is because the other ‘equidistant’ galaxy, looking the other way, still travelled the same distance from the central Big Bang point. There was no extra distance to travel, so no extra distance to add up.

              If so, that might be the problem– ‘adding them up’. I am unsure you need to and if you don’t, then there appears no paradox.

              “I am looking at two galaxies who were 26 billion light years apart 13 billion years ago.” ~ Ron Patterson

              Size of Universe After Inflation?

              “That happened 379,000 years after the big bang at a redshift of 1098 which means the universe was about 84.6 million light years in diameter which, per WolframAlpha, is about half the diameter of the local super cluster of galaxies or about 840 times the diameter of our galaxy.”

              Best with your book. Feel free to let us know how it goes.

              Geometrics 4

          2. Put another way, the reason why the light travel time of X billion years is between the emission distance and the current distance is the expansion rate has been slowing down for most of the past X billion years. Early-on, the expansion was extremely fast, so fast that a light ray starting Y million light years away traveling towards us was actually losing ground: the expansion created more space between us and the light ray than the light ray could traverse at any given time. Eventually the expansion slowed to the point that this light ray was able to start making headway, eventually arriving at Earth some X billion years after it started.

            Reference https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/distances-to-galaxies-using-the-hubble-relation-look-back-time.585644/

            1. From your link, changing your Xs to the actual numbers in the link:
              The reason why the light travel time of 13.7 billion years is between the emission distance and the current distance is that the expansion rate has been slowing down for most of the past 13.7 billion years. Early-on, the expansion was extremely fast, so fast that a light ray starting 43 million light years away traveling towards us was actually losing ground: the expansion created more space between us and the light ray than the light ray could traverse at any given time. Eventually, the expansion slowed to the point that this light ray was able to start making headway, eventually arriving at Earth some 13.7 billion years after it started.

              Doug, this “PhysicsForum” blog where you got this appears to be a blog where people just log in and state their opinions and explanations, kinda like this blog. And some even use pseudo names like Chalnoth. (Shall Not?) And I am not at all sure some of these pseudo science advisors know what the hell they are talking about. There is just no way the universe was expanding so fast that it took light rays starting just 43 million light-years away, 13.7 years to reach us. The universe was never expanding that fast. That is just poppycock. Anyway, the expansion of the universe is accelerating, not slowing down. Seven years ago, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astronomers for their discovery, in the late 1990s, that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace. That’s what this thing called “Dark Energy” is all about. And the amount of energy in dark energy is called “The Cosmological Constant”. It is causing the rate of expansion of the universe to accelerate.

              Okay, enough, I am finished here.

              Thanks, everyone for the exchange.

        4. A “connected” universe does address you paradox. For example, the equator is about 40K kilometers long. But standing anywhere on the equator, I can travel 40k and even more along the equator in either direction!

          How is this possible? It turns out the two “ends” of the equator aren’t ends at all, but connected. So I can go as far as I want.

          But of course the surface of the Earth is curved. Can a 3 space be flat and connected? That is where issue of flatness comes up. And it turns out that flatness is only possible with specific kinds of connectedness.

    4. The galaxy in question is now over 46 billion light years away due to the universe expanding at 70 kilometers per second per megaparsec. Space where we observe that galaxy is expanding at near the speed of light. Space further away is expanding faster than the speed of light. We will never be able to see galaxies further than 17 Gly . However galaxies between 14 Gly and 17 Gly will continue to come into view over time as the light finally reaches us.

      1. Fish, yes, I agree. And yes I have read that the known universe is now 46.5 billion light years in radius. And that is just the known universe. The actual size of the universe is unknown. But none of this addresses my paradox.

        1. First Galaxies Born Sooner After Big Bang Than Thought

          “MACS0647-JD is a candidate, based on a photometric redshift estimate, for the farthest known galaxy from Earth at a redshift of about z = 10.7 – 11, equivalent to a light travel distance of 13.3 billion light-years (4 billion parsecs). If the distance estimate is correct, it formed 420 million years after the Big Bang.” ~ Wikipedia

          Astronomers find one of the oldest known object in the Universe, formed only a billion years after Big Bang

          “…Seeing an object within the first billion years is remarkable because the universe was fully ionized, that is, it was too hot and too uniform to form anything for the first 400 million years.”

    5. Ah, I’m sorry I missed all the fun stuff today! 😉
      But it seems Doug, Gone Fishing and George Kaplan have all pretty much pointed you in the right direction.

      I won’t pretended to truly undersand General Relativity but this site might give some insights.

      http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/C/cosmological+redshift

      …At larger distances (higher redshifts), using the theory of general relativity gives a more accurate relation for recession velocities, which can be greater than the speed of light. Note this doesn’t break the ultimate speed limit of c in Special Relativity as nothing is actually moving at that speed, rather the entire distance between the receding object and us is increasing. This is a complex formula requiring knowledge of the overall expansion history of the universe to calculate correctly but a simple recession velocity is given by multiplying the comoving distance (D) of the object by the Hubble parameter at that redshift (H) as:

      BTW, The graphic below of the cosmological redshift is my rendition of one that Laurence Krauss had in his talk on the Universe from Nothing in which he touches on your question when he explains why the universe is flat and expanding. Basically it shows evenly spaced galaxies in an expanding universe at T1 and T2 and then the two are superimposed to show the redshift.
      .

      1. If the light from MACS0647-JD actually traveled the 13 billion light years distance then
        MACS0647-JD was much closer when the light was emitted due to expansion of the universe during travel time.

        1. “….actually traveled the 13 billion light years distance…”

          Except that astronomers don’t generally think in terms of light years but redshift. And, describing the cosmological expansion origin of redshift, cosmologist Edward Harrison famously said, “Light leaves a galaxy, which is stationary in its local region of space, and is eventually received by observers who are stationary in their own local region of space. Between the galaxy and the observer, light travels through vast regions of expanding space. As a result, all wavelengths of the light are stretched by the expansion of space. It is as simple as that…”

          1. Actually, astronomers think in many terms of distance and measurement. Red shift is only one of the multiple measures of distance and time.

            Stationary in their own local region of space? All that means is something is not moving relative to itself.
            Light is not stretched, space is stretched. Our space is bigger than the space it left. Light loses energy as it travels through a changing space time continuum. E=hv as long as c is constant.
            However, in an expanding universe is c actually a constant? Since c depends on distance and d is a variable.

            Fun working in relative space, isn’t it. No place to put an anchor in the universe since position is not definable in an absolute sense.

            1. Stationary in their own local region of space? All that means is something is not moving relative to itself.

              No, what they are talking about is galactic clusters. Galaxies, on average, are not moving apart within their clusters. The Coma cluster and the Virgo, our cluster, are not getting bigger. Galaxies are, on average, stationary within their cluster though they are moving within the cluster due to gravity. But the clusters are moving further apart from each other.

              But this is no small effect. The Coma cluster contains about 1,000 galaxies and they are, on average, not moving apart from each other.

              Light is not stretched, space is stretched.

              Naaaah, I a slight nitpick here. Of course, space is expanding but the light waves are also being stretched because of the Doppler effect.

            2. Galaxy clusters are stationary? They don’t influence each other gravitationally and orbit each other? Gravity has been repealed?

              So light is stretching space?

              ROFL

            3. Hey please try to read my post before ROLF. What I said was:

              Galaxies are, on average, stationary within their cluster though they are moving within the cluster due to gravity. But the clusters are moving further apart from each other.

              Now you can ROLF.

              What does a galaxy orbit?
              On a larger scale, the Local Group is part of the Virgo Supercluster. It contains many other galaxy clusters. It, too, has a center of mass. But all the galaxy clusters are not “orbiting” this center of mass. They are merely bound together, thanks to gravity.

              Our cluster, the Virgo supercluster, is not orbiting anything. It is moving further apart from the Como cluster because of the expansion of space. And the galaxies within Virgo are not orbiting anything either. But gravity does have its effect. Tiny dwarf galaxies do orbit the Milky Way, but the Andromeda Galaxy, our closest non-dwarf galaxy, does not orbit the Milky Way. But it is moving toward us and will collide with the Milky Way in a few billion years.

              Now you can ROLF a little more.

              So light is stretching space?

              And no, light is not stretching space. No one said that. It is very rude to try to put words in peoples mouth that they never uttered… or wrote.

            4. Yawn, think I’ll walk my dog. That will be (much) more informative and provide me some exercise as well. Besides, there’s more solace in the Einstein field equations than listening to abecedarian cosmologists rattling on about this and that. My final comment: Paradox, what paradox? I guess I’m just too dumb to see one. Goodbye guys, it’s been nice knowing you.

            5. Bye Doug. Have fun with your dog. I don’t see the paradox myself.

    6. Well, if the universe is a three torus, your 26bn light years isn’t correct.

      Imagine being in a cubic room with a door in the middle of each wall and a trap door in the middle of the floor and ceiling. If you exit left, you come back in from the right, and see your back exiting. The same applies to front and back, and the two trap doors.

      This is something like flying east all the way around the world and coming back to where you came from from the West. Also, if you left all four doors open and stood in the middle of the room (being careful not to fall through the trap door!), you would think you are in a hall of mirrors, seeing an infinite number of images of yourself through the doors.

      In our universe the room would be 13bn light years across, so if you the universe was static, look straight to the left, you would see the Earth 13 bn years ago. You wouldn’t see a hall of mirrors because the room is too big. Of course, the universe isn’t static and the Earth isn’t 13 bn years old, so you don’t see the Earth when you look far enough. This makes the whole thing very messy, but you get the idea, I hope.

      Incidentally, there is a subtle difference to Euclidean 3 space: If you had a hook on the floor and you tied a rope to it, and pulled the rope through the door on the left, and took the end back to the hook where the loop began, then no matter how hard you pulled, you would not be able to reduce the size of the loop to zero, even though no physical object was in the way. In Euclidean space, this is never possible: all loops in a rope are contractable, unless some object is in the way.

      But the key point is that even though you can have a straight taught rope that seems to stretch out though both walls, and thus be longer than the room is wide, it actually isn’t any longer. The rope would look infinitely long in the hall of mirrors, but it would physically be as long as the room is wide.

    7. Ron, I suggest you read https://www.space.com/33306-how-does-the-universe-expand-faster-than-light.html

      The expansion rate of space is uniform, and it’s 68 km/s per megaparsec (a megaparsec is 3.26 million light years). So this “means that if you look at a galaxy 1 megaparsec away, it will appear to be receding away from us at 68 km/s. If you look at a galaxy 2 megaparsec away, it recedes at 136 km/s”.

      So at some point, two galaxies sufficiently far away from each other are “moving” (they are not really moving) away from each other faster than the speed of light.

      This is does not violate the law that nothing can move faster than the speed of light, because this law is only referring to the speed at which things move through space, it’s not referring to any limit to the “speed” at which space itself can expand.

      So your two galaxies 26 billion light years away from each other are “moving” away from each other faster than the speed of light, which is the answer to your paradox. See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pobcjRAX3o

      1. Coilin, I never had any doubt that the universe could expand faster than the speed of light. However no galaxy we can see is receding us at faster than the speed of light. If it was, we would not be able to see it.

        So your two galaxies 26 billion light years away from each other are “moving” away from each other faster than the speed of light, which is the answer to your paradox.

        Yes, I know they are receding each other at faster than light, but neither is receding us at faster than the speed of light.

        And no, that has nothing to do with my paradox. However, I have received sufficient data from others here that I am satisfied I have the answer, or close to it anyway.

        However, thanks for the post even though it had nothing to do with my question.

    8. Ron,

      I believe others have already answered your question. The current Lambda-CDM model would explain your question through inflation and dark energy (both cases space expands >> c).
      This is not a general relativity problem as others have argued. Since all observers in the universe would calculate the age of the universe at ~ 13.7 billion years.
      I’ve taken a course on GR at university, possibly one of the hardest subjects I’ve studied.

      1. Iron Mike, I am glad you had a course in General Relativity. I have not. However:

        The current Lambda-CDM model would explain your question through inflation and dark energy (both cases space expands >> c).

        No, inflation has nothing to do with the problem or the explanation. Inflation was over way before the universe was one second old. And the size of the universe after inflation was about the size of a golf ball or a grapefruit, estimates vary. But dark energy? What the hell has that to do with anything. Dark energy is what is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. Meaning it had to be slower in the past.

        I don’t mean to be mean Mike, but you are just not a lot of help here, despite the fact that you took a course in general relativity.

        1. The detectable universe, the particle horizon, points back to a small universe; toward the Big Bang. The actual universe is much larger and the portion we can detect and calculate is only a small portion of the actual universe. The calculated size of the universe is derived from the portion we can see and does not account for the rest.
          How inflation is changing is also a mystery. While the estimate of 92 billion light-years comes from the idea of a constant rate of inflation, many scientists think that the rate is slowing down. If the universe expanded at the speed of light during inflation, it should be 10^23, or 100 sextillion.

          Instead of taking one measurement method, a team of scientists led by Mihran Vardanyan at the University of Oxford did a statistical analysis of all of the results. By using Bayesian model averaging, which focuses on how likely a model is to be correct given the data, rather than asking how well the model itself fits the data. They found that the universe is at least 250 times larger than the observable universe, or at least 7 trillion light-years across.

          “That’s big, but actually more tightly constrained that many other models,” according to MIT Technology Review, which first reported the 2011 story.

          https://www.space.com/24073-how-big-is-the-universe.html

          The universe is actually very big place and so there is no paradox. We just can’t see most of it and calculated size depends upon the assumptions.

          1. The universe is actually very big place and so there is no paradox.

            That is what is called a non-sequitur. I agree that the universe is a very big place. But it does not follow that this means there is no paradox. You cannot say that there is no paradox by simply explaining: “Hey man, it’s big, man it is really big”.

            Okay, I agree, it’s fucking big. Well hell, at least we can agree on that. 😉

            1. “Universes don’t have paradoxes, paradoxes have universes.” ~ Peter Jordanson

            2. Kissy, of course, you just made that shit up. Nevertheless, it sounds exactly like something Jordan Pederson would say. I love it. Thanks for the comic relief. 😉

            3. Kissy, I can understand Ron not understanding what Peterson was getting at, ideas taking over people, but I am surprised at you. Unless you were just taunting.

        2. Ron,

          How did they all get out there in less than one billion years?

          Can you elaborate what you mean by this question please.

        3. Hi Ron,

          I spent some time thinking about your question again. If i understand your question properly this might help answer it.

          Any object with redshift z ~ 1.4 is receding from us > c.
          But we see objects like the one you posted, with redshift z ~11. CMB has a redshift z~1090.
          When the photons from that galaxy left ~ 400 million years ago. Only if those photons reach space-time, where space-time is receding away from us < c , their light will reach us. So any object with z greater or equal to 1.4 has the potential to reach us only if their light reaches these regions in space-time where recession from us < c.

          I hope that helps a little.

          1. When the photons from that galaxy left ~ 400 million years ago. Only if those photons reach space-time, where space-time is receding away from us < c , their light will reach us.

            No, I am afraid that doesn’t help much. The photons left that galaxy 13.3 billion years ago, not 400 million years ago. Perhaps you meant they left when the universe was only 400 million years old.

            Okay, that would mean that galaxy, at that point in time, was less than 400 million light years distant. But space was expanding so fast that it still took light from that galaxy 13.3 billion years to reach us. Is that what you are saying?

            Well hell, it’s that simple? Why the hell didn’t someone just explain it that way when I first posed the question?

            But the universe would look very, very different just 400 million years after the Big Bang. Really? Is that what we are looking at? Somehow that just don’t seem quite right.

            1. Sorry yes, i meant 400 million years after the big bang.

              Okay, that would mean that galaxy, at that point in time, was less than 400 million light years distant. But space was expanding so fast that it still took light from that galaxy 13.3 billion years to reach us. Is that what you are saying?

              Yes basically that is it. More likely than not, that galaxy was once quite close to us and has been receding ever since and we are now seeing its light.

              But the universe would look very, very different just 400 million years after the Big Bang. Really? Is that what we are looking at?

              It sure would, however there is good evidence of dwarf irregular and spiral galaxy formations and population ii star formations within this timeframe. Our very own milky way galaxy funnily enough houses the oldest star ever discovered(yet). Its estimated age is at least ~13.66 billion years old last i checked.

            2. Hats off to all you guys discussing this stuff!
              I don’t even understand all whats going on in the soil under my big toe, just below that 3rd particle of clay on the left.

  2. America has a massive truck driver shortage. Here’s why few want an $80,000 job.
    by Heather Long

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/28/america-has-a-massive-truck-driver-shortage-heres-why-few-want-an-80000-job

    About 51,000 more drivers are needed to meet the demand from companies such as Amazon and Walmart that are shipping more goods across the country, according to the American Trucking Associations. The driver shortage is already leading to delayed deliveries and higher prices for goods that Americans buy. The ATA predicts that it’s likely to get worse in the coming years.

    Many trucking companies are so desperate for drivers that they are offering signing bonuses and pay raises. So why don’t more Americans want this job? We asked truck drivers who have been doing the job anywhere from four months to 40 years for their views.

    Most said the answer is simple: The lifestyle is rough. You barely see your family, you rarely shower, and you get little respect from car drivers, police or major retailers. Michael Dow said he has been divorced twice because of trucking. Donna Penland said she gained 60 pounds her first year from sitting all day and a lack of healthful food on the road.

    Despite the hardships, half said they would recommend the job to friends and family, chiefly because, as Gollnick said, “it’s the easiest money you can get without a college degree.” Here are the drivers’ perspectives on America’s trucking crisis.

    1. The shortage of reliable truck drivers will be fuel for the fire on development and deployment of autonomous delivery vehicles.
      For many loads, time is not of the essence and vehicles could proceed at a slower pace than the traditional stream of traffic, saving energy. Robots don’t need a break, except for battery charge or swap issues.

      1. I look on the extreme use of automation as a disruptor of society. It’s one thing to shift jobs from one area to another, but to focus on eliminating jobs is a nightmare in our current paradigm.

        1. There’s no sign of the kind of disruption you’re talking about. We’ve had this conversation before, but we don’t seem to have made progress. So, let’s try to agree on a few things…

          First, what we’re talking about here are changes in what is called “labor productivity”?

          2nd, you’re talking about the impact of dramatic increases in labor productivity, such that large numbers of people are put permanently out of work?

          1. 2nd, you’re talking about the impact of dramatic increases in labor productivity, such that large numbers of people are put permanently out of work?

            I’m supposed to be out looking for a dog to adopt so I can get a real life…

            But, yes, that is precisely what we are talking about. While it is not a given that it will happen, we are potentially looking at a world where human labor could potentially become completely obsolete!

            So I just wanted to leave you with this video:
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU78taHasS0

            Putting Jobs Out of Work – Yuval Noah Harari Panel Discussion at the WEF Annual Meeting

            1. Hmm. Do you have a transcript, or an article? I don’t have the time to watch an hour of video…

              Here’s the counterpoint:

              “One of the greatest mysteries about the American economy right now is why workers don’t seem to be getting all that much better at their jobs over time. From 2007 to 2016, productivity in the U.S. grew at about 1 percent—a historically low rate. In other recent periods, it’s been much higher: 2.6 percent from 2000 to 2007 and 2.2 percent in the 1990s.

              The slowdown in productivity is worrying for the U.S. economy in the long run, and scholars and economists have speculated a host of reasons for why that might be, from a lack of innovation to weakening investment to even the possibility that it’s a statistical mirage.

              A new report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) puts forward another theory. Josh Bivens, the director of research at the EPI and the author of the paper, argues that the shortfall in spending (or demand) by households, governments, and businesses has held back the kinds of big-idea investments by American companies that drive increased productivity. These investments can include a company improving its workforce, such as by implementing training programs that help employees become more productive or hiring more experienced workers; investing in equipment so workers can do their jobs better; or researching technological advancements.”

              https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/productivity-interest-rate/519522/

            2. Hmm. Do you have a transcript, or an article? I don’t have the time to watch an hour of video…

              It ain’t perfect but you can click on the Youtube ellipse and then open transcript and copy and paste the text into a text editor.

              https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-get-text-out-youtube-video-transcript-frank-theilen

              In any case I disagree with your premise. Focusing on improving productivity at this juncture totally misses the point. The underlying systemic social issues caused by technological disruption are just one of the facets. We could be faced with the possibility of having billions of irrelevant humans on the planet, this is an historical first and how we prepare for that reality will either make or break us.

            3. You can click on the Youtube ellipse and then open transcript and copy and paste the text into a text editor.

              I couldn’t find a transcript function. I see a closed caption function, but not a transcript. The link you gave seemed to be aimed at people who are publishing their own videos. Perhaps this doesn’t work for general viewers?

            4. No, anyone can access it. Though it just gives you the machine generated transcript of the spoken dialogue. You could also play the video a 2X normal speed if you want.

              Here’s a screenshot of the ellipse and drop down.
              .

            5. Aha – it’s not available on an iPad via Safari, but a Windows machine is fine.

              That’s great! That’s going to be useful. Though, when you read the transcript you begin to realize how disorganized ideas are when they’re presented in this kind of forum…

            6. Though, when you read the transcript you begin to realize how disorganized ideas are when they’re presented in this kind of forum…

              I agree, but Yuval stands out from the rest of the crowd in his clarity of vision.

            7. We could be faced with the possibility of having billions of irrelevant humans on the planet, this is an historical first

              Yes, but…there’s no sign of it happening in the near future. Have you read the Atlantic article?

            8. Yes, but…there’s no sign of it happening in the near future. Have you read the Atlantic article?

              Yes. I read the article but it left me more than a bit wanting.

              Kinda of like when I hear arguments that just because EVs only make up 0.2 percent of the total light-duty passenger vehicle share around the world at present, it will be many decades before they become ubiquitous. See Tony Seba.

              I’m seeing very real potential for major paradigm changes allowing for making human labor permanently obsolete in the relatively short term. All further complicated by the converging disruptive technologies of AI, automation, big data, and biotechnology. Thereby allowing for a small elite to diverge from the rest of humanity and be able to control us.

              This is what Yuval Noah Harari talks about.
              So he suggests we should start a conversation now about where we want to head as a civilization in the near future and how we want to get there.

            9. Sorry Nick, but the points you raise on this whole subject just don’t ring true to me. Its like you are talking about a theoretical world, but with faulty assumptions.

          2. “There’s no sign of the kind of disruption you’re talking about”
            You must be kidding.
            I know you will say there are lots of jobs. Fine, but what is the quality of those jobs and the benefit of having those jobs.
            Population in the US more than doubled since 1950.
            The number of works tripled between 195o and 2000.
            GDP rose in real terms by almost 9 times, while in nominal value it rose by 64 times.
            Now how about household income. It rose 40 percent from 1950 to 1970 and has stayed about the same ever since.
            Nice, 9 times GDP/ 3 times the workers should have been 3 times the wages per household not 1.4 times. Especially since we work more hours now.
            So why this shorting of wages. Simply because more valuable jobs have been replaced by a shift to less valuable service jobs and the job market got saturated keeping wages low.
            So as the nation got richer, the people got poorer and did not rise with the nation.
            When you can replace several workers with machines and only need to keep one that is what happens. It doesn’t always show because they are ghost workers, workers that were never hired as companies grew but adopted automation and robots to avoid hiring more people. In fact during a high growth period the term downsizing became well known.

            Sure some went overseas, but most of the growth went to machines not people. And now it will get much worse, 30 to 50 percent of jobs will be lost to automation by 2030, at least those are the predictions.
            I see it already at various retail and food outlets and this is just the beginning.

            1. what is the quality of those jobs and the benefit of having those jobs… shorting of wages… the nation got richer, the people got poorer and did not rise with the nation.

              These are important problems, but they’re different from mass unemployment.

              now it will get much worse, 30 to 50 percent of jobs will be lost to automation by 2030, at least those are the predictions.

              Let’s take the midpoint, at 40%. A 40% reduction over 12 years is 4.2% annual productivity growth. That’s much higher than we’re seeing now, and it’s higher than we’ve seen in the US for many decades. There’s absolutely no sign of that happening. None. Productivity is growing at about 1% per year, right now, and there’s no sign of improvement.

              Did you read the Atlantic article above?

            2. How do you equate productivity and job replacement by less expensive systems? Seems to be apples and oranges to me. Maybe you don’t comprehend my comments.

            3. Yes, when we talk about “job replacement” we’re talking about increasing labor productivity. Labor productivity is the ratio of production output to labor input.

              If you reduce the labor required to produce something, then you increase productivity. If you reduce labor by 50% (while keeping output the same), then you double productivity.

              Make sense?

            4. “Yes, when we talk about “job replacement” we’re talking about increasing labor productivity”
              Not generally, unless you measure it per human worker.

              Is this going somewhere? Do you deny that automation has replaced workers and prevented other workers from obtaining jobs in that sector?
              Do you propose that automation and AI will not increase in the near future?

            5. Yes, generally. Productivity is measured over industries, and over economies overall.

              Of course automation has replaced jobs. That’s the point: otherwise we’d all be farmers.

              The other point: it’s not as fast as some pundits would suggest, and there’s no sign of it accelerating.

            6. “Did you know that before the Industrial Revolution, the average person worked for about two or three hours a day? Studies from a wide range of pre-industrial civilisations show similar data– it takes only about fifteen hours a week to provide for all of our basic human needs. And that’s using hand tools.” ~ Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton, WaldenEffect.org (online)

              “Using the data provided by the United State Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erik Rauch has estimated productivity to have increased by nearly 400%. Says, Rauch:
              ‘… if productivity means anything at all, a worker should be able to earn the same standard of living as a 1950 worker in only 11 hours per week.’
              …Since the 1960s, the consensus among researchers (anthropologists, historians, sociologists), has been that early hunter-gatherer societies enjoyed much more leisure time than is permitted by capitalist and agricultural societies…” ~ Wikipedia

              “The important thing to understand about collapse is that it’s brought on by overreach and overstretch, and people being zealots and trying too hard. It’s not brought on by people being laid back and doing the absolute minimum. Americans could very easily feed themselves and clothe themselves and have a place to live, working maybe 100 days a year. You know, it’s a rich country in terms of resources. There’s really no reason to work more than maybe a third of your time. And that’s sort of a standard pattern in the world. But if you want to build a huge empire and have endless economic growth, and have the largest number of billionaires on the planet, then you have to work over 40 hours a week all the time, and if you don’t, then you’re in danger of going bankrupt. So that’s the predicament that people have ended up in. Now, the cure of course is not to do the same thing even harder… what people have to get used to is the idea that most things aren’t worth doing anyway…” ~ Dmitry Orlov

            7. The other day I walked through the UC Berkeley campus and watched a small delivery robots making its way through the crowds. Nobody except me seemed to be watching it, but then again I wasn’t staring at the screen of a device as I walked along.
              Modern life.

            8. Yes, that is the visible part of the new tech. From what I saw in the 90’s to the 2000’s they were able to avoid hiring about triple the number of people by installing automated systems and related computer systems. That meant thousands of people did not get jobs just in one company.
              Company grew by 5 times, ended up with less people than it started with.

              Whole factories have been built that only need a few people working there. All due to automation.
              The jobs that were replaced and the jobs that never came as companies grew have not been tracked or recorded. All we know is that certain sectors have grown and there are considerably less jobs than in the past in those sectors.
              Jobs don’t grow with company growth anymore, machines grow.

            9. Don’t forget that machines aren’t free, or gifts from heaven. They take labor to produce, manage and maintain. They take even more to install and integrate into the production system. They have to be programmed to do exactly what’s needed, and then the programming must be modified in real time as production systems change.

              And THAT’S NOT EASY. Look at Tesla, and their attempts to increase output with automation – another in a long series of manufacturers who didn’t understand how complex and difficult to manage their assembly systems are.

            10. Is there a point to this. The big push in automation was back in the 1980’s and still continues today.

            11. Oh, heck, automation has been going on for more than 200 years:

              “This portrait of Jacquard was woven in silk on a Jacquard loom and required 24,000 punched cards to create (1839). It was only produced to order. Charles Babbage owned one of these portraits; it inspired him in using perforated cards in his analytical engine.[1]

              The Jacquard machine (French: [ʒakaʁ]) is a device fitted to a power loom that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with such complex patterns as brocade, damask and matelassé.[3] It was invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804.[4] The loom was controlled by a “chain of cards”; a number of punched cards laced together into a continuous sequence.[5] Multiple rows of holes were punched on each card, with one complete card corresponding to one row of the design. Several such paper cards, generally white in color, can be seen in the images below. Chains, like Bouchon’s earlier use of paper tape, allowed sequences of any length to be constructed, not limited by the size of a card.”

              https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom

              That’s part of the point: automation, and growth of labor productivity in general, is a very old thing. The argument that it will produce widespread structural unemployment is also very old.

              So, the idea that the “end of jobs” is in our near future is an extraordinary argument, which needs extraordinary evidence.

            12. So, the idea that the “end of jobs” is in our near future is an extraordinary argument, which needs extraordinary evidence.

              Since you don’t watch videos maybe read this NY Times article by Yuval Noah Harari:

              https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/world/europe/yuval-noah-harari-future-tech.html

              Artificial intelligence and automation will create a ‘global useless class.’

              Just as the Industrial Revolution created the working class, automation could create a “global useless class,” Mr. Harari said, and the political and social history of the coming decades will revolve around the hopes and fears of this new class. Disruptive technologies, which have helped bring enormous progress, could be disastrous if they get out of hand.

              “Every technology has a good potential and a bad potential,” he said. “Nuclear war is obviously terrible. Nobody wants it. The question is how to prevent it. With disruptive technology the danger is far greater, because it has some wonderful potential. There are a lot of forces pushing us faster and faster to develop these disruptive technologies and it’s very difficult to know in advance what the consequences will be, in terms of community, in terms of relations with people, in terms of politics.”

              This one might be more succinct:
              http://www.ynharari.com/homo-deus-impact-digitalization-society/

              «Homo Deus» and the Impact of Digitalization on Society
              Interview published on Synpulse Management Consulting’s “The Magazine”
              Posted On July 20, 2017

            13. Hi Fred,

              I read the two presentations. They’re interesting, and useful, but…they don’t support the argument that automation or AI are going to replace large masses of people in the very near future. Again, the’re interesting ideas, but they’re very speculative, and not really related to near-term tech.

              As I said below (and as GF has alluded to), low wages are probably the big problem for the near future.

              One thing I’ve observed is that private company management in the US is pretty primitive. They’re paid way too much, and their methods are crude, like laying off a flat percentage of employees to cut costs.

            14. Ok, you take the road not traveled by the many experts in the field including Elon Musk.

            15. Have you read his comments lately about robots? He acknowledged that he had overestimated how quickly they would help.

              That’s the point. Automation works, but not by magic, and not overnight.

            16. Have you listened to his talk and future automation on it’s effect on work?

            17. No, I find videos a waste of time. If you can find an organized essay by him, I’d be delighted to read it.

              In particular, if you can find something by Musk in which he predicts WHEN automation will displace all jobs, I’d be interested. My impression is that he’s just speculating about the indefinite long-term. Don’t get me wrong – long-term speculation isn’t bad. But…it’s not the same as near-term predictions.

              “In a rare mea culpa for the mercurial billionaire, Tesla CEO Elon Musk acknowledged that the company has been too reliant on robots for production.”

              https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/13/elon-musk-says-humans-are-underrated-calls-teslas-excessive-automation-a-mistake/

            18. Nick it is very important that these conversation start happening on a much greater level. To be blind sided by automation and AI, global warming, loss of food production etc. is a crime and may place many people in an unrecoverable situation do to the speed and size (global) of these situations.
              None of this is in the future, it is all happening right now. Those who do not see it do not understand the concept of non-linear growth and the results it can give.
              Waiting until major proof and guaranteed predictions is like waiting for Ebola to become widespread before even talking about it, let alone preparing for it.
              So I will consider you out of the conversation and I am not your research lackey. Find it yourself or ignore it. Your choice.

            19. Nick it is very important that these conversation start happening on a much greater level.

              I agree. That’s what we’re doing here.

              Don’t assume that just because someone disagrees with you that they’re not interested in the conversation. And…don’t assume that you know more than they do. They might just know something that you can learn from – you can only find that out by making your best arguments, and providing your best evidence.

              In this case, we’re discussing one element, which is only one step in the conversation. That element is the question of whether mass unemployment will be caused by automation. I think it would be helpful for you to understand that just because many or even most existing jobs are susceptible to automation doesn’t mean that we’re likely to see mass unemployment: the same thing has been true for 200 years, and we keep creating new kinds of jobs. We eliminate farming, and create manufacturing. We eliminate manufacturing, and we create services.

              There’s a vast range of work needed: healthcare, medical research, child care, elder care, education, energy infrastructure construction, environmental remediation, to mention only a small fraction of what’s needed.

              There’s going to be plenty of work for people to do, for many decades. We can only hope that we get more efficient and effective at doing it, with new tools like better software.

              I think the more important risk is that the new software decides to replace us entirely. That’s what I’d like to see us working on:

              https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/elon-musk-billion-dollar-crusade-to-stop-ai-space-x

            20. Nick G- you want the outcome to be pleasant (regarding jobs and automation). I do too.
              But putting it all together, the outcome is not pleasant. AI and automation job displacement will escalate and outpace the falloff in population.
              Add that to the aging of the population in countries such as USA, China, Europe, and you have the recipe for a progressive decline in wage earning capacity of the populace.
              The proportion of people living in poverty will increase.

            21. But putting it all together, the outcome is not pleasant. AI and automation job displacement will escalate and outpace the falloff in population.

              Right! While it might be possible to teach a few old dogs some new tricks it doesn’t look too good for the majority.

              In the past displaced masses of agricultural workers were relatively easily retrained for employment on assembly lines in factories. How do you retrain millions of middle aged service economy workers for gainfull employment where they will be competing against AI robots that do everything better than they can?

              Basically ‘JOBS’ as we have known them, are pretty much a thing of the past.
              Welcome to a brave new world of massive unemployment. So we urgently need to start the conversation about how we create meaning in people’s lives that is decoupled from having a job. This conversation also needs to include the provision for things like universal basic income and universal free health care. Otherwise we will quickly descend into a totalitarian and fascist world.

            22. Nick, disagreement is not the problem. You don’t even recognize the problem, so it is a waste of my time to attempt a conversation.
              It’s called addiction to the old meme.

            23. Hickory,

              Actually, the decline in productivity growth is a negative, not a positive. The economy isn’t growing as quickly as before, people’s lives aren’t improving as quickly as before. It’s one of the reasons Trump voters are so unhappy – combined with growing inequity in income and wealth, their lives aren’t better and are often worse than their parents.

              Fred,

              There are lots of breathless stories about how 47% of jobs will disappear in 20 years – these are superficial analyses that are not rooted in real analysis and observation of what’s actually going on in workplaces. Productivity is growing, but slowly. Changes in medicine, law, government etc are much slower than in manufacturing and agriculture. There are theoretical possibilities, but they are blocked in many cases by successful resistance by incumbents.

              For instance: 30 years ago I saw software that could diagnose and treat ER patients better than the average ER physician. What happened with it? Nothing! It was killed by the healthcare industry, which correctly saw it as a disruptive threat.

              The long term disruptions that rising productivity will cause are certainly important. They’re not new: the Great Depression was caused by labor saving disruptions in agriculture.

              The bigger problem at the moment is low wages for working people. There’s plenty of work, and lots of people working 2 or 3 jobs. The problem is they can’t live on their wages. Sadly, the Current Occupant campaigned on a promise to help working people, but he was a liar, a fake populist working for the wealthy.

              GF,

              I’m sorry you’re discouraged. I’m frustrated that you’re not really reading and following what I’ve said. I’m perfectly clear on the idea that automation will eliminate most or all jobs. I hope it’s true, but there’s no sign of it happening in the near future.

          3. Sending this stuff by rail would be almost as disruptive. For example, the unit trains of the New Silk Road have a single driver, and each carries 41 40 foot containers.

            1. A significant amount of containers and trailers already travel by rail in the United States and Canada, but usually only if the distance they need to travel is 500 miles or more. Unless there are height restrictions, most unit container trains have the containers double stacked. A single train carrying more than 200 containers isn’t unusual.

            2. Thanks for the information. I sort of wonder what the advantage of having such a big train is. My first thought is that it would cost flexibility.

            3. No worries on productivity and robot replacement workers in these interesting times.

              First, add to the national and personal debt levels in almost unimaginable terms.
              Second, start a trade war with allies in order to protect geriatric industries.
              Third, sit back and watch the price on energy increase while debasing currency.
              Finally, start taxing robots on the income they produce. If a robot displaces 3 workers, then tax at 3X the basic rate. Stop at 100%.

              There, fixed it. Add in some extra income inequality, turn up provocation and prevarication to high, take the battery out of the smoke alarm and go tweet about the over paid city firefighters who don’t answer the phone down at the station house.

              We’re at trade war and energy price increases. The movement to tax robots should start up any time now; 5,4,3,2…….
              https://www.techemergence.com/robot-tax-summary-arguments/

            4. That seems to make sense, Paulo… It would appear that if the general population starts getting ‘relatively upset’ beyond some critical socioeconomic threshold, all bets are off, futurists’ prognostications notwithstanding.

  3. In other news…

    https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.8b02834
    Research Article

    Toward Small-Diameter Carbon Nanotubes Synthesized from Captured Carbon Dioxide: Critical Role of Catalyst Coarsening

    Abstract
    Small-diameter carbon nanotubes (CNTs) often require increased sophistication and control in synthesis processes, but exhibit improved physical properties and greater economic value over their larger-diameter counterparts. Here, we study mechanisms controlling the electrochemical synthesis of CNTs from the capture and conversion of ambient CO2 in molten salts and leverage this understanding to achieve the smallest-diameter CNTs ever reported in the literature from sustainable electrochemical synthesis routes, including some few-walled CNTs. Here, Fe catalyst layers are deposited at different thicknesses onto stainless steel to produce cathodes, and atomic layer deposition of Al2O3 is performed on Ni to produce a corrosion-resistant anode. Our findings indicate a correlation between the CNT diameter and Fe metal layer thickness following electrochemical catalyst reduction at the cathode-molten salt interface. Further, catalyst coarsening during long duration synthesis experiments leads to a 2× increase in average diameters from 3 to 60 min durations, with CNTs produced after 3 min exhibiting a tight diameter distribution centered near ∼10 nm. Energy consumption analysis for the conversion of CO2 into CNTs demonstrates energy input costs much lower than the value of CNTs—a concept that strictly requires and motivates small-diameter CNTs—and is more favorable compared to other costly CO2 conversion techniques that produce lower-value materials and products.

    1. Maybe the third, 1000 year flood in three years, will be the charm /sarc!

      In denial.: refusing to admit the truth or reality of something unpleasant.

        1. Somebody needs to depose Trump, and soon!
          He is doing more damage to the economy than a bullshiter in a China shop… (pun intended)

          On the other hand the value of recycled aluminum cans will skyrocket. Many of the nouveau homeless will be happy…

          1. Who is the replacement – Pence. Welcome to a whole new set of problems.

            NAOM

            1. Good Point! Maybe Ralph Nader and Ross Perot could form an independent ticket in 2020

    1. Synthetic pearls, diamonds, rubber, drugs, synthetic clothing, plastics and the list goes on. Man made and man transformed items are ubiquitous and quickly replace many natural products.
      Now if we could only duplicate spider webs and photosynthesis.

      1. Now if we could only duplicate spider webs and photosynthesis.

        Perhaps that’s not totally out of the question…

        https://www.outerplaces.com/science/item/17946-artificial-photosynthesis-clean-energy

        There’s a race going on at the moment in the science world. Various teams around the globe are all competing to be the first to produce a solid, stable form of artificial photosynthesis that functions exactly like the real deal in plants.

        And maybe not quite what one might exactly call a duplicate, but nonetheless a reasonable facsimile thereof…

        http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/spinning-spider-silk-startup-gold

        Researchers first cloned a spider silk gene in 1990, in hopes of incorporating it into other organisms to produce the silk. (Spiders can’t be farmed like silkworms because they are territorial and cannibalistic.) Today, Escherichia coli bacteria, yeasts, plants, silkworms, and even goats have been genetically engineered to churn out spider silk proteins, though the proteins are often shorter and simpler than the spiders’ own…

        …One Emeryville, California-based startup, Bolt Threads, says it has perfected growing spider silk proteins in yeast and is poised to turn out tons of spider silk thread per year. In Lansing, Michigan, Kraig Biocraft Laboratories says it needs only to finalize negotiations with silkworm farms in Vietnam to produce mass quantities of a combination spider/silkworm silk, which the U.S. Army is now testing for ballistics protection. “There has been huge progress since … the ’90s, when both function and commercial scale seemed far away,” says My Hedhammar, a biochemist at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

        Might there be anything else on your wish list, like wiser humans? 😉

        We do already have a pretty complete copy of our Neanderthal cousin’s genome.

        https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/photos/14-extinct-animals-that-could-be-resurrected/neanderthal

      2. On duplicating photosynthesis- why?
        Plants and algae are doing a great job with it.
        We just need to do better at protecting their habitats and be satisfied with the incredible production they accomplish. And live within the constraints the earth presents.
        Secondly, photovoltaic energy is a pretty good backup. Sure, we need lots of work on making it more sustainable in regards to materials used for manufacture, and recycling.
        The ones I have on my roof are 19.6% efficient. So far today (10:26 am pst) my system has generated 16.63 kWh today, which is almost exactly my average annual home consumption/day, on a yearly basis.
        Meanwhile, the basil in the garden is looking very lush for this early in the season.

        1. On duplicating photosynthesis- why?

          Don’t know if you read the article I linked but here’s two pretty good reasons :

          “Our research concerns the technology for direct solar energy storage. It addresses the critical challenge that solar energy is intermittent. It does so by directly harvesting solar energy and storing the energy in chemical bonds, similar to how photosynthesis is performed but with higher efficiencies and lower cost.

          The nice thing about artificial photosynthesis over other forms of solar power is that the process of creating energy actually uses up carbon dioxide – something that, considering the amount of greenhouse gases we’re currently pumping into the atmosphere, will hopefully be able to at least slow the negative effects that we’re having on the environment.

          Cheers!

          1. Yeah. We’re doing pretty well at sunlight-to-energy — more efficient than photosystems I & II in the chloroplasts — but we’re not doing so well at carbon fixation. If we could reproduce something like the Calvin cycle on industrial scale, it would be very useful. Carbon fixation is important.

        2. On duplicating photosynthesis- why?
          To create food, energy and new materials without depleting soil.

          1. Do you think artificial photosynthesis could be harnessed to create instant pizza? 😉

          2. Alright. Two to one. You guys win, despite my skepticism, and the R & D budget will be awarded to artificial photosynthesis. Just make sure it is affordable, Ok?

            But seriously, will we cut down a forest to build this ‘artificial photosynthesis facility, or maybe put it where a potato field is?

            And if it is successful, will it allow us to then marginally feed another 2 billion people?

            1. “Artificial photosynthesis” is kind of a silly name. We’re already capturing solar energy (photons) and converting them to electrical potential, like the photosystems in chloroplasts do. What we’re not doing is using that electrical potential to fix carbon from the air, which is done by RuBisCo or PEP carboxylase in nature. If we could get this going on a mass scale, we could *stabilize the climate*.

              I don’t know why so few people learn basic biology. I mean, I know this stuff was only discovered relatively recently — the Calvin cycle in the 1950s — so older people have an excuse, but younger people don’t.

            2. I don’t know why so few people learn basic biology.

              LOL! A rhetorical question, I assume.

              Just 1/3 of Americans “believe” in the theory of evolution by natural selection.

  4. Voila! -The Grand Appearance of Space – the Big Bang

    The Big Bang

    The Big Bang did not occur as an explosion in the usual way one think about such things, despite one might gather from its name. The universe did not expand into space, as space did not exist before the universe, according to NASA Instead, it is better to think of the Big Bang as the simultaneous appearance of space everywhere in the universe. The universe has not expanded from any one spot since the Big Bang — rather, space itself has been stretching, and carrying matter with it.

    https://www.space.com/52-the-expanding-universe-from-the-big-bang-to-today.html

  5. How everything on the internet became clickbait
    By Kevin Munger

    https://theoutline.com/post/4716/how-everything-on-the-internet-became-clickbait

    Remember Yanny vs. Laurel? It was some science thing that made people hear the same sound in two different ways, and everyone on the internet talked about it. In a sane world, there would be nothing else to discuss.

    But basically every news site covered the story — this Google News page that I archived is particularly horrifying — each putting their own tiny spin on it to keep it on-brand. The New York Times played it straight, deploying experts (Laurel or Yanny? What We Heard From the Experts) and Innovative Web Tools (We Made a Tool to Help You Hear Both Laurel and Yanny) to help its large adult readers parse this important cultural issue from a multitude of angles. The Los Angeles Times threw some topical celebs in there (Yanny vs. Laurel: Mindy Kaling, Chrissy Teigen and other celebs choose sides); Tech site CNET made it about science (Yanny or Laurel: Science doesn’t quite know why you hear one or the other); Washington Post taught the controversy (Audio clip spurs social media debate over yanny or laurel); Breitbart asked the question that’s REALLY been on our minds (Donald Trump Reveals What He Hears in the Yanny vs. Laurel Audio Clip); and Vox… Vox-ed it (Why you hear “Laurel” or “Yanny” in that viral audio clip, explained).

    The Laurel and Yanny phenomenon was perfect for the purposes of online media. It created drama and competing groups, but crucially, those groups transcended other social divisions, meaning that even your Trumpist uncle might have clicked on it. Everyone knew that everyone knew about it, so you could talk about it with anyone, but writing a new “take” on it didn’t require investing the type of journalistic time or effort that, say, traveling to Flint to keep tabs on the water quality would have. The modern internet is optimized for creating these stories; everyone knows this is insanely stupid, but none of us want to feel left out. And so we end up with a whole constellation of outlets and thousands of journalists whose most consistent money-making strategy is treating every single news story as if it were no different from an inane audio clip. (And, for the record, I heard Laurel.)

    1. Luckily there are many thousands of university seminars, well thought out interviews and discussions along with many sites that are intended to help people fix things and solve problems.
      I have noticed on YouTube the commenters calling click-bait when the titles don’t match the content of the video with intent to get viewers.
      Any person with a smidgen of discernment will soon weed out the media sources that consistently show themselves as click oriented with little value-added or new content.

    2. I’ve been puzzled that anyone clicked on that. I never did – I guessed that it was trivial and not worth my time. I still don’t know what it’s about, and I’m glad to hear that my instinct was correct.

    3. wifey an me heard laurel clear except on these cheap speakers where the yanny was more clear.. then that slider thing where you could shift the audio, into more laurel or more yanny was fun to play around with.. that was in the new york times research page..

      1. Most of my family was Laurel as well, except my mom who insisted on Yanny, but she’s a Baby Boomer. 😉

        1. Well I am a baby boomer, but it was laurel for me, when I saw it on the news.

          Regards,
          Ralph
          Cass Tech ’64

  6. Growth in income?
    What happens when we start to subtract out the incomes at the top end?

    Looks like the bottom 90 percent has not done very well for a long time now.

    1. Yeah, things are still very tough for working people.

      The one real virtue of the Roseanne TV show was that it showed just how hard daily working life is for a lot of folks.

      1. That is 9 tenths of Americans who have essentially been thrown off the bus of growth in America for 4 decades. They watch the country get richer while they feel and are poorer.

          1. For context, California isn’t the only state where this has happened. New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island also have more independents than Republicans.

            Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine and New Jersey have more independents than they have Democrats *or* Republicans (in all four cases, Republicans are in third place). Republicans are around 10% in Massachusetts and Rhode Island; they basically aren’t a significant political party there any more.

            In Kansas, Republicans are in first place and Democrats are in third place, which accounts for why the state has been totally ruined.

        1. Here are the numbers that have slowed the takeover of jobs by automation.
          1,5
          2.5
          15
          That effect is starting to end however, as real world jobs are being taken lately despite the sacrifices people are already making.

          1. Um, maybe I’m still a bit hung over from last night and could use another mug of coffee, but any chance you could add some context to those numbers?!

            1. Sure Fred,
              1.5 is the number of “jobs” that a well paid worker (say an electrician) works to keep a small family provided for. He either works a second job part time or if available works consistently more than a 40 hour week
              2.5 is the number of jobs that a less well paid family works to keep itself above water. Both parents work jobs and often one works overtime or has a part time job or business.

              15 is the number of dollars per hour that is bandied around by employers where when the that pay rate is reached (or forced by law) that it is the breakpoint currently for switching to replacement by automation.

              What it comes down to is that by accepting lower pay rates and sacrificing by working several jobs per family the push to automate has been slowed. If pay rates were as high as say a skilled or semi-skilled worker before 1980 were happening (where one worker could raise a family of four, have a house, and one or two cars) then automation would come into being much faster.

              To give you an idea, Back around 1980 a large supermarket chain was offering $10 per hour for cashiers with benefits. Now, almost 4 decades and a lot of inflation later, they are paid between $10 and $15 and hour. Yet still many have been replaced by automated cashier systems.
              To top that off, Amazon has completely eliminated cashiers from it’s store system, even at current low pay rates.

              Despite people essentially sacrificing their lives to survive in America, the march of automation is proceeding and AI will move it up a notch or two into the more skilled areas.

  7. I read the two presentations. They’re interesting, and useful, but…they don’t support the argument that automation or AI are going to replace large masses of people in the very near future.

    As Yuval has said, it certainly isn’t an absolute given but the risk is there, which is why I agree with him and others who say it is of primordial importance to start the conversation now, not later.

    1. Known risks can be moderated and sometimes controlled. Unknown risks or ignored risks are just plain risky.

    2. I certainly agree that we need to have broad discussions about the impact of AI – see the article above about Musk’s concerns about it.

      But…we can’t even get a broad discussion going about the current disruptions happening in rural communities. That’s what Trump voters wanted. Instead, their concerns are being ignored, and they’re getting laws and regulations that will hurt them even more, by hurting unions, safety regs, wage protections, consumer protections, etc.

      Sigh.

    1. “There is nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillo’s ”
      -Forgot

      1. Hell, I know that Hightrekker. That was my point. We are a divided nation. On the far right are Fox News and all the right wing idiots of this world. On the left of the road, at least in broadcasting, are everyone else. CNN is right there with MSNBC in trashing Trump. ABC tried to offer a breadcrumb to the Right with the Rosanne show. They simply forgot about the fact that she was a blatant racist and utterly stupid. (Most racist are stupid you know.) And it backfired on them. So now ABC is completely on the other side of the road, opposite Trump supporters. Only Fox News is there supporting the liars, the racist, the fascists, and all that Right Wing stupidity they all represent are on the other side.

          1. Fred,

            On a not for profit personal blog. It’s probably ok to post it with attribution. In the grand scheme, I doubt anyone would notice.

            1. Yeah, I know, I have friends who work in film and graphics research, and I have on more than one occasion posted such cartoons with attribution here. However that particular link points to a site where you can purchase the cartoon for download. So it would kind of cross a line. I still believe artists should get paid. 😉

            2. As do I. I did not click the link, many others might do the same. Also in general when posting a link, a brief excerpt might get people to click the link.

        1. It seems to me that strong language and labels are being thrown around by both sides (left and right) at each other. Once that consistently happens the only thing that results is a form of trench warfare, each side digging in and treating the other side as an enemy.
          As the internal battle continues, those other countries that have their act together will steadily continue on their way forward while the US goes mostly sideways.

          Personally I think the leadership is preparing for more wars. That will squelch the dissension, take the legal focus off the administration and provide lots of money to the military/industrial complex.

    2. Just about all media outlets preach to their base, so they can get paid (depending on their revenue model). CNN thinks their base is slightly above average when it comes to intelligence, tolerance, literacy, and world awareness, so that is where they generally aim.
      Not much there for trump supporters. They do better with comic books.

  8. Fred —

    DOLPHIN ALGORITHM COULD LEAD TO BETTER MEDICAL ULTRASOUNDS

    “Millions of years of evolutionary fine-tuning have made dolphins phenomenally good at using echolocation to orient themselves, find food and communicate with one another. But how do they actually do it? New research shows that they emit two intertwined ultrasound beam components at different frequencies — and with slightly different timing.”

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180531102742.htm

    1. I’ve actually read somewhere that dolphins can supposedly detect a fetus in pregnant humans. They have basically evolved to be living ultrasound machines. So It wouldn’t be a huge stretch to imagine applying a dolphin based echolocation algorithm to fine tune medical ultrasound technology.

      1. I’ve spent quite a bit of time around dolphins. They can get quite agro- especially if you are near the females.
        I did dolphin watching trips in Micronesia.

  9. There’s no Fix for Hubris of Fossilized Central Gen. Hurricane Nate Florida hit would have been ugly.

    “It’s a highly fragile and vulnerable system that really could suffer worse damage than it suffered with Maria in the face of another natural catastrophe,” Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rossello said.”

    https://www.wnyc.org/story/puerto-rico-power-grid-teetering-despite-38-billion-repair-job/
    https://www.utilitydive.com/news/trump-administration-preparing-2-year-coal-nuke-bailout/524788/

    1. Fixing Hubris?! No, you need to prosecute and lock up all the corrupt politicians first!

      From the Puerto Rico Link:

      After months of darkness and stifling heat, Noe Pagan was overjoyed when power-line workers arrived to restore electricity to his home deep in the lush green mountains of western Puerto Rico. But to his dismay, instead of raising a power pole toppled by Hurricane Maria, the federal contractors bolted the new 220-volt line to the narrow trunk of a breadfruit tree – a safety code violation virtually guaranteed to leave Pagan and his neighbors blacked out in a future hurricane.

      “I asked the contractors if they were going to connect the cable to the post and they just didn’t answer,” said Pagan, a 23-year-old garage worker…

      …Mike Byrne, the head of FEMA’s Caribbean office, says he expects the federal government will eventually have spent a total of $17.5 billion in emergency funds on fixing the hurricane damage and making Puerto Rico’s grid more resilient to future storms.

      From the Coal and Nuke powerplant bailout link:

      DOE, however, has argued NERC and grid operators may not have “the visibility or the proper information to determine if something is a national security issue.”

      “NERC and the RTOs are responsible to run systems reliability and they have visibility of certain things,” Assistant Secretary Bruce Walker told Utility Dive last month. “You might well imagine that with the various intelligence agencies we have throughout the federal government as well as the DOD and a host of others that we have different information and different responsibilities, which are clear, than the RTOs and NERC.”

      The way things are going, the inevitable collapse of the United States is going to make the collapse of the Soviet Union look like a walk in the park.

      1. “The way things are going, the inevitable collapse of the United States is going to make the collapse of the Soviet Union look like a walk in the park.”

        As long as we avoid Chernobyl, I think I can handle it. That said, the Soviet Union fell apart into its component states. I would be very careful which state I live in in the US.

  10. Now this is an example of some of the innovative solutions rural places will be coming up with as population degrowth and stagnation become very serious problems in upcoming years.

    Vermont will pay you $10,000 to move there and work remotely
    By Corinne Purtill

    https://work.qz.com/1289727/vermont-will-pay-you-10000-to-move-there-and-work-remotely/

    Remote workers: the state of Vermont wants you.

    Starting in 2019, Vermont will pay people who move there and work remotely for an out-of-state employer $10,000 over two years to cover relocation expenses, coworking memberships, computers, internet, and other work-related expenses. Gov. Phil Scott signed the bill into law on Wednesday (May 30).

    The northeastern US state of 625,000 people has gorgeous landscapes, great ski slopes—and a rapidly shrinking tax base. Vermont is aging faster than the rest of the US population, an economic crisis that has prompted some creative solutions from state officials. In addition to the remote worker plan, Vermont has also launched a program called “Stay to Stay Weekends” aimed at convincing the state’s 13 million annual tourists to relocate there. Visitors who plan their trips during one of the four designated weekends from April to October can network with employers, entrepreneurs, and realtors.

      1. Wow, that explains it all. Thanks Fred, you really know how to get to the heart of the matter. Much as we know that humans have killed off all the animals even the ones that are alive now and will be alive in the future. The issue of non-existence is a critical issue for the non-existent or partially existent or soon to be non-existent or the great unwashed uncounted masses or the universe.
        So tilt a glass to climate change, political shenanigans, and relevant responses as we consider one more very important but hypothetical particle.

  11. Well then you might want to worry about the larva they just found of an invasive alien species. Trumpdigrade dictatorius… hopefully it can be stamped out before it grows into a full fledged authoritarian fascist monster. Remember this? Steppenwolf – Monster – Suicide – America.flv
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thfPnorJOss
    .

    1. America is an idea based on mercantile freedom.
      “People don’t have ideas, ideas have people.” Jordan Peterson

      It will be ironic when, in the long run, Trump turns out to be the least of our problems.

      1. You are right, Trump is just one visible symptom of the collapsing system. Like a mole on the skin that changes size and color and signals the onset of metastatic melanoma. You can ignore it for a while but it is the spreading cancer that will eventually kill you.

        1. Yeah, if we can’t solve something simple like dumping all those nuclear warheads, how can we be expected to deal with complex problems.
          There is something rotten in more than Denmark.

      2. “People don’t have ideas, ideas have people.” Jordan Peterson

        Really now? Is that statement supposed to make any sense? I have an idea that Jordan Peterson is blowing smoke, trying to baffle you with bullshit by uttering nonsense. But wait… I cannot have an idea because Jordan Peterson says people don’t have ideas. That idea has me.

          1. Hey, you stop it. A statement must make sense to have any meaning. The statement: “People don’t have ideas, ideas have people.” makes no sense whatsoever. And don’t tell me I am simple minded! Goddammit, such accusations really pisses me off.

            I am simply stating that you quoted a man who is known to make nonsensual statements. I have been following Jordan Peterson for over a year now, especially his quarrels with Sam Harris. Jordan Peterson is a blowhard who spouts bullshit and thinks it sounds intellectual. And people who swallow his bullshit are…. Oh hell, forget it.

            1. Hey, you stop it. A statement must make sense to have any meaning. The statement: “People don’t have ideas, ideas have people.”makes no sense whatsoever.

              Disclaimer, I don’t follow Jordan Peterson nor do I intend to, and I don’t pretend to know what he had in mind when making that statement.

              However I could certainly make sense of that statement in the following way. An idea can be a meme. The verb to have, can be interpreted as owning or controlling something or someone. It certainly is not impossible to say that a meme can take control of someone’s mind, therefore a meme has someone.

              http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-10-selfish-genes-and-selfish.html
              Chapter 10: Selfish Genes And Selfish Memes

              … As my colleague N. K. Humphrey neatly summed up an earlier draft of this chapter: “… memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind, you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn’t just a way of talking-the meme for, say, `belief in life after death’ is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of individual men the world over.”

            2. Fred, an idea can turn into a meme, this is true. But damn few ideas do turn into memes. There is a world of difference between an idea and a meme. Everyone has ideas. Some people have many ideas every day. My car is making a funny noise. I don’t know what it is but I have an idea. But for goddamn sure, that idea does not have me. Of course, there are other ways to use the word also. Do you have any idea what is the matter with our President?

              The word “idea” is a very poor synonym for “meme”. It is far from the truth to say that people don’t have ideas. But you could say that people don’t have memes, memes have people.

              Hey, I am sorry for the rant but Jordan Peterson is a stupid ass. I have been following his bullshit for sometime now. If you listened to his debate with Sam Harris you would know what I mean. And he has kept at it, posting more bullshit on the web than Donald Trump. So every time I see something stupid that he says, I just have to react. Something stupid like “people don’t have ideas”.

            3. The word “idea” is a very poor synonym for “meme”.

              OK! If you say so…

              A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture—often with the aim of conveying a particular phenomenon, theme, or meaning represented by the meme.[4] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme.
              Source Wikipedia

              Memes can and do take over, control and posses (have, in a colloquial sense), people’s minds! Given that ‘To Have Someone’, can also have a sexual connotation perhaps we could say that ‘Memes’ are little mind fuckers…

              My point was only that the statement: “ideas have people” can indeed be made sense of on some level. Regardless of it being uttered by some complete clueless jackass.

            4. the statement: “ideas have people” can indeed be made sense of on some level.

              I agree. But how about the statement: “people don’t have ideas”? That makes no sense at any level.

            5. I agree. But how about the statement: “people don’t have ideas”? That makes no sense at any level.

              Dunno! I made a disclaimer early on that I had no idea what was in Peterson’s mind. Maybe in the same way we make sense of ‘In Soviet Russia Jokes’.

              Maybe, just maybe, Gone Fishing was being sarcastic when he quoted him…

              For instance:

              “In America, you mistrust government. In Soviet Russia, government mistrusts YOU!!”

              “In America, you finish sentence. In Soviet Russia, sentence finishes YOU!!”

              “In America, you break law. In Soviet Russia, the law breaks YOU!!”

              It is perfectly possible to make ‘sense’ of the absurd.

              Anyways I don’t really care all that much about this to invest any more time in discussing it.

              “In America people don’t have ideas, ideas have people.”..
              Makes perfect sense to me!

              Cheers!

  12. Great!
    Some nation in East Asia seems to be violating the Montreal Protocol on the banning of CFCs. WTF?!

    https://theoutline.com/post/4708/montreal-protocol-vienna-convention-noaa-nasa-ozone-layer-hole-cfc?zd=1&zi=gekf4xdb

    When the research was published in Nature on May 16, it was like a bomb dropped. A greenhouse gas is billowing into the atmosphere from a source somewhere in East Asia that no one can identify at a rate scientists have never before seen, and it’s ignited a scientific dash to get to the bottom of it.

    All countries are supposed to comply with the rules laid out in the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which banned the production of CFCs—chlorofluorocarbons, which deplete the ozone layer and contribute to global warming—with only temporary exception of a few economically developing countries. If everyone fulfills their end of the deal, the amount of CFCs in the atmosphere should gradually wane over the course of several decades. (CFCs can live in the atmosphere for more than half a century.)

    Link to paper in Nature:
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0106-2

    An unexpected and persistent increase in global emissions of ozone-depleting CFC-11

    Abstract

    The Montreal Protocol was designed to protect the stratospheric ozone layer by enabling reductions in the abundance of ozone-depleting substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere1,2,3. The reduction in the atmospheric concentration of trichlorofluoromethane (CFC-11) has made the second-largest contribution to the decline in the total atmospheric concentration of ozone-depleting chlorine since the 1990s1. However, CFC-11 still contributes one-quarter of all chlorine reaching the stratosphere, and a timely recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer depends on a sustained decline in CFC-11 concentrations1. Here we show that the rate of decline of atmospheric CFC-11 concentrations observed at remote measurement sites was constant from 2002 to 2012, and then slowed by about 50 per cent after 2012. The observed slowdown in the decline of CFC-11 concentration was concurrent with a 50 per cent increase in the mean concentration difference observed between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and also with the emergence of strong correlations at the Mauna Loa Observatory between concentrations of CFC-11 and other chemicals associated with anthropogenic emissions. A simple model analysis of our findings suggests an increase in CFC-11 emissions of 13 ± 5 gigagrams per year (25 ± 13 per cent) since 2012, despite reported production being close to zero4 since 2006. Our three-dimensional model simulations confirm the increase in CFC-11 emissions, but indicate that this increase may have been as much as 50 per cent smaller as a result of changes in stratospheric processes or dynamics. The increase in emission of CFC-11 appears unrelated to past production; this suggests unreported new production, which is inconsistent with the Montreal Protocol agreement to phase out global CFC production by 2010.

    What the hell is wrong with human beings?!

    1. I had heard intimations about this over the last several years.
      Standard Operating Procedure. The East Asians know full well that increasing CO2 output will screw the planet, yet that is just what they did over the last couple of decades. So why are you surprised at CFC production?

      It’s Janus world where both faces are endings. The gates of the temple will never be closed.

      1. So why are you surprised at CFC production?

        I probably shouldn’t have been but this is the first I’d heard that anyone was deliberately violating the Montreal Protocol. I thought that at least, was one mole, (pun intended) that had been permanently whacked.

          1. Once the culprits are pinpointed the entire world should launch massive air strikes on that country…

    2. A good deal of these regulations present examples of diminishing returns or doing something that seems worthwhile at first glance, but really isn’t when the details are fully analyzed. Is it possible that the sum of energy consumed to comply with CFC regulation is worse than the assumed atmospheric effects of CFC’s? A poorer country unable to pay for the energy needed in being compliant has maybe made a choice to rather live with the pollution risk instead of the financial risk.

        1. No, he most certainly did not! I think that’s an insult to Joe Tainter. While Tainter talks about diminishing returns as in what happened during the collapse of the Roman Empire, that is not what is occurring here. Here we are probably looking at some corrupt politicians in a rogue nation looking the other way and not enforcing the law that is being broken by some business or businesses located in that nation. They will be found out and there will be consequences. There are no diminishing returns when protecting the ozone layer is what is at stake. That is a tragedy of the commons!

      1. Julian Radoni,

        Why do you say “the assumed atmospheric effects of CFC’s [sic]”?

        1. Scientists don’t ever prove stuff, they just make assumptions about what they observe.

          1. Your ignorance about science and scientists is rather deep and that is not just an assumption on my part. It is clearly evident in your posts but hey, maybe you can learn some basic chemistry.

            BTW, Chemistry is sometimes called “the central science,” because it bridges physics with other natural sciences, such as geology and biology. Chemistry is the study of matter and its properties.

            Don’t worry, less than 6 min. explanation to follow.
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BM4wXCP3Vc
            How CFC’s Deplete the Ozone Layer

          2. Julian, thats stupid talk.
            Gravity is proven good enough. You think its just an assumption. Well, lets go up to the 5th floor. I’ll give you a little shove and prove it to you. Real clear.
            Or perhaps you’d rather have a lesson on the ‘germ theory of disease’?
            I could go on and on, and after 6 years we’d be at 6th grade.
            Work hard. you will get there.

          3. Julian —

            “Scientists don’t ever prove stuff, they just make assumptions about what they observe.”

            Albert Einstein would probably have agreed with you. He said: “The scientific theorist is not to be envied. For Nature, or more precisely experiment, is an inexorable and not very friendly judge of his work. It never says “Yes” to a theory. In the most favorable cases it says “Maybe,” and in the great majority of cases simply “No.” If an experiment agrees with a theory it means for the latter “Maybe,” and if it does not agree it means “No.” Probably every theory will someday experience its “No” – most theories, soon after conception.”

            So, it’s only mathematicians who “prove stuff”.

            1. But as Richard Feynman famously said: “I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things but I’m not absolutely sure of anything and then many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask, “Why we are here?” and what that question might mean. I might think about it a bit and then if I can’t figure it out then I go on to something else.”

            2. So, my advice would be to ignore the “know-it-alls” and simply enjoy the beauty and mystery that surrounds us. If that comes from watching swallows (or dolphins) and listening to music and learning about the wonders of science and mathematics — so be it.

            3. DougL,

              The way I put it once, since you ask, is: You can prove something if you know all the rules that apply. We can prove things in math because we know the rules–we make them. Similarly in logic.

              In the natural sciences we’re trying to find out what the rules are. We’ve no reason to think there’ll ever be an end to that endeavor.

            4. Synapsid,

              As usual, I agree with you 100%. Math has proofs (because it has rules) science has theories (because it has data).

            5. Science has *evidence*.

              You can prove things with evidence. It’s not a mathematical proof… it’s a proof of the sort we refer to when we talk about “proving” someone guilty in court.

            6. Doug, have you any opinions on Quantum Mechanics? Or how about Max Planck, father of quantum mechanics? Just curious.

              I don’t know beans about Quantum Mechanics myself but I am trying hard to understand a little about it. I just finished one book on the subject and I don’t think I know much more than before I read it. The book, “Quantum Enigma” by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner.

            7. Ron, of course I have opinions about Quantum Mechanics and many other scientific “theories”. In fact I have been trying (unsuccessfully) to solve the equation-of-state as it relates to neutron star interiors for twenty years and will be doing so ’till the incinerate me. Of course QM has been “replaced” by QED which doesn’t explain dark matter, dark energy, and (a few) other basic questions but that doesn’t concern me. Too complex and not my bag!

              And yes, Max Planck along with Enrico Fermi and Paul Dirac were my heroes, starting in High School. As were the great mathematises, especially Leonhard Euler.

            8. Oh. Okay but I was thinking more along the lines of the double slit experiment, and how knowledge collapses the wave function. Does QED explain any of that?

              Jim Al-Khalili says: “If you can explain this using common sense and logic, do let me know, because there is a Nobel Prize for you..”

              But lots of luck with your neutron star research. I have no idea about any of that whatsoever.

            9. Don’t feel bad Ron, to quote Richard Feynman: “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”

            10. Hi Ron and Doug,

              Quantum mechanics is arguably the most successful scientific theory ever. It deals with the interaction of subatomic particles and it covers a range of fields in physics such as optics, condensed matter physics, and solid state physics.
              QED is a branch of quantum mechanics which is the study of the interaction of photons with charged particles and it is the first field to show full agreement between quantum mechanics and special relativity. In some ways QED is the relativistic quantum mechanics.
              Doug if you don’t mind me asking, what aspect of neutron stars are you researching?
              And Ron I have a good documentary about Atomic physics and reality, which might give you a basic foundation on QM including the philosophical aspect of it WITHOUT the woo. If you want i’ll link it to you.

            11. Mike – Relates to partitioning between neutron and quark-gluon matter.

            12. And Ron I have a good documentary about Atomic physics and reality, which might give you a basic foundation on QM including the philosophical aspect of it WITHOUT the woo. If you want i’ll link it to you.

              Yes, I would very much like to watch it. Just post it here, some other folks might like to watch it also.

              Did you have a problem with my Jim Al-Khalili video? That is real stuff, not woo. The problem of the collapse of the wave function has never been solved. That don’t mean it is woo.

            13. “I was thinking more along the lines of the double slit experiment, and how knowledge collapses the wave function.” ~ Ron Patterson

              Assuming it’s related, when I was much younger, it was suspected that if I knew enough about something to predict it, I could then take the steps to possibly affect the prediction, thereby rendering the prediction, unpredictable, at least in an absolute/fundamental sense. I actually shortly after went down to McGill University’s library to confirm/look into it, and that’s how I found out about such things as the uncertainty principle, determinism/indeterminism, and ‘spooky physics’, to paraphrase Einstein(?).

              It would appear that, due to consciousness, prediction is not absolutely/fundamentally possible, and therefore perhaps, certain levels of knowledge. Try telling someone religious that it’s possible that not even ‘God’ knows all that is and/or can be.

            14. Ron: the very basic question you’re looking for an answer for is this.

              How do we make an observation? Generally, we observe something by observing the emissions coming out of it. Or by bouncing something — like light — off of it and seeing how it bounces.

              So, one of the major insights was that doing this bouncing altered the thing we were looking at. It turns out that this is true at a deeper level than you’d think: even receiving seemingly “natural” emissions affects the thing you’re observing. This seems to violate the order of causality — it feels like time travel — but the quantum mechanical equations don’t care, and their predictions are correct.

              The other major thing to know is that all the predictions are probabilistic. Not “this will happen” or “this will be in this location” but “this has x% chance of happening” or “this has x% chance of being in this location”. This is perfectly good for scientific prediction purposes, as long as you repeat your experiments enough times. The really weird thing, however, is the way the probability calculations work, which does *not* correspond to normal probability mathematics.

              Anyway, this is enough orientation that you should be able to start reading intro quantum mechanics material, provided you know enough math, which you might not. It is *not* an easy subject.

              It’s essential to modern chemistry, however. Electrons are considered to be in “orbitals” — these are smeary probability-distribution clouds describing the electron’s location and momentum (or, rather, the statistical likelihood of observing said election with any given location or momentum). Does this help get you started?

      2. What’s actually most interesting is how average global temperature stopped increasing after banning CFCs. That presumes the Ozone hole probably caused the significant warming period seen before 1998.

        1. What is really interesting is how people populate the internet with total bullshit.

          1. Refute the contents. No
            shortage of Dumbnesss and Ignorance. The majority of Americans believe dilithium crystals are a viable energy source.

            1. The majority of Americans believe dilithium crystals are a viable energy source.

              Isn’t that what powers Teslas? /sarc

              In any case I’m pretty sure Julian and Tran are trolls, fuck em!
              The fact that CFCs are both a greenhouse gas and do damage to the ozone layer is pretty well established science. If someone can’t even Google then they need to be put in a facility for their own protection.

            2. ” Trilithium is known to be capable, when used to its full potential, of stopping all fusion within a star, thereby collapsing the star and destroying everything within its solar system via a shock wave…

              Trilithium resin is a toxic byproduct of warp engines, and can be used as a powerful, and quite unstable, explosive…” ~ Wikipedia

  13. China proves job security is a thing of the past.

    China has rapidly become a global leader in automation. From 2018 to 2020, a sales increase between 15 and 20 percent on average per year is possible for industrial robots. Annual sales volume has currently reached the highest level ever recorded for a single country: Within a year, sales in China surged by 27 percent to 87,000 units (2016).

    https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/robots-china-breaks-historic-records-in-automation

  14. Looking for Life on a Flat Earth
    What a burgeoning movement says about science, solace, and how a theory becomes truth.
    By Alan Burdick

    https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/looking-for-life-on-a-flat-earth

    If you are only just waking up to the twenty-first century, you should know that, according to a growing number of people, much of what you’ve been taught about our planet is a lie: Earth really is flat. We know this because dozens, if not hundreds, of YouTube videos describe the coverup. We’ve listened to podcasts—Flat Earth Conspiracy, The Flat Earth Podcast—that parse the minutiae of various flat-Earth models, and the very wonkiness of the discussion indicates that the over-all theory is as sound and valid as any other scientific theory. We know because on a clear, cool day it is sometimes possible, from southwestern Michigan, to see the Chicago skyline, more than fifty miles away—an impossibility were Earth actually curved. We know because, last February, Kyrie Irving, the Boston Celtics point guard, told us so. “The Earth is flat,” he said. “It’s right in front of our faces. I’m telling you, it’s right in front of our faces. They lie to us.” We know because, last November, a year and a day after Donald Trump was elected President, more than five hundred people from across this flat Earth paid as much as two hundred and forty-nine dollars each to attend the first-ever Flat Earth Conference, in a suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina.

    “Look around you,” Darryle Marble, the first featured speaker on the first morning of the conference, told the audience. “You’ll notice there’s not a single tinfoil hat.” He added, “We are normal people that have an abnormal perspective.”

    The unsettling thing about spending two days at a convention of people who believe that Earth is flat isn’t the possibility that you, too, might come to accept their world view, although I did worry a little about that. Rather, it’s the very real likelihood that, after sitting through hours of presentations on “scientism,” lightning angels, and NASA’s many conspiracies—the moon-landing hoax, the International Fake Station, so-called satellites—and in chatting with I.T. specialists, cops, college students, and fashionably dressed families with young children, all of them unfailingly earnest and lovely, you will come to actually understand why a growing number of people are dead certain that Earth is flat. Because that truth is unnerving.

    1. I know this is just a wind up but for the hell of it: at 50 miles you can see anything over about 500 m even lying on your back. Sear’s Tower, or whatever it is now called, is 527 m by Google, so it’s top would be visible (I’d guess that’s why the jokers picked 50 miles and Chicago), and if you’re standing up on tiptoe or in another building you’d be able to see more.

    2. Did they have pictures of the giant turtle holding up the flat Earth?

    1. Many of the coal plant shutdowns announced during the Obama administration were rushed through in order to quiet renewable special interests and professional activists. Due to the lag time between announcing a shutdown and actually completing one, many energy companies probably figured they could reverse course when/if a Republican administration came in to clean house. Trump’s order is an attempt to restore balance between environmental and business considerations in electricity generation.

      1. ThreeSwine- actually just about all of the coal and nuclear plant decisions have been made at the utility level/state level, and among those having to foot the bills.
        Abundant Natural Gas from fracking has been the primary force making coal and nuclear uneconomic.
        The story about Obama and activists is probably fun for those on Fox to talk about, but read the industry news on a site like this one- Utility Dive, and you find lots of good articles over time to see the scenario unfold. examples-

        https://www.utilitydive.com/news/xcel-to-add-12-gw-of-wind-to-texas-new-mexico-mix-as-puc-gives-formal-ok/524548/

        https://www.utilitydive.com/news/how-vistras-coal-retirements-could-impact-the-texas-power-market/510066/

      2. Trump’s order is an attempt to restore balance between environmental and business considerations in electricity generation.

        That’s beyond ridiculous! If anything it is an act of desperation by a corrupt administration beholden to the coal and nuclear lobbies. Economics and the utilities decisions to close coal generating power plants are what tell the real story.

        https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060076419

        President Trump has pledged a coal revival, but America’s utilities aren’t listening.

        U.S. power companies are set to unplug almost 12 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity this year, or about 4 percent of the American coal fleet, according to an E&E News review of federal figures. More than half of those retirements were announced after Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

        Analysts said an economic maelstrom is responsible for the trend. Capacity prices for reserve electricity, long a moneymaker for coal plants, remain low in many parts of the country. Competition from natural gas remains stiff, with no apparent uptick in gas prices in sight. And renewables, improving on cost and performance, continue to eat up coal’s market share.

        “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” – Abraham Lincoln

    2. Republicans have always hated free markets. They’re the party representing monopolists. Remember Adam Smith:

      “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

    1. I was incorrect on coal % source to NW Florida Coal power production. The Largest % imported was Colombian. More is exported to Europe than imported from the Mobile terminal. Do you know where your electrons are from? Interactive Coal data browser. https://www.eia.gov/coal/data/browser/#/topic/39?agg=2,1,0&rank=ok&cntry=vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvto&cust=000040000&map=COAL.EXPORT_QTY.TOT-TOT-TOT.Q&freq=Q&start=200002&end=201704&ctype=map&ltype=pin&rtype=s&maptype=0&rse=0&pin=

  15. Physics question:

    I do not have a science background other than building, machining, basic math required for both, etc. Oh, some electronics. However, I do have 10,000+ flying hours and know full well the dangers of passing too close behind a ‘heavy’. I read above Ron’s question and all the replies, etc. That is why I am asking this forum what might be a basic question, but for me it isn’t.

    I ride a motorcyle. It isn’t big, or heavy, but rather a lighter 500cc Honda. It scoots along right smart. I have noticed over the years that when I pass a logging truck, fully loaded and heading towards me, the buffeting is much greater than what I experience with the same size semi freight truck, or even a bigger freight truck, less streamlined, etc. I concluded the extra buffeting was from the larger mass of the logging truck much like a heavy aircraft creating wing tip vortices. But that doesn’t make sense, either, because gravity isn’t involved in keeping a truck in the air. Both trucks are supported by the same roadway on tires. I talked this over with my son and he seemed nto think my mass explanation doesn’t make sense.

    The front of the logging truck load is irregular as opposed to the front of the freight truck, but not drastically. The loaders load the front pretty vertical, it is the rear where log lengths really differ and stick out all over the place. If is the shape of the logs that is the ‘factor’, I accept there might be a bit more disturbed air flow, but not that much. So, I looked it up on this site and have a less than satisfactory answer:

    Is air resistance affected by both mass and surface area?
    https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/135056/is-air-resistance-affected-by-both-mass-and-surface-area

    If so, which has the biggest impact?

    Answer: 2

    What a layman calls “air resistance”, a physicist would call drag. Drag is affected by the area and shape of the solid object, the speed and orientation of the object relative to the fluid, and various properties of the fluid such as its density and kinematic viscosity. The drag on a solid, rigid object isn’t affected by the object’s mass.

    However, drag is just the portion of the force on the object that’s due to the fluid. The net force on the object will of course be affected by the object’s mass, assuming that gravity is one of the forces on the object.
    ……………
    Okay, air is fluid, so the drag explanation including mass makes sense. But, the last statement seems to negate it because gravity is the same for each truck. Or, is ‘gravity’ the explanation for it along with air being ‘fluid’…acting like a fluid.

    I would appreciate an explanation from anyone who has one. Thanks in advance. Paul S

    1. “The drag on a solid, rigid object isn’t affected by the object’s mass” from your link Paul

      The big box trailer with rounded corners and smooth sides has a lower drag coefficient, then the logs strapped to a trailer in most cases. The logs are creating more turbulence. Auto carriers also create more turbulence than a box trailer

    2. Ah, you’re asking a question in the subject of fluid dynamics, which is considered one of the most intractable subjects in all of physics.

      The rough-edged log trailer creates more turbulence. The streamlined box trailer has air separating around it at high speed, but the air is mostly being pushed “smoothly”. The turbulence means eddies and vortices of air motion, which end up “buffetting” your car.

      The turbulence due to the shape of the truck is actually an enormous effect. The energy transferred from the truck to the air is higher, *and* that energy is distributed differently than when a smooth streamlined vehicle moves through the air. You may feel a single strong push to the side as a streamlined vehicle passes you, but feel jolted back and forth as a non-streamlined vehicle passes you. Turbulence.

    3. The buffeting is caused by vortices. Vortex shedding is on top of turbulence and occurs when a fluid at sufficient velocity (strictly speaking its Reynolds number) passes a bluff object (e.g. wind passing a chimney, a river passed a rock, non streamlined moving objects, they have to be considered in offshore platform design for both sea currents and wind). The vortex eddies typically come off the trailing corners (if there are any). For the logging trucks I think the problem would be the large void behind the cab, with a trailer this is filled in more and the air flow less disrupted, but the irregular sharp edges at the back of the logs may be an additional issue. Compared to an empty flatbed, which also has the void) the logs probably push the vortices out so you feel them more (pretty complicated). With trailers and integrated trucks some small design editions can be incorporated to reduce vortices – e.g. fairings, small strips equivalent to those spirals on chimneys which are there to stop excess fatigue and drag from vortices, even corrugated sides help I think, they might do something with empty flatbeds as well but I don’t know what. In pipes vortices can be induced with predictable frequency depending on velocity and are therefore used for accurate flow measurement, which has been my main exposure to the phenomenon.

    4. It’s a combination of both higher drag for the logging truck and increased turbulence due to a set up interrupted flows. The higher drag means more energy is transferred to the air by the truck passing through it thus causing more energetic flow in the opposing lane. Add to this the complex direction of transferred energy due to the multiple shapes on the truck and the combination of high energy flow with more extreme buffeting makes for an increased dynamic experience to the motorcycle driver.

  16. ECONOMIC MODELS SIGNIFICANTLY UNDERESTIMATE CLIMATE CHANGE RISKS — LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

    They warn that the “integrated assessment models” used by economists “largely ignore the potential for ‘tipping points’ beyond which impacts accelerate, become unstoppable, or become irreversible”. As a result, “they inadequately account for the potential damages from climate change, especially at moderate to high levels of warming”, due to rises in global mean temperature of more than 2 Celsius degrees.

    https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-06/lsoe-ems053118.php

    1. Are they perhaps suggesting that most economists don’t get non linear dynamics and chaos theory?! Shocking I say, just shocking…

    2. I’ve been slowly getting through ‘The Origin Of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics’ by a chap from McKinsey, from 2007. It is a strong critique of traditional equilibrium economics and interesting for the most part – it deals with game theory, evolutionary psychology, chaos theory etc. But so far (about 2/3 rds after 9 months, and with some skips) not a mention of coming resource limits or the environment that I’ve seen, so almost certainly the remaking is not radical enough.

      1. But so far (about 2/3 rds after 9 months, and with some skips) not a mention of coming resource limits or the environment that I’ve seen, so almost certainly the remaking is not radical enough.

        Sounds like just another run of the mill neoclassical economist, that dog don’t hunt no more. Much like astrology, there is real math involved but it’s still hocus pocus.

        1. Just another psychopathic version of how to interact with the world.

      2. George –

        I really admire anyone willing to wade through that stuff. The nomenclature alone defeats me and I’d probable pick up a Bible before I’d buy a book with Economics in the title. That said, I appreciate someone with your obvious mental acuity critiquing “real” economic analyses. Not that I could ever bring myself to read about it in detail. 🙂

        Cheers,

        Doug

        1. And speaking of economists:

          ‘CARBON BUBBLE’ COMING THAT COULD WIPE TRILLIONS FROM THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

          “…New research suggests momentum behind technological change in the global power and transportation sectors will lead to a dramatic decline in demand for fossil fuels in the near future. The study indicates that this will now happen regardless of apparent market certainty or the adoption of climate policies—or lack thereof—by major nations…

          “Detailed simulations produced by an international team of economists and policy experts show this fall in demand has the potential to leave vast reserves of fossil fuels as “stranded assets”: abruptly shifting from high to low value sometime before 2035…”

          Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-carbon-trillions-global-economy.html#jCp

          1. “…New research suggests momentum behind technological change in the global power and transportation sectors will lead to a dramatic decline in demand for fossil fuels in the near future…”

            Tony Seba could have told them that! 😉

            But seriously, anyone who thinks that business as usual is going to continue, just hasn’t been paying attention to the writing on the wall. ‘The Fossil Fuel Age’, is over!

            Any one who bets on continuing to prop up oil, coal and gas are either stupid or criminal agents.
            It seems there will be plenty of tar around to put to use with feathers when the time comes…

            1. Fred said ‘The Fossil Fuel Age’, is over!

              Someone forget to tell that to my town, that is allowing a large car fueling station to be put in right next to a creek. We already have a gas station. I don’t see the sense in building into a descending business model but that is the way retail implodes itself.
              BTW it will be built right on a sensitive natural environment.

            2. Maybe not such a bad idea. Grab the land and sell fuel, for now, but, in the future, convert it into a charging station – they’ll already have the land.

              NAOM

            3. LOL, I don’t think they are that smart. That would be like coal power plants converting their extra land to solar PV, never seen that one happen.

            4. Bridgewater, Nova Scotia’s Mallbomination

              When I first visited Bridgewater, NS, I found out that they built a large indoor mall (therefore ‘inward-looking’) on the sunny-side of the town’s lovely main river. Here’s its view (on the left of course) from the bridge. Last time I was there (about 4 years ago) the mall was almost like a ghost mall, which is what I called it then.

              In place of the mall, it is imagined that the town could have had, instead, a stylish, maybe heritage-cum-vernacular-style strip of cafes, shops and flats set back somewhat from the water with a small access-road and angled row-parking along it and then a treed/gardened/park-like area in between the road and the water all a long the length of the river to the length that the current mall occupies.

            5. I don’t see the sense in building into a descending business model but that is the way retail implodes itself.

              Descending business model?! I still see people investing big time, in beach front condos in South Beach Miami…

            6. Retail businesses would never expend significant sums of capital if they were not expecting a healthy return on investment. Are you armchair experts here saying you know more about business and finance than executives in the field? If so, perhaps you should inform top-level management teams of your knowledge by getting in touch with them. If you have as brilliant of a mind as you suggest, they might even offer you a high-paying job!

            7. How often do you see retail start-ups fail? 80% in the first 5 years.

              NAOM

  17. 1937 — Artist Pablo Picasso completes his mural “Guernica.”
    The most significant painting of the 20th Century IMHO.

    1. Yep, Guernica was a stronghold of the resistance made up of various factions, communists, socialists and assorted anarchists. Franco’s Catholic Nationalists, the Nazis and the Italian Fascists didn’t much like them. Accounts differ but it seems that at the time of the bombings the men were mostly away and it was the women and children who suffered the brunt of the attack. I guess as some might say, there were some good people on both sides…

      1. The Spanish Civil War was the last stand for major anarchist and other advanced ideologies– that is why you had Soviet Russia and Fascist Europeans (although the fighting on the fascist side were mainly North African mercenaries) fighting against them.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWXYsi3zoCQ

      2. Orwell’s observations:

        “As far as my purely personal preferences went I would have liked to join the Anarchists.” George Orwell – Homage to Catalonia page 116
        “The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing. To anyone who had been there since the beginning it probably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period was ending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle.” ibid page 4
        “Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said ‘Senor’ or ‘Don’ or even ‘Usted’; everyone called everyone else ‘Comrade’ and ‘Thou,’ and said ‘Salud!’ instead of ‘Buenas Dias.’ Tipping had been forbidden by law since the time of Primo de Rivera; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were no private motor cars, they had all been commandeered, and alll the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of people streamed constantly to and fro, the loud-speakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night.” ibid page 5
        “Yet so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low; you saw very few conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars except the gypsies. Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine. In the barbers’ shops were Anarchist notices (the barbers were mostly Anarchists) solemnly explaining that barbers were no longer slaves. In the streets were coloured posters appealing to prostitutes to stop being prostitutes.” ibid page 6
        “In practice the democratic ‘revolutionary’ type of discipline is more reliable than might be expected. In a workers’s army discipline is theoretically voluntary. It is based on class-loyalty, whereas the discipline of a bourgeois conscript army is based ultimately on fear…In the militias the bullying and abuse that go on in an ordinary army would never have been tolerated for a moment.” ibid page 28
        “The estates of the big pro-Fascist landlords were in many places seized by the peasants. Along with the collectivization of industry and transport there was an attempt to set up the rough beginnings of a workers’ government by means of local committees, workers’ patrols to replace the old pro-capitalist police forces, workers’ militias based on the trade-unions, and so forth.” ibid page 50
        “In Catalonia, for the first few months, most of the actual power was in the hands of the Anarcho-Syndicalists, who controlled most of the key industries. The thing that had happened in Spain was, in fact, not merely a civil war, but the beginning of a revolution. It is this fact that the anti-Fascist press outside of Spain has made it its special business to obscure.” ibid page 50
        “Except Russia and Mexico no country had had the decency to come to the rescue of the Government, and Mexico, for obvious reasons, could not supply arms in large quantities.” ibid page 53
        “The war was essentially a triangular struggle. The fight against Franco had to continue, but the simultaneous aim of the Government was to recover such power as remained in the hands of the trade unions.” ibid page 54
        “As usual, the breaking-up of the militias was done in the name of military efficiency; and no one denied that a thorough military reorganization was needed. It would, however, have been quite possible to reorganize the militias and make them more efficient while keeping them under direct control of the trade-unions; the main purpose of the change was to make sure that the Anarchists did not possess an army of their own.” ibid page 55
        “During the first two months of the war it was the Anarchists more than anyone else who had saved the situation, and much later than this the Anarchist militia, in spite of their indiscipline, were notoriously the best fighters among the purely Spanish forces.” ibid page 62
        “I have described how were armed, or not armed, on the Aragon front. There is very little doubt that arms were deliberately withheld lest too many of them should get into the hands of the Anarchists, who would afterwards use them for a revolutionary purpose…What was more important was that once the war had been narrowed down to a ‘war for democracy’ it became impossible to make any large scale appeal for working class aid abroad.” ibid page 68
        “I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites.” ibid pages 103-104
        “Many of the normal motives of civilized life-snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.-had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master.” ibid page 104
        “One had breathed the air of equality. I am well aware that it is now the fashion to deny that Socialism has anything to do with equality. In every country in the world a huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are busy ‘proving’ that Socialism means no more than a planned state-capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. But fortunately there also exists a vision of Socialism quite different from this.” ibid page 104
        “Thirdly-though this was not generally known at the time-the Anarchist leaders feared that if things went beyond a certain point and the workers took possession of the town, as they were perhaps in a position to do on 5 May, there would be foreign intervention. A British cruiser and two British destroyers had closed in upon the harbour, and no doubt there were other warships not far away. The English newspapers gave it out that these ships were proceeding to Barcelona ‘to protect British interests,’ but in fact they made no move to do so; that is, they did not land any men or take off any refugees. There can be no certainty about this, but it was at least inherently likely that the British Government, which had not raised a finger to save the Spanish Government from Franco, would intervene quickly enough to save it from its own working class.” ibid pages 153-154
        “For the first time since I had been in Barcelona I went to have a look at the cathedral-a modern cathedral, and one of the most hideous buildings in the world. It has four crenellated spires exactly the shape of hock bottles. Unlike most of the churches in Barcelona it was not damaged during the revolution-it was spared because of its ‘artistic value,’ people said. I think the Anarchists showed bad taste in not blowing it up when they had the chance, though they did hang a red and black banner between its spires.” ibid page 225 [PLEASE NOTE: ORWELL WAS PROBABLY BEING TONGUE-IN-CHEEK HERE. ANYWAY, I AM RELIEVED THAT THE SAGRADA FAMILIA WASN’T DAMAGED DURING THE UPRISING AND STILL STANDS TODAY AS AN ARCHITECTURAL WONDER. I ALSO LIKE THAT THE ANARCHISTS DRAPPED THEIR FLAG FROM IT AS A CHERRY ON THE CAKE]

          1. In this stage of history, when all that’s left is for the shrapnel of the American dream to be quietly cleared from the scene, who can blame them?

  18. G7 FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDY SCORECARD: TRACKING THE PHASE-OUT OF FISCAL SUPPORT AND PUBLIC FINANCE FOR OIL, GAS AND COAL

    https://www.odi.org/publications/11131-g7-fossil-fuel-subsidy-scorecard

    While progress is being made to transition away from fossil fuels, this analysis shows that G7 governments continue to provide at least $100 billion in subsidies to the production and use of coal, oil and gas, which may hinder or delay these shifts. Despite their numerous commitments, not only have G7 governments taken limited action to address fossil fuel subsidies but they have also failed to put in place any mechanisms to define and document the full extent of their support to oil, gas and coal, or to hold themselves accountable for achieving these pledges. The G7 fossil fuel subsidy scorecard aims to address this accountability gap and track, for the first time, each G7 country’s progress in phasing out fossil fuel subsidies across seven indicators.

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