Comments not related to oil and natural gas in this thread please.
345 thoughts to “Open Thread- Non-Petroleum, Oct 18 2017”
From the end of the last open thread:
Looks like CO2 rise has accelerated up to 3 ppm for 2015 and 2016. Was running 2.3 ppm per year last decade. Looks like we are due to cross 500 ppm before 2050. Add on the other GHG’s and we will have doubled by then. That puts a whole new color to the Northern Hemisphere.
this is why people don’t vote with your side no more.. how are insults suppose to get me voting lib.?
I don’t give a rat’s ass who you vote for, you are just another stupid troll or sock puppet!
“When someone responds to the most sensitive situation in the world like this, “moron” is being kind.
Rex Tillerson Had the Very Best Reason for Calling Trump a Moron
Isn’t it weird that of all the infinite timelines we could have ended up living through, we got the one where Donald Trump is president of the United States and we had to spend multiple news cycles on whether or not Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called him a “fucking moron”? Maybe “weird” isn’t the word? Discouraging? Disgusting? Scary? Whichever adjective you want to pick, rest assured that you’re not alone and most of the country feels the same way, so let’s just breathe and dive once more into the “fucking moron” story, shall we?”
“To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of Earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems, is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”
Excerpt from Senator John McCain’s recent speech.
Well said, HB
Glad to see you aren’t dead or retired from commenting.
Trump reserves himself half a dozen times, saying one thing and then totally contradicting himself a little while later on just this ONE issue, like a STUPID kid trying to win an argument.
I often wonder if he can even REMEMBER what he said a month or a year ago, but then I conclude he simply believes he can get away with this sort of bullshit because his supporters don’t pay attention, and he has already written off any intention or even possibility of cooperation with his enemies.
Some people believe, apparently with good reason, that he has succeeded from the beginning of his career by lying shamelessly about just about anything and every thing, and GETTING AWAY with it, and that therefore he will continue to do so.
But as I see it, he is now in substantial danger of not getting away with it very much longer.
I’m thinking that the D’s now have a great opportunity to pickup a considerable bunch of seats in the coming elections, and if they are smart enough run a candidate for president who is not pulling a career long baggage train the R’s can exploit, they are likely to win back the WH in a land slide.
A forced Trump resignation is no longer out of the question.
My wife and I were discussing this, yesterday. I go back to dementia, on top of narcissim. I have seen dementia occur in people as young as 70, and have been dealing with aging parents suffering alzheimers and related dementia for almost 15 years.
The anger, forgetting words, declining vocabulary, mood swings etc remind me of my mother-in-law. Big time. For someone who knows “many words. I know the best words”, Trump seems to rely on a very few expressions and most of them do not fit the situation. The latest big fight with F Wilson over death notification is a case in point. It is with, ‘that woman’. “I never said that”.
It just goes on and on. It’s either dementia, or just asshole. Either way he is unfit. Unless something is done he will only cause more decline and upheaval. I do not think the US can spend another 3 years dealing with Trump. It will fly apart before then.
Good luck, all of us.
Agree w you Paulo, but with Trump I think he has been like this for his whole adult life.
Problem is that Pence would be worse in many ways (like a combo of Dick Cheney and Jerry Falwell).
The American voter has fucked up so badly.
Hey kookoo,
Don’t worry ’bout insults and all that negative stuff. We humans are just “trace biological elements” in this universe anyway and we don’t really amount to much. Once you come to understand that, all you need to do is educate yourself a bit in the subjects of history and the evolution of us “trace” humans, and you can easily understand that we are just gonna continue to fuck-up most of everything we touch. Yep, sorry to shit in your punchbowl, but it’s all downhill from here!
Care for a glass of home-made blueberry wine? Think I’ll have another.
Stan
It’s very unfortunate, maybe the greatest misfortune of our time, or EVER, that the environmental issues have gotten to be inextricably entangled with culture war issues.
The KEY to the problem, as much as anything, appears to be the FACT that the vast majority of the people of this country, liberal OR conservative, are pathetically ill educated in respect to the physical and life sciences. To put it BLUNTLY, unless you are in a university or high tech environment, nine out of ten people you encounter on the street don’t REALLY know shit from apple butter when it comes to the physical and life sciences, and the environment and the biosphere.
They believe what they want to believe, it’s as simple as that. Liberals believe in forced climate change, because the liberal establishment believes in it. The conservative establishment has very good reasons, namely the status quo involving power and money, to either disbelieve or deny belief in forced warming.
The liberals happen to have the facts on their side in this case. It’s as simple as that.
The last five or six university educated young women I have talked to are all environmental greens. Yet not even one of them took even one basic course, a REAL course in the physical or life sciences. They’re green because they believe what their culture tells them to believe, not because they UNDERSTAND the science.
The conservatives who don’t believe in forced climate change generally know about the same amount of science, namely hardly any at all. They also believe what they want to believe, what their cultural leaders TELL them to believe.
It’s important to note that among technically well educated conservatives, belief in forced climate change is actually quite common, with most of the ones I have met agreeing it is real.
And going by their body language, judging from the perspective of an old poker player, most of the remainder ( among those I have met) who are technically literate who say they DON’T believe in forced climate change are lying about it.
The truth has a way of asserting itself, eventually.
It’s been at least ten years, probably closer to twenty, since I have heard one of my neighbors say that the anti tobacco campaign is a communist/ liberal plot organized to make it easy for scientists to collect grant money and an attack on their personal freedom.
The ones who used to say that have learned better. Some of them learned the hardest way of all, having their own fatal strokes and heart attacks. It’s been easy enough for me to convince them, all I’ve had to do is say lets count up the people we used to know personally who died of stroke, lung cancer, heart attack, etc, and how many of them were smokers, and how many weren’t.
In ten or twenty more years, the typical person on the street who believes global warming is a liberal commie plot will have learned just how wrong he is as his air conditioning bill just keeps on climbing and the news is about more super storms and super wildfires and super droughts.
And along the way, he may have learned a few more things as well, such as that single payer health care is a bargain for him and his family, and that keeping the air and water clean is a bargain, compared to paying for water treatment plants and looking after people who are sick due to pollution.
He will even have learned that oil comes out of holes in the ground, and that it doesn’t RAIN OIL and refill the holes, and he may even be GRATEFUL that the electric car industry got a liberal commie plot subsidy boost, because by then gasoline will most likely be sort of EXPENSIVE……. even if most cars sold by then are electrics.
His grand parents got used to the idea the world is round rather than flat and that the Earth orbits the sun rather than vice versa, lol.
Yes it is, but unlike oxygen and nitrogen it interacts with infrared radiation. That’s the wavelengths you are incapable of seeing. Those go bouncing back and forth among CO2 and H2O molecules and the earth/ocean. It keeps the earth/ocean/atmosphere nice and warm and now nice and warmer, for a while. Then the ice melts. Then the CO2 and methane come up out of the ground and oceans. Then life is more than nice and warm.
It’s the little things in life that count.
i heard how the c02 was actually much higher in the past.. even during the ice ages.. i just dont think science has all the answers right now but we can all have different opinions here..
You heard completely wrong about CO2 during the glaciations (we are still in the ice age, it began 2.6 million years ago, we are in an interglacial now).
Opinions are generally not realistic or based in evidence and verified fact. They are just what people think and say at the moment, though at times they may be educated opinions. But those need verification if possible.
True science does not have all the answers at the moment, otherwise scientists would be out of their jobs. Science has given us a great many reliable answers, as is evidenced by the very way you are giving your opinions today.
Opinions have absolutely nothing to do with science!
Not even scientists’ opinions. Being a scientist doesn’t make your opinion scientific. Only data, evidence and facts count in science.
Opinions are like assholes–
Everyone has on.
kokoe3 – often people put their y-o-b in their login name so that would make you 14 – you need to work a bit harder on your science to catch up with your classmates.
Looks like CO2 rise has accelerated up to 3 ppm for 2015 and 2016. Was running 2.3 ppm per year last decade. Looks like we are due to cross 500 ppm before 2050.
Extrapolation from an El Niño period is a clear mistake. The association between ENSO and changes in atmospheric CO2 is known since the mid-70’s. Check for example Bacastow’s work. He was a frequent collaborator of Keeling, and both were at Scripps (UCSD). I was there in the 90’s, but didn’t get to meet any of them as we were in very different fields.
But the acceleration in atmospheric CO2 increase is clear, as I also said in the last open thread.
This creates a problem for the hypothesis, as the climatic effects don’t show that acceleration. Dennis says this is due to the effect being dependent on log [CO2]. He is wrong because log [CO2] also shows acceleration when [CO2] shows acceleration.
All the models are very clear that with the increase in CO2 the climatic effects should accelerate, and that is the basis of any future imagined catastrophic effect. Without an acceleration of the climatic effects, the hypothesis is wrong, the models are wrong, and any catastrophic prediction is wrong.
Javier represents himself as a scientist, and when he talks about anything other than climate, which he does at times, he knows what he’s talking about.
But when it comes to climate, he throws the precautionary principle out the window, and cherry picks his evidence, and ignores any and all evidence that the climate IS changing as the result of fossil fuel pollution.
Now things AREN’T going to hell, climate wise, as fast as the more pessimistic climate scientists thought they would a few years back, but it’s obvious that the Earth is getting a little warmer, in total, day after day, with most of the captured heat energy going into the waters of the world ocean.
It may take a little longer than we think it will, but there’s EVERY reason, based on just about everything we know about physics, to believe that the climate is going to change for the worse, and that we are collectively going to pay a very high price for it.
Lots of times a physician is wrong about how fast his patient with a terminal disease declines and dies. But at some point, such patients decline ACCELERATES sharply, after going slowly for a long time.
Before long, but how long I can’t say, the extra heat in the oceans is going to come into play in a big way, and the result is going to be higher average temperatures, more super storms, more super droughts, more trouble of every sort, climate wise.
Anybody who argues that we can simply move north in terms of agriculture is utterly ignorant of the realities of agriculture. For every hypothetical acre in the north that we may be able to farm as the climate gets hotter, we’re going to lose an acre or MORE in temperate areas and in the tropics.
And there simply isn’t that much land farther north that’s well suited to farming.
The biggest single reason the American mid west is the bread basket of the world is that the super glaciers of past ice ages scoured the Earth and left all that marvelous soil where it is, where we grow corn and wheat by the thousands of acres.
Farther north, there’s damned little in the way of soil, comparatively speaking. In a lot of places, for miles and miles at a stretch, there’s hardly any soil at all.
And where these IS some soil, in the far north, that’s not where we live or want to live.
Please don’t waste your time on someone who has no comprehension of logarithms and even what the term acceleration means. He doesn’t even know how to calculate rate changes. The lack of comprehension is huge, the claims are backed by false assumptions. I know it’s your time to waste OFM, but there should be limits.
Fish – While the following BBC article will be away over Javier’s head it might be a good place for your friend kokoe3 to dip his toe in the water. Saved it for my Grandson, age 10.
OFM, we have used up most soil and need to continually add synthetic nutrients as you well know. I don’t see a good future for most of the world as far as soil and food goes even without global warming. Maybe you have a different view we should hear.
My experience is limited to organic gardening and natural systems.
Hi Gone fishing,
It seems there is the possibility that human waste from sewer systems could be processed into fertilizer, though it will take a rise in the price of various key nutrients (N-P-K, I think), before this becomes profitable.
I know very little about agriculture so it would be interesting to hear OFM’s perspective on loss of soil fertility and what to do about it.
No doubt a peak in human population (2070-2080) followed by declining human population would help.
Hi Javier,
If the level of atmospheric CO2 was increasing exponentially at say 0.5% per year (roughly the average rate of increase from 1990-2016), then the rate of increase in the natural log of atmospheric CO2 would be constant.
That is there would be no acceleration (an increase in the rate of increase). This is fairly basic mathematics.
Chart of natural log of atmospheric CO2 from 1995-2016 shows a linear relationship, aka a constant rate of increase, suggesting no acceleration in the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 over that period. You are correct that an El Nino can change the rate of increase temporarily, this was seen in 1997-98 as well as 2015-16.
So is this when you cherry pick the data?
The Ln [CO2] shows very clearly that its rate of increase is not linear. The first derivative of Ln [CO2] (its acceleration) is growing with time.
The rate of growth of effective forcing due to CO2, ∆Fe (W/m2/year), has been increasing since 1959 from about 0.01 to about 0.03. The increase in the rate of growth of effective forcing should cause an increase in the rate of growth of the climatic effect, that has long been anticipated but is not being observed.
Hi Javier,
Yes over the 1959-2015 period, the rate varies a bit, sometimes decreasing and at other times increasing as there will be releases of carbon from the ocean that vary a bit as ocean currents change over time, as seen by variations in ENSO, AMO, PDO, etc.
You can call it cherry picking if you like, but the chart was posted in response to the following chart, where you claimed sea level rise was not accelerating, but the level of atmospheric CO2 (in ppm) was accelerating.
I pointed out that a large part of sea level rise was in response to rising ocean temperatures which responds to increasing radiative forcing which varies as the natural log of CO2.
Over the period in question from 1993 to 2016, the increase in the natural log of CO2 was linear.
I did not choose when the satellites were launched.
In case you still don’t see it, the rate of growth is represented by the steepness of the red lines, that as you can see, it is growing with time. This is fairly basic mathematics.
Ridiculous word salad.
Hi Javier,
Over the period from 1993 to 2015 when we have satellite altimetry data there was very little change in the rate of increase in the natural log of CO2. I realize there has been an increase from 1959 to 1995, though not a very big one. As you pointed out, there are changes in the rate of increase due to ENSO, and volcanic eruptions will also affect the rate of rise due to ocean cooling as seen during Pinatubo.
The long term rate as been fairly steady from 1993-2017.
Also sea level rise depends to a large degree on ocean temperature, we have data on sea surface temperature, but for the deeper ocean the data is not as good.
Chart below is for the Global Temperature average Temperature anomaly for the vertical average of the top 2000 meters of ocean depth relative to the 1971-2000 mean.
Ocean Temp 0-2000 m vs natural log CO2 1993-2016.
2005 corresponds with natural log of CO2=5.937 (better data starting in 2005 from Argo).
Well, I agree that sea level and sea temperature are increasing linearly. I just don’t that CO2 or its log are. Only for periods of a couple of decades its growth appears linear.
It is not only me who is saying this. It is also the experts at the National Center for Atmospheric Research at Boulder, Colorado, who are putting it on writing at Nature Sci Rep.
“Among the major unanswered questions is why GMSL (Global Mean Sea Level) acceleration has not yet been detected in the altimeter record, given the increasing rates at which glacial and ice sheet melt are estimated to have occurred (6,7) and as greenhouse gas concentrations have risen (8).”
Apparently they should consult with you, as you appear to have the answer.
Hi Javier,
Over the period you raised for sea level from about 1995-2015, the natural log of CO2 has risen roughly linearly. Over longer periods that has not been the case. 1860-1940 was roughly linear, 1940-1970 not linear, and 1970-2015 roughly linear, but a higher rate of increase than 1860-1940.
Dennis,
That graph is actually stitched from two completely different CO2 measurements. Atmospheric CO2 undergoes a very long process of many years before being completely isolated in the ice core. It cannot be compared in the way you are doing with the instantaneous instrumental measurements available since 1959. You are comparing apples and oranges when you talk about the rate of change of ice core CO2 and instrumental CO2. Any conclusion from that exercise is pointless and invalid. You don’t appear to be your better self today.
Hi Javier,
That is correct, the ice core data is joined with the flask data.
Law dome data from:
NAME OF DATA SET: Law Dome Ice Core 2000-Year CO2, CH4, and N2O Data
LAST UPDATE: 7/2010 (Original receipt by WDC Paleo)
CONTRIBUTOR: David Etheridge, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research
IGBP PAGES/WDCA CONTRIBUTION SERIES NUMBER: 2010-070
WDC PALEO CONTRIBUTION SERIES CITATION:
Etheridge, D.M., et al.. 2010.
Law Dome Ice Core 2000-Year CO2, CH4, and N2O Data.
IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology Data Contribution Series # 2010-070.
NOAA/NCDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA.
ORIGINAL REFERENCES:
Ice Core results:
Law Dome CO2 and CH4 records of the last 1000 years first
published in Etheridge et al., 1996 and 1998. Newer results
which fill in gaps, extend record to 2000 BP and include N2O,
were published and explained in detail in MacFarling Meure
et al. 2006 and MacFarling Meure 2004. Some new CH4 results
were also published in Ferretti et al. 2005.
Etheridge, D.M., L.P. Steele, R.L. Langenfelds, R.J. Francey, J.-M. Barnola, and V.I. Morgan. 1996. Natural and anthropogenic changes in atmospheric CO2 over the last 1000 years from air in Antarctic ice and firn. Journal of Geophysical Research, 101, 4115-4128.
Etheridge, D.M., L.P. Steele, R.J. Francey, and R.L. Langenfelds. 1998. Atmospheric methane between 1000 A.D. and present: evidence of anthropogenic emissions and climatic variability. Journal of Geophysical Research, 103, 15979-15996.
MacFarling Meure, C., D. Etheridge, C. Trudinger, P. Steele, R. Langenfelds, T. van Ommen, A. Smith, and J. Elkins. 2006. The Law Dome CO2, CH4 and N2O Ice Core Records Extended to 2000 years BP. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33, No. 14, L14810 10.1029/2006GL026152.
MacFarling Meure, C. 2004. The natural and anthropogenic variations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide during the Holocene from ice core analysis. PhD thesis, University of Melbourne.
Ferretti, D.F., J.B. Miller, J.W.C. White, D.M. Etheridge, K.R. Lassey, D.C. Lowe, C.M. MacFarling Meure, M.F. Dreier, C.M. Trudinger, and T.D. van Ommen. 2005. Unexpected Changes to the Global Methane Budget over the Last 2,000 Years. Science, 309 (5741): 1714-1717.
Not a big difference between law dome data and mauna loa data from 1959 to 2004.
This data is widely accepted by the experts in the field.
Oh and I am doing fine today and yesterday, thanks for asking.
The comparison is close enough when averaged over one year, remember we are considering global climate rather than local weather. 🙂
Hi Javier,
What do you propose for CO2 data before 1959?
Hi Javier,
I had used a smoothed 20 year spline fit to the law dome data for ease of using annual data for regressions. The unsmoothed law dome data compared to Mauna loa for 1860-2015 in chart below. Same sources as comment linked below
Good paper. The lack of acceleration from 1993-2015 is explained by the Pinatubo eruption in 1991 causing a temporary ocean cooling which reduced sea level by the start of the satellite altimetry period in 1993, the recovery from this relatively low sea level over the 1993-2002 period lead to an anomalously large rise in sea level for that decade.
From the paper
Here it is demonstrated that the environment in which the era began was itself highly anomalous due to the preceding eruption of Mt Pinatubo on June 15, 1991, which cooled the oceans and decreased water storage over land and in the atmosphere. The net effect of these changes was to lower sea level prior to the altimeter era and induce an anomalous rise in the era’s early years. It is proposed that this early anomalous rise masked the acceleration that would have otherwise occurred in the broader record. A consequence of this interpretation is that as the altimeter record lengthens, and in the coming decade barring another major volcanic eruption, accelerated rise will likely be detected.
Hi Dennis, thanks.
That they propose an explanation doesn’t mean it is the correct explanation. There are always multiple possible hypotheses to explain observations, and the correct explanation doesn’t even have to be among the proposed ones. Without evidence that rules out alternative explanations, an explanation isn’t worth much.
Sea level increase has been measured with gauges systematically at certain places since the 18th century, and the record doesn’t show any evidence of an effect from volcanic eruptions. If they want their hypothesis to have any weight that is the first thing they should demonstrate.
Hi Javier,
The older data is not very good, only since 1993 do we have decent sea level data. If they demonstrated such an effect on the poor data, you would say the data is not good. We have much better data on the Pinatubo eruption and its effects than any earlier volcanoes.
Do you have a peer reviewed paper that disputes their explanation as opposed to a general proposition that their may be better explanations.
Your claim would be a reason to reject all scientific theory because their might be better theories in the future.
The proposition that their might be better explanations is correct. Rejecting current theory for some imaginary better future theory seems unwise.
I also note your “tide gauges in certain locations”, we need an estimate of global sea level, which prior to 1993 has too much uncertainty to be useful.
Hi Javier,
No acceleration is needed, a steady rise in temperature may be a problem. Also Geochemistry suggests that the atmospheric CO2 levels will remain high for many centuries as the atmospheric CO2 level is reduced very slowly once excess emissions from human activity is reduced. In the mean time the extra 3 W/m2 of extra radiative forcing from an assumed average atmospheric CO2 level of 500 ppm will continue to warm the ocean and atmosphere so that global temperatures will rise from 1.7 C above the 1850-1900 mean to 2.5 C above the 1850-1900 mean, if we assume an ECS of 3C.
There are likely to be other effects such as reduced albedo, reduced aerosols, release of carbon from permafrost and forest fires all of which will tend to increase temperature further, the ESS is likely to be higher than ECS, probably at least 4 C which would correspond to 2.7C of warming at 450 ppm of atmospheric CO2. It might take 5000 years or more for the full Earth system effects to be realized and perhaps atmospheric CO2 will fall over those 5000 years. Possibly atmospheric CO2 could fall from 500 ppm to 457 ppm over 5000 years (corresponding to the rate of decrease in atmospheric CO2 from 114 ky BP to 105 ky BP), which would correspond to about 2.8C above the 1850-1900 Global average temperature. So temperatures will be warm for a while, though you claim that is a good thing it is far from clear how easily we will adjust to the mid-Pliocene Temperatures of 3 million years ago.
There is no objective evidence on this question, we only have expert scientific opinion to go on.
No acceleration is needed, a steady rise in temperature may be a problem.
Without acceleration, the problem is greatly reduced.
Global warming has been taking place at similar rates since ~ 1910. After 100 years its effects are mostly beneficial. We are at peak civilization with the highest rates of health, wealth, longevity, and lowest rates of early mortality, hunger and poverty. It is difficult to defend that we are being harmed by global warming by any objective criteria.
A steady rise in temperature is bound to sooner or later become a problem only if it continues indefinitely, but we have evidence that multi-century warming or cooling periods are common in the paleo record, and they always end. People in charge of subprime mortgages risk also assumed that property prices would continue rising indefinitely. They were proven wrong. At some time in the future the warming will end. Our use of fossil fuels is also bound to decrease in the near future. The problem is most likely non-existent. Clearly there is no evidence that it is a problem or that it will become a problem over the next decades.
Other effects must be dominated by negative feedback factors. The Earth has been subject to any type of conditions we can imagine and some we can’t, and it has maintained life-compatible temperatures for thousands of millions of years. If positive feedback factors dominated, there would have been a temperature runaway long ago. Last time I checked we were still in an Ice Age characterized by extensive ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. The rate of melting for the past decades could be sustained for tens of thousands of years before they melt.
We don’t know how long it takes for CO2 to decrease when conditions change. We didn’t know about carbon storage response in the 1990’s (the famous missing sink), and we didn’t know until recently about the changes in the airborne fraction. Some scientists believe we can know now how long it will take for the CO2 to come down. They are fooling themselves and others.
What we do know is that temperatures can come down even under constant CO2 levels. So elevated CO2 does not prevent cooling. Vostok ice core shows that between 128-114,000 years ago CO2 levels remained constant, while temperatures fell from interglacial level to glacial level.
I think you need to review what you really, positively know, and what is based on dubious assumptions and unknown premises.
Hi Javier,
I agree and you should do the same about your assumptions and what you know.
I am not too worried about cockroaches and viruses, they may be fine.
The global temperature level did not change by that amount, there can be local changes in temperatures due to changing ocean currents, or ice shelf collapse.
Can you find a peer reviewed paper rather than a blog article by a non-expert?
Find something in the peer reviewed literature about how quickly carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are reduced over long periods. Temperatures at the poles can change quite a bit, global temperature estimates are more interesting.
I am not too worried about the next glacial maximum, it is likely 30,ooo to 100,000 years in the future.
I understand that you believe any amount of warming is always a good thing. Climate over the period that homo sapiens has existed has exclusively been at atmospheric carbon dioxide levels of less than 300 ppm until very recently. The mid Pliocene with atmospheric CO2 similar to today was 2-3 C warmer with sea levels 10 to 40 meters higher (estimates vary widely).
You can also assume that any uncertainty will always vary on the side that makes things better for life on the planet (or for humans). The rapid change in Global temperature over a very short time frame may make it difficult for ecosystems to adjust over the period from 500 CE to 2016 CE the warming over any 140 year period has never been as fast as the most recent 140 years. In fact, the change in Global temperatures from the LGM to the HCO was only about 3.75 C based on the Shakun et al 2012 estimate, the difference was that change in temperature occurred over 10,000 years with the fasted rate over that period for global temperature change of about 1.8 C per 1000 years. The rate of change over the past 100 years has been 6.7 times higher. Over the past 70 years the rate of global warming has been 10 times higher than the fastest period during the warmup from the LGM. The past 50 years the rate of warming(2.65 C per century) has been almost 15 times higher than during the fastest rise during the LGM to HCO transition (0.18 C per century.)
Download the correlation between world population and CO2 content in the air. Scary. So much of the CO2 creation is directly related to feeding and maintaining the population. This in my opinion is our greatest challenge. We have bred way too many people and the trend is still up! Without a reversal in the population growth and eventually a reduction in numbers, I as a scientist do not see a significant reduction in CO2 content for a long time. Yes I believe in cleaner burning fuels.
Frock?! really?!
No offense but, while I personally agree with the content of your post, I’m also deeply suspicious of short posts such as yours. You may be legit, but I have a hunch that there is more afoot in terms of trolls, bots and sock puppets on sites such as this than is evident at first hand. I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, you can start by telling us what field your scientific expertise is in and by perhaps giving us a link to a site or sites that have the correlation between CO2 and population. Most here are perfectly capable of finding that information on their own but I’d like to see you do it, if for no other reason than as a token of proof that you are more than a drive by poster intent on simply stoking the fires of general discord. Ball’s in your court…
I did a Google search regarding atmospheric CO2 and human population correlation. There does appear to be some interesting literature. Didn’t have time yet to read much of it though.
Oh I’m sure there is a strong correlation! That in and of itself doesn’t make me any less suspicious of the style of comment posted by our new unknown visitor. Let’s see if and how they respond…
Hey frock, what if we made our energy, machinery and moved our transport without making much CO2 at all? It’s called renewable energy and efficiency.
There goes the relationship between CO2 and population, very weak indeed. The key here is how we make our energy. The correlation does not hold if energy is made from renewable sources that don’t produce CO2. Population does produce CO2, but in turn plants are grown to feed it so the CO2 is absorbed by the plants, just a cycle if you leave out the FF.
Correlation does not mean causation. Excess energy to drive machines to produce excess food and goods is the cause of population increase. Any energy source could do that.
Hi Gone fishing,
I agree in terms of CO2. I do think reducing human population by means of a demographic transition (such as what has occurred in many European and East Asian nations (Japan and S. Korea) to lower total fertility levels (under 1.75 live births per woman over their lifetime) would be good for the Earth system.
We should probably aim for 1-2 billion, possibly less. These levels won’t be reached until 2300 at the earliest unless there is an intervening catastrophe, WW3, pandemic, super volcano, asteroid impact, etc. in my view.
The population reduction idea is a completely other topic. I was disposing of the so called causation between CO2 and population.
First of all the population reduction scenarios are fraught with problems. I agree that our use of the planet is destroying the natural world and will stop one way or the other.
Disasters that would reduce the population to half or less are not a solution unless the planet has become mostly uninhabitable. People will recover and produce as much population as possible. Just think how short a time it took to go from 2 billion to 7 billion and we did not have the abilities or knowledge we now have.
Some say we are damaging the ecosystems to the point of no return. In that case population might fall to zero. I see no real cessation in the rate of destruction and as problems crop up in the near future, the rate will increase due to humans struggling to survive.
The only sane way out is move away from destructive practices as much as possible using system changes and technological changes. That means maintaining some form of BAU to avoid catastrophic failure which would cause far more damage to ecosystems than we do presently.
Population might fall or level out naturally. It will definitely fall as food sources reduce and pollution builds. That is the most likely scenario considering the planetary crisis we are mostly not facing.
Will any of our efforts be fast enough? With the current rate of effort, probably not. But that could change. Stay tuned, the next two decades are critical, if we don’t blow ourselves up.
What I find interesting is the struggle by business to keep their businesses rather than shift to new and better businesses and strategies. Why follow the sinking ship down? Not logical and smacks of a prison mentality.
The whole argument that renewable energy uses petroleum and other fossil fuels to be built out is highly entertaining. I sit back and smile when I think of that petro based insulation cutting off the supply of oil needed to heat the house and when the PV electricity runs without coal or natural gas. The fossil fuel industry is building their own demise because they are trapped into selling it for all purposes.
Yep, good old fossil fuel is building out the renewable world. What a hoot.
At least the automotive industry is trying to change. They see the light.
You forgot all that oil needed to lubricate wind turbines as mentioned by one of our recent troll visitors…
/sarc
Use bacon grease.
Hi Gone fishing,
I agree with your assessment that fossil fuel use and population are not necessarily linked, as fossil fuels deplete and peak fossil fuels is reached this will become obvious.
My point was that a sustainable increase in living standards (education and health especially) will likely lead to a demographic transition Worldwide (as in Europe in East Asian nations where it has occurred already), population peaks in 2075+/-5 (as some demographers believe) and then declines.
I doubt BAU continues, except the BAU that there is continual technological progress and that BAU is essentially constant change (which essentially asserts that there is no BAU over the long term).
From where I sit things are much different today from when I was 10 (about as far back as I remember things in more detail), I imagine 50 years from now things will have changed in ways I cannot envision (and I will not be around to see those changes).
Yep, BAU embodies a lot of change, it is changing right now.
The demographic transition is really happening everywhere it’s not blocked by particularly rigid oppression of women – which is pretty much just Africa and the ME.
This article is a bit dated. As of 2016 the TFR for Haredi “ultra-orthodox” Jews is 6.9. That is comparable to Somalia and Niger. KSA, which is rather rigid and oppressive, was 2.8 in 2016. That’s below Israel’s 3.1.
I’d suggest you, and Gary Brecher, have stumbled onto the outer limits of western thinking on these things, where there are few rational discussions — and no easy answers (except for perhaps the simplistic and naive ones).
Thanks, for the articles -it‘s striking how much the problem is in Africa.
As for simplicity – I dunno – I think it really is pretty simple:
Give women the freedom to go to school (it helps, of course, if the schools teach freedom of thought, i.e., they’re non-religious), the freedom to work, and the freedom to use birth control, and…they choose to have far fewer kids.
This has probably already been brought up in the TaaS discussions, but eliminating parking in urban areas would free up a lot of real estate. You could increase public transportation; have more drop off and pick up transportation which could stop long enough to load and unload, but wouldn’t be able to park within city limits, or you could close all streets altogether so that people would need to walk, bike, use golf carts, use moving sidewalks, etc. to get around.
I can foresee a time when urban real estate becomes too valuable to waste in parking garages, parking lots, and street parking.
I wonder how much a generic and AUTONOMOUS Segway will cost in fifteen or twenty years when all the key patents are expired and batteries and the other components are cheaper than ever.
I’m betting there will be two wheel single seaters you can hop in and close the transparent LID,staying clean and dry and warm or cool, and swipe your card or put your thumb on the payment pad, and away you go, for as far as maybe five or ten miles, in a dense urban environment. And when this single person low speed autonomous transporter isn’t hauling people, it can be hauling groceries.
You will just transmit your order to the store, and a few minutes later, your groceries will be at your door.
I foresee utility or publicly owned as well as privately owned charging stations being quite common, and properly standardized. There’s no reason a city government can’t own charging stations just as it owns parking meters and street lights, lol. So there can be stations all over the place, and payment can be made either electronically or by depositing cash , paper or coin.
Autonomous cars will be able to park themselves at any available charger, and buy some juice if it belongs to another company or the city or even a home owner, and move to another spot as soon as the battery is topped off, freeing up the charger. There can even be rules that say once a car at a public charger has a fifty percent charge, it must move to free the charger up to a car with only twenty five percent, lol.
And at night, or at times when the load is heavy but traffic is light, these cars will pull up to a charger and feed some juice back into the grid, and be credited for doing so. And it can all be done without anybody actually touching anything except the maintenance guys.
And the cars will be MOSTLY charged using wind and solar power that’s freely available during the hours when the cars will be needed least, namely while most people are AT WORK, eight till five or so and at night when cars are needed even less often.
Hell’s bells, such cars could be used at night as warm and comfortable sleeping spots by homeless people who can come up with a few coins or welfare tokens.
They could be pretty safe too, because if anybody tries to break into one with the lid locked, and the rent paid, it will summons the cops, transmit pictures, and even turn on a siren and run away, lol.
Some of them will have built in coffee makers, lol. Microwaves big enough for hot sandwiches too. A mini fridge with a cold drink for sale? Why not?
Maybe some of them will be toilets for hire. Why not ?
This sort of thing could play hell with the hotel industry. Suppose you will be able to hire a mini motor home type vehicle at the airport, and eat and sleep and bathe in it, if you’re road warrior, and be on the phone while it drives itself from one appointment to the next?
The lawyers will probably make more money out of these cars than the people who build them conducting countless never ending lawsuits over what will be legally acceptable, and what will be forbidden.
Hi Boomer,
As Gonefishing has pointed out (and he is correct I believe), this may lead to higher energy use, though I suppose one could argue that the cars that will bring commuters into the city can be parked in the suburbs overnight and then have less far to travel to pick up rides in the morning. The problem is what to do with all the cars that are waiting to take people home at evening rush hour. Not all of them will be needed for urban taxi service so they will need to be parked somewhere. A trip to a remote parking site will waste energy, which I think is at least a part of Gonefishing’s point.
What if TaasS doesn’t happen, and we have millions of autonomous vehicles floating around city centers waiting for their owners?
Parking can (and should) be expensive in urban centers. Human drivers are expensive and that reduces idling in the street becoming a big problem (though people looking for parking can be 50% of traffic even now), but autonomous drivers will be cheap. Energy costs will likely be insignificant, with cheap surplus solar electricity during the day. But congestion will be a real challenge.
This will require innovative use-pricing solutions.
Hi Nick,
I was thinking in terms of TaaS. Yes it is possible that at some point solar will be so cheap that energy is not much of a constraint. The parking expense in the city is one reason TaaS could become competitive as parking in Chicago, Boston, New York, and San Francisco (cities that I know a bit) is quite expensive.
I think it might be helpful to think of TaaS on a continuum: taxis on one end, Uber/Lyft moving to lower cost and faster service, and autonomous EVs providing much lower cost and greater availability.
Uber/Lyft have greatly expanded the market for TaaS – taxis have lost a modest amount of business, but the overall market has expanded greatly: most of Uber/Lyft’s customers are new. The number of people who have one or zero cars has expanded as a result. The cost of parking is certainly a large factor.
Autonomy would greatly reduce costs, which would expand it’s market even more, and the shift away from ownership would accelerate. Electrification would also help, though not nearly as much: labor is roughly 10x larger (maybe labor of $1/mile vs fuel at $.10 for hybrids and $.05/mile for EVs).
Hi Nick,
Another consideration is that it is pretty unlikely that it would be cheaper to have the AV drive around all day than it would be to go and park somewhere. For AVs that are EVs, the battery would not last for the day, it will need to park and possibly park and charge.
Of course it will not be all or nothing (all AVs or no AVs) and I agree AVs will reduce the cost of TaaS greatly and increase it’s acceptance.
Well, the cost of parking in a major city is easily $30, or roughly $3/hour for 10 hours (much more per hour for shorter time periods). If an EAV costs $.15/mile to operate and is moving at 15MPH (which is optimistic in a dense city), it’s cheaper to keep moving. An EAV with 225 mile range could float for 10 hours and have 75 miles left.
I suppose all-day commuters would be likely to banish their cars to migrate to the nearest suburb where the cost of parking is below the cost of moving. But, for someone who’s downtown for an hour or two of shopping, parking would cost $6-8/hour and having their car float would be the cheapest option.
Unless cities found a way to apply congestion charges. Given the electronic nature of both AVs and TaaS, that doesn’t seem that hard to implement.
Roughly the same logic applies to surplus TaaS cars.
Hi Nick,
The problem with your logic is it doesn’t take account of depreciation of the car due to excess miles. Also parking prices would decrease to the point that it would be cheaper to park than to “float” just through market forces. Also 15 MPH doesn’t seem right to me, there is little congestion outside of rush hour so it is not clear that the 15 MPH assumption is a good one. Maybe people would use up their batteries in that manner, it would probably be cheaper for commuters to send their car to a parking lot at the edge of the city (where parking would be $10/d instead of $30, in which case money is saved (assuming a 20 mile round trip to parking lot ($3+$10= $13 vs $18 to drive around all day so $5 savings per day, plus less depreciation on the car from 100 fewer miles driven).
So the floating would only make sense if shopping and again street parking rates would fall to make it uneconomic to have the car “float”.
For TaaS AVs they would park and wait for next ride and the surplus TaaS cars would remote park as it is cheaper.
I think there may be very significant interim problems with parking, but I imagine some kind of electronic congestion charge will eventually fix it.
Background info:
Mileage based depreciation is included – it’s not as much as you might think. For instance, a 2015 Camry Hybrid has a trade-in value of 12,021 at 30k miles, and that drops to 10,875 at 50k miles, for a cost of 5.7 cents per mile. That per-mile depreciation cost will drop with older and cheaper cars.
I don’t think parking costs depend much on parking demand: dense urban areas have a very high opportunity cost for land. On-street parking is generally badly underpriced and simply would become road lanes if not needed, parking structures would become usable space for commercial or residential use if not needed for parking.
The 15MPG figure is my observed average speed in my dense city, due to congestion and many tightly spaced intersections with lights and stop signs. Careful routing strategies can reduce speed to 5 or 10MPH if the driver desires by moving to low-speed side streets or congested main streets, or maximize speed to as much as 30MPH (which, of course, Uber drivers try to do with online routing systems that provide congestion information). Online routing systems are starting to create substantial problems in places like San Francisco (and other cities) due to the systems identifying short cuts through residential streets which have been relatively quiet before now – various barriers to reduce speed and traffic volume are multiplying like rabbits on those side streets…
Actually, I meant to say that I think there will be problems with *congestion*.
Taxis create additional cars on the road, looking for passengers. Uber/Lyft have made that worse, in part by siphoning some passengers from mass transit. AVs would make the situation much worse.
Public roads don’t deal well with demand overloads, due to the lack of pricing to balance supply & demand. That has been mitigated by the cost of driving, but AVs would dramatically reduce the cost of driving. Something will have to change.
We’re gonna need congestion pricing, and we’re gonna have problems in the transition.
Hi Nick,
Even assuming you 15 cent per mile estimate for an AV to drive around is correct, it is still cheaper to remote park. My experience is that parking at the outskirts of the city is far cheaper.
I also disagree that parking prices are unrelated to demand. If the parking lots are empty, the price will be lowered to the point that they fill up.
So AVs floating around the city seems unlikely. Eliminating street parking would just create more street congestion and waste energy as cars would just keep moving for only the reason that there is no place to park.
Eliminating street parking would just create more street congestion and waste energy
I agree. There will be a need for some kind of congestion pricing to push AVs into parking.
I would expect an AV to be programmed to minimize it’s waiting costs.
Now, there probably is free or cheap parking (less than $4.50) within a reasonable range, but that’s only because they’re in neighborhoods with excess parking supply. Free street parking will disappear if there are gangs of AVs roaming around, filling it up: residents will be up in arms, and find ways to keep the AVs out (permit parking of some sort available only to local residents, probably).
If suburban commercial district street parking starts to see new demand, then I imagine pricing would rise to the point of keeping AVs on the street.
parking at the outskirts of the city is far cheaper
Well, sure, but you have to get there. Let’s say the cheap parking is 10 miles away, for a round trip of 20 miles. Alternatively, if your AV can float at 5 miles per hour on side streets (It’s very doable – I’ve done it) for 10 hours, that’s 50 miles of travel. The difference is 30 miles of additional travel to float. At 15 cents per mile that’s a cost of $4.50, so the suburban parking has to be cheaper than $4.50 to make it worthwhile. And probably less given that 2/3 of the travel cost is deferred (additional depreciation and maintenance).
Heck, it’s possible to float at 2MPH: back streets, alleys, etc.
If the parking lots are empty, the price will be lowered to the point that they fill up.
You can only starve a business so far, and it dies. Surface parking lots in dense cities are disappearing – their opportunity cost is way too high. If their revenues fall, that will greatly accelerate their extinction. Structures are very expensive to maintain – reduce demand, and they’ll disappear too. Again, AVs would create demand for FREE parking, but they might (probably will) avoid anything that costs more than floating. You just can’t run a business at that price.
The bottom line? A bumpy transition, and eventually some kind of congestion pricing to push AVs into parking.
@NickG
Trouble with all these parking schemes is that they only look at one aspect of parking and try to solve one problem with one solution. They then ignore other issues.
I spent many years in field service visiting clients in towns with many different schemes. Residents’ pass or buy a ticket from a local shop and display it in your window, you have to park to find a shop to buy the ticket from while the warden writes you up. Drove 7 miles to travel from the in town car park to pick up a load of gear from the client 200 yds away! No meter feeding when a call could take between 10 mins and 10 hrs and you have no idea how long till you finish. Park and ride, try lugging a couple of hundred pounds in several cases on a bus.
One size fits all solutions do not work.
NAOM
NAOM,
Yeah, permit parking is a pain.
I imagine electronic, automatic systems enabled by autonomous vehicle telecommunications: you enter a congestion zone, and start getting charged for the time you drive there. You park and get automatically charged in the same way.
You’ll probably want the congestion charge to be higher than the parking charge…
Hi Nick,
You have moved the goal posts.
First it is 15 MPH, then 2 MPH, or it could be done at 0 MPH, it’s called parking. 🙂
I did not suggest free street parking, the price could change based on congestion.
Remote parking prices would depend on the demand. There could also be high fines for driving 10 MPH under the speed limit, this would make it pretty difficult to “Float” at ridiculous speeds such as 2 MPH (I walk at about 4 MPH), so a car averaging 2 MPH is pretty absurd.
I doubt this will be nearly as much of a problem as you think. If too many people cause congestion by having their cars drive around all day. In fact empty cars could be pulled over and have a timer showing how long they have been driving empty, more than 30 minutes, big fine. In that case it’s cheaper to remote park.
Well, I certainly don’t think that such a problem can’t be fixed. But, it will be a very interesting transition.
Yes, as I thought about it my estimate of minimum speeds dropped. The thing is…AVs are intelligent. They can minimize their speed with a variety of strategies: they can learn which side streets or alleys are empty; they can stop, or cruise along, watching for meter maids or traffic cops; they can scurry to vacant spots, they can all gang up on a certain part of town and create sufficient congestion that the top speed is 2 MPH. That last doesn’t have to be deliberate, just a positive feedback thing where they’re all looking for slow areas, and they all arrive there and more head over as speeds drop.
There are lots of opportunities for unexpected results and interactions.
Hi Nick,
So you are going to defend a 2 MPH average speed? We start to get to turning everything into a parking lot in that case and AVs are not allowed into the city, or are fined very large amounts when they are stopped while “floating”.
So I guess this could be a problem for free market fundementalists. But for those who realize that there will be practical regulations for public safety, the problem is unlikely to occur as solutions will quickly be found for the problem you envision.
I agree that there are solutions. But heck, are we interested only in finding things with no solutions? Identifying problems before they become acute is very useful…
In this case, I think it will take a while to recognize the problems, and to come to consensus on the solutions.
We start to get to turning everything into a parking lot in that case
Well, I think maybe you’re not thinking about the great diversity of roads and driving spaces that exist in large dense cities. There are boulevards that are quite busy, and on the other hand there are quiet sidestreets and alleys. Quiet, slow EAVs probably wouldn’t bother anybody on sidestreets up until a certain critical mass: residents there might only start to complain, as they are doing now, when TaaS (Uber/Lyft) drives fast and noisily through their quiet residential streets.
But, yeah, turning city streets into a big parking lot is the basic concern.
Interesting times…
I think loitering around at low speed will be forbidden here.
If you block someone driving much to slow you can get a ticket already here. Even Taxis wait at official taxi stands who are at points of local interrest – or seek a cost free parking slow when they are in the suburbs and have to wait.
There is an alternative: a few automated central parking lots, where automatic car companies can park their cars. Due to the nature of these companies, parking can be a lot more compact than normal parking, it can be a kind of car warehouse where these companies can store surplus cars waiting for a rush hour. And they don’t have to unpark a special car, any car does it so they can store really dense.
They will have traffic models to estimate how many cars they need where and when.
I think we thought electricity was going to be so cheap in the 50’s from nuclear, we had no need to meter it.
I was thinking about the congestion issue. Having a bunch of cars parked within the city but all wanting to leave at the same time at the end of the work day will generate at least as much congestion as cars scheduled to pick up people at their offices.
I think the solution would be more public transportation or closed areas where only pedestrians and bikes can go.
If a city doesn’t have the funds to expand public transportation right now, having a system of shuttles would work. Kind of a car pool. Instead of one vehicle picking up one person, have one vehicle picking up 6 to 10 people at one stop. That would be easy to schedule for big office buildings. Once out of the urban area, people can disperse in various ways to locations beyond the inner cities.
In the NYC region people have long used trains and subways to get into NYC. Drop off and pick up at the regional train stations were traditionally done by someone with the family car. It’s much more efficient than each worker driving a car into the city and parking it.
That’s the first thing I’ve seen in years worth reading at WUWT.
It’s not at WUWT– it’s at a parody of Wattt Is My Head Doing Up My Ass?
Red faced here, lol.
Read it more asleep than awake.
Senior moment plus looking after somebody as old as my dad means you spend a good bit of time in a mental fog. I thought they had developed a sense of humor and were parodying themselves.
So far at least I haven’t stomped on the gas when I meant to stomp on the brakes.
It is a camouflaged site.
But funny—
Try an EV with good regen brakes to enable one-pedal driving. The older I get, the more I appreciate all the new features that augment my other senses. One pedal driving is one of the best.
Only in America you say:
CLIMATE SKEPTICS WANT MORE CO2
“A key argument used by climate skeptics to downplay the consequences of anthropogenic climate change is resurfacing: the idea that carbon dioxide emissions are a net positive for the planet’s vegetation. The line of reasoning is being used to push back on the underlying science of global warming. The Heartland Institute, which has sought to place climate contrarians on science advisory councils at U.S. EPA, even suggested that it might sue companies for not emitting more CO2, Climatewire, Oct. 16).”
If only the crap they spew were fertilizer it would at least help. More script from the FF Clown Act.
This reminds me of religion versus science where the religion is the Creepy Church of Profit and Greed. One side just has to make up stories while the other side wears itself out pursuing fact and reality.
Trump last week nominated Kathleen Hartnett White, who previously led the Texas Commision on Environmental Quality, to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality, a post that requires Senate confirmation. Hartnett White, currently a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, has long expressed skepticism about established climate science and once dismissed the idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, calling it “the gas of life on this planet.”
I highly recommend that these geniuses at least take ‘Plant Physiology 101’…
The rapidly rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affect plants’ absorption of nitrogen, which is the nutrient that restricts crop growth in most terrestrial ecosystems. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have now revealed that the concentration of nitrogen in plants’ tissue is lower in air with high levels of carbon dioxide, regardless of whether or not the plants’ growth is stimulated. The study has been published in the journal Global Change Biology.
EVOLUTION IS BACK IN NEW MEXICO SCHOOLS AFTER UPROAR FROM SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY
Still, it is rather sad that in the 21st century USA we are back re-litigating the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. Fortunately for monkeys, we didn’t descend from them, but if we had they would be deeply ashamed of producing morons such as Trump and Hartnett White.
dismissed the idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant
She has a point. The least you have of a pollutant in the environment, the better. That’s clearly not the case of CO2.
Ever heard of light pollution or noise pollution? By your definition of a pollutant light and noise could never be a pollutant. Yet it can be.
“Light pollution is the impact that anthropogenic light has on the visibility of the night sky. It also encompasses ecological light pollution which describes the effect of artificial light on individual organisms and on the structure of ecosystems as a whole.”
“A pollutant is a substance or energy introduced into the environment that has undesired effects, or adversely affects the usefulness of a resource. A pollutant may cause long- or short-term damage by changing the growth rate of plant or animal species, or by interfering with human amenities, comfort, health, or property values. Some pollutants are biodegradable and therefore will not persist in the environment in the long term.”
Pollution seems to be in many cases a matter of degree. A threshold. Not very scientific or analytical at all Ned, as usual.
California Considers A Ban On Gasoline And Diesel Car Sales. Can It Work?
Gasoline and diesel-powered vehicle bans are accelerating: China, several European nations, and India have announced bans on internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle sales will commence between 2025 and 2040. Now, America’s largest vehicle market may join the global trend of banning fossil fuel vehicle sales .
More than 2 million new vehicles were registered in California last year, the most of any state, and 5% of California’s new vehicle sales in the first quarter of 2017 were electric vehicles (EVs). Under a new legislative proposal, every new vehicle sold statewide would have to be zero emission.
But even with surging EV sales, is it realistic to mandate all new vehicle sales be electric? And even if this mandate is feasible, is it good policy? The short answer is yes, it’s feasible, and the benefits will be immense. But the long answer is that it will require reworking our transportation energy system, along with continued technology innovation and smart public policies.
California’s climate policies have cut electricity emissions 26% since 2014, but transportation emissions have remained stubbornly high. Passenger vehicle tailpipe emissions grew 4.5% from 2014-2015, increasing transportation’s total share to 37%. With petroleum refining and oil extraction, that total grows to 50% of statewide emissions. These trends must be reversed to hit the state’s aggressive target of 40% emissions reductions below 1990 levels by 2030.
California’s 2030 emissions target will only be achieved with large-scale vehicle electrification.
The article is a bit confusing but appears to say that all sales will be EV by 2040. That is very practical. People and industry can plan with long range mandates on the books. It’s the back and forth of mutable policy that really messes up the system.
By 2040 the oil industry may be on it’s knees anyway, so no big deal. Now if they had courage and said 2025 or 2030 to achieve 100 percent EV sales in the state then that would be worthy action.
I do have one question. Why can’t someone go outside he state and buy an ICE or hybrid and then register it in state?
Regulation, California has had a different new vehicle emission standards for decades. I can’t tell you the current requirements, but in the past you couldn’t just go buy a new car in Arizona and register in California. It would have to meet California emission standards and if it didn’t have something like 6000 miles on it. You would be charged sales tax.
I agree with you about the mandates needed for the industry long term planning. I also think the right date should be 2030. The sooner the better, but I think 2025 is unrealistic. If 2030 is to optimistic by a few years, so be it. People could stock up on ice vehicle prior or continue to wear out the current old ice vehicles until they find an EV to suit their needs.
For those interested in building energy, here is a solar heat gain calculator for south facing windows. It comes up as an Excel file.
China looks set to defy all earlier expectations, and install an enormous 50 GW of new solar by the end of the year.
AECEA’ latest figures show that up to the end of September, China’s newly added capacity for the year amounted to roughly 42 GW – placing China’s total PV capacity at around 120 GW. This would mean that an average of just 2.7 GW/month would be needed to breach 50 GW by the end of the year. [snip]
When the 42 GW for solar so far is compared with installation figures for other sources – 1.09 GW for nuclear, 6.69 for hydro, 7.3 GW for wind and 18.84 for thermal power, China’s shift towards solar really stands out.
AECEA is now estimating average installations for 2018-2020 at between 35 and 40 GW annually, meaning that China’s total capacity could stand as high as 248 GW by the end of the decade.
This represents the second time this year that Asia Europe Clean Energy Associates has raised its expectation for China’s annual PV installation figure, as the country has defied the expectations of most analysts, who were expecting a similar, albeit less severe, drop off in demand for the second half of the year.
China is not messing around with solar PV! They are already ahead of their 105 GW, 2020 target by 15 GW, with three months of the year left! It remains to be seen how well they integrate this new PV capacity into their grid but, their considerable hydro electricity generation resources should help with absorbing the intermittent output from PV. According to a page at China Energy Portal on 2016 detailed electricity statistics, a little over 3% of China’s electricity was produced by NG in 2016. The contribution from solar was a little more than a third of that at 1.1% and while these percentages are relatively tiny compared to coal’s 65% and hydro’s 19%, PV capacity will have doubled from the end of 2016 figure of 78GW, some time before the end of 2018, for a doubling time of less than 24 months! It will be very interesting to see how the Chinese grid copes with this sudden flood of non-dispatch-able power.
Here are some interesting factoids from this.
In the first nine months of 2017 China installed more PV than either the US or Germany have installed in their entire history up to the end of 2016.
The cumulative installed capacity of PV in China at the end of September was greater than the cumulative capacity of the three nations with the next largest capacities (Japan, Germany and the US) combined as at the end of 2016.
It seems to me that a lot of both pro renewable and pro fossil fuel advocates are very poorly informed about the dispatchability of coal and nuclear power. Or maybe they know better, but pretend otherwise for various reasons.
It’s very easy to find articles that say than nukes can’t be ramped up and down, but the French nuclear industry has proven otherwise. Nukes can be built to be run at various power levels so that running them up and down over the course of several hours is no big deal, although nuclear fuel has generally been so cheap there has been no point in trying to save fuel by dialing back reactors.
It’s also easy to find articles arguing that coal plants can’t be ramped up and down, for one reason or another, and it’s true that this is hard on the boilers, and that it results in more emissions than running steady.
But the utility industry has been running coal fired plants up and down on a daily basis, sometimes twice a day, pretty much since day one.
They will be able to ramp some of their coal plants up and down as needed to balance the output of their solar farms. This will mean they get a little less power per ton of coal in the plants that are run up and down, and that these plants will produce a little more pollution per kilowatt hour generated AT these plants.
But taken all around, they will make out like bandits, because they won’t have to be spending as much money on buying coal while at the same time reducing their overall pollution emissions.
Considering what it costs THEM to build a solar farm, and what a ton of DELIVERED coal costs them in cash and externalized costs such as reduced worker productivity and higher health care costs, it’s easy to understand why they are keeping the pedal to the metal building out solar.
Plus the more they use themselves, the cheaper they can sell solar equipment to other countries, and thus maintain their dominant position in the industry.
Economies of scale may not be the only thing in industry, but some times, like the coach said about winning, economies of scale are the ONLY thing that actually matters, in terms of who wins, and who loses.
non-dispatch-able power
I get frustrated with that phrase. Renewables can be dispatchable in the same way that anything else is dispatchable. Everything is over-built (built so that maximum possible production is greater than maximum needed production) and then production is turned up or down within that range.
I suppose a better word would be “intermittent”: it’s production is determined by the weather, time of day and season of the year. With renewables, the variance is large enough that over-building alone is very likely not the optimal strategy: you’d have to build quite a lot of windpower, and that would be expensive. Solar alone, of course, would require quite a lot of very long distance transmission, which would also be excessively expensive.
But, it’s worth noting that everything has some intermittency. Nuclear, coal, NG: they all can and do break down, sometimes with little notice and long restoration times. Renewable intermittency also breaks down, but it tends to do so in smaller “chunks” – Ireland can use windpower but not nuclear, because nuclear comes in such large increments, which are too large for the Irish grid, if they’re lost. Thermal plants are vulnerable to weather in the form of drought and hurricanes. And, some of renewable intermittency is very predictable – daily solar variation is very predictable.
I don’t understand the need for overbuild. Just build somewhat above average and during times of bright sunlight make hydrogen or some other long term storage that will get one through the seasonal changes and long term cloudiness. Batteries and wind are good for night time power needs that PV does not directly fill, but seasonal winter diminishment can be filled by the spring and summer abundance of daylight.
Of course if PV stays really cheap then it will be overbuilt. Heating energy can be stored in insulated underground tanks while ice can be made for summer cooling. Hot water can be pre-heated from the underground tanks and topped off by a heat pump. An in-house battery good for one to two days of power will fill the final need while the excess from the EV can be used for any short term shortfalls or long term emergencies on diminished power.
It sounds complicated, but it replaces a huge very complex system of mining, drilling, refining, pumping, transporting and distributing that is hidden from most people. Instead the quiet clean systems will be hidden in-house somewhere and in the nearby locale.
Hi Gonefishing,
The overbuild of capacity is in part due to wind not blowing or sun not shining all the time. So if the average windpower turbine provides average output of 33% of capacity over 24 hours and the average PV panel provided 30% of capacity over the average 25 hour period, then with no fossil fuel, nuclear or hydro we would need 3 times more windpower capacity than average load in an all windpower world. For an all PV world we would need 3.33 times average load for PV capacity. Backup from hydro, pumped hydro, nuclear, or other energy sources would reduce the need for over capacity.
if the average windpower turbine provides average output of 33% of capacity…we would need 3 times more windpower capacity than average load in an all windpower world.
Well, that’s not overbuilding. That’s precisely matching needed capacity with average load. Overbuilding by a factor two would mean building 6 times more windpower capacity than average load. Overbuilding by a factor three would mean building 9 times more windpower capacity than average load.
That’s why you don’t want to “overbuild” any more than is necessary. The study that you often refer to estimated a need for overbuilding by roughly a factor of three. I suspect that’s a little higher than needed. The study simulated two kinds of storage, but didn’t use the two forms of storage in the same simulation run, so it didn’t get an optimal low-cost result which would result in less overbuilding and more storage.
You are be correct Nick, my mistake. The excess (3 times average load) was to cover those times when wind and solar levels were low with a minimum of backup needed. They may have done a simulation using fuel cells, VTG, and batteries, but wind gas and pumped hydro were not included. So there is potential for improvement.
A better simulation would look at nuclear, hydro, and pumped hydro along with wind, solar, batteries, fuel cells, and Vehicle to grid all in a single simulation looking for minimum cost.
It is too bad there hasn’t been more research along these lines.
I did find this study, have only read executive summary so far.
The study aims to see if 30% renewables (for annual average output) is feasible when looking at the 5 minute dispatch level.
Not all aspects were considered (long term capital cost, adequate revenue for coal and natural gas plants that will see lower capacity factors with increased wind and solar penetration. The study focuses on the Eastern interconnect. It would be worthwhile to consider the entire nation with HVDC interconnects between the Three main US grids as their are very good wind resources in some regions and very good solar resources in others which would reduce system cost.
The overbuild is an attempt to reduce cost. Often the storage solutions are more expensive than an overbuild in the capacity for wind and solar.
Also note that the overbuild is relative to average load, there is some difference between peak load and average load (not sure what it is, but let’s assume 1.5 times average load at peak load). So if that estimate is roughly correct for an entire grid network a 3x overbuild relative to average load would be 2 times peak load. I agree that the various thermal and battery solutions you suggest will work. As PV costs and wind costs fall the excess generation (3 times average load for example) may be cheaper than the various storage solutions for a cost minimized system.
“. Renewables can be dispatchable in the same way that anything else is dispatchable.”
This might be the case…. eventually. Probably WILL be the case…. eventually.
For now…………
This is the kind of statement that fossil fuel advocates use to make renewable advocates look like silly in public debate, which is after all conducted mostly via sound bites.
Well, you just made exactly the same point about nuclear: in the US it’s not dispatchable because it’s too small – you always use it first and maximize it. In France it’s dispatchable, because it’s large enough.
It’s kind’ve hard to imagine the context in which a quote about dispatchability would be a catchy sound bite…
Doesn’t matter how much you have overbuilt wind generators if the wind is not blowing, or how much you have overbuilt solar generators if the Sun is not shining, or how much you have overbuilt hydroelectric generators if you are in a multi-year drought.
Any electricity storage system increases the cost of electricity hugely. The only one that is cost effective at this time is pumped hydro, and it is very limited in location.
hmm. I was curious about this reply to my comment, and I’m reminded why I normally have Javier’s comments hidden. (And, now I feel impelled to answer for some reason)
You see, none of that’s true as a practical matter.
Over a relatively modest geographical area, wind almost never goes away (it goes away less often than coal plants fail).
Solar certainly goes away at night, but no one is going to build an all-solar system if they can help it. Maybe on isolated islands, and probably not there either. On a theoretical level, as I said: “Solar alone, of course, would require quite a lot of very long distance transmission, which would also be excessively expensive.” Because the sun is always shining somewhere.
Any electricity storage system increases the cost of electricity hugely.
No. First of all, the first storage you want to use is the free one – EVs owned by residential customers. They can charge during peak renewable production periods, and even send back power during the unusual periods when it’s most useful.
2nd, storage is only expensive if you do’t use it optimally: it should store a relatively small percentage of your consumption. Now, if you want to maximize solar, like for instance islands that are dependent on oil, then you’ll use more storage and still save a lot of money. Which brings us to
3rd, non-hydro storage has gotten a lot cheaper – batteries are now competitive with pumped storage for certain things, especially where really cheap natural water storage isn’t available. Don’t forget “wind-gas” for seasonal storage.
Fossil fuel energy is extremely expensive. Our economic system does not recognize it for two reasons, otherwise the price would be vastly higher.
First the price on the environment and global health is not recognized or accounted. Second the fact that production of fossil fuels no longer exists, no more is being made at any rate that is meaningful or useful. That means we are merely tapping a warehouse and once that is depleted it is done. Any other dwindling product that was still demanded would be priced high and rise dramatically as it was depleted. Instead we treat oil and other substances as if there is an infinite supply as far as economics goes. Price is controlled by rate of removal, not by amount that is left, a commodity mindset. The faster we raid the warehouse, the lower the price.
But what happens when the warehouse is empty or the last of the product out of reach?
And the 3rd reason: security. The US has spent quite a lot on security due to oil: the lives and health of quite a few servicemen & women, and trillions on oil wars.
And the hundreds of thousands we have killed or destroyed their lives, but they are not citizens of the US so not generally a concern to the egocentric American.
Yes, indeed.
That number is more like millions. The numbers in Iraq alone are staggering.
But, as you say, that information doesn’t resonate much in the US.
First the price on the environment and global health is not recognized or accounted.
Many countries around the world seem to be finally waking up to the fact that the US fossil fuel based car centric model is a really bad idea.
China is a good example of this change in attitude.
Tackling air pollution in China
Combining climate policy and vehicle emissions standards could pack a one-two punch.
Mark Dwortzan | MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
May 17, 2017
A recent study estimates that about 1.6 million people in China die each year — roughly 4,000 a day — from heart, lung, and stroke disorders due to poor air quality. Most of the nation’s lethal air pollution, including headline-grabbing toxins such as fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ground-level ozone (O3), is produced in its coal-dominated energy and industrial sectors. But a substantial and growing contributor to the problem is road transportation; as private vehicle ownership and freight traffic increase, so, too, do ambient concentrations of pollutants from gasoline and diesel fuel exhaust.
It is no accident that China and other countries are going all out in a transition to clean renewables. The current American administration is absolutely on the wrong side of history in this regard.
If we were actually sentient and reasoning beings we would be screaming toward clean energy at an extreme rate. Instead we plod along and a large contingent want to keep the poisoning of planet going.
Any truly sentient and reasoning being would run away from us as fast as it could. We have yet to prove ourselves actually intelligent.
“Doesn’t matter how much you have overbuilt wind generators if the wind is not blowing”
Try to understand not correlated generation, two sites that are more than 1200 km remote to each other are not correlated, connect many of such sites by transmission lines and you have something like baseload.
“Any electricity storage system increases the cost of electricity hugely”
Strawman. Even baseload power plants need quite a lot of storage due to fluctuating demnad. Interesting, all the German pumped hydro capacity were build for coal power or nuclear power.
Yes, REs need more storage and/or transmission capacity, however the price is not that much higher, quite contrary, in many case generator plus net integration is actually cheaper with REs.
two sites that are more than 1200 km remote to each other are not correlated
In some places, three sites about 150 km apart produce reliability equivalent to coal.
The WNISR has a nice graph comparing wind, solar and nuclear in China
But even combined, they’re still less than 10% of chinese electricity production if I recall correctly.
The report is available as a PDF as well and it is a highly recommended read for anyone interested in the nuclear industry.
I have determined for a building or residence that going beyond R25 overall would only be practical in exceptional circumstances such as extreme cold or heat. Probably places one should not live anyway. After that it is better to optimize the heating, cooling and shading of building rather than spend a lot of money and material further insulating the structure.
The advantage of insulation is that it does not depend upon mechanical or electric devices to operate and takes no energy to continue operating if the structure remains intact.
The problem of windows is brought up in the white paper.
The environmental question trumps all other questions combined.
The following was cut for time in the last Saturday Night Live episode. The short is simply called “Climate Change” and its a funny look at our favorite topic. 😀 😛
Republicans get most of the money, but D’s get a huge amount. I haven’t heard jack shit from either party about doing anything about the SOURCE of the opioid drugs that are killing people by the thousands.
The Trump administration will blow a little hot air about it, but won’t do anything, so that doesn’t count.
Incidentally , all the people who go around running their mouth about what a rotten capitalist hog Ayn Rand was don’t know jack shit about her books, because they have NEVER READ THEM, they have only swallowed the propaganda of the leftish element.
Atlas Shrugged is NOT about heartless capitalists destroying society.
It’s about fucking fascists, defined as government plus big business in bed together, running things, and so destroying society.
Reasonably and effectively regulated capitalism is fine, it’s at least as good as any other economic system, when it’s REGULATED effectively.
Capitalism combined with government is fascism, and THAT’s what Atlas Shrugged is REALLY about, and THAT’s WHY we have most of the drug problems we have today, capitalists in bed with whoring politicians, of BOTH parties.
THAT’s WHY our overall health care costs are so high. The health care industry has succeeded in capturing the parts of the government that are supposed to regulate it.
That’s why our food is so full of nasty chemicals.
That’s why we don’t have much in the way of mass transit, even in places where it would work ok.
Most of our problems are due to our whoring politicians and the businessmen who buy their services.
But having government in complete control seems to lead to even WORSE outcomes.
Maybe one of these days the people of this country will be well enough educated that we can have better government, government more like the kind that prevails in Western Europe.
But I’m not going to live long enough to see it, personally.
The education profession/ industry, of which I was once a member, has a strangle hold on our government, and our rotten public schools in our failing communities will REMAIN rotten, until that stranglehold is broken.
I see pretty much zero signs of that happening.
Our legal principles are based on the idea that a dozen criminals should go free, rather than that one innocent man should go to jail.
Our current educational system is based on the idea that if your kid is capable of learning and doing well, but you don’t have a lot of money, so you can put that kid in a private school, he ROTS in a rotten public school, if you live in a community with a failed school system, so all the kids can rot TOGETHER.
And most of the school systems that are supposedly doing OK, in comparison to other AMERICAN school systems, are basically fifty percent rotten.
Go to a typical American high school, and if you know enough to KNOW what you are looking at, you will find THREE schools operating in the same buildings.
One school is for the kids of the elite, the kids that will be going on to real colleges and universities, and will succeed in life. One school is for the typical kids who learn enough to at least balance their checkbooks and read Fox news articles. And one is for the kids who are too much trouble for the teachers in the first two schools to be bothered with them. I’m painting fast with a very broad brush of course.
A few kids in the vocational wing will learn enough to have a great shot at an entry level position in a trade that will enable them to make a decent living, and maybe even make a lot of money.
But in a school I worked in, a couple of dozen willing to work girls were pushed out into the world having spent half of their high school career learning how to cut hair. Nearly all of them are working as cashiers, or clerks, or factory hands. The community has openings for maybe one percent of them in that trade.
The state put in a law requiring two years training to get a job as a hair dresser. That’s the same length of time it requires to sit for the professional nursing license examination. The cosmetology profession has captured the regulatory apparatus you see.
The previous school had a horticulture program, same results. I used to socialize with the hort teacher. She quit in frustration, because she quickly found out there were no jobs for her students, that they couldn’t get even a quarter an hour more as an entry level employee at a local store or farm than the next person that walked in off the street. Then she came back when her old job was open again, because SHE couldn’t find a local job in her field that would pay enough for her to live. This was at the same time I quit teaching to go into construction and power plant maintenance etc the second time,tripling my income on an annual basis.
This general situation isn’t going to change, because the teachers are in bed with whoring ( mostly D in this case ) politicians who will make SURE it doesn’t change, that there will be ONLY one option, zero choice, for ninety five percent plus of all our kids…… the local public school.
YOUR kid, unless you are a member of the local elite, will likely as not be sacrificed on the altar of equal educational opportunity,in effect meaning you can’t take your share of the tax money spent on education and spend it in a school that gets results.
And in a city with a REALLY rotten school system, even the classrooms reserved for the elite STINK. That as much or more than any other single reason why the middle classes have fled so many cities.
Elite in this case doesn’t mean one percenter income, it means well brought up, willing to listen, behave, study, WORK at learning, etc. It means working class with a work ethic taught at home, and it means middle class where books and magazines and some real education is the norm.
The D’s didn’t do anything about the opioid problem when they had the opportunity to do so.The R’s won’t likely do anything about it NOW, except they may resort to doing all the same old things that not only don’t work, things that will make it WORSE, overall.
Secondhand smoke is not a problem. If children don’t like to be in a smoky room, they’ll leave. (As for infants,) … at some point, they crawl.
— Charles Harper, chairman, RJR Tobacco Company
The Australian: Coalition MPs shocked by energy threat
Pay-walled link. Use Google web cache to access. It worked for me.
“When Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg walked into the Coalition party room with his energy policy earlier this week he faced a sea of hostile faces. But they left the room shocked. At last, the government politicians understood that Australia faces a long term blackout power crisis the like of which has never been seen in modern times.
It’s one thing to read commentaries warning of what is ahead but another to see a minister use confidential information from independent power authorities and regulators to show the desperate state of affairs that is looming for the nation.
The froth and bubble in the political debate is about everyone trying to estimate how far prices will fall and claiming that clean energy targets will solve the problems. While all these issues are important they are swamped by energy security and the desperate plight facing the nation of Australia.
Frydenberg divides electricity generation up into two parts — what he calls “dispatchable capacity” and “intermittent capacity”.
“Dispatchable capacity” is power that can be produced on demand and while it includes coal and gas it also includes hydro, pumped hydro, batteries and biomass.
“Intermittent capacity” is capacity that depends on weather and is led by wind and solar power.
Between 2012 and 2017 Australia has built 1,850MW of weather-linked “intermittent capacity” and only 150 MW of “dispatchable capacity”.
At the same time “dispatchable capacity” has been reduced with the closure of coal and gas fired power plants and the failure to maintain existing coal fired plants.
According to the Australian Energy Market Operator back in 2012-13 we had 20 per cent “reserve capacity”— power generation capacity above maximum demand. Currently that’s down to 12 per cent and if the Liddell power station is shut there will be a big shortfall. We therefore face the clear certainty of frequent and long blackouts in all our cities if we do not invest in “dispatchable capacity”.
Victoria’s target at 40 per cent renewables by 2025 is four times the existing level of renewable generation; Queensland’s target is 50 per cent by 2030 or about 10 times the existing level. NSW does not have a renewable energy target but like Victoria is “plonking” solar and wind installations around the state without any understanding that you must have a major content of “dispatchable capacity”.
Remember if the investment in renewables is in “dispatchable capacity” it prevents blackouts, but such investment is more costly and does not grab the same green vote-winning headlines.
What makes South Australia different to the other states is that they have actually undertaken the sort of program other states are planning so we know what is ahead for the rest of the nation. It’s true last February South Australia was a bit unlucky in that power lines were blown down and an interconnector with Victoria failed but the long blackouts were always the most likely outcome of their actions. (They are now investing in “dispatchable capacity” because they learned the lesson the hard way.)
Frydenberg uses South Australia to show what is going to happen to NSW, Victoria and Queensland if they follow their current path. This SA graph shows the share of intermittent power generation between February 6 and February 8 (wind and solar), which falls from 91 per cent to 3 per cent.
NSW got a taste of what was ahead on February 10, 2017 but tactfully Frydenberg did not mention it because the NSW government is from the Coalition and not the ALP.
The NSW system on February 10 had 2080MW in renewable capacity, excluding the Snowy, but only generated 707MW from that capacity at the peak demand time because the wind did not blow and at 5pm the sun had lost power.
And the failure to maintain old NSW coal power plants caused the coal generation to fall 3000MW below capacity. Victoria saved NSW but Victoria is now in a deeper mess as it ploughs on with crazy installations of “intermittent capacity” that will not generate if the weather conditions are unfavourable.
I can’t think of any country in the world that would be so stupid and do what Australia is doing.
We only have one hope — a plan which has been responsibly prepared by the government of the day. We have to hope it triggers investment in “dispatchable capacity” as well as lowering prices.
I don’t see how ignoring these very serious issues is going to help us in the future. We need nuclear ASAP.
If one visits http://reneweconomy.com.au one gets a sense that things are unraveling relatively quickly in Australia. The Australian Federal government has been captured by fossil fuel interests and the legacy electricity generating industry who have pressured them into propping up the status quo at all costs. In addition to which the legacy operators have been gaming the system to receive high prices and blaming said high prices on renewables. All the while increasing numbers of households have been finding that a solar PV system can bring some relief from the high priced electricity supplied by the grid, especially if batteries can be added to the system so as to enable the household to choose when to take power from the grid. The actions being taken by the Australian Federal government will most likely drive more consumers to adopt solar PV and storage technologies (including ice storage for air conditioning).
One could say that RenewEconomy is a biased source, in which case one could easily look to the Rupert Murdoch controlled media for the opposing view, which will be as biased in favor of the status quo, if not more so.
Islandboy
Your last paragraph may contain a great deal more significance than a quick read would imply.
The sources of virtually all our data seems inextricably intertwined with political/social/ideological bias.
However, by reading from numerous points of view – most especially from the ‘Other’ (regardless of whom is represented from our own biases), one might obtain a broader perspective and make evaluations accordingly.
It seems the South Australians are fucked.
In just a few weeks, the best case scenario would be a non-interrupted electric supply provided at the cost of the world’s most expensive pricing.
A more realistic pre-appraisal would indicate the start of a multi year, chronic period of blackouts during heat waves, somewhat mitigated by even more expensive, peaked- provided electricity.
We will see.
The responsibility/blame for this situation is frantically being placed upon the ‘Others’ shoulders.
The recent report claiming 2 New England power companies were responsible for natgas shortages would indicate that this finger pointing is starting to spread and not unique to Oz.
Interesting times.
To reiterate:
A modern wind turbine needs 80 gallons of gear lube in the gearbox.
A barrel of oil yields 0.42 gallons of lubricant.
Therefore, 190 barrels of oil need to be refined to obtain the 80 gallons of lubricant to fill the gearbox in one wind turbine. For every 7980 gallons of crude oil, you will have 80 gallons of gear oil.
There are 341,000 wind turbines on the planet.
190×341,000=64,790,000 barrels of oil need to be refined to obtain enough lubricant for the wind turbines for one year.
The wind turbine gearboxes need new gear oil once each year.
25 years of operation for the wind turbines, 25×64,790,000=1,619,750,000 barrels of refined oil over 25 years so the gearboxes are lubricated properly, then they won’t come to a screeching halt.
Unsustainable, there will be failure of wind turbines, will all end as stranded assets.
You will have to recycle the gear oil. Synthetic gear oils will work. Regardless, wind turbines need oil to operate.
Have to have a maintenance schedule, drive an ice truck to each land based wind turbine and change the gear oil in the gearbox. You have to do it to keep the wind turbine churning out those sparks of electricity.
In other words, the wind industry is highly dependent on the oil industry and that will not change.
It is a tough job to drive that kind of information into thick skulls.
Cheers!
I take it you assume there will not be much oil production in the future for other reasons. A good assumption in the long run as energy and transport move away from it.
Sounds really dumb to use oil for the production of lubricants if we have little use for oil otherwise and the yield of lubricants is low. Other methods and chemistries will underprice oil in that case. Synthetics will do the job and last longer than petroleum based oils. Chemistry is the key factor here not oil. Increasingly for offshore applications, synthetic and biodegradable fluids are being developed. Additionally, turbine gear oil specifications are beginning to reflect demand for higher lubricant performance through testing for enhanced oxidation and corrosion resistance, and improved bearing and long-term operational performance.The new generation of lubricating oils for wind towers have moved the oil drain time from 8 months to three years, so your numbers are not valid and will be less valid in the future as new oils and systems are developed.
But not to worry, oil will be pumped for chemical uses, not so much for energy. The short molecular chain compounds used for energy will be processed into other valuable products. No one ever said oil production would totally disappear, just that it would not be burned for energy and transport in the future.
Yes and all the other demands for oil will fall one by one. No one expects a conversion in just a few years, but that truck, that train, that boat will be energized very differently by mid-century or earlier. Enjoy the transistion, it’s exciting and will have lots of benefits, including all those building and maintenance jobs for renewable energy.
My prediction is we will not need nearly as much energy in the future as we do now. Now that throws a wrench into almost all the extrapolations and predictions that are typically published. Non-linear can go both ways.
Where do you get your numbers from out of interest? I’d have thought a large gear box, intermittent use (e.g. 30% availability), fairly cool operation, very low speed on the drive end and a high spec design with decent filtration and monitoring systems would need much less frequent replacement than say a continuously operating generator with turbine or ICE. Also that amount of lube oil would be collected and recycled, or maybe even periodically cleaned-up in situ, so very little extra would be needed as make up (plus energy for the recycling process would be needed).
You will never get the source of the numbers but it is in the ballpark. I have seen 0.5 gallons lubricant per barrel of oil. Doesn’t matter anyway, mostly using synthetic lubricants now, some have over 4 year life.
The oil is filtered and cooled at the turbine. Since no buildup of combustion products, it’s more a matter oxidation, water content and viscous stability that requires a change. Much cheaper to change oil than change bearings and gears and pivot drives.
Synthetic lube oil mostly comes from petroleum still I think – it just gets modified quite extensively along the way and I was more asking where the data concerning the turbines comes from.
Mr. Kaplan
I’ve been trying to learn more about the wind powered industry and have found promotional material touted on the net by manufacturers to be an excellent data source.
Specifications are included, as a rule, and comparative analysis to competitors or existing practices can be made.
Everybody seems quick to claim why their approach is superior. In doing so, the specs – and potential vulnerabilities of competing/adversarial players – is revealed.
Dennis
If you have the time and are inclined to broaden your perspective on the operations of offshore wind, suggest you do some checking on the grout problem that has incapacitated hundreds of offshore turbines.
The turning online of Hywind – world’s first operational floating turbines, an outstanding engineering accomplishment – sparked discussions of the difficulties in keeping many of these huge, anchored structures at true vertical. This is an absolute must for proper functioning.
Ongoing design adjustments seem not to be 100% effective, which could cause huge problems.
Yair . . . .
Dunno Alfred.
I know bugger all about wind turbines but I would imagine gearboxes are conservatively rated and run synthetic oils.
Suggest you do a bit of research on oil sampling techniques and kidney loop filtration such as are used in large transmission and hydraulic systems.
Cheers.
“In other words, the wind industry is highly dependent on the oil industry and that will not change.”
OMG. A competend chemical company can produce the needed amount as syn-fuel by P2L, you can estimate how long a turbine must run to provide the energy (10 kWh = 1 liter fuel). Is that a gamebreaker?
Hi Alfred,
I’m thinking you are a wannabe Ronald Walter.
Maybe you are RW, and just not quite performing at your usual level right now.
What’s missing is the sense of absurdity that RW could add in with a few choice words. The framework is right, but the humor isn’t quite there.
Alfred
Interesting comment by you and the followup responses.
Yes, the 80 to 95 gallon gear oil capacity has been required to be changed on an annual basis.
The 12 man- hour process (2 man teams using a bucket brigade) is being supplanted by innovative, mechanized extractive and pumping processes with one man able to do the job in a few hours.
The gearbox failure rate is suspected to be caused by inadequate change out.
Synthetic oils are being introduced with 3 year lifespans, and remote, 24/7 monitoring systems are being emplaced.
Gearbox oil is one of a half dozen lubricants used in these installations.
A reader might imagine the efforts involved when doing this maintenance offshore, all the more so with the size of the turbines increasing dramatically putting more demands upon the hardware.
A reader might imagine the efforts involved when doing this maintenance offshore, all the more so with the size of the turbines increasing dramatically putting more demands upon the hardware.
Pfft! As someone who used to do BOP hydraulic systems maintenance on wellheads on the ocean floor, deep beneath the semisubmersible rigs being pounded by the waves at the surface, I can’t say I’m particularly impressed by the supposed degree of difficulties involved in wind turbine maintenance requirements, wherever they may be found…
Furthermore, as has already been mentioned, and can easily be confirmed by a quick Google search or two, the name of the game these days, is synthetic greases and lubricants which can easily be produced even from non fossil fuel based chemical feed stocks. I can also imagine AI enhanced smart robots and drones doing most of the maintenance in the not too distant future.
… And as someone who was taken off the tragic Piper Alpha, put on a plane to be flown back to Brazil, tasked to do the then- deepest dive off Brazil (Campos field, 820 feet depth, burning off one leg of the spud in template), I, also, am highly unimpressed with an offshore oil change.
What I DO think is of great relevance is the cost of these operations.
And, as an aside, while you and I did the bulk of our ‘commuting’ via chopper, the new built-for-putpose maintenance fleet is still grappling with the ever precarious embarking/disembarking procedure.
New gangways are being implemented to more safely transport work crews.
None of these maintenance focused operations are rocket science.
The cost is something else entirely.
None of these maintenance focused operations are rocket science.
The cost is something else entirely.
Agreed but the real issue is cost compared to what? Are we talking full cost accounting? You may or may not agree with many of the points in Nate Hagen’s talk posted by Gone Fishing but, at least IMHO we need to pay up front to upgrade to a sustainable ‘Civilization 2.0’ and then perhaps the relatively high costs of maintenance of things like wind turbines will seem orders of magnitude cheaper than maintaining BAU.
Anyways I still think AI robots will be doing most of the maintenance.
AI? AAAAAAIIIIIIIIIII!!!!
Fred, if it gets to the point where I have to negotiate with my refrigerator to get to open the door I will give it a lobotomy with a grill starter. And the car better not talk back to me, it’s bad enough with that lady in my smartphone always telling me where to go.
Maybe the voice recognition to enter my house would fail if I had a rough throat and it would call the AI police if I tried to break in.
Then there is the toaster…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec
An article looking at the costs of owning a car and when it is cheaper not to.
One point that it mentions which gets overlooked in many comments about TaaS is the value of time. If you earn a lot of money per hour, not having to drive yourself anywhere, look for parking, or bothering with maintenance can be worth far more to you than what you would pay for on demand service.
This is a fast hitting, info and idea rich lecture. You may not agree with every detail but there is a lot to consider and maybe it will help focus your efforts and direction.
I will give Nate his 65% grade that he assesses himself, which is scary high for dealing with such large diverse systems and topics. I actually prefer his talks on human psychology and how that fits into the pattern of actions that led to our current situation and keeps it going, probably because that is his forte’.
I will give Nate his 65% grade that he assesses himself, which is scary high for dealing with such large diverse systems and topics.
And let’s not forget that he is supposedly speaking to an audience that has not previously been exposed to Nate’s level of dot connecting and overall risk assessment of maintaining BAU.
Though I’m not too sure I like his choice of a mouse in a four sided cage analogy, over the many blind men examining the proverbial elephant.
Whatever anyone else may take away from Nate’s talk, at least for me, it underscores the fact that the continuation of the ‘Infinite Economic Growth Paradigm’, is patently unsustainable. Yet everywhere you turn it is still the explicit underlying long term goal.
The Imperial Pink Elephant apparently has no clothes and it’s about to take a major dump in the middle of the room, so get your shovels ready folks!
I agree, the IEGP is the walking dead soon to be put in the grave for good.
It will be good to get our feet back on the ground and give nature her due respect. She is our mother and we have been abusing her way too long. It will probably dramatically reduce the level of mental illness among humans and everyone will have meaningful tasks to perform.
We do need to get everyone on board eventually.
I’ve actually had some personal interaction with him (we both hunt mushrooms).
He is walking the walk the best he can.
Learning how to communicate with Cheeto Jesus ?
“Texas Sen. John Cornyn is frustrating both administration officials and conservative movement leaders by holding up the confirmation of Russ Vought to be Mick Mulvaney’s right hand man at the Office of Management and Budget.
Cornyn — a member of Senate leadership who has a strong say over the floor schedule — has made it clear that Vought will be held up until he gets more funding for Texas’ hurricane relief, according to three sources close to the situation. It’s unclear how Cornyn has phrased his demand or how much extra money, exactly, he’s asking for, but his message has been heard loud and clear by top Trump administration officials.
Maybe he can throw them some paper towels instead?”
When is your State, pigs at the trough are your friends.
Russia-sponsored troll networks targeting the U.S. may number in the hundreds
Hook, line and sinker, right OFM (OldMacDonald aka KGB Trumpster) ?
And you never even got paid
I never needed any help from the Russians to badmouth HRC. She provided the world with PLENTY of ammo, all by her arrogant self, from the days of Cattle Gate and White Water on.
Are you aware that BILL accepted half a million bucks for making speeches in Russia while she was Sec of State?
Now that sort of conflict of interest would have you SCREAMING if she had run on the R ticket, wouldn’t it?
On of the big differences between us, old buddy, is that I go where ever the facts lead me, whereas you are a hypocritical partisan who never has anything to say except from a particular partisan point of view.
Why don’t you tell us what you know about HRC’s involvement in uranium deals and Russians, and BIG contributions to her family slush fund from shady characters in that part of the world?
If you don’t know anything about this, I will post some links for you, if you wish. I might anyway, just to remind people just how scummy she actually was, and just how little effort most of the msm put into really telling it like it was in respect to her ethics record.
That sort of thing is perfectly ok with a hard core Clinton partisan, and it’s ok with lots of more moderate D’s so long as it’s a D who does it, ditto it’s ok with hard core R’s so long as it’s an R doing it. It’s ok with you, because you are apparently infatuated with HRC for some reason or another.
This sort of thing is NOT ok with me, regardless of who is doing it.
The Russians probably managed to convince a few people to either vote for Trump, or to stay home. Both sides in political campaigns run disinformation campaigns called ADVERTISMENTS, lol.
Would you like to discuss Yankee interference in the elections of OTHER countries?
WHILE HRC was at state, and Obama was in the WH? We could go there, and I could have a lot of fun out of you in the going, if you wish. I mean, we weren’t only fucking around with voters, we were actively there on the ground killing people and getting some of our own people killed, lol.
I could post hundreds of links indicating just how the HRC machine manipulated the nomination process in her favor. She’s not worthy of the office of president.
Trump’s a pro crook, a big league scumbag. HRC’s and amateur, maybe at the level of varsity athlete at a smallish college, compared to Trump who plays consistently at the Super Bowl level.
But she’s still a scumbag, maybe even more so that most American politicians that make it close to the top.
Most of the women I know who have self respect wouldn’t vote for her on the basis of the fact that she stuck with Bill and set up a Bimbo Squad to cover up for him…. excepting the women who are too ignorant to know about the Bimbo Squad, or who are cynical enough or partisan enough to overlook that sort of thing.
Bottom line, you’re incapable of admitting the actual facts in respect to WHY she lost , such as the fact that she in her insufferable arrogance expected the people who are the base of the D party to vote for her, while she hobnobbed with banksters and promoted globalism.
FATAL MISTAKES.
Secret email server. FATAL MISTAKE. In her spoiled little girl princess mind, it’s Comey’s fault she’s not president. But but but but Comey didn’t set up that secret email server now , did he? I read in the last few days that there were almost three thousand documents on her homie girl’s pervert husband’s laptop that had zero business anywhere except on a secure government computer………….
Comey did his job, and was doing it when Trump got rid of him for doing it. But hopefully Mueller will finish that job.
Talking about Sanders supporters as if they were spoiled children, rather than the future of the D party. Shot off a few toes that time.
Using words such as deplorable to describe people who disagree with her.
Shot off a few more toes with that one.
Some of those “deplorable ” voters probably had to ask somebody what the word means, but you can BET they were pissed enough when they found out that a lot of them either stayed home or voted for Trump……. maybe enough of them that they might have put her over the top in those last three big states………
Senate Seeks To Interview FBI Informant Linking Russian Nuclear Bribery Case To Clinton Foundation
Russian Purchase of US Uranium Assets in Return for $145mm in Contributions to the Clinton Foundation – Bill and Hillary Clinton assisted a Canadian financier, Frank Giustra, and his company, Uranium One, in the acquisition of uranium mining concessions in Kazakhstan and the United States. Subsequently, the Russian government sought to purchase Uranium One but required approval from the Obama administration given the strategic importance of the uranium assets. In the run-up to the approval of the deal by the State Department, nine shareholders of Uranium One just happened to make $145mm in donations to the Clinton Foundation. Moreover, the New Yorker confirmed that Bill Clinton received $500,000 in speaking fees from a Russian investment bank, with ties to the Kremlin, around the same time. Needless to say, the State Department approved the deal giving Russia ownership of 20% of U.S. uranium assets
Why else would I be posting more links critical of the Trump administration than everybody else put together?
I’m having fun seeing you make a fool of yourself, HB, because you are making it clear to people who can actually THINK why Clinton WAS a rotten candidate, with the evidence being clear to anybody who is willing to look at it.
Now most people with a few working neurons between their ears understand that owning a gigantic foundation with hundreds of millions of dollars is pretty close to as good as actually having all that cash and POWER in a personal bank account.
And considering that donations to the CLINTON SLUSH FUND crashed like fifty percent or so when she lost the election, I guess we know about what percentage of those hundreds of millions coming in were being donated in hopes of buying some INFLUENCE, don’t we now?
Even hard core cynical D partisans know, if they know doo doo from apple butter about HRC, lol.
But partisans and cynics seldom admit the truth about what they know and believe if doing so is detrimental to their partisan agenda.
HOPEFULLY a few hundred Democrats will get my message, considering I’m spreading it far and wide using various means in various places, the message being RUN CANDIDATES WHO ARE ACCEPTABLE TO THE PEOPLE AS WHOLE. As a practical matter, this translates to think hard about who you support in the primaries.
Right at half the country had an extremely low opinion of HRC even before the nomination process got underway.
A Brief History of the “Kremlin Trolls”
(a different view– “minds are like parachutes, they only work when open”)
Sorry for the article in German, I don’t have any on this topic in English. Try Google Translate (this translator is said to be better though: https://www.deepl.com/translator).
I’m sick and tired by this “we’re being influenced by a foreign power and they’re meddling with our elections” bullshit by a country that has been meddling with other countries’ elections for decades.
Shut up and eat your own dog food!
The Strange World of Russian ‘Trolls’
A big part of the Russia-gate hysteria is to accuse Russia of spreading U.S. dissension via Internet “trolling,” but that’s just one more wild exaggeration among many, as William Blum describes at Anti-Empire Report.
Australia’s public broadcasting network gave Hillary Clinton an open mike to defame WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange as “a tool of Russian intelligence” without giving him a chance to respond, as John Pilger describes.
As the Russia-gate hysteria spirals down from the implausible to the absurd, almost every bad thing is blamed on the Russians, even how they turned the previously pristine Internet into a “sewer,” reports Robert Parry.
It’s pretty common to have a few small quakes near fault lines in California but fracking has changed things a lot. Now, this is just a typical day with quakes in Kansas and Montana – places that never had quakes 10 years ago.
If something gets damaged can you sue the fracking company?
I heard the problem was mainly waist water being pumped underground for disposal – but whatever the cause are there less earthquake generating methods?
And in California,they are seriously taking about fracking here. I guess they want to trigger a big one…
“Earthquakes in diverse places” is something you maybe have heard before, as it looks to be coming more and more true each day. Just read some trusted sources, including the first one you should always turn to, because you will be astounded.
As a summary though, the current idea among the world’s best scientists is when Israel strikes Iran (which could be next year based on the historical Blood Moon Partners of War) the other Mideast Nations will use this to their advantage and retaliate against Israel in a pure Psalm 83 War. As the war progresses, Saudi Arabia along with other Arab nations which sell oil to America will cut off all our oil unless we stop supporting Israel. Russia can then use this opportunity to blackmail its satellite nations by saying you will buy your oil from us and establish a kind of quasi Soviet Union, or we will also cut your oil supply off.
Our President Trump will wind up having a monumental choice to make. Either we rely on the oil and gas we are now producing in North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas while supporting Israel by unifying Jerusalem, or continue to buy Arab oil while supporting a Two State Solution, giving Palestine a new state and dividing Jerusalem. Now if Trump goes with fully dividing Jerusalem then it is over for America, as following the division of Jerusalem Zacheriah 12:3 notes there would be a massive earthquake in the New Madrid Fault Line. This is close to where the warning prophecy tremors are already occurring in the Oklahoma area, only this quake would be felt up and down the Mississippi all the way from St. Paul to New Orleans. Those of us who have ears to hear, will pray to inform the Trump Administration to use our country’s own oil and not try to interfere with Israel or divide up their land.
After reading Peggy Hahn’s eight pm comment I’m having trouble deciding if she / he / it is a troll out to make religious people look as dumb as fence posts, or a far gone nut case who takes such gibberish seriously.
Every once in a while you run across a nut case who thinks the KJB is full of SPECIFIC prophecies. I’ve met one or two of that sort myself over the years.
My guess is that Peggin’ Peggy is aping the Christians. Although it’s hard to tell these days. Satire and reality are becoming quite indistinguishable. Especially amongst those who embrace Bronze Age tribal dogma as meaningful insight into today’s reality.
With regards to Israel; they should probably start working on a plan to evacuate the non-combatants.
With regards to Zecheriah; Mormonism is my second favourite fake religion, Jehovah Witness comes first. You gotta be a total lune to sign up for that tripe. ‘Hey honey have you seen the golden plates? I put them in the garage with the seer stones and my hat but they’re not there anymore. Did you move them?’
Now Peggy, no need to pray, you can contact the Trump administration directly. They actually exist, though sometimes it seems like a bad TV drama. I recommend the US mail, not sure they use email.
Peggy Hon, you really do believe that shit don’t you? I don’t know whether to feel sorry for you, or laugh at you.
And good luck with praying to inform punkin-head to do anything.
I looked it up, and wasn’t able to see the connection between Zech 12:3 and the New Madrid. Guess I’m just not that bright.
Oh well……………..
Satire and reality are becoming quite indistinguishable
Just another meme infested moron who is a Cabbage For Christ.
Peggy- you are probably unaware of your own mental status, but I must point out that there is no better example of severe indoctrination/brainwashing than that which you exhibit. Not in any totalitarian state, not in any ISIS camp, and not in Jonestown.
What a waste of a brain.
“Can you sue the fracking company?”
That’s an open question for now. Filing a suit is one thing, getting it tried is another, and winning it’s a third.
My guess is that the answer depends on which state you are in, and how good a hold the fracking industry has on the nuts of the people who run the state government.
Preston- they are not seriously considering fracking in Calif. Water is short and the resource is poor. And most people are not in favor of it.
Bark up some other tree.
They are fracking in California now and Jerry Brown is for it…
“Kern County alone pumps more oil than Oklahoma, accounting for more than 70 percent of California’s production and more than 90 percent of its fracked wells. ”
That area (Kern) not not near the big faults. The problem (geologically) around there is land subsidence. It does gradually cause infrastructure problems- like cracked road, rails and canals.
The Monterey area is higher risk, but is very unlikely to see significant fracking for the reasons I mentioned above.
Worry about something else, if you must.
Any thoughts of what would happen to the US economy if we all started driving high mpg vehicles or EV;s, insulated and sealed our homes better, used LEDs for lighting and stopped buying a lot of stuff we just don’t need? Oh yeah, might as well throw in not eating junk food or prepared food anymore and eat less in general.
Who knows, maybe we’d get lucky and all the parasites in banking, finance and Wall Street would do the rest of us a favor by committing suicide en masse.
Just most of us not eating junk food and eating less food in general would probably destroy not only the junk food industry itself but as a side effect would take out the pharmaceutical and drug industries along with the health care and health insurance businesses. Now imagine if we all walked and rode bicycles more… game over!
Well, that is one way to enrich the soil.
I used to sell LED lighting part time. It’s grabbing market share fast, though some people are still reluctant to buy it. But those people are usually older. Conservative estimates show at least 80 percent of all lighting will be LED by 2030.
Te global LED lighting market accounted for USD 26.09 billion in 2016 and is expected to reach USD 54.28 Billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of around 13% between 2017 and 2022.
The accelerated deployment of light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs is on track to save U.S. consumers and businesses $20 billion a year in electricity costs within a decade, which would lower U.S. CO2 emissions by some 100 million metric tons a year! The growing global effort to speed up LED adoption could ultimately cut global energy costs and carbon pollution 5 times as much.
So not to worry about increased use of power from electric cars, LED growth will compensate for that and in time the cars will get more efficient while PV growth plus less use of electricity due to reduced fossil fuel production and distribution will take care of the rest.
Friday I visited a wholesale fruiterer that I haven’t been to for a while. The roof is now completely covered in solar and the lights are all LED giving far better lighting inside. A no-brainer. Lots of free electricity at peak demand when people are in and out of the walk ins all the time so the doors stay open with just the dangling curtain. Lighting , computers and other appliances in full use. Would love to see their before and after electrical bill.
NAOM
People would have more money to spend on…er…junk?!
NAOM
“and stopped buying a lot of stuff we just don’t need” You must have missed that part NAOM.
Nope, just being realistic. As soon as they realise they stop buying all the junk they are buying now they will be marketed a whole load of other stuff they have no use for because bottom line. Companies will want to soak up all that spare money with…er…junk. One load will replace another.
These new documents,or at least summaries of them, will be interesting reading for those of us old enough to remember the day of the assassination.
My guess is that they will show that Oswald was the shooter, and that he did indeed have substantial contact with Russian and Cuban covert operations people aka spies or worse, professionals involved in so called wet work.
We may learn more about Ruby than we do about Oswald.
There’s little question in my mind that there was a coverup, not necessarily to cover up WHO was responsible but probably more to cover up the failures of the intelligence community to coordinate properly with the people responsible for protecting the president.There were also some legitimate reasons for keeping as much info as possible under wraps, because foreign intelligence services can use that sort of info to identify their own leakers and our own covert operations guys and spies.
I’m a fair hand with a rifle, not as good as a typical Marine by any means, but good enough to know without a shadow of a doubt that Oswald didn’t need to be a world class marksman and that the weapon he had was perfectly adequate, given the circumstances of the assassination. The odds are probably eighty percent that most Marines not too long out of training could have hit Kennedy the same way under the same circumstances.
My opinion is that the conclusion he was the sole shooter will stand.
But some people, most of them dead or at least retired by now, are going to look bad, because they had their eye on Oswald , and knew about his Russian and Cuban connections, but failed to KEEP it on him.
The leading revelations will likely be how incompetent CIA was. Or perhaps CIA elements did detect the plot and decided to let it slide i.e. feign disbelief.
OFM,
I have studied the assassination extensively and it’s obvious that Oswald didn’t do it. It was an establishment assassination followed by an establishment cover-up. There is no doubt in my mind that Allen Dulles was the architect of the assassination, with considerable help from James Angelton (his assistant at the CIA). Numerous CIA people were involved such as David Atlee Phillips, Bill Harvey, David Morales, E. Howard Hunt. Also the Mafia was involves through people like Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancona.
The event was supported by the deep state, the subterranean network of military, intelligence and industrial people, because Kennedy was viewed as weak on communism and a threat to the U.S.
Also LBJ was part of the conspiracy because there was a good bet he would have been prosecuted by Robert Kennedy if JFK was re-elected. LBJ’s office was responsible for getting the route changed so that the motorcade went through Dealey Plaza.
You may remember that Dulles was fired by Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs invasion. He, and other CIA people, were seething with hatred for Kennedy.
Interestingly Dulles lobbied hard to get on the Warren Commission and LBJ appointed him to the commission. He was by far the most active member of the commission and he was successful in steering any investigation away for the CIA.
Oswald had a long involvement with the CIA. The CIA helped him get Russian language training and helped him get into Russia (Remember he defected to Russia in the late 1950s). It’s interesting that when he came back to the U.S., he came back with no problem at all. Actually the State Department gave him a loan to cover his travel expenses.
Roughly 15 minutes before the assassination he was seen drinking a coke in the second floor lunch room of the book depository. Within 2 minutes after the assassination he was seen in the lunch room by a police officer. Interestingly, the motorcade was about 10 minutes late when it went through Dealey Plaza.
He had to be killed because he knew too much.
I’m not a conspiracy nut but there is too much evidence that points to multiple shooters. Many people prefer to believe that Oswald did it because of the implications associated with a conspiracy.
Hi Roger,
I ‘m personally open minded about the who’s and the why’s of the assassination. The only thing I’m pretty firm on, in terms of the details is that Oswald almost certainly was the shooter.
Thanks for providing these details.
And I’m dead sure he COULD have done it, considering his skill set, his weapon, and the actual circumstances.
What’s your opinion of the quality of evidence suggesting at least one bullet simply could NOT have been fired from Oswald’s position ? My guess is that if there really was a second shooter, the medical files, unless they have been purged and vacuumed and thoroughly buggered, must contain clear evidence in this respect.
It’s history by now, with most people having lost interest, but it’s entirely relevant to point out the questions swirling around the assassination, because the more things change, the more they stay the same, in terms of politics and people and the way people behave.
There could be another assassination or attempted assassination that with a little bad luck thrown in could result in WWIII.
When the world is a powder keg, it takes only one spark at the right time and place to set it off.
The world was a powder keg just prior to the assassination that triggered WWI, but with a little luck that war might not have gotten started, and might never have been fought.
Most of us need reminding that there are a lot of forces in play that could result in a hot war getting started just about any time.
OFM
If you are receptive to taking a peek into the Rabbit Hole, spending 3 minutes watching the famous “Secret Service Standown JFK Assassination” video is a good start.
The 7 minute video watching green beret colonel Dan Marvin describe being asked to assassinate Bruce Pitzer is also enlightening.
Be forewarned, however, decent people are prone to severe psychological jarring when bigger, wicked realities intrude upon their long held views of the world.
he world was a powder keg just prior to the assassination that triggered WWI
AFAIK, Germany really, really wanted a war. They felt that they were the new rising industrial power, and that they had been badly left out of the divvying up of colonial empires.
I think WWI and II were inevitable.
Hi Nick,
Circumstances were such that the risk of war was very high, you’re right about that, and WWI might well have happened anyway, but it might have started years later, and it might have played out differently.
And there’s always a possibility that some of the people who DON’t want a war will prevail.
If the victors had used more common sense in setting the terms of the surrender of Germany, etc, the German people wouldn’t have been in such dire straits that they were susceptible to falling into the clutches of Hitler and the nazis.
Hence WWII might have been avoided, or long delayed, with different players on each side.
Having said this much, I’m a hard core Darwinist, and believe that it’s perfectly natural and normal behavior for humans and human societies to FIGHT, just as virtually all the higher animals fight for dominance.
Ask any farmer, horses, dogs, cows, chickens, they all fight, sometimes to the death, for the purpose of being in charge and getting laid.
Ask any biologist, and he will tell you the same, that chimps, loins, wolves, deer, buffalo, even most of our songbirds, fight to control a territory and to gain access to females etc.
So far as I’m concerned, it takes either an idiot or a person who doesn’t know the abc’s of biology to believe that humans are creatures not of nature but something created by a god or whatever, and that we therefore aren’t SUPPOSED to act like our relatives, from the chimps who are the closest ones remaining, all the way out to distant cousins such as wolves and song birds.
THEY all fight.
Why should we be an exception ?
As you said, Germany wanted a war…. or to put it a little more accurately, a hell of a lot of Germans in positions of power and influence wanted a war, and it’s likely they would have found some other pretext for starting one had the assassination of the so and so duke not happened.
I have yet to read the first explanation or argument that holds water to the effect that humans are something SPECIAL, DIFFERENT from the rest of the so called higher species of animals.
This is not to say that we aren’t capable of realizing that peace is better than war. It’s just acknowledging that some of us for various reasons are always ready for a fight, that some of us are always LOOKING for a fight.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe there will always be people who feel justified in killing or enslaving other people, seizing their property.
Wars can be VERY profitable for the winners.
As Mackinder put it, “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland.”
Dulles’s decade as the director of the CIA—which he used to further his public and private agendas—were dark times in American politics. Calling himself “the secretary of state of unfriendly countries,” Dulles saw himself as above the elected law, manipulating and subverting American presidents in the pursuit of his personal interests and those of the wealthy elite he counted as his friends and clients—colluding with Nazi-controlled cartels, German war criminals, and Mafiosi in the process. Targeting foreign leaders for assassination and overthrowing nationalist governments not in line with his political aims, Dulles employed those same tactics to further his goals at home, Talbot charges, offering shocking new evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Roger wrote: I’m not a conspiracy nut but……..
Yes, you are. Your above post leaves no doubt whatsoever, you are just another conspiracy theory nut.
9/11 was master mined by Asama Bin Laden and carried out by 19 Islamic terrorists. Jet contrails are nothing but ice crystals. The HAARP antenna field was to study the aurora borealis and nothing else and Oswald really killed Kennedy.
Everything that happens is not really a giant conspiracy. Learn to live with it.
Yep, it always seemed to me a bunch of pissed off young Arabs and Persians did it.
The “Great American Century” thesis, where it was stated they needed a “event” to put forward their agenda, made me examine it pretty throughly.
It was the pissed off Arabs and Persians.
Musk will probably play off a few various jurisdictions against each other before he decides on the location of the first large scale tunnel.
But considering how successful he has been in other endeavors, I’m ready to believe he will succeed in this one too.
The last sentence from the link Survivalist posted:
“Two weeks before Cobb’s information landed with her CIA handlers in Mexico, the commission had issued its final report in Washington and shut down its investigation.”
Even though there is plenty of evidence at least strongly suggestive of a cover up, it doesn’t necessarily reflect badly on the competence of the Warren Commission.
GLOBAL CO2 EMISSIONS STALLED FOR THE THIRD YEAR IN A ROW
“The annual assessment of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the JRC and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) confirms that CO2 emissions have stalled for the third year in a row.”
Well, there’s more to the atmosphere than CO2. Meanwhile:
WARM WATERS MELTING ANTARCTIC ICE SHELVES MAY HAVE APPEARED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN OVER 7,000 YEARS
“Now, for possibly the first time in 7,000 years, a phenomenon known as “upwelling” (the upward flow of warmer ocean water to the surface), is thought to have caused recent ice shelf collapse around the continent—and the glacial thinning associated with it.”
Inveterate party-goers, we two-legged naked apes heedlessly withdrew 250 million years of fossil sunlight from Earth’s savings account and binged like mice in a corn silo. Then we vomited all that carbon into the atmosphere. It will take a very long time to clean up, even after the mice have long gone.
It’s not really 250M years of sunlight – it’s about a month’s worth: just divide the likely total consumption of fossil fuel into the continuous sunlight input of 100 terawatts.
No question that our burning of FF will create enormous damage, and take a long time to clean up…
Yep, fossil fuels are about as low in efficiency as one can get. Not only did it take many millions of years to make the coal, oil and gas using low efficiency plant life but it took millions of years of erosion to bury them, all solar driven.
All that time and sunlight to make a month’s worth of energy. Not a viable energy source, barely satisfies the short term.
We are using about 10,000 years of ancient sunlight a day–
What could possibly go wrong?
This
Well, that’s kind’ve the point: that 250M year thing is misleading.
We only need a tiny fraction of sunlight. Human civilization generates roughly 12-20 terawatts, and the sun drops about 100,000 TW, 24×7 365 days per year.
So, humans only need about .02% of the total daily sunlight that hits the earth.
Ah, but accessing that energy is the problem.
Why else would we be dependent on ancient sunlight?
The energy lotto has been a fun win.
But the last time we were living on real time energy inputs we had 700 million people on Earth, oceans full of fish, intact ecosystems, and continents to plunder.
That is all gone.
Yes, in the year 1700 accessing the power of sunlight, wind and water was harder than burning stuff.
That’s no longer true. Solar PV and wind power are now cheaper and easier than coal, even if you don’t deal with the majority of the pollution costs of coal. Of course, if you deal with the 18 cents per kWh of pollution & environmental costs, then coal is an instant goner.
But we haven’t replaced it.
And money is not energy.
Lets talk when we get beyond 25%.
In 2016, renewable energy sources accounted for about 10% of total U.S. energy consumption and about 15% of electricity generation.
we haven’t replaced it.
Well, geez, give it a little time. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Have a long way to go for transportation, heating, etc.
In Oregon, where I live, we have lots of hydro, and I see new PV going in—
it ranks 10th
Yeah, good reminder that hydro works very well!
Hi Gone fishing,
I would expect there will be annual variation in emissions from ocean, forest fires, permafrost melt, and many factors I have not considered (variation in forest regrowth and changes in agriculture due to droughts, floods etc).
Aside from that even if emissions have not increased, there will continue to be an increase in atmospheric CO2 with a constant level of emissions at the 2014 level (this includes only fossil fuel emissions in the “stalled” category in Doug’s linked article).
The emissions from biomass burning, forest fires and land use change are not very well estimated as you suggest (I think), there can also be variation in net emissions from the ocean from year to year.
So generally the changes in atmospheric CO2 would not agree with emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels, we need these to decrease and this will happen as fossil fuels peak and fossil fuel prices increase, though perhaps not as quickly as is needed.
Here is the weekly averages of atmospheric CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa for the last 7 years.
Last data point is last week, horizontal marks are two years, vertical is 4 ppm.
CO2 is a fast mixing gas, I don’t see a slow down of increase for the last three years. In fact it looks like the rate has increased in the last three years. We should see a downward inflection of slope if the rate stopped increasing.
Hi Gonefishing,
As I believe I said, the report was for fossil fuel emissions only. There are other sources of CO2 and they vary over time. Also the amount of carbon sequestered by land and ocean varies substantially year to year and the estimates are not very precise. The carbon cycle is far from simple, the amount of carbon emissions sequestered has averaged roughly 56% from 1960-2015 with the rest remaining in the atmosphere (this includes fossil fuels, cement production, and land use change).
Annual variations are quite large ranging from 20% to 80% with large uncertainty in the estimates.
So what are these natural variations that just happened to coincidentally appear at the same time as a so called reduction in anthropogenic reduction to counteract it? I am interested and will add them into my calculations.
Hi Gonefishing,
There is not a one to one correspondence between changes in fossil fuel emissions and changes in atmospheric CO2.
First there are changes in land use, forest fires, release or uptake of carbon from soil, permafrost, and the ocean, and volcanic eruptions. This list is no doubt incomplete.
None of these are measured very accurately.
One can assume that over the long run these are all relatively constant, but the data we do have suggests wide variation over time and the amount of carbon sequestered by the Earth system varies from 20% to 80% annually over the 1960-2016 period (with wide uncertainty in the measurements).
Like most else in climate science there are a variety of models as well with large differences from model to model.
Ok, nothing new.
Well the actual emissions may have stalled but CO2 in the atmosphere is still rising and emissions of other greenhouse gases such as methane due to agriculture are still rising so the overall effect is that we are still pretty much fucked, unless we drastically change course. By WE, I’m really talking about most of our kids, as us older folk probably ain’t gonna be around to really see the shit hit the fan.
Daily CO2
Mauna Loa Observatory | Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations
October 21, 2017 404.23 ppm NOAA-ESRL
October 21, 2016 401.87 ppm NOAA-ESRL
Correct, CO2 has been rising since the 1800’s when there was just a tiny amount of coal used for trains and industry. Even if we cut emissions all they way to near 0, Co2 would still be rising because it takes thousands or millions of years for CO2 to fall. That’s why geoengineering is getting a serious look, we need negative emissions, but it’s unlikely to save us. Its a first step, but stable emissions does not at all mean stable levels.
That’s why geoengineering is getting a serious look, we need negative emissions,
There is only one form of geoengineering that makes any sense!
.
I think it is an accounting “error”.
Disclaimer: Earth’s atmosphere is composed of about 78% Nitrogen and 21% Oxygen by volume. No other gas constitutes more than 1%. As a matter of fact, CO2 is a trace gas representing approximately 0.04% of the volume of dry air in the atmosphere. What follows is an illustrative graphic depicting a suitable framework into which we can all place the Mauna Loa measurements.
Yep, but where are your relationships defining the heating role of GHG’s and where are your equations relating them (they are not independent variables)?
You can’t just weigh something or measure it’s volume and state a heating or energy effect. That would make dynamite merely a paperweight. You are missing almost all of the science involved. Go back to knitting or golf.
Just one question, why isn’t oxygen or nitrogen a greenhouse gas?
I remember when the argument Louis presents made a great impression on me……… and I already knew a great deal of real science at that time.
It doesn’t make intuitive sense that such a small change in inputs into such a huge system would bring about substantial change.
But then I learned MORE science, and it became obvious to me that yes, sometimes just changing an input just a tiny little bit can result in enormous changes over time.
Adding just a little more CO2 to the blend year after year has, over time, enriched the CO2 content of the atmosphere to the point that it traps incoming solar energy more effectively than it did previously.
The amount of heat energy arriving from the sun is basically constant, in historical terms, in human terms, but LESS of that heat is now being leaked back out into space than formerly, because CO2 is in effect a SUPERB atmospheric insulator.
CO2’s sorta like Brylcreem, a little dab’ll do ya.
The essentially constant amount of incoming solar energy used to leak back out into space as fast as it arrived. That’s not happening anymore.
So the Earth is gradually accumulating a portion of the incoming solar energy in the form of warmer oceans, warmer soils, and warmer air.
It’s getting warmer, and it’s going to continue to get warmer, on average, all over the planet, until the planet gets hot enough to radiate heat energy as fast as solar energy arrives, and restores the balance between incoming and outgoing energy.
Yo, Louis Tennessee,
If all the idiots, in all the villages left their villages and formed a village of idiots…
In that village YOU would be THE VILLAGE IDIOT!
.
I often do reverse image searches for what Ned posts here under his various monikers. Some of the images appear nowhere but on Twitter. This image posted above leads to antisemitic climate denial websites i.e sea level rise can’t be a real threat because Jews are buying coastal real estate.
an ossified egotism winnows down awareness to manageable bits of casuistry:
“I just shovelled three feet of snow from my driveway. Global Warming…my frozen butt.” “I think too much political hay is made from weather. Our ancestors braved it and it was part of their lives,” arrive the (verbatim) quotes as seen on my Facebook newsfeed.
Hi Fred,
In the report it is only CO2 emissions that are covered through 2016, (with not much increase from 2012 to 2016 for CO2 emissions from fossil fuels).
Data for other GHG is only through 2012, see page 2 of link below
also agricultural data is not available after 2014, so land use change etc is not well estimated for 2015 and 2016 as far as total carbon emissions, the focus here is on fossil fuel emissions mostly.
In the report it is only CO2 emissions that are covered through 2016, (with not much increase from 2012 to 2016 for CO2 emissions from fossil fuels).
Yes, I was trying to acknowledged that when I said: “emissions may have stalled but CO2 in the atmosphere continues to rise.”
Even though I didn’t explicitly state: CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, that was what I meant.
Hi Fred,
When emissions fell in 1979-1983, atmospheric CO2 also continued to rise, no doubt there must be a lag between falling emissions and a decrease in the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2. Probably carbon emissions need to be reduced to under 2 Gt C/year ( a factor of more than 5) to stabilize atmospheric carbon eventually. Even at 1 Gt C per year emissions we may still see atmospheric carbon levels rising due to other feedbacks (permafrost melt, forest fires, and less snow cover) as Global temperature rises. The sooner we can get to low or zero carbon emissions the better.
We need to save the fuel so we can keep warm in the coming ice age. 🙂
Fred, I just had two back to back encounters with hard right conspiracy theory guys. After talking to them (they both sounded like a recording of Koch talking points plus a bunch of conspiracy stuff thrown in) at length I have come to the conclusion that we are fucked. It felt like talking to a fundamentalist Christian about evolution. Did you know all the scientists are on the government till and falsifying their data? Did you know that we can’t possibly know things because we haven’t gone through them before or were not there to take temperature measurements? And more garbage.
I ended up saying to the one guy “So you believe in nothing and everyone is lying on both sides?”
Not because we can’t do things about the situation but because humans will always be so divided on the subject that concerted effort other than for profit will never really occur. Even some the ones that say they are for CO2 reduction seem to have their own agenda and set of rock hard beliefs that would help undermine any strong efforts.
The human mind is a very strange place.
I guess we will just have to learn to like the heat. Maybe we can attach radiative fins for heat exchange during the hot periods or wear solar powered air conditioned suits. Not sure how we will help the plants, maybe put up big sun shades for them.
“Fred, I just had two back to back encounters with hard right conspiracy theory guys. After talking to them (they both sounded like a recording of Koch talking points plus a bunch of conspiracy stuff thrown in) at length I have come to the conclusion that we are fucked. It felt like talking to a fundamentalist Christian about evolution.”-
I knew we were fucked along time ago, and was reminded of this when Trump wasn’t defeated by 30 points. btw if I was a constructive republican strategist I would have put a ticket of Kasich/Rubio on the board.
The planet has been in a flux between being icebox and sauna for most of the last 4.5 Billion years, that is all without mankind doing anything at all. Like most of my friends, along with those it sounds like you talked to, my opinion is, it’s unique human arrogance to say without a doubt, human activity is the only cause of warming. Yes perhaps some human activity contributes to carbon dioxide level, in some way, but my thought is there is likely many more naturally occurring things even more responsible. Science has yet to investigate the hundreds, if not thousands of natural links we have going on here.
Regards,
Ralph
Cass Tech ’64
Science has yet to investigate the hundreds, if not thousands of natural links we have going on here.
Not that I really expect you to use it let alone grasp the implications, but what the hell, give it a shot it is free! https://iris.ai/
Suggestion: take a scientific peer reviewed paper, read it first, then plug it into the IRIS AI search engine and see all the links to other papers.
I grabbed this one from Google Scholar just for shits and giggles
This is what IRIS returns if you plug that paper into the search engine:
Spreading Dead Zones and Consequences for Marine Ecosystems
I’ve identified 257 related papers and grouped them by concept.
Now plug each of the returned papers back into IRIS.
Guess what?
Science is already investigating the hundreds, if not thousands of natural links we have going on here. And you are pretty much just another ignorant troll!
Yep—
And our “journalists” are tracking down 100,000 worth of face book advertisements.
Billy got 500,00o for one speech to a Russian Investment Bank.
Clinton Foundation got 145 million in “contributions”.
“When people cease to believe in God, they do not henceforth believe in nothing. ”
When people replace their traditional beliefs with new ones, they find it expedient and even NECESSARY to ignore or deny the inconsistencies of their new set of beliefs.
If you ( rhetorical of course ) believe in the current liberal mantra/ dogma, and I DO PERSONALLY believe in most of it, it’s VERY likely you will reflexively defend this mantra/ dogma even when you know certain parts of it don’t hold water.
As a matter of fact, the more problems there are with some particular point of belief, the more likely you are to defend it to the point of forgetting all about critical thinking and resorting to childlike arguments. HB has never had any REAL answers to my criticisms of the faults of HRC, and the current day D party leadership, so the best he can do is call me names, which actually furthers MY own agenda, namely moving the party towards the Sanders camp and away from the Republican Lite camp.
There’s a mindset in the media, and in academia, that leads the people in these professions to identify the enemy as anybody who disagrees with their politics and their personal agendas.
It’s the same old same old culture war. Professors and university educated journalists are about as prone to this failing as the backwoods yahoos who reflexively believe anything bad about liberal politics and climate science.
When things don’t go to suit you, your reaction is to find ways to blame your problems on your enemies. So you focus on political ads, while ignoring the literal crimes of your favorites.
I hereby label ANYBODY a goddamned fool who believes that less than about HALF the contributions coming into the Clinton family slush funds were made for any other reason than to buy access and influence. The identity of the donors and the timelines of their donations tell us all we need to know about this aspect of HRC’s record.
Since people like HB will never ever face up to the fact that HRC lost because she was a lousy candidate by almost any objective measure such as reputation with the voters as a whole, etc, they just naturally focus their efforts on whatever their enemies did or might have done.
Yep, old HB will NEVER EVER admit publicly that HRC lost ten or twenty or fifty times as many votes among the REAL core D party voters by hobnobbing with banksters, calling working class people deplorables, calling Sanders supporters spoiled children, supporting globalization when places such as the town nearest my home are suffering mightily from the loss of industries shipped overseas, etc. AS SHE LOST TO FAKE NEWS.
Ya see it’s not just the jobs lost actually working in the textile and furniture industries, it’s all the other smaller businesses that failed as the result of these industries leaving town. It’s the landlords who owned small buildings and houses rented to these former workers. It’s the people in the police department who find it necessary to arrest former law abiding citizens they have known since childhood …… citizens who have taken to doing whatever they COULD to make ends meet. It’s the management of the local hospital that sees so many MORE uninsured patients coming in for treatment that will have to be written off.
And he will never admit publicly that while the Russians were fucking with our election, Clinton as Secretary of State was involved in fucking with elections by actively participating in sending soldiers with real guns to places where they were shooting people and getting shot, lol.
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
OldFarmerMac aka KGB Trumpster(OFM), I see your Russian Republican spin continues that got Trump elected.
*****
The Clinton Foundation convenes businesses, governments, NGOs, and individuals to improve global health and wellness, increase opportunity for women and girls, reduce childhood obesity, create economic opportunity and growth, and help communities address the effects of climate change.
Charities Performing Similar Types of Work Highly Rated
Charity Name & State Overall Score Overall Rating
The Clinton Foundation (NY) 93.91
Pangaea Global AIDS (CA) 87.25
St. Boniface Haiti Foundation (MA) 96.46
Mustard Seed Communities (MA) 96.66
Nazarene Compassionate Ministries Inc. (KS) 90.85
Compare These Charities (Highly Rated)
The Red Cross was ranked as an “A-” to the Clinton Foundation’s “A” by CharityWatch, but the larger Charity Navigator didn’t rate the latter organization until recently.
With respect to the original tweet, it was true that CharityWatch gave the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation an “A” rating by CharityWatch in April 2016, while by contrast they assigned an “A-” grade to the American Red Cross of August 2016. While the Red Cross achieved a higher “Program Percentage” (share of monies allocated to services) than the Clinton Foundation at 90% percent vs. 88%, the Red Cross was less efficient because they spent more money to raise money ($30 per $100) than the Clinton Foundation ($3 per $100) did, according to CharityWatch.
However, the comparison arguably constitutes cherry picking, in that CharityWatch is a far smaller, atypical arbiter of charity ratings. Most news outlets turn to Charity Navigator when seeking out figures for any one charity organization’s effectiveness, but no such claim was proffered about the comparative rankings of the American Red Cross and the Clinton Foundation by Charity Navigator. That’s likely because while the American Red Cross has achieved an overall Charity Navigator rating of 85% (80% for financial organization and 93% for accountability & transparency), Charity Navigator maintains no rating for the Clinton Foundation at all.
I realize most people posting here are pessimistic about the future. And those who are optimistic appear to ignore realities.
What I am wondering is if, as we are expanding our military, heading toward war, increasing the national debt, discouraging renewable energy, and stifling science, is there anything out of all of this which might change the direction we are headed?
During the Bush years I kept telling myself that if things got bad enough, people would want a change. They did get bad enough and we did get a change.
Now the propaganda machine seems to be working so well that the country could be devastated and that right wing base would just push that much harder for authoritarian control.
I realize many of you believe we are in overshoot, but I still have trouble dealing with the idea that in my lifetime we have gone from prosperity to destruction. Things must have looked pretty gloomy during the Dust Bowl, the Depression, and WWII. But we pulled through.
I have hoped that China could lead the way in some areas, but it is hard to tell, reading the latest political news from there, if they can balance leading the world globally with internal politics.
Don’t believe the propaganda machine.
We’re not heading from prosperity to destruction. Renewables & EVs aren’t being stopped by the Republicans. The stuff about N. Korea is all theater: both the NK government and Trump are playing to their own base, not to anyone else.
Hi Nick,
The people who started WWI were playing to their own bases, likewise.
Personally I’m somewhat worried that between Trump and doughboy we may wind up with a war, which conceivably could be a big one. The odds that there will be a war with NK are probably pretty low, but I’m pretty sure they aren’t trivial.
There’s a big difference: Germany really did want a war. The cultures of the time glorified war (was was thought to be good for men – the idea that warfare is disabling for veterans is a very modern concept_ and empire, and the Germans felt left out of empire. They wanted a war, and it was just a matter of finding an excuse for it. It would have required great good luck to prevent.
Trump and NK’s leaders don’t want a war at all. They want theatre. It’s analogous to Republicans under Obama who didn’t care very much about the Affordable Care Act (under Bush they created Medicare Part D without a second thought) – they simply wanted to create a propaganda weapon. So, those 90 votes to repeal “Obamacare”? All theatre. Which is why they couldn’t repeal it when they had power: they had not idea what to do, they had no sensible proposals, and their base actually wanted the ACA, once they understood that their new insurance and the demonized “Obamacare” were actually the same thing.
Trump wants theatre. He wants ratings, he wants viewers, he wants to get his base mad and scared. NK’s leaders want to scare their citizens. They don’t want war – they just want the threat of war from the evil outsiders. That’s why NK and Trump suit each other so perfectly – they both want the same thing: scary headlines.
Now, is there a chance they’ll make a mistake and start a major war? Yeah, there is, and that’s a little scary. But let’s be clear: it would be a miscalculation, a mistake. It will take great bad luck for it to happen.
Meanwhile The AI robots are coming… They are everywhere.
There’s going to be a lot of disruption and job loss in a lot of sectors. Time to start getting serious about universal income and universal healthcare. Either that, or a completely new paradigm needs to be created ASAP!
I HAVE to agree with you, some sort of universal income scheme is going to be necessary, there’s no getting around it. Jobs are disappearing at an alarming rate. This is obvious, but it does NOT mean we ought to get rid of jobs wholesale any sooner than NECESSARY by shipping them overseas.
I’m devoting considerable time to the study of what might work, and what doesn’t, and WHY, in terms of the success of such schemes.
My current opinion is that unless there is a way to make the recipients of such income PAY for it, after some fashion, any guaranteed income scheme is guaranteed to fail, and fail catastrophically, long term, in a diverse and stratified society.
It’s hard to say what final form this failure might actually take, but it could take the form of an elitist dominated government controlling the population via food and shelter rations, or it could take the form of a collapsed society along the lines of some place such as Somalia. That would make the government as master scenario look pretty good. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
What I do know is that idle hands find SOMETHING to do, and in the majority of cases, if it isn’t WORK, it’s some sort of mischief.
And I DO know that a substantial number of people are more than happy to live on welfare, getting by from day to day, without working much if at all, rather than actually working regularly , which is NOT fun or fulfilling for about ninety five percent of the population. It’s just hard and boring, and leaves you worn out.
I could be playing cards right now, mid morning on a Monday, and burning a joint and enjoying a brew, with four or five guys I know who are all perfectly capable of working, all of whom live within a ten minute drive, who have managed to get on disability….. except for the pesky fact they won’t get moving before midafternoon.
I’m not judging these guys any more than I’m condemning the children of the local elite for taking it easy at the local country club, and going skiing in Colorado, or south to the sun, when the weather gets cold. They’re just taking advantage of whatever resources they can put their hands on, like any OTHER living organism. Two of them are close enough kin to me that I know our exact relationship.
I’m not saying they DON’T work…… sometimes. Out of sight of the public, and strictly for cash or barter. And they are very skillful when it comes to making a little money go a LONG way, and since they don’t have JOBS as such, they have plenty of time to make their money go a long way….. they change the oil in their own cars, they hit a lot of yard sales, they spend a lot of time on CL, and buy any real bargains that pop up close by. They live in shacks or even decent houses that belong to them, or to relatives, or that can be rented dirt cheap, because housing is plentiful in places where jobs are less plentiful and people are moving away or dying off, especially from the poorer neighborhoods.
The women with kids generally have husbands in all except legal fact, which enables him to work, in most cases, and her to collect whatever social services can pay, no real questions asked, from food stamps to free lunches at school to rental assistance, etc etc etc. Chances are she works too……. sometimes, when she can figure out a good hustle. A day or two a week
Now I’m thinking that in places like Scandinavia, such schemes can work, and work reasonably well, because Scandinavian societies are highly homogeneous compared to Yankee society, and the norms are VERY different in terms of personal values and belief systems.
I can’t remember the name of it right off the bat, but once when I was teaching ag, I was given the job of supervising twenty kids who were supposed to get some introductory training during summer break in the construction trades, while collecting a very modest paycheck. I found out VERY quickly that about fifteen of them knew goddamned well they weren’t going to strike a tap at the proverbial snake when they signed up. They showed up wearing NICE clothes, their first excuse, lol. They KNEW I couldn’t fire them, JUST as they knew I couldn’t FAIL them in my classroom. They got their checks, and the four or five who possessed some minimal sense of responsibility assembled the new bleachers with me showing them how, actually learning something in the process.
Am I judging that fifteen? In a sense , yes, but they were doing just what everybody else is doing, in general terms, taking advantage of whatever opportunities come their way.I never turned down an unemployment check myself after a two month stint of six twelves or even seven twelves in a nuke on a maintenance shutdown. I didn’t NEED that unemployment check, but all I had to do to get it was apply for three jobs, and there weren’t any available consistent with the rules of collecting, so I put in my three apps, which took maybe an hour or two hours a week, max. I don’t feel like I stole that money, and I was most certainly legally entitled to it. I didn’t write the rules that ARE written, and I didn’t break any of the unwritten ones in taking it, according to my own ethics.
I worked at projects of my own while on unemployment that didn’t generate any CASH income,excepting the days I spent reading or fishing. Those days added considerably to my net worth, and the work I did on them was STRICTLY legal. You see if you build a deck on a house that you own and live in,or landscape the yard, that’s within the rules. And if it happens that a year or two later, you move out and sell it, or rent it, you don’t have to give back the extra money due to that deck being there.
SO….. I’m hoping to hear any thoughtful responses as to HOW we can make a universal income scheme work, and reading any links about such schemes proposed or actual, etc.
I’m thinking home printers that will run off sheets of 20 dollar bills (or maybe 100’s given inflation) indistinguishable from the stuff government produce; save a trip to the bank and you won’t have to worry about catching some dread disease from handling other people’s money. Hell, if the government can run off a trillion when they’re feeling a bit short………….
but it does NOT mean we ought to get rid of jobs wholesale any sooner than NECESSARY by shipping them overseas.
Yes, but that is NOT what is happening. Case in point, There are millions of truck drivers in the US, I doubt you could argue that when self driving vehicles become ubiquitous, it will be a consequence of deliberate offshoring of such jobs. 9 out of 10 manufacturing jobs are currently threatened by automation and not because of shipping jobs overseas.
Furthermore highly skilled white collar jobs are also seriously threatened by AI and it is not because they might be shipped to China, Not to mention that automation and AI will eliminate the vast majority of jobs as we know them today, everywhere in the world. This is not a problem unique to the US. Human beings are very quickly becoming a useless class if the old economic paradigm continues… I certainly won’t pretend to know where this is going, other than to suggest the future of work or gainful employment is shaping up to be very different than it has been up until now.
I also absolutely do not buy the myth that the majority of people are not interested in engaging in some kind of fulfilling activity given the opportunity! IMHO what we currently have in the US is a system that is stupid beyond belief, but that is a separate dissertation.
This is a discussion that every citizen of every country will need to take part in and it is only just beginning!
Automation has been eliminating “all the jobs” for hundreds of years. 100 years ago most people worked on farms. Now it’s 1%. The same is happening to manufacturing. So, what’s different this time, if any?
The real question is: is there still work to be done? Look around – is there stuff that could and should be done? Healthcare, medical research, childcare, eldercare, education, infrastructure construction, environmental cleanup etc. – it’s obvious that there’s enough work to keep everyone busy for quite a long time. It’s just(!) a matter of organizing people and society to “git er done”.
A few parts of the structural problem: low wage levels for low skill work; the wealthy are trying to cripple government programs which are sometimes needed to fund work, increase minimum wages, etc.; drug convictions cause criminal records that prevent re-entry to the aboveground economy.
Besides building a whole new energy infrastructure, refitting existing buildings for better energy conservation and to produce energy, there will be the mitigation and moving of infrastructure due to sea level rise. plus all the manual stuff that needs to be done, like my neighbor having her deck replaced or a plumbing repair job, etc.
Refrigeration needs vast improvement, people can work on that and implement it.
Here is a “talking ” refrigerated railcar: We also have a whole bank of customer service people who monitor our cars 24/7,” he continues. “They know if a car’s temperature changes, if the doors are open during transit or if there is any other kind of issue. We can send technicians out to fix any problems that arise in transit, and we alert the authorities if our electronic door alarms indicate that a car has been broken into. With all of this technology, losing loads or having loads arrive outside of the customers temperature specs has become a thing of the past.”
Part of the strength of the RMP is the two-way technology that allows Cryo-Trans to “talk” and “listen” to the railcars. This technology allows the cars to send signals to the main office, showing the fleet’s location and each car’s temperature. Additionally, Cryo-Trans’ operators can remotely change a car’s temperature or turn the refrigeration on and off.
In November, Cryo-Trans introduced its new super-insulated boxcars for beverage and canned-goods customers. These incorporate the same technology Cryo-Trans uses in its refrigerated cars, and also have five inches of insulation around the box to provide maximum-possible temperature protection. Now these goods can safely be shipped by rail and Cryo-Trans can guarantee the product won’t freeze or overheat. The company’s car building line is booked with new orders for the near future, Haksteen says. http://www.tlimagazine.com/sections/trucking-and-freight/1933-cryo-trans-inc
Automation has been eliminating “all the jobs” for hundreds of years. 100 years ago most people worked on farms. Now it’s 1%. The same is happening to manufacturing. So, what’s different this time, if any?
It’s never that way in the movies! Machines are our friends (usually).
Well, except for the AI wars. That is the most likely scenario for fast AI development, an AI military race. AI fits the military mindset.
The only reason I can see for pursuing AI is to help solve our predicaments. Otherwise we are just playing a game of pretend.
I haven’t said that the MAJORITY of people can’t find something useful and fulfilling to do if freed from the need to work to support themselves.
That’s misdirection and bullshit.
What I SAID is that a SUBSTANTIAL number of people are satisfied to live on welfare while supplementing their income by various hustles, and this is a perfectly obvious truth to anybody who actually has any CONTACT with the lower rungs of American society.
Anybody who knows a few rednecks who hate the guts of every body with an easy lavish lifestyle understands where I’m coming from. If you don’t know any such people, then you will never really understand that they believe the only real difference between them and YOU is a MATTER OF LUCK. If good luck presents them with an opportunity to latch onto a few bucks any way they can, they feel PERFECTLY satisfied and ENTITLED to do so, no shame attached at all.
They will take the bennies just like old HB brags about paying trivial taxes on his capital gains, while some clerk working at one of his oil companies is paying thirty or forty percent total in federal, state and local income taxes.
Yes, truckers jobs are going to disappear. So are cashiers jobs, lawn care jobs, cooks jobs, and countless other jobs.
But it’s still true that the faster this transition happens, the harder it is on the people who depend on the jobs that are lost, and the greater the backlash.
Anybody who cannot understand, or REFUSES to understand, that one of the BIGGEST reasons Trump is president today is the political backlash coming from all the people scared of globalization is either a fool or a boneheaded partisan unwilling to talk about such issues honestly.
We’re going to need some time, more time than we have available probably, to deal with this problem. One thing that will help is to preserve the jobs that are being lost, and will be lost, to globalization to the extent we can, for as long as we can.
I know lots of people PERSONALLY who are within striking distance of retirement, people in their fifties who will be ok if their current jobs in manufacturing, etc, last another ten years or so. Younger people who have more time to realize that the writing is on the wall will have more incentive to get into a line of work that will not disappear, hopefully, before it’s too late, before they’re saddled with responsibilities and getting on in years.
Now while I have sympathy for people in other parts of the world, just about every body I know personally lives HERE in the USA, and I’m WAY more concerned about THEIR welfare than people I have never met and never will.
Feel free to call me names for saying so.
Virtually all the hard core liberals I have ever met who have money enough to do so live and work in places where they have NEAR ZERO contact with the underclasses of this country, or the world for that matter.
I’m not much interesting in listening to hypocritical bullshit coming from people who live in gated communities and drink six dollar coffee about how much they love poor people.
Now here’s link from WIRED, which contains a few lines that just MIGHT ring a few bells in the heads of people who really UNDERSTAND biological realities, one of which is that naked apes are cutthroat competitors and that there are always going to be naked apes that will exploit every possible advantage to available to them.
“Though it was obvious why we were building the systems at the heart of our product, such as the battery and motors, many people had difficulty understanding why we manufactured high-voltage cables, displays, fuses, and other smaller systems.”
“The answer is simple: Our goal wasn’t to build the best electric vehicle. It was to build the best premium car in the world that just happened to be an EV. This meant integrating technologies that were not readily available.”
“Why am I so passionate about this? Early in my career, I was a participant in the offshoring of US manufacturing. We built factories that were pushing the state of the art in several areas of technology—yet all of it was outside of the US. Because of this trend, American industry lost some of the fundamental knowledge that comes from building your own products.”
The author of this piece which I excerpted explains in some detail WHY an industry needs to be CONCENTRATED. It brings all the necessary knowledge and technology together in one place, where it can be applied to greatest effect.
The more we lose, the more WE WILL LOSE, when it comes to our leading position, or what’s left of that position, in the manufacturing world. The little bits we lose here and there wind up on the scale in favor of the countries that got the industries we export.
The LAST decent little local industrial supply house is closing any day in my local hometown. The factories used to support it, and it supported hundreds of small businessmen, loggers, farmers, construction guys, even homeowners who needed things. Lots of guys I grew up with who did poorly in school worked their way right on up the ladder starting as laborers or machine operators and eventually moving into maintenance, becoming skilled mechanics and eventually supervisors and even plant managers.
You aren’t going to learn very much other than showing up and being nice to customers selling fast food.
At some point, we are going to reach a tipping point whereby our manufacturing base has been crippled to such an extent, compared to that of other countries that are OUT FOR THEMSELVES, that these other countries are going to dominate the world the way we FORMERLY dominated the world.
A hell of a lot of people who are able to think rather well are already pointing out that we are already reduced to the point that we are relying on our military establishment to maintain our dominant position. This is unquestionably true, in my estimation.
OTHER people who can think rather well point out that we won’t be able to maintain this military advantage very much longer, if various other countries such as China and India become the manufacturing and scientific centers of the world, leaving us Yankees behind. This is also unquestionably true, in my estimation.
What the thinkers on the LEFTISH wing fail to realize, or at least articulate, is that history indicates that the winners ALWAYS take advantage……….. BIG advantage. In my estimation, history will repeat itself, as it has since the beginning of it, as far back as we know it. People on the rightish wing are usually rather quick to point out this aspect of history and human behavior.
I’m not personally interested in lowering my own living standard, or seeing the living standards of most of the people I know being lowered.
I’m not happy about the possibility that maybe someday China, India, Russia, or some other country, will be in a position to invade the oil patch, the way we have, or Central America, and that we won’t be in a position to do anything about it, just as nobody has been in a position to prevent THIS country from playing the global bully.
And I’m not happy about Trump being president, as much as anything because of the political backlash against globalization. If the D’s had remained in power for the last few decades, we would be a lot better off in many respects, especially in terms of the environment, which trumps all other issues.
Maybe the D’s will have sense enough in the next few elections to pay closer attention to the problems of the majority of the people of the country, the people who DON’T work in industries or professions that are sheltered from the effects of globalization.
I’ve met a few people personally who thought their jobs were safe forever, including a radiologist and a couple of computer programmers, who found out differently.
You know what they call a liberal who has just been bashed upside the head with a brick and robbed?
A newly minted conservative.
But I don’t IDENTIFY personally with EITHER camp when it comes to telling the truth the facts lead me to see it.
So when the liberals are right, as I see the facts, I say so, as in the case of environmental issues, personal rights, etc.
When conservatives are right, as when they say our public schools are rotten to the core in many places, I say so.
When jackasses such as Trump get elected because of political backlash, I say so. And I try to point out that the D’s should pay a little more attention when it comes to such backlash, so they can WIN.
Now I don’t think we can STOP automation. But I do think we can do some things to lessen the worst effects of it, and to allow the people of this country, and the world for that matter, more time to adjust to the new reality.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
Yes there is backlash from people who do not understand economics.
As I have pointed out many times before, protectionist measures may seem like a good idea, but they hurt those workers in industries that are net exporters in order to help those in industries where there is a net import of goods and hurt everybody with an increase in the level of inflation.
If you have children, you may realize that if given a choice they would eat only cake and ice cream, with candy for dessert.
The protectionist measures proposed by populists is the “cake and ice cream” policy for everyone approach.
You may think it’s a good idea, but you may have not gone beyond the introductory level in economics, or perhaps did intermediate microeconomics (which would apply for agriculture), but skipped the intermediate macroeconomics where some ideas from international economics get explored more fully than there is time for in an introductory macroeconomics course.
Hi Dennis ,
I understand your arguments, and recognize that they are sound, depending on the time frame involved , and whether you wish to talk about the AVERAGE citizen’s AVERAGE welfare, and if past history continues to hold.
I’ve done only two basic courses, junior and senior level full academic year courses, which were incidentally taught by econ professors to econ students, although my transcript says Ag ECON with the same identifying letters and numbers otherwise.
But I’ve read dozens of books on or closely related to the field since then, and I generally read books written by professionals with excellent reputations in their field. So for instance in biology, my personal favorites include guys such as Stephen Gould and Wilson, both Harvard professors. In psychology I read guys such as Pinker who the last time I checked was a professor at MIT.
( Now as to why I have read so many books, that’s simple. It’s what I wanted to do,above everything else, and I was fortunate enough to easily make enough money to indulge that want. Living in the woods in a camper for six months doesn’t cost much and I have done that ten times at least, with a valid grad student id that enabled me to check out almost any book available in a university library. . And in six months I could and did read as much or more than most guys going for a master or doctorate in their own field in a year. )
Since nobody else here in particular, and just about everywhere else in general ever has anything serious to say about the effects globalization has had SHORT TERM on the lower and a substantial portion of the so called middle class of this country, I try to plug that gap, and in particular I try to make people realize that while something may be GOOD in the long run, it can a disaster in the short run, depending on circumstances and its implementation.
Now you tell me.
How many people do you think voted for Trump because they were AFRAID they might lose their jobs and their homes, or have ALREADY lost them, to globalization?
I will go to my grave firmly convinced that ENOUGH such people voted for Trump to put him over the victory line, and into the White House.
Note that I occasionally point out the the R’s are mostly responsible for globalization, in terms of politics and trade agreements, etc.
But the D’s have been paying the price for it, politically, for the most part.
It’s one thing to support something in principle because it’s good overall on average or good long term for most people, but it’s something else to support it when supporting it leads to political disasters such as R party control of DC, most state houses, most local offices, etc.
Hi OFM,
Globalization is not the problem, automation is.
It is not enough to spout crap like Trump, one needs a policy. Eventually stupid people will realize that electing other stupid people with no policy ideas, is not smart.
What do we do with the people who would be hurt short term by protectionist measures.
Are you under the impression that the US has only imports and no exports?
Lots of people do not understand economics. Protectionism is a two edged sword.
The protectionist measures proposed by populists is the “cake and ice cream” policy for everyone approach.
You may think it’s a good idea, but you may have not gone beyond the introductory level in economics,…
To be honest, full disclosure, I skipped most of the economics courses myself. However I grew up in an international family and worked in the global economy from an early age. It was my experience that trade and supply chains were by nature multinational, I couldn’t imagine it any other way.
So whenever I hear someone push a protectionist or economic nationalist world view, literally every hair on the back of my neck stands up! I can’t imagine a worse possible way of proceeding at this juncture in world history.
AUGIE PICADO
The real reason manufacturing jobs are disappearing
The reality is that shared production allows us to manufacture higher quality products at lower costs. It’s that simple. It allows us to get more out of the limited resources and expertise we have and at the same time benefit from lower prices. It’s really important to remember that for shared production to be effective, it relies on efficient cross-border movement of raw materials, components and finished products.
So remember this: the next time you’re hearing somebody try to sell you on the idea that protectionism is a good deal, it’s just not.
What I SAID is that a SUBSTANTIAL number of people are satisfied to live on welfare while supplementing their income by various hustles, and this is a perfectly obvious truth to anybody who actually has any CONTACT with the lower rungs of American society.
It may be true for the lower rungs of American society, though I have my doubts even about that. I mentioned that I think the US has a really stupid system in place to deal with poverty. It is counterproductive and rewards the wrong kinds of behavior.
However having worked with people from the lowest rungs of societies in the four corners of the planet, I’ll go out on a limb and say that it doesn’t hold for 95% of the rest of humanity. Extreme poverty is the rule not the exception! Humans have a basic need to be productive and to be respected for their contributions to their communities.
Hi Fred,
I agree…….
Except that once people are once somewhat better off, a SUBSTANTIAL portion of them, a LOT more than five percent, decide they like the laid back working as little as possible lifestyle, with the max free time, etc even if it means a low standard of living….. still higher than most people in places where life is REALLY tough, food is short, medical care and electricity scarce to non existent, etc.
I don’t pretend to know the answers. I’m hoping you can provide some. I’m all ears.
I gather reading between the lines that your extended family and peer group are collectively blessed with ambition and a strong work ethic, as mine has been, traditionally, for the last century.
But every body I know knows some dead beats. I have a couple of nephews that are content to just barely get by from one week to the next. Two of the guys I drink a beer with lots of afternoons are deadbeats. I don’t condemn them any more than I condemn ticks for sucking blood. They’ve found a way to survive, and they are surviving, and living substantially less stressful lives than a lot of people I know who work their tails off year in and year out.
I know several women who support worthless men who spend more on fishing and beer than they spend on supporting their families.
Once you have countless people who believe the system has fucked them over, whether it’s true, or not, then those same countless people are ready to fuck over the system at any opportunity. There are at least thirty such people here in the USA in my personal opinion.
This is not a good sign. Consumer debt is getting high again.
I tossed my credit cards a long time ago. People need to leave the land of MORE STUFF and enjoy life more. Maybe we should call it the land of MOREDUMB.
I have neighbors that blow through savings like it was infinite and use credit too. Sad when the rope runs out. I try to get them to do things that save them money, conserve energy and do enjoyable things. A few listen. Most just wait until life slams the lesson home and then they moan about how unfair it is. We live in a world of children in adult bodies.
Hi Boomer,
Data from Fred is only through the end of 2016, but to that point not much of a problem
Much different story when we look at the real numbers. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a study revealing that total household debt in the US has risen above recessionary highs. Driven primarily by growth in nonhousing-related debt, total household debt in the US climbed to $12.8 trillion in Q2 2017, surpassing the $12.7 trillion reached in Q3 2008. http://www.businessinsider.com/us-household-debt-passes-recession-peak-2017-8
Those two data series seem consistent. The difference is the adjustment that comes from dividing by GDP.
GDP rose about 29% from 2008 to 2016 ($14.4T to 18.6T). So, if household debt is the same, then the ratio to GDP is roughly 29% lower.
Hi Gone fishing,
Let’s say someone has a car payment of $500 per month. If the person earns $20,000 per year they are in trouble as their income is only $1600 per month so making the payment will be difficult, someone earning $50,000 per year might be ok, though even at $4200/month and net of roughly $3400/month, this might barely be affordable depending on rent and utilities etc.
Basic point is that income matters so looking at debt without looking at income is not realistic.
Income has been going down for decades Dennis.
Hi Gonefishing,
Income is equal to GDP, if we do this in constant dollars to adjust for inflation we have real GDP per capita (the same as real income per capita).
For the US in 1996 real GDP per capita (2010$) was $39,681 per person in the US and in 2016 it was $52,195/person.
“The amount of fire activity in Canada, which currently is about 2½ million hectares has doubled since the 1970s. Not only has Canada experienced a record-breaking season, it’s been a historic year for wildfires across the globe. There have been deadly fires and historic fires in Chile, Portugal (twice), and California. The California fires will be the most expensive at tens of billions in losses.”
Sucks for the people and the forest life.
Nature always gives examples though. Just visit the red rock country of the American West to see what other areas of the West will turn into as the drying continues.
After seeing fossilized turtles in the Badlands of South Dakota many years ago, it solidified my view that change happens on a large scale on this planet and the changes become permanent from any human point of view. I am glad I live in a fairly wet area since the idiots around here are too dumb not to start forest fires in a drought (I am surrounded by forest).
GROUNDWATER, TUNDRA FIRES MAY WORK TOGETHER TO THAW PERMAFROST
“The new study reveals that, after wildfire burns off a portion of organic rich soil that normally insulates permafrost, summer warmth penetrates deeper into the frozen soils, allowing groundwater to flow downgradient and potentially contributing to greater release of greenhouse gases.”
Seems like a domino effect. Or maybe just how tipping points work, they all gang together. Dependent variables are so messy.
Of course maybe we just make up the variables for our convenience and there is only one thing actually, the system. I have been wondering if the system has only a certain small set of quasi-stable points and two stable points, sort of like a planetary quantum effect where only certain states are allowed.
From snowball to ice free and lately an oscillating unstable system that apparently only needs a small push to go to ice free again. Two stable points and quasi-stable vibrational states in between. Might be others, but life would not exist in those.
Of course all these are in time periods much longer than human history so we have difficult time imagining them.
Still, not a good time to be witness to fast small changes.
The timing of the human carbon pulse in relation to the glacial oscillations is uncanny.
E.P.A. cancels talk on climate change by agency scientists – “It’s definitely a blatant example of the scientific censorship we all suspected was going to start being enforced at E.P.A”
(The Orange Authoritarian is putting those global warmin scientist who want to destroy capitalism in their place!)
Remember when NASA’s mission statement included this phrase?
“To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers … as only NASA can.”
Well, while the USA apparently no longer wants to understand and protect our home planet, it seems the Chinese and the French still do!
First joint France-China satellite to study oceans
France and China’s space agencies unveiled their first joint satellite in Beijing Friday, which will be used to improve forecasting of ocean storms and cyclones.
The satellite, named CFOSAT (China-France Oceanography Satellite), is due to be launched next year by China and will primarily be used to study wind and ocean wave patterns.
“In practical terms, it will be used to improve forecasts of strong storms, cyclones or waves for all coastal activities”, Daniele Hauser, a French scientist working on the project, told AFP. Understanding the interaction between the oceans and the atmosphere will also help to model and tackle climate change, scientists said.
The satellite will include two radars: a French system designed to measure direction and wavelength of ocean waves, and a Chinese version focusing on wind strength and direction.
The satellite is the first to be jointly constructed by France and China.
The project was originally envisaged as a joint programme for the French and European space agencies.
BTW, note to nationalist trolls, no US tax payer dollars were spent to fund this scientific research! But it will cost us a bundle in lost respect and international scientific and technological prestige.
That is wonderful news Fred. As our satellites go dark at least somebody is doing something.
While the powers that be blanket the globe with satellites and make a few studies, where is the action? Let’s see major long term committed and directed action not small baby steps that don’t tread on too many toes. Otherwise all the information in the world will merely fill libraries and give meat to discussion panels.
Certainly the “free market” will never do it in time or do it well.
R2 to R2 in thousands of years. Fine example of the results of the free market.
Meanwhile the fossil energy consumption has kept going up even though we knew the problems four decades ago or more. How many scientific papers, books and lectures will it take to put the brakes on.
Where are the brakes anyway?
Let’s see major long term committed and directed action not small baby steps that don’t tread on too many toes.
If you are looking for leadership from the USA you are looking in the wrong place. Now China is a whole nuther ball of wax, they do have major long term plans and are highly aware of the dangers of climate change due to the burning fossil fuels. Their investments in renewables technology speaks for itself. They are also in the process of laying the ground work for a new global economic order.
Behind China’s $1 Trillion Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order
VANG VIENG, Laos — Along the jungle-covered mountains of Laos, squads of Chinese engineers are drilling hundreds of tunnels and bridges to support a 260-mile railway, a $6 billion project that will eventually connect eight Asian countries.
Chinese money is building power plants in Pakistan to address chronic electricity shortages, part of an expected $46 billion worth of investment.
Chinese planners are mapping out train lines from Budapest to Belgrade, Serbia, providing another artery for Chinese goods flowing into Europe through a Chinese-owned port in Greece.
The massive infrastructure projects, along with hundreds of others across Asia, Africa and Europe, form the backbone of China’s ambitious economic and geopolitical agenda. President Xi Jinping of China is literally and figuratively forging ties, creating new markets for the country’s construction companies and exporting its model of state-led development in a quest to create deep economic connections and strong diplomatic relationships.
The initiative, called “One Belt, One Road,” looms on a scope and scale with little precedent in modern history, promising more than $1 trillion in infrastructure and spanning more than 60 countries. To celebrate China’s new global influence, Mr. Xi is gathering dozens of state leaders, including President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in Beijing on Sunday.
While we in the US are resting on our laurels and have allowed one of the most ignorant, despicable bunch of morons ever to walk the surface of the planet, to rise to power.
Edit, also from the article:
Mr. Xi’s plan stands in stark contrast to President Trump and his “America First” mantra. The Trump administration walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the American-led trade pact that was envisioned as a buttress against China’s growing influence.
“Pursuing protectionism is just like locking oneself in a dark room,” Mr. Xi told business leaders at the World Economic Forum in January.
It is past time to lock Trump and his band of imbeciles in a dark room and throw away the key! If we don’t the US will pay a very high price in the long term!
Note to economic nationalists, it might be time for you to start taking classes in Mandarin!
Wasn’t being US centric. Look at the graph, that is global. Proof is in the pudding. No concerted effort on anyone’s part, in fact your Chinese buddies have been the worst offenders and even a concerted effort on their part would take a decade to level out their coal and oil surge. You see how coal had leveled out back in the 80’s and nineties? Then a huge surge, think China followed by the rest of East Asia.
Then there is the new surge in the use methane, which not only produces CO2 but leaks a lot and is 100X stronger than CO2.
Meanwhile renewables are chunking along but not fast enough. Much of that renewable is hydro and biofuels. We know biofuels can be about as bad (or worse) than oil.
Lets cut the demand, fast. Not asking anyone to do what I haven’t already done.
Wasn’t being US centric. Look at the graph, that is global. Proof is in the pudding. No concerted effort on anyone’s part, in fact your Chinese buddies have been the worst offenders and even a concerted effort on their part would take a decade to level out their coal and oil surge.
I’m not defending China’s CO2 emissions or pollution production and they have been among the worst offenders in terms of ecological devastation. However, they are putting in the ground work for global economic dominance through trade networks and banks. At least they are not building stupid walls. And while their investment in renewables may be way too little and way too late they are still light years ahead of the USA.
A trillion dollars is certainly putting their money where their mouths are…
Good for the Chinese, they need to have their day, looks like it won’t last very long but they need to feel big before they fall.
Isn’t that infrastructure build just more BAU and more CO2? Haven’t they put up lots of senseless infrastructure already?
Trump is not the USA. I didn’t think the wall was built yet.
Also I am not Trump.
Isn’t that infrastructure build just more BAU and more CO2? Haven’t they put up lots of senseless infrastructure already?
Probably, but I wasn’t just talking about physical infrastructure in China. I was referring to their trade agreements and influence in the 60 countries mentioned.
They have been ahead on that for a while now. Our current admin will really screw up our trade system. See the Reich talk I posted down near the bottom of the comments about AI, he discusses that subject.
Hi Gonefishing,
The Chinese are using a lot less fossil fuel energy per capita than the US. Higher prices will help and those will arrive when fossil fuel peaks. Fossil fuel use where there are carbon taxes is lower per capita than places where fossil fuel prices are low.
Sure, over a billion people and more than half of them in abject poverty. 40 percent with less than $2100 a year income and you think they will use much energy per capita? Or maybe they work in a city where they might make $12 a day but have higher expenses.
I think you don’t understand the context behind many of the numbers you present.
And don’t come back with that World Bank number who left poverty because they made more than $1.91 per day. That was for extreme poverty and the Chinese government latched hard onto that number.
Hi Gonefishing,
I was responding to the following comment:
Wasn’t being US centric. Look at the graph, that is global. Proof is in the pudding. No concerted effort on anyone’s part, in fact your Chinese buddies have been the worst offenders and even a concerted effort on their part would take a decade to level out their coal and oil surge. You see how coal had leveled out back in the 80’s and nineties? Then a huge surge, think China followed by the rest of East Asia.
Then there is the new surge in the use methane, which not only produces CO2 but leaks a lot and is 100X stronger than CO2.
The point was intended to be that the Chinese have far lower emissions per capita than the US, I agree average income in China is much lower, but income per capita has been rising quickly and generally higher income leads to higher energy use.
According to the website linked above GWP for methane is 28 times higher than CO2 over a 100 year time horizon, rather than the 100 times you suggest, note that longer time horizons (such as 1000 years) reduces the GWP further. The CO2 remains in the atmosphere roughly 16 times longer than methane, which makes it more of a problem over the long term. Since 1750 the CO2 increase has increased radiative forcing by about 1.94 W/m2, methane about 0.5 W/m2, N2O about 0.2 W/m2, tropospheric ozone 0.4 W/m2, and other greenhouse gases about 0.34 W/m2. The total is 3.38 W/m2 (this does not take into account other factors such as aerosols and their interactions with clouds which may reduce the total anthropogenic contribution) and CO2 is about 57% of this total and methane is about 15%.
On the coal surge in China, that has levelled out already, oil use is increasing, but the coming peak in oil output and the high prices associated with that peak is likely to reduce the rate of growth in oil use, both in China and the World.
Real GDP per capita in China grew at about 7.5% per year from 1970 to 2010. The GINI index was similar to the US from 2008-2012 (a measure of income inequality). In 2015 China’s GDP per capita was similar to Spain’s in 1960.
China and India will try to maintain fast growth rates to catch up with Europe and North America.
The only way this can be done is to develop alternatives to fossil fuel. China knows this and India is catching on.
The transition will happen and might occur more rapidly than many believe is possible.
Dennis, you are talking to a professional spectroscopist. I understand the interactions between matter and electromagnetic energy. Made a living at it. As I said before, you do not seem to have any real grasp of the context of the numbers you read and reiterate.
I have tried several times before to educate you on the instantaneous response of methane as it exists in the atmosphere. Your numbers assume a loss of concentration with time due to dissociation of the methane molecule. An assumption that assumes the methane input will fall. Sure the molecules dissociate but they are more than being replaced by new ones so one must look at atmospheric concentration in real time.
In fact the concentration is rising, so that assumption is erroneous.
The actual infrared response of CH4 is about 100X that of CO2 for various physical reasons I will not attend to at this point in time. That makes the 1800 ppb equivalent to 180 ppm of CO2.
Did the US climate scientists finally take up France’s offer to have them move over there to keep “researching” the climate? It was said on the radio the average IQ’s in both countries would go up immediately so a win win all around.
Fred, I am now retired but always did work hard for my money to support my family like a real man. Never went on welfare, food stamps, looked to the government for giveaways none of that. So many people today got the entitlement mentality, they need to be put in their place.
“they need to be put in their place.”
And who’s gonna do that for you?
Speaking of entitlement mentality- how’s Trump doing? I’ve been ignoring him for quite some time now. Not hard to do when one has no cable TV.
Charles Van Vleet = Ever Vacant Shell (the best troll name anagram yet).
The wiki man somewhere above is Louis Tennessee = Out Senile Sense.
(George Kaplan is prong leakage, which might be in my not so distant future unfortunately)
On a more serious note what is the difference between defaming people purely on the basis of their belonging to some nebulous group (be it a nationality or a profession or anything else) and outright racism or homophobia, either of which would get you banned from a lot blogs I think?
George Kaplan -> Anal Egg Poker
??☝????
That’s the response I was looking for so hopefully we can start to get some of you dumbasses banned.
I wholeheartedly second the motion! Enough is enough!
I think first you could explain why you can copy and paste crass anagrams of people whose opinions you just don’t like but you don’t think anybody else can. I was only following your lead. ????
Internet Trolls Are Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Sadists
It will interesting to see how things unfold when the Chinese Heavy Oil Refinery comes on line next year, and Ven’s dependence of US refining is no longer needed.
Those largest oil reserves will be freed from outside interference–
Correct, the big burp from the arctic has been triggered
Alarmism?
CLIMATE TROUBLE MAY BE BUBBLING UP IN FAR NORTH
“Reporting to the European Geophysical Union last year, the scientists, affiliated with the University of Alaska and the Russian Academy of Sciences, cited “extreme” saturation of methane in surface waters and in the air above. They said up to 10% of the undersea permafrost area had melted, and it was “highly possible” that this would open the way to abrupt release of an estimated 50 billion tons of methane. Depending on how much dissolved in the sea, that might multiply methane in the atmosphere several-fold, boosting temperatures enough to cause “catastrophic greenhouse warming,” as the Russians called it. It would be self-perpetuating, melting more permafrost, emitting more methane.
And this certainly didn’t help: two years ago, the largest methane leak was discovered; the leak in Los Angeles County focused attention on the state’s aging gas wells. The well was one of 115 wells connected to a subsurface storage reservoir in the Aliso Canyon gas field a field which has been used for natural gas storage since 1973, the fourth largest facility of its kind in the U.S. It’s estimated 109,000 metric tons of methane escaped.
I checked the data from Mt Wilson and as huge as that leak was it doesn’t show up in the data. I think it was December 2015. Of course, LA is so polluted anyway it’s hard to notice.
It just shows it must be a huge amount of methane being released in Barrow, Alaska right now.
Methane, methane, methane. It’s just natural gas and natural can’t hurt you can it?
Just because it adds about 180 ppm effective warming to the CO2 thing right now is no reason to get alarmed about a few bubbles and some degassing. I mean what could go wrong?
Oh, that. But the vultures like that, they will have their own population boom, flies too.
Nature will take care of us, nothing to worry about.
I recall not too long ago a paper saying there were deep cracks in the permafrost which allows methane pockets to be released before the surface melts down to them.
No going back now.
An improvised explosive drone (‘dron bomba’) was interdicted by Mexican Federal Police/Policía Federal (PF) in Guanajunto in Central Mexico at daybreak of Friday, 20 October 2017.
the tide is going out for the climate alarmist, what a breath of fresh air
HERE’S THE ECONOMIC ARGUMENT TO TRUMP FOR FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE
“The Government Accountability Office says America has spent over $350 billion in the last 10 years on extreme weather and fire events, a total that could increase sharply as climate change effects worsen. Congress’s bipartisan auditing arm explains that the bulk of that total stems from domestic disaster assistance programs and losses from flood and crop insurance. Those figures look set to rise, though, as floods, droughts, and other climate change-exacerbated phenomena become more frequent. By the end of the century, America could be spending as much as $112 billion per year on dealing with such events…Trouble is, many of these effects will play out over a time period that may not bother the current President all that much. So the impact of its findings may not be as strong as you’d hope.”
Meanwhile,
NEW YORK CITY AREA COULD SOON SEE MASSIVE FLOODS EVERY 5 YEARS
This year’s Atlantic hurricane season was off the charts by nearly every measure, and new climate modeling suggests that New York City may be headed for weather that could make superstorm Sandy look routine. Flooding from hurricanes will intensify with sea level rise, and what was—in preindustrial times—a once-in-500-years flood may occur once every 5 years by 2030 scientists report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Oh yeah, if the good folk at Breitbart said so then it must be true! Though I’ll bet you haven’t read a single one of those supposed 400 papers, have you? Let alone know who the authors were or who funded them.
On the other hand, as they say: “T’is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than speak and remove all doubt.”
You have now definitely removed even the slightest remaining shred of doubt…
Dose of reality:
EVs? Not in Canada where truck sales, including SUVs, increased by 12.5% with 129,731 units sold in September while passenger car sales declined by 1.8% with 57,106 units sold. Dennis DesRosiers noted that, “every single month in 2017 thus far has been a record sales month for light trucks while passenger car sales have remained below record levels that were set as far back as the late 1980’s.” Truck market share advanced further to 67.7%, year-to-date, while that for passenger cars continued its decline to just 32.3%. The Ford’s F-Series continued to be the best-selling truck and the best-selling vehicle overall with its best-selling month on record.
September was the best month for plug-in electric vehicles sales in Germany … ever. In total, 5,365 plug-ins were registered, which was 75% more than year ago.
New high was set in both categories:
BEVs: 2,247 (new record) – up 37%
PHEVs: 3,118 (new record) – up 120%
Market share for the month hit near record levels as well, finishing up at 1.86%. That is 1 out of every 54 new car sales arriving with a plug!
Two brands stood out from the crowd in September – BMW and Volkswagen, which both crossed the 1,000 mark for registrations:
France’s plug-in vehicle market share hit a new record in September, crossing the 2% mark for the first time (2.1%). About 1 in every 48 new light vehicles purchased in the country came with a plug.
And as we recently reported, there a lot more public charging locations to plug into, as France also passed 20,000 charging stations (details) during the month.
New registrations of plug-in passenger vehicles hit 3,556 units (+560 commercial BEVs), which isn’t a new net record (4,521 were sold in June, good for a 1.73% market share), but the fast growth year-over-year translates to a rapidly expanding market share.
By looking at the results so far this year in China, it is hard to not notice the upward climb in plug-in vehicle sales. For September, deliveries increased by 79% to 78,000!
Once again, that is 78,000 plug-in sales…in a single month. More than the rest of the world achieved combined last month.
Sales of New Energy Vehicles in China – September 2017
Breakdown on the sales by category:
BEVs: 64,000 (up 83.4%)
PHEVs: 14,000 (up 61.9%)
Looking ahead to the rest of 2017, we should see back-to-back record monthly sales results in November and December, as the last couple of months of the year in China are typically best ones.
So far this year, sales of New Energy Vehicles (plug-ins) in China have reached 398,000 (up 37.7%). If it wasn’t for the government butchering the incentives at the start of 2017 (ain’t slow moving, bureaucratic red tape great?), then we likely would have already seen 500,000 sold in the region.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, China is “ground zero” for EVs. The rest of the world is facing a serious risk of being left in the dust by Chinese manufacturers. China is definitely focused on semi-conductor manufacturing and semiconductors are a big part of EVs from the control electronics and infotainment systems to the power electronics that charge the batteries and drive the motors. Batteries are another major component in EVs where the Chinese are establishing a huge lead. For anyone who wants to deride the quality of Chinese products, I would like to remind you that in the sixties (when I was a child), “made in Japan” had the same negative connotations. China is laying the groundwork to become a major force in EV manufacturing.
The global solar market is set to end 2017 some 95 GW larger than when it began, according to German analyst firm Bernreuter Research.
This record growth could even hit triple figures going by polysilicon supply data, which is enough to push global production of crystalline silicon cells to 100 GW, the report adds.
China’s solar PV market is on track to reach 52 GW of new installations this year, with the U.S. way back in second place with 12.5 GW of new solar, followed by India (9 GW), Japan (a mere 5.8 GW), Germany (2.2 GW) and Brazil (1.3 GW). Australia, Chile, Turkey and South Korea will all be GW-scale markets this year, Bernreuter Research said.
Given shipment time lags and inventories in the supply chain, as much as 100 GW of crystalline solar cells and an additional 5 GW of thin-film modules will be produced in the calendar year. This translates to 95 to 97 GW of installations. This figure represents a 30% growth on 2016’s 74 GW of new solar.
The Koch brothers inspired Trump administration is doing their best to keep the US from winning the race to the technologies that will dominate energy production and use in the future. Trolls and sock puppets need not wory, they will have all their coal to themselves. Here’s to hoping (for their sake) that will “make America great again.”
Not ignoring Doug’s dose of reality. Just trying to highlight what could happen if we could get the influence of the likes of the Koch brothers out of the way and exhibit the political will to try and do something about our predicament.
Islandboy – These days I more-or-less divide my time between Norway and Western Canada. Oslo is the EV capital of the world where more than 30% of all new cars are EVs or plug-in hybrids. There is talk of banning ICE vehicles by 2025. Now there are currently over 100,000 plug-in vehicles in a country of only five million people, which makes perfect sense. Internal combustion cars are taxed at 100%. EVs? No tax. In the region of Canada where I live virtually everyone owns two vehicles: an all-wheel drive SUV plus a pickup truck. Of course this will change but it won’t be anytime soon.
In the region of Canada where I live virtually everyone owns two vehicles: an all-wheel drive SUV plus a pickup truck.
You are describing my nephew in Alberta. Of course, that’s not the whole country.
Here in the Greater Toronto Area, which makes up about 20% of the Canadian market, I am also surrounded by SUV’s and pickups. I believe that the introduction of electric pickups will be the game changer. People won’t buy them for the environment, or the cost, or anything like that, but because the damn things will be fast and less prone to rolling over. The best way to make an SUV safer (short of halving the horsepower) is to put a ton of batteries very low in the chassis. This combination will allow them to be sold equally well to soccer moms and males with penis length challenges.
-Lloyd
Norway sounds great. How is the solar PV effort doing up there?
The Wild West (North America) hasn’t gotten over it’s youth yet and there are some practical aspects to pickups and four wheel drive vehicles in the rural regions.
My neighbor who just passed away kept an old F150 running for over 30 years. So old it only had an AM radio. No FM! Good for hauling, good for carrying stone to fill the holes in the road, which we need around here.
Just saw a carpenter rebuilding a deck nearby. His old Chevy truck must be from the early 90’s, still running as a work truck. Not pretty but very useful.
Nothing electric yet to replace them, soon maybe. Working vehicles need to run for the long term and fancy just gets beat up.
All those high fashion newer pickups are going to need all kinds of work just to keep the gadgets running. Probably be trashed for electrical/electronic failures before the engines wear out.
When gasoline is cheap, a new F150 is a very satisfactory vehicle as judged from the point of view of most people who buy new pickup trucks.
Anybody who hasn’t driven or at least ridden in a NEW full size Ford, Dodge, or Chevy pickup in the last few years is in for a BIG surprise when he gets in one. They’re as comfortable as cars, ride like cars, have all the bells and whistles found on any car that sells for less than fifty grand, have plenty of room for three super sized adults and so forth.
And when you consider that the cost of gasoline is only a VERY minor fraction of the total cost of ownership of a vehicle, well…… the people who buy them aren’t grumbling about fuel economy.
And when you’re ready to trade, compared to a typical car, you’ll be thousands ahead if you bought a pickup most of the time.
They last longer than cars, and they’re typically more reliable and considerably easier to work on……. and when you DO need to haul something occasionally, you can.
Most people, once they get used to driving a newer full size pickup PREFER to drive one after that….. because they like the seating position and being able to see the road so much better compared to a typical car.
Having said all this, I’ve seen countless pickups that are ten years old that still don’t have a scratch inside the cargo box.
So I suppose the only way people will voluntarily switch to small cars is if the price of gasoline goes thru the roof. That’s almost sure to happen in my opinion, sometime within the next few years, my reasoning being that we won’t switch to electric cars fast enough to offset the depletion of oil.
It doesn’t matter so much what people own as it does how much they drive. If fuel goes up enough or if a recession hits and people don’t have a reason to drive much, then petroleum consumption goes down.
I don’t think we necessarily have to replace big ICE vehicles with EVs right away if those ICE vehicles mostly sit in driveways.
Saudi Arabia plans to build futuristic city for innovators
“This place is not for conventional people or conventional companies,” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told an audience of investors from around the world gathered in the capital, Riyadh, on Tuesday. “This will be a place for the dreamers of the world.”
MbS needs a breath alcohol and urinalysis. Reasonable cause. Dudes a total lune.
I read the link about SA building the new super city and all that. Personally I know next to nothing about Mohamed bin Salman but I can see several potentially good reasons why he’s doing what he can to change the direction of his country.
The first one, and maybe the most important one, in my estimation, is that unless the royal family succeeds in destroying the power of the priesthood, it may well become the EX royal family, with the survivors living in exile ( luxurious to the tenth, but still exile).
Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s my impression the House of Saud made a pact with the mullahs that allowed them to STAY in power, but at the risk of the priests gaining TOO much power. The risk as I read it turned out to be real, and now they are looking at destroying the power of the priesthood, or at least severely pruning it, or else……. The priests will get to be so powerful they run out the royal family.
And if they don’t succeed in raising or at the very least maintaining the living standards of the people, they will lose control anyway, because the people have now had a taste of a better life, and it’s too late for them to pull off a NK dough boy style dictatorship. WAY too late. Impossible. Too many people coming and going, too much freedom of communication already,etc.
Most of us forget that the royal family has been sending a lot of the country’s brightest young men to various countries where they have learned as much as can be learned in top universities about finance and economics and so forth. And there’s little doubt that while they were there, they also learned quite a lot about how fast the world can change, about the realities of oil depletion, about disruptive technologies, about what the world is going to be like in a few more decades.
I just read MbS’s wiki biography, and while he does not appear to have any formal education other than in the law, it’s perfectly obvious that his career path has kept him in constant contact with business leaders of all sorts, including leaders in new technologies such as robotics, communications, renewable energy, etc.
So it’s reasonable to speculate that he UNDERSTANDS the overall economic situation of his country, and the world, in much the same way as such regulars in this forum as Nick and Fred Maygar understand these things.
(Both these guys are convinced that while there are no guarantees, we naked apes collectively have an excellent shot at a very bright future, if we can just somehow manage to pull thru our current / impending economic and ecological bottlenecks. I’m not so optimistic as they are, short term, but I hope they’re right, and they may well be right. )
When the old USSR finally gave up the ghost, it was for as much as any other reason that the people of that cobbled together country/ empire came to understand that there was a BETTER way, that the old system wasn’t working, and would never work well , and so when somebody, namely Gorbachev, finally got into a position to start making really serious reforms, the reforms took on a life of their own, like a little snow breaking loose and starting an avalanche.
( Gorbachev probably didn’t intend for things to get out of hand the way they did, but there wasn’t anything he or anybody else could do to stop that avalanche, because NOBODY believed in the old status quo any more. )
MbS has the reputation of a gambler, and he’s obviously gambling the future of his country, and his own position as ruler to be of it, on transforming his society, getting back to “moderate Islam” as he has expressed it, and so forth.
It looks to me as if he believes best way to secure his own position and power, and that of his extended family, at least for the next few decades, is to transform the society and the economy so that the people are happier and more prosperous, less under the heel of the religious police and their masters.
Maybe he will succeed.
He’s put it all on the line just forcing the religious establishment to accept women having the right to drive. Once that sort of break in a dike is made, a flood often follows.
This could be a game changer, a tipping point. Whether it happens, and how quickly, now that’s the question…….. plus how much it will cost of course.
This evidently means storing about five to six kilowatt hours in the battery PER MINUTE to get about thirty kWh into it that fast.
It’s going to take a hell of a service drop to provide enough power to run a service station with ten or twelve such chargers at a busy intersection. And most of the people wanting to charge up, if it can be done so fast, are probably going to want to do it either on the way to work or on the way home.
I see a hell of a potential peak load problem, but that can be solved at least to some extent by pricing juice cheap at off hours, and thereby encouraging people to charge up at home or at off peak hours at service stations.
Now suppose your car drives itself, and your office building has a king sized solar array……… On a sunny day, depending on your place in the pecking order, you can get your get your car charged up while you’re at work, without even paying for it.
And if you’ve got a substantial array at home, you can probably get enough charge before or after work and on weekends to drive two hundred miles or more per week. A ten kW system could charge you full up on Saturday or Sunday even in the winter time, if the sun’s out most of the day.
That’s cool and it’s not too radical. 34KWhr isn’t really enough for 200 miles of range, but it’s still good even if a 70KWHr version takes 12 minutes.
Lot of others are working on it, Porsche seems to be in the lead.
“But perhaps Mission E’s most startling performance metric is a claimed 80 percent charging time for its massive battery pack in just 15 minutes. The car’s rated driving range is 300 miles, so just 15 minutes plugged in to a Porsche charger will yield 250 miles of driving range, Blume told Car. ”
The cars have been seen on test tracks, not vaporware….. The car is just the first to work the bugs out, but Volkswagon plans on using the tech in other cars later. There are 350KW charging stations being installed now across Europe, and in California.
Hi OFM,
The fast charging does damage to the battery so most people will slow charge at home unless they have a 300 mile round trip commute and no possibility of charging at work (unlikely in the future).
These fast charging stations will be used exclusively for those travelling on a long trip. Holidays may be a problem, people who regularly go away to the country on weekends will need to stay within 300 miles of home or wait in long lines to charge their car.
This is not quite what it appears, but very interesting and illuminating.
Sounds like a long range real estate takeover plan. I have seen them before and if the parties involved are patient and slightly clever no one is the wiser.
Republicans, Wall Street score victory in dismantling class-action rule
CFPB Director Richard Cordray, a Democrat appointed by former President Barack Obama, rarely comments on congressional action but on Tuesday night said “Wall Street won and ordinary people lost.”
“This vote means the courtroom doors will remain closed for groups of people seeking justice and relief when they are wronged by a company,” he added.
This was a pure party line vote accept Graham and Kennedy. But the moron American voter was more concerned about who got paid giving a speech to the bankers. Than who supported their own interest.
Next on the agenda is to eliminate the inheritance tax. So Donald Jr. can live in luxury for life and the religious conservatives can file their income tax on a post card. God forbid someone has their own internet server and uses email. We might have to lock them up.
Don’t let an apple fall on your child’s head when their young. Apparently it can damage them for life.
HB is up to his usual standard, failing to realize that HRC would have won if she hadn’t made any of the wooden headed mistakes she made, such as accepting millions from bankers for SECRET speeches, and probably around a hundred fifty million in dirty money while Sec of State.
And the email system wouldn’t have been much of a problem, except she kept it a secret, and wiped the server denying all the people who believe she’s a scumbag the opportunity to learn otherwise. Lessons and weddings my poor ass, anybody who believes that is dumb enough to believe in Santa Claus as well. Now of course it’s ok to lie like a street thief if you’re defending your own cultural, religious, political or other IN group.
Every body does that , with a few exceptions such as yours truly. I go wherever the facts lead me, and criticize hypocrisy wherever I find it, as when environmentalists fail to admit even in principle that policies that reduce population growth, such as restricted immigration, are good for countries that implement them. Nobody else comes even close to posting as many criticisms of the R’s in general and Trump in particular as I do.
But he’s right about the R’s putting the screws to consumers.
About the inheritance tax, not so much. Just about every body who WOULD be subject to paying it pays out a small fortune to lawyers and accountants and thus avoids paying more than a minor fraction of the stated rates.
Even relatively poor folks such as my parents transferred ownership rights to their property to the OTHER kids years ago, retaining lifetime estates.The home farm’s a nice little place, as small farms go, but it’s worth less than many a perfectly ordinary house in places like northern Virginia or LA or Seattle. I went my own way financially except for one acre to build on, but I have the use of the place so long as I’m able to live on it. It doesn’t generate enough income to offset the taxes on it since we quit the orchard.
OldFailedAppleFarmer, you yap and carry on day after day. But on November 8th of last year, when it was time to make a binary choice for the future of the country. You punted. Like other morons in this country, you focused on personal attack ads and lost sight of policy.
You’re a rube
It’s official—for 2016, the estate and gift tax exemption is $5.45 million per individual, up from $5.43 million in 2015. That means an individual can leave $5.45 million to heirs and pay no federal estate or gift tax. A married couple will be able to shield $10.9 million from federal estate and gift taxes.Oct 22, 2015
There is no need to eliminate the inheritance tax for the Trumps of the country.
It’s into the future from the past. Forget roads, they are long gone. Your personal electric helicopter drops you off at the high speed monorail or vacuum tube train. Cities have mostly vanished, no one really wants to live like rats all piled together. Farmers sit back and help guide the robots that do all the work on the farm.
Who knows what will come next? Well, Popular Mechanics kept predicting the future and amazingly some of it came true.
But it’s still dirty, messy, polluted and crowded with trash around and lots of people not even having clean water or good food, so there is still a lot of work to be done. And we still have roads and no personal electric copters yet. 🙁
Enjoy the predictions from the past. http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/g462/future-that-never-was-next-gen-tech-concepts/
From the end of the last open thread:
Looks like CO2 rise has accelerated up to 3 ppm for 2015 and 2016. Was running 2.3 ppm per year last decade. Looks like we are due to cross 500 ppm before 2050. Add on the other GHG’s and we will have doubled by then. That puts a whole new color to the Northern Hemisphere.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/03/13/carbon-dioxide-in-the-atmosphere-is-rising-at-the-fastest-rate-ever-recorded/?utm_term=.9f26e37c7be6
co2 is a trace gas in the atmosphere..
Fuck off, moron!
this is why people don’t vote with your side no more.. how are insults suppose to get me voting lib.?
I don’t give a rat’s ass who you vote for, you are just another stupid troll or sock puppet!
“When someone responds to the most sensitive situation in the world like this, “moron” is being kind.
Rex Tillerson Had the Very Best Reason for Calling Trump a Moron
Isn’t it weird that of all the infinite timelines we could have ended up living through, we got the one where Donald Trump is president of the United States and we had to spend multiple news cycles on whether or not Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called him a “fucking moron”? Maybe “weird” isn’t the word? Discouraging? Disgusting? Scary? Whichever adjective you want to pick, rest assured that you’re not alone and most of the country feels the same way, so let’s just breathe and dive once more into the “fucking moron” story, shall we?”
https://www.gq.com/story/rex-tillerson-trump-moron-nukes
“To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of Earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems, is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”
Excerpt from Senator John McCain’s recent speech.
Well said, HB
Glad to see you aren’t dead or retired from commenting.
Here’s another link.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-resumes-twitter-attacks-comey-crooked-hillary-131719426.html
Trump reserves himself half a dozen times, saying one thing and then totally contradicting himself a little while later on just this ONE issue, like a STUPID kid trying to win an argument.
I often wonder if he can even REMEMBER what he said a month or a year ago, but then I conclude he simply believes he can get away with this sort of bullshit because his supporters don’t pay attention, and he has already written off any intention or even possibility of cooperation with his enemies.
Some people believe, apparently with good reason, that he has succeeded from the beginning of his career by lying shamelessly about just about anything and every thing, and GETTING AWAY with it, and that therefore he will continue to do so.
But as I see it, he is now in substantial danger of not getting away with it very much longer.
I’m thinking that the D’s now have a great opportunity to pickup a considerable bunch of seats in the coming elections, and if they are smart enough run a candidate for president who is not pulling a career long baggage train the R’s can exploit, they are likely to win back the WH in a land slide.
A forced Trump resignation is no longer out of the question.
My wife and I were discussing this, yesterday. I go back to dementia, on top of narcissim. I have seen dementia occur in people as young as 70, and have been dealing with aging parents suffering alzheimers and related dementia for almost 15 years.
The anger, forgetting words, declining vocabulary, mood swings etc remind me of my mother-in-law. Big time. For someone who knows “many words. I know the best words”, Trump seems to rely on a very few expressions and most of them do not fit the situation. The latest big fight with F Wilson over death notification is a case in point. It is with, ‘that woman’. “I never said that”.
It just goes on and on. It’s either dementia, or just asshole. Either way he is unfit. Unless something is done he will only cause more decline and upheaval. I do not think the US can spend another 3 years dealing with Trump. It will fly apart before then.
Good luck, all of us.
Agree w you Paulo, but with Trump I think he has been like this for his whole adult life.
Problem is that Pence would be worse in many ways (like a combo of Dick Cheney and Jerry Falwell).
The American voter has fucked up so badly.
Hey kookoo,
Don’t worry ’bout insults and all that negative stuff. We humans are just “trace biological elements” in this universe anyway and we don’t really amount to much. Once you come to understand that, all you need to do is educate yourself a bit in the subjects of history and the evolution of us “trace” humans, and you can easily understand that we are just gonna continue to fuck-up most of everything we touch. Yep, sorry to shit in your punchbowl, but it’s all downhill from here!
Care for a glass of home-made blueberry wine? Think I’ll have another.
Stan
It’s very unfortunate, maybe the greatest misfortune of our time, or EVER, that the environmental issues have gotten to be inextricably entangled with culture war issues.
The KEY to the problem, as much as anything, appears to be the FACT that the vast majority of the people of this country, liberal OR conservative, are pathetically ill educated in respect to the physical and life sciences. To put it BLUNTLY, unless you are in a university or high tech environment, nine out of ten people you encounter on the street don’t REALLY know shit from apple butter when it comes to the physical and life sciences, and the environment and the biosphere.
They believe what they want to believe, it’s as simple as that. Liberals believe in forced climate change, because the liberal establishment believes in it. The conservative establishment has very good reasons, namely the status quo involving power and money, to either disbelieve or deny belief in forced warming.
The liberals happen to have the facts on their side in this case. It’s as simple as that.
The last five or six university educated young women I have talked to are all environmental greens. Yet not even one of them took even one basic course, a REAL course in the physical or life sciences. They’re green because they believe what their culture tells them to believe, not because they UNDERSTAND the science.
The conservatives who don’t believe in forced climate change generally know about the same amount of science, namely hardly any at all. They also believe what they want to believe, what their cultural leaders TELL them to believe.
It’s important to note that among technically well educated conservatives, belief in forced climate change is actually quite common, with most of the ones I have met agreeing it is real.
And going by their body language, judging from the perspective of an old poker player, most of the remainder ( among those I have met) who are technically literate who say they DON’T believe in forced climate change are lying about it.
The truth has a way of asserting itself, eventually.
It’s been at least ten years, probably closer to twenty, since I have heard one of my neighbors say that the anti tobacco campaign is a communist/ liberal plot organized to make it easy for scientists to collect grant money and an attack on their personal freedom.
The ones who used to say that have learned better. Some of them learned the hardest way of all, having their own fatal strokes and heart attacks. It’s been easy enough for me to convince them, all I’ve had to do is say lets count up the people we used to know personally who died of stroke, lung cancer, heart attack, etc, and how many of them were smokers, and how many weren’t.
In ten or twenty more years, the typical person on the street who believes global warming is a liberal commie plot will have learned just how wrong he is as his air conditioning bill just keeps on climbing and the news is about more super storms and super wildfires and super droughts.
And along the way, he may have learned a few more things as well, such as that single payer health care is a bargain for him and his family, and that keeping the air and water clean is a bargain, compared to paying for water treatment plants and looking after people who are sick due to pollution.
He will even have learned that oil comes out of holes in the ground, and that it doesn’t RAIN OIL and refill the holes, and he may even be GRATEFUL that the electric car industry got a liberal commie plot subsidy boost, because by then gasoline will most likely be sort of EXPENSIVE……. even if most cars sold by then are electrics.
His grand parents got used to the idea the world is round rather than flat and that the Earth orbits the sun rather than vice versa, lol.
Yes it is, but unlike oxygen and nitrogen it interacts with infrared radiation. That’s the wavelengths you are incapable of seeing. Those go bouncing back and forth among CO2 and H2O molecules and the earth/ocean. It keeps the earth/ocean/atmosphere nice and warm and now nice and warmer, for a while. Then the ice melts. Then the CO2 and methane come up out of the ground and oceans. Then life is more than nice and warm.
It’s the little things in life that count.
i heard how the c02 was actually much higher in the past.. even during the ice ages.. i just dont think science has all the answers right now but we can all have different opinions here..
You heard completely wrong about CO2 during the glaciations (we are still in the ice age, it began 2.6 million years ago, we are in an interglacial now).
Opinions are generally not realistic or based in evidence and verified fact. They are just what people think and say at the moment, though at times they may be educated opinions. But those need verification if possible.
True science does not have all the answers at the moment, otherwise scientists would be out of their jobs. Science has given us a great many reliable answers, as is evidenced by the very way you are giving your opinions today.
Opinions have absolutely nothing to do with science!
Not even scientists’ opinions. Being a scientist doesn’t make your opinion scientific. Only data, evidence and facts count in science.
Opinions are like assholes–
Everyone has on.
kokoe3 – often people put their y-o-b in their login name so that would make you 14 – you need to work a bit harder on your science to catch up with your classmates.
Extrapolation from an El Niño period is a clear mistake. The association between ENSO and changes in atmospheric CO2 is known since the mid-70’s. Check for example Bacastow’s work. He was a frequent collaborator of Keeling, and both were at Scripps (UCSD). I was there in the 90’s, but didn’t get to meet any of them as we were in very different fields.
Bacastow, R. B. (1976). Modulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide by the Southern Oscillation. Nature, 261(5556), 116-118.
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v261/n5556/abs/261116a0.html
But the acceleration in atmospheric CO2 increase is clear, as I also said in the last open thread.
This creates a problem for the hypothesis, as the climatic effects don’t show that acceleration. Dennis says this is due to the effect being dependent on log [CO2]. He is wrong because log [CO2] also shows acceleration when [CO2] shows acceleration.
All the models are very clear that with the increase in CO2 the climatic effects should accelerate, and that is the basis of any future imagined catastrophic effect. Without an acceleration of the climatic effects, the hypothesis is wrong, the models are wrong, and any catastrophic prediction is wrong.
Javier represents himself as a scientist, and when he talks about anything other than climate, which he does at times, he knows what he’s talking about.
But when it comes to climate, he throws the precautionary principle out the window, and cherry picks his evidence, and ignores any and all evidence that the climate IS changing as the result of fossil fuel pollution.
Now things AREN’T going to hell, climate wise, as fast as the more pessimistic climate scientists thought they would a few years back, but it’s obvious that the Earth is getting a little warmer, in total, day after day, with most of the captured heat energy going into the waters of the world ocean.
It may take a little longer than we think it will, but there’s EVERY reason, based on just about everything we know about physics, to believe that the climate is going to change for the worse, and that we are collectively going to pay a very high price for it.
Lots of times a physician is wrong about how fast his patient with a terminal disease declines and dies. But at some point, such patients decline ACCELERATES sharply, after going slowly for a long time.
Before long, but how long I can’t say, the extra heat in the oceans is going to come into play in a big way, and the result is going to be higher average temperatures, more super storms, more super droughts, more trouble of every sort, climate wise.
Anybody who argues that we can simply move north in terms of agriculture is utterly ignorant of the realities of agriculture. For every hypothetical acre in the north that we may be able to farm as the climate gets hotter, we’re going to lose an acre or MORE in temperate areas and in the tropics.
And there simply isn’t that much land farther north that’s well suited to farming.
The biggest single reason the American mid west is the bread basket of the world is that the super glaciers of past ice ages scoured the Earth and left all that marvelous soil where it is, where we grow corn and wheat by the thousands of acres.
Farther north, there’s damned little in the way of soil, comparatively speaking. In a lot of places, for miles and miles at a stretch, there’s hardly any soil at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Shield
And where these IS some soil, in the far north, that’s not where we live or want to live.
Please don’t waste your time on someone who has no comprehension of logarithms and even what the term acceleration means. He doesn’t even know how to calculate rate changes. The lack of comprehension is huge, the claims are backed by false assumptions. I know it’s your time to waste OFM, but there should be limits.
Fish – While the following BBC article will be away over Javier’s head it might be a good place for your friend kokoe3 to dip his toe in the water. Saved it for my Grandson, age 10.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE EARTH’S CO2
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-41671770
OFM, we have used up most soil and need to continually add synthetic nutrients as you well know. I don’t see a good future for most of the world as far as soil and food goes even without global warming. Maybe you have a different view we should hear.
My experience is limited to organic gardening and natural systems.
Hi Gone fishing,
It seems there is the possibility that human waste from sewer systems could be processed into fertilizer, though it will take a rise in the price of various key nutrients (N-P-K, I think), before this becomes profitable.
I know very little about agriculture so it would be interesting to hear OFM’s perspective on loss of soil fertility and what to do about it.
No doubt a peak in human population (2070-2080) followed by declining human population would help.
Hi Javier,
If the level of atmospheric CO2 was increasing exponentially at say 0.5% per year (roughly the average rate of increase from 1990-2016), then the rate of increase in the natural log of atmospheric CO2 would be constant.
That is there would be no acceleration (an increase in the rate of increase). This is fairly basic mathematics.
Chart of natural log of atmospheric CO2 from 1995-2016 shows a linear relationship, aka a constant rate of increase, suggesting no acceleration in the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 over that period. You are correct that an El Nino can change the rate of increase temporarily, this was seen in 1997-98 as well as 2015-16.
So is this when you cherry pick the data?
The Ln [CO2] shows very clearly that its rate of increase is not linear. The first derivative of Ln [CO2] (its acceleration) is growing with time.
The rate of growth of effective forcing due to CO2, ∆Fe (W/m2/year), has been increasing since 1959 from about 0.01 to about 0.03. The increase in the rate of growth of effective forcing should cause an increase in the rate of growth of the climatic effect, that has long been anticipated but is not being observed.
Hi Javier,
Yes over the 1959-2015 period, the rate varies a bit, sometimes decreasing and at other times increasing as there will be releases of carbon from the ocean that vary a bit as ocean currents change over time, as seen by variations in ENSO, AMO, PDO, etc.
You can call it cherry picking if you like, but the chart was posted in response to the following chart, where you claimed sea level rise was not accelerating, but the level of atmospheric CO2 (in ppm) was accelerating.
I pointed out that a large part of sea level rise was in response to rising ocean temperatures which responds to increasing radiative forcing which varies as the natural log of CO2.
Over the period in question from 1993 to 2016, the increase in the natural log of CO2 was linear.
I did not choose when the satellites were launched.
data for nat log CO2 from
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html#global_data
In case you still don’t see it, the rate of growth is represented by the steepness of the red lines, that as you can see, it is growing with time. This is fairly basic mathematics.
Ridiculous word salad.
Hi Javier,
Over the period from 1993 to 2015 when we have satellite altimetry data there was very little change in the rate of increase in the natural log of CO2. I realize there has been an increase from 1959 to 1995, though not a very big one. As you pointed out, there are changes in the rate of increase due to ENSO, and volcanic eruptions will also affect the rate of rise due to ocean cooling as seen during Pinatubo.
The long term rate as been fairly steady from 1993-2017.
Also sea level rise depends to a large degree on ocean temperature, we have data on sea surface temperature, but for the deeper ocean the data is not as good.
See https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/basin_avt_data.html
Chart below is for the Global Temperature average Temperature anomaly for the vertical average of the top 2000 meters of ocean depth relative to the 1971-2000 mean.
Ocean Temp 0-2000 m vs natural log CO2 1993-2016.
2005 corresponds with natural log of CO2=5.937 (better data starting in 2005 from Argo).
Well, I agree that sea level and sea temperature are increasing linearly. I just don’t that CO2 or its log are. Only for periods of a couple of decades its growth appears linear.
It is not only me who is saying this. It is also the experts at the National Center for Atmospheric Research at Boulder, Colorado, who are putting it on writing at Nature Sci Rep.
“Among the major unanswered questions is why GMSL (Global Mean Sea Level) acceleration has not yet been detected in the altimeter record, given the increasing rates at which glacial and ice sheet melt are estimated to have occurred (6,7) and as greenhouse gas concentrations have risen (8).”
Fasullo, J. T., R. S. Nerem, and B. Hamlington. “Is the detection of accelerated sea level rise imminent?.” Scientific reports 6 (2016): 31245.
https://www.nature.com/srep/2016/160810/srep31245/full/srep31245.html
Apparently they should consult with you, as you appear to have the answer.
Hi Javier,
Over the period you raised for sea level from about 1995-2015, the natural log of CO2 has risen roughly linearly. Over longer periods that has not been the case. 1860-1940 was roughly linear, 1940-1970 not linear, and 1970-2015 roughly linear, but a higher rate of increase than 1860-1940.
Dennis,
That graph is actually stitched from two completely different CO2 measurements. Atmospheric CO2 undergoes a very long process of many years before being completely isolated in the ice core. It cannot be compared in the way you are doing with the instantaneous instrumental measurements available since 1959. You are comparing apples and oranges when you talk about the rate of change of ice core CO2 and instrumental CO2. Any conclusion from that exercise is pointless and invalid. You don’t appear to be your better self today.
Hi Javier,
That is correct, the ice core data is joined with the flask data.
Law dome data from:
NAME OF DATA SET: Law Dome Ice Core 2000-Year CO2, CH4, and N2O Data
LAST UPDATE: 7/2010 (Original receipt by WDC Paleo)
CONTRIBUTOR: David Etheridge, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research
IGBP PAGES/WDCA CONTRIBUTION SERIES NUMBER: 2010-070
WDC PALEO CONTRIBUTION SERIES CITATION:
Etheridge, D.M., et al.. 2010.
Law Dome Ice Core 2000-Year CO2, CH4, and N2O Data.
IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology Data Contribution Series # 2010-070.
NOAA/NCDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA.
ORIGINAL REFERENCES:
Ice Core results:
Law Dome CO2 and CH4 records of the last 1000 years first
published in Etheridge et al., 1996 and 1998. Newer results
which fill in gaps, extend record to 2000 BP and include N2O,
were published and explained in detail in MacFarling Meure
et al. 2006 and MacFarling Meure 2004. Some new CH4 results
were also published in Ferretti et al. 2005.
Etheridge, D.M., L.P. Steele, R.L. Langenfelds, R.J. Francey, J.-M. Barnola, and V.I. Morgan. 1996. Natural and anthropogenic changes in atmospheric CO2 over the last 1000 years from air in Antarctic ice and firn. Journal of Geophysical Research, 101, 4115-4128.
Etheridge, D.M., L.P. Steele, R.J. Francey, and R.L. Langenfelds. 1998. Atmospheric methane between 1000 A.D. and present: evidence of anthropogenic emissions and climatic variability. Journal of Geophysical Research, 103, 15979-15996.
MacFarling Meure, C., D. Etheridge, C. Trudinger, P. Steele, R. Langenfelds, T. van Ommen, A. Smith, and J. Elkins. 2006. The Law Dome CO2, CH4 and N2O Ice Core Records Extended to 2000 years BP. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33, No. 14, L14810 10.1029/2006GL026152.
MacFarling Meure, C. 2004. The natural and anthropogenic variations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide during the Holocene from ice core analysis. PhD thesis, University of Melbourne.
Ferretti, D.F., J.B. Miller, J.W.C. White, D.M. Etheridge, K.R. Lassey, D.C. Lowe, C.M. MacFarling Meure, M.F. Dreier, C.M. Trudinger, and T.D. van Ommen. 2005. Unexpected Changes to the Global Methane Budget over the Last 2,000 Years. Science, 309 (5741): 1714-1717.
Mauna Loa data from
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/data.html
Not a big difference between law dome data and mauna loa data from 1959 to 2004.
This data is widely accepted by the experts in the field.
Oh and I am doing fine today and yesterday, thanks for asking.
The comparison is close enough when averaged over one year, remember we are considering global climate rather than local weather. 🙂
Hi Javier,
What do you propose for CO2 data before 1959?
Hi Javier,
I had used a smoothed 20 year spline fit to the law dome data for ease of using annual data for regressions. The unsmoothed law dome data compared to Mauna loa for 1860-2015 in chart below. Same sources as comment linked below
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-oct-18-2017/#comment-617865
Hi Javier,
Good paper. The lack of acceleration from 1993-2015 is explained by the Pinatubo eruption in 1991 causing a temporary ocean cooling which reduced sea level by the start of the satellite altimetry period in 1993, the recovery from this relatively low sea level over the 1993-2002 period lead to an anomalously large rise in sea level for that decade.
From the paper
Here it is demonstrated that the environment in which the era began was itself highly anomalous due to the preceding eruption of Mt Pinatubo on June 15, 1991, which cooled the oceans and decreased water storage over land and in the atmosphere. The net effect of these changes was to lower sea level prior to the altimeter era and induce an anomalous rise in the era’s early years. It is proposed that this early anomalous rise masked the acceleration that would have otherwise occurred in the broader record. A consequence of this interpretation is that as the altimeter record lengthens, and in the coming decade barring another major volcanic eruption, accelerated rise will likely be detected.
Hi Dennis, thanks.
That they propose an explanation doesn’t mean it is the correct explanation. There are always multiple possible hypotheses to explain observations, and the correct explanation doesn’t even have to be among the proposed ones. Without evidence that rules out alternative explanations, an explanation isn’t worth much.
Sea level increase has been measured with gauges systematically at certain places since the 18th century, and the record doesn’t show any evidence of an effect from volcanic eruptions. If they want their hypothesis to have any weight that is the first thing they should demonstrate.
Hi Javier,
The older data is not very good, only since 1993 do we have decent sea level data. If they demonstrated such an effect on the poor data, you would say the data is not good. We have much better data on the Pinatubo eruption and its effects than any earlier volcanoes.
Do you have a peer reviewed paper that disputes their explanation as opposed to a general proposition that their may be better explanations.
Your claim would be a reason to reject all scientific theory because their might be better theories in the future.
The proposition that their might be better explanations is correct. Rejecting current theory for some imaginary better future theory seems unwise.
I also note your “tide gauges in certain locations”, we need an estimate of global sea level, which prior to 1993 has too much uncertainty to be useful.
Hi Javier,
No acceleration is needed, a steady rise in temperature may be a problem. Also Geochemistry suggests that the atmospheric CO2 levels will remain high for many centuries as the atmospheric CO2 level is reduced very slowly once excess emissions from human activity is reduced. In the mean time the extra 3 W/m2 of extra radiative forcing from an assumed average atmospheric CO2 level of 500 ppm will continue to warm the ocean and atmosphere so that global temperatures will rise from 1.7 C above the 1850-1900 mean to 2.5 C above the 1850-1900 mean, if we assume an ECS of 3C.
There are likely to be other effects such as reduced albedo, reduced aerosols, release of carbon from permafrost and forest fires all of which will tend to increase temperature further, the ESS is likely to be higher than ECS, probably at least 4 C which would correspond to 2.7C of warming at 450 ppm of atmospheric CO2. It might take 5000 years or more for the full Earth system effects to be realized and perhaps atmospheric CO2 will fall over those 5000 years. Possibly atmospheric CO2 could fall from 500 ppm to 457 ppm over 5000 years (corresponding to the rate of decrease in atmospheric CO2 from 114 ky BP to 105 ky BP), which would correspond to about 2.8C above the 1850-1900 Global average temperature. So temperatures will be warm for a while, though you claim that is a good thing it is far from clear how easily we will adjust to the mid-Pliocene Temperatures of 3 million years ago.
There is no objective evidence on this question, we only have expert scientific opinion to go on.
Without acceleration, the problem is greatly reduced.
Global warming has been taking place at similar rates since ~ 1910. After 100 years its effects are mostly beneficial. We are at peak civilization with the highest rates of health, wealth, longevity, and lowest rates of early mortality, hunger and poverty. It is difficult to defend that we are being harmed by global warming by any objective criteria.
A steady rise in temperature is bound to sooner or later become a problem only if it continues indefinitely, but we have evidence that multi-century warming or cooling periods are common in the paleo record, and they always end. People in charge of subprime mortgages risk also assumed that property prices would continue rising indefinitely. They were proven wrong. At some time in the future the warming will end. Our use of fossil fuels is also bound to decrease in the near future. The problem is most likely non-existent. Clearly there is no evidence that it is a problem or that it will become a problem over the next decades.
Other effects must be dominated by negative feedback factors. The Earth has been subject to any type of conditions we can imagine and some we can’t, and it has maintained life-compatible temperatures for thousands of millions of years. If positive feedback factors dominated, there would have been a temperature runaway long ago. Last time I checked we were still in an Ice Age characterized by extensive ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. The rate of melting for the past decades could be sustained for tens of thousands of years before they melt.
We don’t know how long it takes for CO2 to decrease when conditions change. We didn’t know about carbon storage response in the 1990’s (the famous missing sink), and we didn’t know until recently about the changes in the airborne fraction. Some scientists believe we can know now how long it will take for the CO2 to come down. They are fooling themselves and others.
What we do know is that temperatures can come down even under constant CO2 levels. So elevated CO2 does not prevent cooling. Vostok ice core shows that between 128-114,000 years ago CO2 levels remained constant, while temperatures fell from interglacial level to glacial level.
I think you need to review what you really, positively know, and what is based on dubious assumptions and unknown premises.
Hi Javier,
I agree and you should do the same about your assumptions and what you know.
I am not too worried about cockroaches and viruses, they may be fine.
The global temperature level did not change by that amount, there can be local changes in temperatures due to changing ocean currents, or ice shelf collapse.
Can you find a peer reviewed paper rather than a blog article by a non-expert?
Find something in the peer reviewed literature about how quickly carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are reduced over long periods. Temperatures at the poles can change quite a bit, global temperature estimates are more interesting.
I am not too worried about the next glacial maximum, it is likely 30,ooo to 100,000 years in the future.
I understand that you believe any amount of warming is always a good thing. Climate over the period that homo sapiens has existed has exclusively been at atmospheric carbon dioxide levels of less than 300 ppm until very recently. The mid Pliocene with atmospheric CO2 similar to today was 2-3 C warmer with sea levels 10 to 40 meters higher (estimates vary widely).
You can also assume that any uncertainty will always vary on the side that makes things better for life on the planet (or for humans). The rapid change in Global temperature over a very short time frame may make it difficult for ecosystems to adjust over the period from 500 CE to 2016 CE the warming over any 140 year period has never been as fast as the most recent 140 years. In fact, the change in Global temperatures from the LGM to the HCO was only about 3.75 C based on the Shakun et al 2012 estimate, the difference was that change in temperature occurred over 10,000 years with the fasted rate over that period for global temperature change of about 1.8 C per 1000 years. The rate of change over the past 100 years has been 6.7 times higher. Over the past 70 years the rate of global warming has been 10 times higher than the fastest period during the warmup from the LGM. The past 50 years the rate of warming(2.65 C per century) has been almost 15 times higher than during the fastest rise during the LGM to HCO transition (0.18 C per century.)
Download the correlation between world population and CO2 content in the air. Scary. So much of the CO2 creation is directly related to feeding and maintaining the population. This in my opinion is our greatest challenge. We have bred way too many people and the trend is still up! Without a reversal in the population growth and eventually a reduction in numbers, I as a scientist do not see a significant reduction in CO2 content for a long time. Yes I believe in cleaner burning fuels.
Frock?! really?!
No offense but, while I personally agree with the content of your post, I’m also deeply suspicious of short posts such as yours. You may be legit, but I have a hunch that there is more afoot in terms of trolls, bots and sock puppets on sites such as this than is evident at first hand. I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, you can start by telling us what field your scientific expertise is in and by perhaps giving us a link to a site or sites that have the correlation between CO2 and population. Most here are perfectly capable of finding that information on their own but I’d like to see you do it, if for no other reason than as a token of proof that you are more than a drive by poster intent on simply stoking the fires of general discord. Ball’s in your court…
I did a Google search regarding atmospheric CO2 and human population correlation. There does appear to be some interesting literature. Didn’t have time yet to read much of it though.
http://www.21stcentech.com/3-ps-world-master-21st-century-population-politics-policy/
Oh I’m sure there is a strong correlation! That in and of itself doesn’t make me any less suspicious of the style of comment posted by our new unknown visitor. Let’s see if and how they respond…
Hey frock, what if we made our energy, machinery and moved our transport without making much CO2 at all? It’s called renewable energy and efficiency.
There goes the relationship between CO2 and population, very weak indeed. The key here is how we make our energy. The correlation does not hold if energy is made from renewable sources that don’t produce CO2. Population does produce CO2, but in turn plants are grown to feed it so the CO2 is absorbed by the plants, just a cycle if you leave out the FF.
Correlation does not mean causation. Excess energy to drive machines to produce excess food and goods is the cause of population increase. Any energy source could do that.
Hi Gone fishing,
I agree in terms of CO2. I do think reducing human population by means of a demographic transition (such as what has occurred in many European and East Asian nations (Japan and S. Korea) to lower total fertility levels (under 1.75 live births per woman over their lifetime) would be good for the Earth system.
We should probably aim for 1-2 billion, possibly less. These levels won’t be reached until 2300 at the earliest unless there is an intervening catastrophe, WW3, pandemic, super volcano, asteroid impact, etc. in my view.
The population reduction idea is a completely other topic. I was disposing of the so called causation between CO2 and population.
First of all the population reduction scenarios are fraught with problems. I agree that our use of the planet is destroying the natural world and will stop one way or the other.
Disasters that would reduce the population to half or less are not a solution unless the planet has become mostly uninhabitable. People will recover and produce as much population as possible. Just think how short a time it took to go from 2 billion to 7 billion and we did not have the abilities or knowledge we now have.
Some say we are damaging the ecosystems to the point of no return. In that case population might fall to zero. I see no real cessation in the rate of destruction and as problems crop up in the near future, the rate will increase due to humans struggling to survive.
The only sane way out is move away from destructive practices as much as possible using system changes and technological changes. That means maintaining some form of BAU to avoid catastrophic failure which would cause far more damage to ecosystems than we do presently.
Population might fall or level out naturally. It will definitely fall as food sources reduce and pollution builds. That is the most likely scenario considering the planetary crisis we are mostly not facing.
Will any of our efforts be fast enough? With the current rate of effort, probably not. But that could change. Stay tuned, the next two decades are critical, if we don’t blow ourselves up.
What I find interesting is the struggle by business to keep their businesses rather than shift to new and better businesses and strategies. Why follow the sinking ship down? Not logical and smacks of a prison mentality.
The whole argument that renewable energy uses petroleum and other fossil fuels to be built out is highly entertaining. I sit back and smile when I think of that petro based insulation cutting off the supply of oil needed to heat the house and when the PV electricity runs without coal or natural gas. The fossil fuel industry is building their own demise because they are trapped into selling it for all purposes.
Yep, good old fossil fuel is building out the renewable world. What a hoot.
At least the automotive industry is trying to change. They see the light.
You forgot all that oil needed to lubricate wind turbines as mentioned by one of our recent troll visitors…
/sarc
Use bacon grease.
Hi Gone fishing,
I agree with your assessment that fossil fuel use and population are not necessarily linked, as fossil fuels deplete and peak fossil fuels is reached this will become obvious.
My point was that a sustainable increase in living standards (education and health especially) will likely lead to a demographic transition Worldwide (as in Europe in East Asian nations where it has occurred already), population peaks in 2075+/-5 (as some demographers believe) and then declines.
I doubt BAU continues, except the BAU that there is continual technological progress and that BAU is essentially constant change (which essentially asserts that there is no BAU over the long term).
From where I sit things are much different today from when I was 10 (about as far back as I remember things in more detail), I imagine 50 years from now things will have changed in ways I cannot envision (and I will not be around to see those changes).
Yep, BAU embodies a lot of change, it is changing right now.
The demographic transition is really happening everywhere it’s not blocked by particularly rigid oppression of women – which is pretty much just Africa and the ME.
This article is a bit dated. As of 2016 the TFR for Haredi “ultra-orthodox” Jews is 6.9. That is comparable to Somalia and Niger. KSA, which is rather rigid and oppressive, was 2.8 in 2016. That’s below Israel’s 3.1.
War of the Babies
http://takimag.com/article/war_of_the_babies/print#axzz4wDPMUsW0
References
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/216254
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate
I’d suggest you, and Gary Brecher, have stumbled onto the outer limits of western thinking on these things, where there are few rational discussions — and no easy answers (except for perhaps the simplistic and naive ones).
Thanks, for the articles -it‘s striking how much the problem is in Africa.
As for simplicity – I dunno – I think it really is pretty simple:
Give women the freedom to go to school (it helps, of course, if the schools teach freedom of thought, i.e., they’re non-religious), the freedom to work, and the freedom to use birth control, and…they choose to have far fewer kids.
This has probably already been brought up in the TaaS discussions, but eliminating parking in urban areas would free up a lot of real estate. You could increase public transportation; have more drop off and pick up transportation which could stop long enough to load and unload, but wouldn’t be able to park within city limits, or you could close all streets altogether so that people would need to walk, bike, use golf carts, use moving sidewalks, etc. to get around.
I can foresee a time when urban real estate becomes too valuable to waste in parking garages, parking lots, and street parking.
I wonder how much a generic and AUTONOMOUS Segway will cost in fifteen or twenty years when all the key patents are expired and batteries and the other components are cheaper than ever.
I’m betting there will be two wheel single seaters you can hop in and close the transparent LID,staying clean and dry and warm or cool, and swipe your card or put your thumb on the payment pad, and away you go, for as far as maybe five or ten miles, in a dense urban environment. And when this single person low speed autonomous transporter isn’t hauling people, it can be hauling groceries.
You will just transmit your order to the store, and a few minutes later, your groceries will be at your door.
I foresee utility or publicly owned as well as privately owned charging stations being quite common, and properly standardized. There’s no reason a city government can’t own charging stations just as it owns parking meters and street lights, lol. So there can be stations all over the place, and payment can be made either electronically or by depositing cash , paper or coin.
Autonomous cars will be able to park themselves at any available charger, and buy some juice if it belongs to another company or the city or even a home owner, and move to another spot as soon as the battery is topped off, freeing up the charger. There can even be rules that say once a car at a public charger has a fifty percent charge, it must move to free the charger up to a car with only twenty five percent, lol.
And at night, or at times when the load is heavy but traffic is light, these cars will pull up to a charger and feed some juice back into the grid, and be credited for doing so. And it can all be done without anybody actually touching anything except the maintenance guys.
And the cars will be MOSTLY charged using wind and solar power that’s freely available during the hours when the cars will be needed least, namely while most people are AT WORK, eight till five or so and at night when cars are needed even less often.
Hell’s bells, such cars could be used at night as warm and comfortable sleeping spots by homeless people who can come up with a few coins or welfare tokens.
They could be pretty safe too, because if anybody tries to break into one with the lid locked, and the rent paid, it will summons the cops, transmit pictures, and even turn on a siren and run away, lol.
Some of them will have built in coffee makers, lol. Microwaves big enough for hot sandwiches too. A mini fridge with a cold drink for sale? Why not?
Maybe some of them will be toilets for hire. Why not ?
This sort of thing could play hell with the hotel industry. Suppose you will be able to hire a mini motor home type vehicle at the airport, and eat and sleep and bathe in it, if you’re road warrior, and be on the phone while it drives itself from one appointment to the next?
The lawyers will probably make more money out of these cars than the people who build them conducting countless never ending lawsuits over what will be legally acceptable, and what will be forbidden.
Hi Boomer,
As Gonefishing has pointed out (and he is correct I believe), this may lead to higher energy use, though I suppose one could argue that the cars that will bring commuters into the city can be parked in the suburbs overnight and then have less far to travel to pick up rides in the morning. The problem is what to do with all the cars that are waiting to take people home at evening rush hour. Not all of them will be needed for urban taxi service so they will need to be parked somewhere. A trip to a remote parking site will waste energy, which I think is at least a part of Gonefishing’s point.
What if TaasS doesn’t happen, and we have millions of autonomous vehicles floating around city centers waiting for their owners?
Parking can (and should) be expensive in urban centers. Human drivers are expensive and that reduces idling in the street becoming a big problem (though people looking for parking can be 50% of traffic even now), but autonomous drivers will be cheap. Energy costs will likely be insignificant, with cheap surplus solar electricity during the day. But congestion will be a real challenge.
This will require innovative use-pricing solutions.
Hi Nick,
I was thinking in terms of TaaS. Yes it is possible that at some point solar will be so cheap that energy is not much of a constraint. The parking expense in the city is one reason TaaS could become competitive as parking in Chicago, Boston, New York, and San Francisco (cities that I know a bit) is quite expensive.
I think it might be helpful to think of TaaS on a continuum: taxis on one end, Uber/Lyft moving to lower cost and faster service, and autonomous EVs providing much lower cost and greater availability.
Uber/Lyft have greatly expanded the market for TaaS – taxis have lost a modest amount of business, but the overall market has expanded greatly: most of Uber/Lyft’s customers are new. The number of people who have one or zero cars has expanded as a result. The cost of parking is certainly a large factor.
Autonomy would greatly reduce costs, which would expand it’s market even more, and the shift away from ownership would accelerate. Electrification would also help, though not nearly as much: labor is roughly 10x larger (maybe labor of $1/mile vs fuel at $.10 for hybrids and $.05/mile for EVs).
Hi Nick,
Another consideration is that it is pretty unlikely that it would be cheaper to have the AV drive around all day than it would be to go and park somewhere. For AVs that are EVs, the battery would not last for the day, it will need to park and possibly park and charge.
Of course it will not be all or nothing (all AVs or no AVs) and I agree AVs will reduce the cost of TaaS greatly and increase it’s acceptance.
Well, the cost of parking in a major city is easily $30, or roughly $3/hour for 10 hours (much more per hour for shorter time periods). If an EAV costs $.15/mile to operate and is moving at 15MPH (which is optimistic in a dense city), it’s cheaper to keep moving. An EAV with 225 mile range could float for 10 hours and have 75 miles left.
I suppose all-day commuters would be likely to banish their cars to migrate to the nearest suburb where the cost of parking is below the cost of moving. But, for someone who’s downtown for an hour or two of shopping, parking would cost $6-8/hour and having their car float would be the cheapest option.
Unless cities found a way to apply congestion charges. Given the electronic nature of both AVs and TaaS, that doesn’t seem that hard to implement.
Roughly the same logic applies to surplus TaaS cars.
Hi Nick,
The problem with your logic is it doesn’t take account of depreciation of the car due to excess miles. Also parking prices would decrease to the point that it would be cheaper to park than to “float” just through market forces. Also 15 MPH doesn’t seem right to me, there is little congestion outside of rush hour so it is not clear that the 15 MPH assumption is a good one. Maybe people would use up their batteries in that manner, it would probably be cheaper for commuters to send their car to a parking lot at the edge of the city (where parking would be $10/d instead of $30, in which case money is saved (assuming a 20 mile round trip to parking lot ($3+$10= $13 vs $18 to drive around all day so $5 savings per day, plus less depreciation on the car from 100 fewer miles driven).
So the floating would only make sense if shopping and again street parking rates would fall to make it uneconomic to have the car “float”.
For TaaS AVs they would park and wait for next ride and the surplus TaaS cars would remote park as it is cheaper.
I think there may be very significant interim problems with parking, but I imagine some kind of electronic congestion charge will eventually fix it.
Background info:
Mileage based depreciation is included – it’s not as much as you might think. For instance, a 2015 Camry Hybrid has a trade-in value of 12,021 at 30k miles, and that drops to 10,875 at 50k miles, for a cost of 5.7 cents per mile. That per-mile depreciation cost will drop with older and cheaper cars.
I don’t think parking costs depend much on parking demand: dense urban areas have a very high opportunity cost for land. On-street parking is generally badly underpriced and simply would become road lanes if not needed, parking structures would become usable space for commercial or residential use if not needed for parking.
The 15MPG figure is my observed average speed in my dense city, due to congestion and many tightly spaced intersections with lights and stop signs. Careful routing strategies can reduce speed to 5 or 10MPH if the driver desires by moving to low-speed side streets or congested main streets, or maximize speed to as much as 30MPH (which, of course, Uber drivers try to do with online routing systems that provide congestion information). Online routing systems are starting to create substantial problems in places like San Francisco (and other cities) due to the systems identifying short cuts through residential streets which have been relatively quiet before now – various barriers to reduce speed and traffic volume are multiplying like rabbits on those side streets…
Actually, I meant to say that I think there will be problems with *congestion*.
Taxis create additional cars on the road, looking for passengers. Uber/Lyft have made that worse, in part by siphoning some passengers from mass transit. AVs would make the situation much worse.
Public roads don’t deal well with demand overloads, due to the lack of pricing to balance supply & demand. That has been mitigated by the cost of driving, but AVs would dramatically reduce the cost of driving. Something will have to change.
We’re gonna need congestion pricing, and we’re gonna have problems in the transition.
Hi Nick,
Even assuming you 15 cent per mile estimate for an AV to drive around is correct, it is still cheaper to remote park. My experience is that parking at the outskirts of the city is far cheaper.
I also disagree that parking prices are unrelated to demand. If the parking lots are empty, the price will be lowered to the point that they fill up.
So AVs floating around the city seems unlikely. Eliminating street parking would just create more street congestion and waste energy as cars would just keep moving for only the reason that there is no place to park.
Eliminating street parking would just create more street congestion and waste energy
I agree. There will be a need for some kind of congestion pricing to push AVs into parking.
I would expect an AV to be programmed to minimize it’s waiting costs.
Now, there probably is free or cheap parking (less than $4.50) within a reasonable range, but that’s only because they’re in neighborhoods with excess parking supply. Free street parking will disappear if there are gangs of AVs roaming around, filling it up: residents will be up in arms, and find ways to keep the AVs out (permit parking of some sort available only to local residents, probably).
If suburban commercial district street parking starts to see new demand, then I imagine pricing would rise to the point of keeping AVs on the street.
parking at the outskirts of the city is far cheaper
Well, sure, but you have to get there. Let’s say the cheap parking is 10 miles away, for a round trip of 20 miles. Alternatively, if your AV can float at 5 miles per hour on side streets (It’s very doable – I’ve done it) for 10 hours, that’s 50 miles of travel. The difference is 30 miles of additional travel to float. At 15 cents per mile that’s a cost of $4.50, so the suburban parking has to be cheaper than $4.50 to make it worthwhile. And probably less given that 2/3 of the travel cost is deferred (additional depreciation and maintenance).
Heck, it’s possible to float at 2MPH: back streets, alleys, etc.
If the parking lots are empty, the price will be lowered to the point that they fill up.
You can only starve a business so far, and it dies. Surface parking lots in dense cities are disappearing – their opportunity cost is way too high. If their revenues fall, that will greatly accelerate their extinction. Structures are very expensive to maintain – reduce demand, and they’ll disappear too. Again, AVs would create demand for FREE parking, but they might (probably will) avoid anything that costs more than floating. You just can’t run a business at that price.
The bottom line? A bumpy transition, and eventually some kind of congestion pricing to push AVs into parking.
@NickG
Trouble with all these parking schemes is that they only look at one aspect of parking and try to solve one problem with one solution. They then ignore other issues.
I spent many years in field service visiting clients in towns with many different schemes. Residents’ pass or buy a ticket from a local shop and display it in your window, you have to park to find a shop to buy the ticket from while the warden writes you up. Drove 7 miles to travel from the in town car park to pick up a load of gear from the client 200 yds away! No meter feeding when a call could take between 10 mins and 10 hrs and you have no idea how long till you finish. Park and ride, try lugging a couple of hundred pounds in several cases on a bus.
One size fits all solutions do not work.
NAOM
NAOM,
Yeah, permit parking is a pain.
I imagine electronic, automatic systems enabled by autonomous vehicle telecommunications: you enter a congestion zone, and start getting charged for the time you drive there. You park and get automatically charged in the same way.
You’ll probably want the congestion charge to be higher than the parking charge…
Hi Nick,
You have moved the goal posts.
First it is 15 MPH, then 2 MPH, or it could be done at 0 MPH, it’s called parking. 🙂
I did not suggest free street parking, the price could change based on congestion.
Remote parking prices would depend on the demand. There could also be high fines for driving 10 MPH under the speed limit, this would make it pretty difficult to “Float” at ridiculous speeds such as 2 MPH (I walk at about 4 MPH), so a car averaging 2 MPH is pretty absurd.
I doubt this will be nearly as much of a problem as you think. If too many people cause congestion by having their cars drive around all day. In fact empty cars could be pulled over and have a timer showing how long they have been driving empty, more than 30 minutes, big fine. In that case it’s cheaper to remote park.
Well, I certainly don’t think that such a problem can’t be fixed. But, it will be a very interesting transition.
Yes, as I thought about it my estimate of minimum speeds dropped. The thing is…AVs are intelligent. They can minimize their speed with a variety of strategies: they can learn which side streets or alleys are empty; they can stop, or cruise along, watching for meter maids or traffic cops; they can scurry to vacant spots, they can all gang up on a certain part of town and create sufficient congestion that the top speed is 2 MPH. That last doesn’t have to be deliberate, just a positive feedback thing where they’re all looking for slow areas, and they all arrive there and more head over as speeds drop.
There are lots of opportunities for unexpected results and interactions.
Hi Nick,
So you are going to defend a 2 MPH average speed? We start to get to turning everything into a parking lot in that case and AVs are not allowed into the city, or are fined very large amounts when they are stopped while “floating”.
So I guess this could be a problem for free market fundementalists. But for those who realize that there will be practical regulations for public safety, the problem is unlikely to occur as solutions will quickly be found for the problem you envision.
I agree that there are solutions. But heck, are we interested only in finding things with no solutions? Identifying problems before they become acute is very useful…
In this case, I think it will take a while to recognize the problems, and to come to consensus on the solutions.
We start to get to turning everything into a parking lot in that case
Well, I think maybe you’re not thinking about the great diversity of roads and driving spaces that exist in large dense cities. There are boulevards that are quite busy, and on the other hand there are quiet sidestreets and alleys. Quiet, slow EAVs probably wouldn’t bother anybody on sidestreets up until a certain critical mass: residents there might only start to complain, as they are doing now, when TaaS (Uber/Lyft) drives fast and noisily through their quiet residential streets.
But, yeah, turning city streets into a big parking lot is the basic concern.
Interesting times…
I think loitering around at low speed will be forbidden here.
If you block someone driving much to slow you can get a ticket already here. Even Taxis wait at official taxi stands who are at points of local interrest – or seek a cost free parking slow when they are in the suburbs and have to wait.
There is an alternative: a few automated central parking lots, where automatic car companies can park their cars. Due to the nature of these companies, parking can be a lot more compact than normal parking, it can be a kind of car warehouse where these companies can store surplus cars waiting for a rush hour. And they don’t have to unpark a special car, any car does it so they can store really dense.
They will have traffic models to estimate how many cars they need where and when.
I think we thought electricity was going to be so cheap in the 50’s from nuclear, we had no need to meter it.
I was thinking about the congestion issue. Having a bunch of cars parked within the city but all wanting to leave at the same time at the end of the work day will generate at least as much congestion as cars scheduled to pick up people at their offices.
I think the solution would be more public transportation or closed areas where only pedestrians and bikes can go.
If a city doesn’t have the funds to expand public transportation right now, having a system of shuttles would work. Kind of a car pool. Instead of one vehicle picking up one person, have one vehicle picking up 6 to 10 people at one stop. That would be easy to schedule for big office buildings. Once out of the urban area, people can disperse in various ways to locations beyond the inner cities.
In the NYC region people have long used trains and subways to get into NYC. Drop off and pick up at the regional train stations were traditionally done by someone with the family car. It’s much more efficient than each worker driving a car into the city and parking it.
POLITICAL ENTOMOLOGY 101
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-probable-event-of-some-of-president.html
That’s the first thing I’ve seen in years worth reading at WUWT.
It’s not at WUWT– it’s at a parody of Wattt Is My Head Doing Up My Ass?
Red faced here, lol.
Read it more asleep than awake.
Senior moment plus looking after somebody as old as my dad means you spend a good bit of time in a mental fog. I thought they had developed a sense of humor and were parodying themselves.
So far at least I haven’t stomped on the gas when I meant to stomp on the brakes.
It is a camouflaged site.
But funny—
Try an EV with good regen brakes to enable one-pedal driving. The older I get, the more I appreciate all the new features that augment my other senses. One pedal driving is one of the best.
Only in America you say:
CLIMATE SKEPTICS WANT MORE CO2
“A key argument used by climate skeptics to downplay the consequences of anthropogenic climate change is resurfacing: the idea that carbon dioxide emissions are a net positive for the planet’s vegetation. The line of reasoning is being used to push back on the underlying science of global warming. The Heartland Institute, which has sought to place climate contrarians on science advisory councils at U.S. EPA, even suggested that it might sue companies for not emitting more CO2, Climatewire, Oct. 16).”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-skeptics-want-more-co2/
If only the crap they spew were fertilizer it would at least help. More script from the FF Clown Act.
This reminds me of religion versus science where the religion is the Creepy Church of Profit and Greed. One side just has to make up stories while the other side wears itself out pursuing fact and reality.
What a gas!
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/19/politics/kfile-kathleen-hartnett-white-paganism/
Trump last week nominated Kathleen Hartnett White, who previously led the Texas Commision on Environmental Quality, to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality, a post that requires Senate confirmation. Hartnett White, currently a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, has long expressed skepticism about established climate science and once dismissed the idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, calling it “the gas of life on this planet.”
I highly recommend that these geniuses at least take ‘Plant Physiology 101’…
The rapidly rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affect plants’ absorption of nitrogen, which is the nutrient that restricts crop growth in most terrestrial ecosystems. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have now revealed that the concentration of nitrogen in plants’ tissue is lower in air with high levels of carbon dioxide, regardless of whether or not the plants’ growth is stimulated. The study has been published in the journal Global Change Biology.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2015-06-carbon-dioxide-air-restrict-ability.html#jCp
On the bright side the creationist morons have apparently lost the battle against Darwin’s TOE yet again.
http://www.newsweek.com/evolution-back-new-mexico-schools-after-uproar-scientific-community-688901
EVOLUTION IS BACK IN NEW MEXICO SCHOOLS AFTER UPROAR FROM SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY
Still, it is rather sad that in the 21st century USA we are back re-litigating the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. Fortunately for monkeys, we didn’t descend from them, but if we had they would be deeply ashamed of producing morons such as Trump and Hartnett White.
She has a point. The least you have of a pollutant in the environment, the better. That’s clearly not the case of CO2.
Ever heard of light pollution or noise pollution? By your definition of a pollutant light and noise could never be a pollutant. Yet it can be.
“Light pollution is the impact that anthropogenic light has on the visibility of the night sky. It also encompasses ecological light pollution which describes the effect of artificial light on individual organisms and on the structure of ecosystems as a whole.”
“A pollutant is a substance or energy introduced into the environment that has undesired effects, or adversely affects the usefulness of a resource. A pollutant may cause long- or short-term damage by changing the growth rate of plant or animal species, or by interfering with human amenities, comfort, health, or property values. Some pollutants are biodegradable and therefore will not persist in the environment in the long term.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollutant
Pollution seems to be in many cases a matter of degree. A threshold. Not very scientific or analytical at all Ned, as usual.
California Considers A Ban On Gasoline And Diesel Car Sales. Can It Work?
Gasoline and diesel-powered vehicle bans are accelerating: China, several European nations, and India have announced bans on internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle sales will commence between 2025 and 2040. Now, America’s largest vehicle market may join the global trend of banning fossil fuel vehicle sales .
More than 2 million new vehicles were registered in California last year, the most of any state, and 5% of California’s new vehicle sales in the first quarter of 2017 were electric vehicles (EVs). Under a new legislative proposal, every new vehicle sold statewide would have to be zero emission.
But even with surging EV sales, is it realistic to mandate all new vehicle sales be electric? And even if this mandate is feasible, is it good policy? The short answer is yes, it’s feasible, and the benefits will be immense. But the long answer is that it will require reworking our transportation energy system, along with continued technology innovation and smart public policies.
California’s climate policies have cut electricity emissions 26% since 2014, but transportation emissions have remained stubbornly high. Passenger vehicle tailpipe emissions grew 4.5% from 2014-2015, increasing transportation’s total share to 37%. With petroleum refining and oil extraction, that total grows to 50% of statewide emissions. These trends must be reversed to hit the state’s aggressive target of 40% emissions reductions below 1990 levels by 2030.
California’s 2030 emissions target will only be achieved with large-scale vehicle electrification.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2017/10/16/california-considers-a-ban-on-gasoline-and-diesel-car-sales-can-it-work/#4c297b97523d
The article is a bit confusing but appears to say that all sales will be EV by 2040. That is very practical. People and industry can plan with long range mandates on the books. It’s the back and forth of mutable policy that really messes up the system.
By 2040 the oil industry may be on it’s knees anyway, so no big deal. Now if they had courage and said 2025 or 2030 to achieve 100 percent EV sales in the state then that would be worthy action.
I do have one question. Why can’t someone go outside he state and buy an ICE or hybrid and then register it in state?
Regulation, California has had a different new vehicle emission standards for decades. I can’t tell you the current requirements, but in the past you couldn’t just go buy a new car in Arizona and register in California. It would have to meet California emission standards and if it didn’t have something like 6000 miles on it. You would be charged sales tax.
I agree with you about the mandates needed for the industry long term planning. I also think the right date should be 2030. The sooner the better, but I think 2025 is unrealistic. If 2030 is to optimistic by a few years, so be it. People could stock up on ice vehicle prior or continue to wear out the current old ice vehicles until they find an EV to suit their needs.
For those interested in building energy, here is a solar heat gain calculator for south facing windows. It comes up as an Excel file.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0ahUKEwjP4p64uP3WAhWl7IMKHbMcBIEQFgg8MAM&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cchrc.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fdocs%2FSolar_Heat_Gain_Through_Windows_v1_1.xlsx&usg=AOvVaw1tqzr-FZJhJXCvGCta_MS0
AECEA: 50 GW within reach for 2017 installations in China
China looks set to defy all earlier expectations, and install an enormous 50 GW of new solar by the end of the year.
AECEA’ latest figures show that up to the end of September, China’s newly added capacity for the year amounted to roughly 42 GW – placing China’s total PV capacity at around 120 GW. This would mean that an average of just 2.7 GW/month would be needed to breach 50 GW by the end of the year. [snip]
When the 42 GW for solar so far is compared with installation figures for other sources – 1.09 GW for nuclear, 6.69 for hydro, 7.3 GW for wind and 18.84 for thermal power, China’s shift towards solar really stands out.
AECEA is now estimating average installations for 2018-2020 at between 35 and 40 GW annually, meaning that China’s total capacity could stand as high as 248 GW by the end of the decade.
This represents the second time this year that Asia Europe Clean Energy Associates has raised its expectation for China’s annual PV installation figure, as the country has defied the expectations of most analysts, who were expecting a similar, albeit less severe, drop off in demand for the second half of the year.
China is not messing around with solar PV! They are already ahead of their 105 GW, 2020 target by 15 GW, with three months of the year left! It remains to be seen how well they integrate this new PV capacity into their grid but, their considerable hydro electricity generation resources should help with absorbing the intermittent output from PV. According to a page at China Energy Portal on 2016 detailed electricity statistics, a little over 3% of China’s electricity was produced by NG in 2016. The contribution from solar was a little more than a third of that at 1.1% and while these percentages are relatively tiny compared to coal’s 65% and hydro’s 19%, PV capacity will have doubled from the end of 2016 figure of 78GW, some time before the end of 2018, for a doubling time of less than 24 months! It will be very interesting to see how the Chinese grid copes with this sudden flood of non-dispatch-able power.
Here are some interesting factoids from this.
In the first nine months of 2017 China installed more PV than either the US or Germany have installed in their entire history up to the end of 2016.
The cumulative installed capacity of PV in China at the end of September was greater than the cumulative capacity of the three nations with the next largest capacities (Japan, Germany and the US) combined as at the end of 2016.
It seems to me that a lot of both pro renewable and pro fossil fuel advocates are very poorly informed about the dispatchability of coal and nuclear power. Or maybe they know better, but pretend otherwise for various reasons.
It’s very easy to find articles that say than nukes can’t be ramped up and down, but the French nuclear industry has proven otherwise. Nukes can be built to be run at various power levels so that running them up and down over the course of several hours is no big deal, although nuclear fuel has generally been so cheap there has been no point in trying to save fuel by dialing back reactors.
It’s also easy to find articles arguing that coal plants can’t be ramped up and down, for one reason or another, and it’s true that this is hard on the boilers, and that it results in more emissions than running steady.
But the utility industry has been running coal fired plants up and down on a daily basis, sometimes twice a day, pretty much since day one.
They will be able to ramp some of their coal plants up and down as needed to balance the output of their solar farms. This will mean they get a little less power per ton of coal in the plants that are run up and down, and that these plants will produce a little more pollution per kilowatt hour generated AT these plants.
But taken all around, they will make out like bandits, because they won’t have to be spending as much money on buying coal while at the same time reducing their overall pollution emissions.
Considering what it costs THEM to build a solar farm, and what a ton of DELIVERED coal costs them in cash and externalized costs such as reduced worker productivity and higher health care costs, it’s easy to understand why they are keeping the pedal to the metal building out solar.
Plus the more they use themselves, the cheaper they can sell solar equipment to other countries, and thus maintain their dominant position in the industry.
Economies of scale may not be the only thing in industry, but some times, like the coach said about winning, economies of scale are the ONLY thing that actually matters, in terms of who wins, and who loses.
non-dispatch-able power
I get frustrated with that phrase. Renewables can be dispatchable in the same way that anything else is dispatchable. Everything is over-built (built so that maximum possible production is greater than maximum needed production) and then production is turned up or down within that range.
I suppose a better word would be “intermittent”: it’s production is determined by the weather, time of day and season of the year. With renewables, the variance is large enough that over-building alone is very likely not the optimal strategy: you’d have to build quite a lot of windpower, and that would be expensive. Solar alone, of course, would require quite a lot of very long distance transmission, which would also be excessively expensive.
But, it’s worth noting that everything has some intermittency. Nuclear, coal, NG: they all can and do break down, sometimes with little notice and long restoration times. Renewable intermittency also breaks down, but it tends to do so in smaller “chunks” – Ireland can use windpower but not nuclear, because nuclear comes in such large increments, which are too large for the Irish grid, if they’re lost. Thermal plants are vulnerable to weather in the form of drought and hurricanes. And, some of renewable intermittency is very predictable – daily solar variation is very predictable.
I don’t understand the need for overbuild. Just build somewhat above average and during times of bright sunlight make hydrogen or some other long term storage that will get one through the seasonal changes and long term cloudiness. Batteries and wind are good for night time power needs that PV does not directly fill, but seasonal winter diminishment can be filled by the spring and summer abundance of daylight.
Of course if PV stays really cheap then it will be overbuilt. Heating energy can be stored in insulated underground tanks while ice can be made for summer cooling. Hot water can be pre-heated from the underground tanks and topped off by a heat pump. An in-house battery good for one to two days of power will fill the final need while the excess from the EV can be used for any short term shortfalls or long term emergencies on diminished power.
It sounds complicated, but it replaces a huge very complex system of mining, drilling, refining, pumping, transporting and distributing that is hidden from most people. Instead the quiet clean systems will be hidden in-house somewhere and in the nearby locale.
Hi Gonefishing,
The overbuild of capacity is in part due to wind not blowing or sun not shining all the time. So if the average windpower turbine provides average output of 33% of capacity over 24 hours and the average PV panel provided 30% of capacity over the average 25 hour period, then with no fossil fuel, nuclear or hydro we would need 3 times more windpower capacity than average load in an all windpower world. For an all PV world we would need 3.33 times average load for PV capacity. Backup from hydro, pumped hydro, nuclear, or other energy sources would reduce the need for over capacity.
if the average windpower turbine provides average output of 33% of capacity…we would need 3 times more windpower capacity than average load in an all windpower world.
Well, that’s not overbuilding. That’s precisely matching needed capacity with average load. Overbuilding by a factor two would mean building 6 times more windpower capacity than average load. Overbuilding by a factor three would mean building 9 times more windpower capacity than average load.
That’s why you don’t want to “overbuild” any more than is necessary. The study that you often refer to estimated a need for overbuilding by roughly a factor of three. I suspect that’s a little higher than needed. The study simulated two kinds of storage, but didn’t use the two forms of storage in the same simulation run, so it didn’t get an optimal low-cost result which would result in less overbuilding and more storage.
You are be correct Nick, my mistake. The excess (3 times average load) was to cover those times when wind and solar levels were low with a minimum of backup needed. They may have done a simulation using fuel cells, VTG, and batteries, but wind gas and pumped hydro were not included. So there is potential for improvement.
A better simulation would look at nuclear, hydro, and pumped hydro along with wind, solar, batteries, fuel cells, and Vehicle to grid all in a single simulation looking for minimum cost.
It is too bad there hasn’t been more research along these lines.
I did find this study, have only read executive summary so far.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy16osti/64472.pdf
The study aims to see if 30% renewables (for annual average output) is feasible when looking at the 5 minute dispatch level.
Not all aspects were considered (long term capital cost, adequate revenue for coal and natural gas plants that will see lower capacity factors with increased wind and solar penetration. The study focuses on the Eastern interconnect. It would be worthwhile to consider the entire nation with HVDC interconnects between the Three main US grids as their are very good wind resources in some regions and very good solar resources in others which would reduce system cost.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy16osti/64472.pdf
Hi Gonefishing,
The overbuild is an attempt to reduce cost. Often the storage solutions are more expensive than an overbuild in the capacity for wind and solar.
Also note that the overbuild is relative to average load, there is some difference between peak load and average load (not sure what it is, but let’s assume 1.5 times average load at peak load). So if that estimate is roughly correct for an entire grid network a 3x overbuild relative to average load would be 2 times peak load. I agree that the various thermal and battery solutions you suggest will work. As PV costs and wind costs fall the excess generation (3 times average load for example) may be cheaper than the various storage solutions for a cost minimized system.
“. Renewables can be dispatchable in the same way that anything else is dispatchable.”
This might be the case…. eventually. Probably WILL be the case…. eventually.
For now…………
This is the kind of statement that fossil fuel advocates use to make renewable advocates look like silly in public debate, which is after all conducted mostly via sound bites.
Well, you just made exactly the same point about nuclear: in the US it’s not dispatchable because it’s too small – you always use it first and maximize it. In France it’s dispatchable, because it’s large enough.
It’s kind’ve hard to imagine the context in which a quote about dispatchability would be a catchy sound bite…
Doesn’t matter how much you have overbuilt wind generators if the wind is not blowing, or how much you have overbuilt solar generators if the Sun is not shining, or how much you have overbuilt hydroelectric generators if you are in a multi-year drought.
Any electricity storage system increases the cost of electricity hugely. The only one that is cost effective at this time is pumped hydro, and it is very limited in location.
hmm. I was curious about this reply to my comment, and I’m reminded why I normally have Javier’s comments hidden. (And, now I feel impelled to answer for some reason)
You see, none of that’s true as a practical matter.
Over a relatively modest geographical area, wind almost never goes away (it goes away less often than coal plants fail).
Solar certainly goes away at night, but no one is going to build an all-solar system if they can help it. Maybe on isolated islands, and probably not there either. On a theoretical level, as I said: “Solar alone, of course, would require quite a lot of very long distance transmission, which would also be excessively expensive.” Because the sun is always shining somewhere.
Any electricity storage system increases the cost of electricity hugely.
No. First of all, the first storage you want to use is the free one – EVs owned by residential customers. They can charge during peak renewable production periods, and even send back power during the unusual periods when it’s most useful.
2nd, storage is only expensive if you do’t use it optimally: it should store a relatively small percentage of your consumption. Now, if you want to maximize solar, like for instance islands that are dependent on oil, then you’ll use more storage and still save a lot of money. Which brings us to
3rd, non-hydro storage has gotten a lot cheaper – batteries are now competitive with pumped storage for certain things, especially where really cheap natural water storage isn’t available. Don’t forget “wind-gas” for seasonal storage.
Fossil fuel energy is extremely expensive. Our economic system does not recognize it for two reasons, otherwise the price would be vastly higher.
First the price on the environment and global health is not recognized or accounted. Second the fact that production of fossil fuels no longer exists, no more is being made at any rate that is meaningful or useful. That means we are merely tapping a warehouse and once that is depleted it is done. Any other dwindling product that was still demanded would be priced high and rise dramatically as it was depleted. Instead we treat oil and other substances as if there is an infinite supply as far as economics goes. Price is controlled by rate of removal, not by amount that is left, a commodity mindset. The faster we raid the warehouse, the lower the price.
But what happens when the warehouse is empty or the last of the product out of reach?
And the 3rd reason: security. The US has spent quite a lot on security due to oil: the lives and health of quite a few servicemen & women, and trillions on oil wars.
And the hundreds of thousands we have killed or destroyed their lives, but they are not citizens of the US so not generally a concern to the egocentric American.
Yes, indeed.
That number is more like millions. The numbers in Iraq alone are staggering.
But, as you say, that information doesn’t resonate much in the US.
First the price on the environment and global health is not recognized or accounted.
Many countries around the world seem to be finally waking up to the fact that the US fossil fuel based car centric model is a really bad idea.
China is a good example of this change in attitude.
http://news.mit.edu/2017/tackling-air-pollution-in-china-0517
Tackling air pollution in China
Combining climate policy and vehicle emissions standards could pack a one-two punch.
Mark Dwortzan | MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
May 17, 2017
A recent study estimates that about 1.6 million people in China die each year — roughly 4,000 a day — from heart, lung, and stroke disorders due to poor air quality. Most of the nation’s lethal air pollution, including headline-grabbing toxins such as fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ground-level ozone (O3), is produced in its coal-dominated energy and industrial sectors. But a substantial and growing contributor to the problem is road transportation; as private vehicle ownership and freight traffic increase, so, too, do ambient concentrations of pollutants from gasoline and diesel fuel exhaust.
It is no accident that China and other countries are going all out in a transition to clean renewables. The current American administration is absolutely on the wrong side of history in this regard.
If we were actually sentient and reasoning beings we would be screaming toward clean energy at an extreme rate. Instead we plod along and a large contingent want to keep the poisoning of planet going.
Any truly sentient and reasoning being would run away from us as fast as it could. We have yet to prove ourselves actually intelligent.
“Doesn’t matter how much you have overbuilt wind generators if the wind is not blowing”
Try to understand not correlated generation, two sites that are more than 1200 km remote to each other are not correlated, connect many of such sites by transmission lines and you have something like baseload.
“Any electricity storage system increases the cost of electricity hugely”
Strawman. Even baseload power plants need quite a lot of storage due to fluctuating demnad. Interesting, all the German pumped hydro capacity were build for coal power or nuclear power.
Yes, REs need more storage and/or transmission capacity, however the price is not that much higher, quite contrary, in many case generator plus net integration is actually cheaper with REs.
two sites that are more than 1200 km remote to each other are not correlated
In some places, three sites about 150 km apart produce reliability equivalent to coal.
The WNISR has a nice graph comparing wind, solar and nuclear in China
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/The-World-Nuclear-Industry-Status-Report-2017-HTML.html#link169
But even combined, they’re still less than 10% of chinese electricity production if I recall correctly.
The report is available as a PDF as well and it is a highly recommended read for anyone interested in the nuclear industry.
I have determined for a building or residence that going beyond R25 overall would only be practical in exceptional circumstances such as extreme cold or heat. Probably places one should not live anyway. After that it is better to optimize the heating, cooling and shading of building rather than spend a lot of money and material further insulating the structure.
The advantage of insulation is that it does not depend upon mechanical or electric devices to operate and takes no energy to continue operating if the structure remains intact.
The problem of windows is brought up in the white paper.
Chasing Diminishing Returns of Over-Insulation
http://www.holt.com/files/all/energy-efficient_building_envelopes_whtie_paper.pdf
This site has some interesting articles
Restoring the Old Way of Warming: Heating People, not Places
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/02/heating-people-not-spaces.html
How to Keep Warm in a Cool House
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/03/local-heating.html
Heat Storage Hypocausts: Air Heating in the Middle Ages
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/03/heat-storage-hypocausts-air-heating-middle-ages.html
Fruit growers might find this interesting
Fruit Walls: Urban Farming in the 1600s
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/fruit-walls-urban-farming.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/pollution-kills-people-wars-violence-article-1.3575493
The environmental question trumps all other questions combined.
The following was cut for time in the last Saturday Night Live episode. The short is simply called “Climate Change” and its a funny look at our favorite topic. 😀 😛
https://youtu.be/JR9FALnLFQ8
(Note video will be blocked in some countries (including Canada, Australia, Spain, Norway, Germany, all of South America and so forth)
If you want to know why we have an opioid crisis……….
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/19/big-pharma-money-lobbying-us-opioid-crisis?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=248691&subid=9848135&CMP=GT_US_collection
Republicans get most of the money, but D’s get a huge amount. I haven’t heard jack shit from either party about doing anything about the SOURCE of the opioid drugs that are killing people by the thousands.
The Trump administration will blow a little hot air about it, but won’t do anything, so that doesn’t count.
Incidentally , all the people who go around running their mouth about what a rotten capitalist hog Ayn Rand was don’t know jack shit about her books, because they have NEVER READ THEM, they have only swallowed the propaganda of the leftish element.
Atlas Shrugged is NOT about heartless capitalists destroying society.
It’s about fucking fascists, defined as government plus big business in bed together, running things, and so destroying society.
Reasonably and effectively regulated capitalism is fine, it’s at least as good as any other economic system, when it’s REGULATED effectively.
Capitalism combined with government is fascism, and THAT’s what Atlas Shrugged is REALLY about, and THAT’s WHY we have most of the drug problems we have today, capitalists in bed with whoring politicians, of BOTH parties.
THAT’s WHY our overall health care costs are so high. The health care industry has succeeded in capturing the parts of the government that are supposed to regulate it.
That’s why our food is so full of nasty chemicals.
That’s why we don’t have much in the way of mass transit, even in places where it would work ok.
Most of our problems are due to our whoring politicians and the businessmen who buy their services.
But having government in complete control seems to lead to even WORSE outcomes.
Maybe one of these days the people of this country will be well enough educated that we can have better government, government more like the kind that prevails in Western Europe.
But I’m not going to live long enough to see it, personally.
The education profession/ industry, of which I was once a member, has a strangle hold on our government, and our rotten public schools in our failing communities will REMAIN rotten, until that stranglehold is broken.
I see pretty much zero signs of that happening.
Our legal principles are based on the idea that a dozen criminals should go free, rather than that one innocent man should go to jail.
Our current educational system is based on the idea that if your kid is capable of learning and doing well, but you don’t have a lot of money, so you can put that kid in a private school, he ROTS in a rotten public school, if you live in a community with a failed school system, so all the kids can rot TOGETHER.
And most of the school systems that are supposedly doing OK, in comparison to other AMERICAN school systems, are basically fifty percent rotten.
Go to a typical American high school, and if you know enough to KNOW what you are looking at, you will find THREE schools operating in the same buildings.
One school is for the kids of the elite, the kids that will be going on to real colleges and universities, and will succeed in life. One school is for the typical kids who learn enough to at least balance their checkbooks and read Fox news articles. And one is for the kids who are too much trouble for the teachers in the first two schools to be bothered with them. I’m painting fast with a very broad brush of course.
A few kids in the vocational wing will learn enough to have a great shot at an entry level position in a trade that will enable them to make a decent living, and maybe even make a lot of money.
But in a school I worked in, a couple of dozen willing to work girls were pushed out into the world having spent half of their high school career learning how to cut hair. Nearly all of them are working as cashiers, or clerks, or factory hands. The community has openings for maybe one percent of them in that trade.
The state put in a law requiring two years training to get a job as a hair dresser. That’s the same length of time it requires to sit for the professional nursing license examination. The cosmetology profession has captured the regulatory apparatus you see.
The previous school had a horticulture program, same results. I used to socialize with the hort teacher. She quit in frustration, because she quickly found out there were no jobs for her students, that they couldn’t get even a quarter an hour more as an entry level employee at a local store or farm than the next person that walked in off the street. Then she came back when her old job was open again, because SHE couldn’t find a local job in her field that would pay enough for her to live. This was at the same time I quit teaching to go into construction and power plant maintenance etc the second time,tripling my income on an annual basis.
This general situation isn’t going to change, because the teachers are in bed with whoring ( mostly D in this case ) politicians who will make SURE it doesn’t change, that there will be ONLY one option, zero choice, for ninety five percent plus of all our kids…… the local public school.
YOUR kid, unless you are a member of the local elite, will likely as not be sacrificed on the altar of equal educational opportunity,in effect meaning you can’t take your share of the tax money spent on education and spend it in a school that gets results.
And in a city with a REALLY rotten school system, even the classrooms reserved for the elite STINK. That as much or more than any other single reason why the middle classes have fled so many cities.
Elite in this case doesn’t mean one percenter income, it means well brought up, willing to listen, behave, study, WORK at learning, etc. It means working class with a work ethic taught at home, and it means middle class where books and magazines and some real education is the norm.
The D’s didn’t do anything about the opioid problem when they had the opportunity to do so.The R’s won’t likely do anything about it NOW, except they may resort to doing all the same old things that not only don’t work, things that will make it WORSE, overall.
Secondhand smoke is not a problem. If children don’t like to be in a smoky room, they’ll leave. (As for infants,) … at some point, they crawl.
— Charles Harper, chairman, RJR Tobacco Company
The Australian: Coalition MPs shocked by energy threat
Pay-walled link. Use Google web cache to access. It worked for me.
“When Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg walked into the Coalition party room with his energy policy earlier this week he faced a sea of hostile faces. But they left the room shocked. At last, the government politicians understood that Australia faces a long term blackout power crisis the like of which has never been seen in modern times.
It’s one thing to read commentaries warning of what is ahead but another to see a minister use confidential information from independent power authorities and regulators to show the desperate state of affairs that is looming for the nation.
The froth and bubble in the political debate is about everyone trying to estimate how far prices will fall and claiming that clean energy targets will solve the problems. While all these issues are important they are swamped by energy security and the desperate plight facing the nation of Australia.
Frydenberg divides electricity generation up into two parts — what he calls “dispatchable capacity” and “intermittent capacity”.
“Dispatchable capacity” is power that can be produced on demand and while it includes coal and gas it also includes hydro, pumped hydro, batteries and biomass.
“Intermittent capacity” is capacity that depends on weather and is led by wind and solar power.
Between 2012 and 2017 Australia has built 1,850MW of weather-linked “intermittent capacity” and only 150 MW of “dispatchable capacity”.
At the same time “dispatchable capacity” has been reduced with the closure of coal and gas fired power plants and the failure to maintain existing coal fired plants.
According to the Australian Energy Market Operator back in 2012-13 we had 20 per cent “reserve capacity”— power generation capacity above maximum demand. Currently that’s down to 12 per cent and if the Liddell power station is shut there will be a big shortfall. We therefore face the clear certainty of frequent and long blackouts in all our cities if we do not invest in “dispatchable capacity”.
Victoria’s target at 40 per cent renewables by 2025 is four times the existing level of renewable generation; Queensland’s target is 50 per cent by 2030 or about 10 times the existing level. NSW does not have a renewable energy target but like Victoria is “plonking” solar and wind installations around the state without any understanding that you must have a major content of “dispatchable capacity”.
Remember if the investment in renewables is in “dispatchable capacity” it prevents blackouts, but such investment is more costly and does not grab the same green vote-winning headlines.
What makes South Australia different to the other states is that they have actually undertaken the sort of program other states are planning so we know what is ahead for the rest of the nation. It’s true last February South Australia was a bit unlucky in that power lines were blown down and an interconnector with Victoria failed but the long blackouts were always the most likely outcome of their actions. (They are now investing in “dispatchable capacity” because they learned the lesson the hard way.)
Frydenberg uses South Australia to show what is going to happen to NSW, Victoria and Queensland if they follow their current path. This SA graph shows the share of intermittent power generation between February 6 and February 8 (wind and solar), which falls from 91 per cent to 3 per cent.
NSW got a taste of what was ahead on February 10, 2017 but tactfully Frydenberg did not mention it because the NSW government is from the Coalition and not the ALP.
The NSW system on February 10 had 2080MW in renewable capacity, excluding the Snowy, but only generated 707MW from that capacity at the peak demand time because the wind did not blow and at 5pm the sun had lost power.
And the failure to maintain old NSW coal power plants caused the coal generation to fall 3000MW below capacity. Victoria saved NSW but Victoria is now in a deeper mess as it ploughs on with crazy installations of “intermittent capacity” that will not generate if the weather conditions are unfavourable.
I can’t think of any country in the world that would be so stupid and do what Australia is doing.
We only have one hope — a plan which has been responsibly prepared by the government of the day. We have to hope it triggers investment in “dispatchable capacity” as well as lowering prices.
I don’t see how ignoring these very serious issues is going to help us in the future. We need nuclear ASAP.
If one visits http://reneweconomy.com.au one gets a sense that things are unraveling relatively quickly in Australia. The Australian Federal government has been captured by fossil fuel interests and the legacy electricity generating industry who have pressured them into propping up the status quo at all costs. In addition to which the legacy operators have been gaming the system to receive high prices and blaming said high prices on renewables. All the while increasing numbers of households have been finding that a solar PV system can bring some relief from the high priced electricity supplied by the grid, especially if batteries can be added to the system so as to enable the household to choose when to take power from the grid. The actions being taken by the Australian Federal government will most likely drive more consumers to adopt solar PV and storage technologies (including ice storage for air conditioning).
One could say that RenewEconomy is a biased source, in which case one could easily look to the Rupert Murdoch controlled media for the opposing view, which will be as biased in favor of the status quo, if not more so.
Islandboy
Your last paragraph may contain a great deal more significance than a quick read would imply.
The sources of virtually all our data seems inextricably intertwined with political/social/ideological bias.
However, by reading from numerous points of view – most especially from the ‘Other’ (regardless of whom is represented from our own biases), one might obtain a broader perspective and make evaluations accordingly.
It seems the South Australians are fucked.
In just a few weeks, the best case scenario would be a non-interrupted electric supply provided at the cost of the world’s most expensive pricing.
A more realistic pre-appraisal would indicate the start of a multi year, chronic period of blackouts during heat waves, somewhat mitigated by even more expensive, peaked- provided electricity.
We will see.
The responsibility/blame for this situation is frantically being placed upon the ‘Others’ shoulders.
The recent report claiming 2 New England power companies were responsible for natgas shortages would indicate that this finger pointing is starting to spread and not unique to Oz.
Interesting times.
To reiterate:
A modern wind turbine needs 80 gallons of gear lube in the gearbox.
A barrel of oil yields 0.42 gallons of lubricant.
Therefore, 190 barrels of oil need to be refined to obtain the 80 gallons of lubricant to fill the gearbox in one wind turbine. For every 7980 gallons of crude oil, you will have 80 gallons of gear oil.
There are 341,000 wind turbines on the planet.
190×341,000=64,790,000 barrels of oil need to be refined to obtain enough lubricant for the wind turbines for one year.
The wind turbine gearboxes need new gear oil once each year.
25 years of operation for the wind turbines, 25×64,790,000=1,619,750,000 barrels of refined oil over 25 years so the gearboxes are lubricated properly, then they won’t come to a screeching halt.
Unsustainable, there will be failure of wind turbines, will all end as stranded assets.
You will have to recycle the gear oil. Synthetic gear oils will work. Regardless, wind turbines need oil to operate.
Have to have a maintenance schedule, drive an ice truck to each land based wind turbine and change the gear oil in the gearbox. You have to do it to keep the wind turbine churning out those sparks of electricity.
In other words, the wind industry is highly dependent on the oil industry and that will not change.
It is a tough job to drive that kind of information into thick skulls.
Cheers!
I take it you assume there will not be much oil production in the future for other reasons. A good assumption in the long run as energy and transport move away from it.
Sounds really dumb to use oil for the production of lubricants if we have little use for oil otherwise and the yield of lubricants is low. Other methods and chemistries will underprice oil in that case. Synthetics will do the job and last longer than petroleum based oils. Chemistry is the key factor here not oil. Increasingly for offshore applications, synthetic and biodegradable fluids are being developed. Additionally, turbine gear oil specifications are beginning to reflect demand for higher lubricant performance through testing for enhanced oxidation and corrosion resistance, and improved bearing and long-term operational performance.The new generation of lubricating oils for wind towers have moved the oil drain time from 8 months to three years, so your numbers are not valid and will be less valid in the future as new oils and systems are developed.
But not to worry, oil will be pumped for chemical uses, not so much for energy. The short molecular chain compounds used for energy will be processed into other valuable products. No one ever said oil production would totally disappear, just that it would not be burned for energy and transport in the future.
Yes and all the other demands for oil will fall one by one. No one expects a conversion in just a few years, but that truck, that train, that boat will be energized very differently by mid-century or earlier. Enjoy the transistion, it’s exciting and will have lots of benefits, including all those building and maintenance jobs for renewable energy.
My prediction is we will not need nearly as much energy in the future as we do now. Now that throws a wrench into almost all the extrapolations and predictions that are typically published. Non-linear can go both ways.
Where do you get your numbers from out of interest? I’d have thought a large gear box, intermittent use (e.g. 30% availability), fairly cool operation, very low speed on the drive end and a high spec design with decent filtration and monitoring systems would need much less frequent replacement than say a continuously operating generator with turbine or ICE. Also that amount of lube oil would be collected and recycled, or maybe even periodically cleaned-up in situ, so very little extra would be needed as make up (plus energy for the recycling process would be needed).
You will never get the source of the numbers but it is in the ballpark. I have seen 0.5 gallons lubricant per barrel of oil. Doesn’t matter anyway, mostly using synthetic lubricants now, some have over 4 year life.
The oil is filtered and cooled at the turbine. Since no buildup of combustion products, it’s more a matter oxidation, water content and viscous stability that requires a change. Much cheaper to change oil than change bearings and gears and pivot drives.
Synthetic lube oil mostly comes from petroleum still I think – it just gets modified quite extensively along the way and I was more asking where the data concerning the turbines comes from.
Mr. Kaplan
I’ve been trying to learn more about the wind powered industry and have found promotional material touted on the net by manufacturers to be an excellent data source.
Specifications are included, as a rule, and comparative analysis to competitors or existing practices can be made.
Everybody seems quick to claim why their approach is superior. In doing so, the specs – and potential vulnerabilities of competing/adversarial players – is revealed.
There are renewable lubricants such as
http://renewablelube.com/
Some of the synthetics are made from crude, but many can be made from NGL (so still petroleum, but not crude oil), See Group IV-PAO in article below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_oil
Dennis
If you have the time and are inclined to broaden your perspective on the operations of offshore wind, suggest you do some checking on the grout problem that has incapacitated hundreds of offshore turbines.
The turning online of Hywind – world’s first operational floating turbines, an outstanding engineering accomplishment – sparked discussions of the difficulties in keeping many of these huge, anchored structures at true vertical. This is an absolute must for proper functioning.
Ongoing design adjustments seem not to be 100% effective, which could cause huge problems.
Yair . . . .
Dunno Alfred.
I know bugger all about wind turbines but I would imagine gearboxes are conservatively rated and run synthetic oils.
Suggest you do a bit of research on oil sampling techniques and kidney loop filtration such as are used in large transmission and hydraulic systems.
Cheers.
“In other words, the wind industry is highly dependent on the oil industry and that will not change.”
OMG. A competend chemical company can produce the needed amount as syn-fuel by P2L, you can estimate how long a turbine must run to provide the energy (10 kWh = 1 liter fuel). Is that a gamebreaker?
Hi Alfred,
I’m thinking you are a wannabe Ronald Walter.
Maybe you are RW, and just not quite performing at your usual level right now.
What’s missing is the sense of absurdity that RW could add in with a few choice words. The framework is right, but the humor isn’t quite there.
Alfred
Interesting comment by you and the followup responses.
Yes, the 80 to 95 gallon gear oil capacity has been required to be changed on an annual basis.
The 12 man- hour process (2 man teams using a bucket brigade) is being supplanted by innovative, mechanized extractive and pumping processes with one man able to do the job in a few hours.
The gearbox failure rate is suspected to be caused by inadequate change out.
Synthetic oils are being introduced with 3 year lifespans, and remote, 24/7 monitoring systems are being emplaced.
Gearbox oil is one of a half dozen lubricants used in these installations.
A reader might imagine the efforts involved when doing this maintenance offshore, all the more so with the size of the turbines increasing dramatically putting more demands upon the hardware.
A reader might imagine the efforts involved when doing this maintenance offshore, all the more so with the size of the turbines increasing dramatically putting more demands upon the hardware.
Pfft! As someone who used to do BOP hydraulic systems maintenance on wellheads on the ocean floor, deep beneath the semisubmersible rigs being pounded by the waves at the surface, I can’t say I’m particularly impressed by the supposed degree of difficulties involved in wind turbine maintenance requirements, wherever they may be found…
Furthermore, as has already been mentioned, and can easily be confirmed by a quick Google search or two, the name of the game these days, is synthetic greases and lubricants which can easily be produced even from non fossil fuel based chemical feed stocks. I can also imagine AI enhanced smart robots and drones doing most of the maintenance in the not too distant future.
… And as someone who was taken off the tragic Piper Alpha, put on a plane to be flown back to Brazil, tasked to do the then- deepest dive off Brazil (Campos field, 820 feet depth, burning off one leg of the spud in template), I, also, am highly unimpressed with an offshore oil change.
What I DO think is of great relevance is the cost of these operations.
And, as an aside, while you and I did the bulk of our ‘commuting’ via chopper, the new built-for-putpose maintenance fleet is still grappling with the ever precarious embarking/disembarking procedure.
New gangways are being implemented to more safely transport work crews.
None of these maintenance focused operations are rocket science.
The cost is something else entirely.
None of these maintenance focused operations are rocket science.
The cost is something else entirely.
Agreed but the real issue is cost compared to what? Are we talking full cost accounting? You may or may not agree with many of the points in Nate Hagen’s talk posted by Gone Fishing but, at least IMHO we need to pay up front to upgrade to a sustainable ‘Civilization 2.0’ and then perhaps the relatively high costs of maintenance of things like wind turbines will seem orders of magnitude cheaper than maintaining BAU.
Anyways I still think AI robots will be doing most of the maintenance.
AI? AAAAAAIIIIIIIIIII!!!!
Fred, if it gets to the point where I have to negotiate with my refrigerator to get to open the door I will give it a lobotomy with a grill starter. And the car better not talk back to me, it’s bad enough with that lady in my smartphone always telling me where to go.
Maybe the voice recognition to enter my house would fail if I had a rough throat and it would call the AI police if I tried to break in.
Then there is the toaster…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec
🙂
Just get a dog to watch over your AIs …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcOZ56K8lDc
DOG FETCHES BEER FROM FRIDGE
Teach it phenomenology.
NAOM
An article looking at the costs of owning a car and when it is cheaper not to.
One point that it mentions which gets overlooked in many comments about TaaS is the value of time. If you earn a lot of money per hour, not having to drive yourself anywhere, look for parking, or bothering with maintenance can be worth far more to you than what you would pay for on demand service.
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/10/if-you-drive-less-than-10000-miles-a-year-you-probably-shouldnt-own-a-car/542988/?utm_source=SFTwitter%3Futm_source%3Dfbb
This is a fast hitting, info and idea rich lecture. You may not agree with every detail but there is a lot to consider and maybe it will help focus your efforts and direction.
Nate Hagens – “Blindspots and Superheroes”,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUSpsT6Oqrg
Hagens has great analysis.
I will give Nate his 65% grade that he assesses himself, which is scary high for dealing with such large diverse systems and topics. I actually prefer his talks on human psychology and how that fits into the pattern of actions that led to our current situation and keeps it going, probably because that is his forte’.
I will give Nate his 65% grade that he assesses himself, which is scary high for dealing with such large diverse systems and topics.
And let’s not forget that he is supposedly speaking to an audience that has not previously been exposed to Nate’s level of dot connecting and overall risk assessment of maintaining BAU.
Though I’m not too sure I like his choice of a mouse in a four sided cage analogy, over the many blind men examining the proverbial elephant.
Whatever anyone else may take away from Nate’s talk, at least for me, it underscores the fact that the continuation of the ‘Infinite Economic Growth Paradigm’, is patently unsustainable. Yet everywhere you turn it is still the explicit underlying long term goal.
The Imperial Pink Elephant apparently has no clothes and it’s about to take a major dump in the middle of the room, so get your shovels ready folks!
I agree, the IEGP is the walking dead soon to be put in the grave for good.
It will be good to get our feet back on the ground and give nature her due respect. She is our mother and we have been abusing her way too long. It will probably dramatically reduce the level of mental illness among humans and everyone will have meaningful tasks to perform.
We do need to get everyone on board eventually.
I’ve actually had some personal interaction with him (we both hunt mushrooms).
He is walking the walk the best he can.
Learning how to communicate with Cheeto Jesus ?
“Texas Sen. John Cornyn is frustrating both administration officials and conservative movement leaders by holding up the confirmation of Russ Vought to be Mick Mulvaney’s right hand man at the Office of Management and Budget.
Maybe he can throw them some paper towels instead?”
When is your State, pigs at the trough are your friends.
Russia-sponsored troll networks targeting the U.S. may number in the hundreds
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article179799311.html#storylink=cpy
Hook, line and sinker, right OFM (OldMacDonald aka KGB Trumpster) ?
And you never even got paid
I never needed any help from the Russians to badmouth HRC. She provided the world with PLENTY of ammo, all by her arrogant self, from the days of Cattle Gate and White Water on.
Are you aware that BILL accepted half a million bucks for making speeches in Russia while she was Sec of State?
Now that sort of conflict of interest would have you SCREAMING if she had run on the R ticket, wouldn’t it?
On of the big differences between us, old buddy, is that I go where ever the facts lead me, whereas you are a hypocritical partisan who never has anything to say except from a particular partisan point of view.
Why don’t you tell us what you know about HRC’s involvement in uranium deals and Russians, and BIG contributions to her family slush fund from shady characters in that part of the world?
If you don’t know anything about this, I will post some links for you, if you wish. I might anyway, just to remind people just how scummy she actually was, and just how little effort most of the msm put into really telling it like it was in respect to her ethics record.
That sort of thing is perfectly ok with a hard core Clinton partisan, and it’s ok with lots of more moderate D’s so long as it’s a D who does it, ditto it’s ok with hard core R’s so long as it’s an R doing it. It’s ok with you, because you are apparently infatuated with HRC for some reason or another.
This sort of thing is NOT ok with me, regardless of who is doing it.
The Russians probably managed to convince a few people to either vote for Trump, or to stay home. Both sides in political campaigns run disinformation campaigns called ADVERTISMENTS, lol.
Would you like to discuss Yankee interference in the elections of OTHER countries?
WHILE HRC was at state, and Obama was in the WH? We could go there, and I could have a lot of fun out of you in the going, if you wish. I mean, we weren’t only fucking around with voters, we were actively there on the ground killing people and getting some of our own people killed, lol.
I could post hundreds of links indicating just how the HRC machine manipulated the nomination process in her favor. She’s not worthy of the office of president.
Trump’s a pro crook, a big league scumbag. HRC’s and amateur, maybe at the level of varsity athlete at a smallish college, compared to Trump who plays consistently at the Super Bowl level.
But she’s still a scumbag, maybe even more so that most American politicians that make it close to the top.
Most of the women I know who have self respect wouldn’t vote for her on the basis of the fact that she stuck with Bill and set up a Bimbo Squad to cover up for him…. excepting the women who are too ignorant to know about the Bimbo Squad, or who are cynical enough or partisan enough to overlook that sort of thing.
Bottom line, you’re incapable of admitting the actual facts in respect to WHY she lost , such as the fact that she in her insufferable arrogance expected the people who are the base of the D party to vote for her, while she hobnobbed with banksters and promoted globalism.
FATAL MISTAKES.
Secret email server. FATAL MISTAKE. In her spoiled little girl princess mind, it’s Comey’s fault she’s not president. But but but but Comey didn’t set up that secret email server now , did he? I read in the last few days that there were almost three thousand documents on her homie girl’s pervert husband’s laptop that had zero business anywhere except on a secure government computer………….
Comey did his job, and was doing it when Trump got rid of him for doing it. But hopefully Mueller will finish that job.
Talking about Sanders supporters as if they were spoiled children, rather than the future of the D party. Shot off a few toes that time.
Using words such as deplorable to describe people who disagree with her.
Shot off a few more toes with that one.
Some of those “deplorable ” voters probably had to ask somebody what the word means, but you can BET they were pissed enough when they found out that a lot of them either stayed home or voted for Trump……. maybe enough of them that they might have put her over the top in those last three big states………
Senate Seeks To Interview FBI Informant Linking Russian Nuclear Bribery Case To Clinton Foundation
Russian Purchase of US Uranium Assets in Return for $145mm in Contributions to the Clinton Foundation – Bill and Hillary Clinton assisted a Canadian financier, Frank Giustra, and his company, Uranium One, in the acquisition of uranium mining concessions in Kazakhstan and the United States. Subsequently, the Russian government sought to purchase Uranium One but required approval from the Obama administration given the strategic importance of the uranium assets. In the run-up to the approval of the deal by the State Department, nine shareholders of Uranium One just happened to make $145mm in donations to the Clinton Foundation. Moreover, the New Yorker confirmed that Bill Clinton received $500,000 in speaking fees from a Russian investment bank, with ties to the Kremlin, around the same time. Needless to say, the State Department approved the deal giving Russia ownership of 20% of U.S. uranium assets
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-19/senate-seeks-interview-fbi-informant-linking-russian-nuclear-bribery-case-clinton-fo
(I know it is Zero Brain, not one of my usual sources)
“Meanwhile, the ‘journalists’ over at CNN are still trying to get to the bottom of exactly who spent the $100,000 on Facebook ads.”..
OldFarmerMac (OFM, OldMacDonald aka KGB Trumpster), the Russians played your conservative Republican hate and ignorance like Mozart played the piano.
Your denial technique is no different that Donald Trump’s attack on Wilson. You always need an enemy.
“Donald Trump Tries A New Tactic To Attack Congresswoman Who Exposed His Lies
Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) had revealed unflattering details of the president’s conversation with an Army widow.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-frederica-wilson_us_59eb3da1e4b0a484d0638a0b?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
FOR SURE I’m a REPUBLICAN, lol.
Why else would I be posting more links critical of the Trump administration than everybody else put together?
I’m having fun seeing you make a fool of yourself, HB, because you are making it clear to people who can actually THINK why Clinton WAS a rotten candidate, with the evidence being clear to anybody who is willing to look at it.
Now most people with a few working neurons between their ears understand that owning a gigantic foundation with hundreds of millions of dollars is pretty close to as good as actually having all that cash and POWER in a personal bank account.
And considering that donations to the CLINTON SLUSH FUND crashed like fifty percent or so when she lost the election, I guess we know about what percentage of those hundreds of millions coming in were being donated in hopes of buying some INFLUENCE, don’t we now?
Even hard core cynical D partisans know, if they know doo doo from apple butter about HRC, lol.
But partisans and cynics seldom admit the truth about what they know and believe if doing so is detrimental to their partisan agenda.
HOPEFULLY a few hundred Democrats will get my message, considering I’m spreading it far and wide using various means in various places, the message being RUN CANDIDATES WHO ARE ACCEPTABLE TO THE PEOPLE AS WHOLE. As a practical matter, this translates to think hard about who you support in the primaries.
Right at half the country had an extremely low opinion of HRC even before the nomination process got underway.
A Brief History of the “Kremlin Trolls”
(a different view– “minds are like parachutes, they only work when open”)
http://thesaker.is/a-brief-history-of-the-kremlin-trolls/
Russia pays trolls.
The Pentagon pays “consultants”.
Same shit, different packaging.
https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/ausland/amerika/27000-PRBerater-polieren-Image-der-USA/story/20404513
Sorry for the article in German, I don’t have any on this topic in English. Try Google Translate (this translator is said to be better though: https://www.deepl.com/translator).
I’m sick and tired by this “we’re being influenced by a foreign power and they’re meddling with our elections” bullshit by a country that has been meddling with other countries’ elections for decades.
Shut up and eat your own dog food!
The Strange World of Russian ‘Trolls’
A big part of the Russia-gate hysteria is to accuse Russia of spreading U.S. dissension via Internet “trolling,” but that’s just one more wild exaggeration among many, as William Blum describes at Anti-Empire Report.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/22/the-strange-world-of-russian-trolls/
Clinton, Assange and the War on Truth
Australia’s public broadcasting network gave Hillary Clinton an open mike to defame WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange as “a tool of Russian intelligence” without giving him a chance to respond, as John Pilger describes.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/20/clinton-assange-and-the-war-on-truth/
Blaming Russia for the Internet ‘Sewer’
As the Russia-gate hysteria spirals down from the implausible to the absurd, almost every bad thing is blamed on the Russians, even how they turned the previously pristine Internet into a “sewer,” reports Robert Parry.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/18/blaming-russia-for-the-internet-sewer/
It’s pretty common to have a few small quakes near fault lines in California but fracking has changed things a lot. Now, this is just a typical day with quakes in Kansas and Montana – places that never had quakes 10 years ago.
If something gets damaged can you sue the fracking company?
I heard the problem was mainly waist water being pumped underground for disposal – but whatever the cause are there less earthquake generating methods?
And in California,they are seriously taking about fracking here. I guess they want to trigger a big one…
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
“Earthquakes in diverse places” is something you maybe have heard before, as it looks to be coming more and more true each day. Just read some trusted sources, including the first one you should always turn to, because you will be astounded.
As a summary though, the current idea among the world’s best scientists is when Israel strikes Iran (which could be next year based on the historical Blood Moon Partners of War) the other Mideast Nations will use this to their advantage and retaliate against Israel in a pure Psalm 83 War. As the war progresses, Saudi Arabia along with other Arab nations which sell oil to America will cut off all our oil unless we stop supporting Israel. Russia can then use this opportunity to blackmail its satellite nations by saying you will buy your oil from us and establish a kind of quasi Soviet Union, or we will also cut your oil supply off.
Our President Trump will wind up having a monumental choice to make. Either we rely on the oil and gas we are now producing in North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas while supporting Israel by unifying Jerusalem, or continue to buy Arab oil while supporting a Two State Solution, giving Palestine a new state and dividing Jerusalem. Now if Trump goes with fully dividing Jerusalem then it is over for America, as following the division of Jerusalem Zacheriah 12:3 notes there would be a massive earthquake in the New Madrid Fault Line. This is close to where the warning prophecy tremors are already occurring in the Oklahoma area, only this quake would be felt up and down the Mississippi all the way from St. Paul to New Orleans. Those of us who have ears to hear, will pray to inform the Trump Administration to use our country’s own oil and not try to interfere with Israel or divide up their land.
After reading Peggy Hahn’s eight pm comment I’m having trouble deciding if she / he / it is a troll out to make religious people look as dumb as fence posts, or a far gone nut case who takes such gibberish seriously.
Every once in a while you run across a nut case who thinks the KJB is full of SPECIFIC prophecies. I’ve met one or two of that sort myself over the years.
My guess is that Peggin’ Peggy is aping the Christians. Although it’s hard to tell these days. Satire and reality are becoming quite indistinguishable. Especially amongst those who embrace Bronze Age tribal dogma as meaningful insight into today’s reality.
With regards to Israel; they should probably start working on a plan to evacuate the non-combatants.
With regards to Zecheriah; Mormonism is my second favourite fake religion, Jehovah Witness comes first. You gotta be a total lune to sign up for that tripe. ‘Hey honey have you seen the golden plates? I put them in the garage with the seer stones and my hat but they’re not there anymore. Did you move them?’
Now Peggy, no need to pray, you can contact the Trump administration directly. They actually exist, though sometimes it seems like a bad TV drama. I recommend the US mail, not sure they use email.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH7-GKiQXNE
Religious Freedom (to Burn Our Own Witches)” by Roy Zimmerman
Peggy Hon, you really do believe that shit don’t you? I don’t know whether to feel sorry for you, or laugh at you.
And good luck with praying to inform punkin-head to do anything.
I looked it up, and wasn’t able to see the connection between Zech 12:3 and the New Madrid. Guess I’m just not that bright.
Oh well……………..
Satire and reality are becoming quite indistinguishable
Just another meme infested moron who is a Cabbage For Christ.
Saint George
https://youtu.be/8rh6qqsmxNs
Peggy- you are probably unaware of your own mental status, but I must point out that there is no better example of severe indoctrination/brainwashing than that which you exhibit. Not in any totalitarian state, not in any ISIS camp, and not in Jonestown.
What a waste of a brain.
“Can you sue the fracking company?”
That’s an open question for now. Filing a suit is one thing, getting it tried is another, and winning it’s a third.
My guess is that the answer depends on which state you are in, and how good a hold the fracking industry has on the nuts of the people who run the state government.
Preston- they are not seriously considering fracking in Calif. Water is short and the resource is poor. And most people are not in favor of it.
Bark up some other tree.
They are fracking in California now and Jerry Brown is for it…
“Kern County alone pumps more oil than Oklahoma, accounting for more than 70 percent of California’s production and more than 90 percent of its fracked wells. ”
http://www.sfchronicle.com/science/article/Gov-Brown-clashes-with-environmentalists-over-11151180.php
That area (Kern) not not near the big faults. The problem (geologically) around there is land subsidence. It does gradually cause infrastructure problems- like cracked road, rails and canals.
The Monterey area is higher risk, but is very unlikely to see significant fracking for the reasons I mentioned above.
Worry about something else, if you must.
NOAA@NSIDC Releases Sea Ice Index, Version 3.0
https://nsidc.org/the-drift/data-update/noaansidc-releases-sea-ice-index-version-3-0/
Warm waters melting Antarctic ice shelves may have appeared for the first time in over 7,000 years
https://theconversation.com/warm-waters-melting-antarctic-ice-shelves-may-have-appeared-for-the-first-time-in-over-7-000-years-82016
Any thoughts of what would happen to the US economy if we all started driving high mpg vehicles or EV;s, insulated and sealed our homes better, used LEDs for lighting and stopped buying a lot of stuff we just don’t need? Oh yeah, might as well throw in not eating junk food or prepared food anymore and eat less in general.
Who knows, maybe we’d get lucky and all the parasites in banking, finance and Wall Street would do the rest of us a favor by committing suicide en masse.
Just most of us not eating junk food and eating less food in general would probably destroy not only the junk food industry itself but as a side effect would take out the pharmaceutical and drug industries along with the health care and health insurance businesses. Now imagine if we all walked and rode bicycles more… game over!
Well, that is one way to enrich the soil.
I used to sell LED lighting part time. It’s grabbing market share fast, though some people are still reluctant to buy it. But those people are usually older. Conservative estimates show at least 80 percent of all lighting will be LED by 2030.
Te global LED lighting market accounted for USD 26.09 billion in 2016 and is expected to reach USD 54.28 Billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of around 13% between 2017 and 2022.
The accelerated deployment of light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs is on track to save U.S. consumers and businesses $20 billion a year in electricity costs within a decade, which would lower U.S. CO2 emissions by some 100 million metric tons a year! The growing global effort to speed up LED adoption could ultimately cut global energy costs and carbon pollution 5 times as much.
https://thinkprogress.org/5-charts-that-illustrate-the-remarkable-led-lighting-revolution-83ecb6c1f472/
So not to worry about increased use of power from electric cars, LED growth will compensate for that and in time the cars will get more efficient while PV growth plus less use of electricity due to reduced fossil fuel production and distribution will take care of the rest.
Friday I visited a wholesale fruiterer that I haven’t been to for a while. The roof is now completely covered in solar and the lights are all LED giving far better lighting inside. A no-brainer. Lots of free electricity at peak demand when people are in and out of the walk ins all the time so the doors stay open with just the dangling curtain. Lighting , computers and other appliances in full use. Would love to see their before and after electrical bill.
NAOM
People would have more money to spend on…er…junk?!
NAOM
“and stopped buying a lot of stuff we just don’t need” You must have missed that part NAOM.
Nope, just being realistic. As soon as they realise they stop buying all the junk they are buying now they will be marketed a whole load of other stuff they have no use for because bottom line. Companies will want to soak up all that spare money with…er…junk. One load will replace another.
NAOM
Covered under the “don’t need” part.
http://www.businessinsider.com/top-theories-about-the-jfk-assassination-2017-10
These new documents,or at least summaries of them, will be interesting reading for those of us old enough to remember the day of the assassination.
My guess is that they will show that Oswald was the shooter, and that he did indeed have substantial contact with Russian and Cuban covert operations people aka spies or worse, professionals involved in so called wet work.
We may learn more about Ruby than we do about Oswald.
There’s little question in my mind that there was a coverup, not necessarily to cover up WHO was responsible but probably more to cover up the failures of the intelligence community to coordinate properly with the people responsible for protecting the president.There were also some legitimate reasons for keeping as much info as possible under wraps, because foreign intelligence services can use that sort of info to identify their own leakers and our own covert operations guys and spies.
I’m a fair hand with a rifle, not as good as a typical Marine by any means, but good enough to know without a shadow of a doubt that Oswald didn’t need to be a world class marksman and that the weapon he had was perfectly adequate, given the circumstances of the assassination. The odds are probably eighty percent that most Marines not too long out of training could have hit Kennedy the same way under the same circumstances.
My opinion is that the conclusion he was the sole shooter will stand.
But some people, most of them dead or at least retired by now, are going to look bad, because they had their eye on Oswald , and knew about his Russian and Cuban connections, but failed to KEEP it on him.
The files re June Cobb interest me the most.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/20/what-could-a-mysterious-us-spy-know-about-the-jfk-assassination-215143
The leading revelations will likely be how incompetent CIA was. Or perhaps CIA elements did detect the plot and decided to let it slide i.e. feign disbelief.
OFM,
I have studied the assassination extensively and it’s obvious that Oswald didn’t do it. It was an establishment assassination followed by an establishment cover-up. There is no doubt in my mind that Allen Dulles was the architect of the assassination, with considerable help from James Angelton (his assistant at the CIA). Numerous CIA people were involved such as David Atlee Phillips, Bill Harvey, David Morales, E. Howard Hunt. Also the Mafia was involves through people like Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancona.
The event was supported by the deep state, the subterranean network of military, intelligence and industrial people, because Kennedy was viewed as weak on communism and a threat to the U.S.
Also LBJ was part of the conspiracy because there was a good bet he would have been prosecuted by Robert Kennedy if JFK was re-elected. LBJ’s office was responsible for getting the route changed so that the motorcade went through Dealey Plaza.
You may remember that Dulles was fired by Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs invasion. He, and other CIA people, were seething with hatred for Kennedy.
Interestingly Dulles lobbied hard to get on the Warren Commission and LBJ appointed him to the commission. He was by far the most active member of the commission and he was successful in steering any investigation away for the CIA.
Oswald had a long involvement with the CIA. The CIA helped him get Russian language training and helped him get into Russia (Remember he defected to Russia in the late 1950s). It’s interesting that when he came back to the U.S., he came back with no problem at all. Actually the State Department gave him a loan to cover his travel expenses.
Roughly 15 minutes before the assassination he was seen drinking a coke in the second floor lunch room of the book depository. Within 2 minutes after the assassination he was seen in the lunch room by a police officer. Interestingly, the motorcade was about 10 minutes late when it went through Dealey Plaza.
He had to be killed because he knew too much.
I’m not a conspiracy nut but there is too much evidence that points to multiple shooters. Many people prefer to believe that Oswald did it because of the implications associated with a conspiracy.
Hi Roger,
I ‘m personally open minded about the who’s and the why’s of the assassination. The only thing I’m pretty firm on, in terms of the details is that Oswald almost certainly was the shooter.
Thanks for providing these details.
And I’m dead sure he COULD have done it, considering his skill set, his weapon, and the actual circumstances.
What’s your opinion of the quality of evidence suggesting at least one bullet simply could NOT have been fired from Oswald’s position ? My guess is that if there really was a second shooter, the medical files, unless they have been purged and vacuumed and thoroughly buggered, must contain clear evidence in this respect.
It’s history by now, with most people having lost interest, but it’s entirely relevant to point out the questions swirling around the assassination, because the more things change, the more they stay the same, in terms of politics and people and the way people behave.
There could be another assassination or attempted assassination that with a little bad luck thrown in could result in WWIII.
When the world is a powder keg, it takes only one spark at the right time and place to set it off.
The world was a powder keg just prior to the assassination that triggered WWI, but with a little luck that war might not have gotten started, and might never have been fought.
Most of us need reminding that there are a lot of forces in play that could result in a hot war getting started just about any time.
OFM
If you are receptive to taking a peek into the Rabbit Hole, spending 3 minutes watching the famous “Secret Service Standown JFK Assassination” video is a good start.
The 7 minute video watching green beret colonel Dan Marvin describe being asked to assassinate Bruce Pitzer is also enlightening.
Be forewarned, however, decent people are prone to severe psychological jarring when bigger, wicked realities intrude upon their long held views of the world.
he world was a powder keg just prior to the assassination that triggered WWI
AFAIK, Germany really, really wanted a war. They felt that they were the new rising industrial power, and that they had been badly left out of the divvying up of colonial empires.
I think WWI and II were inevitable.
Hi Nick,
Circumstances were such that the risk of war was very high, you’re right about that, and WWI might well have happened anyway, but it might have started years later, and it might have played out differently.
And there’s always a possibility that some of the people who DON’t want a war will prevail.
If the victors had used more common sense in setting the terms of the surrender of Germany, etc, the German people wouldn’t have been in such dire straits that they were susceptible to falling into the clutches of Hitler and the nazis.
Hence WWII might have been avoided, or long delayed, with different players on each side.
Having said this much, I’m a hard core Darwinist, and believe that it’s perfectly natural and normal behavior for humans and human societies to FIGHT, just as virtually all the higher animals fight for dominance.
Ask any farmer, horses, dogs, cows, chickens, they all fight, sometimes to the death, for the purpose of being in charge and getting laid.
Ask any biologist, and he will tell you the same, that chimps, loins, wolves, deer, buffalo, even most of our songbirds, fight to control a territory and to gain access to females etc.
So far as I’m concerned, it takes either an idiot or a person who doesn’t know the abc’s of biology to believe that humans are creatures not of nature but something created by a god or whatever, and that we therefore aren’t SUPPOSED to act like our relatives, from the chimps who are the closest ones remaining, all the way out to distant cousins such as wolves and song birds.
THEY all fight.
Why should we be an exception ?
As you said, Germany wanted a war…. or to put it a little more accurately, a hell of a lot of Germans in positions of power and influence wanted a war, and it’s likely they would have found some other pretext for starting one had the assassination of the so and so duke not happened.
I have yet to read the first explanation or argument that holds water to the effect that humans are something SPECIAL, DIFFERENT from the rest of the so called higher species of animals.
This is not to say that we aren’t capable of realizing that peace is better than war. It’s just acknowledging that some of us for various reasons are always ready for a fight, that some of us are always LOOKING for a fight.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe there will always be people who feel justified in killing or enslaving other people, seizing their property.
Wars can be VERY profitable for the winners.
As Mackinder put it, “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland.”
http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/eBooks/Articles/1904%20HEARTLAND%20THEORY%20HALFORD%20MACKINDER.pdf
The Berlin-Baghdad Railway as a Cause of World War I
https://www.scribd.com/document/219947900/The-Berlin-baghdad-Railway-as-a-Cause-of-World-War-i
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_railway#Role_in_origins_of_World_War_I
OFM,
I would recommend reading 6 seconds in Dallas by Joshua Thompson. He did what the Warren Commission should have done in terms of analysis.
It’s interesting that there was no gun powder residue on Oswald’s face after the assassination.
Allen Dulles was one of the slimeist beings ever to exist on this planet, and that is saying something.
Have you read
The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government ?
https://www.amazon.com/Devils-Chessboard-Dulles-Americas-Government/dp/0062276174
Dulles’s decade as the director of the CIA—which he used to further his public and private agendas—were dark times in American politics. Calling himself “the secretary of state of unfriendly countries,” Dulles saw himself as above the elected law, manipulating and subverting American presidents in the pursuit of his personal interests and those of the wealthy elite he counted as his friends and clients—colluding with Nazi-controlled cartels, German war criminals, and Mafiosi in the process. Targeting foreign leaders for assassination and overthrowing nationalist governments not in line with his political aims, Dulles employed those same tactics to further his goals at home, Talbot charges, offering shocking new evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Roger wrote: I’m not a conspiracy nut but……..
Yes, you are. Your above post leaves no doubt whatsoever, you are just another conspiracy theory nut.
9/11 was master mined by Asama Bin Laden and carried out by 19 Islamic terrorists. Jet contrails are nothing but ice crystals. The HAARP antenna field was to study the aurora borealis and nothing else and Oswald really killed Kennedy.
Everything that happens is not really a giant conspiracy. Learn to live with it.
Yep, it always seemed to me a bunch of pissed off young Arabs and Persians did it.
The “Great American Century” thesis, where it was stated they needed a “event” to put forward their agenda, made me examine it pretty throughly.
It was the pissed off Arabs and Persians.
http://mashable.com/2017/10/21/elon-musk-boring-company-tunnel-maryland/#3_tyq4.8xsqT
Musk will probably play off a few various jurisdictions against each other before he decides on the location of the first large scale tunnel.
But considering how successful he has been in other endeavors, I’m ready to believe he will succeed in this one too.
The last sentence from the link Survivalist posted:
“Two weeks before Cobb’s information landed with her CIA handlers in Mexico, the commission had issued its final report in Washington and shut down its investigation.”
Even though there is plenty of evidence at least strongly suggestive of a cover up, it doesn’t necessarily reflect badly on the competence of the Warren Commission.
GLOBAL CO2 EMISSIONS STALLED FOR THE THIRD YEAR IN A ROW
“The annual assessment of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the JRC and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) confirms that CO2 emissions have stalled for the third year in a row.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171020105341.htm
Too bad the atmosphere does not agree.
Well, there’s more to the atmosphere than CO2. Meanwhile:
WARM WATERS MELTING ANTARCTIC ICE SHELVES MAY HAVE APPEARED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN OVER 7,000 YEARS
“Now, for possibly the first time in 7,000 years, a phenomenon known as “upwelling” (the upward flow of warmer ocean water to the surface), is thought to have caused recent ice shelf collapse around the continent—and the glacial thinning associated with it.”
https://theconversation.com/warm-waters-melting-antarctic-ice-shelves-may-have-appeared-for-the-first-time-in-over-7-000-years-82016
Inveterate party-goers, we two-legged naked apes heedlessly withdrew 250 million years of fossil sunlight from Earth’s savings account and binged like mice in a corn silo. Then we vomited all that carbon into the atmosphere. It will take a very long time to clean up, even after the mice have long gone.
It’s not really 250M years of sunlight – it’s about a month’s worth: just divide the likely total consumption of fossil fuel into the continuous sunlight input of 100 terawatts.
No question that our burning of FF will create enormous damage, and take a long time to clean up…
Yep, fossil fuels are about as low in efficiency as one can get. Not only did it take many millions of years to make the coal, oil and gas using low efficiency plant life but it took millions of years of erosion to bury them, all solar driven.
All that time and sunlight to make a month’s worth of energy. Not a viable energy source, barely satisfies the short term.
We are using about 10,000 years of ancient sunlight a day–
What could possibly go wrong?
This
Well, that’s kind’ve the point: that 250M year thing is misleading.
We only need a tiny fraction of sunlight. Human civilization generates roughly 12-20 terawatts, and the sun drops about 100,000 TW, 24×7 365 days per year.
So, humans only need about .02% of the total daily sunlight that hits the earth.
Ah, but accessing that energy is the problem.
Why else would we be dependent on ancient sunlight?
The energy lotto has been a fun win.
But the last time we were living on real time energy inputs we had 700 million people on Earth, oceans full of fish, intact ecosystems, and continents to plunder.
That is all gone.
Yes, in the year 1700 accessing the power of sunlight, wind and water was harder than burning stuff.
That’s no longer true. Solar PV and wind power are now cheaper and easier than coal, even if you don’t deal with the majority of the pollution costs of coal. Of course, if you deal with the 18 cents per kWh of pollution & environmental costs, then coal is an instant goner.
But we haven’t replaced it.
And money is not energy.
Lets talk when we get beyond 25%.
In 2016, renewable energy sources accounted for about 10% of total U.S. energy consumption and about 15% of electricity generation.
we haven’t replaced it.
Well, geez, give it a little time. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
And money is not energy.
No, but wind and solar have high E-ROI.
Lets talk when we get beyond 25%.
Iowa is at 36%.
36% of electrical energy.
(which is quite good! But it ranks 10th)
http://files.gazlab.com/content-host/c3charts/projects/template-bar-chart/index.html#Cleanpowerrankings
Have a long way to go for transportation, heating, etc.
In Oregon, where I live, we have lots of hydro, and I see new PV going in—
it ranks 10th
Yeah, good reminder that hydro works very well!
Hi Gone fishing,
I would expect there will be annual variation in emissions from ocean, forest fires, permafrost melt, and many factors I have not considered (variation in forest regrowth and changes in agriculture due to droughts, floods etc).
Aside from that even if emissions have not increased, there will continue to be an increase in atmospheric CO2 with a constant level of emissions at the 2014 level (this includes only fossil fuel emissions in the “stalled” category in Doug’s linked article).
The emissions from biomass burning, forest fires and land use change are not very well estimated as you suggest (I think), there can also be variation in net emissions from the ocean from year to year.
So generally the changes in atmospheric CO2 would not agree with emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels, we need these to decrease and this will happen as fossil fuels peak and fossil fuel prices increase, though perhaps not as quickly as is needed.
Here is the weekly averages of atmospheric CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa for the last 7 years.
Last data point is last week, horizontal marks are two years, vertical is 4 ppm.
CO2 is a fast mixing gas, I don’t see a slow down of increase for the last three years. In fact it looks like the rate has increased in the last three years. We should see a downward inflection of slope if the rate stopped increasing.
Hi Gonefishing,
As I believe I said, the report was for fossil fuel emissions only. There are other sources of CO2 and they vary over time. Also the amount of carbon sequestered by land and ocean varies substantially year to year and the estimates are not very precise. The carbon cycle is far from simple, the amount of carbon emissions sequestered has averaged roughly 56% from 1960-2015 with the rest remaining in the atmosphere (this includes fossil fuels, cement production, and land use change).
Annual variations are quite large ranging from 20% to 80% with large uncertainty in the estimates.
See http://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/GCP/ for most recent Global Carbon Budget.
So what are these natural variations that just happened to coincidentally appear at the same time as a so called reduction in anthropogenic reduction to counteract it? I am interested and will add them into my calculations.
Hi Gonefishing,
There is not a one to one correspondence between changes in fossil fuel emissions and changes in atmospheric CO2.
First there are changes in land use, forest fires, release or uptake of carbon from soil, permafrost, and the ocean, and volcanic eruptions. This list is no doubt incomplete.
None of these are measured very accurately.
One can assume that over the long run these are all relatively constant, but the data we do have suggests wide variation over time and the amount of carbon sequestered by the Earth system varies from 20% to 80% annually over the 1960-2016 period (with wide uncertainty in the measurements).
Like most else in climate science there are a variety of models as well with large differences from model to model.
Ok, nothing new.
Well the actual emissions may have stalled but CO2 in the atmosphere is still rising and emissions of other greenhouse gases such as methane due to agriculture are still rising so the overall effect is that we are still pretty much fucked, unless we drastically change course. By WE, I’m really talking about most of our kids, as us older folk probably ain’t gonna be around to really see the shit hit the fan.
Daily CO2
Mauna Loa Observatory | Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations
October 21, 2017 404.23 ppm NOAA-ESRL
October 21, 2016 401.87 ppm NOAA-ESRL
Correct, CO2 has been rising since the 1800’s when there was just a tiny amount of coal used for trains and industry. Even if we cut emissions all they way to near 0, Co2 would still be rising because it takes thousands or millions of years for CO2 to fall. That’s why geoengineering is getting a serious look, we need negative emissions, but it’s unlikely to save us. Its a first step, but stable emissions does not at all mean stable levels.
That’s why geoengineering is getting a serious look, we need negative emissions,
There is only one form of geoengineering that makes any sense!
.
I think it is an accounting “error”.
Disclaimer: Earth’s atmosphere is composed of about 78% Nitrogen and 21% Oxygen by volume. No other gas constitutes more than 1%. As a matter of fact, CO2 is a trace gas representing approximately 0.04% of the volume of dry air in the atmosphere. What follows is an illustrative graphic depicting a suitable framework into which we can all place the Mauna Loa measurements.
Yep, but where are your relationships defining the heating role of GHG’s and where are your equations relating them (they are not independent variables)?
You can’t just weigh something or measure it’s volume and state a heating or energy effect. That would make dynamite merely a paperweight. You are missing almost all of the science involved. Go back to knitting or golf.
Just one question, why isn’t oxygen or nitrogen a greenhouse gas?
Ned comments here under several monikers
https://mobile.twitter.com/NikolovScience
Total lune.
I remember when the argument Louis presents made a great impression on me……… and I already knew a great deal of real science at that time.
It doesn’t make intuitive sense that such a small change in inputs into such a huge system would bring about substantial change.
But then I learned MORE science, and it became obvious to me that yes, sometimes just changing an input just a tiny little bit can result in enormous changes over time.
Adding just a little more CO2 to the blend year after year has, over time, enriched the CO2 content of the atmosphere to the point that it traps incoming solar energy more effectively than it did previously.
The amount of heat energy arriving from the sun is basically constant, in historical terms, in human terms, but LESS of that heat is now being leaked back out into space than formerly, because CO2 is in effect a SUPERB atmospheric insulator.
CO2’s sorta like Brylcreem, a little dab’ll do ya.
The essentially constant amount of incoming solar energy used to leak back out into space as fast as it arrived. That’s not happening anymore.
So the Earth is gradually accumulating a portion of the incoming solar energy in the form of warmer oceans, warmer soils, and warmer air.
It’s getting warmer, and it’s going to continue to get warmer, on average, all over the planet, until the planet gets hot enough to radiate heat energy as fast as solar energy arrives, and restores the balance between incoming and outgoing energy.
Yo, Louis Tennessee,
If all the idiots, in all the villages left their villages and formed a village of idiots…
In that village YOU would be THE VILLAGE IDIOT!
.
I often do reverse image searches for what Ned posts here under his various monikers. Some of the images appear nowhere but on Twitter. This image posted above leads to antisemitic climate denial websites i.e sea level rise can’t be a real threat because Jews are buying coastal real estate.
https://tinyurl.com/y7zlf459
an ossified egotism winnows down awareness to manageable bits of casuistry:
“I just shovelled three feet of snow from my driveway. Global Warming…my frozen butt.” “I think too much political hay is made from weather. Our ancestors braved it and it was part of their lives,” arrive the (verbatim) quotes as seen on my Facebook newsfeed.
Hi Fred,
In the report it is only CO2 emissions that are covered through 2016, (with not much increase from 2012 to 2016 for CO2 emissions from fossil fuels).
Data for other GHG is only through 2012, see page 2 of link below
http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/booklet2017/CO2_and_GHG_emissions_of_all_world_countries_booklet_online.pdf
also agricultural data is not available after 2014, so land use change etc is not well estimated for 2015 and 2016 as far as total carbon emissions, the focus here is on fossil fuel emissions mostly.
In the report it is only CO2 emissions that are covered through 2016, (with not much increase from 2012 to 2016 for CO2 emissions from fossil fuels).
Yes, I was trying to acknowledged that when I said: “emissions may have stalled but CO2 in the atmosphere continues to rise.”
Even though I didn’t explicitly state: CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, that was what I meant.
Hi Fred,
When emissions fell in 1979-1983, atmospheric CO2 also continued to rise, no doubt there must be a lag between falling emissions and a decrease in the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2. Probably carbon emissions need to be reduced to under 2 Gt C/year ( a factor of more than 5) to stabilize atmospheric carbon eventually. Even at 1 Gt C per year emissions we may still see atmospheric carbon levels rising due to other feedbacks (permafrost melt, forest fires, and less snow cover) as Global temperature rises. The sooner we can get to low or zero carbon emissions the better.
We need to save the fuel so we can keep warm in the coming ice age. 🙂
Fred, I just had two back to back encounters with hard right conspiracy theory guys. After talking to them (they both sounded like a recording of Koch talking points plus a bunch of conspiracy stuff thrown in) at length I have come to the conclusion that we are fucked. It felt like talking to a fundamentalist Christian about evolution. Did you know all the scientists are on the government till and falsifying their data? Did you know that we can’t possibly know things because we haven’t gone through them before or were not there to take temperature measurements? And more garbage.
I ended up saying to the one guy “So you believe in nothing and everyone is lying on both sides?”
Not because we can’t do things about the situation but because humans will always be so divided on the subject that concerted effort other than for profit will never really occur. Even some the ones that say they are for CO2 reduction seem to have their own agenda and set of rock hard beliefs that would help undermine any strong efforts.
The human mind is a very strange place.
I guess we will just have to learn to like the heat. Maybe we can attach radiative fins for heat exchange during the hot periods or wear solar powered air conditioned suits. Not sure how we will help the plants, maybe put up big sun shades for them.
“Fred, I just had two back to back encounters with hard right conspiracy theory guys. After talking to them (they both sounded like a recording of Koch talking points plus a bunch of conspiracy stuff thrown in) at length I have come to the conclusion that we are fucked. It felt like talking to a fundamentalist Christian about evolution.”-
I knew we were fucked along time ago, and was reminded of this when Trump wasn’t defeated by 30 points. btw if I was a constructive republican strategist I would have put a ticket of Kasich/Rubio on the board.
The planet has been in a flux between being icebox and sauna for most of the last 4.5 Billion years, that is all without mankind doing anything at all. Like most of my friends, along with those it sounds like you talked to, my opinion is, it’s unique human arrogance to say without a doubt, human activity is the only cause of warming. Yes perhaps some human activity contributes to carbon dioxide level, in some way, but my thought is there is likely many more naturally occurring things even more responsible. Science has yet to investigate the hundreds, if not thousands of natural links we have going on here.
Regards,
Ralph
Cass Tech ’64
Science has yet to investigate the hundreds, if not thousands of natural links we have going on here.
Not that I really expect you to use it let alone grasp the implications, but what the hell, give it a shot it is free! https://iris.ai/
Suggestion: take a scientific peer reviewed paper, read it first, then plug it into the IRIS AI search engine and see all the links to other papers.
I grabbed this one from Google Scholar just for shits and giggles
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/321/5891/926
Spreading Dead Zones and Consequences for Marine Ecosystems
This is what IRIS returns if you plug that paper into the search engine:
Spreading Dead Zones and Consequences for Marine Ecosystems
I’ve identified 257 related papers and grouped them by concept.
Now plug each of the returned papers back into IRIS.
Guess what?
Science is already investigating the hundreds, if not thousands of natural links we have going on here. And you are pretty much just another ignorant troll!
Reducing Aerodynamic Drag and Fuel Consumption
https://gcep.stanford.edu/pdfs/ChEHeXOTnf3dHH5qjYRXMA/10_Browand_10_11_trans.pdf
WATTS & WORRAL : WATERMELON WARMUNISTAS ?
Australian coal flack Eric Worrall’s latest WUWT Guest essay:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2017/10/watts-worral-exposed-as-watermelon.html
Tesla now has an agreement to create a factory in Shanghai.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/22/16516064/tesla-reached-deal-factory-china-shanghai-electric-vehicles-cars
And it plans to disrupt car insurance.
http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-liberty-mutual-create-customize-insurance-package-2017-10
Bill Clinton sought State’s permission to meet with Russian nuclear official during Obama uranium decision
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/356323-bill-clinton-sought-states-permission-to-meet-with-russian-nuclear
Yep—
And our “journalists” are tracking down 100,000 worth of face book advertisements.
Billy got 500,00o for one speech to a Russian Investment Bank.
Clinton Foundation got 145 million in “contributions”.
“When people cease to believe in God, they do not henceforth believe in nothing. ”
When people replace their traditional beliefs with new ones, they find it expedient and even NECESSARY to ignore or deny the inconsistencies of their new set of beliefs.
If you ( rhetorical of course ) believe in the current liberal mantra/ dogma, and I DO PERSONALLY believe in most of it, it’s VERY likely you will reflexively defend this mantra/ dogma even when you know certain parts of it don’t hold water.
As a matter of fact, the more problems there are with some particular point of belief, the more likely you are to defend it to the point of forgetting all about critical thinking and resorting to childlike arguments. HB has never had any REAL answers to my criticisms of the faults of HRC, and the current day D party leadership, so the best he can do is call me names, which actually furthers MY own agenda, namely moving the party towards the Sanders camp and away from the Republican Lite camp.
There’s a mindset in the media, and in academia, that leads the people in these professions to identify the enemy as anybody who disagrees with their politics and their personal agendas.
It’s the same old same old culture war. Professors and university educated journalists are about as prone to this failing as the backwoods yahoos who reflexively believe anything bad about liberal politics and climate science.
When things don’t go to suit you, your reaction is to find ways to blame your problems on your enemies. So you focus on political ads, while ignoring the literal crimes of your favorites.
I hereby label ANYBODY a goddamned fool who believes that less than about HALF the contributions coming into the Clinton family slush funds were made for any other reason than to buy access and influence. The identity of the donors and the timelines of their donations tell us all we need to know about this aspect of HRC’s record.
Since people like HB will never ever face up to the fact that HRC lost because she was a lousy candidate by almost any objective measure such as reputation with the voters as a whole, etc, they just naturally focus their efforts on whatever their enemies did or might have done.
Yep, old HB will NEVER EVER admit publicly that HRC lost ten or twenty or fifty times as many votes among the REAL core D party voters by hobnobbing with banksters, calling working class people deplorables, calling Sanders supporters spoiled children, supporting globalization when places such as the town nearest my home are suffering mightily from the loss of industries shipped overseas, etc. AS SHE LOST TO FAKE NEWS.
Ya see it’s not just the jobs lost actually working in the textile and furniture industries, it’s all the other smaller businesses that failed as the result of these industries leaving town. It’s the landlords who owned small buildings and houses rented to these former workers. It’s the people in the police department who find it necessary to arrest former law abiding citizens they have known since childhood …… citizens who have taken to doing whatever they COULD to make ends meet. It’s the management of the local hospital that sees so many MORE uninsured patients coming in for treatment that will have to be written off.
And he will never admit publicly that while the Russians were fucking with our election, Clinton as Secretary of State was involved in fucking with elections by actively participating in sending soldiers with real guns to places where they were shooting people and getting shot, lol.
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
OldFarmerMac aka KGB Trumpster(OFM), I see your Russian Republican spin continues that got Trump elected.
*****
The Clinton Foundation convenes businesses, governments, NGOs, and individuals to improve global health and wellness, increase opportunity for women and girls, reduce childhood obesity, create economic opportunity and growth, and help communities address the effects of climate change.
Charities Performing Similar Types of Work Highly Rated
Charity Name & State Overall Score Overall Rating
The Clinton Foundation (NY) 93.91
Pangaea Global AIDS (CA) 87.25
St. Boniface Haiti Foundation (MA) 96.46
Mustard Seed Communities (MA) 96.66
Nazarene Compassionate Ministries Inc. (KS) 90.85
Compare These Charities (Highly Rated)
https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=16680
******
The Red Cross was ranked as an “A-” to the Clinton Foundation’s “A” by CharityWatch, but the larger Charity Navigator didn’t rate the latter organization until recently.
With respect to the original tweet, it was true that CharityWatch gave the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation an “A” rating by CharityWatch in April 2016, while by contrast they assigned an “A-” grade to the American Red Cross of August 2016. While the Red Cross achieved a higher “Program Percentage” (share of monies allocated to services) than the Clinton Foundation at 90% percent vs. 88%, the Red Cross was less efficient because they spent more money to raise money ($30 per $100) than the Clinton Foundation ($3 per $100) did, according to CharityWatch.
However, the comparison arguably constitutes cherry picking, in that CharityWatch is a far smaller, atypical arbiter of charity ratings. Most news outlets turn to Charity Navigator when seeking out figures for any one charity organization’s effectiveness, but no such claim was proffered about the comparative rankings of the American Red Cross and the Clinton Foundation by Charity Navigator. That’s likely because while the American Red Cross has achieved an overall Charity Navigator rating of 85% (80% for financial organization and 93% for accountability & transparency), Charity Navigator maintains no rating for the Clinton Foundation at all.
https://www.snopes.com/clinton-foundation-scores-higher-as-a-charity-than-the-red-cross/
*******
Trumpster, your a fucking moron
““When someone responds to the most sensitive situation in the world like this, “moron” is being kind.
Rex Tillerson Had the Very Best Reason for Calling Trump a Moron”
*******
“Bob Corker: Donald Trump’s Legacy Will Be The ‘Debasement Of Our Nation’
Trump fired back at Corker on Twitter, calling the GOP senator a “lightweight.””
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bob-corker-donald-trump_us_59ef3032e4b03535fa93ce16?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
I realize most people posting here are pessimistic about the future. And those who are optimistic appear to ignore realities.
What I am wondering is if, as we are expanding our military, heading toward war, increasing the national debt, discouraging renewable energy, and stifling science, is there anything out of all of this which might change the direction we are headed?
During the Bush years I kept telling myself that if things got bad enough, people would want a change. They did get bad enough and we did get a change.
Now the propaganda machine seems to be working so well that the country could be devastated and that right wing base would just push that much harder for authoritarian control.
I realize many of you believe we are in overshoot, but I still have trouble dealing with the idea that in my lifetime we have gone from prosperity to destruction. Things must have looked pretty gloomy during the Dust Bowl, the Depression, and WWII. But we pulled through.
I have hoped that China could lead the way in some areas, but it is hard to tell, reading the latest political news from there, if they can balance leading the world globally with internal politics.
Don’t believe the propaganda machine.
We’re not heading from prosperity to destruction. Renewables & EVs aren’t being stopped by the Republicans. The stuff about N. Korea is all theater: both the NK government and Trump are playing to their own base, not to anyone else.
Hi Nick,
The people who started WWI were playing to their own bases, likewise.
Personally I’m somewhat worried that between Trump and doughboy we may wind up with a war, which conceivably could be a big one. The odds that there will be a war with NK are probably pretty low, but I’m pretty sure they aren’t trivial.
There’s a big difference: Germany really did want a war. The cultures of the time glorified war (was was thought to be good for men – the idea that warfare is disabling for veterans is a very modern concept_ and empire, and the Germans felt left out of empire. They wanted a war, and it was just a matter of finding an excuse for it. It would have required great good luck to prevent.
Trump and NK’s leaders don’t want a war at all. They want theatre. It’s analogous to Republicans under Obama who didn’t care very much about the Affordable Care Act (under Bush they created Medicare Part D without a second thought) – they simply wanted to create a propaganda weapon. So, those 90 votes to repeal “Obamacare”? All theatre. Which is why they couldn’t repeal it when they had power: they had not idea what to do, they had no sensible proposals, and their base actually wanted the ACA, once they understood that their new insurance and the demonized “Obamacare” were actually the same thing.
Trump wants theatre. He wants ratings, he wants viewers, he wants to get his base mad and scared. NK’s leaders want to scare their citizens. They don’t want war – they just want the threat of war from the evil outsiders. That’s why NK and Trump suit each other so perfectly – they both want the same thing: scary headlines.
Now, is there a chance they’ll make a mistake and start a major war? Yeah, there is, and that’s a little scary. But let’s be clear: it would be a miscalculation, a mistake. It will take great bad luck for it to happen.
Meanwhile The AI robots are coming… They are everywhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=43&v=Zj-YoTJPSD4
Built Robotics – Autonomous Track Loader (ATL)
There’s going to be a lot of disruption and job loss in a lot of sectors. Time to start getting serious about universal income and universal healthcare. Either that, or a completely new paradigm needs to be created ASAP!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOmQqBX6Dn4
The Future of Humanity – with Yuval Noah Harari
The Royal Institution
Hi Fred,
I HAVE to agree with you, some sort of universal income scheme is going to be necessary, there’s no getting around it. Jobs are disappearing at an alarming rate. This is obvious, but it does NOT mean we ought to get rid of jobs wholesale any sooner than NECESSARY by shipping them overseas.
I’m devoting considerable time to the study of what might work, and what doesn’t, and WHY, in terms of the success of such schemes.
My current opinion is that unless there is a way to make the recipients of such income PAY for it, after some fashion, any guaranteed income scheme is guaranteed to fail, and fail catastrophically, long term, in a diverse and stratified society.
It’s hard to say what final form this failure might actually take, but it could take the form of an elitist dominated government controlling the population via food and shelter rations, or it could take the form of a collapsed society along the lines of some place such as Somalia. That would make the government as master scenario look pretty good. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
What I do know is that idle hands find SOMETHING to do, and in the majority of cases, if it isn’t WORK, it’s some sort of mischief.
And I DO know that a substantial number of people are more than happy to live on welfare, getting by from day to day, without working much if at all, rather than actually working regularly , which is NOT fun or fulfilling for about ninety five percent of the population. It’s just hard and boring, and leaves you worn out.
I could be playing cards right now, mid morning on a Monday, and burning a joint and enjoying a brew, with four or five guys I know who are all perfectly capable of working, all of whom live within a ten minute drive, who have managed to get on disability….. except for the pesky fact they won’t get moving before midafternoon.
I’m not judging these guys any more than I’m condemning the children of the local elite for taking it easy at the local country club, and going skiing in Colorado, or south to the sun, when the weather gets cold. They’re just taking advantage of whatever resources they can put their hands on, like any OTHER living organism. Two of them are close enough kin to me that I know our exact relationship.
I’m not saying they DON’T work…… sometimes. Out of sight of the public, and strictly for cash or barter. And they are very skillful when it comes to making a little money go a LONG way, and since they don’t have JOBS as such, they have plenty of time to make their money go a long way….. they change the oil in their own cars, they hit a lot of yard sales, they spend a lot of time on CL, and buy any real bargains that pop up close by. They live in shacks or even decent houses that belong to them, or to relatives, or that can be rented dirt cheap, because housing is plentiful in places where jobs are less plentiful and people are moving away or dying off, especially from the poorer neighborhoods.
The women with kids generally have husbands in all except legal fact, which enables him to work, in most cases, and her to collect whatever social services can pay, no real questions asked, from food stamps to free lunches at school to rental assistance, etc etc etc. Chances are she works too……. sometimes, when she can figure out a good hustle. A day or two a week
Now I’m thinking that in places like Scandinavia, such schemes can work, and work reasonably well, because Scandinavian societies are highly homogeneous compared to Yankee society, and the norms are VERY different in terms of personal values and belief systems.
I can’t remember the name of it right off the bat, but once when I was teaching ag, I was given the job of supervising twenty kids who were supposed to get some introductory training during summer break in the construction trades, while collecting a very modest paycheck. I found out VERY quickly that about fifteen of them knew goddamned well they weren’t going to strike a tap at the proverbial snake when they signed up. They showed up wearing NICE clothes, their first excuse, lol. They KNEW I couldn’t fire them, JUST as they knew I couldn’t FAIL them in my classroom. They got their checks, and the four or five who possessed some minimal sense of responsibility assembled the new bleachers with me showing them how, actually learning something in the process.
Am I judging that fifteen? In a sense , yes, but they were doing just what everybody else is doing, in general terms, taking advantage of whatever opportunities come their way.I never turned down an unemployment check myself after a two month stint of six twelves or even seven twelves in a nuke on a maintenance shutdown. I didn’t NEED that unemployment check, but all I had to do to get it was apply for three jobs, and there weren’t any available consistent with the rules of collecting, so I put in my three apps, which took maybe an hour or two hours a week, max. I don’t feel like I stole that money, and I was most certainly legally entitled to it. I didn’t write the rules that ARE written, and I didn’t break any of the unwritten ones in taking it, according to my own ethics.
I worked at projects of my own while on unemployment that didn’t generate any CASH income,excepting the days I spent reading or fishing. Those days added considerably to my net worth, and the work I did on them was STRICTLY legal. You see if you build a deck on a house that you own and live in,or landscape the yard, that’s within the rules. And if it happens that a year or two later, you move out and sell it, or rent it, you don’t have to give back the extra money due to that deck being there.
SO….. I’m hoping to hear any thoughtful responses as to HOW we can make a universal income scheme work, and reading any links about such schemes proposed or actual, etc.
I’m thinking home printers that will run off sheets of 20 dollar bills (or maybe 100’s given inflation) indistinguishable from the stuff government produce; save a trip to the bank and you won’t have to worry about catching some dread disease from handling other people’s money. Hell, if the government can run off a trillion when they’re feeling a bit short………….
but it does NOT mean we ought to get rid of jobs wholesale any sooner than NECESSARY by shipping them overseas.
Yes, but that is NOT what is happening. Case in point, There are millions of truck drivers in the US, I doubt you could argue that when self driving vehicles become ubiquitous, it will be a consequence of deliberate offshoring of such jobs. 9 out of 10 manufacturing jobs are currently threatened by automation and not because of shipping jobs overseas.
Furthermore highly skilled white collar jobs are also seriously threatened by AI and it is not because they might be shipped to China, Not to mention that automation and AI will eliminate the vast majority of jobs as we know them today, everywhere in the world. This is not a problem unique to the US. Human beings are very quickly becoming a useless class if the old economic paradigm continues… I certainly won’t pretend to know where this is going, other than to suggest the future of work or gainful employment is shaping up to be very different than it has been up until now.
I also absolutely do not buy the myth that the majority of people are not interested in engaging in some kind of fulfilling activity given the opportunity! IMHO what we currently have in the US is a system that is stupid beyond belief, but that is a separate dissertation.
Joe Rogan & Sam Harris on Universal Basic Income
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_ZSeHiix50
This is a discussion that every citizen of every country will need to take part in and it is only just beginning!
Automation has been eliminating “all the jobs” for hundreds of years. 100 years ago most people worked on farms. Now it’s 1%. The same is happening to manufacturing. So, what’s different this time, if any?
The real question is: is there still work to be done? Look around – is there stuff that could and should be done? Healthcare, medical research, childcare, eldercare, education, infrastructure construction, environmental cleanup etc. – it’s obvious that there’s enough work to keep everyone busy for quite a long time. It’s just(!) a matter of organizing people and society to “git er done”.
A few parts of the structural problem: low wage levels for low skill work; the wealthy are trying to cripple government programs which are sometimes needed to fund work, increase minimum wages, etc.; drug convictions cause criminal records that prevent re-entry to the aboveground economy.
Besides building a whole new energy infrastructure, refitting existing buildings for better energy conservation and to produce energy, there will be the mitigation and moving of infrastructure due to sea level rise. plus all the manual stuff that needs to be done, like my neighbor having her deck replaced or a plumbing repair job, etc.
Refrigeration needs vast improvement, people can work on that and implement it.
Here is a “talking ” refrigerated railcar:
We also have a whole bank of customer service people who monitor our cars 24/7,” he continues. “They know if a car’s temperature changes, if the doors are open during transit or if there is any other kind of issue. We can send technicians out to fix any problems that arise in transit, and we alert the authorities if our electronic door alarms indicate that a car has been broken into. With all of this technology, losing loads or having loads arrive outside of the customers temperature specs has become a thing of the past.”
Part of the strength of the RMP is the two-way technology that allows Cryo-Trans to “talk” and “listen” to the railcars. This technology allows the cars to send signals to the main office, showing the fleet’s location and each car’s temperature. Additionally, Cryo-Trans’ operators can remotely change a car’s temperature or turn the refrigeration on and off.
In November, Cryo-Trans introduced its new super-insulated boxcars for beverage and canned-goods customers. These incorporate the same technology Cryo-Trans uses in its refrigerated cars, and also have five inches of insulation around the box to provide maximum-possible temperature protection. Now these goods can safely be shipped by rail and Cryo-Trans can guarantee the product won’t freeze or overheat. The company’s car building line is booked with new orders for the near future, Haksteen says.
http://www.tlimagazine.com/sections/trucking-and-freight/1933-cryo-trans-inc
Automation has been eliminating “all the jobs” for hundreds of years. 100 years ago most people worked on farms. Now it’s 1%. The same is happening to manufacturing. So, what’s different this time, if any?
EVERYTHING!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOmQqBX6Dn4
The Future of Humanity – with Yuval Noah Harari
It’s never that way in the movies! Machines are our friends (usually).
Well, except for the AI wars. That is the most likely scenario for fast AI development, an AI military race. AI fits the military mindset.
The only reason I can see for pursuing AI is to help solve our predicaments. Otherwise we are just playing a game of pretend.
I haven’t said that the MAJORITY of people can’t find something useful and fulfilling to do if freed from the need to work to support themselves.
That’s misdirection and bullshit.
What I SAID is that a SUBSTANTIAL number of people are satisfied to live on welfare while supplementing their income by various hustles, and this is a perfectly obvious truth to anybody who actually has any CONTACT with the lower rungs of American society.
Anybody who knows a few rednecks who hate the guts of every body with an easy lavish lifestyle understands where I’m coming from. If you don’t know any such people, then you will never really understand that they believe the only real difference between them and YOU is a MATTER OF LUCK. If good luck presents them with an opportunity to latch onto a few bucks any way they can, they feel PERFECTLY satisfied and ENTITLED to do so, no shame attached at all.
They will take the bennies just like old HB brags about paying trivial taxes on his capital gains, while some clerk working at one of his oil companies is paying thirty or forty percent total in federal, state and local income taxes.
Yes, truckers jobs are going to disappear. So are cashiers jobs, lawn care jobs, cooks jobs, and countless other jobs.
But it’s still true that the faster this transition happens, the harder it is on the people who depend on the jobs that are lost, and the greater the backlash.
Anybody who cannot understand, or REFUSES to understand, that one of the BIGGEST reasons Trump is president today is the political backlash coming from all the people scared of globalization is either a fool or a boneheaded partisan unwilling to talk about such issues honestly.
We’re going to need some time, more time than we have available probably, to deal with this problem. One thing that will help is to preserve the jobs that are being lost, and will be lost, to globalization to the extent we can, for as long as we can.
I know lots of people PERSONALLY who are within striking distance of retirement, people in their fifties who will be ok if their current jobs in manufacturing, etc, last another ten years or so. Younger people who have more time to realize that the writing is on the wall will have more incentive to get into a line of work that will not disappear, hopefully, before it’s too late, before they’re saddled with responsibilities and getting on in years.
Now while I have sympathy for people in other parts of the world, just about every body I know personally lives HERE in the USA, and I’m WAY more concerned about THEIR welfare than people I have never met and never will.
Feel free to call me names for saying so.
Virtually all the hard core liberals I have ever met who have money enough to do so live and work in places where they have NEAR ZERO contact with the underclasses of this country, or the world for that matter.
I’m not much interesting in listening to hypocritical bullshit coming from people who live in gated communities and drink six dollar coffee about how much they love poor people.
Now here’s link from WIRED, which contains a few lines that just MIGHT ring a few bells in the heads of people who really UNDERSTAND biological realities, one of which is that naked apes are cutthroat competitors and that there are always going to be naked apes that will exploit every possible advantage to available to them.
https://www.wired.com/story/teslas-secret-second-floor/
“Though it was obvious why we were building the systems at the heart of our product, such as the battery and motors, many people had difficulty understanding why we manufactured high-voltage cables, displays, fuses, and other smaller systems.”
“The answer is simple: Our goal wasn’t to build the best electric vehicle. It was to build the best premium car in the world that just happened to be an EV. This meant integrating technologies that were not readily available.”
“Why am I so passionate about this? Early in my career, I was a participant in the offshoring of US manufacturing. We built factories that were pushing the state of the art in several areas of technology—yet all of it was outside of the US. Because of this trend, American industry lost some of the fundamental knowledge that comes from building your own products.”
The author of this piece which I excerpted explains in some detail WHY an industry needs to be CONCENTRATED. It brings all the necessary knowledge and technology together in one place, where it can be applied to greatest effect.
The more we lose, the more WE WILL LOSE, when it comes to our leading position, or what’s left of that position, in the manufacturing world. The little bits we lose here and there wind up on the scale in favor of the countries that got the industries we export.
The LAST decent little local industrial supply house is closing any day in my local hometown. The factories used to support it, and it supported hundreds of small businessmen, loggers, farmers, construction guys, even homeowners who needed things. Lots of guys I grew up with who did poorly in school worked their way right on up the ladder starting as laborers or machine operators and eventually moving into maintenance, becoming skilled mechanics and eventually supervisors and even plant managers.
You aren’t going to learn very much other than showing up and being nice to customers selling fast food.
At some point, we are going to reach a tipping point whereby our manufacturing base has been crippled to such an extent, compared to that of other countries that are OUT FOR THEMSELVES, that these other countries are going to dominate the world the way we FORMERLY dominated the world.
A hell of a lot of people who are able to think rather well are already pointing out that we are already reduced to the point that we are relying on our military establishment to maintain our dominant position. This is unquestionably true, in my estimation.
OTHER people who can think rather well point out that we won’t be able to maintain this military advantage very much longer, if various other countries such as China and India become the manufacturing and scientific centers of the world, leaving us Yankees behind. This is also unquestionably true, in my estimation.
What the thinkers on the LEFTISH wing fail to realize, or at least articulate, is that history indicates that the winners ALWAYS take advantage……….. BIG advantage. In my estimation, history will repeat itself, as it has since the beginning of it, as far back as we know it. People on the rightish wing are usually rather quick to point out this aspect of history and human behavior.
I’m not personally interested in lowering my own living standard, or seeing the living standards of most of the people I know being lowered.
I’m not happy about the possibility that maybe someday China, India, Russia, or some other country, will be in a position to invade the oil patch, the way we have, or Central America, and that we won’t be in a position to do anything about it, just as nobody has been in a position to prevent THIS country from playing the global bully.
And I’m not happy about Trump being president, as much as anything because of the political backlash against globalization. If the D’s had remained in power for the last few decades, we would be a lot better off in many respects, especially in terms of the environment, which trumps all other issues.
Maybe the D’s will have sense enough in the next few elections to pay closer attention to the problems of the majority of the people of the country, the people who DON’T work in industries or professions that are sheltered from the effects of globalization.
I’ve met a few people personally who thought their jobs were safe forever, including a radiologist and a couple of computer programmers, who found out differently.
You know what they call a liberal who has just been bashed upside the head with a brick and robbed?
A newly minted conservative.
But I don’t IDENTIFY personally with EITHER camp when it comes to telling the truth the facts lead me to see it.
So when the liberals are right, as I see the facts, I say so, as in the case of environmental issues, personal rights, etc.
When conservatives are right, as when they say our public schools are rotten to the core in many places, I say so.
When jackasses such as Trump get elected because of political backlash, I say so. And I try to point out that the D’s should pay a little more attention when it comes to such backlash, so they can WIN.
Now I don’t think we can STOP automation. But I do think we can do some things to lessen the worst effects of it, and to allow the people of this country, and the world for that matter, more time to adjust to the new reality.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
Yes there is backlash from people who do not understand economics.
As I have pointed out many times before, protectionist measures may seem like a good idea, but they hurt those workers in industries that are net exporters in order to help those in industries where there is a net import of goods and hurt everybody with an increase in the level of inflation.
If you have children, you may realize that if given a choice they would eat only cake and ice cream, with candy for dessert.
The protectionist measures proposed by populists is the “cake and ice cream” policy for everyone approach.
You may think it’s a good idea, but you may have not gone beyond the introductory level in economics, or perhaps did intermediate microeconomics (which would apply for agriculture), but skipped the intermediate macroeconomics where some ideas from international economics get explored more fully than there is time for in an introductory macroeconomics course.
Hi Dennis ,
I understand your arguments, and recognize that they are sound, depending on the time frame involved , and whether you wish to talk about the AVERAGE citizen’s AVERAGE welfare, and if past history continues to hold.
I’ve done only two basic courses, junior and senior level full academic year courses, which were incidentally taught by econ professors to econ students, although my transcript says Ag ECON with the same identifying letters and numbers otherwise.
But I’ve read dozens of books on or closely related to the field since then, and I generally read books written by professionals with excellent reputations in their field. So for instance in biology, my personal favorites include guys such as Stephen Gould and Wilson, both Harvard professors. In psychology I read guys such as Pinker who the last time I checked was a professor at MIT.
( Now as to why I have read so many books, that’s simple. It’s what I wanted to do,above everything else, and I was fortunate enough to easily make enough money to indulge that want. Living in the woods in a camper for six months doesn’t cost much and I have done that ten times at least, with a valid grad student id that enabled me to check out almost any book available in a university library. . And in six months I could and did read as much or more than most guys going for a master or doctorate in their own field in a year. )
Since nobody else here in particular, and just about everywhere else in general ever has anything serious to say about the effects globalization has had SHORT TERM on the lower and a substantial portion of the so called middle class of this country, I try to plug that gap, and in particular I try to make people realize that while something may be GOOD in the long run, it can a disaster in the short run, depending on circumstances and its implementation.
Now you tell me.
How many people do you think voted for Trump because they were AFRAID they might lose their jobs and their homes, or have ALREADY lost them, to globalization?
I will go to my grave firmly convinced that ENOUGH such people voted for Trump to put him over the victory line, and into the White House.
Note that I occasionally point out the the R’s are mostly responsible for globalization, in terms of politics and trade agreements, etc.
But the D’s have been paying the price for it, politically, for the most part.
It’s one thing to support something in principle because it’s good overall on average or good long term for most people, but it’s something else to support it when supporting it leads to political disasters such as R party control of DC, most state houses, most local offices, etc.
Hi OFM,
Globalization is not the problem, automation is.
It is not enough to spout crap like Trump, one needs a policy. Eventually stupid people will realize that electing other stupid people with no policy ideas, is not smart.
What do we do with the people who would be hurt short term by protectionist measures.
Are you under the impression that the US has only imports and no exports?
Lots of people do not understand economics. Protectionism is a two edged sword.
The protectionist measures proposed by populists is the “cake and ice cream” policy for everyone approach.
You may think it’s a good idea, but you may have not gone beyond the introductory level in economics,…
To be honest, full disclosure, I skipped most of the economics courses myself. However I grew up in an international family and worked in the global economy from an early age. It was my experience that trade and supply chains were by nature multinational, I couldn’t imagine it any other way.
So whenever I hear someone push a protectionist or economic nationalist world view, literally every hair on the back of my neck stands up! I can’t imagine a worse possible way of proceeding at this juncture in world history.
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_autor_why_are_there_still_so_many_jobs/up-next
AUGIE PICADO
The real reason manufacturing jobs are disappearing
The reality is that shared production allows us to manufacture higher quality products at lower costs. It’s that simple. It allows us to get more out of the limited resources and expertise we have and at the same time benefit from lower prices. It’s really important to remember that for shared production to be effective, it relies on efficient cross-border movement of raw materials, components and finished products.
So remember this: the next time you’re hearing somebody try to sell you on the idea that protectionism is a good deal, it’s just not.
What I SAID is that a SUBSTANTIAL number of people are satisfied to live on welfare while supplementing their income by various hustles, and this is a perfectly obvious truth to anybody who actually has any CONTACT with the lower rungs of American society.
It may be true for the lower rungs of American society, though I have my doubts even about that. I mentioned that I think the US has a really stupid system in place to deal with poverty. It is counterproductive and rewards the wrong kinds of behavior.
However having worked with people from the lowest rungs of societies in the four corners of the planet, I’ll go out on a limb and say that it doesn’t hold for 95% of the rest of humanity. Extreme poverty is the rule not the exception! Humans have a basic need to be productive and to be respected for their contributions to their communities.
Hi Fred,
I agree…….
Except that once people are once somewhat better off, a SUBSTANTIAL portion of them, a LOT more than five percent, decide they like the laid back working as little as possible lifestyle, with the max free time, etc even if it means a low standard of living….. still higher than most people in places where life is REALLY tough, food is short, medical care and electricity scarce to non existent, etc.
I don’t pretend to know the answers. I’m hoping you can provide some. I’m all ears.
I gather reading between the lines that your extended family and peer group are collectively blessed with ambition and a strong work ethic, as mine has been, traditionally, for the last century.
But every body I know knows some dead beats. I have a couple of nephews that are content to just barely get by from one week to the next. Two of the guys I drink a beer with lots of afternoons are deadbeats. I don’t condemn them any more than I condemn ticks for sucking blood. They’ve found a way to survive, and they are surviving, and living substantially less stressful lives than a lot of people I know who work their tails off year in and year out.
I know several women who support worthless men who spend more on fishing and beer than they spend on supporting their families.
Once you have countless people who believe the system has fucked them over, whether it’s true, or not, then those same countless people are ready to fuck over the system at any opportunity. There are at least thirty such people here in the USA in my personal opinion.
This is not a good sign. Consumer debt is getting high again.
http://www.businessinsider.com/americans-are-more-indebted-than-ever-raising-economic-risks-2017-10
I tossed my credit cards a long time ago. People need to leave the land of MORE STUFF and enjoy life more. Maybe we should call it the land of MOREDUMB.
I have neighbors that blow through savings like it was infinite and use credit too. Sad when the rope runs out. I try to get them to do things that save them money, conserve energy and do enjoyable things. A few listen. Most just wait until life slams the lesson home and then they moan about how unfair it is. We live in a world of children in adult bodies.
Hi Boomer,
Data from Fred is only through the end of 2016, but to that point not much of a problem
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HDTGPDUSQ163N
Much different story when we look at the real numbers.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a study revealing that total household debt in the US has risen above recessionary highs. Driven primarily by growth in nonhousing-related debt, total household debt in the US climbed to $12.8 trillion in Q2 2017, surpassing the $12.7 trillion reached in Q3 2008.
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-household-debt-passes-recession-peak-2017-8
Those two data series seem consistent. The difference is the adjustment that comes from dividing by GDP.
GDP rose about 29% from 2008 to 2016 ($14.4T to 18.6T). So, if household debt is the same, then the ratio to GDP is roughly 29% lower.
Hi Gone fishing,
Let’s say someone has a car payment of $500 per month. If the person earns $20,000 per year they are in trouble as their income is only $1600 per month so making the payment will be difficult, someone earning $50,000 per year might be ok, though even at $4200/month and net of roughly $3400/month, this might barely be affordable depending on rent and utilities etc.
Basic point is that income matters so looking at debt without looking at income is not realistic.
Income has been going down for decades Dennis.
Hi Gonefishing,
Income is equal to GDP, if we do this in constant dollars to adjust for inflation we have real GDP per capita (the same as real income per capita).
For the US in 1996 real GDP per capita (2010$) was $39,681 per person in the US and in 2016 it was $52,195/person.
See
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDUSA
Feedback?
CLIMATE CHANGE MADE RECORD WILDFIRE SEASON WORSE
“The amount of fire activity in Canada, which currently is about 2½ million hectares has doubled since the 1970s. Not only has Canada experienced a record-breaking season, it’s been a historic year for wildfires across the globe. There have been deadly fires and historic fires in Chile, Portugal (twice), and California. The California fires will be the most expensive at tens of billions in losses.”
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/how-climate-change-made-2017-historic-wildfire-season-worse-british-columbia-alberta-waterton-lakes-national-park-lightning-caused-crowsnest-pass-saskatchewan-western-canada-global-warming-warmer-temperatures-winds/88074/
And,
DANGER TO AIR QUALITY FROM FOREST FIRES
“On top of the immediate danger to lives and livelihood, smoke from these destructive fires also poses a substantial risk to human health.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171019100805.htm
Sucks for the people and the forest life.
Nature always gives examples though. Just visit the red rock country of the American West to see what other areas of the West will turn into as the drying continues.
After seeing fossilized turtles in the Badlands of South Dakota many years ago, it solidified my view that change happens on a large scale on this planet and the changes become permanent from any human point of view. I am glad I live in a fairly wet area since the idiots around here are too dumb not to start forest fires in a drought (I am surrounded by forest).
http://www.dw.com/en/how-climate-change-is-increasing-forest-fires-around-the-world/a-19465490
Yup & speaking of Feedback feeding Feedback:
GROUNDWATER, TUNDRA FIRES MAY WORK TOGETHER TO THAW PERMAFROST
“The new study reveals that, after wildfire burns off a portion of organic rich soil that normally insulates permafrost, summer warmth penetrates deeper into the frozen soils, allowing groundwater to flow downgradient and potentially contributing to greater release of greenhouse gases.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171023094633.htm
Seems like a domino effect. Or maybe just how tipping points work, they all gang together. Dependent variables are so messy.
Of course maybe we just make up the variables for our convenience and there is only one thing actually, the system. I have been wondering if the system has only a certain small set of quasi-stable points and two stable points, sort of like a planetary quantum effect where only certain states are allowed.
From snowball to ice free and lately an oscillating unstable system that apparently only needs a small push to go to ice free again. Two stable points and quasi-stable vibrational states in between. Might be others, but life would not exist in those.
Of course all these are in time periods much longer than human history so we have difficult time imagining them.
Still, not a good time to be witness to fast small changes.
The timing of the human carbon pulse in relation to the glacial oscillations is uncanny.
China shutting down polluting factories.
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/10/23/559009961/china-shuts-down-tens-of-thousands-of-factories-in-unprecedented-pollution-crack
E.P.A. cancels talk on climate change by agency scientists – “It’s definitely a blatant example of the scientific censorship we all suspected was going to start being enforced at E.P.A”
(The Orange Authoritarian is putting those global warmin scientist who want to destroy capitalism in their place!)
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2017/10/epa-cancels-talk-on-climate-change-by.html
Remember when NASA’s mission statement included this phrase?
“To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers … as only NASA can.”
Well, while the USA apparently no longer wants to understand and protect our home planet, it seems the Chinese and the French still do!
https://phys.org/news/2017-10-joint-france-china-satellite-oceans.html
First joint France-China satellite to study oceans
France and China’s space agencies unveiled their first joint satellite in Beijing Friday, which will be used to improve forecasting of ocean storms and cyclones.
The satellite, named CFOSAT (China-France Oceanography Satellite), is due to be launched next year by China and will primarily be used to study wind and ocean wave patterns.
“In practical terms, it will be used to improve forecasts of strong storms, cyclones or waves for all coastal activities”, Daniele Hauser, a French scientist working on the project, told AFP.
Understanding the interaction between the oceans and the atmosphere will also help to model and tackle climate change, scientists said.
The satellite will include two radars: a French system designed to measure direction and wavelength of ocean waves, and a Chinese version focusing on wind strength and direction.
The satellite is the first to be jointly constructed by France and China.
The project was originally envisaged as a joint programme for the French and European space agencies.
BTW, note to nationalist trolls, no US tax payer dollars were spent to fund this scientific research! But it will cost us a bundle in lost respect and international scientific and technological prestige.
That is wonderful news Fred. As our satellites go dark at least somebody is doing something.
While the powers that be blanket the globe with satellites and make a few studies, where is the action? Let’s see major long term committed and directed action not small baby steps that don’t tread on too many toes. Otherwise all the information in the world will merely fill libraries and give meat to discussion panels.
Certainly the “free market” will never do it in time or do it well.
R2 to R2 in thousands of years. Fine example of the results of the free market.
Meanwhile the fossil energy consumption has kept going up even though we knew the problems four decades ago or more. How many scientific papers, books and lectures will it take to put the brakes on.
Where are the brakes anyway?
Let’s see major long term committed and directed action not small baby steps that don’t tread on too many toes.
If you are looking for leadership from the USA you are looking in the wrong place. Now China is a whole nuther ball of wax, they do have major long term plans and are highly aware of the dangers of climate change due to the burning fossil fuels. Their investments in renewables technology speaks for itself. They are also in the process of laying the ground work for a new global economic order.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/business/china-railway-one-belt-one-road-1-trillion-plan.html
Behind China’s $1 Trillion Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order
VANG VIENG, Laos — Along the jungle-covered mountains of Laos, squads of Chinese engineers are drilling hundreds of tunnels and bridges to support a 260-mile railway, a $6 billion project that will eventually connect eight Asian countries.
Chinese money is building power plants in Pakistan to address chronic electricity shortages, part of an expected $46 billion worth of investment.
Chinese planners are mapping out train lines from Budapest to Belgrade, Serbia, providing another artery for Chinese goods flowing into Europe through a Chinese-owned port in Greece.
The massive infrastructure projects, along with hundreds of others across Asia, Africa and Europe, form the backbone of China’s ambitious economic and geopolitical agenda. President Xi Jinping of China is literally and figuratively forging ties, creating new markets for the country’s construction companies and exporting its model of state-led development in a quest to create deep economic connections and strong diplomatic relationships.
The initiative, called “One Belt, One Road,” looms on a scope and scale with little precedent in modern history, promising more than $1 trillion in infrastructure and spanning more than 60 countries. To celebrate China’s new global influence, Mr. Xi is gathering dozens of state leaders, including President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in Beijing on Sunday.
While we in the US are resting on our laurels and have allowed one of the most ignorant, despicable bunch of morons ever to walk the surface of the planet, to rise to power.
Edit, also from the article:
Mr. Xi’s plan stands in stark contrast to President Trump and his “America First” mantra. The Trump administration walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the American-led trade pact that was envisioned as a buttress against China’s growing influence.
“Pursuing protectionism is just like locking oneself in a dark room,” Mr. Xi told business leaders at the World Economic Forum in January.
It is past time to lock Trump and his band of imbeciles in a dark room and throw away the key! If we don’t the US will pay a very high price in the long term!
Note to economic nationalists, it might be time for you to start taking classes in Mandarin!
Wasn’t being US centric. Look at the graph, that is global. Proof is in the pudding. No concerted effort on anyone’s part, in fact your Chinese buddies have been the worst offenders and even a concerted effort on their part would take a decade to level out their coal and oil surge. You see how coal had leveled out back in the 80’s and nineties? Then a huge surge, think China followed by the rest of East Asia.
Then there is the new surge in the use methane, which not only produces CO2 but leaks a lot and is 100X stronger than CO2.
Meanwhile renewables are chunking along but not fast enough. Much of that renewable is hydro and biofuels. We know biofuels can be about as bad (or worse) than oil.
Lets cut the demand, fast. Not asking anyone to do what I haven’t already done.
Wasn’t being US centric. Look at the graph, that is global. Proof is in the pudding. No concerted effort on anyone’s part, in fact your Chinese buddies have been the worst offenders and even a concerted effort on their part would take a decade to level out their coal and oil surge.
I’m not defending China’s CO2 emissions or pollution production and they have been among the worst offenders in terms of ecological devastation. However, they are putting in the ground work for global economic dominance through trade networks and banks. At least they are not building stupid walls. And while their investment in renewables may be way too little and way too late they are still light years ahead of the USA.
A trillion dollars is certainly putting their money where their mouths are…
Good for the Chinese, they need to have their day, looks like it won’t last very long but they need to feel big before they fall.
Isn’t that infrastructure build just more BAU and more CO2? Haven’t they put up lots of senseless infrastructure already?
Trump is not the USA. I didn’t think the wall was built yet.
Also I am not Trump.
Isn’t that infrastructure build just more BAU and more CO2? Haven’t they put up lots of senseless infrastructure already?
Probably, but I wasn’t just talking about physical infrastructure in China. I was referring to their trade agreements and influence in the 60 countries mentioned.
They have been ahead on that for a while now. Our current admin will really screw up our trade system. See the Reich talk I posted down near the bottom of the comments about AI, he discusses that subject.
Hi Gonefishing,
The Chinese are using a lot less fossil fuel energy per capita than the US. Higher prices will help and those will arrive when fossil fuel peaks. Fossil fuel use where there are carbon taxes is lower per capita than places where fossil fuel prices are low.
Sure, over a billion people and more than half of them in abject poverty. 40 percent with less than $2100 a year income and you think they will use much energy per capita? Or maybe they work in a city where they might make $12 a day but have higher expenses.
I think you don’t understand the context behind many of the numbers you present.
And don’t come back with that World Bank number who left poverty because they made more than $1.91 per day. That was for extreme poverty and the Chinese government latched hard onto that number.
Hi Gonefishing,
I was responding to the following comment:
Wasn’t being US centric. Look at the graph, that is global. Proof is in the pudding. No concerted effort on anyone’s part, in fact your Chinese buddies have been the worst offenders and even a concerted effort on their part would take a decade to level out their coal and oil surge. You see how coal had leveled out back in the 80’s and nineties? Then a huge surge, think China followed by the rest of East Asia.
Then there is the new surge in the use methane, which not only produces CO2 but leaks a lot and is 100X stronger than CO2.
The point was intended to be that the Chinese have far lower emissions per capita than the US, I agree average income in China is much lower, but income per capita has been rising quickly and generally higher income leads to higher energy use.
http://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/pns/current_ghg.html
According to the website linked above GWP for methane is 28 times higher than CO2 over a 100 year time horizon, rather than the 100 times you suggest, note that longer time horizons (such as 1000 years) reduces the GWP further. The CO2 remains in the atmosphere roughly 16 times longer than methane, which makes it more of a problem over the long term. Since 1750 the CO2 increase has increased radiative forcing by about 1.94 W/m2, methane about 0.5 W/m2, N2O about 0.2 W/m2, tropospheric ozone 0.4 W/m2, and other greenhouse gases about 0.34 W/m2. The total is 3.38 W/m2 (this does not take into account other factors such as aerosols and their interactions with clouds which may reduce the total anthropogenic contribution) and CO2 is about 57% of this total and methane is about 15%.
On the coal surge in China, that has levelled out already, oil use is increasing, but the coming peak in oil output and the high prices associated with that peak is likely to reduce the rate of growth in oil use, both in China and the World.
Real GDP per capita in China grew at about 7.5% per year from 1970 to 2010. The GINI index was similar to the US from 2008-2012 (a measure of income inequality). In 2015 China’s GDP per capita was similar to Spain’s in 1960.
China and India will try to maintain fast growth rates to catch up with Europe and North America.
The only way this can be done is to develop alternatives to fossil fuel. China knows this and India is catching on.
The transition will happen and might occur more rapidly than many believe is possible.
Dennis, you are talking to a professional spectroscopist. I understand the interactions between matter and electromagnetic energy. Made a living at it. As I said before, you do not seem to have any real grasp of the context of the numbers you read and reiterate.
I have tried several times before to educate you on the instantaneous response of methane as it exists in the atmosphere. Your numbers assume a loss of concentration with time due to dissociation of the methane molecule. An assumption that assumes the methane input will fall. Sure the molecules dissociate but they are more than being replaced by new ones so one must look at atmospheric concentration in real time.
In fact the concentration is rising, so that assumption is erroneous.
The actual infrared response of CH4 is about 100X that of CO2 for various physical reasons I will not attend to at this point in time. That makes the 1800 ppb equivalent to 180 ppm of CO2.
Did the US climate scientists finally take up France’s offer to have them move over there to keep “researching” the climate? It was said on the radio the average IQ’s in both countries would go up immediately so a win win all around.
https://youtu.be/UfOqXFcycB8
Don’t quit your day job
Trolling the internet IS is his job.
Fred, I am now retired but always did work hard for my money to support my family like a real man. Never went on welfare, food stamps, looked to the government for giveaways none of that. So many people today got the entitlement mentality, they need to be put in their place.
“they need to be put in their place.”
And who’s gonna do that for you?
Speaking of entitlement mentality- how’s Trump doing? I’ve been ignoring him for quite some time now. Not hard to do when one has no cable TV.
Charles Van Vleet = Ever Vacant Shell (the best troll name anagram yet).
The wiki man somewhere above is Louis Tennessee = Out Senile Sense.
(George Kaplan is prong leakage, which might be in my not so distant future unfortunately)
On a more serious note what is the difference between defaming people purely on the basis of their belonging to some nebulous group (be it a nationality or a profession or anything else) and outright racism or homophobia, either of which would get you banned from a lot blogs I think?
George Kaplan -> Anal Egg Poker
??☝????
That’s the response I was looking for so hopefully we can start to get some of you dumbasses banned.
I wholeheartedly second the motion! Enough is enough!
I think first you could explain why you can copy and paste crass anagrams of people whose opinions you just don’t like but you don’t think anybody else can. I was only following your lead. ????
Internet Trolls Are Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Sadists
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-online-secrets/201409/internet-trolls-are-narcissists-psychopaths-and-sadists
… and I would add losers who need to get a life.
Venezuela governors sworn in, showing opposition disunity
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics/venezuela-governors-sworn-in-showing-opposition-disunity-idUSKBN1CS2R3?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Reuters%2FworldNews+%28Reuters+World+News%29
It will interesting to see how things unfold when the Chinese Heavy Oil Refinery comes on line next year, and Ven’s dependence of US refining is no longer needed.
Those largest oil reserves will be freed from outside interference–
Watch those Methane Emissions!
http://indianmavericks.blogspot.ca/2017/10/watch-those-methane-emissions.html?m=1
Too late.
Correct, the big burp from the arctic has been triggered
Alarmism?
CLIMATE TROUBLE MAY BE BUBBLING UP IN FAR NORTH
“Reporting to the European Geophysical Union last year, the scientists, affiliated with the University of Alaska and the Russian Academy of Sciences, cited “extreme” saturation of methane in surface waters and in the air above. They said up to 10% of the undersea permafrost area had melted, and it was “highly possible” that this would open the way to abrupt release of an estimated 50 billion tons of methane. Depending on how much dissolved in the sea, that might multiply methane in the atmosphere several-fold, boosting temperatures enough to cause “catastrophic greenhouse warming,” as the Russians called it. It would be self-perpetuating, melting more permafrost, emitting more methane.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/JustOneThing/story?id=8457650
And this certainly didn’t help: two years ago, the largest methane leak was discovered; the leak in Los Angeles County focused attention on the state’s aging gas wells. The well was one of 115 wells connected to a subsurface storage reservoir in the Aliso Canyon gas field a field which has been used for natural gas storage since 1973, the fourth largest facility of its kind in the U.S. It’s estimated 109,000 metric tons of methane escaped.
I checked the data from Mt Wilson and as huge as that leak was it doesn’t show up in the data. I think it was December 2015. Of course, LA is so polluted anyway it’s hard to notice.
It just shows it must be a huge amount of methane being released in Barrow, Alaska right now.
Methane, methane, methane. It’s just natural gas and natural can’t hurt you can it?
Just because it adds about 180 ppm effective warming to the CO2 thing right now is no reason to get alarmed about a few bubbles and some degassing. I mean what could go wrong?
Oh, that. But the vultures like that, they will have their own population boom, flies too.
Nature will take care of us, nothing to worry about.
I recall not too long ago a paper saying there were deep cracks in the permafrost which allows methane pockets to be released before the surface melts down to them.
No going back now.
An improvised explosive drone (‘dron bomba’) was interdicted by Mexican Federal Police/Policía Federal (PF) in Guanajunto in Central Mexico at daybreak of Friday, 20 October 2017.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/mexican-cartel-tactical-note-35
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/10/24/delingpole-now-400-scientific-papers-in-2017-say-global-warming-is-a-myth/
the tide is going out for the climate alarmist, what a breath of fresh air
HERE’S THE ECONOMIC ARGUMENT TO TRUMP FOR FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE
“The Government Accountability Office says America has spent over $350 billion in the last 10 years on extreme weather and fire events, a total that could increase sharply as climate change effects worsen. Congress’s bipartisan auditing arm explains that the bulk of that total stems from domestic disaster assistance programs and losses from flood and crop insurance. Those figures look set to rise, though, as floods, droughts, and other climate change-exacerbated phenomena become more frequent. By the end of the century, America could be spending as much as $112 billion per year on dealing with such events…Trouble is, many of these effects will play out over a time period that may not bother the current President all that much. So the impact of its findings may not be as strong as you’d hope.”
Meanwhile,
NEW YORK CITY AREA COULD SOON SEE MASSIVE FLOODS EVERY 5 YEARS
This year’s Atlantic hurricane season was off the charts by nearly every measure, and new climate modeling suggests that New York City may be headed for weather that could make superstorm Sandy look routine. Flooding from hurricanes will intensify with sea level rise, and what was—in preindustrial times—a once-in-500-years flood may occur once every 5 years by 2030 scientists report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/new-york-city-area-could-soon-see-massive-floods-every-5-years
DT is not listening and doesn’t really care.
HE USED TO SWIM WITH SHARKS, NOW HE JUST JUMPS THEM
Thanks to Breitbart’s vigilant fact-checkers, the pesky things rarely outcrop in the work of:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2017/10/he-used-to-swim-with-sharks-now-he-just.html
Oh yeah, if the good folk at Breitbart said so then it must be true! Though I’ll bet you haven’t read a single one of those supposed 400 papers, have you? Let alone know who the authors were or who funded them.
On the other hand, as they say:
“T’is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than speak and remove all doubt.”
You have now definitely removed even the slightest remaining shred of doubt…
Dose of reality:
EVs? Not in Canada where truck sales, including SUVs, increased by 12.5% with 129,731 units sold in September while passenger car sales declined by 1.8% with 57,106 units sold. Dennis DesRosiers noted that, “every single month in 2017 thus far has been a record sales month for light trucks while passenger car sales have remained below record levels that were set as far back as the late 1980’s.” Truck market share advanced further to 67.7%, year-to-date, while that for passenger cars continued its decline to just 32.3%. The Ford’s F-Series continued to be the best-selling truck and the best-selling vehicle overall with its best-selling month on record.
https://canadianautodealer.ca/2017/10/september-sales-set-yet-another-record/
LEST WE FORGET: A partial list of products made from Petroleum includes over 6000 items.
http://whgbetc.com/petro-products.pdf
Followed by a dose of optimism (hope?):
Plug-In EV Sales In Germany Hit New High In September – 5,000+ Sold!
September was the best month for plug-in electric vehicles sales in Germany … ever. In total, 5,365 plug-ins were registered, which was 75% more than year ago.
New high was set in both categories:
BEVs: 2,247 (new record) – up 37%
PHEVs: 3,118 (new record) – up 120%
Market share for the month hit near record levels as well, finishing up at 1.86%. That is 1 out of every 54 new car sales arriving with a plug!
Two brands stood out from the crowd in September – BMW and Volkswagen, which both crossed the 1,000 mark for registrations:
Plug-In EV Market Share In France Crosses A Record 2% In September!
France’s plug-in vehicle market share hit a new record in September, crossing the 2% mark for the first time (2.1%). About 1 in every 48 new light vehicles purchased in the country came with a plug.
And as we recently reported, there a lot more public charging locations to plug into, as France also passed 20,000 charging stations (details) during the month.
New registrations of plug-in passenger vehicles hit 3,556 units (+560 commercial BEVs), which isn’t a new net record (4,521 were sold in June, good for a 1.73% market share), but the fast growth year-over-year translates to a rapidly expanding market share.
Sales Of Plug-in Electric Vehicles In China Up In September Nearly 80%
By looking at the results so far this year in China, it is hard to not notice the upward climb in plug-in vehicle sales. For September, deliveries increased by 79% to 78,000!
Once again, that is 78,000 plug-in sales…in a single month. More than the rest of the world achieved combined last month.
Sales of New Energy Vehicles in China – September 2017
Breakdown on the sales by category:
BEVs: 64,000 (up 83.4%)
PHEVs: 14,000 (up 61.9%)
Looking ahead to the rest of 2017, we should see back-to-back record monthly sales results in November and December, as the last couple of months of the year in China are typically best ones.
So far this year, sales of New Energy Vehicles (plug-ins) in China have reached 398,000 (up 37.7%). If it wasn’t for the government butchering the incentives at the start of 2017 (ain’t slow moving, bureaucratic red tape great?), then we likely would have already seen 500,000 sold in the region.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, China is “ground zero” for EVs. The rest of the world is facing a serious risk of being left in the dust by Chinese manufacturers. China is definitely focused on semi-conductor manufacturing and semiconductors are a big part of EVs from the control electronics and infotainment systems to the power electronics that charge the batteries and drive the motors. Batteries are another major component in EVs where the Chinese are establishing a huge lead. For anyone who wants to deride the quality of Chinese products, I would like to remind you that in the sixties (when I was a child), “made in Japan” had the same negative connotations. China is laying the groundwork to become a major force in EV manufacturing.
Finally on the solar front:
Global solar market to grow 30% and reach close to 100 GW this year, says Bernreuter Research
The global solar market is set to end 2017 some 95 GW larger than when it began, according to German analyst firm Bernreuter Research.
This record growth could even hit triple figures going by polysilicon supply data, which is enough to push global production of crystalline silicon cells to 100 GW, the report adds.
China’s solar PV market is on track to reach 52 GW of new installations this year, with the U.S. way back in second place with 12.5 GW of new solar, followed by India (9 GW), Japan (a mere 5.8 GW), Germany (2.2 GW) and Brazil (1.3 GW). Australia, Chile, Turkey and South Korea will all be GW-scale markets this year, Bernreuter Research said.
Given shipment time lags and inventories in the supply chain, as much as 100 GW of crystalline solar cells and an additional 5 GW of thin-film modules will be produced in the calendar year. This translates to 95 to 97 GW of installations. This figure represents a 30% growth on 2016’s 74 GW of new solar.
The Koch brothers inspired Trump administration is doing their best to keep the US from winning the race to the technologies that will dominate energy production and use in the future. Trolls and sock puppets need not wory, they will have all their coal to themselves. Here’s to hoping (for their sake) that will “make America great again.”
Not ignoring Doug’s dose of reality. Just trying to highlight what could happen if we could get the influence of the likes of the Koch brothers out of the way and exhibit the political will to try and do something about our predicament.
Islandboy – These days I more-or-less divide my time between Norway and Western Canada. Oslo is the EV capital of the world where more than 30% of all new cars are EVs or plug-in hybrids. There is talk of banning ICE vehicles by 2025. Now there are currently over 100,000 plug-in vehicles in a country of only five million people, which makes perfect sense. Internal combustion cars are taxed at 100%. EVs? No tax. In the region of Canada where I live virtually everyone owns two vehicles: an all-wheel drive SUV plus a pickup truck. Of course this will change but it won’t be anytime soon.
In the region of Canada where I live virtually everyone owns two vehicles: an all-wheel drive SUV plus a pickup truck.
You are describing my nephew in Alberta. Of course, that’s not the whole country.
Here in the Greater Toronto Area, which makes up about 20% of the Canadian market, I am also surrounded by SUV’s and pickups. I believe that the introduction of electric pickups will be the game changer. People won’t buy them for the environment, or the cost, or anything like that, but because the damn things will be fast and less prone to rolling over. The best way to make an SUV safer (short of halving the horsepower) is to put a ton of batteries very low in the chassis. This combination will allow them to be sold equally well to soccer moms and males with penis length challenges.
-Lloyd
Norway sounds great. How is the solar PV effort doing up there?
The Wild West (North America) hasn’t gotten over it’s youth yet and there are some practical aspects to pickups and four wheel drive vehicles in the rural regions.
My neighbor who just passed away kept an old F150 running for over 30 years. So old it only had an AM radio. No FM! Good for hauling, good for carrying stone to fill the holes in the road, which we need around here.
Just saw a carpenter rebuilding a deck nearby. His old Chevy truck must be from the early 90’s, still running as a work truck. Not pretty but very useful.
Nothing electric yet to replace them, soon maybe. Working vehicles need to run for the long term and fancy just gets beat up.
All those high fashion newer pickups are going to need all kinds of work just to keep the gadgets running. Probably be trashed for electrical/electronic failures before the engines wear out.
When gasoline is cheap, a new F150 is a very satisfactory vehicle as judged from the point of view of most people who buy new pickup trucks.
Anybody who hasn’t driven or at least ridden in a NEW full size Ford, Dodge, or Chevy pickup in the last few years is in for a BIG surprise when he gets in one. They’re as comfortable as cars, ride like cars, have all the bells and whistles found on any car that sells for less than fifty grand, have plenty of room for three super sized adults and so forth.
And when you consider that the cost of gasoline is only a VERY minor fraction of the total cost of ownership of a vehicle, well…… the people who buy them aren’t grumbling about fuel economy.
And when you’re ready to trade, compared to a typical car, you’ll be thousands ahead if you bought a pickup most of the time.
They last longer than cars, and they’re typically more reliable and considerably easier to work on……. and when you DO need to haul something occasionally, you can.
Most people, once they get used to driving a newer full size pickup PREFER to drive one after that….. because they like the seating position and being able to see the road so much better compared to a typical car.
Having said all this, I’ve seen countless pickups that are ten years old that still don’t have a scratch inside the cargo box.
So I suppose the only way people will voluntarily switch to small cars is if the price of gasoline goes thru the roof. That’s almost sure to happen in my opinion, sometime within the next few years, my reasoning being that we won’t switch to electric cars fast enough to offset the depletion of oil.
It doesn’t matter so much what people own as it does how much they drive. If fuel goes up enough or if a recession hits and people don’t have a reason to drive much, then petroleum consumption goes down.
I don’t think we necessarily have to replace big ICE vehicles with EVs right away if those ICE vehicles mostly sit in driveways.
Saudi Arabia plans to build futuristic city for innovators
“This place is not for conventional people or conventional companies,” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told an audience of investors from around the world gathered in the capital, Riyadh, on Tuesday. “This will be a place for the dreamers of the world.”
http://business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/saudi-arabia-opens-major-conference-with-eye-on-investment
MbS needs a breath alcohol and urinalysis. Reasonable cause. Dudes a total lune.
I read the link about SA building the new super city and all that. Personally I know next to nothing about Mohamed bin Salman but I can see several potentially good reasons why he’s doing what he can to change the direction of his country.
The first one, and maybe the most important one, in my estimation, is that unless the royal family succeeds in destroying the power of the priesthood, it may well become the EX royal family, with the survivors living in exile ( luxurious to the tenth, but still exile).
Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s my impression the House of Saud made a pact with the mullahs that allowed them to STAY in power, but at the risk of the priests gaining TOO much power. The risk as I read it turned out to be real, and now they are looking at destroying the power of the priesthood, or at least severely pruning it, or else……. The priests will get to be so powerful they run out the royal family.
And if they don’t succeed in raising or at the very least maintaining the living standards of the people, they will lose control anyway, because the people have now had a taste of a better life, and it’s too late for them to pull off a NK dough boy style dictatorship. WAY too late. Impossible. Too many people coming and going, too much freedom of communication already,etc.
Most of us forget that the royal family has been sending a lot of the country’s brightest young men to various countries where they have learned as much as can be learned in top universities about finance and economics and so forth. And there’s little doubt that while they were there, they also learned quite a lot about how fast the world can change, about the realities of oil depletion, about disruptive technologies, about what the world is going to be like in a few more decades.
I just read MbS’s wiki biography, and while he does not appear to have any formal education other than in the law, it’s perfectly obvious that his career path has kept him in constant contact with business leaders of all sorts, including leaders in new technologies such as robotics, communications, renewable energy, etc.
So it’s reasonable to speculate that he UNDERSTANDS the overall economic situation of his country, and the world, in much the same way as such regulars in this forum as Nick and Fred Maygar understand these things.
(Both these guys are convinced that while there are no guarantees, we naked apes collectively have an excellent shot at a very bright future, if we can just somehow manage to pull thru our current / impending economic and ecological bottlenecks. I’m not so optimistic as they are, short term, but I hope they’re right, and they may well be right. )
When the old USSR finally gave up the ghost, it was for as much as any other reason that the people of that cobbled together country/ empire came to understand that there was a BETTER way, that the old system wasn’t working, and would never work well , and so when somebody, namely Gorbachev, finally got into a position to start making really serious reforms, the reforms took on a life of their own, like a little snow breaking loose and starting an avalanche.
( Gorbachev probably didn’t intend for things to get out of hand the way they did, but there wasn’t anything he or anybody else could do to stop that avalanche, because NOBODY believed in the old status quo any more. )
MbS has the reputation of a gambler, and he’s obviously gambling the future of his country, and his own position as ruler to be of it, on transforming his society, getting back to “moderate Islam” as he has expressed it, and so forth.
It looks to me as if he believes best way to secure his own position and power, and that of his extended family, at least for the next few decades, is to transform the society and the economy so that the people are happier and more prosperous, less under the heel of the religious police and their masters.
Maybe he will succeed.
He’s put it all on the line just forcing the religious establishment to accept women having the right to drive. Once that sort of break in a dike is made, a flood often follows.
This could be a game changer, a tipping point. Whether it happens, and how quickly, now that’s the question…….. plus how much it will cost of course.
https://blog.caranddriver.com/toshiba-on-the-cusp-of-an-ev-battery-capable-of-200-miles-of-range-after-six-minute-charge/
This evidently means storing about five to six kilowatt hours in the battery PER MINUTE to get about thirty kWh into it that fast.
It’s going to take a hell of a service drop to provide enough power to run a service station with ten or twelve such chargers at a busy intersection. And most of the people wanting to charge up, if it can be done so fast, are probably going to want to do it either on the way to work or on the way home.
I see a hell of a potential peak load problem, but that can be solved at least to some extent by pricing juice cheap at off hours, and thereby encouraging people to charge up at home or at off peak hours at service stations.
Now suppose your car drives itself, and your office building has a king sized solar array……… On a sunny day, depending on your place in the pecking order, you can get your get your car charged up while you’re at work, without even paying for it.
And if you’ve got a substantial array at home, you can probably get enough charge before or after work and on weekends to drive two hundred miles or more per week. A ten kW system could charge you full up on Saturday or Sunday even in the winter time, if the sun’s out most of the day.
That’s cool and it’s not too radical. 34KWhr isn’t really enough for 200 miles of range, but it’s still good even if a 70KWHr version takes 12 minutes.
Lot of others are working on it, Porsche seems to be in the lead.
“But perhaps Mission E’s most startling performance metric is a claimed 80 percent charging time for its massive battery pack in just 15 minutes. The car’s rated driving range is 300 miles, so just 15 minutes plugged in to a Porsche charger will yield 250 miles of driving range, Blume told Car. ”
https://www.maxim.com/rides/porsche-mission-e-ev-will-cost-less-than-100k-2017-9
The cars have been seen on test tracks, not vaporware….. The car is just the first to work the bugs out, but Volkswagon plans on using the tech in other cars later. There are 350KW charging stations being installed now across Europe, and in California.
Hi OFM,
The fast charging does damage to the battery so most people will slow charge at home unless they have a 300 mile round trip commute and no possibility of charging at work (unlikely in the future).
These fast charging stations will be used exclusively for those travelling on a long trip. Holidays may be a problem, people who regularly go away to the country on weekends will need to stay within 300 miles of home or wait in long lines to charge their car.
This is not quite what it appears, but very interesting and illuminating.
Robert Reich: “Preparing Our Economy for the Impact of Automation & AI” | Talks at Google
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xflVUa4M_8
“Stinky Zinke” strikes again:
U.S. proposes fee hikes at national parks to pay for upgrades
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-parks/u-s-proposes-fee-hikes-at-national-parks-to-pay-for-upgrades-idUSKBN1CU06L?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews
Sounds like a long range real estate takeover plan. I have seen them before and if the parties involved are patient and slightly clever no one is the wiser.
Republicans, Wall Street score victory in dismantling class-action rule
CFPB Director Richard Cordray, a Democrat appointed by former President Barack Obama, rarely comments on congressional action but on Tuesday night said “Wall Street won and ordinary people lost.”
“This vote means the courtroom doors will remain closed for groups of people seeking justice and relief when they are wronged by a company,” he added.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-consumers-arbitration/republicans-wall-street-score-victory-in-dismantling-class-action-rule-idUSKBN1CU06F?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtopNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Top+News%29
This was a pure party line vote accept Graham and Kennedy. But the moron American voter was more concerned about who got paid giving a speech to the bankers. Than who supported their own interest.
Next on the agenda is to eliminate the inheritance tax. So Donald Jr. can live in luxury for life and the religious conservatives can file their income tax on a post card. God forbid someone has their own internet server and uses email. We might have to lock them up.
Don’t let an apple fall on your child’s head when their young. Apparently it can damage them for life.
HB is up to his usual standard, failing to realize that HRC would have won if she hadn’t made any of the wooden headed mistakes she made, such as accepting millions from bankers for SECRET speeches, and probably around a hundred fifty million in dirty money while Sec of State.
And the email system wouldn’t have been much of a problem, except she kept it a secret, and wiped the server denying all the people who believe she’s a scumbag the opportunity to learn otherwise. Lessons and weddings my poor ass, anybody who believes that is dumb enough to believe in Santa Claus as well. Now of course it’s ok to lie like a street thief if you’re defending your own cultural, religious, political or other IN group.
Every body does that , with a few exceptions such as yours truly. I go wherever the facts lead me, and criticize hypocrisy wherever I find it, as when environmentalists fail to admit even in principle that policies that reduce population growth, such as restricted immigration, are good for countries that implement them. Nobody else comes even close to posting as many criticisms of the R’s in general and Trump in particular as I do.
But he’s right about the R’s putting the screws to consumers.
About the inheritance tax, not so much. Just about every body who WOULD be subject to paying it pays out a small fortune to lawyers and accountants and thus avoids paying more than a minor fraction of the stated rates.
Even relatively poor folks such as my parents transferred ownership rights to their property to the OTHER kids years ago, retaining lifetime estates.The home farm’s a nice little place, as small farms go, but it’s worth less than many a perfectly ordinary house in places like northern Virginia or LA or Seattle. I went my own way financially except for one acre to build on, but I have the use of the place so long as I’m able to live on it. It doesn’t generate enough income to offset the taxes on it since we quit the orchard.
OldFailedAppleFarmer, you yap and carry on day after day. But on November 8th of last year, when it was time to make a binary choice for the future of the country. You punted. Like other morons in this country, you focused on personal attack ads and lost sight of policy.
You’re a rube
It’s official—for 2016, the estate and gift tax exemption is $5.45 million per individual, up from $5.43 million in 2015. That means an individual can leave $5.45 million to heirs and pay no federal estate or gift tax. A married couple will be able to shield $10.9 million from federal estate and gift taxes.Oct 22, 2015
There is no need to eliminate the inheritance tax for the Trumps of the country.
It’s into the future from the past. Forget roads, they are long gone. Your personal electric helicopter drops you off at the high speed monorail or vacuum tube train. Cities have mostly vanished, no one really wants to live like rats all piled together. Farmers sit back and help guide the robots that do all the work on the farm.
Who knows what will come next? Well, Popular Mechanics kept predicting the future and amazingly some of it came true.
But it’s still dirty, messy, polluted and crowded with trash around and lots of people not even having clean water or good food, so there is still a lot of work to be done. And we still have roads and no personal electric copters yet. 🙁
Enjoy the predictions from the past.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/g462/future-that-never-was-next-gen-tech-concepts/
Hi all,
A new Open Thread at link below
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-october-25-2017/
and a new post by George Kaplan on Gulf of Mexico at link below
http://peakoilbarrel.com/gom-july-production-update/