Comments not related to petroleum in this thread. Thank you.
198 thoughts to “Open Thread- Non-Petroleum, September 27, 2018”
A response to Gone Fishing regarding the relative merits/demerits of PV deployment on verdant lands [class 1/2 farmlands, forests and fields of significant natural photosynthetic potential].
carried on from prior thread-
“I too would enjoy a long chat by the lakeside. Please understand that my comments have no intent of taking the wind out of the renewable s deployment.
More to point out that we don’t do nature any good, or the ultimate carrying capacity of the earth any good, by diminishing the earth natural photosynthetic capability, even for the sake of PV deployment.
We need rapid downsizing, not covering forests with PV.
This will be hard in verdant places like N.Carolina and Malaysia, easy in west Texas and S. Calif. (to find sunny relatively barren lands).
Of course we should start with the rooftops, but I have already seen PV lots on class 1-2 farmland. This land could be highly productive nature preserves if not needed for food.
Agree about the emergency setting of situation. Killing off more nature won’t help the long run.”
The above comment is a repeat, guess not getting it had to be repeated.
That 1% of area for PV is nothing compared to the 16% (increasing) for our infrastructure and the 11%t for agriculture, plus the 26% for ranching.
Look at the numbers, development is eating up farmland, expected losses by 2030 is about 2% globally. Farming is the worst enemy of farmland.
<You think of the dust bowl of the 1930s in North America and then you realise we are moving towards that situation if we don’t do something,” said Duncan Cameron, professor of plant and soil biology at the University of Sheffield.
“The continual ploughing of fields, combined with heavy use of fertilizers, has degraded soils across the world, the research found, with erosion occurring at a pace of up to 100 times greater than the rate of soil formation. It takes around 500 years for just 2.5cm of topsoil to be created amid unimpeded ecological changes.
We are increasing the rate of loss and we are reducing soils to their bare mineral components,” he said. “We are creating soils that aren’t fit for anything except for holding a plant up. The soils are silting up river systems – if you look at the huge brown stain in the ocean where the Amazon deposits soil, you realise how much we are accelerating that process.
Around 30% of the world’s ice-free surfaces are used to keep chicken, cattle, pigs and other livestock, rather than to grow crops.
Soil is the earth’s fragile skin that anchors all life on Earth. It is comprised of countless species that create a dynamic and complex ecosystem and is among the most precious resources to humans. Increased demand for agriculture commodities generates incentives to convert forests and grasslands to farm fields and pastures. The transition to agriculture from natural vegetation often cannot hold onto the soil and many of these plants, such as coffee, cotton, palm oil, soybean and wheat, can actually increase soil erosion beyond the soil’s ability to maintain itself.
Half of the topsoil on the planet has been lost in the last 150 years.
So maybe you need to take new view of technology that actually saves plants and forests from being burned, while taking a deeper view into the major hits on soil and nature from farming and development. Maybe you will come to realize that shifting to society based on wind and solar energy is just part of the degrowth and deharm plan.
Of course we could just stifle it further and let the current paradigm wreck everything in the pursuit of the next app and the next adolescent showdown between Russia and the US using proxy nations and the next fossil fuel driven profit.
Agree with all your comments regarding soil. I have a very strong background in soil science from undergrad days (Univ Agronomy degree), and am extremely concerned about soil ecology. Nothing is more important.
Yep, a long walk in the red rock area of the western US will teach a person what happens when the soil is gone.
It’s still happening, and nobody seems to realize something could be done about it. Instead of providing stewardship for the land, they dig bigger and bigger culverts to let the soil wash away faster. The should be digging ditches on contour, not across the contour.
“Maybe you will come to realize that shifting to society based on wind and solar energy is just part of the degrowth and deharm plan.” ~ GoneFishing
A society in part based on wind and solar energy (while also in part based on equity and solidarity) can of course be very low-tech with little or nothing to do with large-scale non-local industrial manufacture in the crony-capitalist plutarchy context.
Humans have been leveraging the power of the sun and wind long before their conversions to electricity and the messes made in the processes.
Given historical considerations, there’s little that’s reassuring about humans’ approach to this ‘next phase of energy’, while fossil fuels continue to be not left in the ground.
Priorities for energy-use, whether via human or machine labor, would appear to predominantly include ecosystemic restoration and enhancement (yes, go one step above just restoration and with an ongoing emphasis with a kind of symbiosis with nature), and individual and local empowerment and vis-a-vis basic needs, like clean water, air and fertile soil.
One of the best, incidentally, if not the only, approaches in these regards would appear to be permaculture…
“Permaculture is a system of agricultural and social design principles centered around simulating or directly utilizing the patterns and features observed in natural ecosystems…
The word permaculture originally referred to ‘permanent agriculture’, but was expanded to stand also for ‘permanent culture’, as it was understood that social aspects were integral to a truly sustainable system as inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka’s natural farming philosophy.
Mollison [Bill] has said: ‘Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labour; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system.’ ” ~ Wikipedia
A good start would be to reject every planning application for buildings that do not have solar covering their roof, PV or hot water.
NAOM
^ ?
…
This is a great example of the “freedumb” argument. We don’t do dumb things because we’re dumb, we do dumb things because we’re free! It worked really well for the Republicans opposing Obamacare.
If this kind of braindead ideological argument is the best thing you can come up with, you don’t have a good argument.
So it’s live how we dictate from you and notanoilman?
If so, you two and others seem to strongly suggest why others– maybe even notanoilman and you, yourself– suggest that we are fucked.
I thought the natural building pic without solar panels on it I posted previously made something obvious…
So– as per what we’ve been doing for aeons– no planning application and we just build our own homes without solar panels anyway, and then what? Cops (AKA, State thugs) at our doors?
“It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free.” ~ Niccolò Macchiavelli
“Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.” ~ V. S. Naipaul
PV is a great idea is the areas of California wrecked by industrial farming like Antelope Valley.
The fact is that there is no shortage of sunshine. Fresh water is short but sunshine is not. So you’re trying to optimize (or pretending to try to optimize, your arguments are obviously not what they pretend to be) for the wrong thing.
And on it goes,
WETLANDS DISAPPEARING THREE TIMES FASTER THAN FORESTS
“The 88-page report found that around 35 percent of wetlands, which include lakes, rivers, marshes and peatlands, as well as coastal and marine areas like lagoons, mangroves and coral reefs, were lost between 1970 and 2015. Today, wetlands cover more than 12 million square kilometres (4.6 million square miles), the annual rates of loss had accelerated since 2000.”
“We are in a crisis,” Martha Rojas Urrego, head of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, told reporters in Geneva, warning of the potential devastating impact of wetland loss, including on climate change.
We are in crisis! No shit! We have a 10 alarm global emergency and apparently the best we can fucking do, is meekly mention that we are in crisis?!
Potential devastating impact of wetland loss?! No! You stupid mother fuckers, we are already in the midst of major devastating wetland loss in every goddamned corner of our planet!
The only question I have is what are we going to do about it?!
Fred, you just don’t get it, do you? We desperately need more paved parking spaces near the ocean and lakes for cars and campers. Lack of parking and boat launch sites for water skiers is becoming a crisis.
Ok! Then let the paving begin!
.
We have a 10 alarm global emergency and apparently the best we can fucking do, is meekly mention that we are in crisis?!
Mustn’t upset the mileennials, they might drop their smartphone and suddenly have to make a decision not prescribed by the advertising industry, which might involve not buying that jade vaginal egg they so wanted or that third life experience package holiday of the year.
Correct, millenials are responsible for all of the world’s problems past, present and future. Baby boomers are off the hook completely. ??
Killing off more nature won’t help the long run.
Bingo!
We have a winner.
Farming is not nature, it’s industrial sterilization of the ground and a source of toxins and pollutants throughout the watersheds, probably responsible for large ocean deadzones.
Not new so, humans being so clever, maybe we’ve dealt with all these issues now?
HEALTH OF OCEANS ‘DECLINING FAST’
“The health of the world’s oceans is deteriorating even faster than had previously been thought. A review from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean, warns that the oceans are facing multiple threats. They are being heated by climate change, turned slowly less alkaline by absorbing CO2, and suffering from overfishing and pollution. The report warns that dead zones formed by fertiliser run-off are a problem. It says conditions are ripe for the sort of mass extinction event that has afflicted the oceans in the past.”
Wetlands, forests, oceans, cryosphere, deserts, farmland, urban areas – is there anything not doing worse than previously expected.
Well, there’s no known limit to how long humans can live, scientists now say. So, if adding 83 million more people to our planet every year isn’t enough we can simply keep ourselves alive longer. That wouldn’t be worse than previously expected — I suppose?
Heh, I’m sitting at the airport waiting to board my flight and I just saw a bucket full of plastic water bottles from Fiji… the sign above the bottles says: “The Shape of the Bottles makes the Water Taste Better! I took a picture but can’t resize it for posting right now maybe I’ll do it at some later date.
Cheers!
If anyone wants to see how crowded the skies are right now.
I just read this. I hate politics, Trump. But I read it, the whole thing, thinking: Wait. This is satire.
Survivalist, thank you for this. “Walk Like an Egyptian?” We. Are. Fucked.
You’re welcome. I’m glad you found it interesting.
“Walk Like an Egyptian?” We. Are. Fucked. I was going to comment almost word for word the same thing when I read that before I saw you got there first. Wonder when the film will come out, other films of Lewis’s have been good. Will need to be soon though as there may be no-one left to watch.
While there are numerous reasons I usually refrain from participating in these threads, today’s developments in DC (Kavanaugh’s hearing) prompt me to post a brief comment.
This is absolutely not an attempt to persuade those holding the predominant political ideology expressed regularly here, rather it is merely a pointing – if you will – to a concise description of what is presently unfolding in America.
Justice Kavanaugh’s opening 45 minute statement today will come to be reconized as a pivotal moment in history.
The article today “Kavanaugh, cold anger, and the reckoning” from the conservativetreehouse site, powerfully describes what is going on … and what to certainly expect in the coming weeks.
This piece ranks right up there with the Wall Street Journal’s “No Guardrails” editorial in capturing the zeitgeist that is sweeping across this nation, while the shrinking Talking Heads and their minions continue to falter at an exponential rate.
On this site (POB), several weeks back, there was a discussion concerning the merits of various news sources regarding accuracy, ideology, etc.
Too late, folks … WAY too late.
Social media – including sites like this (comment sections, especially) are what people on a global scale are turning to for up to the minute information.
The 300,000 people on Reddit following Q were abruptly cut off from their daily fix and have turned to Voat and the chans.
These primarily progressive folks have been redpilled on a massive scale and we long term, truth driven autists welcome them with open arms.
For those of you who wish to get a glimpse of what is ‘really’ going on, check out the various feeds on the internet while they are still available (China blocks the chans from being viewable within their borders.
New world dawning, folks.
Buckle up.
“For those of you who wish to get a glimpse of what is ‘really’ going on, check out the various feeds on the internet while they are still available”
For those of us who don’t have the time to browse various feeds on the Internet in hopes of uncovering the ones that elucidate your thesis; what do you feel is presently unfolding in America, could you be more specific? What feeds would you recommend as a good place to start?
The site on voat – QRV, for QResearch – was just set up (and, I believe) is being administered by individuals associated with 8chan’s Q Research board.
This was to effect a somewhat workable source for people tending to have what is considered progressive/liberal views but are already in some phase of awakening, i.e., essentially intelligent, trusting people who have been particularly vulnerable to being deceived as they themselves are not liars.
Hardcore, ground zero would definitely be 8chan, but I personally would not go there initially as a primary source as it might be too confusing/overwhelming/counter productive.
It must be understood …
There is, and has been, an ongoing battle for people’s hearts and minds with information being a primary weapon.
Disinformation, misinformation, deceit, poisoning the well, are just a tiny sliver of the numerous tactics employed by those attempting to shape ongoing narratives.
Quick aside that has electrified some of us, General Flynn’s recent comment at the Eagle Forum whereby he openly acknowledged the recruitment of an army of citizen journalists in the largest, most successful counterinsurgency op of all time.
He was referring to the Q Anon phenomenon.
For those who will never willingly accept the wanton slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Syrian women and children, General Flynn’s firing as head of the DIA should serve as a marker for where this good man stands.
Googling any of this stuff is an easy entry into this hall of mirrors, but discernment, especially regarding the sources, is always a prerequisite for truth finding.
I wasn’t aware that the Q Anon phenomenon was the largest, most successful counterinsurgency op of all time. I just thought it was a bunch of dudes who can’t get laid.
The Rich Roll podcast has quite a good interview with Yuval Noah Harari from September 16. The topic of too much bullshit information is discussed. Knowledge and information are no longer as powerful as they once were, due to being not as scarce these days. Today, in a world of information overload, the most scarce resource is ones attention, and it is paramount to focus it optimally in order to obtain maximum clarity. Sam Harris also had him on recently.
Here’s the iTunes link. But it can be found elsewhere if you look. https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-rich-roll-podcast/id582272991?mt=2&i=1000419860297
I’ve found Harris’s selection of guests quite conservative (not always).
Interesting, but often clueless.
Still, it is on the list.
I agree. I’m not a big fan of Harris. I do quite like Yuval though.
I’ll do a bit more exploration.
Not on my path currently.
Does Trump just pick the most unpleasant and incompetent people he can find, or are they the only ones he can get to consider working with him?
My guess is he goes for sycophants, and those who are good at manipulating him. For example- Pence is a sycophant, Pompeo is good at manipulating him. I divide most of his entourage into those two categories.
I’m a idiot, and proud of it!
I think Trump then goes for the psychopaths.
Since he’s being so obtuse and I can’t figure out whether he’s on the side of the progressives (Bernie Sanders et al) or the bible thumping pawns of the oligarchs (Graham, Hatch, Pence et al) I’ll throw my two cents in.
I have seen enough evidence suggesting that vested interests, primarily tied to the fossil fuel industries, are trying desperately to co opt governments around the world to do their bidding. This is particularly evident in three English speaking nations with a significant share of mass media outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch. The existence of “think tanks” like The Heartland Institute and The Institute for Energy Research, with their thinly veiled agendas of misinformation, also helps to solidify my opinion that the oligarch class has been working very hard and been somewhat successful in using propaganda to get voters to vote against their best interests. It has been documented that groups funded by the likes of the Koch brothers have been on a multi decade campaign to co opt the US federal government to form an oligarchy.
I liker to apply the principle of “cui bono” ( to whose benefit) when looking at things and have a hunch that in the US at least, a significant portion of the electorate might just be figuring things out. We’ll see if I’m right on November 6!
“fossil fuel industries, are trying desperately to co opt governments around the world to do their bidding”
This happened decades ago. Old news.
Being vague and obtuse is one form of manipulation, fairly sophisticated, but none-the-less without good intent. Or else the person would just come right out and say what they mean. To me it seems like an attempt to get people to subscribe to Fox news feed.
Well, here is a “foreigners” view of ‘Merika:
“The blinkered people, the tax collectors roadside (police everywhere collecting taxes), the tax collecting at every opportunity, the welfare state, the severe drop in service at restaurants, the tattoos, the green hair, the lard-asses everywhere, the severe over-population of great swathes of the country, the hideous media out only to inflame, and not to report, the aged and infirm working at whatever jobs they can find, the homeless everywhere, the beggars, the filth roadside, the severe health issues seen at every turn (people everywhere too fat to walk, carrying oxygen, diabetes inflicted, toothless), casinos one after another, hideous roads, etc. ad naseum, lead me to but one conclusion: the US is fucked….They have no insight, no curiosity, no sense of understanding of the world, no vision of anything outside their tiny bubble of existence.”
As a life-long member of USA, I’ll respond to this:
“They have no insight, no curiosity, no sense of understanding of the world, no vision of anything outside their tiny bubble of existence.”
It’s overly broad, as all the bright, curious, visionary people I know are some of my best friends. ;->
But, yes, you’re essentially right. And as I’m pretty much anonymous here, I’ll tell ya what I think. It’s the ultimate in political incorrectness: There’s only about one person I say this to (my husband).
America is fucked–and has been fucked for a long time–because of a triad of forces that are virtually omniscient, entrenched, and untouchable:
The media (by which I mean television)
Marketing and advertising
Religion.
Television is the great immobilizer. It monopolizes people’s inner lives, tells them what they should be thinking about, shoves goods down their throats, keeps them sitting and staring and stewing. This works hand-in-glove with:
Marketing and advertising. This is psychological manipulation on the most massive scale imaginable (see Edward Bernays). It is lying codified, packaged, gulped down, so that corporate wishes are incorporated into one’s DNA, as it were. And this is all facilitated by:
Religion. This fosters irrationality. Get people to believe that a dead Jew 2,000 years ago rose from a tomb, walked through a wall, and ate a fish, and they’ll believe anything–anything the TV tells them, anything the advertisers tell them, anything their particular identity group tells them.
That’s my two cents, ain’t worth much, & nobody cares.
Michael — beware, the NSA is watching you.
They are going to be sorely disappointed. ;->
I find the increasingly worse mental health of the United States being caused by the acceptance of toxic beliefs like Nihilism, in which people refuse to see the goodness of the world so they slowly spiral down a cycle of self hate and striking out at everyone for being “evil” and so on. Many people no longer believe in the inherent purity and good will of human beings. They slowly drift towards beliefs that we are animals and must be extinguished for the world to “prosper”, missing the point of how fundamentally evil and destructive that would be.
>>They slowly drift towards beliefs that we are animals and must be extinguished for the world to “prosper”<<
This is kinda silly. That humans are animals is not "belief," it's a biological fact.
The phrase "must be extinguised," even though in passive voice, indicates that you must think there is a force somewhere guiding human fate. Who or what is doing the extinguishing? No, if humans "are extinguised," it will be their own damn fault, though as Ron has argued here, there's really no one to blame: it's all the result of the evolutionary success of a particularly ardent and destructive African ape, us.
But your belief in the power of belief is charming.
Danny-
“Many people no longer believe in the inherent purity”
Umm… we are animals who get birthed out of a vagina, just like other mammals. Look it up.
And why don’t you go to a meeting of rape survivors, or a war crimes tribunal, and stand up and start talking about the inherent purity of Homo sap. Please have these events on video so we can watch on You Tube. Thanks in advance.
“I find the increasingly worse mental health of the United States being caused by the acceptance of toxic beliefs like Nihilism, in which people refuse to see the goodness of the world so they slowly spiral down a cycle of self hate and striking out at everyone for being “evil” and so on.”
are you referring to Trump and his ilk?
The idea that foreigners think that Americans pay too much in taxes is a bit silly.
The idea that scofflaw drivers shouldn’t be fined is bonkers American populism at it dumbest.
Fred, you may find this interesting?
THE CHIMP WHO BELIEVED SHE WAS HUMAN
“In 1964, a psychotherapist and his wife adopted a two-day-old chimpanzee. They named her Lucy. For twelve years, Dr. Maurice and Jane Temerlin would raise Lucy as if she were their human daughter. The chimp ate at the family dinner table, using silverware. She dressed herself. She served her parents tea. She even learned 140 signs in American Sign Language. When Lucy reached adolescence, she developed a taste for straight gin and Playgirl—which she flipped through while masturbating with a vacuum cleaner. She began to act out, sometimes violently. Growing concerned, the Temerlins decided to introduce Lucy to another chimp for the first time, with the apparent intention of mating them. Lucy was uninterested. By all measurable counts, Lucy believed she was human.”
PS: Sometimes my old dog looks at me as if I’m a idiot; and, sometimes I think he’s right.
A psychotherapist alienating an animal. A sad story indeed. They shouldn’t let them get close to human beings either. I mean the psychotherapists; they are dangerous.
Yeah, I knew about that story…
Ah the things you’ll read on a forum entitled, ‘Peak Oil Barrel’. It’s comments like these that can make me miss The Oil Drum sometimes.
“Fred, you may find this interesting?” ~ Doug Leighton
After you, Fred…
“While there are numerous reasons I usually refrain from participating in these threads…” ~ Coffeeguyzz
‘u^
Above my pay grade- need help with a calculation.
The Vogtle Nuclear Plants being built in SC units 3 and 4, are now at 27B$ construction cost combined. I don’t know if this includes fuel and final completion, but lets assume it is the final price.
The nameplate capacity total is 2.2 MW and lets be very generous and assume a 90% operating capacity.
That comes out to 13.5 B$ per MW.
What does this equate to in cost (assuming 30 yr LCOE)- in cents/kwh?
The comparison for Utility Scale fixed tilt PV in N.Carolina for yr 2017
[according to the report from NREL- pg 47 https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68925.pdf ]
is Installed cost 0.97 cent/W and Real LCOE (30yr) is 5.67 cent/kwh
[note- LCOE 30= Leveled Cost of Energy over 30 yrs]
Thanks for the help on this.
1. 90% of Fuel is imported. IIRC Fabing the rods more costly than the U.
2. Spent fuel management costs are unknown and not included. Possible to be the highest cost of all.
3. PV does not fit the current Centralized on way Investor-Owned Utility Model. Distributed Energy Resources “DER” has too many advantages. Utilities are Banned from owning DER in most states unless it’s on their Property. Do we see IOU’s morphing into McDonald’s? Now You Know why the Edison Institute continues to spend millions to kill disruptive 3rd Party PV. It’s not over till it’s over.
Messy Vogtle Update: https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060099887
LCOE for new nuclear is listed as about 9.2 cents per kWh. Since the levelized capital cost is about 6.9 cents of that and there is a cost overrun of about three times, looking at 24 cents kWh LCOE.
Thats for the comment guys, I am trying to figure out how to go from 13.5$ B/MW to cents$/kwh calculation.?
Weather production dependent Solar PV is the Only Gen Source that both Costs and Production models and estimates turn out to be amazingly accurate. There just fewer variables. The Global Price for containers of PV is a waze below 40 cents/watt. The Focus in the last few years is to reduce all the other Balance of Systems cost. Disruptive with a Capital D.
Longtimber- I was using the data for the closest NREL site they calculated, that being in the coastal plain of NC which is very close to Vogtle solar potential. Also local land, labor, and building costs are similar, which is part of the equation that NREL used to be as real as possible with their analysis.
Therefore, I believe their utility scale PV cost is reality based, at least for Q1 2017.
You’re 1000 times too low on generating capacity, try 2x 1,100 MW.
NAOM
Thank you. That explains part of my outrageous nuclear costs, but still I’m embarrassed to post the numbers until I verify my calculations better.
In the meantime, about 8GW of wind power is added each year, equivalent to more than 3 of these nuke reactors in energy production. All for about 11 billion dollars.
Meaning that wind energy can be added at 12 times the rate of nuclear energy and at much lower cost, at least in the US.
At 1100MW per reactor make that 7x.
NAOM
No, not 7x
At 90 percent capacity factor for the nuke and 40 percent for all new wind turbines the last few years, no it’s 12 times the build rate.
8GWX 0.4= 3.2 GW per year
It will take over 7 years to complete the reactors and get them running.
2GW/7.5 years build = 0.267 GW/year
3.2/0.267 = 11.99 round up to 12 times
Also consider that wind turbines will be better and cheaper by the time those get running in 2021 and 2022. So it’s an even bigger factor.
I doubt if nukes will get better in the US, economical dead end without considering the cost of actual storage or decommissioning.
It does not matter what the fuel costs, with 13500 USD per kW you have around 1000 USD capital costs per year (annually 7-8% for 20 years), alone this gives a kWh price of more than 0.1 USD. The typical NPP has a CF of 80-90% in western countries.
Everything else comes on top: fuel, O&M
If you check capacity factors and costs of windpower and PV, you can combine windpower, PV plus open NG turbine as backup for less than 5000 USD for the same annual output.
NPPs are economicall dead as dead can be if they cost more than 5000 USD/kW.
This has been a great boon to the construction workers and contractors, someone is making lots of money on the front end. Could be the last nukes built in the US but not much makes sense anymore so there may be more. It’s not scalable anyway so nuclear is just an unnecessary hazard and money/materials sinkhole.
Wonder how many old nukes will have to be decommissioned during the next decade.
“It is expected that the urban public transportation market will be influenced by the cable cars and ropeways market in the future… Urban cities have started to realize the potential for cable cars and ropeways as a solution to mobility needs, thus boosting the growth of cable cars and ropeway market.”
“In a span of just five years, La Paz has built over 27km (16.2mi) of rapid transit. That’s faster or nearly the same amount of time it takes to complete infrastructure review processes in some North American jurisdictions…
…unlike some of the previous cable cars… the new 4.3km urban cable car has upgraded performance abilities with capacities reaching 4,000 passengers per hour per direction (pphpd) and speeds of 6m/s.”
“CONUS-scale aggregation of solar and wind power is not sufficient to provide a highly reliable energy system without large quantities of supporting technologies (energy storage, separate carbon-neutral, flexible generators, demand management, etc.). This conclusion stems directly from an analysis of the physical characteristics of solar and wind resources and does not depend on any detailed modeling assumptions. The system architecture required to produce high reliability using primarily solar and wind generation is driven almost entirely by the need to overcome seasonal and weather-driven variability in the solar and wind resources.”
“We CAN (if we want) spend ridiculous amounts on getting CLOSE to 100% rens. Or we can solve climate + health + hunger + many other things for the SAME cost. I think it is morally important to aim to solve as many of the world issues at the same time.” ~ Christopher Clack
I think the energy business is ripe for massive disruption. As it is so often with these things, the raw numbers don’t show it in advance.
Self-Defeating Buildout?
Another concern I have with any kind of relatively large-scale alternative energy buildout, as per the current crony-capitalist plutarchy context, is that it will most likely not be allocated where and how most people would most directly benefit from it.
I mean, if we are on the global fossil-fuel and general energy downslope, and the quantity and quality of energies at our disposal become increasingly constrained, a la entropy, and also therefore relatively more valuable, it would seem to make especially serious sense to consider how it’s allocated and adding value there.
Prioritizing critical facilities and infrastructures?
Most folks on sites like these already appear well-aware that humans have somewhat squandered their fossil fuel heritage (among other planetary heritages); as well as aware of James Howard Kunstler’s often-repeated gripe to the effect of suburbia being ‘the greatest misallocation of resources in history’. So, rampant buildout of alternative energy with little foresight nor reason nor rhyme would seem to defeat its own purpose.
There is little point to calling for something like a whole lot of solar panel arrays in the deserts if the processes and results will defeat much of its own purpose is there? But that’s what appears many have done and continue to do. The horse has to come before the cart.
That said, then, if my implied recommendation must be explicit, it would be for countries and their locales to work together in a concerted attempt to make certain that the remaining global energy and energy-related resources be used with some uncharacteristic foresight, ethics and some reason and rhyme.
Caelan, you might be better off railing against the guys I highlight in a response to a post by HB futrther down. That post goes to the heart of your pet peeve, the crony-capitalist plutarchy and shows how players have been playing the long game to co opt the US Federal Government and the legal system. Just so you know, these players are vehemently opposed to renewable energy or anything that seeks to constrain their ability to continue to reap massive profits from resource extracting industries they own. (Koch Industries)
Then again, IIRC you are actually live in CanadaCanadian, so maybe you couldn’t care less if the US government and legal system were to end up being controlled by the crony-capitalist plutarchy. That would not be a good thing IMHO.
Down The Rabbit Hole With Islandboy
“Neofeudalism… signifies the end of shared citizenship… As such, the commodification of policing and security operates to cement (sometimes literally) and exacerbate social and spatial inequalities generated elsewhere; serving to project, anticipate and bring forth a… ‘neo-feudal’ world of private orders in which social cohesion and common citizenship have collapsed… Out of such a marriage of business and government, a symbiosis emerges between the commercial sector’s own private security forces and the local government’s police forces, with repressive outcomes shaped by profit-driven definitions of deviance and a commodification of social control…” ~ Wikipedia
“Then again, IIRC you are actually Canadian…” ~ islandboy
Nope. I’m Terran.
“One manifestation of this ideal of refusing geopolitical borders in favour of older or no borders can be seen in Hogan’s repeated references to the idea of Pangaea, the theorized ‘original’ landmass that eventually broke apart into the continents… Through their reconnection with Native understandings of space and their successful creation of an effective coalition, Hogan’s characters claim citizenship as Native subjects who have a different but valid knowledge of the world and can forge the political power to help shape that world.” ~ Dreaming of Pangaea: Decolonizing Strategies in Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms
“…shows how players have been playing the long game to co opt the US Federal Government and the legal system.” ~ islandboy
“The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.” ~ Emma Goldman
Edited live! On-the-fly! ^u^
Post above edited to reflect country of residence as opposed to citizenship.
‘Country of residence’ seems still a bit of a mindfuck (ideological colonization) or genuflect, but maybe inches a little more toward mental freedom, so that’s something. The rabbit hole goes pretty deep of course.
“I had one or two of my posts last week get snagged in the spam filter, but I edit the hell out of some of them anyway, recently thanks to Dennis. ?
Every year something quite unusual seems to happen in the Arctic. This year the refreeze has been late and slow, especially in the central basin. The peripheral seas are still pretty warm and a lot of the changes seem to be ice getting blown around from one area to another. Global sea ice extent is pretty much following 2016 and 2017 minimums. I feel every climate, resource or political related comment these days should end with the words “we are so fucked”.
Now there are many very smart minds in the tech and venture capital fields coming together to bring to market the solutions to the climate problem so writing “we are so fucked” in all your messages is just wrong. Note here is an example of Google marketing new data that cities can use for the coming decades to reverse climate change.
Google’s New Tool to Fight Climate Change
Robinson Meyer
In the next decade or so, more than 6,000 cities, states, and provinces around the world will try to do something that has eluded humanity for 25 years: reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, which warm the atmosphere and cause climate change.
The city-level leaders overseeing this task won’t have the same tools available to their national peers. Most of them won’t have an Environmental Protection Agency (or its equivalent), a meteorological bureau, a team of military engineers, or NASA. So where will they start? Never mind how to reduce their city’s greenhouse-gas emissions; how will they know what’s spewing carbon dioxide in the first place?
Maybe Google will do it for them. Or, at least, do it with them.
Google has started estimating greenhouse-gas emissions for individual cities, part of what it recently described as an ambitious new plan to deploy its hoard of geographic information on the side of climate-concerned local leaders.
“The first step toward taking climate action is creating an emissions inventory,” says Saleem Van Groenou, a program manager at Google Earth. “Understanding your current situation at the city scale, and understanding what you can do to it—that’s an information problem, and that’s a good place for Google to sit.”
As part of this initiative, Google says it will also release its proprietary estimates of a city’s annual driving, biking, and transit ridership, generated from information collected by its popular mapping apps, Google Maps and Waze. The company has never released this kind of aggregate transportation data to the public before, and it says it may share even more specific types of data with individual local governments.
Better information can replace energy and cut waste in any system.
I’d put having my life taken over by Google, advertising agencies and smart phones very much in the “so fucked” category.
And once we get all the data from Google and elsewhere, if we still have clear minds, we will look at it and conclude… ‘we are so fucked’ [the biggest thing this refers to is that we are so so far into global overshoot]
Nibbling at the problem is not going to get any result. Sort of like throwing paper cups at a charging bear.
This company is stepping up to the plate (pun intended) with Zinc-Air batteries, claiming to have the cost of production down to a affordable level. This appears to be for stationary applications. It is backed back a billionaire and is rolling along pretty fast- https://nantenergy.com/company/
American company
Rest of world installations 194
American installations 1
Says something.
NAOM
What it says is that so far most of their installations have been in the ‘microgrid’ scenario far from grids, in underdeveloped locales.
But they seem to be on the verge of production at costs which be competitive in grid connected scenarios. We shall see.
The cost of running grid to some of those places would be astronomical, nobody would be able to afford the electricity. Little wonder they haven’t had any to date.
On this day in 1953, the CIA staged a coup in Iran overturning its democratically elected leader.
We have been paying the price for this illegal act ever since.
Why did they do it?
Iran nationalized its oil. What does that mean? They told British Petroleum “the oil in our country belongs to us.”
This caused British Petroleum (BP) and the UK government to flip out.
They went to the US and asked to different presidents to intervene. Truman, to his great credit, said “no.” Eisenhower said “yes.”
The country was given over to the corrupt Shah who in exchange for billions in bribes and arms gave turned the country’s oil over to BP. To keep control over people who never elected him the Shah employed CIA torture experts to help set up a secret police.
And we wonder why there is turmoil in the region.
Unfortunately this “success” led to other CIA supported coups – in Guatemala, in Indonesia, in Vietnam, in the Congo, in the Dominican Republic, in Brazil, and in Chile.
Between 1947 and 1989, the United States tried to change other nations’ governments 72 times. Most of the attempts failed.
Guatemala was next in 1954.
The price is being paid for all theses actions.
Good summary.
What percent of Americans know this history,
or that in large part the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a fabrication/gross exaggeration?
I would be proud of an American president who had the ovaries to offer a major apology to Iran for
that behavior.
“who had the ovaries”
Clearly not 10 out of 11 on the R side of the judiciary committee and who knows what the hell Lindsey has but it’s not ovaries. I’m not sure he knows, but I am sure he is taking it from behind from Trump.
Then there was Chile–
1973 Chilean coup d’état
On 911, I though first it was Chile–as that was the date of the coup.
In 2013 Gallup, which conducts international polls, asked the question- which country is the biggest threat to world peace. USA won by a country mile. In a distant second place was Pakistan, probably skewed in part by the beliefs of the large India population. The poll result was not reported much in American mainstream media, and the question was never asked again. America is the asshole of the planet. If NK did nuke America it seems most of the people on the planet would cheer.
I don’t think America is the asshole of the planet. It has, and still is, producing great things – rock ‘n’ roll in many forms, modern art, cinema (though I don’t like blockbusters), and most of all thinkers in science, medicine, humanities, philosophy etc. But I’ve lived in a few “western” countries and it’s always seemed more different than any of the others, despite the common language, and I’d stress I certainly didn’t dislike living there. It thinks of itself as free but is one of the most rule bound places I’ve been (explicit like long lists of prescribed and proscribed actions and implicit like narrow bands of tolerated behaviour). It producers some of the most highly educated people but also the dumbest (and often wilfully and proudly so). I don’t understand why it continually goes against the trend that religious belief is declining most places in the west. Most people are incredibly upbeat and optimistic but overall not particularly happy or content (almost the exact opposite of Denmark). It has it’s own sports that are mostly highly explosive and anaerobic whereas most countries have football (soccer) and more aerobic, longer lasting things. Nowhere else has the overt university based tribalism. Nowhere else has even remotely the veneration for the military (though I think it’s more as an abstract concept than reality). I think most of all is that there’s a kind of acceptance of, and almost pride in, confrontation, sometimes violent – almost everything is seen as some kind of us versus some kind of them and no compromise is possible. Maybe it’s an empire thing, Rome, Spain, China, UK might have been the same in their day
I think that many of the successes that Americans have experienced, such as conquest of the continent and successful exploitation of its vast resources, war victories in ww1 and ww11, and a long list of inventions, and cultural innovations, have given the culture a sense of entitlement and superiority that is reflected in the behavior as rudeness, cockiness, and disrespect for others.
The current president is a perfect presentation of this phenomena.
And he can barely read.
“And he can barely read.”
“I’m a idiot and proud of it!” is not politically viable.
“I’m a idiot and proud of it!” is not politically viable.
Well, that seems to work if you are in the republican camp. They seem to have a strong affinity for that stance.
Well said George. Its all well and good to knock America and Americans but not to ignore the many positive contributions that have come out of the US. One only has to think of the countless numbers of people who escaped a nothing or doomed life who were able to reach an astronomic potential because of opportunities available to them in America — Einstein and Enrico Fermi being two.
Lest we forget without the US intervention, most of you would probably be under the boot of the Nazis or living as Japanese slaves. Of course, this intervention forced the US to become an international superpower that spent huge sums rebuilding Europe. They also provided aid to Asian countries.
So much for the horrible Americans, who spent lots of money, lives and materials to only become derided and spurned by the very people they helped.
And ever since the US has had a war footing economy meaning a debt economy, keeping that balance of power. Or did Europe want to be part of the Soviet regime? And so was born the industrial military complex and debt ridden police state we live with today, thanks to crazy Europeans wanting to run the world. Please take notice that the US was generally reluctant to enter war before that time.
Yes, for example, the Japanese were utterly astounded by the generous and humane post-war treatment they received at the hands of the US. Furthermore, that sentiment still exists in Japan today.
Well, I guess that proves the Brexiteer’s point that UK isn’t part of Europe, as the US didn’t spend treasure rebuilding its ally. It took 61 years, and $83.25m to repay “Lend Lease”. (And the UK also repaid Canada $22.7m). This was settled with a final payment on 29 December 2006. The Americans I’ve spoken to about this were angry that any British person should question the repayment — it was a loan, after all, and (as one said to me) ‘we saved your ass’. I suspect here it became a point of honour.
Oh Bullshit! The US gave the British $26 billion (today’s money) dollars through the Marshall plan plus funded the operation.
“The largest recipient of Marshall Plan money was the United Kingdom (receiving about 26% of the total), followed by France (18%) and West Germany (11%). Some eighteen European countries received Plan benefits.”
It took 61 years to repay 83 million? That is nothing compared to the GDP of GB. Which even back in 1965 was 100 billion dollars. Sounds like a token payment to me, especially at about a million per year. Heck that is not even a CEO salary at many corporations.
Well said!
You only prove that brexiters may have huge deficiencies in respect to UK history. 🙂
It is a special variant of the reality deficiency syndrome, which is quite prevalent in brexiters and can only be traeted with a hard brexit and a lot of pain. 🙂
it seems that Spanish scientists invented a pole that creates electric energy by means of vibration from the vortex of the wind whirling around it. it as no moving parts like the actual aerogenerators and can deliver up to 1 MW of power. The poles can be situated closer than the aerogenerators and are cheaper up to 47%. But the best part of the invent is that no birds die by striking the actual aerogenerators fans since the invent it is just a pole.
Link or it didn’t happen!
NAOM
just google ‘vibrating rod’- I’m sure you’ll find it
Only level switches. My point was that someone posting under a footballer’s name should provide a reference point so others don’t need to search and search, especially when it is a more extraordinary claim. That avoids the appearance of a troll.
NAOM
Oh I agree- was joking about the ‘vibrating rod’ search.
The idea that wind turbines are a danger to birds because they have whirling blades is false. Any large objct such as a building or a radio tower has the same problem.
Matt Damon Impersonates Brett Kavanaugh In Instantly Iconic ‘SNL’ Sketch
“Saturday Night Live” roared back big time in its 44th season opener with a jam-packed cold-open replay of Thursday’s Brett Kavanaugh hearing.
In the instantly iconic sketch, Matt Damon unleashed a mega-furious impersonation of the Supreme Court nominee, entering the hearing room after “shadow boxing in the men’s room for the last 45 minutes.”
Supported by generous donations from conservative billionaires such as the Koch brothers, the Federalist Society has spent decades grooming promising young law students and attorneys to fill vacancies on the federal courts. This long-range effort has born fruit in the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Unites States Supreme Court and now the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to take the seat of retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were picked by President Donald Trump straight from a list of pro-business, anti-regulation conservative judges compiled by the Federalist Society. Rich right-wing donors have gotten a big return on their investment.
In the weeks ahead, we’re going to spend a lot of time going over Brett Kavanaugh’s biography — where he’s from and what he’s written. But that’s not the most important way to understand the guy.
Kavanaugh is the product of a community. He is the product of a conservative legal infrastructure that develops ideas, recruits talent, links rising stars, nurtures genius, molds and launches judicial nominees. It almost doesn’t matter which Republican is president. The conservative legal infrastructure is the entity driving the whole project. It almost doesn’t even matter if Kavanaugh is confirmed or shot down; there are dozens more who can fill the vacancy, just as smart and just as conservative.
This community didn’t just happen; it was self-consciously built. If you want to understand how to permanently change the political landscape, it’s a good idea to study and be inspired how it was done.
Nearly forty years later, many of the Kochs’ policy preferences are now standard Republican orthodoxy, having been promoted from the fringes into the mainstream by the dozens of nonprofit organizations and candidates they funded. Small government, anti-tax, anti-regulatory, and pro-privatization policies, as well as skepticism regarding global warming, are commonplace……[snip]
What is often overlooked, and is far more significant, is the large extent to which the Kochs’ policy preferences have prevailed under Trump. Trump’s only major legislative achievement, the tax bill, which reduced corporate taxes from thirty-five to twenty-one per cent, was passed with the support of a twenty-million-dollar campaign by Americans for Prosperity, the Kochs’ nationwide advocacy group. At the same time, the Kochs launched an equally effective political campaign to defeat the mechanism that Trump originally embraced to pay for these enormous tax cuts: a “border adjustment tax” devised by Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. Despite support from the White House and Republican leaders in Congress, the Koch network killed it. The final tax bill redistributed wealth from the bottom and the middle to the top and created gaping deficits that will likely require additional cuts in government spending, positions the Kochs have long embraced.
Trump’s rollback of the Obama Administration’s environmental policies, crippling of Obamacare, and dismantling of key provisions in the Dodd-Frank financial-services law all have been top items on the Kochs’ wish list. There is no sign that David Koch’s departure from public life will significantly affect any of this. The Kochs’ Seminar Network is promising to spend an estimated three to four hundred million dollars during the this fall’s midterm election. Evidently, even if there is only one Koch brother left at the table, the menu will remain exactly the same, and the tab will be larger than ever.
It would appear, that if you guys in the US are not careful you will end up living in The United States of Kochistan! The greatest oligarchy the world has ever seen!
A slow motion coup d’état.
NAOM
The US seems to be ceasing to be a full democracy, though maybe the high independence of the states will slow things down. Non democracies often end up going to war, sometimes with former allies, so it’s not just the US that needs to be careful.
With wide gender, racial and partisan gaps, and a shift in support among independent voters, 48 percent of American voters say the U.S. Senate should not confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, as 42 percent say Kavanaugh should be confirmed, according to a Quinnipiac University National Poll released today.
This compares to the results of a September survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University National Poll, showing 41 percent of American voters supporting a Kavanaugh confirmation, with 42 percent opposed. Independent voters, who supported Kavanaugh 45 – 39 percent September 10, oppose his confirmation 49 – 39 percent today.
Women oppose confirmation 55 – 37 percent, while men support it 49 – 40 percent.
White voters say 51 – 40 percent confirm Kavanaugh. Opposed are black voters 81 – 11 percent and Hispanic voters 65 – 30 percent.
Choosing between Kavanaugh and his accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, 48 percent of American voters most believe Ford as 41 percent most believe Kavanaugh.
But 49 percent of voters say Kavanaugh “is the target of a politically motivated smear campaign,” as 45 percent of voters say he is not a target of a smear campaign.
Musk settles with SEC, to step down as Tesla Chairman; $40M in combined fines
Elon Musk, CEO and Chairman of Tesla, Inc., has agreed to settle the securities fraud charge brought by the SEC against him last week. (Earlier post.) The SEC also today charged Tesla with failing to have required disclosure controls and procedures relating to Musk’s tweets, a charge that Tesla has agreed to settle.
The settlements, which are subject to court approval, will result in comprehensive corporate governance and other reforms at Tesla—including Musk’s removal as Chairman of the Tesla board (he will remain CEO)—and the payment by Musk and Tesla of financial penalties.
According to the SEC’s complaint against him, Musk tweeted on 7 August 2018 that he could take Tesla private at $420 per share—a substantial premium to its trading price at the time—that funding for the transaction had been secured, and that the only remaining uncertainty was a shareholder vote.
“G I G A News for TeslaHeads! Elon just Tweeted to his 22 million disciples – time to take TSLA Private @ 420 /Share! Major upsides here since TSLA can focus past the Next Quarter. Wipes out BILLIONS in Shorts. What a Bloodbath !!! No one else could source cells in this volume to pull this off, photon years ahead with Panasonic and GIGAFactory. Hope he’s got a Ludicrous mode Body Guard.” ~ Longtimber http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-aug-7-2018/#comment-647866
Looks like he also wiped out 20 million of his own stash, and 20 million belonging to Tesla. What a bloodbath. Musk should try a few weeks at Betty Ford Center.
Bloodbath? Nope, no Americans killed, just a mistake for a rich guy and a very rich company. Well, they did lose out on profit from a week’s worth of Model 3s. Probably shed a tear over that.
Anyway, you should enjoy knowing that the government will get that money.
In Tesla’s Jan. 2016 shareholders letter, Musk tells shareholders “We plan to fund about $1.5 billion in capital expenditures without accessing any outside capital….” Three months later, the company announces that it plans to sell $2 billion of Tesla shares in order to invest in the just-announced Model 3 production. Right. Three months ago, he had no idea he’d need capital for the new model?
The dudes a flake! Anyone selling the importance of decreased carbon emissions, while at the same time promoting the idea of future space tourism needs their head examined.
Elon is not a flake, he is a practical genius that thinks way beyond what is possible today. I did wonder and disagree with his Mars mission agenda, at first. But by listening to a number of interviews of Musk and realizing he is a lot smarter than I am, I pieced together his strong motivations for his rocket endeavors. His purpose is not to send up satellites or do space tourism, those are merely the vehicles to start an actual colony on Mars.
It does, at first glance, appear to be an improbable and wasteful mission. However, after listening carefully to him I realize he is convinced that humans on Earth are very much in danger and that the Mars colony would be a backup for disaster. I won’t argue with someone that smart who has been warning people for a long time now. As usual people are not listening. So he does things himself, he and his people.
I don’t know why you are so concerned about the Tesla business model, whether it fails or thrives. Were you this adamant about Amazon not making a profit for years, or the shale oil Ponzi scheme going on for years now?
I do recall your saying how having more dead Americans from the flu was a silver lining. http://peakoilbarrel.com/world-coal-2018-2050-world-energy-annual-report-part-4/#comment-653415
Maybe it’s you that needs his head examined.
Wa® E¢onomi¢$
The innocent civilians dead, tortured and/or injured at the hands of assorted so-called American intervention the world over and across history might agree (or have agreed) with some of its gist though.
As for Musk, his ‘genius’ doesn’t seem that much evolved than ours as kids when we played with our Tonkas®, Hotwheels® and plastic moon-rockets in the sandboxes.
“Chris Hedges interviews former combat veteran and US Army officer Spenser Rapone about bravery and morality. The second lieutenant was given an ‘other than honorable’ discharge June 18 after an army investigation determined that he ‘went online to promote a socialist revolution and disparage high-ranking officers’, and thereby engaged in ‘conduct unbecoming an officer.’ ” ~ Russia Today’s On Contact
I’m not qualified to judge these against the standard designs currently in use, but I could see this kind of design being useful atop buildings in cities, for example, where big blade turbines may not be feasible.
A problem there could be sympathetic resonance in the building. Maybe not affecting the structure but causing hum in certain sized rooms or vibrating objects. Any damping would counter the generating effect.
Winter Ice on Lakes, Rivers, Ponds: A Thing of the Past? Now the scientists have looked more specifically at trends in ice duration in 65 waterbodies across what might be called the last bastion of winter in the United States–the Great Lakes region (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario and New York)–during a period of rapid climate warming (1975-2004).
Average rates of change in ice freeze and breakup dates were 5.8 and 3.3 times faster, respectively, than historical rates from 1846 to 1995 for the Northern Hemisphere. Average ice duration decreased by 5.3 days per decade.
Over the same time period, average temperatures from fall through spring in this region increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius. The average number of days with snow decreased by 5.0 days per decade, and the average snow depth on those days decreased by 1.7 centimeters per decade.
They really tried their hardest here, but this year’s ice out on lakes in this region was one of the latest ever. I suggest taking a look at the records from Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota, since they go back over 160 years and this year had the latest ice out of them all.
One year? One lake? Really?
Yes, really. The study you promoted ends at 2004, which is too long ago now to be fully relevant. 2008, 2013, and 2014 also had unusually late ice outs which would skew the narrative away from warming at a faster rate if they were taken into account.
Let’s see 2004 to 2018 is 15 years, so there was late ice four out of fifteen years. I do recall that there was an unusual cold spell in the spring this year in some regions. Still, not a widespread trend of any sort. Just a local or regional occurrence in spring due to shifts in the Jetstream.
Personally, I have studied and done on site surveys of the old ice cutting areas on the mountains in my region. They are no longer viable, often open water now in midwinter and only thin ice forming some winters (not all).
Give it a few more years in your area, it will be obvious to you. Follow it back over more than one hundred years as I have.
I know it is difficult for most people to analyze a smaller variation within a larger one, so just go with the science if you can’t do that.
Deven “FBI-Hater” Nunes has a Dairy Farm in Iowa – in Steve “Immigrant Hater” King’s district – and that farm like all American dairy and Ag businesses relies heavily on poorly paid illegal immigrants for labor.
A reporter who tried to dig around to find out more was run out of town by a posse led by Deven’s family. The reporter was perplexed by the hypocrisy of the local dairy farmers who opposed Trump and Steve King’s immigration curbs – but still continued to vote for both.
DEVIN NUNES’S FAMILY FARM IS HIDING A POLITICALLY EXPLOSIVE SECRET
“By utilizing HRP-5P as a development platform of industry-academia collaboration, it is expected that research and development for practical use of humanoid robots in building construction sites and assembly of large structures such as aircraft and ships will be accelerated,” write the creators.
The researchers see the robot as a replacement for an aging population and a declining birth rate. “It is expected that many industries such as the construction industry will fall into serious manual shortages in the future, and it is urgent to solve this problem by robot technology,” they write.
Bold mine.
Perhaps I’m alone in thinking that we are still quite far from experiencing a serious shortage of humans who might be willing and able to do some manual labor.
Cheers!
P.S. Though yesterday I watched a small lawn mowing robot in a Children’s park here in Göbrichen where I am staying.
The combination of AI, robots and 3-D printing will allow mankind to pursue many other activities rather than laborious work. Why we may eventually be able to do this someday.
So he stays very far away from himself?
Maybe that is why he can’t read, arms to short?
Arctic sea ice is continuing to be reluctant to refreeze. Temperature anomalies are currently 2 to 3K (about as expected by Arctic amplification) but forecast to be above 4 this week. Without the plug of thick ice that dissappeared last year a lot of the thin stuff from the central basin is getting pushed south into the Canadian Archipelago. There is some evidence of warmer and saltier water getting in to deeper seas from Atlantic and/or Pacific. Every phenomena is a kind of one off and changes the next year, I guess that is characteristic of any system transitioning between two stable states. It’s probably the same for the Earth as a whole as we move from glacial to hothouse.
That’s because the Arctic will actually spill out into the west next week. Temperatures in the Northern Plains will be so far below normal by this weekend that there will likely be an unprecedented early October snowfall brought on by a low pressure system.
Hey Bob maybe you could be the weatherman at Fox news. Just make some blue maps. Although I understand they have a strong preference for red. You might have to rethink that whole plan.
[wow, look how democratic Wyoming has become this week!, and the whole NE is downright fascist]
“The future is bright for dinoflagellates.”
— Jeremy Jackson
Bob, maybe I can help you out a little with the upcoming long range (6 month) forecast-
Very cold at times, more so in some places than others. High likelihood of the temperature averages being normal (within 2 SD deviations of the mean [20 yr]).
Run with it.
btw- average first date of measurable snowfall in Billings is Oct 12, and earliest is Sept 7.
Watch for some major natural gas price spikes this winter in US.
How quaint that your entire world view still consists of the USA…
Best regards from the other side of the Atlantic! FYI, there is weather here as well…
Cheers!
Herr Kaplan —
LIMITATIONS OF BATSMEN RANKINGS REVEALED
“Current systems for ranking the best batsmen in test cricket have been bowled out by a new study. In a paper which could give sleepless night to cricket statisticians all over the world, researchers from Newcastle and Northumbria universities delivered their ‘out’ verdict to current methods after analysing the two most popular test cricket rankings. They found that rating batsmen by average score alone is not enough to determine who is best.”
I have an infallible ranking system: Colin Cowdrey (ex Kent and England): No. 1; everybody else: not No.1.
Hightrekker — Physics is not dead. 😉
BLACK HOLES RULED OUT AS UNIVERSE’S MISSING DARK MATTER
“We are back to the standard discussions. What is dark matter? Indeed, we are running out of good options,” said Uroš Seljak, a UC Berkeley professor of physics and astronomy and BCCP co-director. “This is a challenge for future generations.”
“Challenged” is a proper word if you are paying attention.
A wake up call.
Synapsid – not forgetting my sagacious sidekick on this snowy Tuesday morning.
DID KEY BUILDING BLOCKS FOR LIFE COME FROM DEEP SPACE?
“Little was known about a key element in the building blocks, phosphates, until now. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa researchers, in collaboration with colleagues in France and Taiwan, provide compelling new evidence that this component for life was found to be generated in outer space and delivered to Earth in its first one billion years by meteorites or comets. The phosphorus compounds were then incorporated in biomolecules found in cells in living beings on Earth.”
Ah, phosphorus! It and sulfur are the subject of one of the branches of isotope geochem whose siren voice called from the deeps when I was entering graduate study. Thanks for wheezing on the coals, as it were.
Finding element P in comets (possibly in forms resulting from the kinds of reactions the article tells us about) adds to its discovery in the solid state in many meteorites so it’s an easy step to thinking the two types of body could, likely did, deliver P, some of it chemically accessible when in water, to Earth in the very early days. Many meteorites, we recall, are remnants of the kinds of objects our planet formed from, so we should keep in mind that Earth may well have formed with a fair treasury of P to be supplemented by delivery via arrival from space. Weathering of rock releases P and it makes its way to the oceans, and the oceans were here very early indeed, so it’s nice to see evidence that, um…life, ah yes: life…could have come into being…on Earth. (Going out on a limb here)
There’s a name for this delightful field–perhaps you’ve encountered it: cosmochemistry. How I strayed from its pursuit is a long story.
Thanks again.
The perfect three way marriage!
Cryptocurrencies, PV solar energy and emerging economies.
How a Ugandan prince and a crypto startup are planning an African revolution
What if blockchain turned out to be just what emerging economies were after?
Crypto and blockchain enthusiasts have been railing for years against the centralized world of banks, but many have been doing so from the privileged vantage point of developed countries. But what if blockchain technology turned out to be most revolutionary in emerging economies?
Quiet heroes:
A new book of photos has just been published, to mark the 75th anniversary of one of the most daring rescues in World War Two. It features striking portraits of civilians who resisted the Nazis.
“Denmark was the only Western European country occupied by Nazi Germany that was able to save its Jewish population. While evil and fear took over most of Europe, the Danish people retained their humanity and rescued those in great danger.”
344 — [BC] Aristotle dies of indigestion. Probably gagged on Plato & Socrates, famous authoritarians.
+Hightrekker, I doubt Aristotle would have gagged on Plato (or Socrates–whose views we know about only through Plato). Although Aristotle often differed with Plato, both men had reservations about democracy. Aristotle called it the best of the bad forms of government, but the worst of the good forms. He thought there were three basic forms of government (and governments did not have to be purely one form but could be mixed in various degrees): aristocracy, oligarchy, and democracy, or as we would say today, meritocracy, plutarchy, and democracy. But unlike the simple good vs. evil dichotomy that we moderns tend to view these forms as, Aristotle thought that good and bad versions of each form of government were possible. He noted that abusive versions (tyrannies) tended to be short-lived. He also noted that governments were not always in practice what they claimed to be in theory, since the rules could be rigged to favor one group or another. I have no doubt that if Aristotle were with us today that he would describe the USA as an oligarchy (plutarchy) masquerading as a democracy. Remember, Aristotle did not think that oligarchies were invariably bad, but I think he would hold the American version in very low esteem. Aristotle, who was a slave owner, thought that some men were naturally slaves, and he thought that Sparta (which was the inspiration for Plato’s Republic) had declined because it gave too much freedom to its women (to the dismay of the equality-minded Plato, Athens kept its women in seclusion, what we now call purdah, a custom that Alexander is thought by many to have spread to the Middle East), so I doubt he would think highly of our civil rights and feminist revolutions since the 1960’s.
I agree– Aristotle was anti democratic also, and it was Catholicism embracing his ideas that he is held in prominence.
“Anti-democratic” is too simple to describe Aristotle’s view. It was not his favorite form of government, but he did not consider it necessarily unviable or without its merits. He seems to have thought of democracy, plutocracy, and meritocracy (the best men from the best families, aristocracy in Greek) as ingredients in a recipe, although one ingredient tended to predominate in a given place and time. I think he would have been sympathetic with Alexander Pope’s view: “For forms of government let fools contest, That which is best administered is best.” On the other hand, he was totally unambivalent about flute music. He did not object to instrumental music in general, but the flute in particular, he said, corrupted the morals of the youth. I wonder what he would have said about rock’n’roll.
“WILL YOU walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly,
‘Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I’ve a many curious things to show when you are there.”
EXCESS OF ELECTRON NEUTRINOS DETECTED BY ICECUBE NEUTRINO OBSERVATORY
“Neutrinos at the observatory are studied in two different ways. In the first, researchers study the tracks they make as they move through a detector. In the second, they study particles that cause light to be emitted when they smash into ice particles. Scientists studying the neutrinos have found an apparent anomaly, one that is in need of an explanation. The anomaly involves the ratio of neutrino types that are detected at the observatory. Prior research has found that there are three kinds of neutrinos—electron, muon and tau—and that they should be found in equal numbers. But the detector consistently detects many more electron neutrinos than the other two types. Denton and Tamborra suggest this discrepancy can be explained by tau and muon neutrinos decaying into a different particle called a majoron. And this is where it gets truly interesting because majorons are a proposed dark matter particle.”
” ‘I travel a lot’, says Santiago Sierra. ‘But entering a country is like going to jail. Borders disgust me – as an idea and as a personal experience. This work denies all of that.’…
Sierra is talking about his latest installation, which has just opened at Dundee Contemporary Arts. Called Black Flag, it documents his attempts to have the symbol of anarchism planted at the north and south poles.”
I would like to throw out a question that is not subject to exact calculation but will have to rely on approximation and intuition: how long do you (anyone) think that individuals and small groups have to prepare themselves before the world spirals out of control? Or do some think the decline will remain more or less orderly all the way down? It looks to me as if the peaks in liquid fuels, coal, and uranium, maybe gas too, will cluster together in a relatively short time frame and this will be a huge shock. This might be between 2025 and a little past 2030. However, there will also be some plateauing and heroic measures to shore things up, so there will follow a period of severe economic distress, until we fall a substantial distance off either the transport fuels plateau, or the electrical production plateau. Then governments will no longer have the resources to maintain some sort of crude safety net under the multitudes of broke and unemployed, and society will begin to unravel in earnest. Let’s say we fall off one of these plateaus around 2035 and have descended substantially downward 10 years later–so utter chaos by 2045???
Too many variables and pitfalls to predict with accuracy. Could have been 27 yrs ago, or 27 yrs from now. Or maybe not a global phenomena, more patchy in distribution. Lots of places have been like hell before, and already. Which society are you talking about?
The world is being driven now by destructive forces that are awakening amplifying natural forces. We are in the midst of the problem not at the beginning. The world has made a lot of positive progress despite the uber-control of the defective and deadly incumbent paradigm. So align yourself with the positive forces and most adamantly stay away from the fringe groups that think everything is bad.
No way to know which problems will synergize in any area, best to know your region and assess on a local/regional scale. Also look at the particular weaknesses (external dependencies and lacks) that can crop up quickly. Then figure out ways to mitigate those.
Those that fear change and try to fight it or avoid it will probably not do well. A few will, but mostly by accident. Those that embrace change and learn to move with the flow will do the best overall.
There is lots of written material on the subjects of resilience and sustainability. Try to stay away from the doomer set, they are spiraling down from their own internal feedback systems and want to take you with them.
The best advice I can give you is Don’t Panic. Panic can be sudden and overwhelming or take on the form of a steady anxiety and worry that wears you down. Either one makes for bad decision making that can get one killed or hurt, as well as get others hurt. Practice reducing your panic/anxiety levels so that when real situations arise you can be clear headed and act appropriately. Volunteer for a rescue squad or become a firefighter. That will prepare you well for many nasty circumstances as well as help build a network of friends/acquaintances. Also occasional community service and helping environmental groups is a great way to network.
Outdoor adventure and survival courses are good for learning how to stay cool in bad situations. Also get you used to being very uncomfortable.
Preparing for bad times is good, but don’t waste your life doing it. The future may unfold much differently than people think.
I agree with most of what GF says!
My own focus is on ecosystem collapse. I have previously posted about a paper describing a 75% loss of insect biomass over the last 27 years recorded in protected nature preserves in Germany.
Ironically I’m in Germany at the moment and drove through the countryside and had more insects splatter on my windscreen than driving through the Everglades…
It is ecosystem collapse that I see happening all over the globe that I think will do us all in, in the near future. The economy ceases to exist if we have multiple ecosystems collapsing all over the planet.
As GF said, DON’T PANIC!
Cheers !
When the pres opens up the “football” this is what he will see.
Related to ecosystem collapse, the vulture populations of India and Pakistan are dropping radically mostly because of antibiotics and other poisons in the carrion they eat. A vulture’s digestive system is able to kill pathogens that would otherwise find their way into the biosphere. So, for example, cattle carcasses are either left to rot or growing packs of wild dogs eat them and spread rabies and other diseases that would be cleaned up by the vultures. So the knock-on effect is that India and Pakistan are spending billions of dollars on public health that used to be taken care of by natures ‘cleanup committee’
So I get terrifically riled when someone says something like “Who cares if the polar bears go extinct. It’s no skin off my nose.”
People just don’t understand the interconnectedness of everything.
That would be better posted in Islandboy’s EIA thread.
NAOM
“…how long do you (anyone) think that individuals and small groups have to prepare themselves before the world spirals out of control?” ~ Nehemiah
Hi Nehemiah, lots depend.
It depends, for example, on what ‘prepare themselves’ or ‘spirals out of control’ mean and for whom and where, etc., as well as what and how the two– ‘prepare themselves’ and ‘spirals out of control’– might interrelate.
My sense of ‘fractal collapses in complex systems’ is that no one really knows.
So maybe it’s best to be as prepared as possible, maybe even for the worst– whatever that might mean– and for examples, looking to local/small-group/community and individual resilience and learning things about how our ancestors used to do things to live and thrive, such as WRT basic needs like food, clothing, potable water and shelter. This would include looking toward and working more, and more symbiotically and in harmony, with nature and natural systems…
Remember, it’s ‘civilization’ and its particular modus operandi that’s collapsing or declining and taking natural systems down with it in the process. So it’s important, or at least helps, to understand why, but also to try to be true to what actually supports us/you, rather than what pretends to, and doesn’t.
Yes, my wording left a lot of room for subjectivity. Let’s say we put some benchmarks on this: global GDP contracts 25% in a decade, and global population contracts 10% in a decade, and neither one recovers. Network news not only reports on falling oil production, but also on falling production of other finite fuel sources because electricity rates are at record highs and it has to be explained. As demand for PV cells explodes, silver becomes so expensive that thieves begin to steal PV cells for their silver content. _Limits To Growth_ goes back into print due to popular demand. That’s five benchmarks. How long do you think until we hit at least 4 of them? (Yes, I know the system is complex, but that why I pointed out in my initial post that the answer cannot be exactly calculated but must rely on intuition. If we had enough intuitive guesses from relatively well informed parties, the average or median answer might be surprisingly close to the future reality.)
“As demand for PV cells explodes, silver becomes so expensive that thieves begin to steal PV cells for their silver content”
If the price of silver increased much the manufacturers would simply move back to aluminum or copper. At 65 mg per cell it’s not much material.
With 500,000 metric tons of known silver reserves that is about 3 trillion cells if we use half of the reserve for PV.
Sure, they could move to something else like aluminum or copper, but there is a good reason why they prefer a more expensive material like silver. My guess is that going to copper or aluminum will reduce efficiency (thus requiring more cells).
I don’t know how many cells to a panel, but one source says:
It is estimated that it currently takes about 20 grams of silver to build an average solar panel.
And: Even after factoring in an assumed quadrupling of solar panel efficiency, there is still not enough silver on earth to convert to a 100% solar-powered economy.
And: Even relatively more modest goals, such as solar becoming the largest source of energy, remain out of reach as long as solar panel manufacturing depends on silver supplies.
Further, aluminum production is very energy intensive, which should become problematic in the future. Copper is more plentiful than silver, but it is projected to peak most likely before 2040, which should send prices flying since Cu is indispensable to the electrical age. This is in addition to providing reduced conversion efficiency compared to silver.
And then there is the whole question of how long we can keep the electrical grid in operation. Everything depends upon everything else.
Northern hemisphere snow cover has bottomed out in July for a loss of 3.5 million square kilometers since 1966. Since Greenland snow cover is about 2.1 million km2, it can’t get much lower.
Maybe Frisky Bobby has an inverted version of that graph, he can post for us…
I find this summer snow cover chart rather comforting. Geologists tell us that the time to worry is when less and less snow melts during the north hemisphere summer, which is what happens when we are headed into a serious glacial expansion (“ice age,” although technically the ice age that began 2.8 million years ago still has not ended. Pre-ice age temperatures were 15 degrees F (8.5C) warmer than today, so we are still quite cool.) During the Little Ice Age period of history, a drop of just 1C degree from mean temperatures more or less identical to today (perhaps slightly warmer than today in northern Europe) caused reductions in crop yields and widespread suffering.
Yep, we are nearing 2C rise now (from when the crops were doing fine) and it will continue to get more comforting for a long time.
Pre Ice Age, you mean 53 million years ago.
No, just 3 million years ago temps were 8.5C or 15F warmer than today, which were typical temperatures for tens of millions of years. Most species alive today originated in that warmer world (or earlier, before the Chicxulub impact). Man did not, of course, but primates as a group did. Basic earth history.
Sorry Dude you got cheated on your basic Earth history course, temperature now is what it was 3 million years ago.
It was about eight degrees C higher 53 million years ago in the PETM.
“During the PETM, the global mean temperature seems to have risen by as much as 5-8 °C (9-14 °F) to an average temperature as high as 23 °C (73 °F), in contrast to the global average temperature of today at just under 15 °C (60 °F). “
Gone Fishing, the online graphs seem to be more variable than the dead tree version I remember, so perhaps my dead tree version was oversimplifed. So, let’s look at this more closely, because I suspect we may both be working with oversimplified paradigms of past temperatures.
Ocean surface temperatures worldwide shot up by 5-8°C for a few thousand years – but in the Arctic, it heated up even more, to a balmy 23°C (73°F).–end quote
The timing of the PETM suggests it might be associated with the recurring extinction event that recurs like clockwork every 62 million years (the end Cretaceous event was not part of the cycle), and is thought to be associated with events in the Arctic:
in the Arctic, it heated up even more, to a balmy 23°C (73°F). This caused a severe dieoff of little ocean critters called foraminifera, and a drastic change of the dominant mammal species.–end quote
shows much higher temperatures than today for the first 20 million years, with PETM temps not appearing to spike that high compared to typical background temperatures. IOW, normal temps in the early Cenozoic were much closer to the PETM spike in this graph than to temps today.
Then you seem temps falling for millions of years as Antarctica slowly moves into its present position over the South Pole and become permanently capped by ice, sort of like the way the freezer compartment keeps the whole refrigerator cooler.
Then temps roughly plateau for over 20 million years before dropping for about 10 million years until we entered the Pleistocene Ice Age, which is even cooler.
Here is CO2 vs temps for the last 600 million years, notice the relationship is not reliable:
Here is a another graph of the Cenozoic. Notice it shows temps warmer than today until about 6 MYA, and current temps not in any way unusual for an interglacial. IOW, we are experiencing normal interglacial temperatures, not living in an unusually warm era even by Pleistocene standards.
Looking at more recent temps, here they are for the last 800,000 years. Notice that current temps are lower than 3 of the last 4 interglacials, not in any way unprecedented:
Here are reconstructed temps all the way back to the Precambrian. Notice that they have been close to 25C for about half the time, in an apparently recurring cycle. In none of these long episodes near the top of the temperature range does life on earth appear to have been endangered, although particular species come and go. Notice we are not abnormally warm. In fact, today’s “heated” world is near the bottom of earth’s normal temperature range, as you can see:
Projections that CO2 levels which, although rising, are still unusually low by earth history standards are going to return earth temperatures to a level still lower than where they have been for a large part of life’s time own earth, and that this middle of the range temperature rise will “destroy the planet” are not based on any kind of real world evidence. It entirely depends on unproven computer models that cannot accurate backcast, much less forecast, weather prior to the period on which they are curve fitted. If we just compare the present with the past, today’s climate is a normal interglacial that is likely near the end of its run, and the Antarctic ice cap still sits over the South Pole keeping background temperatures at the low end of the geohistorical range. The paleoclimatic relationship between temp and CO2 over long eons of time indicates that CO2 levels cannot reliably predict present or future temperatures, and the highly cyclical nature of the Pleistocene glacial cycle indicates that the primary driver of climate change, other than continental drift over very long periods, is celestial in origin.
A response to Gone Fishing regarding the relative merits/demerits of PV deployment on verdant lands [class 1/2 farmlands, forests and fields of significant natural photosynthetic potential].
carried on from prior thread-
“I too would enjoy a long chat by the lakeside. Please understand that my comments have no intent of taking the wind out of the renewable s deployment.
More to point out that we don’t do nature any good, or the ultimate carrying capacity of the earth any good, by diminishing the earth natural photosynthetic capability, even for the sake of PV deployment.
We need rapid downsizing, not covering forests with PV.
This will be hard in verdant places like N.Carolina and Malaysia, easy in west Texas and S. Calif. (to find sunny relatively barren lands).
Of course we should start with the rooftops, but I have already seen PV lots on class 1-2 farmland. This land could be highly productive nature preserves if not needed for food.
Agree about the emergency setting of situation. Killing off more nature won’t help the long run.”
The above comment is a repeat, guess not getting it had to be repeated.
That 1% of area for PV is nothing compared to the 16% (increasing) for our infrastructure and the 11%t for agriculture, plus the 26% for ranching.
Look at the numbers, development is eating up farmland, expected losses by 2030 is about 2% globally. Farming is the worst enemy of farmland.
<You think of the dust bowl of the 1930s in North America and then you realise we are moving towards that situation if we don’t do something,” said Duncan Cameron, professor of plant and soil biology at the University of Sheffield.
“The continual ploughing of fields, combined with heavy use of fertilizers, has degraded soils across the world, the research found, with erosion occurring at a pace of up to 100 times greater than the rate of soil formation. It takes around 500 years for just 2.5cm of topsoil to be created amid unimpeded ecological changes.
We are increasing the rate of loss and we are reducing soils to their bare mineral components,” he said. “We are creating soils that aren’t fit for anything except for holding a plant up. The soils are silting up river systems – if you look at the huge brown stain in the ocean where the Amazon deposits soil, you realise how much we are accelerating that process.
Around 30% of the world’s ice-free surfaces are used to keep chicken, cattle, pigs and other livestock, rather than to grow crops.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/arable-land-soil-food-security-shortage
Soil is the earth’s fragile skin that anchors all life on Earth. It is comprised of countless species that create a dynamic and complex ecosystem and is among the most precious resources to humans. Increased demand for agriculture commodities generates incentives to convert forests and grasslands to farm fields and pastures. The transition to agriculture from natural vegetation often cannot hold onto the soil and many of these plants, such as coffee, cotton, palm oil, soybean and wheat, can actually increase soil erosion beyond the soil’s ability to maintain itself.
Half of the topsoil on the planet has been lost in the last 150 years.
https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/soil-erosion-and-degradation
So maybe you need to take new view of technology that actually saves plants and forests from being burned, while taking a deeper view into the major hits on soil and nature from farming and development. Maybe you will come to realize that shifting to society based on wind and solar energy is just part of the degrowth and deharm plan.
Of course we could just stifle it further and let the current paradigm wreck everything in the pursuit of the next app and the next adolescent showdown between Russia and the US using proxy nations and the next fossil fuel driven profit.
Agree with all your comments regarding soil. I have a very strong background in soil science from undergrad days (Univ Agronomy degree), and am extremely concerned about soil ecology. Nothing is more important.
Yep, a long walk in the red rock area of the western US will teach a person what happens when the soil is gone.
It’s still happening, and nobody seems to realize something could be done about it. Instead of providing stewardship for the land, they dig bigger and bigger culverts to let the soil wash away faster. The should be digging ditches on contour, not across the contour.
A society in part based on wind and solar energy (while also in part based on equity and solidarity) can of course be very low-tech with little or nothing to do with large-scale non-local industrial manufacture in the crony-capitalist plutarchy context.
Humans have been leveraging the power of the sun and wind long before their conversions to electricity and the messes made in the processes.
Given historical considerations, there’s little that’s reassuring about humans’ approach to this ‘next phase of energy’, while fossil fuels continue to be not left in the ground.
Priorities for energy-use, whether via human or machine labor, would appear to predominantly include ecosystemic restoration and enhancement (yes, go one step above just restoration and with an ongoing emphasis with a kind of symbiosis with nature), and individual and local empowerment and vis-a-vis basic needs, like clean water, air and fertile soil.
One of the best, incidentally, if not the only, approaches in these regards would appear to be permaculture…
A good start would be to reject every planning application for buildings that do not have solar covering their roof, PV or hot water.
NAOM
^ ?
…
This is a great example of the “freedumb” argument. We don’t do dumb things because we’re dumb, we do dumb things because we’re free! It worked really well for the Republicans opposing Obamacare.
If this kind of braindead ideological argument is the best thing you can come up with, you don’t have a good argument.
So it’s live how we dictate from you and notanoilman?
If so, you two and others seem to strongly suggest why others– maybe even notanoilman and you, yourself– suggest that we are fucked.
I thought the natural building pic without solar panels on it I posted previously made something obvious…
So– as per what we’ve been doing for aeons– no planning application and we just build our own homes without solar panels anyway, and then what? Cops (AKA, State thugs) at our doors?
PV is a great idea is the areas of California wrecked by industrial farming like Antelope Valley.
The fact is that there is no shortage of sunshine. Fresh water is short but sunshine is not. So you’re trying to optimize (or pretending to try to optimize, your arguments are obviously not what they pretend to be) for the wrong thing.
And on it goes,
WETLANDS DISAPPEARING THREE TIMES FASTER THAN FORESTS
“The 88-page report found that around 35 percent of wetlands, which include lakes, rivers, marshes and peatlands, as well as coastal and marine areas like lagoons, mangroves and coral reefs, were lost between 1970 and 2015. Today, wetlands cover more than 12 million square kilometres (4.6 million square miles), the annual rates of loss had accelerated since 2000.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-09-wetlands-faster-forests.html#jCp
“We are in a crisis,” Martha Rojas Urrego, head of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, told reporters in Geneva, warning of the potential devastating impact of wetland loss, including on climate change.
We are in crisis! No shit! We have a 10 alarm global emergency and apparently the best we can fucking do, is meekly mention that we are in crisis?!
Potential devastating impact of wetland loss?! No! You stupid mother fuckers, we are already in the midst of major devastating wetland loss in every goddamned corner of our planet!
The only question I have is what are we going to do about it?!
Fred, you just don’t get it, do you? We desperately need more paved parking spaces near the ocean and lakes for cars and campers. Lack of parking and boat launch sites for water skiers is becoming a crisis.
Ok! Then let the paving begin!
.
We have a 10 alarm global emergency and apparently the best we can fucking do, is meekly mention that we are in crisis?!
Mustn’t upset the mileennials, they might drop their smartphone and suddenly have to make a decision not prescribed by the advertising industry, which might involve not buying that jade vaginal egg they so wanted or that third life experience package holiday of the year.
Correct, millenials are responsible for all of the world’s problems past, present and future. Baby boomers are off the hook completely. ??
Killing off more nature won’t help the long run.
Bingo!
We have a winner.
Farming is not nature, it’s industrial sterilization of the ground and a source of toxins and pollutants throughout the watersheds, probably responsible for large ocean deadzones.
Not new so, humans being so clever, maybe we’ve dealt with all these issues now?
HEALTH OF OCEANS ‘DECLINING FAST’
“The health of the world’s oceans is deteriorating even faster than had previously been thought. A review from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean, warns that the oceans are facing multiple threats. They are being heated by climate change, turned slowly less alkaline by absorbing CO2, and suffering from overfishing and pollution. The report warns that dead zones formed by fertiliser run-off are a problem. It says conditions are ripe for the sort of mass extinction event that has afflicted the oceans in the past.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24369244
Wetlands, forests, oceans, cryosphere, deserts, farmland, urban areas – is there anything not doing worse than previously expected.
Well, there’s no known limit to how long humans can live, scientists now say. So, if adding 83 million more people to our planet every year isn’t enough we can simply keep ourselves alive longer. That wouldn’t be worse than previously expected — I suppose?
http://time.com/4835763/how-long-can-humans-live/
Heh, I’m sitting at the airport waiting to board my flight and I just saw a bucket full of plastic water bottles from Fiji… the sign above the bottles says: “The Shape of the Bottles makes the Water Taste Better! I took a picture but can’t resize it for posting right now maybe I’ll do it at some later date.
Cheers!
If anyone wants to see how crowded the skies are right now.
https://www.flightradar24.com/41.67,-75.95/3
What, no app to fix the planet? Guess we will have to wait for AI and the Nanobots.
With 7.6 billion homo sapiens on a biologically collapsing planet, we won’t have to wait long.
‘This guy doesn’t know anything’: the inside story of Trump’s shambolic transition team
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/27/this-guy-doesnt-know-anything-the-inside-story-of-trumps-shambolic-transition-team
Pure comedy gold. I hope he gets four more years.
I just read this. I hate politics, Trump. But I read it, the whole thing, thinking: Wait. This is satire.
Survivalist, thank you for this. “Walk Like an Egyptian?” We. Are. Fucked.
You’re welcome. I’m glad you found it interesting.
“Walk Like an Egyptian?” We. Are. Fucked. I was going to comment almost word for word the same thing when I read that before I saw you got there first. Wonder when the film will come out, other films of Lewis’s have been good. Will need to be soon though as there may be no-one left to watch.
While there are numerous reasons I usually refrain from participating in these threads, today’s developments in DC (Kavanaugh’s hearing) prompt me to post a brief comment.
This is absolutely not an attempt to persuade those holding the predominant political ideology expressed regularly here, rather it is merely a pointing – if you will – to a concise description of what is presently unfolding in America.
Justice Kavanaugh’s opening 45 minute statement today will come to be reconized as a pivotal moment in history.
The article today “Kavanaugh, cold anger, and the reckoning” from the conservativetreehouse site, powerfully describes what is going on … and what to certainly expect in the coming weeks.
This piece ranks right up there with the Wall Street Journal’s “No Guardrails” editorial in capturing the zeitgeist that is sweeping across this nation, while the shrinking Talking Heads and their minions continue to falter at an exponential rate.
On this site (POB), several weeks back, there was a discussion concerning the merits of various news sources regarding accuracy, ideology, etc.
Too late, folks … WAY too late.
Social media – including sites like this (comment sections, especially) are what people on a global scale are turning to for up to the minute information.
The 300,000 people on Reddit following Q were abruptly cut off from their daily fix and have turned to Voat and the chans.
These primarily progressive folks have been redpilled on a massive scale and we long term, truth driven autists welcome them with open arms.
For those of you who wish to get a glimpse of what is ‘really’ going on, check out the various feeds on the internet while they are still available (China blocks the chans from being viewable within their borders.
New world dawning, folks.
Buckle up.
“For those of you who wish to get a glimpse of what is ‘really’ going on, check out the various feeds on the internet while they are still available”
For those of us who don’t have the time to browse various feeds on the Internet in hopes of uncovering the ones that elucidate your thesis; what do you feel is presently unfolding in America, could you be more specific? What feeds would you recommend as a good place to start?
TBH I found this article kind of weird (although the comments are kind of interesting, especially the ones advocating for civil war and opposing women’s suffrage);
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/09/27/kavanaugh-cold-anger-and-the-reckoning/
But hey, I wrote in Charlie Sheen on my ballot.
The site on voat – QRV, for QResearch – was just set up (and, I believe) is being administered by individuals associated with 8chan’s Q Research board.
This was to effect a somewhat workable source for people tending to have what is considered progressive/liberal views but are already in some phase of awakening, i.e., essentially intelligent, trusting people who have been particularly vulnerable to being deceived as they themselves are not liars.
Hardcore, ground zero would definitely be 8chan, but I personally would not go there initially as a primary source as it might be too confusing/overwhelming/counter productive.
It must be understood …
There is, and has been, an ongoing battle for people’s hearts and minds with information being a primary weapon.
Disinformation, misinformation, deceit, poisoning the well, are just a tiny sliver of the numerous tactics employed by those attempting to shape ongoing narratives.
Quick aside that has electrified some of us, General Flynn’s recent comment at the Eagle Forum whereby he openly acknowledged the recruitment of an army of citizen journalists in the largest, most successful counterinsurgency op of all time.
He was referring to the Q Anon phenomenon.
For those who will never willingly accept the wanton slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Syrian women and children, General Flynn’s firing as head of the DIA should serve as a marker for where this good man stands.
Googling any of this stuff is an easy entry into this hall of mirrors, but discernment, especially regarding the sources, is always a prerequisite for truth finding.
I wasn’t aware that the Q Anon phenomenon was the largest, most successful counterinsurgency op of all time. I just thought it was a bunch of dudes who can’t get laid.
The Rich Roll podcast has quite a good interview with Yuval Noah Harari from September 16. The topic of too much bullshit information is discussed. Knowledge and information are no longer as powerful as they once were, due to being not as scarce these days. Today, in a world of information overload, the most scarce resource is ones attention, and it is paramount to focus it optimally in order to obtain maximum clarity. Sam Harris also had him on recently.
Here’s the iTunes link. But it can be found elsewhere if you look.
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-rich-roll-podcast/id582272991?mt=2&i=1000419860297
I’ve found Harris’s selection of guests quite conservative (not always).
Interesting, but often clueless.
Still, it is on the list.
I agree. I’m not a big fan of Harris. I do quite like Yuval though.
I’ll do a bit more exploration.
Not on my path currently.
Does Trump just pick the most unpleasant and incompetent people he can find, or are they the only ones he can get to consider working with him?
My guess is he goes for sycophants, and those who are good at manipulating him. For example- Pence is a sycophant, Pompeo is good at manipulating him. I divide most of his entourage into those two categories.
I’m a idiot, and proud of it!
I think Trump then goes for the psychopaths.
George, this might explain it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tldGgGFe194
cgz, thanks for being so . . . vague.
Since he’s being so obtuse and I can’t figure out whether he’s on the side of the progressives (Bernie Sanders et al) or the bible thumping pawns of the oligarchs (Graham, Hatch, Pence et al) I’ll throw my two cents in.
I have seen enough evidence suggesting that vested interests, primarily tied to the fossil fuel industries, are trying desperately to co opt governments around the world to do their bidding. This is particularly evident in three English speaking nations with a significant share of mass media outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch. The existence of “think tanks” like The Heartland Institute and The Institute for Energy Research, with their thinly veiled agendas of misinformation, also helps to solidify my opinion that the oligarch class has been working very hard and been somewhat successful in using propaganda to get voters to vote against their best interests. It has been documented that groups funded by the likes of the Koch brothers have been on a multi decade campaign to co opt the US federal government to form an oligarchy.
I liker to apply the principle of “cui bono” ( to whose benefit) when looking at things and have a hunch that in the US at least, a significant portion of the electorate might just be figuring things out. We’ll see if I’m right on November 6!
“fossil fuel industries, are trying desperately to co opt governments around the world to do their bidding”
This happened decades ago. Old news.
Being vague and obtuse is one form of manipulation, fairly sophisticated, but none-the-less without good intent. Or else the person would just come right out and say what they mean. To me it seems like an attempt to get people to subscribe to Fox news feed.
Well, here is a “foreigners” view of ‘Merika:
“The blinkered people, the tax collectors roadside (police everywhere collecting taxes), the tax collecting at every opportunity, the welfare state, the severe drop in service at restaurants, the tattoos, the green hair, the lard-asses everywhere, the severe over-population of great swathes of the country, the hideous media out only to inflame, and not to report, the aged and infirm working at whatever jobs they can find, the homeless everywhere, the beggars, the filth roadside, the severe health issues seen at every turn (people everywhere too fat to walk, carrying oxygen, diabetes inflicted, toothless), casinos one after another, hideous roads, etc. ad naseum, lead me to but one conclusion: the US is fucked….They have no insight, no curiosity, no sense of understanding of the world, no vision of anything outside their tiny bubble of existence.”
As a life-long member of USA, I’ll respond to this:
“They have no insight, no curiosity, no sense of understanding of the world, no vision of anything outside their tiny bubble of existence.”
It’s overly broad, as all the bright, curious, visionary people I know are some of my best friends. ;->
But, yes, you’re essentially right. And as I’m pretty much anonymous here, I’ll tell ya what I think. It’s the ultimate in political incorrectness: There’s only about one person I say this to (my husband).
America is fucked–and has been fucked for a long time–because of a triad of forces that are virtually omniscient, entrenched, and untouchable:
The media (by which I mean television)
Marketing and advertising
Religion.
Television is the great immobilizer. It monopolizes people’s inner lives, tells them what they should be thinking about, shoves goods down their throats, keeps them sitting and staring and stewing. This works hand-in-glove with:
Marketing and advertising. This is psychological manipulation on the most massive scale imaginable (see Edward Bernays). It is lying codified, packaged, gulped down, so that corporate wishes are incorporated into one’s DNA, as it were. And this is all facilitated by:
Religion. This fosters irrationality. Get people to believe that a dead Jew 2,000 years ago rose from a tomb, walked through a wall, and ate a fish, and they’ll believe anything–anything the TV tells them, anything the advertisers tell them, anything their particular identity group tells them.
That’s my two cents, ain’t worth much, & nobody cares.
Michael — beware, the NSA is watching you.
They are going to be sorely disappointed. ;->
I find the increasingly worse mental health of the United States being caused by the acceptance of toxic beliefs like Nihilism, in which people refuse to see the goodness of the world so they slowly spiral down a cycle of self hate and striking out at everyone for being “evil” and so on. Many people no longer believe in the inherent purity and good will of human beings. They slowly drift towards beliefs that we are animals and must be extinguished for the world to “prosper”, missing the point of how fundamentally evil and destructive that would be.
>>They slowly drift towards beliefs that we are animals and must be extinguished for the world to “prosper”<<
This is kinda silly. That humans are animals is not "belief," it's a biological fact.
Google human cladistics.
The phrase "must be extinguised," even though in passive voice, indicates that you must think there is a force somewhere guiding human fate. Who or what is doing the extinguishing? No, if humans "are extinguised," it will be their own damn fault, though as Ron has argued here, there's really no one to blame: it's all the result of the evolutionary success of a particularly ardent and destructive African ape, us.
But your belief in the power of belief is charming.
Danny-
“Many people no longer believe in the inherent purity”
Umm… we are animals who get birthed out of a vagina, just like other mammals. Look it up.
And why don’t you go to a meeting of rape survivors, or a war crimes tribunal, and stand up and start talking about the inherent purity of Homo sap. Please have these events on video so we can watch on You Tube. Thanks in advance.
“I find the increasingly worse mental health of the United States being caused by the acceptance of toxic beliefs like Nihilism, in which people refuse to see the goodness of the world so they slowly spiral down a cycle of self hate and striking out at everyone for being “evil” and so on.”
are you referring to Trump and his ilk?
The idea that foreigners think that Americans pay too much in taxes is a bit silly.
The idea that scofflaw drivers shouldn’t be fined is bonkers American populism at it dumbest.
Fred, you may find this interesting?
THE CHIMP WHO BELIEVED SHE WAS HUMAN
“In 1964, a psychotherapist and his wife adopted a two-day-old chimpanzee. They named her Lucy. For twelve years, Dr. Maurice and Jane Temerlin would raise Lucy as if she were their human daughter. The chimp ate at the family dinner table, using silverware. She dressed herself. She served her parents tea. She even learned 140 signs in American Sign Language. When Lucy reached adolescence, she developed a taste for straight gin and Playgirl—which she flipped through while masturbating with a vacuum cleaner. She began to act out, sometimes violently. Growing concerned, the Temerlins decided to introduce Lucy to another chimp for the first time, with the apparent intention of mating them. Lucy was uninterested. By all measurable counts, Lucy believed she was human.”
PS: Sometimes my old dog looks at me as if I’m a idiot; and, sometimes I think he’s right.
https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/571318/lucy-chimp/
A psychotherapist alienating an animal. A sad story indeed. They shouldn’t let them get close to human beings either. I mean the psychotherapists; they are dangerous.
Yeah, I knew about that story…
Ah the things you’ll read on a forum entitled, ‘Peak Oil Barrel’. It’s comments like these that can make me miss The Oil Drum sometimes.
After you, Fred…
‘u^
Above my pay grade- need help with a calculation.
The Vogtle Nuclear Plants being built in SC units 3 and 4, are now at 27B$ construction cost combined. I don’t know if this includes fuel and final completion, but lets assume it is the final price.
The nameplate capacity total is 2.2 MW and lets be very generous and assume a 90% operating capacity.
That comes out to 13.5 B$ per MW.
What does this equate to in cost (assuming 30 yr LCOE)- in cents/kwh?
The comparison for Utility Scale fixed tilt PV in N.Carolina for yr 2017
[according to the report from NREL- pg 47 https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68925.pdf ]
is Installed cost 0.97 cent/W and Real LCOE (30yr) is 5.67 cent/kwh
[note- LCOE 30= Leveled Cost of Energy over 30 yrs]
Thanks for the help on this.
1. 90% of Fuel is imported. IIRC Fabing the rods more costly than the U.
2. Spent fuel management costs are unknown and not included. Possible to be the highest cost of all.
3. PV does not fit the current Centralized on way Investor-Owned Utility Model. Distributed Energy Resources “DER” has too many advantages. Utilities are Banned from owning DER in most states unless it’s on their Property. Do we see IOU’s morphing into McDonald’s? Now You Know why the Edison Institute continues to spend millions to kill disruptive 3rd Party PV. It’s not over till it’s over.
Messy Vogtle Update: https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060099887
LCOE for new nuclear is listed as about 9.2 cents per kWh. Since the levelized capital cost is about 6.9 cents of that and there is a cost overrun of about three times, looking at 24 cents kWh LCOE.
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf
Thats for the comment guys, I am trying to figure out how to go from 13.5$ B/MW to cents$/kwh calculation.?
Weather production dependent Solar PV is the Only Gen Source that both Costs and Production models and estimates turn out to be amazingly accurate. There just fewer variables. The Global Price for containers of PV is a waze below 40 cents/watt. The Focus in the last few years is to reduce all the other Balance of Systems cost. Disruptive with a Capital D.
Longtimber- I was using the data for the closest NREL site they calculated, that being in the coastal plain of NC which is very close to Vogtle solar potential. Also local land, labor, and building costs are similar, which is part of the equation that NREL used to be as real as possible with their analysis.
Therefore, I believe their utility scale PV cost is reality based, at least for Q1 2017.
You’re 1000 times too low on generating capacity, try 2x 1,100 MW.
NAOM
Thank you. That explains part of my outrageous nuclear costs, but still I’m embarrassed to post the numbers until I verify my calculations better.
In the meantime, about 8GW of wind power is added each year, equivalent to more than 3 of these nuke reactors in energy production. All for about 11 billion dollars.
Meaning that wind energy can be added at 12 times the rate of nuclear energy and at much lower cost, at least in the US.
At 1100MW per reactor make that 7x.
NAOM
No, not 7x
At 90 percent capacity factor for the nuke and 40 percent for all new wind turbines the last few years, no it’s 12 times the build rate.
8GWX 0.4= 3.2 GW per year
It will take over 7 years to complete the reactors and get them running.
2GW/7.5 years build = 0.267 GW/year
3.2/0.267 = 11.99 round up to 12 times
Also consider that wind turbines will be better and cheaper by the time those get running in 2021 and 2022. So it’s an even bigger factor.
I doubt if nukes will get better in the US, economical dead end without considering the cost of actual storage or decommissioning.
Thanks for mapping out your method.
NAOM
Globally nuclear power has a less than 90 percent capacity factor.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/gallery/world-nuclear-performance-report-gallery/mean-capacity-factor-2012-2017-by-age-of-reactor.aspx
It should be:
13.5 BUSD per GW
13500 USD per kW 🙂
It does not matter what the fuel costs, with 13500 USD per kW you have around 1000 USD capital costs per year (annually 7-8% for 20 years), alone this gives a kWh price of more than 0.1 USD. The typical NPP has a CF of 80-90% in western countries.
Everything else comes on top: fuel, O&M
If you check capacity factors and costs of windpower and PV, you can combine windpower, PV plus open NG turbine as backup for less than 5000 USD for the same annual output.
NPPs are economicall dead as dead can be if they cost more than 5000 USD/kW.
Check above:
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-september-27-2018/#comment-653536
This has been a great boon to the construction workers and contractors, someone is making lots of money on the front end. Could be the last nukes built in the US but not much makes sense anymore so there may be more. It’s not scalable anyway so nuclear is just an unnecessary hazard and money/materials sinkhole.
Wonder how many old nukes will have to be decommissioned during the next decade.
Wonder no longer.
For the US:
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/reactors-are-closing/
And I highly recommend the WNISR
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/
Short summary regarding decommissioning here:
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Reuters-Nuclear-plant-decommissioning-outpacing-new-build-report.html
?
Cable Cars And Ropeways Market is Set to Experience Revolutionary Growth by 2026
La Paz’s 8th Urban Gondola, The Purple Line, Receives Its First Passenger
Geophysical constraints on the reliability of solar and wind power in the United States
“We CAN (if we want) spend ridiculous amounts on getting CLOSE to 100% rens. Or we can solve climate + health + hunger + many other things for the SAME cost. I think it is morally important to aim to solve as many of the world issues at the same time.” ~ Christopher Clack
Well at least the buildout is slowing down
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-26/goldman-says-europe-may-have-built-its-last-coal-power-plant
I think the energy business is ripe for massive disruption. As it is so often with these things, the raw numbers don’t show it in advance.
Self-Defeating Buildout?
Another concern I have with any kind of relatively large-scale alternative energy buildout, as per the current crony-capitalist plutarchy context, is that it will most likely not be allocated where and how most people would most directly benefit from it.
I mean, if we are on the global fossil-fuel and general energy downslope, and the quantity and quality of energies at our disposal become increasingly constrained, a la entropy, and also therefore relatively more valuable, it would seem to make especially serious sense to consider how it’s allocated and adding value there.
Prioritizing critical facilities and infrastructures?
Most folks on sites like these already appear well-aware that humans have somewhat squandered their fossil fuel heritage (among other planetary heritages); as well as aware of James Howard Kunstler’s often-repeated gripe to the effect of suburbia being ‘the greatest misallocation of resources in history’. So, rampant buildout of alternative energy with little foresight nor reason nor rhyme would seem to defeat its own purpose.
There is little point to calling for something like a whole lot of solar panel arrays in the deserts if the processes and results will defeat much of its own purpose is there? But that’s what appears many have done and continue to do. The horse has to come before the cart.
That said, then, if my implied recommendation must be explicit, it would be for countries and their locales to work together in a concerted attempt to make certain that the remaining global energy and energy-related resources be used with some uncharacteristic foresight, ethics and some reason and rhyme.
Caelan, you might be better off railing against the guys I highlight in a response to a post by HB futrther down. That post goes to the heart of your pet peeve, the crony-capitalist plutarchy and shows how players have been playing the long game to co opt the US Federal Government and the legal system. Just so you know, these players are vehemently opposed to renewable energy or anything that seeks to constrain their ability to continue to reap massive profits from resource extracting industries they own. (Koch Industries)
Then again, IIRC you
areactually live in CanadaCanadian, so maybe you couldn’t care less if the US government and legal system were to end up being controlled by the crony-capitalist plutarchy. That would not be a good thing IMHO.Down The Rabbit Hole With Islandboy
“Then again, IIRC you are actually Canadian…” ~ islandboy
Nope. I’m Terran.
“The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.” ~ Emma Goldman
Post above edited to reflect country of residence as opposed to citizenship.
‘Country of residence’ seems still a bit of a mindfuck (ideological colonization) or genuflect, but maybe inches a little more toward mental freedom, so that’s something. The rabbit hole goes pretty deep of course.
‘u^
Every year something quite unusual seems to happen in the Arctic. This year the refreeze has been late and slow, especially in the central basin. The peripheral seas are still pretty warm and a lot of the changes seem to be ice getting blown around from one area to another. Global sea ice extent is pretty much following 2016 and 2017 minimums. I feel every climate, resource or political related comment these days should end with the words “we are so fucked”.
Now there are many very smart minds in the tech and venture capital fields coming together to bring to market the solutions to the climate problem so writing “we are so fucked” in all your messages is just wrong. Note here is an example of Google marketing new data that cities can use for the coming decades to reverse climate change.
Google’s New Tool to Fight Climate Change
Robinson Meyer
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/09/google-climate-change-greenhouse-gas-emissions/571144/
In the next decade or so, more than 6,000 cities, states, and provinces around the world will try to do something that has eluded humanity for 25 years: reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, which warm the atmosphere and cause climate change.
The city-level leaders overseeing this task won’t have the same tools available to their national peers. Most of them won’t have an Environmental Protection Agency (or its equivalent), a meteorological bureau, a team of military engineers, or NASA. So where will they start? Never mind how to reduce their city’s greenhouse-gas emissions; how will they know what’s spewing carbon dioxide in the first place?
Maybe Google will do it for them. Or, at least, do it with them.
Google has started estimating greenhouse-gas emissions for individual cities, part of what it recently described as an ambitious new plan to deploy its hoard of geographic information on the side of climate-concerned local leaders.
“The first step toward taking climate action is creating an emissions inventory,” says Saleem Van Groenou, a program manager at Google Earth. “Understanding your current situation at the city scale, and understanding what you can do to it—that’s an information problem, and that’s a good place for Google to sit.”
As part of this initiative, Google says it will also release its proprietary estimates of a city’s annual driving, biking, and transit ridership, generated from information collected by its popular mapping apps, Google Maps and Waze. The company has never released this kind of aggregate transportation data to the public before, and it says it may share even more specific types of data with individual local governments.
Better information can replace energy and cut waste in any system.
I’d put having my life taken over by Google, advertising agencies and smart phones very much in the “so fucked” category.
And once we get all the data from Google and elsewhere, if we still have clear minds, we will look at it and conclude… ‘we are so fucked’ [the biggest thing this refers to is that we are so so far into global overshoot]
Nibbling at the problem is not going to get any result. Sort of like throwing paper cups at a charging bear.
Anyone interested in the current of the wind energy industry, here is an outstanding report to chew on-
https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/2017_wind_technologies_market_report.pdf
This company is stepping up to the plate (pun intended) with Zinc-Air batteries, claiming to have the cost of production down to a affordable level. This appears to be for stationary applications. It is backed back a billionaire and is rolling along pretty fast-
https://nantenergy.com/company/
American company
Rest of world installations 194
American installations 1
Says something.
NAOM
What it says is that so far most of their installations have been in the ‘microgrid’ scenario far from grids, in underdeveloped locales.
But they seem to be on the verge of production at costs which be competitive in grid connected scenarios. We shall see.
The cost of running grid to some of those places would be astronomical, nobody would be able to afford the electricity. Little wonder they haven’t had any to date.
NAOM
Does the US $ have a future? http://www.usagold.com/cpmforum/2018/09/28/dmr-isolationism-de-dollarization-and-gold-a-research-note-from-jp-morgan-market-strategist-marko-kolanovic/
On this day in 1953, the CIA staged a coup in Iran overturning its democratically elected leader.
We have been paying the price for this illegal act ever since.
Why did they do it?
Iran nationalized its oil. What does that mean? They told British Petroleum “the oil in our country belongs to us.”
This caused British Petroleum (BP) and the UK government to flip out.
They went to the US and asked to different presidents to intervene. Truman, to his great credit, said “no.” Eisenhower said “yes.”
The country was given over to the corrupt Shah who in exchange for billions in bribes and arms gave turned the country’s oil over to BP. To keep control over people who never elected him the Shah employed CIA torture experts to help set up a secret police.
And we wonder why there is turmoil in the region.
Unfortunately this “success” led to other CIA supported coups – in Guatemala, in Indonesia, in Vietnam, in the Congo, in the Dominican Republic, in Brazil, and in Chile.
Between 1947 and 1989, the United States tried to change other nations’ governments 72 times. Most of the attempts failed.
https://www.brasscheck.com/video/when-the-cia-overturned-iran-in-1953/
Thanks for the reality check.
Guatemala was next in 1954.
The price is being paid for all theses actions.
Good summary.
What percent of Americans know this history,
or that in large part the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a fabrication/gross exaggeration?
I would be proud of an American president who had the ovaries to offer a major apology to Iran for
that behavior.
“who had the ovaries”
Clearly not 10 out of 11 on the R side of the judiciary committee and who knows what the hell Lindsey has but it’s not ovaries. I’m not sure he knows, but I am sure he is taking it from behind from Trump.
Then there was Chile–
1973 Chilean coup d’état
On 911, I though first it was Chile–as that was the date of the coup.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27état
In 2013 Gallup, which conducts international polls, asked the question- which country is the biggest threat to world peace. USA won by a country mile. In a distant second place was Pakistan, probably skewed in part by the beliefs of the large India population. The poll result was not reported much in American mainstream media, and the question was never asked again. America is the asshole of the planet. If NK did nuke America it seems most of the people on the planet would cheer.
I don’t think America is the asshole of the planet. It has, and still is, producing great things – rock ‘n’ roll in many forms, modern art, cinema (though I don’t like blockbusters), and most of all thinkers in science, medicine, humanities, philosophy etc. But I’ve lived in a few “western” countries and it’s always seemed more different than any of the others, despite the common language, and I’d stress I certainly didn’t dislike living there. It thinks of itself as free but is one of the most rule bound places I’ve been (explicit like long lists of prescribed and proscribed actions and implicit like narrow bands of tolerated behaviour). It producers some of the most highly educated people but also the dumbest (and often wilfully and proudly so). I don’t understand why it continually goes against the trend that religious belief is declining most places in the west. Most people are incredibly upbeat and optimistic but overall not particularly happy or content (almost the exact opposite of Denmark). It has it’s own sports that are mostly highly explosive and anaerobic whereas most countries have football (soccer) and more aerobic, longer lasting things. Nowhere else has the overt university based tribalism. Nowhere else has even remotely the veneration for the military (though I think it’s more as an abstract concept than reality). I think most of all is that there’s a kind of acceptance of, and almost pride in, confrontation, sometimes violent – almost everything is seen as some kind of us versus some kind of them and no compromise is possible. Maybe it’s an empire thing, Rome, Spain, China, UK might have been the same in their day
I think that many of the successes that Americans have experienced, such as conquest of the continent and successful exploitation of its vast resources, war victories in ww1 and ww11, and a long list of inventions, and cultural innovations, have given the culture a sense of entitlement and superiority that is reflected in the behavior as rudeness, cockiness, and disrespect for others.
The current president is a perfect presentation of this phenomena.
And he can barely read.
“And he can barely read.”
“I’m a idiot and proud of it!” is not politically viable.
“I’m a idiot and proud of it!” is not politically viable.
Well, that seems to work if you are in the republican camp. They seem to have a strong affinity for that stance.
Well said George. Its all well and good to knock America and Americans but not to ignore the many positive contributions that have come out of the US. One only has to think of the countless numbers of people who escaped a nothing or doomed life who were able to reach an astronomic potential because of opportunities available to them in America — Einstein and Enrico Fermi being two.
Lest we forget without the US intervention, most of you would probably be under the boot of the Nazis or living as Japanese slaves. Of course, this intervention forced the US to become an international superpower that spent huge sums rebuilding Europe. They also provided aid to Asian countries.
So much for the horrible Americans, who spent lots of money, lives and materials to only become derided and spurned by the very people they helped.
And ever since the US has had a war footing economy meaning a debt economy, keeping that balance of power. Or did Europe want to be part of the Soviet regime? And so was born the industrial military complex and debt ridden police state we live with today, thanks to crazy Europeans wanting to run the world. Please take notice that the US was generally reluctant to enter war before that time.
And yet the US probably only existed due to the poor judgment of a British Admiral.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXDGzmOkC5g
Viva La France.
“They also provided aid to Asian countries.”
Yes, for example, the Japanese were utterly astounded by the generous and humane post-war treatment they received at the hands of the US. Furthermore, that sentiment still exists in Japan today.
Well, I guess that proves the Brexiteer’s point that UK isn’t part of Europe, as the US didn’t spend treasure rebuilding its ally. It took 61 years, and $83.25m to repay “Lend Lease”. (And the UK also repaid Canada $22.7m). This was settled with a final payment on 29 December 2006. The Americans I’ve spoken to about this were angry that any British person should question the repayment — it was a loan, after all, and (as one said to me) ‘we saved your ass’. I suspect here it became a point of honour.
Oh Bullshit! The US gave the British $26 billion (today’s money) dollars through the Marshall plan plus funded the operation.
“The largest recipient of Marshall Plan money was the United Kingdom (receiving about 26% of the total), followed by France (18%) and West Germany (11%). Some eighteen European countries received Plan benefits.”
It took 61 years to repay 83 million? That is nothing compared to the GDP of GB. Which even back in 1965 was 100 billion dollars. Sounds like a token payment to me, especially at about a million per year. Heck that is not even a CEO salary at many corporations.
Well said!
You only prove that brexiters may have huge deficiencies in respect to UK history. 🙂
It is a special variant of the reality deficiency syndrome, which is quite prevalent in brexiters and can only be traeted with a hard brexit and a lot of pain. 🙂
2018 Arctic sea ice minimum
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2018/09/2018-arctic-sea-ice-minimum.html
Hi everybody,
it seems that Spanish scientists invented a pole that creates electric energy by means of vibration from the vortex of the wind whirling around it. it as no moving parts like the actual aerogenerators and can deliver up to 1 MW of power. The poles can be situated closer than the aerogenerators and are cheaper up to 47%. But the best part of the invent is that no birds die by striking the actual aerogenerators fans since the invent it is just a pole.
Link or it didn’t happen!
NAOM
just google ‘vibrating rod’- I’m sure you’ll find it
Only level switches. My point was that someone posting under a footballer’s name should provide a reference point so others don’t need to search and search, especially when it is a more extraordinary claim. That avoids the appearance of a troll.
NAOM
Oh I agree- was joking about the ‘vibrating rod’ search.
The idea that wind turbines are a danger to birds because they have whirling blades is false. Any large objct such as a building or a radio tower has the same problem.
Matt Damon Impersonates Brett Kavanaugh In Instantly Iconic ‘SNL’ Sketch
“Saturday Night Live” roared back big time in its 44th season opener with a jam-packed cold-open replay of Thursday’s Brett Kavanaugh hearing.
In the instantly iconic sketch, Matt Damon unleashed a mega-furious impersonation of the Supreme Court nominee, entering the hearing room after “shadow boxing in the men’s room for the last 45 minutes.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/matt-damon-does-defcon1-kavanaugh-on-snl_us_5bb0448de4b0343b3dc0c275
Enjoy
While SNL tries to make light of the situation, I find it truly sinister. Here’s why:
Checks and balances (cartoon)
Supported by generous donations from conservative billionaires such as the Koch brothers, the Federalist Society has spent decades grooming promising young law students and attorneys to fill vacancies on the federal courts. This long-range effort has born fruit in the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Unites States Supreme Court and now the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to take the seat of retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were picked by President Donald Trump straight from a list of pro-business, anti-regulation conservative judges compiled by the Federalist Society. Rich right-wing donors have gotten a big return on their investment.
It Took a Village to Raise Kavanaugh
In the weeks ahead, we’re going to spend a lot of time going over Brett Kavanaugh’s biography — where he’s from and what he’s written. But that’s not the most important way to understand the guy.
Kavanaugh is the product of a community. He is the product of a conservative legal infrastructure that develops ideas, recruits talent, links rising stars, nurtures genius, molds and launches judicial nominees. It almost doesn’t matter which Republican is president. The conservative legal infrastructure is the entity driving the whole project. It almost doesn’t even matter if Kavanaugh is confirmed or shot down; there are dozens more who can fill the vacancy, just as smart and just as conservative.
This community didn’t just happen; it was self-consciously built. If you want to understand how to permanently change the political landscape, it’s a good idea to study and be inspired how it was done.
One Koch Brother Forces the Other Out of the Family Business
Nearly forty years later, many of the Kochs’ policy preferences are now standard Republican orthodoxy, having been promoted from the fringes into the mainstream by the dozens of nonprofit organizations and candidates they funded. Small government, anti-tax, anti-regulatory, and pro-privatization policies, as well as skepticism regarding global warming, are commonplace……[snip]
What is often overlooked, and is far more significant, is the large extent to which the Kochs’ policy preferences have prevailed under Trump. Trump’s only major legislative achievement, the tax bill, which reduced corporate taxes from thirty-five to twenty-one per cent, was passed with the support of a twenty-million-dollar campaign by Americans for Prosperity, the Kochs’ nationwide advocacy group. At the same time, the Kochs launched an equally effective political campaign to defeat the mechanism that Trump originally embraced to pay for these enormous tax cuts: a “border adjustment tax” devised by Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. Despite support from the White House and Republican leaders in Congress, the Koch network killed it. The final tax bill redistributed wealth from the bottom and the middle to the top and created gaping deficits that will likely require additional cuts in government spending, positions the Kochs have long embraced.
Trump’s rollback of the Obama Administration’s environmental policies, crippling of Obamacare, and dismantling of key provisions in the Dodd-Frank financial-services law all have been top items on the Kochs’ wish list. There is no sign that David Koch’s departure from public life will significantly affect any of this. The Kochs’ Seminar Network is promising to spend an estimated three to four hundred million dollars during the this fall’s midterm election. Evidently, even if there is only one Koch brother left at the table, the menu will remain exactly the same, and the tab will be larger than ever.
It would appear, that if you guys in the US are not careful you will end up living in The United States of Kochistan! The greatest oligarchy the world has ever seen!
A slow motion coup d’état.
NAOM
The US seems to be ceasing to be a full democracy, though maybe the high independence of the states will slow things down. Non democracies often end up going to war, sometimes with former allies, so it’s not just the US that needs to be careful.
Now here’s somebody who “get’s it”!
Sen. King says he’ll vote ‘no’ on Kavanaugh’s nomination for Supreme Court
The final strike against Kavanaugh, King said, is “the deeply conservative dark money groups investing millions in those glossy TV ads.”
“The existence of this campaign probably tells us more about what kind of judge he will be than any opinion, speech, or Senate testimony,” King said.
All Americans that are not billionaires (99.9%), need to think long and hard about King’s last reason for voting no on Kavanaugh.
Here is what the latest poll results are saying.
More U.S. Voters Say Don’t Confirm Kavanaugh, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; More Voters Believe Ford Than Kavanaugh
https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2574
With wide gender, racial and partisan gaps, and a shift in support among independent voters, 48 percent of American voters say the U.S. Senate should not confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, as 42 percent say Kavanaugh should be confirmed, according to a Quinnipiac University National Poll released today.
This compares to the results of a September survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University National Poll, showing 41 percent of American voters supporting a Kavanaugh confirmation, with 42 percent opposed. Independent voters, who supported Kavanaugh 45 – 39 percent September 10, oppose his confirmation 49 – 39 percent today.
Women oppose confirmation 55 – 37 percent, while men support it 49 – 40 percent.
White voters say 51 – 40 percent confirm Kavanaugh. Opposed are black voters 81 – 11 percent and Hispanic voters 65 – 30 percent.
Choosing between Kavanaugh and his accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, 48 percent of American voters most believe Ford as 41 percent most believe Kavanaugh.
But 49 percent of voters say Kavanaugh “is the target of a politically motivated smear campaign,” as 45 percent of voters say he is not a target of a smear campaign.
Musk settles with SEC, to step down as Tesla Chairman; $40M in combined fines
Elon Musk, CEO and Chairman of Tesla, Inc., has agreed to settle the securities fraud charge brought by the SEC against him last week. (Earlier post.) The SEC also today charged Tesla with failing to have required disclosure controls and procedures relating to Musk’s tweets, a charge that Tesla has agreed to settle.
The settlements, which are subject to court approval, will result in comprehensive corporate governance and other reforms at Tesla—including Musk’s removal as Chairman of the Tesla board (he will remain CEO)—and the payment by Musk and Tesla of financial penalties.
According to the SEC’s complaint against him, Musk tweeted on 7 August 2018 that he could take Tesla private at $420 per share—a substantial premium to its trading price at the time—that funding for the transaction had been secured, and that the only remaining uncertainty was a shareholder vote.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2018/09/20180930-tesla.html
Don’t tweet when you drunk!
“G I G A News for TeslaHeads! Elon just Tweeted to his 22 million disciples – time to take TSLA Private @ 420 /Share! Major upsides here since TSLA can focus past the Next Quarter. Wipes out BILLIONS in Shorts. What a Bloodbath !!! No one else could source cells in this volume to pull this off, photon years ahead with Panasonic and GIGAFactory. Hope he’s got a Ludicrous mode Body Guard.” ~ Longtimber
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-aug-7-2018/#comment-647866
Looks like he also wiped out 20 million of his own stash, and 20 million belonging to Tesla. What a bloodbath. Musk should try a few weeks at Betty Ford Center.
Bloodbath? Nope, no Americans killed, just a mistake for a rich guy and a very rich company. Well, they did lose out on profit from a week’s worth of Model 3s. Probably shed a tear over that.
Anyway, you should enjoy knowing that the government will get that money.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/pe-ratio
A rich company? call me when they make (as in earn) a dime.
How’s the 1/2 a million in 2018 going? a little behind schedule?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-results-idUSKCN0XV2JL
In Tesla’s Jan. 2016 shareholders letter, Musk tells shareholders “We plan to fund about $1.5 billion in capital expenditures without accessing any outside capital….” Three months later, the company announces that it plans to sell $2 billion of Tesla shares in order to invest in the just-announced Model 3 production. Right. Three months ago, he had no idea he’d need capital for the new model?
The dudes a flake! Anyone selling the importance of decreased carbon emissions, while at the same time promoting the idea of future space tourism needs their head examined.
Elon is not a flake, he is a practical genius that thinks way beyond what is possible today. I did wonder and disagree with his Mars mission agenda, at first. But by listening to a number of interviews of Musk and realizing he is a lot smarter than I am, I pieced together his strong motivations for his rocket endeavors. His purpose is not to send up satellites or do space tourism, those are merely the vehicles to start an actual colony on Mars.
It does, at first glance, appear to be an improbable and wasteful mission. However, after listening carefully to him I realize he is convinced that humans on Earth are very much in danger and that the Mars colony would be a backup for disaster. I won’t argue with someone that smart who has been warning people for a long time now. As usual people are not listening. So he does things himself, he and his people.
I don’t know why you are so concerned about the Tesla business model, whether it fails or thrives. Were you this adamant about Amazon not making a profit for years, or the shale oil Ponzi scheme going on for years now?
I do recall your saying how having more dead Americans from the flu was a silver lining.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/world-coal-2018-2050-world-energy-annual-report-part-4/#comment-653415
Maybe it’s you that needs his head examined.
Wa® E¢onomi¢$
The innocent civilians dead, tortured and/or injured at the hands of assorted so-called American intervention the world over and across history might agree (or have agreed) with some of its gist though.
As for Musk, his ‘genius’ doesn’t seem that much evolved than ours as kids when we played with our Tonkas®, Hotwheels® and plastic moon-rockets in the sandboxes.
SpaceX Launches a Super-Secret Payload for the Feds
Rip Sensor
When nature gives something extra -lightning destroys sailplane
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDhl5dOd4_0
About the link of the electricity producing poles, it is in portuguese but here it comes:
https://www.portal-energia.com/turbinas-eolicas-sem-pas-criada-espanha/
Here is company website- https://vortexbladeless.com/
and a report on it from MIT review. 2015
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/537721/bladeless-wind-turbines-may-offer-more-form-than-function/
Obrigado.
NAOM
I’m not qualified to judge these against the standard designs currently in use, but I could see this kind of design being useful atop buildings in cities, for example, where big blade turbines may not be feasible.
A problem there could be sympathetic resonance in the building. Maybe not affecting the structure but causing hum in certain sized rooms or vibrating objects. Any damping would counter the generating effect.
NAOM
What could go wrong, turbines and big buildings.
https://www.tue.nl/en/news/news-overview/23-04-2014-bahrain-world-trade-center-is-exactly-the-wrong-way-round/
Maybe we should stick to PV on buildings.
That nicely small-scale-metaphorizes my concerns for the applications of alternative energy in general and writ large-scale, globe-wide.
Well, good by—-
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2018/09/walking-on-venezuelas-last-glacier-its.html
Yep, losing winter in the north too.
Winter Ice on Lakes, Rivers, Ponds: A Thing of the Past?
Now the scientists have looked more specifically at trends in ice duration in 65 waterbodies across what might be called the last bastion of winter in the United States–the Great Lakes region (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario and New York)–during a period of rapid climate warming (1975-2004).
Average rates of change in ice freeze and breakup dates were 5.8 and 3.3 times faster, respectively, than historical rates from 1846 to 1995 for the Northern Hemisphere. Average ice duration decreased by 5.3 days per decade.
Over the same time period, average temperatures from fall through spring in this region increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius. The average number of days with snow decreased by 5.0 days per decade, and the average snow depth on those days decreased by 1.7 centimeters per decade.
https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=110967
Here’s Where Winters Are Warming the Most
Winters are warming across the U.S., and in some locations, the warming is dramatic. The Northern Plains, Great Lakes, and the Northeast are warming the fastest, while warming is taking place at a slower rate in the western U.S.
http://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/maps/heres-where-winters-are-warming-the-most
They really tried their hardest here, but this year’s ice out on lakes in this region was one of the latest ever. I suggest taking a look at the records from Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota, since they go back over 160 years and this year had the latest ice out of them all.
One year? One lake? Really?
Yes, really. The study you promoted ends at 2004, which is too long ago now to be fully relevant. 2008, 2013, and 2014 also had unusually late ice outs which would skew the narrative away from warming at a faster rate if they were taken into account.
Let’s see 2004 to 2018 is 15 years, so there was late ice four out of fifteen years. I do recall that there was an unusual cold spell in the spring this year in some regions. Still, not a widespread trend of any sort. Just a local or regional occurrence in spring due to shifts in the Jetstream.
Personally, I have studied and done on site surveys of the old ice cutting areas on the mountains in my region. They are no longer viable, often open water now in midwinter and only thin ice forming some winters (not all).
Give it a few more years in your area, it will be obvious to you. Follow it back over more than one hundred years as I have.
I know it is difficult for most people to analyze a smaller variation within a larger one, so just go with the science if you can’t do that.
Deven “FBI-Hater” Nunes has a Dairy Farm in Iowa – in Steve “Immigrant Hater” King’s district – and that farm like all American dairy and Ag businesses relies heavily on poorly paid illegal immigrants for labor.
A reporter who tried to dig around to find out more was run out of town by a posse led by Deven’s family. The reporter was perplexed by the hypocrisy of the local dairy farmers who opposed Trump and Steve King’s immigration curbs – but still continued to vote for both.
DEVIN NUNES’S FAMILY FARM IS HIDING A POLITICALLY EXPLOSIVE SECRET
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a23471864/devin-nunes-family-farm-iowa-california/
Who needs immigrant labor or even manual laborers anymore?! /sarc
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/01/watch-this-humanoid-robot-install-drywall/?yptr=yahoo
Watch this humanoid robot install drywall
“By utilizing HRP-5P as a development platform of industry-academia collaboration, it is expected that research and development for practical use of humanoid robots in building construction sites and assembly of large structures such as aircraft and ships will be accelerated,” write the creators.
The researchers see the robot as a replacement for an aging population and a declining birth rate. “It is expected that many industries such as the construction industry will fall into serious manual shortages in the future, and it is urgent to solve this problem by robot technology,” they write.
Bold mine.
Perhaps I’m alone in thinking that we are still quite far from experiencing a serious shortage of humans who might be willing and able to do some manual labor.
Cheers!
P.S. Though yesterday I watched a small lawn mowing robot in a Children’s park here in Göbrichen where I am staying.
The combination of AI, robots and 3-D printing will allow mankind to pursue many other activities rather than laborious work. Why we may eventually be able to do this someday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkjbMoj0JY4
“I’ve always been blessed with a kind of intuition about people that allows me to sense who the sleazy guys are, and I stay far away.”
—Donald Trump, Surviving at the Top
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/19/the-curious-world-of-donald-trumps-private-russian-connections/
So he stays very far away from himself?
Maybe that is why he can’t read, arms to short?
Arctic sea ice is continuing to be reluctant to refreeze. Temperature anomalies are currently 2 to 3K (about as expected by Arctic amplification) but forecast to be above 4 this week. Without the plug of thick ice that dissappeared last year a lot of the thin stuff from the central basin is getting pushed south into the Canadian Archipelago. There is some evidence of warmer and saltier water getting in to deeper seas from Atlantic and/or Pacific. Every phenomena is a kind of one off and changes the next year, I guess that is characteristic of any system transitioning between two stable states. It’s probably the same for the Earth as a whole as we move from glacial to hothouse.
That’s because the Arctic will actually spill out into the west next week. Temperatures in the Northern Plains will be so far below normal by this weekend that there will likely be an unprecedented early October snowfall brought on by a low pressure system.
Hey Bob maybe you could be the weatherman at Fox news. Just make some blue maps. Although I understand they have a strong preference for red. You might have to rethink that whole plan.
[wow, look how democratic Wyoming has become this week!, and the whole NE is downright fascist]
“The future is bright for dinoflagellates.”
— Jeremy Jackson
Bob, maybe I can help you out a little with the upcoming long range (6 month) forecast-
Very cold at times, more so in some places than others. High likelihood of the temperature averages being normal (within 2 SD deviations of the mean [20 yr]).
Run with it.
btw- average first date of measurable snowfall in Billings is Oct 12, and earliest is Sept 7.
Watch for some major natural gas price spikes this winter in US.
How quaint that your entire world view still consists of the USA…
Best regards from the other side of the Atlantic! FYI, there is weather here as well…
Cheers!
Herr Kaplan —
LIMITATIONS OF BATSMEN RANKINGS REVEALED
“Current systems for ranking the best batsmen in test cricket have been bowled out by a new study. In a paper which could give sleepless night to cricket statisticians all over the world, researchers from Newcastle and Northumbria universities delivered their ‘out’ verdict to current methods after analysing the two most popular test cricket rankings. They found that rating batsmen by average score alone is not enough to determine who is best.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-10-limitations-batsmen-revealed.html#jCp
I have an infallible ranking system: Colin Cowdrey (ex Kent and England): No. 1; everybody else: not No.1.
Hightrekker — Physics is not dead. 😉
BLACK HOLES RULED OUT AS UNIVERSE’S MISSING DARK MATTER
“We are back to the standard discussions. What is dark matter? Indeed, we are running out of good options,” said Uroš Seljak, a UC Berkeley professor of physics and astronomy and BCCP co-director. “This is a challenge for future generations.”
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/uoc–bhr100118.php
“Challenged” is a proper word if you are paying attention.
A wake up call.
Synapsid – not forgetting my sagacious sidekick on this snowy Tuesday morning.
DID KEY BUILDING BLOCKS FOR LIFE COME FROM DEEP SPACE?
“Little was known about a key element in the building blocks, phosphates, until now. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa researchers, in collaboration with colleagues in France and Taiwan, provide compelling new evidence that this component for life was found to be generated in outer space and delivered to Earth in its first one billion years by meteorites or comets. The phosphorus compounds were then incorporated in biomolecules found in cells in living beings on Earth.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-09-key-blocks-life-deep-space.html#jCp
Estimable DougL,
Ah, phosphorus! It and sulfur are the subject of one of the branches of isotope geochem whose siren voice called from the deeps when I was entering graduate study. Thanks for wheezing on the coals, as it were.
Finding element P in comets (possibly in forms resulting from the kinds of reactions the article tells us about) adds to its discovery in the solid state in many meteorites so it’s an easy step to thinking the two types of body could, likely did, deliver P, some of it chemically accessible when in water, to Earth in the very early days. Many meteorites, we recall, are remnants of the kinds of objects our planet formed from, so we should keep in mind that Earth may well have formed with a fair treasury of P to be supplemented by delivery via arrival from space. Weathering of rock releases P and it makes its way to the oceans, and the oceans were here very early indeed, so it’s nice to see evidence that, um…life, ah yes: life…could have come into being…on Earth. (Going out on a limb here)
There’s a name for this delightful field–perhaps you’ve encountered it: cosmochemistry. How I strayed from its pursuit is a long story.
Thanks again.
The perfect three way marriage!
Cryptocurrencies, PV solar energy and emerging economies.
How a Ugandan prince and a crypto startup are planning an African revolution
What if blockchain turned out to be just what emerging economies were after?
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/01/how-a-ugandan-prince-and-an-crypto-startup-are-planning-an-african-revolution/
Crypto and blockchain enthusiasts have been railing for years against the centralized world of banks, but many have been doing so from the privileged vantage point of developed countries. But what if blockchain technology turned out to be most revolutionary in emerging economies?
Quiet heroes:
A new book of photos has just been published, to mark the 75th anniversary of one of the most daring rescues in World War Two. It features striking portraits of civilians who resisted the Nazis.
“Denmark was the only Western European country occupied by Nazi Germany that was able to save its Jewish population. While evil and fear took over most of Europe, the Danish people retained their humanity and rescued those in great danger.”
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20181001-the-danish-network-that-defied-hitler
Thanks Doug.
344 — [BC] Aristotle dies of indigestion. Probably gagged on Plato & Socrates, famous authoritarians.
+Hightrekker, I doubt Aristotle would have gagged on Plato (or Socrates–whose views we know about only through Plato). Although Aristotle often differed with Plato, both men had reservations about democracy. Aristotle called it the best of the bad forms of government, but the worst of the good forms. He thought there were three basic forms of government (and governments did not have to be purely one form but could be mixed in various degrees): aristocracy, oligarchy, and democracy, or as we would say today, meritocracy, plutarchy, and democracy. But unlike the simple good vs. evil dichotomy that we moderns tend to view these forms as, Aristotle thought that good and bad versions of each form of government were possible. He noted that abusive versions (tyrannies) tended to be short-lived. He also noted that governments were not always in practice what they claimed to be in theory, since the rules could be rigged to favor one group or another. I have no doubt that if Aristotle were with us today that he would describe the USA as an oligarchy (plutarchy) masquerading as a democracy. Remember, Aristotle did not think that oligarchies were invariably bad, but I think he would hold the American version in very low esteem. Aristotle, who was a slave owner, thought that some men were naturally slaves, and he thought that Sparta (which was the inspiration for Plato’s Republic) had declined because it gave too much freedom to its women (to the dismay of the equality-minded Plato, Athens kept its women in seclusion, what we now call purdah, a custom that Alexander is thought by many to have spread to the Middle East), so I doubt he would think highly of our civil rights and feminist revolutions since the 1960’s.
I agree– Aristotle was anti democratic also, and it was Catholicism embracing his ideas that he is held in prominence.
“Anti-democratic” is too simple to describe Aristotle’s view. It was not his favorite form of government, but he did not consider it necessarily unviable or without its merits. He seems to have thought of democracy, plutocracy, and meritocracy (the best men from the best families, aristocracy in Greek) as ingredients in a recipe, although one ingredient tended to predominate in a given place and time. I think he would have been sympathetic with Alexander Pope’s view: “For forms of government let fools contest, That which is best administered is best.” On the other hand, he was totally unambivalent about flute music. He did not object to instrumental music in general, but the flute in particular, he said, corrupted the morals of the youth. I wonder what he would have said about rock’n’roll.
“WILL YOU walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly,
‘Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I’ve a many curious things to show when you are there.”
EXCESS OF ELECTRON NEUTRINOS DETECTED BY ICECUBE NEUTRINO OBSERVATORY
“Neutrinos at the observatory are studied in two different ways. In the first, researchers study the tracks they make as they move through a detector. In the second, they study particles that cause light to be emitted when they smash into ice particles. Scientists studying the neutrinos have found an apparent anomaly, one that is in need of an explanation. The anomaly involves the ratio of neutrino types that are detected at the observatory. Prior research has found that there are three kinds of neutrinos—electron, muon and tau—and that they should be found in equal numbers. But the detector consistently detects many more electron neutrinos than the other two types. Denton and Tamborra suggest this discrepancy can be explained by tau and muon neutrinos decaying into a different particle called a majoron. And this is where it gets truly interesting because majorons are a proposed dark matter particle.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-10-explanation-excess-electron-neutrinos-icecube.html#jCp
Can anybody explain to me why the Western Canadian Select is in free fall? Just pipeline constraints or other or a combination?
Anarchy at the south pole: Santiago Sierra plants the black flag to destroy all borders
I like your photo better:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5495e6912d71965692a824bed3ce3ca02ac4653269e906b0f058dfe17d6c294c.jpg
Cute, but should there be a whole lot more people in there with him? Maybe swap them for most of the industrial prison complex folks?
Clues to Planet X
https://www.space.com/41995-dwarf-planet-the-goblin-discovery-planet-nine.html
I would like to throw out a question that is not subject to exact calculation but will have to rely on approximation and intuition: how long do you (anyone) think that individuals and small groups have to prepare themselves before the world spirals out of control? Or do some think the decline will remain more or less orderly all the way down? It looks to me as if the peaks in liquid fuels, coal, and uranium, maybe gas too, will cluster together in a relatively short time frame and this will be a huge shock. This might be between 2025 and a little past 2030. However, there will also be some plateauing and heroic measures to shore things up, so there will follow a period of severe economic distress, until we fall a substantial distance off either the transport fuels plateau, or the electrical production plateau. Then governments will no longer have the resources to maintain some sort of crude safety net under the multitudes of broke and unemployed, and society will begin to unravel in earnest. Let’s say we fall off one of these plateaus around 2035 and have descended substantially downward 10 years later–so utter chaos by 2045???
Too many variables and pitfalls to predict with accuracy. Could have been 27 yrs ago, or 27 yrs from now. Or maybe not a global phenomena, more patchy in distribution. Lots of places have been like hell before, and already. Which society are you talking about?
The world is being driven now by destructive forces that are awakening amplifying natural forces. We are in the midst of the problem not at the beginning. The world has made a lot of positive progress despite the uber-control of the defective and deadly incumbent paradigm. So align yourself with the positive forces and most adamantly stay away from the fringe groups that think everything is bad.
No way to know which problems will synergize in any area, best to know your region and assess on a local/regional scale. Also look at the particular weaknesses (external dependencies and lacks) that can crop up quickly. Then figure out ways to mitigate those.
Those that fear change and try to fight it or avoid it will probably not do well. A few will, but mostly by accident. Those that embrace change and learn to move with the flow will do the best overall.
There is lots of written material on the subjects of resilience and sustainability. Try to stay away from the doomer set, they are spiraling down from their own internal feedback systems and want to take you with them.
The best advice I can give you is Don’t Panic. Panic can be sudden and overwhelming or take on the form of a steady anxiety and worry that wears you down. Either one makes for bad decision making that can get one killed or hurt, as well as get others hurt. Practice reducing your panic/anxiety levels so that when real situations arise you can be clear headed and act appropriately. Volunteer for a rescue squad or become a firefighter. That will prepare you well for many nasty circumstances as well as help build a network of friends/acquaintances. Also occasional community service and helping environmental groups is a great way to network.
Outdoor adventure and survival courses are good for learning how to stay cool in bad situations. Also get you used to being very uncomfortable.
Preparing for bad times is good, but don’t waste your life doing it. The future may unfold much differently than people think.
I agree with most of what GF says!
My own focus is on ecosystem collapse. I have previously posted about a paper describing a 75% loss of insect biomass over the last 27 years recorded in protected nature preserves in Germany.
Ironically I’m in Germany at the moment and drove through the countryside and had more insects splatter on my windscreen than driving through the Everglades…
It is ecosystem collapse that I see happening all over the globe that I think will do us all in, in the near future. The economy ceases to exist if we have multiple ecosystems collapsing all over the planet.
As GF said, DON’T PANIC!
Cheers !
When the pres opens up the “football” this is what he will see.
Related to ecosystem collapse, the vulture populations of India and Pakistan are dropping radically mostly because of antibiotics and other poisons in the carrion they eat. A vulture’s digestive system is able to kill pathogens that would otherwise find their way into the biosphere. So, for example, cattle carcasses are either left to rot or growing packs of wild dogs eat them and spread rabies and other diseases that would be cleaned up by the vultures. So the knock-on effect is that India and Pakistan are spending billions of dollars on public health that used to be taken care of by natures ‘cleanup committee’
So I get terrifically riled when someone says something like “Who cares if the polar bears go extinct. It’s no skin off my nose.”
People just don’t understand the interconnectedness of everything.
That would be better posted in Islandboy’s EIA thread.
NAOM
Hi Nehemiah, lots depend.
It depends, for example, on what ‘prepare themselves’ or ‘spirals out of control’ mean and for whom and where, etc., as well as what and how the two– ‘prepare themselves’ and ‘spirals out of control’– might interrelate.
My sense of ‘fractal collapses in complex systems’ is that no one really knows.
So maybe it’s best to be as prepared as possible, maybe even for the worst– whatever that might mean– and for examples, looking to local/small-group/community and individual resilience and learning things about how our ancestors used to do things to live and thrive, such as WRT basic needs like food, clothing, potable water and shelter. This would include looking toward and working more, and more symbiotically and in harmony, with nature and natural systems…
Remember, it’s ‘civilization’ and its particular modus operandi that’s collapsing or declining and taking natural systems down with it in the process. So it’s important, or at least helps, to understand why, but also to try to be true to what actually supports us/you, rather than what pretends to, and doesn’t.
Yes, my wording left a lot of room for subjectivity. Let’s say we put some benchmarks on this: global GDP contracts 25% in a decade, and global population contracts 10% in a decade, and neither one recovers. Network news not only reports on falling oil production, but also on falling production of other finite fuel sources because electricity rates are at record highs and it has to be explained. As demand for PV cells explodes, silver becomes so expensive that thieves begin to steal PV cells for their silver content. _Limits To Growth_ goes back into print due to popular demand. That’s five benchmarks. How long do you think until we hit at least 4 of them? (Yes, I know the system is complex, but that why I pointed out in my initial post that the answer cannot be exactly calculated but must rely on intuition. If we had enough intuitive guesses from relatively well informed parties, the average or median answer might be surprisingly close to the future reality.)
“As demand for PV cells explodes, silver becomes so expensive that thieves begin to steal PV cells for their silver content”
If the price of silver increased much the manufacturers would simply move back to aluminum or copper. At 65 mg per cell it’s not much material.
With 500,000 metric tons of known silver reserves that is about 3 trillion cells if we use half of the reserve for PV.
Sure, they could move to something else like aluminum or copper, but there is a good reason why they prefer a more expensive material like silver. My guess is that going to copper or aluminum will reduce efficiency (thus requiring more cells).
I don’t know how many cells to a panel, but one source says:
It is estimated that it currently takes about 20 grams of silver to build an average solar panel.
And: Even after factoring in an assumed quadrupling of solar panel efficiency, there is still not enough silver on earth to convert to a 100% solar-powered economy.
And: Even relatively more modest goals, such as solar becoming the largest source of energy, remain out of reach as long as solar panel manufacturing depends on silver supplies.
Further, aluminum production is very energy intensive, which should become problematic in the future. Copper is more plentiful than silver, but it is projected to peak most likely before 2040, which should send prices flying since Cu is indispensable to the electrical age. This is in addition to providing reduced conversion efficiency compared to silver.
And then there is the whole question of how long we can keep the electrical grid in operation. Everything depends upon everything else.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4044219-enough-silver-power-world-even-solar-power-efficiency-quadruple
48 cells per panel X 65 mg = 3.12 grams silver is all that is needed
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/07/06/amount-of-silver-needed-in-solar-cells-to-be-more-than-halved-by-2028-silver-institute-says/
All these materials can be recycled,
Next add silver grapheme hybrids that exist now, to reduce even further.
We will move to graphene and other nano materials.
Northern hemisphere snow cover has bottomed out in July for a loss of 3.5 million square kilometers since 1966. Since Greenland snow cover is about 2.1 million km2, it can’t get much lower.
Maybe Frisky Bobby has an inverted version of that graph, he can post for us…
I find this summer snow cover chart rather comforting. Geologists tell us that the time to worry is when less and less snow melts during the north hemisphere summer, which is what happens when we are headed into a serious glacial expansion (“ice age,” although technically the ice age that began 2.8 million years ago still has not ended. Pre-ice age temperatures were 15 degrees F (8.5C) warmer than today, so we are still quite cool.) During the Little Ice Age period of history, a drop of just 1C degree from mean temperatures more or less identical to today (perhaps slightly warmer than today in northern Europe) caused reductions in crop yields and widespread suffering.
Yep, we are nearing 2C rise now (from when the crops were doing fine) and it will continue to get more comforting for a long time.
Pre Ice Age, you mean 53 million years ago.
No, just 3 million years ago temps were 8.5C or 15F warmer than today, which were typical temperatures for tens of millions of years. Most species alive today originated in that warmer world (or earlier, before the Chicxulub impact). Man did not, of course, but primates as a group did. Basic earth history.
Sorry Dude you got cheated on your basic Earth history course, temperature now is what it was 3 million years ago.
It was about eight degrees C higher 53 million years ago in the PETM.
“During the PETM, the global mean temperature seems to have risen by as much as 5-8 °C (9-14 °F) to an average temperature as high as 23 °C (73 °F), in contrast to the global average temperature of today at just under 15 °C (60 °F). “
Gone Fishing, the online graphs seem to be more variable than the dead tree version I remember, so perhaps my dead tree version was oversimplifed. So, let’s look at this more closely, because I suspect we may both be working with oversimplified paradigms of past temperatures.
First, your 23C at the PETM was the temperature in the ARCTIC, incredibly, according to http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/
Ocean surface temperatures worldwide shot up by 5-8°C for a few thousand years – but in the Arctic, it heated up even more, to a balmy 23°C (73°F).–end quote
The timing of the PETM suggests it might be associated with the recurring extinction event that recurs like clockwork every 62 million years (the end Cretaceous event was not part of the cycle), and is thought to be associated with events in the Arctic:
in the Arctic, it heated up even more, to a balmy 23°C (73°F). This caused a severe dieoff of little ocean critters called foraminifera, and a drastic change of the dominant mammal species.–end quote
This graph of the Cenozoic
https://yandex.com/images/search?pos=13&img_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwhywebecamehuman.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F12%2FGlobl-temperature-2.jpg&text=temperatures%2065%20million%20years%20timeline&lr=109873&rpt=simage
shows much higher temperatures than today for the first 20 million years, with PETM temps not appearing to spike that high compared to typical background temperatures. IOW, normal temps in the early Cenozoic were much closer to the PETM spike in this graph than to temps today.
Then you seem temps falling for millions of years as Antarctica slowly moves into its present position over the South Pole and become permanently capped by ice, sort of like the way the freezer compartment keeps the whole refrigerator cooler.
Then temps roughly plateau for over 20 million years before dropping for about 10 million years until we entered the Pleistocene Ice Age, which is even cooler.
Here is CO2 vs temps for the last 600 million years, notice the relationship is not reliable:
https://yandex.com/images/search?pos=17&img_url=https%3A%2F%2F2static1.fjcdn.com%2Fcomments%2F1%2Bclearly%2Byou%2Bdidnt%2Bread%2Byour%2Bown%2Blink%2Bgod%2Bdamn%2B_7f4024ddb472398b4ba41624c218d060.jpg&text=temperatures%2065%20million%20years%20timeline&lr=109873&rpt=simage
Here is a different graph over the last 570 MY, again, there is not a consistent relationship:
https://yandex.com/images/search?pos=4&img_url=http%3A%2F%2Frockyhigh66.org%2Fstuff%2Ftempco2570mlefttoright.png&text=temperatures%2065%20million%20years%20timeline&lr=109873&rpt=simage
Here is a another graph of the Cenozoic. Notice it shows temps warmer than today until about 6 MYA, and current temps not in any way unusual for an interglacial. IOW, we are experiencing normal interglacial temperatures, not living in an unusually warm era even by Pleistocene standards.
https://yandex.com/images/search?pos=5&img_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.paulmacrae.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2008%2F06%2Fglacials-and-interglacials.jpg&text=temperatures%2065%20million%20years%20timeline&lr=109873&rpt=simage
Looking at more recent temps, here they are for the last 800,000 years. Notice that current temps are lower than 3 of the last 4 interglacials, not in any way unprecedented:
https://yandex.com/images/search?pos=0&img_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.climate.gov%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2FPaleoTemp_EPICA_large.png&text=temperatures%2065%20million%20years%20timeline&lr=109873&rpt=simage
Here are reconstructed temps all the way back to the Precambrian. Notice that they have been close to 25C for about half the time, in an apparently recurring cycle. In none of these long episodes near the top of the temperature range does life on earth appear to have been endangered, although particular species come and go. Notice we are not abnormally warm. In fact, today’s “heated” world is near the bottom of earth’s normal temperature range, as you can see:
https://yandex.com/images/search?pos=23&img_url=https%3A%2F%2Fappraisersforum.com%2Fforums%2Fproxy.php%3Fimage%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fc3headlines.typepad.com%252F.a%252F6a010536b58035970c0162fdd74719970d-pi%26hash%3D9cdb320815801c88cb2fa138563ac192&text=temperatures%2065%20million%20years%20timeline&lr=109873&rpt=simage
Projections that CO2 levels which, although rising, are still unusually low by earth history standards are going to return earth temperatures to a level still lower than where they have been for a large part of life’s time own earth, and that this middle of the range temperature rise will “destroy the planet” are not based on any kind of real world evidence. It entirely depends on unproven computer models that cannot accurate backcast, much less forecast, weather prior to the period on which they are curve fitted. If we just compare the present with the past, today’s climate is a normal interglacial that is likely near the end of its run, and the Antarctic ice cap still sits over the South Pole keeping background temperatures at the low end of the geohistorical range. The paleoclimatic relationship between temp and CO2 over long eons of time indicates that CO2 levels cannot reliably predict present or future temperatures, and the highly cyclical nature of the Pleistocene glacial cycle indicates that the primary driver of climate change, other than continental drift over very long periods, is celestial in origin.
Better graphic