162 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum”

    1. 100kWh/day ~ 30 Liters of Diesel ( assuming 3kWh/L from a Genset) or the Avg kWh from 100 250w PV Panels @ 38 degrees Latitude.

      1. And if you add in some thermal panels, which have much higher efficiency, it lessens the need for PV or allows an excess of electric power. 3 to 5 kWh/m2 per day.
        No need to heat water or buildings with PV. Heat can be easily and cheaply stored also.

        1. GoneFishing,

          PV produces still some electricity in winter when thermal panels stink, the combination of PV/wind with heat pumps is the way to go IMHO.

          The price of PV decreases very fast, the price of thermal panels not.

          To store thermal energy in an economic way requires relatively large efford for a single house, PV + heat pump is better; thermal solar panels make sense for larger objects or for substitution of heat at low temperature in industry.

          1. Better. A small, very efficient heat engine, running on biomass and generating heat directly, plus driving heat pump. Home free!

            Working on it.

            Engine part done already elsewhere, for NASA space power. Over 30% thermal efficiency at less than 1kW output — Astounding!

          2. Ulenspiegel,
            Most of the price of PV is in the installation and control systems now. The panels are less than a dollar a watt.
            How do you get your PV to operate in the winter, sun angles below 25 degrees mean much of the energy is reflected off the glass. Thermal is set up vertical or near vertical. Most PV systems are set at roof angles which are inefficient in winter.
            How are you storing the energy for overnight and for multi-day storms?

            1. You can give PV a different orientation so it works in autm, winter and spring. Do not optimize it for summer. 🙂

              I do not want to store energy, I am not off-grid. 🙂

              More serious: In central Europe we have the demand peak in winter, this is covered by wind. Therefore you need grid access anyway.

              PV delivers in summer still a product with economic value, thermal solar does not.

            2. I want something that can provide heat and be independent of semi-independent of the power grid. One year we were without power for over a month total. Two weeks straight once.
              Thermal solar provides hot water energy during the summer and stores energy during the summer for winter.
              I have enough space for PV on my roof to supply my typical energy needs and an electric car. I am also concerned about the reliability of heat pumps. I don’t want to become reliant on high tech that needs frequent repairs.
              A thermal system can be home built and home repaired. Replacing a small pump takes minutes. The circuitry is simple and cheap. The thermal system itself can last fifty years or more. I can do all the maintenance and service myself. None of that can be said for heat pumps where a service contract is needed on top of the warranty.

              Isn’t central Europe still using a lot of coal and natural gas to power the grid? Not something I want to encourage.

            3. From what I have read, heat pumps default to heat strips when they cannot provide enough heat or malfunction. That is the heat pump becomes an electric heater and does not necessarily tell the owner. Was reading comments of people getting huge electric bills in winter when having heat pumps.
              Unless they are geothermal, heat pumps get inefficient at cold air temps, just when you need them most. So spend the money and bury the exchanger pipes, preferably 10 feet deep or more.

            4. I have a heat pump and it makes less trouble than the NG heater in my mother’s house and provides 4 units of heat for each unit electricity. 🙂

              No repairs in the last 8 years.

            5. Ulenspiegel, what is the make and manufacturer of that heat pump?

            6. Heat pumps are generally very reliable, but if the compressor or condenser fails, etc, you sure can get a big surprise your next electric bill.

              A buried system is good, if you can afford it, but the upfront costs are so high they wipe out the savings for many years to come.

              Unless you live in a place where the temperature stays well below freezing most of the winter, a run of the mill heat pump is your best option.

              If you can afford a top of the line model, it will save you money on energy even at 0 F.

            7. Old Farmer,
              Yes, the temps are well below freezing here most winters. Lows down to minus 20 F, with zero to 20 common. This winter was slightly above average but the two previous were well below average.
              Don’t see why a six foot deep trench would be so expensive. Temps down there are always above freezing.

            8. Yes, there’s a temperature below which an air-source heat pump needs an electric heater backup. You have to look at your *specific model* of heat pump to figure out how cold that is, and the models have gotten better every year. If it’s only happening a couple days a year, *and* you have a small house where you can’t justify the cost of a single geothermal bore (there’s a huge upfront cost in the $30000+ range for one bore), it’s probably worth getting the air-source heat pump.

            9. “How are you storing the energy for overnight and for multi-day storms?”

              In principle you can of course store thermal energy from thermal solar in huge tanks as it is done in the Jenni Haus.

              And you can add a small battery to your PV system.

              However, if you do see offgrid as bug, not as feature, than you get better solutions for less money. 🙂

  1. My seat of the pants impression is that we are living in what the Chinese euphemistically call interesting times, and that times are getting more and more interesting all the time.

    Things could get totally out of hand any day, or any month or year in the Middle East, but for now at least I don’t see much reason to worry about the various factions there putting their hands on any nuclear weapons, at least not in the short term. The wars there are apt to remain local, because the countries involved, and the people involved,other than the Russians, don’t have the means to project military power.

    North Korea is another kettle of fish. I don’t think the doughboy is dumb enough to nuke anybody, but I wouldn’t offer high odds against him doing so.

    If NK goes to war, then NK will cease to exist as a country in a matter of hours, that’s a foregone conclusion, if we and our allies play hardball. Seoul will burn, that’s also foregone.

    The real question is what would such a war mean to countries such as the USA and China in terms of our relationship?

    What would happen in terms of international trade in oil, for instance, and how long might it take for things to settle down to a new “normal”?

      1. Hi EZ ,

        For now it does not seem very likely the India / Pakistan problems will spill result in other countries getting involved in the shooting.

        But if the NK Doughboy attacks SK, then we Yankees, and some of our friends, are going to be involved hot and heavy.

        Doughboy might be dumb, or unstable enough, to fire off a nuke at some other country, meaning most likely the USA.

        If he tries something along that line, maybe there is somebody in his personal entourage with brains enough to understand what the consequences for NK would be, somebody who would assassinate him. .

        In the event NK starts a war, who gets dragged in, and how will they react?

        In NK, the people who would actually launch a missile might be so ill informed, and so afraid for themselves and their families, that they would go ahead with an attack.

        1. Well here is a slightly different view on why that kind of hot war might not be all that likely.

          https://goo.gl/rM46pC

          “I want you to reimagine how life is organized on earth,” says global strategist Parag Khanna. As our expanding cities grow ever more connected through transportation, energy and communications networks, we evolve from geography to what he calls “connectography.” This emerging global network civilization holds the promise of reducing pollution and inequality — and even overcoming geopolitical rivalries. In this talk, Khanna asks us to embrace a new maxim for the future: “Connectivity is destiny.

          Might be interesting to think of Steven Pinker’s point that violence is diminishing in our modern world.

          https://goo.gl/EttXxT

          Steven Pinker charts the decline of violence from Biblical times to the present, and argues that, though it may seem illogical and even obscene, given Iraq and Darfur, we are living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence.

          Of course there is still violence and war in our world but given all of the possibilities for it occurring it is still quite remarkable that there isn’t a whole lot more! I think Parag Khanna’s talk might shed some light on why that may be the case!

          If you watch the latest link posted in the the last thread about Tony Seba’s talk it may also be that as a whole humanity can learn to live on a much reduced personal energy diet as well.

          One thing is for sure we do live in interesting times but I’m not so sure that it is a given that many more major hot wars are in the cards either. Yes we do have to deal with the grievances of angry young men who like to terrorize us by blowing themselves up in airports and restaurants but that is nothing compared to a major world war.

          Go have a grasshopper pizza and a beer! and think about E.O. Wilson’s Half Earth project! There are so many dots to connect… 🙂

            1. Wimbi has proven himself a man of many talents. I am strongly tempted to post his entire essay here.It’s G R E A T.

            2. Dang it Wimbi! that’s one darned good essay and it really does connect the dots in a way that even the average Joe and Jane should be able to get. And all without any calculus or even a single differential equation. My hat is off to you sir! Now on to the next 🙂

            3. Thanks for all the kind words, folks, That’s the sorta thing I have always done for fun. Started when my kids were young and I was trying to get them to think by telling fables “partly true and partly not true” which they then had to sort out themselves.

              They quickly got to be experts at tearing apart TV ads.–the few they were allowed to see.

              The community solutions people are also going to let me post my many widget ideas soon – – good and not good; you gotta sort them out for yourself.

            4. Great essay, you stated in a different way many of the beliefs and conclusions about the world that I hold dear.

            5. Good essay Wimbi.

              We’ve been fruitful, and we’ve multiplied. The time is long past due for us to replenish the Earth.

            6. Hi Wimbi, I noticed essays that go back some months too, so that’s good, and thanks for sharing.

            7. “Here’s what a proper planet should look like, a paradise. Now, get out there and keep it that way.”

              When God created Adam, he showed him all the trees of the Garden of Eden and said to him: See my works, how lovely they are, how fine they are. All I have created, I created for you. Take care not to corrupt and destroy my universe, for if you destroy it, no one will come after you to put it right.” (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7)

          1. Hi Fred,

            Hopefully you are right.

            Incidentally Pinker and Wilson are in my humble opinion two of the most important scientists alive today, although Wilson is not apt to do any more important original work at his age.

            Their actual WORK is leveraged by their extraordinary talents as writers. I don’t know of any body else, period, who writes even remotely as well as they do, when it comes to the sciences.

            Given the extent to which they have brought up to date science to the attention of the public, they may in effect be THE two most important scientists working today. Knowledge possessed by the elite, by the few, is not very important, in practical terms, compared to knowledge possessed by the larger citizenry.

            1. Their actual WORK is leveraged by their extraordinary talents as writers. I don’t know of any body else, period, who writes even remotely as well as they do, when it comes to the sciences.

              I agree that they are both talented writers but where they really shine is in their assessment of the data. Like the late Matt Simmons they examine the data, examine the data again and then they do it a third time and only then do they offer their analysis and finally their conclusions. They are truly scientists extraordinaire!

              Cheers!

  2. KLAMATH, Calif. — The U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of Commerce, PacificCorp, and the states of Oregon and California today signed an agreement that, following a process administered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), is expected to remove four dams on the Klamath River by 2020, amounting to one of the largest river restoration efforts in the nation.

    https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/two-new-klamath-basin-agreements-carve-out-path-dam-removal-and-provide-key-benefits

  3. EZriderMike posted this link earlier, but at the tail end of the last open thread non oil.

    It is chock full of highly relevant statistics that are indispensable to understanding how the future might unfold, in terms of energy markets, and in terms of the environment.

    I guarantee it is well worth the time to read it.

    http://karenlynnallen.blogspot.com/2016/03/an-energy-diet-for-healthy-planet-part-i.html

    If the technology ambulance doesn’t run out of gas on the way to the technology hospital, we actually do have a shot at turning the corner on our dependence on fossil fuels.

    It’s a race between ff depletion and the resulting environmental destruction on the one hand, and the POTENTIAL at least of renewables combined with lifestyle changes etc on the other.

    If we keep the pedal to the metal on renewables, some of our grandchildren, maybe quite a lot of them, may live pretty decent lives. Conceivably maybe even most of them!

    The price of just ONE nice new car, added to the price of a new house, is enough to make it into or very near a net zero energy house. Sustainability is NOT out of the question anymore.

    I have mostly all hand made solid wood furniture already fifty years old, furniture that will last for generations. It is not modern or chic, but it grows more valuable every year, and it was never boxed or shipped, it was delivered directly from the maker to our door, with that trip being no farther than the trip to a furniture store in the nearest city. Except for some wax, some screws, and some glass, it has no “other added ingredients”.

    The house itself, barring fire, will last at least a couple of centuries , if it is properly maintained.

    My folks are mostly the sort referred to as evangelicals these days in the msm, but the birth rate of my extended family dropped to just about replacement level in MY generation, and is well below replacement level in the younger generation.

    I don’t know a whole lot of Catholics, because they are not numerous in this area, but among the ones I do know, I know of only one large family, five kids. All the rest have limited themselves to one or two kids with a couple having three.

    The preachers and priests have a lot to say about extramarital sex, but they dare not say a WORD about birth control, to the extent they can avoid doing so, for fear of empty pews.

    Even the most reckless and irresponsible young women have mostly quit having a house full of babies. Looking after just one without a reliable man to help out has generally been enough for them to see the light.

    1. “The preachers and priests have a lot to say about extramarital sex, but they dare not say a WORD about birth control, to the extent they can avoid doing so, for fear of empty pews. ”

      Developed civilization in a nutshell:
      Invent and promote a huge amount of machinery, chemical processes, industrial farming practices and ignore the devastating effects of all the pollution and destruction. All to increase the wealth of the greedy. Artificially increase food production to the point it can support 10 billion people, at the cost of much of the natural earth and biological resources. In the name of growth.
      Then train the next generation to overuse and waste all of the above and call it “progress” and “growth”.
      Next blame the current inhabitants for being too numerous and prosperous. Then blame the future generations for even having the gall to possibly exist and possibly continue what the previous generations produced.
      Insane, totally insane. It boggles the mind, how any reasoning being could accept the situation.
      Even the words progress and growth have been so twisted they no longer have any real meaning that relates to life on earth.

      To all you promoting the non-existence of future generations, take a good long hard look in the mirror and assess yourself and your actions. Maybe you will see that the human race has been set up and you took a part in creating the disaster that is now.
      It is not population, it’s ideas and the actions that follows them. Population is merely a result of those ideas and actions. Halve or quarter the population and it will grow again to the point of disaster, unless the ideas and actions change. Without a change in attitude and action, the rest is pointless jabbering. The very structure and meaning of society and civilization must change.
      If you can’t see that, then you have no ability to see or reason. Just talking heads, jabber, jabber, jabber.
      The real problem is not population. The real problem is the system of industrialization that led to the many predicaments we have today. Treating the symptoms does not cure the disease.

  4. Back to my current favorite subject, feeling the BURN.

    It case anybody wonders if I am right in saying HRC is in the pocket of big money interests, here’s a link to prove my point. It’s a good place to START.

    http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/inside-hillary-clinton-s-big-money-cavalry-n552081

    She is making an ENORMOUS mistake in telling the younger generation to shut up and eat their peas like good children.

    Incidentally Sanders won the womens’ vote in Wisconsin.

    AND he won Oklahoma without needing the independent vote as well, contrary to some establishment D party spin control.

    For the detailed story on HRC and big money, go direct .

    https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/04/05/19528/inside-hillary-clintons-big-money-cavalry

  5. In response to Entropy101 over on the World Crude Plus Condensate Decline Rate.
    Entropy said “Higher oil prices are unsustainable and will only lead to a faster transition into renewable energy sources. Production costs in kWh between fossil and solar are currently about equal, with solar costs still dropping. Wind is at approximately the same point. Battery costs per kWh are also dropping fast and with several large factories in development, will drop faster. When the oil price will increase, it is economically not interesting anymore to generate power with fossil fuels. When this transition starts, it will quickly spread to the automotive industry, since it will be far cheaper to own a electric car instead of a car with internal combustion engine.
    The coal, oil and gas industry will be dead in the water in five to ten years in respect of power generation”
    ——–=========
    Yes, I agree. Higher oil prices will produce a faster transistion to renewable energy and at much lower cost. I would give the coal industry 20 years and the gas industry about 15 years, mostly due to current infrastructure. The oil industry could be down to 20 percent in 20 years.

    The annual solar energy hitting a typical residential roof is on the order of 117,000 kwh at 40 deg north latitude in a damp area. Dryer areas get more.

    The annual solar energy hitting the south wall of a typical residence is about 75,000 kwh ( 256 million BTU).

    If we can’t deal with our energy problems, it’s because of lack of effort and lack of vision. There is plenty of energy out there. How we use it is up to us. We need to have the motivation and courage to leave fossil fuels behind. We do not need them for energy. They should be relegated to chemical reactions.

  6. Clinton said a few days ago she was appalled at Sanders defending gun manufacturers against being held liable for misuse of their products.

    I am totally with Sanders on this one, since if she actually believes that, it indicates she TRULY has designs on our Second Amendment rights. Holding any industry financially responsible for its products would soon bankrupt that industry. Exon and BP don’t have assets enough to pay for the damage oil does to the environment. Nor does anybody else.

    I haven’t heard her mention holding beer manufacturers, or tobacco manufacturers accountable this way, at least not at the presidential campaign level.

    What Sanders would actually do in office in respect to this issue is unclear, but it is in my estimation excellent politics for him to leave it alone, to the extent he can, so as not to alienate millions of independents and conservatives who will vote for him, in order to vote against Trump, if they get the opportunity to do so.

    The Second Amendment is the definitive single issue for millions of people who are otherwise middle of the road. They won’t vote for anybody who is an obvious threat to their Second Amendment rights.

    1. Hillary will make sure PV Manufacturers are responsible for Skin Cancer. Never forget the Solar killing Clinton’s “Million Solar Roofs program” or the Bribes taken to reassemble the ATT Monopoly.

      Thanks GF. “The annual solar energy hitting a typical residential roof is on the order of 117,000 kwh at 40 deg north latitude in a damp area.”

      So said another way – The annual solar energy hitting a typical residential roof @ 40 deg Latitude exceeds 100 Megawatt hours.

    2. Hi Old Farmer Mac,

      Do you think there should be any limitations on firearms? The second amendment is far from clear on this, I believe it reads as:

      A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

      Regulation of this right by the State is right there up front.

      The supreme court has ruled that the Second Amendment does not preclude government regulation of this right. For the millions that have a diehard belief that the right to own firearms of any type should not be regulated in any way by the government, there are 100s of millions that think that firearms should be registered and that gun show and private sales loopholes in existing law should be eliminated.

      The slippery slope argument does not cut it with me.

      1. Obviously there should be limitations on the ownership of firearms. Felons aren’t allowed firearms, and ordinary citizens don’t have any need or justification for machine guns, or mortars, or artillery pieces, etc. No argument from ME in this particular respect.

        I have NOT said I believe there should be NO regulation of firearms.

        What I believe is that HRC will do whatever she can to restrict these rights right across the board, so that eventually, if she has her way, owning a firearm anywhere would eventually be as much trouble is it is in places like Washington DC.

        You can destroy a right by regulating it out of existence.

        Now I have read quite a lot about what the Second Amendment means, and I interpret it, after having read a hell of a lot of history myself, as meaning it means the founders intended me to have the right to own firearms PERSONALLY.

        Of course there are various ways to interpret almost ANY language in any law if you disagree with it. I personally believe anybody who interprets this particular law otherwise is making a partisan argument not supported by original intent. This does not mean I am right, but it is nevertheless what I believe.

        In the end, as we all know, we are basically agreed in this country to be bound by the Supreme Court’s interpretation of any particular law. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, when the Court decides in your favor, or against you, in interpreting any particular law.

        The Court pussy foots around on a lot of issues, but mostly gets it right in my opinion.

        Now there is a possibility that the Court will come down eventually with a ruling that I must surrender my weapons to whoever is in power at the moment, but I pray that day will not come.

        The slippery slope argument cuts it just fine with me when it comes to HRC and the Second Amendment.

        I am campaigning for Sanders, knowing that if he gets the nomination and wins the election, the balance will swing away from my position on the Second Amendment, but his position in respect to the Second Amendment is more palatable than Clinton’s.

        I have come to believe that the environmental issue trumps all other issues combined, and that the only real hope of fast progress on the environment hinges on having a D president who is NOT in the pocket of big biz.

        Clinton fails the smell test, in my opinion, when it comes to big money and politics as usual. Sanders is better by a mile in this respect.

        The younger generation understands this to the bottom of their hearts.

        If you want independents and conservatives to vote D this time around, I think it would be best not to emphasize opposition to firearms ownership. Doing so helps Clinton remind her fan base who she is, but it is not necessary, except to mobilize her troops for the nomination fight.

        Sanders is way ahead among independents and moderates, and he is right imo to take the stand he has, in terms of winning their votes if he gets the nomination. . It also impresses me as the more principled stand.

        The anti gun faction is not going to vote for Trump or any other R candidate. They’re in the bag for the D party already.

        1. Mac, I, too, am “feeling the Bern”. I have always been “left of center”. However, years ago, I parted ways with my more liberal brethren on the subject of guns. What I have not heard discussed much, is that Bernie Sanders is a RURAL liberal (Vermont), and many rural folk have a much different take on firearms than many urbanites. HRC, IMHO, is a throwback to urban liberals that just don’t understand rural issues. Her election would cause the same dissatisfaction with liberal policies that we experienced in the late 1970s, which resulted in Ronald Reagan’s presidency. As far as liberals and guns, I recommend an essay (from last January) in the New York Times, “Some Inconvenient Gun Facts for Liberals”, by the esteemed Nicholas Kristof.

          1. For me it’s not just the actual facts, which are generally badly mauled and misrepresented via cherry picking by the msm in this country, when it comes to guns and violence.

            It’s the matter of holding to the principle that people should be held to account for their actions, rather than third parties.

            I live in the famously violent macho southern mountains.I grew up here, and I have lived in some pretty rough neighborhoods in a city.

            There are millions of people out there with similar experiences from similar backgrounds , excepting the education, and excepting the fact that I participate in forums such as this one. Not many of my sort are lucky enough to escape the culture, and even fewer who do are content to return to it. But I feel right at home here , and find this sort of life far more REAL than an apartment in the city, wearing a tie, going to work at eight, getting off at five, living inside four walls, having little contact with the real physical world, where there are butterflies, and song birds, and people who might kill you, all of which keep things INTERESTING.

            Violence is nothing new to me, I have personal experience with it. I know some murderers personally. I have relatives in the pen for the duration of their natural lives. I have known more than just a couple of people who were murdered.

            But I have also known several times as many who were the victims of drunk drivers, or kids driving fast cars recklessly. I have known lots of people who died as the result of smoking and eating what are basically poisonous highly processed foods packed with sugar, salt, unhealthy fats, etc. I have known a close to dozen at least that died from long term alcohol abuse, and many years ago my very best friend at that time died of an acute overdose of self administered liquor. I have known a woman who was beaten to death by her boyfriend.

            Are we going to hold PEOPLE responsible for their actions , or are we going to place the blame for what people do on third parties?

            Down that path lies a world where everything not mandatory is forbidden.

        2. Hi Old Farmer Mac,

          It seems that owning firearms is not a problem, but the second amendment clearly had in mind firearms being needed for government regulated militias from the way the second amendment was written.

          If your interpretation of the Second Amendment was correct it would read:

          “A person’s right to bear arms shall not be infringed.”

          I disagree with Clinton on the immunity of firearms manufacturers, but think the sales of firearms should require background checks whether a private sale, at a gun show or at a retail store.

          Not sure my views are much different from yours really.

          My slippery slope comment referred to the thinking that nothing should change from present law or they are going to take your guns away.

          1. Hi Dennis,
            I have probably read as much or more as you have, considering this is a hot button issue for me, one of a handful that keep me from identifying myself as liberal.

            There is zero doubt in my own mind that most of the founders were of the opinion that people were to be expected to personally own firearms, and to have the RIGHT to personal ownership of firearms.

            It COULD be that the words about militias were added to ENFORCE the right to own guns, or to enable a compromise on this question of the ownership of arms, rather than to LIMIT the right of ownership to the local organized militia.

            Let’s not forget that these people were just recently finished fighting a war to free themselves from a government they saw as overbearing, arrogant, capricious, and WORTHY of armed rebellion, and that they recognized the possibility that the government they were founding might someday NEED overthrowing.

            Note that our state militias these days are virtually totally subservient to the federal MIC in terms of training, manpower, equipment, etc. They are supposed to be under the control of state governments, but when the chips are actually down in the event of a REAL emergency ……….. they will be defacto controlled from DC.

            Sometimes honest folks disagree. Sometimes written words, even in documents such as the constitution, are subject to varied interpretations.

            I have never argued that any particular right is not subject to some regulation or restraint in the event history proves it is essential that some curbs be allowed.

            I don’t a machine gun, personally, nor do I want idiot kids shooting off machine guns in town.

            But neither do I want to have to jump thru countless hoops to have a gun around to protect my home and business, the way you must do if you live in some places in this country already.

            I do believe we are on the same page, just about all the time. I worry you may be overoptimistic about future oil supplies, but you may be right. Hopefully you are.

            It sounds harsh, but I personally believe that the occasional mass shooting of the sort carried out by the occasional mentally unbalanced individual are not sufficient grounds to take away the rights of hundreds of millions of people.

            That way, even aside from the question of right and wrong, you create a backlash problem many times worse . Cures can be worse than diseases.

            Witness alcohol prohibition.

            I personally know, or used to know, at least a dozen or more people who live in places where they are legally prohibited from owning a pistol, without jumping thru the hoops. All of them are OTHERWISE law abiding citizens.They might smoke a joint, or make few hundred bucks on the side on Saturday mornings and forget to pay tax on that pocket money. They owned firearms then, and probably still do now. They ignored the hoops. They are in effect MANUFACTURED criminals.

            And yes, being the resident token redneck in this forum otherwise populated with well educated and CIVILIZED people, I am sure I could name a dozen felons who illegally possess guns. I can’t be SURE, since they are not so foolish as to actually TELL me they have a gun of course, in so many words. Generally that sort of people are more afraid of being without a gun than they are of getting arrested for the possession thereof.

            In any case, I have in recent years come to believe that our only real hope of preserving enough of the natural world for life to be worth living for future generations depends on a liberal government controlled by citizens who are well enough educated technically to make sure the right policies are implemented and followed.

            That sort of people are generally young and in the Sanders camp. The Clinton camp imo is more of a Republican Lite sort of camp, with far too many ties to big banks, big biz, etc.

            Better than Cruz or Trump, yes but not so good as Sanders.

            1. Some of you know I live in the boondocks. To give an idea of what this means for “city” people who don’t know me (all miles are one way): 15 miles to get our mail – no home delivery around here, 30 miles to any chain store and 60 miles to get to a big box store. OK?

              The vast majority of people have firearms; no one even thinks about it. A lot of us used to ride with rifles on rear window racks in our trucks because (and this sounds nuts) there are times when you have to shoot something “right now”. Unfortunately California made that illegal some years ago.

              My view is that all the crap about guns comes from urban and suburban people who don’t know squat and they take their views and lack of experience with firearms and want to apply it to all of us no matter how it impacts our lives.

              If they eventually try to ban guns, no one around here will comply even if that means burying them. And, FWIW, CA is sort of proposing background checks to buy ammo. Nuts.

              Todd

            2. Hi Old Farmer Mac,

              As I said, I think I agree with your position.

              I do not know what was in the minds of the founding fathers when the Bill of rights was written. The language of the second amendment is pretty clear, the right to bear arms was so that well-regulated militias could protect the State.

              Prohibition was a problem. Allowing the regulated use of alchohol is less of a problem.

              Often gun rights advocates equate regulation with prohibition, that is a red herring.

  7. Tesla X sales are approaching two thousand a month. Not bad for a startup car company. I wonder if Tesla can manage the rollout of the THREE successfully, without falling too far behind.

    It’s obvious a hell of a lot of the component parts will have to be outsourced, unless Musk can buy up some companies that actually make car parts. He is not apt to have time to do that.

    But so far he has proven equal to hiring management up to the job, maybe late, but nevertheless getting it done.

    1. Better to outsource. Mom and Pop shops do better R&D on the component Level.

      1. Tesla has repeatedly insourced due to suppliers simply not performing according to spec.

        Tesla already has what seems to be a car parts factory in Lathrop, believe it or not…

        The portions which they can outsource are still outsourced, such as wheels and suspension, but Tesla owns FAR more of the value chain in a car than any other car company.

    2. Even major manufacturers outsource lots of stuff. I owned a Volkswagen that had a Bosch fuel injection system and IIRC the headlamps were “Hella”. I remember buying a clutch slave cylinder that came in a box branded as “FAG” and when I took it out of the box, it could be clearly seen where the “VW OOOO” (OOOO = Audi) markings on the casting had been machined off, suggesting that FAG had the molds for the OEM part, that is, they made the part fr Volkswagen but, had to remove the Volkswagen branding if the part was not being sold through Volkswagen.

      I also owned a Nissan that had a “Tokico” master cylinder and a Hitachi starter motor. Another Nissan had a Mitsubishi starter motor. Back in the seventies, before Japanese brands started to dominate the market in my neck of the woods, most cars came from the UK and used brake parts from “Girling” and electrics from “Lucas”. I doubt there is a single car manufacturer that makes their own wheel bearings or suspension dampers (shock absorbers). Many people in the auto repair trade actually know which companies manufacture parts for the OEMs and can often fit “original” parts, sourced for significantly less than going through the OEM’s supply chain.

      I suspect that, “a hell of a lot of the component parts” for most cars are already outsourced to companies that specialize in making specific components. I also suspect that the strategy used by Musk, to start with low volume production and ramp up, has gained the company considerable experience as to how to do it. I have very little doubt that, they will execute very well on the Model ≡, especially since there are no esoteric “Falcon Wing” doors or anything like that.

      1. Hi Islandboy, you are dead on, every line.

        A small local company someplace usually makes millions of some particular small part for lots of different manufacturers. A skilled auto parts counterman can find identical parts, all manufactured by the same company, on the same production line, in different boxes with different stock numbers for different cars twenty or thirty times a day. I have bought many a Chevy part to put on an Oldsmobile or Caddy or Buick. Ditto other makes. The only detectable difference in most cases such as Chevy to Buick is the price and label on the box.

        Name branded parts sold by the more reputable parts stores are generally considerably cheaper but as good or better as the parts you get at the dealer, which is no surprise since they are the SAME parts as likely as not. IF you can’t get a particular part except from the dealer , it is usually because it is a low volume part, or something new enough that it is replaced under warranty and so there is no sale for it.

        I am thinking Tesla is going to be forced to outsource even more parts than usual, due to the company growing so fast.

        You have my utmost sympathy for having owned a car with Lucas electrics. The usual joke is that Lucas light switches are labeled off, dim, and flicker.

        1. “I am thinking Tesla is going to be forced to outsource even more parts than usual, due to the company growing so fast.”

          The thing about EVs is that the part count is so much lower than anything with an ICE:

          No gearbox clutch or torque converter. Just a simple reduction gear and differential.
          No emission control or exhaust system.
          No fuel system.
          Simpler cooling and lubrication systems.
          Not to mention that an electric induction has one moving part.

          The bare platform on which the current Tesla models are built, which is on display in their showrooms, shows the battery pack with front and rear suspension sub frames, including the rear drive motor, attached. Trust me! Not a lot of moving parts.

          Most of the manufacturing is going to be the bodywork, interior and upholstery. The pictures of the prototypes that I have seen, dispense with a dashboard, using instead the large, center mounted, touch screen computer to replace all the dials and indicators and a whole host of knobs and switches!

          “You have my utmost sympathy for having owned a car with Lucas electrics.”

          During the seventies I was in high school so I never owned a car made in the UK but, my parents who were teachers did and must have been very thankful to have a son who was very keen on learning how to fix stuff. I kept them running as best I could and eventually, after I had started working bought a Soviet made Lada. If there’s anything worse than Lucas electrics, it would have to be what came in the Lada! The alternator gave up (rectifier failure) within a few hours of taking delivery!

          1. Anyone figure to guess how many lines of code in a Model 3? Wonder how the Software design team is managed and how bug free the code shall be? Potential problem is complexity by too many features. OTA – Over the Air Updates – what could possibly go wrong?

          2. Hi Islandboy,

            You are dead on about the simplicity of a battery powered electric car versus a conventional car. I have made the same point many times in other forums, and at times in this one as well.

            1. Glad that Tesla is doing well and other electrics are also having some popularity. It’s tough for startups, since they not only have to come up with a high end product right off the bat but often have to have something that is quite superior. Meanwhile the ICE was sold mostly on glitz,chrome and size for a very long time. Now they mostly all look alike in just two versions and still sell. The Tesla does not look much different from the outside but it certainly is very different on the inside, that is an attractive feature for many people. Tesla has also become an icon in just a short time.
              They are still just cars though. I wonder what will come next. I won’t hold my breath though, it took over one hundred years for the electric car to come into it’s own.

              Space-X just did it’s first successful rocket landing at sea as they launched an expandable extension to the ISS into orbit. They should reach the space station on Sunday.

            2. What comes next in the automobile story is the electric micro car, maybe a plug in hybrid, which will be basically a low narrow well streamlined weather tight golf cart with two seats fore and aft. It will get forty reliable miles on a battery a quarter the size of the one in last years Leaf or Volt.
              Every desirable parking space will have a plug so the commuter can charge at work as well as at home.

              This will be the salvation of suburbia and country living.

              Abandoning suburbia is not an option. Electrifying our personal transportation this way won’t cost even five percent of what abandoning suburbia would cost.

            3. I would love to build one of those now, but legalities limit what can go on the road. I think that there is a whole world of experimental transport that is being stifled by the status qou.
              Here is what some students produced in the distant past of EV’s (2011). http://discover.mst.edu/2012/01/09/seniors_build_hybrid_go-kart/

              Back to ancient history:
              Craig-Vetter Contests
              http://www.craigvetter.com/pages/470MPG/Vetter%20Fuel%20Economy%20Contests.html

              Back to 2011
              http://www.gizmag.com/zoleco-home-built-concept-car/20650/

              The 1984 Avion
              http://www.gizmag.com/avion-sets-fuel-economy-record/16381/?li_source=LI&li_medium=default-widget

              And here is a modular kit to start a project:
              http://www.gizmag.com/krysztopik-ez-ev-open-source-diy-electric-car-kit/25891/?li_source=LI&li_medium=default-widget

            4. GREAT links, GF

              Thanks, I am saving them all.

              I agree about the excessive federal safety mommy culture. Idiots wearing intellectual blinders are already literally forcing some people out of smaller affordable cars and onto motor scooters, which are many times as dangerous.

              But when the shit someday hits the fan, and it WILL hit the fan, eventually, the people of this country will kick the asses of the safety mommies right out of their comfy offices, and within a matter of months you will be able to look at pictures of cars TO BE BUILT by major manufacturers along the lines suggested, low, narrow, light, streamlined, fore and aft seating, etc.

              Within a year, such cars will be seen on the road. NECESSITY can be a harsh mistress indeed.

              The ONLY REAL reasons such cars are not in mass production already in OTHER countries are, one, that new car buyers can still afford conventionally designed cars and two, gasoline is still cheap and readily available.

              I have read about many cars modified by backyard “engineers” such as myself that get astounding mileage, but of course this comes at the price of comfort and speed.

              Even the most primitive enclosed car is many times safer than any two wheeler in traffic, and twenty five mph is three times faster than a fast horse over any distance greater than five miles or six miles, lol.

              A great way to get your ass chewed out in the program head’s office as a nursing student is to point out in class that the real but very minor danger associated with pesticide residues in our food is MINISCULE in comparison to the danger associated with poverty and malnutrition due to the high cost of fruits and veggies.

              There is ALWAYS a bigger picture than the one in the minds of mostly mindless bureaucrats.

              It is impossible for an elected sheriff to say crime is whipped to the point he can live with fewer deputies and a smaller jail, lol.

              No school will ever have a low enough ratio of students to teachers in the eyes of the teachers unions, and no car will ever have enough safety features in the eyes of the safety mommies.

              The safety mommies would outlaw kitchen knives if they had the power to do so, and we would have to buy our veggies chopped and our meat ground into sausage and burgers.

              Boneless, too. Somebody might eventually break a tooth on a bone.

              Crap, I forgot they would just outlaw meat outright, and we would have to get by on nuts and soybeans.

              MY sarc light is on , but not burning hot.

        2. In fact Tesla now has:
          — battery factory (the “Gigafactory”, Sparks NV)
          — car factory (the “Tesla Factory”, Fremont CA)
          — engineering and research (Palo Alto CA)
          — machining — probably car parts, maybe skunkworks (Lathrop CA)
          — its own tool and die maker (Tesla Tool and Die, Grand Rapids MI)
          — assembly of European cars (Tilburg, Netherlands)

          That’s a lot of insourcing. Now, Tesla still has *lots* of suppliers. But they’ve *reduced* the number of suppliers with each successive model…

      1. A refundable deposit is a far cry from a firm order. I made a $500 refundable deposit on an early Prius but later elected to take my money back.

        1. Tesla was originally only planning to produce about 100,000 Model 3 in the first year. Even if only half the reservations turn into firm orders… they’re gonna want to ramp up faster.

  8. Decreasing Arctic albedo:
    http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2014/02/decreasing-arctic-albedo-boosts-global-warming.html

    Observational determination of albedo decrease caused by vanishing Arctic sea ice
    “The Arctic sea ice retreat has been one of the most dramatic climate changes in recent decades. Nearly 50 y ago it was predicted that a darkening of the Arctic associated with disappearing ice would be a consequence of global warming. Using satellite measurements, this analysis directly quantifies how much the Arctic as viewed from space has darkened in response to the recent sea ice retreat. We find that this decline has caused 6.4 ± 0.9 W/m2 of radiative heating since 1979, considerably larger than expectations from models and recent less direct estimates. Averaged globally, this albedo change is equivalent to 25% of the direct forcing from CO2 during the past 30 y. ”
    http://www.pnas.org/content/111/9/3322.abstract
    Full paper:
    http://www.pnas.org/content/111/9/3322.full.pdf?with-ds=yes

    1. It’ not just the loss of ice, it’s also that there is enough soot in the air even in the Arctic to darken the ice and snow cover enough to significantly reduce the reflectivity of the ice and snow.

      I don’t have a link handy, but I have seen pictures of melt water in some spots on the ice in glaciers that actually had enough soot to be clearly visible to the naked eye.

      1. Yes, soot is a problem for snow and ice cover and not just in the arctic, much further south the warmth and soot are eliminating snow and ice cover earlier in the spring. Spring in the north is showing some of the largest temperature anomalies. Going from 90 percent reflective to 30 percent is large amount of energy per square mile.

        We usually forget about the Great Lakes unless we live near them, but they are sizable and have been varying quite a bit in their ice coverage, this year will be another low.
        http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/despite-the-chills-the-great-lakes-are-remarkably-ice-free/62297

        Hudson Bay ice cover anomalies have been almost all negative since 1993, often hitting up 20 percent less ice cover, sometimes 40 to 45 percent less. That exposes more dark waters.

        1. It’s not just Greenland, it’s arctic sea ice and northern hemisphere snow and ice cover being effected by soot coverings.

          Soot Climate Forcing via Snow and Ice Albedos
          http://camarasambientais.cetesb.sp.gov.br/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2014/04/sootclimateforcingviasnowandicealbedos.pdf

          “Plausible estimates for the effect of soot on snow and ice albedos
          (1.5% in the Arctic and 3% in Northern Hemisphere land areas)
          yield a climate forcing of 0.3 Wm2 in the Northern Hemisphere.
          The ‘‘efficacy’’ of this forcing is2, i.e., for a given forcing it is twice
          as effective as CO2 in altering global surface air temperature. This
          indirect soot forcing may have contributed to global warming of
          the past century, including the trend toward early springs in the
          Northern Hemisphere, thinning Arctic sea ice, and melting land ice
          and permafrost.”

  9. The predictions only get worse.

    In 2007, a United Nations panel of scientists studying the rise of sea level related to climate change predicted that, if nothing was done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, seas could rise by about 2 feet by 2100. By 2013, the panel had increased its forecast to more than 3 feet, which would put major cities at risk of flooding and storm surge.

    Yet all along, the panel emphasized what it did not know. It expressed particular uncertainty about what could happen to the ice sheet in Antarctica. To help fill in the gaps, it invited outside scientists to contribute their own research.

    Now the outside research is bearing fruit — and the news is not good.

    A new study published in the journal Nature painted perhaps the most ominous picture yet. It showed that, by the end of this century, sea levels could rise 6 feet or more — again, if nothing is done to reduce emissions — potentially inundating many coastal areas, submerging nations and remaking maps of the world.

    http://www.latimes.com/nation/antarctica-contribution-to-sea-rise-20160406-snap-htmlstory.html#nt=oft07a-14gp1

    1. If the global warming actually gets to the point of where the scientific models predict by the end of the century, I anticipate some of these areas (particularly to the south, in Canada) to be part of a vast new frontier for humanity in terms of agriculture and mining. All I can imagine is that young entrepreneurs of the future are going to be living in some unique, but undoubtedly exciting, times.

      Picture related as far as agriculture is concerned: http://images.natureworldnews.com/data/images/full/7344/welternaehrung_en_535-png.png?w=600

  10. I think this was mentioned in previous comments.

    “Solar and wind power are coming online at rates unforeseen only a few years ago. That’s a good thing if your goal is to decarbonize the energy sector. But if you’re a utility or independent power producer and you make your money selling electricity, it can be not such a good thing.

    In places with abundant wind and solar resources, like Texas and California, the price of electricity is dipping more and more frequently into negative territory. In other words, utilities that operate big fossil-fuel or nuclear plants, which are very costly to switch off and ramp up again, are running into problems when wind and solar farms are generating at their peaks. With too much energy supply to the grid, spot prices for power turn negative and utilities are forced to pay grid operators to take power off their hands.

    That’s happened on about a dozen days over the past year in sunny Southern California, according to data from Bloomberg, and it’s liable to happen more often in the future. “In Texas, power at one major hub traded below zero for almost 50 hours in November and again in March,” according to the state’s grid operator. In Germany, negative energy prices have become commonplace, dramatically slashing utility revenues despite renewable energy subsidies that bolster electricity prices much more than in the United States.

    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601221/texas-and-california-have-too-much-renewable-energy/

    1. With too much energy supply to the grid, spot prices for power turn negative and utilities are forced to pay grid operators to take power off their hands.

      All the more reason to decentralize energy production and end utility monopolies. Energy like health care should be as close to free as possible!

      We need new economic models and a new political system. We can’t can’t continue to allow 85 individuals to control as much wealth as one half of the human population.

      1. Dead on Fred,

        As a practical matter, we are necesarily stuck with most of our existing fossil fuel generating capacity for quite a while yet, because it is going to take quite a while to build out enough renewables to scrap it. By the time that much renewable power is available on a consistent basis, a hell of a lot of today’s ff capacity is going to be worn out and obsolete ANYWAY.

        In the meantime, we are going to have to come up with a fair way to allow existing ff plants to take in enough revenue to be kept up and running or ready to run.

        This is an economic and political problem, it is NOT an engineering problem. The engineers have already made the claim heard so often, that twenty percent was the upper limit of renewables on the grid, due to stability issues, OBSOLETE.

        Texas now routinely exceeds forty percent using INTERMITTENT wind.

        We gladly pay the costs of maintaining many other kinds of large scale infrastructure that is used intermittently, without complaint, and without thought.

        Most freeways are just about deserted at three am . Armies and navies are on STANDBY nearly ALL the time. Ditto cops. Ditto firemen. Ditto lots of other people, who use LOTS of expensive infrastructure.

        A typical farm tractor, even on a big commercial farm, is seldom used more than two thousand hours in a year, and a lot less most of the time, due to the work being INTERMITTENT, lol. (When they ARE used, they are often used twenty or more hours a day, if an operator is available. )

        Paying enough to utilities for them to run some fossil fuel plants intermittently instead of constantly is not that big a deal.

    2. “In Germany, negative energy prices have become commonplace, dramatically slashing utility revenues despite renewable energy subsidies that bolster electricity prices much more than in the United States.”

      But this only indicates that the integration of electrcity into the big market for thermal energy (600 TWh electricty vs. 1500 TWh heat in Germany) does not work. A negative price for electrcity should not happen, in Europe a kWh thermal energy costs 0.02 EUR.

      The solution is to add resistent haeters in industry and community heating facilities which are switched on when electricity is below 0.02 EUR/kWh.

  11. Human population growth has followed the trajectory of a typical invasive species, says a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, and that suggests there may be a looming global population “crash.”

    “The question is: Have we overshot Earth’s carrying capacity today?” said Elizabeth Hadly, a professor in environmental biology at Stanford University and senior author of the paper, in a press statement.

    “Because humans respond as any other invasive species,” Hadly continued, “the implication is that we are headed for a crash before we stabilize our global population size.”

    http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/08/humans-invasive-species-heading-crash-study-says

    1. Stanford Report, April 5, 2016

      Populations of early human settlers grew like an ‘invasive species,’ Stanford researchers find

      When humans colonized South America, their populations grew like a typical invasive species – an initial explosive growth rapidly reached the environment’s carrying capacity. Agriculture and settled societies allowed a second phase of exponential population growth.

      http://news.stanford.edu/news/2016/april/south-america-earlyhumans-040516.html

      1. If you haven’t watched any of Hans Rosling’s lectures on population growth, I recommend that you do so [they’re on youtube]. He dispels a number of misconceptions and political biases many people have about global population and population growth.

        1. I have watched his lectures and my conclusion is that Hans Rosling is a blooming idiot!

          The only misconception he dispels is the notion that he might have even the slightest understanding as to why the population exploded in the first place and why those trends simply can not continue.

          He doesn’t seem to understand the laws of basic physics and thermodynamics and he certainly doesn’t understand the limits of biological systems or ecosystem thermodynamics either.

          He should be watched only as an example of extreme ignorance of natural systems and hubris. Where he really misses the boat is not grasping the simple fact that past performance does not necessarily predict future results! Systems thinking is definitely not his forté

          1. He says more people will ride bicycles, lots of EV cars instead of ICE’s and you think he is stupid? Isn’t that what many of these transition communities are pushing? Isn’t that where we are heading?
            Didn’t much of the developing world already move up in economic status? It is happening right now. Not much of a leap to predict a few decades ahead.
            Sounds like you are jumping on the doomer bandwagon Fred. Maybe you should explain more thoroughly.
            BTW, most people that spout about thermodynamics and physics don’t understand it very well. I would love to hear your thoughts on that. Not being sarcastic or facetious. I agree with most things you say on this forum and would like to understand your above comment more thoroughly.

            1. Sounds like you are jumping on the doomer bandwagon Fred. Maybe you should explain more thoroughly.

              That depends on the day of the week and it varies from one week to the next. 🙂

              Let’s be clear, I said he was ignorant not stupid. If you watch his presentations he goes on and on about human ingenuity never once seeming to grasp that all the progress he talks about is a direct consequence of humanity winning the fossil fuel lottery and he doesn’t get that we have been squandering that windfall and the bank account is getting low. Furthermore he doesn’t get ecosystems and ecological footprints and how our own footprint is already too big to be sustainable.

              As for thermodynamics, where to start? Perhaps with the very basics of ecosystem thermodynamics here:

              Ecosystem Thermodynamics
              Presentation given in the course of the
              Master’s Programme
              Environmental Management
              – Module 2.1.1 “Ecosystem Analysis” –
              Aiko Huckauf

              http://www.uni-kiel.de/ecology/users/fmueller/salzau2006/ea_presentations/Data/2006-07-05_-_Thermodynamics_II.pdf

              And here with Tom Murphy’s Growth Has an Expiration Date:

              https://goo.gl/90Jp4i

              If you do a search on Google Scholar for key words ” Ecological Footprint and the Laws of Thermodynamics you will get plenty of hits such as this:

              HTML] Energetic limits to economic growth
              JH Brown, WR Burnside, AD Davidson… – …, 2011 – bioscience.oxfordjournals.org
              … macroecology (Brown 1995) to document energetic constraints on human ecology that have … Key
              theoretical underpinnings come from the laws of thermodynamics: first, that energy … The ecological
              footprint, an aggregate measure of per capita resource consumption and waste …
              Cited by 126 Related articles All 30 versions Cite Save

            2. Let’s be clear, I said he was ignorant not stupid.

              We have a difference of opinion here Fred. I think he is just fucking stupid.

            3. BIG GRIN! OK! I didn’t say I didn’t THINK he wasn’t stupid! I was just making clear what I actually wrote…

            4. Thanks for the explanation Fred. Rosling’s main objective is dispel the erroneous myths about population that are commonly held in the developed world. He is an educator and in that area he has done a good job.
              He shows the current realities and trends.
              Since there is abundant energy all around us, there is no real energy problem, just a problem in implementation that has been held back for 50 years by an erroneous over-dependence on fossil fuels.
              The problem of ecosystem dynamics is out of his field and has been dealt with by other experts in that field. We all know that much of the developed world has overstepped the bounds of nature and that much of the developing world and undeveloped have overstepped the bounds of population as well as demand on the ecosystem.
              However that does not eliminate someone trying to clearly explain the current world and trends. Scientists do that all the time and their models may not be predictive, but they are not stupid or ignorant. They are just following their expertise. All knowledge is limited, all expertise is merely a model of the world, not the world itself. To expect everyone to know everything is idiotic. To not be able to glean the valid points of information from others is a serious weakness in thinking.
              My own position in this is more of a naturalist position. I feel we need to shift toward a lower energy society, reduce demand and population, and eventually move to a very different system, a more biological one and one using the more abundant elements to make our creations. In the meantime we must keep up and increase a global culture to be able to safely implement these changes. Otherwise, knowing people, all hell will break loose as we splinter into more isolated and fearful groups again. War is the norm in a splintered world. Now we have the weapons to wreck the world. They must not be used.
              As we back off and give nature more room to grow and thrive, we will advance in a more meaningful way. Exciting as these times have been, the current techno-industrial society is quite harmful to life on this planet and our very mentality. Extreme changes in our operating system need to be made or we will end up with a dead planet.

            5. All very good. My own thoughts are that:

              Energy could be near free if we used it for what makes sense, and did so in a sensible way. Example, houses that need no ff input at all to keep comfortable, lit, and entertaining – at low cost.

              The changes to the operating system needed are obvious, easy, and end up with everybody happier. All we need do is just apply the lessons of other times and other places.

              But

              “You have the ages for your guide, but lack the wisdom to be led.—–Will you pay for what you are with all there is?”

            6. However that does not eliminate someone trying to clearly explain the current world and trends. Scientists do that all the time and their models may not be predictive, but they are not stupid or ignorant. They are just following their expertise. All knowledge is limited, all expertise is merely a model of the world, not the world itself. To expect everyone to know everything is idiotic. To not be able to glean the valid points of information from others is a serious weakness in thinking.

              He is not clearly explaining anything! He is merely reporting to us what has happened and he shows no particularly special insight into the whys and wherefores!

              My opinion of him is not based on his not being an expert in ecosystem dynamics. He is jumping to conclusions based on faulty logic and lack of critical thinking skills. His is a classic case of not understanding that correlation is not causation. He doesn’t understand the simple fact that past performance is no guarantee of future results!
              He has not shown that he has even the most basic understanding of what combination of circumstances led to the very sudden advances and progess that humanity has acheived in the last two centuries or so.

              To expect everyone to know everything is idiotic.

              You have 100% agreement from me on that point!

              BTW, Hans Rosling is a medical doctor, he is NOT a scientist. As someone who has a bunch of MDs in my extended family and based on my experience with them (granted that may have biased my views on this matter) I do not think most MDs are very good at critical thinking. Case in point: Neuro surgeon and recent Republican presidential candidate, Ben Carson who is also a creationist… I rest my case!

            7. Fred, considering that there are more than a million practicing and retired physicians in the US, how can you rest your case with family members and one religious neurosurgeon. Judging from my reading of Mason Inman’s biography of Hubbert I am unconvinced that geologists average more scientific than physicians. I am actually skeptical of many of the so-called real scientists. They are too often reliant on government grants. I believe that many of us are intrinsically scientific from a young age. That may persist whether we become actuaries, engineers, or pathologists. Rosling would be suspect regardless of his occupation.

            8. Fred, considering that there are more than a million practicing and retired physicians in the US, how can you rest your case with family members and one religious neurosurgeon.

              I guess being facetious, somewhat tongue in cheek and sarcastic all rolled up into one, isn’t so easily conveyed while posting comments on the internet, eh?

              Critical thinking is not a common human trait, Rosling is just your average human. This is my last comment on him!

  12. Demand Destruction.

    Another $1.2 Billion Substation? No Thanks, Says Utility, We’ll Find a Better Way

    In a novel project ConEd will deploy a mix of distributed solar, fuel cells and efficiency measures to address New York City’s surging power demand.

    By Jan Ellen Spiegel, InsideClimate News, Apr 4, 2016

    Consolidated Edison, the iconic utility that provides New York City’s electricity, discovered a problem in the summer of 2014. Within a few years, the demand for power in an area spanning parts of Brooklyn and Queens would outpace what existing infrastructure could supply, especially during the peak demand of the hottest summer days.

    The traditional solution would be to add a substation. But that would cost $1.2 billion or more and represent a more-of-the-same approach to the electric grid—a central station with long inefficient wires, less resilience to the effects of climate change and more fossil fuel use. Con Ed was not thrilled.

    So it came up with a completely different approach. Con Ed solicited ideas for smaller, cheaper, nontraditional and ideally more environmentally friendly solutions.

    The cost: About $200 million, less than one-fifth the price of a substation.

    The project is fundamentally designed to relieve the demand for electricity from the Brooklyn-Queens part of the grid, which Con Ed calculates will be overloaded by 69 megawatts in 2018. The plan calls for 52 megawatts of relief by summer 2018 through a combination of efficiency and new, mainly clean generation.

    1. I have a friend whose pet black lab fetches beer from his portable cooler for him. She flips up the lid with her nose, grabs one, and brings it over any time he yells BEER. That’s a lot more impressive dog trick than just flying a stupid airplane. It took him a couple of weeks fifteen minutes a day, to teach her this trick and of course she already knew the basics such as go, find, fetch, etc

      The trick only works properly when the cooler has only BEER in it. So far, he has not figured out how to teach her to distinguish between cans of Pepsi and Coors, lol.

      And she always leaves the lid open, so she must be an intellectually challenged doggie!!!!!

      But she IS smart enough she won’t fetch a beer for me, or anybody else except her owner. She knows who buys her chow. 😉

        1. My hounds have always been smart enough to ignore any commands at all, except the ones they liked, such as getting in the truck to go hunting.

        2. My dog may not be as smart (or stupid) as I am; it’s hard to say. His sense of smell is a thousand times greater than mine but who knows how this source of information is employed. I’ll admit he can’t do Jacobian matrix math but then, I can’t track a cougar track through the bush.

        3. Hey, I know the name of all my toys. I am miffed though, that dog has a lot more toys than I do. 🙁

          I trained for years to be able to go out into nature and survive. My dog can do it with no training at all. Yep, the dog is more intelligent. I think people lost their operating manual and have to make it up as they go.

            1. Excellent, what ever happened to public floggings and the headstock? Bet that would keep some people in line.
              Good old Heinlein, a futurist who didn’t forget the past.

          1. “I am miffed though, that dog has a lot more toys than I do.”

            Well, there is that, but a far bigger concern is the possibility of Kodi (my dog) seeing that video. I’ve had the conspicuous consumption debate with him, which seemed to end in a draw, so I sure as hell don’t need him to start yakking on about some bloody Border Collie (who ought to be herding sheep) playing with a house full of stuffed animals rather than working for a living.

          2. Don’t get me going about self-domestication.

            I have been teaching myself, among other things, wild edibles and medicinals for the past few summers…

            “… So money goes toward those who will create even more of it. But, basically economic growth means that you have to find something that was once nature and make it into a good, or was once a gift-relationship and make it into a service. You have to find something that people once got for free or did for themselves or for each other, and then take it away and sell it back to them, somehow. By turning things into commodities, we get cut off from nature in the same ways we are cut off from community.” ~ Charles Eisenstein

        4. It is beyond the capacity of Chaser’s trainer to remember the names of all of her toys, he must write the name on the toy to keep them straight.

          Perhaps Chaser doesn’t remember them either. She’s just learned to read.

  13. Big troubles in the western yankee coal mines!

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-there-a-future-for-western-coal/

    The authors of this piece are actually Climate Wire guys. They have done a good job, so far as they go, but for one reason or another, they don’t mention the impact of wind and solar power on coal consumption, keeping the focus on environmental regs and the price of natural gas.

    Wind and solar combined must be cutting into the American domestic market for coal by close to four percent already. It’s hard to say for sure, and specific figures are hard to come by. Gas for electrical generation may actually be UP in some places with lots of wind and solar power, because load balancing with gas is easier than with coal.

    Barring the economy going to hell in a hand basket, it seems to be a foregone conclusion that we are going to see continued fast growth in renewable electricity here in the Home o the Brave as well as world wide.

    The young folks no longer believe in GOD, but they surely still believe in the DEVIL, and one guise of old SATAN is air pollution. They want to live forever, and they ASSUME that renewables can giterdone, and giterdone reliably. Meanwhile, “back at the ranch”, I have just heard about the passing of a couple more local guys and girls I went to elementary school with.

    The old fogey conservative generation will be gone in fifteen more years.

    Just what this may mean in terms of environmental politics is hard to say, exactly, because there are so many wild cards in the deck of reality, and Mother Nature is not necessarily going to DEAL the cards on a REGULAR basis. We could get a new deal once a month for six months, and then no new deal for a year or two in either or both political and technical terms.

    But imo it is safe to say that politically the handwriting is on the wall for coal as an electrical generating fuel in the USA, so long as we don’t run short of affordable gas.

  14. I am willing to believe that in some places with very little land, but lots of people with lots of money, that vertical farming can be made to work, on the principle that expense be damned.

    Otherwise, stuff along these lines is pretty much bullshit. The building trades are mature, and the costs of building any sort of high rise building is NOT going to decrease very much if at all.

    Lettuce for salads is one thing, beans and potatoes and bread are other things altogether. Sprouts are one thing. Meat and eggs are OTHER things.

    So far as vertical farming is concerned, other than as boutique operations are concerned, fugettaboutit is the operative word.

    http://inhabitat.com/wind-powered-vertical-skyfarms-look-to-a-more-sustainable-future-for-farming/

    For all intents and purposes, there is a zero chance such things as these vertical farming towers can be built and operated at costs competitive with traditional methods, even allowing for losses due to weather, pests, and shipping.

    The people pushing such things are selling dreams rather than reality. Land is just not that expensive, except in a few places such as Hong Kong. And in Hong Kong, they can use the same amount of land to manufacture stuff to sell more economically than they can use it for vertical farming.

    Beyond that, the vertical farm advocates don’t seem to realize they are shooting at a moving target. Conventional production methods are subject to continuous refinement.

    IF the world were really fixing to turn into one continuous city, vertical farming might happen. That won’t happen, the population is going to peak within the next fifty years or so.

  15. If dogs are so smart, then how come they can’t handle a kitty cat that weighs ’bouts five pounds or so?

    The cat can hold its own, the cat’s paw has claws and is a decisive factor. Frustrates the dog, aggravation and that other stuff.

    The dog is smart, but the cat has more mojo. har

    Just a little puppy dog, well, a rather large puppy dog, so it can do some damage even at a very young age. I’m trying to teach the dog not to bite the hand that feeds him and am instructing the dog in dog first aid, to lick the wounds he inflicts on the hand that feeds him.

    Such an insolent mutt, thinks anything goes. har

    Projected climate change:

    http://koeppen-geiger.vu-wien.ac.at/

    1. Climate change is like that relative that visits and never wants to leave. Ok at first, but then you notice that most of the food in the fridge is gone, the drinks are gone, the place is a mess, things are broken, the tub has overflowed and the thermostat is being set too high. And he is always borrowing money but not paying it back. Life gets crappy when cliMATT CHANge comes to live with you. Definitely inconvenient.

  16. Our fearless leaders get something right every once in a while.

    http://abcnews.go.com/Health/federal-reclassification-marijuana-major-impact-medical/story?id=38308268

    I wonder if it would be much help if every time an R type politician got up to make a speech, a reporter asked him if he really is stupid enough to believe marijuana is as dangerous as herion, and ought to be a SCHEDULE ONE drug?

    I USED TO KNOW at least half a dozen or so people personally who died as the result of ( somebody ) drinking a few beers, or a few glasses of wine, or a few shots of hard liquor. I can’t say for SURE that I don’t know anybody who has died as the result of smoking pot. It certainly has the potential to cause an automobile accident, although just about every body I know who has used both believes beer is more likely to result in reckless or inattentive driving.

    And as for LSD being extremely dangerous- I never saw any real world evidence to that effect. It is certainly not as dangerous as a blood alcohol reading above point o eight. Sometime decades ago, my best friend at the time died as the result of alcohol poisoning, simply from drinking to much at a party.

    1. The bull and surrogate cow story comment was a teachable moment. A very good read.

      “If drinking don’t kill me, her memory will”

      Tobacco is the most abused substance on the entire planet. The numbers are the proof in the pudding. When it finally arrived in Europe, the Pope banned it.

      Alcohol is the most debilitating substance one can obtain. Pink elephants are not a rare occasion in the world of drinking.

      “I need a drink worse than the breath of life itself,” said Little Big Man. “Any damn fool can drink himself to death,” replied Wild Bill.

      Drinking alcohol is a lot of fun and people do know how to drink. Just ask Al Capone, the first US businessman to earn 100,000,000 dollars in one year.

      Al’s dispensing machines were making 20,000 gallons of beer flow to thirsty Chicago drunks every single day. Booze drinking was going on in New York City too, but Eliot Ness wasn’t there going apeshit bananas about somebody having a snort. Al was nice to old ladies and had a penchant to use a baseball bat on objects other than baseballs. Al didn’t like losing market share. One more: Easy Eddie O’Hare was Al’s lawyer.

      Easy Eddie’s son, Butch, was an ace pilot in the USAF. Think O’Hare Airport in Chicago, that’s the place.

      Wet senators versus dry senators and the wet ones won!

      Then after all was said and done, President Roosevelt enjoyed a beer in the White House, it only made sense.

      Booze won the battle, which was lost from the getgo, but it didn’t matter. Seagram’s moved from Weyburn, Saskatchewan to Brandon, Manitoba then to Winnipeg then to Montreal. After all of the fuss and bother, Seagram’s ended up in New York. Whiskey from Canada flowed south to the dry states. Whiskey River does not run dry. Run that rum, smuggle that marijuana.

      The old cartoon of a car stopped on the highway while a highway patrolman searches the car for contraband while the truck and trailer passes by with the word ‘MARIJUANA’ advertised on the side of the trailer does come to mind.

      You can make a law, not everybody is going to follow it. In fact, nobody is going to obey such a ridiculous law that prohibits the use of alcohol. They just flat out refuse.

      You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

      If the car’s radiator needed water, you couldn’t use the water in the trough for the horses, it was the law! It was illegal to teach a slave to read and write. You were breaking the law!

      You might know how to make moonshine, but don’t you dare drink it! It’s the law!

      The end result: bootleggers and baptists.

      Prohibition can work in theory, however, you end up with a black market and some folks end up with methanol poisoning. You’ll be the blind leading the blind. In the real world, prohibition doesn’t work because it can’t. In practice, it fails.

      You end up a hypocrite. You’ll seek any means to obtain some booze. During Prohibition, doctors prescribed ‘medicinal’ alcohol.

      People will not stop using alcohol, no matter what.

      “Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.” – Abraham Lincoln

      http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lincoln.htm

      Well, maybe Lincoln said it.

      One thing I do know for sure, Hey Blinkin would tell Ted Cruz to go fly a kite.

      I can’t agree more with John Stuart Mill when it comes to stupid people being conservative.

      Ted is drinking a lot of kool-aid. Mitt Romney is making the kool-aid. This stuff is bad. Your brain hurts.

      Makes you want a drink, driven to drink.

      the ‘other liquids’ category. har

  17. HRC owns the mass media. It is hard to find anything in the msm that is not either subtly or blatantly slanted in her favor.
    Consider this current piece.

    “Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have opened up double-digit leads in New York ahead of the state’s April 19 primary, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll.”

    This is a headline for TODAY.

    The fucking TRUTH is that Sanders has been consistently gaining on HRC in New York, according to all the polls I have seen so far. Her lead is almost for dead sure shrinking, rather than growing.

    OF COURSE older folks who are not much into thinking, and in the habit of getting their news from TV and the old line papers, read this and assume it is all over for an upstart such as Sanders.

    The younger people who have abandoned tv and old line papers know better, and are so thoroughly pissed about the misrepresentation of the facts as THEY see them that a lot of them have declared their intention of staying home rather than voting for HRC.

    We no longer trust our msm media because the msm media are hardly worthy of being trusted anymore.

    Public radio is SUPPOSED to be fair and unbaised.

    I listened to a long string of nasty satirical and very funny commentary about Trump and Cruz on NPR a couple of days ago. I have yet to hear anything ever on NPR similarly making fun of any D party candidate, even one running for dog catcher.

    The fact that I agree with NPR about Trump and Cruz is NOT relevant to the point I am making.

    I generally have a rather high opinion of the ATLANTIC, but a few days ago, they ran a piece about HRC’s scandals that could easily have been written by one of her campaign staff. The entire tone was that all her troubles, except maybe a couple of minor easily excusable mistakes are the results of opposition smears. Cattle Gate was not mentioned, and the fact that a number of her business associates went to jail was not mentioned.

    1. The media bias in favor of Clinton has disgusted me too. She started off with an overwhelming lead in New York and had it whittled away continuously until the actual primary.

      I still give Sanders about a 50% chance of winning the nomination. It all depends on California. If he cleans up in California, he wins.

  18. Sometimes we talk about meat and climate, or meat and the environment separately from the climate issue.

    http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/people-still-don-t-get-the-link-between-meat-consumption-and-climate-change/

    I eat a lot of meat myself, TOO MUCH for my own good, and I have raised meat for sale, and intend to do so again, starting soon. A few beef cows are better suited to an old retired guy’s energy level and lifestyle than orchards.

    I don’t want to spend a lot of time arguing the question when it comes to grain fed animals. So far as I am concerned, the answer is crystal clear, when it comes to beef and feedlots.

    Almost all of us are eating more meat than is good for us, in terms of our health. We ought to cut back and so live longer and happier lives. The evidence for this position is also crystal clear as I see it.

    Hey, I am just another naked ape myself, and nobody should expect me to behave rationally all the time, lol. Gonna have oven baked spare ribs for supper, lol. With sauce made with a lot of sugar along with the tomatoes, pepper, garlic, etc. Double lol.

    For my part, I HAVE cut way back on pork and beef in favor of chicken and turkey, and eating more fish as well.

    I doubt if the eat less meat and live longer message will sell very well to the general public, but it will sell to the younger generation who seldom believe in personal immortality, because they do live in mortal fear of pot bellies and sagging behinds. Some of them also actually do realize they will get old and die someday.

    And that generation is soon going to be in control of our political system.

    1. I eat about the world average per capita meat intake whereas industrial countries consume about twice that per capita.
      PEAK MEAT PRODUCITON STRAINS LAND AND WATER RESOURCES
      “Meat consumption basically follows the same regional pattern as production, with Asia being dominant. On a per capita basis, meat use stood at 42.9 kilograms in 2013 worldwide.19 Although the disparities have narrowed somewhat, people in industrial countries continue to eat much larger quantities—75.9 kilograms (kg)—than those in developing nations—33.7 kg.20 Meat consumption in Japan is much lower than in many other rich countries, however, and runs close to the world average.21 People in New Zealand (126.7 kg per person) and Australia (121.1 kg) ate the most meat in 2011—far more than those at the bottom of the scale, in Bangladesh and India (just above 4 kg).22 (See Figure 3.) People in China consume almost 14 times as much meat per person as people in India do, and South Africans consume six times more meat than Nigerians.23”

      http://vitalsigns.worldwatch.org/sites/default/files/meat_vital_signs.pdf

      I get the sense that much of meat production was traditionally occurring on land not that suitable for crops. Now it seems to be industrialized and highly dependent on crop resources.
      “Feeding grain to livestock improves their fertility and growth, but it sets up a de facto competition for food between cattle and people. Worldwide, close to 800 million tons of wheat, rye, oats, and corn are fed to animals annually (more than 40 percent of world production), along with 250 million tons of soybeans and other oilseeds.”
      So it’s getting down to feed the people grain or feed the animals. Which mouth will get it first? With ocean fish stocks depleting, that is a very big question.

      I am sure there are better ways to grow animals and to reduce carbon and energy footprints. It will take time, knowledge and pressure on big business.

      1. There are many tens of millions of acres of land that are better suited to raising animals on pasture for meat, milk, leather, wool, etc, than to raising crops. It is good policy to use this land for such purposes. We need the meat, we need the leather, the wool, the milk, etc.

        In terms of the BIG PICTURE, this is ok from an ecological or environmental point of view. It would be better to leave more land undisturbed, but we can’t do that and still feed seven billion people who all want some meat, mostly MORE meat.

        Feeding animals out on grain in feedlots is NOT ok from an environmental point of view, and it is NOT ok from a public health point of view. Lean pasture raised meat is considerably healthier than feedlot meat.

        1. The really big killer for people is starches and sugars. Some fat is fine, definitely better than a lot of starch and sugar.
          The food industry loves starch, sugar and corn syrup and salt. It’s cheap and people like the taste and full feeling it gives them as the starch breaks down into sugars quickly, flooding the bloodstream.

          Fat takes longer to digest and if it wasn’t laced with chemicals would be OK to eat in moderation. However, chemicals tend to store in the fats, so we get extras when we eat bacon and other fatty meats.
          Any nitrates and nitrites are bad, they can convert to nitrosamines in the digestive tract or in the food process, causing cancers.

          Read the label for a frozen turkey pot pie sometime just for educational purposes.

          1. “The really big killer for people is starches and sugars. Some fat is fine, definitely better than a lot of starch and sugar.”

            That is debatable. The issue is that most people consume more calories than they burn. Their bodies store this excess energy as fat. And many consequences are equal whether this fat comes from fat or sugar. 🙂

            As long as you burn as much as you consume it is not relvant if your diet is based mainly on fat or carbonhydrates, actually many extremly hard working people in the past hat a diet that would be called junk today, however, they did not have any problems as their eneergetical turnover was sufficiently high. Diabetes and other issues are mainly a result of excess energy consumption, not a result of specific energy sources.

            1. Ulenspiegel, what you say goes against all medical findings.

              No, not debatable, it’s well documented biochemistry. Sugars and starches (which are quickly broken down into sugars) are formed into long chain fatty molecules by insulin and cholesterol. The cells cannot absorb the excess quickly enough. That is the major source of arterial plaque. More than 60 percent of people are capable of producing an excess of insulin to promote this disease, so eating sugary and starchy foods is dangerous for them.

              From a study of American soldiers who died during the Korean War. These people were young and very fit. Yet they showed dramatic artery clogging at an early age.

              “Three hundred soldiers, most of whom were killed in action or accidentally, were autopsied, and their arteries were carefully dissected both cross-sectionally and longitudinally [1 and 2]. Complete data, including age, height and weight were collected for 200 of the subjects. Average age ranged from 18 to 48 years with a mean of 22.1 years, average height was 171 centimeters, and average weight was 66 kilograms. [2]

              In measuring the extent of atherosclerosis, “occlusion was considered complete only when the plaque had no free surface and was fused to the wall opposite its point of origin. […] No actual measurements were made.” [1] The classification of atherosclerosis ranged from “fibrous thickening to large atheromatous plaques causing complete occlusion of one or more of the major vessels.” [1] No cases with a known history of coronary heart disease were included.

              Results:

              In 77.3% of the hearts, some evidence of atherosclerosis was discovered. [1] For 35% of the cases, the disease was limited to “fibrous thickening or streaking causing insignificant luminal narrowing.” [1] For 13.3% of the population, plaques had narrowed the lumina by 10%. For 5.3% of the population, the lumina had narrowed by 90%. [1] For the majority of cases, the atherosclerotic lesions were found in the “proximal third of the left coronary artery […] usually thickest on the epicardial side of the lumen” or “in the distal third of the artery just proximal to the bifurcation of the circumflex artery in a more medial position.” [1]”

            2. It’s possible to damage your heart by eating too much fat, but you have to eat completely insane amounts of fat. Most people become sated after eating relatively small amounts.

              If your diet consists of two marbled beefsteaks per day cooked in a stick of butter each, with deep-fried pork rinds on the side, and bacon for breakfast… you might have a problem. This sort of diet was common enough in the US in the 1950s that it caused medical researchers to recommend a “lower fat” diet. Nearly everyone nowadays already eats a lower fat diet.

  19. The sale of new gasoline and diesel powered personal vehicles after 2025 has been outlawed in the Netherlands, in favor of electrically powered cars. I am not sure about their law in respect to commercial trucks. I suspect they will have to make an exception for larger trucks.

    In the meantime, almost ten percent of new cars registered in the Netherlands last year were plug in cars.

    My personal seat of the pants intuition is telling me that oil production will fall off enough in the next couple of years to put oil prices back into the hundred dollar class, and maybe higher, due to capex being cut back so much. This is assuming the world wide economy does ok.

    A price spike above a hundred bucks is not at all out of the question, depending on how big a production shortfall might occur if the economy picks up noticeably faster than upstream oil spending. Depletion never sleeps, that’s for sure.

    If gasoline were to spike to five or six bucks nationally in the USA, cars such as the new model Chevy Volt will sell like ice water in hell. Ditto any similar models on dealer lots, and cars such as the LEAF , BOLT, and TESLA THREE.

    Hybrids and plug ins are now at just about the same point of public acceptance as the Toyota PRIUS was a few years back. People who were afraid to buy one new because of fears it be unreliable and expensive to maintain are now ready to buy old ones with a hundred fifty thousand or more miles on the odometer, based on their reputation for reliability.

    I got my eyeballs on a new VOLT for the first time yesterday, and a chance to talk to the driver, a traveling California woman.

    She said she is very happy with it so far in terms of convenience, ride, and gasoline only fuel economy. So far she doesn’t know how well it will do on the battery, because she has not had it long enough to find out.

    I was impressed with the styling inside and out. It will be much better accepted by maintstream buyers who almost invariably put a lot of weight on styling.

  20. The Gaurdian is one of the most liberal English language papers in the world, and a regular go to source for environmental news for me.

    Now anybody interested in really knowing what younger and small d democrats have to say about Sanders and Clinton can read this article, and then the comments.

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/12/bernie-sanders-betrayed-hillary-clinton-attacks#comment-72229641

    The comments are running more than fifty to one in favor of Sanders, and the tone of the comments in general is outrage.

    HRC owns the D party establishment, even including a super liberal paper not even located in the USA.

    But the READERSHIP of that paper has just about zero enthusiasm for her, as evidenced by the comments following articles shamelessly slanted in her favor.

    He may not win, but the future of the D party is clear.

  21. This is definitely NON-PETROLEUM
    How about an electric aircraft that goes 200 miles at 100 mph on less than a gallon (equivalent) of fuel energy? And it is a four place machine at that. Not new, done back in 2011.
    Pipistrel Taurus G4
    http://www.pipistrel-usa.com/blog1/
    http://www.pipistrel.si/news/taurus-g4-is-flying-at-the-nasa-gfc
    http://www.design-engineering.com/nasa-google-award-hyper-efficient-airplane-maker-1-3-million-prize-43432/

    Sure beats building more roads.
    With a 30 to 1 glide ratio, it could probably easily use thermal lift too.

  22. The Guardian continues to defend HRC with the most blatant possible partisan coverage.

    http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/12/hillary-clinton-email-server-criminal-charges-department-of-justice

    The headline is that the possibility of HRC being indicted is a partisan political elephant.

    The paper is enraging it’s own readership,which is probably about the most liberal readership of any paper in America, or close, in my estimation.

    Not more than one person out of fifty who is commenting is defending HRC.

    The regular readers of the Guardian are tree hugging whale loving climate scaremongering (sarc ) greenies- just like me.

    They are all for all the stuff the D party here in the USA usually stands for, except for just one thing.

    They are not for HRC. After reading the first fifty or so comments , only one person stands out as a Clinton defender. The rest, forty nine out of fifty, are furious that the paper is so blatantly defending Clinton.

    This wouldn’t be so bad, except for two things. One, it is widespread across nearly all the major papers and news networks.

    The other is that it is utterly convincing evidence, from the pov of technically uneducated conservatives, that the environmental movement in general is a liberal pinko commie D party PLOT to take over the economy. This is a perfectly natural conclusion to come to, because when any of us believe we have caught somebody lying their ass off , we naturally conclude that anything else that person has to say is apt to be a lie as well.

    It is EXTREMELY unfortunate that environmental questions have come to be inextricably entangled with partisan social politics in this country.

    It is for instance damned near impossible for me to explain to my neighbors that coal really is a NASTY fuel that is killing people and destroying a huge part of the environment, when they are losing their jobs manufacturing equipment for the nearby mines. They are utterly convinced that there really is a deliberate war on coal, as such. They are utterly convinced that both the R and the D parties sold them out when they put various international trade agreements enacted over the last decade or two.

    This is why the D’s are in revolt against HRC, and the R’s are in revolt against the R party establishment.

    This is a sea change in American politics folks.We may not get the change we are looking for, this time around, but we will not quit looking.

    I suppose I will keep reading the Guardian for the environmental coverage, which so far is pretty decent.

    1. The other is that it is utterly convincing evidence, from the pov of technically uneducated conservatives, that the environmental movement in general is a liberal pinko commie D party PLOT to take over the economy. This is a perfectly natural conclusion to come to, because when any of us believe we have caught somebody lying their ass off , we naturally conclude that anything else that person has to say is apt to be a lie as well.

      Did you happen to catch any of the Red Eye Radio show last night? Or early this morning I guess. They had a really good 30 minute discussion going on explaining all the reasons why global warming is a huge scam. Even had the legal expert on to explain how the climate scientists along with liberal climate warrior Al Gore should all be in prison by now for all the jobs and livelihoods of innocent people they’ve destroyed. Of course they’re not since they could pay off the right people, plus O got elected in 2008. The whole discussion was really enlightening stuff that just speaks to what you wrote above. I’m going to go see if I can find a link to listen to the show.

        1. Thanks for the link but I don’t listen to that sort of stuff.

          By the luck of the draw, or by the Grace of GOD, or whatever, I have a working brain and an educational background including the basic physical and life sciences. Forced global warming is real beyond any shadow of doubt so far as I am concerned.

          I do alternate between NPR and the more popular conservative talk radio shows so as to hear what both sides are saying. Which station I have on depends on where I am. Sometimes I can’t get a good public radio signal, and sometimes the local NPR station spends hours talking about subjects of zero interest to me. Then I check out whatever Hannity or somebody is saying.

          Generally speaking , conservative radio talk show hosts get it all wrong when it comes to climate and the environment, but otherwise they do have some things to say that are worth listening to from time to time.

          It’s not just poorly educated working class conservatives who make the mistake of judging people by the company they keep. I know plenty of well educated liberals who are DEAD sure any scandal associated with HRC is nothing more than a R party plot.

          That sort of D partisan is convinced I am a R party redneck for questioning her judgement and ethics , and all the evidence in the world will never convince them otherwise.

          It is uncommon to find a hard core D voter who does not reflexively defend the D party right across the board, ditto it is uncommon to find a hard core R voter who does not defend the R party right across the board.

          By and large, we would much rather stick with our in group, and be wrong on some issues, than break ranks and become social outcasts.

          Most of the people I know who profess to believe in the Noah and the Ark story don’t, not really. But ask them, and they say they do, because they identify with the church culture, and so they defend it and support it.

        2. I have a sound university level education heavy on the physical and life sciences.

          Forced global warming is real.

          The extent of it is debatable, and the scope of the problems it will cause us is debatable, but there is no question whatsoever in my mind that the earth is has warmed up a good bit already mostly due to burning fossil fuels , and no question in my mind that there is already a substantial amount of additional warming already baked in.

          I am one of the rare sort of monkeys that doesn’t mind being a social outcast. It doesn’t bother me that some people call me a libtard, and others call me a tea party cretin.

          Neither wing of our political system has a copyright on the whole truth.

          1. Arctic News has a graph showing global land-surface temperature anomalies and global land-ocean temperature anomalies as compared to the 1951-1980 means. Labeled Monthly Mean Global Surface Temperature.

            The land-surface temperature anomalies are positive 1.6 deg C and the land-ocean is not far behind. So the 2 degree C above pre-industrial barrier has already been breached. The temperature rise rate is significantly higher than in the first half of the twentieth century.
            http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/

  23. 3D Printing Enables New Generation of Heat Exchangers

    Energy.gov, Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, March 17, 2016 – 10:32am

    Three-dimensional printing is revolutionizing how we manufacture objects in almost every industry—from vehicles to medical devices to biotech. Now, the University of Maryland, through a partnership with 3D Systems and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office, has used 3D printing to prototype one of the most important enabling technologies in a building—the heat exchanger. This next-generation heat exchanger weighs 20% less, performs 20% more efficient, and can be manufactured much quicker, compared to current designs.

  24. GREENLAND MELT STARTED NEARLY TWO MONTHS EARLY

    “Little to no melt through winter is the norm as sub-zero temperatures keep Greenland’s massive ice sheet, well, on ice. Warm weather usually kicks off the melt season in late May or early June, but this year is a bit different.

    Record warm temperatures coupled with heavy rain mostly sparked 12 percent of the ice sheet to go into meltdown mode (hat tip to Climate Home’s Megan Darby). Almost all the melt is currently centered around southwest Greenland.

    According to Polar Portal, which monitors all things ice-related in the Arctic, melt season kicks off when 10 percent of the ice sheet experiences surface melt. The previous record for earliest start was May 5, 2010.”

    http://www.climatecentral.org/news/greenlands-melt-season-started-nearly-two-months-early-20237

    1. This sort of news tends to keep me wondering about the future when I am trying to get to sleep at night.

      The really scary part is that the climate modelers might have overlooked or underestimated some positive feedback loops that might cause warming to take off suddenly when some unknown tipping point is passed. The most pessimistic climate guys could conceivably turn out to be way too optimistic.

      One of my favorite cartoons of all time has a thoughtful looking bearded king sitting on the royal crapper, his royal robes spread out around him, reading a newspaper.

      He is thinking out loud, talking to himself, cartoon style, and saying paraphrased,

      “I know I’m paranoid. The question is, am I PARANOID ENOUGH?”

      Thank SKY DADDY I retired and quit working the orchard. It looks as if all that extraordinarily warm weather back in Feb. and March put the trees ahead of schedule, and the inevitable normal early April cold snap appears to have wiped out at least fifty to seventy five percent of the local crop. It will be a couple of weeks before growers will know for sure.

      Late frost kills used to be relatively rare in this part of the country. Not anymore.

      1. Ocean waves are getting bigger and large waves are getting bigger even faster.
        “The trio established that between 1985 and 2008, global increases in wave height were most significant for extreme waves – large spontaneous waves. They increased in height by an average of 7 per cent in the past 20 years. In equatorial regions the rise was 0.25 per cent a year, while in higher latitudes the rise was up to 1 per cent a year. The mean wave height also increased, but to a lesser degree.

        When analysing extreme wind speed data over the world’s oceans, the researchers found they increased by 10 per cent in the past two decades, or by 0.5 per cent a year.”

        http://www.smh.com.au/environment/scientists-find-waves-are-getting-bigger-20110324-1c97e.html

        Over 90 ships are lost each year, that may increase with increasing wave heights and winds. Shoreline damage and flooding will also be on the increase. Erosion will increase, navigation will become more difficult. Steering a large containership in high winds and waves is no easy matter, especially as one nears land and ports.
        Between 2004 and 2014, 1,271 ships were lost.
        Bigger ships also mean bigger economic losses.

      2. Geological evidence says we are going to have more tipping points and a very fast climate shift. Massive die-off. Well, unless we figure out how to suck large amounts of CO2 out of the air fast (many scientists ARE working on this and we know a couple of carbon-negative industrial processes).

  25. Debbie W Schultz is one of HRC’s best buddies, not to mention the DNC boss. I am not at all surprised that the D party machinery is totally aligned with Clinton. She makes old time southern and Chicago style machine politicians look like amatuers sometimes.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/debbie-wasserman-schultz-payday-lenders_us_56e1a9d6e4b065e2e3d50764

    Anybody ever heard that old saying about birds of a feather flocking together?

    If you listen to the MSM today or for the next couple of weeks, you will hear that a Sanders supporter called Clinton a corporate whore.

    But as a matter of fact, he only IMPLIED that.

    The MSM will fail to make that distinction at least ninety nine percent of the time, you can bet your last can of beans on it.

  26. http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/2016/04/14/midamerican-energy-pours-36b-more-into-wind/83021574/

    Iowa is now at thirty percent wind generation and shooting for forty percent.
    If the 2000 megawatts this company wants to build gets built, which will happen, later if not sooner, that much wind will offset the amount of coal burnt by a seven hundred megawatt coal plant running continuously, assuming a thirty five percent capacity factor for the wind farms.

    That is one hell of a lot of coal that won’t be dug, hauled and burnt over the next few decades.

    I doubt we are in any danger of running out of coal anytime soon, but oil will be getting scarce and pricey within the next decade.

    Maybe somebody who likes to play with the arithmetic will compute how many cars can run how many miles on that much wind, and consequently how much less oil we will have to have going forward, just as the result of this one wind project.

    How about it RW?

  27. http://www.bnsf.com/about-bnsf/financial-information/weekly-carload-reports/pdf/20160409.pdf

    Petroleum cars hauled in week 14 of 2016: 8,250

    In week 14 of 2015 petroleum cars hauled: 10,253

    Coal cars hauled were down 23,800 compared to week 14 of 2015.

    Mr. Peabody’s coal train got hauled away. Natural Gas seems to be a lot less hassle than coal.

    Except for when you have to have two small chunks of coal for the snowman’s eyes. Also, lumps of coal for Christmas presents, there will be an increased demand for coal during the holidays. har

    The scientific nature of the the ordinary man is to go on out and do the best you can – John Prine, Humidity Built The Snowman

  28. Hillary and Barney, flip flopping hypocrites extraordinaire:

    From the GUARDIAN this morning

    No one has made this point better than Clinton surrogate and former representative Barney Frank – or should I say, the 2012 version of him. Last week, Frank accused Sanders supporters of engaging in McCarthyism by suggesting that politicians, and Clinton in particular, are influenced by big money contributions from wealthy backers, and as a result, did not push for prosecutions of the executives of large banks. However, Frank sang an altogether different tune about the influence of campaign contributions when he was leaving Congress in 2012.

    “People say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t have any effect on me,’” Frank told NPR at the time about the constant need to continually raise money as a congressman. “Well if that were the case, we’d be the only human beings in the history of the world who on a regular basis took significant amounts of money from perfect strangers and made sure that it had no effect on our behavior.”

    I guess we can assume Clinton is the first person in the history of the world to avoid this problem altogether then.

    No one has made this point better than Clinton surrogate and former representative Barney Frank – or should I say, the 2012 version of him. Last week, Frank accused Sanders supporters of engaging in McCarthyism by suggesting that politicians, and Clinton in particular, are influenced by big money contributions from wealthy backers, and as a result, did not push for prosecutions of the executives of large banks. However, Frank sang an altogether different tune about the influence of campaign contributions when he was leaving Congress in 2012.

    “People say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t have any effect on me,’” Frank told NPR at the time about the constant need to continually raise money as a congressman. “Well if that were the case, we’d be the only human beings in the history of the world who on a regular basis took significant amounts of money from perfect strangers and made sure that it had no effect on our behavior.”

    I guess we can assume Clinton is the first person in the history of the world to avoid this problem altogether then.

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/14/money-hillary-clinton-banks-oil-links-presidential-campaign

    “Democrats have a decision to make: do they think money in politics is a corrupting force that influences the decisions made by elected officials, or not? After years railing against the Citizens United decision, which opened the floodgates to outside spending in elections, some of them appear to have done a complete reversal.

    The Clinton campaign has spent the last few weeks furiously pushing back at the criticism that she is influenced by the vast donations her campaign receives from backers in the oil and financial industries. Her supporters have been vigorously arguing there’s no evidence of a quid pro quo.

    How quickly they forget. As journalist David Sirota reported earlier this week, in the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, Clinton harshly criticized then senator Obama for accepting donations from oil and gas executives – and even cut a campaign commercial about it. The kicker? It was less money than Clinton has accepted from people working for fossil fuel companies so far this campaign season.”

    More, same article

    “No one has made this point better than Clinton surrogate and former representative Barney Frank – or should I say, the 2012 version of him. Last week, Frank accused Sanders supporters of engaging in McCarthyism by suggesting that politicians, and Clinton in particular, are influenced by big money contributions from wealthy backers, and as a result, did not push for prosecutions of the executives of large banks. However, Frank sang an altogether different tune about the influence of campaign contributions when he was leaving Congress in 2012.

    “People say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t have any effect on me,’” Frank told NPR at the time about the constant need to continually raise money as a congressman. “Well if that were the case, we’d be the only human beings in the history of the world who on a regular basis took significant amounts of money from perfect strangers and made sure that it had no effect on our behavior.”

    I guess we can assume Clinton is the first person in the history of the world to avoid this problem altogether then.”

    No big money would equal no HRC.

    Big weapon suppliers, etc, were donating TONS of money to the Clinton Foundation at the same time HRC was Sec of State.At the same time they were getting huge contracts.

    This election is about fundamental change. HRC is a republican when it comes to big biz and big money running the show.

      1. Hi Ron,

        I ain’t no fucking republican, lol.

        My republican friends and acquaintances in recent years have taking to calling me a libtard or worse, mostly behind my back, but sometimes to my face with a smile. I haven’t voted R in recent times. I am a TRUE conservative , which is something far different from a typical member of the modern day American Republican political party.

        My dark ages days D party acquaintances are cautiously welcoming me back into the fold, since we agree on some critical issues, virtually all the critical issues as a matter of fact.

        Those jackasses have hijacked the word “conservative” and used it like an enslaved woman in a cat house.

        I do define the word to suit myself, and use it in the engineering sense.

        Show me one nice thing I have had to say about any recent R party big wig, in office or out, or running. You will be a long time looking, and you won’t find it here.

        Conservative in my book means looking after first things first. Of course you have to KNOW ENOUGH to know what is important, and be able to figure out which things are the MOST important.

        I am fortunate enough that I know enough to figure out the “big picture ” score, and the big picture score of our time is all about the environment, with everything else by comparison being about like rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking TITANIC.

        I have constantly maintained since you started this blog that the D party is far better for the environment than the R party. Also, since a working free market does not exist in health care in the USA, I am in favor of a western European type health care system for this country.

        ( This does not change the facts -as I see them- that Ocare was a fucking disaster for the D party, being poorly conceived and even more poorly implemented, and being in large part responsible for the R party mopping the floors of congress with the D’s. Ocare has not fixed anything in terms of controlling the costs of medical care. It’s just another income transfer scheme. The European model actually controls costs. )

        In the engineering sense of being conservative, you and I understand that we are utterly and absolutely dependent on the grand scale world wide ecosystem, the biosphere, remaining healthy and robust. We agree that humanity is in overshoot. We know what the consequences are going to be, and agree on that too, except I am not so pessimistic as you are in this respect, and hope and believe now that some people in some places will pull thru overshoot ok, without our species going totally back to the animal power era.

        The majority of the people of this country are sick and tired of establishment politics, either R or D party style. This is why Trump is leading the R party for now, not because anybody really likes him, except nincompoops, but because the R party working class core is SICK of the R party establishment taking them for granted and fucking them over, sending jobs overseas, bailing out billionaires, etc.

        DITTO THE D party , in terms of the young people and those not bought and paid for due to being so tightly tied to the D party power structure. That sort includes the teachers unions, big labor, etc.

        Right now I believe that if somebody gets hold of the transcripts of her Wall Street speeches, she is a cooked old goose.

        http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-abramson/release-of-clintons-wall-street-speeches_b_9698632.html

        Your time and mine is basically over and gone, we will be in our graves soon enough.

        The time of the younger generation is here now, and they are NOT satisfied with D party politics as usual. They want some real change, and they voted for OBAMA in preference to a soiled and shopworn HRC in order to get it. She is more soiled, and more shopworn NOW than she was ten years ago.

        It is extremely hard to find a young person who really has any enthusiasm for her these days. Her diehard fans can overlook her never ending flip flops and the faint odor of dead fish that always trails after her, but the young generation is not willing to do so. It’s not that they don’t understand that she is better than ok, really good, on stuff like civil rights, they know that.

        The problem is that they believe she is too tight with big money, big banks, big industry, the MIC, etc. They have heard the D party rant about Citizens United for years now, and yet they see HRC using superpacs like tissue paper. Hard core D partisans of the HRC camp don’t think the email server is a big deal, but damned near everybody else DOES. Even if it is eventually deemed legal, the country is PISSED that it was kept SECRET, and pissed that HRC believes and acts like she is above the rules about such things. MOST older D party members will never say so in public of course, but in the privacy of the voting booth, they chose OBAMA, and given the choice, as they get to know him, they are choosing SANDERS by margins considerably greater than indicated by the polls. This is because they fib to pollsters,and because they are changing their minds about HRC fast enough that the pollsters are just about always behind the curve now.

        If it weren’t for super delegates, Sanders would most likely win the nomination handily. If the early states were to hold their caucuses or primaries again, he would pick up another ten to twenty percent in those states today. He would be in the lead.

        If HRC wins New York , it will be because independents can’t vote in the primary, and because it is her home turf. Her margin will be half the polls prediction if she does win.

        I believe the young folks are dead on right, and I am putting a hell of a lot of time doing what I can to make sure that Trump DOES NOT get into the White House, and that Sanders DOES.

        Elections are won in the middle in this country, and if Sanders can get the nomination, he will kick Trumps ass, assuming Trump gets the R nomination. He may not, because the R party is doing everything it its power to deny it to him, even as the D party is doing everything in it’s power to ensure HRC gets the D nomination.

        Sanders is an uphill long shot, but his extremely fast rise is proof in plenty that the D party body and soul, is tired of HRC.

        If HRC gets the D nomination, I think now she will beat Trump, but I am not CONFIDENT she will beat him. Trump is making a lot of really stupid mistakes, and may manage yet to shoot off his own feet. So far he has only hit a few toes though, lol.

        HRC has awesome negatives, from the R party pov, and Trump is not going to hesitate to exploit them to the max.

        I am confident that Sanders would beat Trump, or anybody else the R’s can come up with at this late date.

        Everybody I know, almost to the last one, who would vote for HRC , will vote for Sanders. But many tens of millions of middle of the road Americans are disgusted at the very thought of voting for EITHER HRC or TRUMP.

        I believe most of them will vote for Sanders, rather than stay home.

        In terms of the usual political definitions, I am pretty much of a libertarian populist these days.

        I believe in privacy, and that makes me a libtard in terms of the scared of their shadow R people who would rather surrender their privacy than take a one in a ten million chance of being a terrorist victim, etc.

        I believe in legal pot, because I believe in small government, as any real conservative believes. Only a goddamned fool with a beer in his hand could POSSIBLY believe that pot should be dealt with as a habit forming narcotic.

        Government should and must be big enough to look after the problems only government can deal with. The environmental question is one only government can deal with.

        I am sure you have noticed I am pedal to the metal, all the time, on the renewables issue, including any and all subsidies to get renewables scaled up faster.
        Ordinarily I am very much of a free market fan, but in the case of renewables, I believe the risk of continued dependence on fossil fuels any longer than absolutely necessary is a danger to our very survival.

        So I believe in pushing renewables in the same way I believe in maintaining a powerful Pentagon establishment. Both are expensive, but both are essential to our continued safety and prosperity. It’s damned hard to find an R party politician with national ambitions who favors subsidizing renewables, especially on the grand scale.

        I believe in forced climate change , and that it is a serious problem already, and that it threatens to get to be bad enough to bring on ecological and economic disasters.

        Do my positions sound like R party positions?

        I ain’t no stinking republican. 😉 I do however believe in some values and policies held dear by many republicans, such as choice in education. Any mother ought to be able to get a voucher to send her child to the school of her choice. The monopoly educational establishment is not going to change, until it is forced to do so by the steel toed boot of vouchers in it’s fat ass. I know, I used to be a part of it. I could get my expired professional license renewed by taking one piddly do nothing learn nothing three credit class.

        I try as best I can to deal in facts, rather than partisanship, except right now I am a flat out Sanders partisan, until he either wins or loses the nomination.

        If he loses, he will still have been the catalyst that determines the course of D party politics for the next generation, and that direction in my opinion is the right direction.

        On the other hand , I absolutely refuse to kiss any PC ass. I won’t go along with pretending Islam as it exists today is a religion of peace. I think maybe we share this position as well, lol.

        I get really tired of hearing people talk about people like my old Daddy, who is an honorable and honest man, what is left of him, because he believes in God and the KJB, etc.

        He lacked the educational opportunities he worked so hard to make available to me.

        As best as I have been able to determine, Obama’s long term church and preacher hold to about the same positions and beliefs as the one on the hilltop nearest my house, where my dead mother and grandparents and siblings are buried. I have NEVER heard anybody make fun of OBAMA for attending that church for years, or for Bill and Hillary toting Bibles.

        I believe in the Second Amendment.

        So I ain’t exactly a large D democrat either.

        Coming from anybody else, I would just laugh at them, but since you are our host and founder, and thus due respect and consideration, I will cut it back by ninety percent, starting right now.

        There are plenty of other forums, and plenty of handles, and in some of them I may post under my own name. Here I favor being anonymous due to not wanting any family members to run across me posting as an atheist. They would be worried sick about my non existent soul burning in a non existent Hell forever.

        1. The problem is that they believe she is too tight with big money, big banks, big industry, the MIC, etc. They have heard the D party rant about Citizens United for years now, and yet they see HRC using superpacs like tissue paper.

          Yep! If I could have one wish come true in my lifetime it would be to see all the fucking bankers in the world be lined up against a wall and shot!

          ​”​If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered…I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies…The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.​”​
          – Thomas Jefferson, 1802

          1. Hi Fred,

            I need not lecture you about who owns the FED, but most members of this forum probably need a primer.

            They can google Fed ownership and freedom of information act.

            Now personally, I would turn ten percent of the junior grade bankers loose so as to allow them to go out into the world and advise other folks about the dangers of the banking profession, LOL. My sarc light is on and BURNING HOT.

  29. Not for sound bite fans, but worth the time to anybody who wants insights into the way Russia will be playing the energy game in international business and politics for some time to come.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-conversation-us/russia-a-global-energy-po_b_9693032.html

    Cheap Russian gas for instance might result in wind and solar power being scaled up slower than otherwise.

    Russia can deliver to most Russian customers via pipeline, meaning the Russians have a permanent cost advantage compared to us Yankees. We will have to ship LNG overseas if we produce a gas surplus.

  30. Forbe’s puts HRC’s net worth at forty five million, not bad for a lowly servant of the people. Third to Carly and Donald among all prez candidates this time around.

    The word is that between them, Bill and Hill took in over forty million last year.

  31. Here’s a little PRACTICAL consideration involving renewable energy that is seldom if ever mentioned in public.

    Many of the countries eager to sign on to climate change mitigation treaties and programs are simply not going to have much in the way of capital to invest in such programs. They are stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea, with depletion inevitably soon forcing up the costs of coal, oil, and natural gas.

    But the people running these smaller and or less prosperous countries aren’t stupid.

    They know that every time renewables displace another percent of coal and gas and oil consumption in richer and or larger countries, the actual effect is to increase the supply available to THEM, and at lower costs to boot. 😉

    “SunPower is a research & development powerhouse; its solar cell technology can convert more than 22% of the sunlight hitting a panel into energy, higher than any competitor. This is helping generate strong sales in developing countries adding solar capacity, such as Mexico. SunPower’s sales to residential customers also are growing rapidly, with unit shipments up 60% in 2015 — and they should continue to soar thanks to its new Equinox, a sleek and efficient integrated system for which SunPower produces every component, an industry first.”

    This is from the
    Street Authority site.

    This is a notable tipping point, the intro of complete turnkey systems produced by a single manufacturer.

    SUNPOWER now has in a very real sense passed a critical threshold in the scaling up and consolidation of the pv industry, and what this means is substantially cheaper, more reliable, simpler, easier to install, easier to permit, easier to buy pv for everybody from a homeowner right on up to a utility.

    I can remember when you had to go to at least five or six different companies to put together a decent personal music system. I had different brand names on speakers, amps, tuner, turntable needles, wiring , everything.

    The days of six different brand name products being used in a single home pv system are numbered, but it will take another decade or longer for the industry to fully consolidate down to a couple of dozen major players.

  32. The Chinese have invented a method of making solar cells that capture almost the entire light spectrum. If they can commercialize it, even if it is very expensive to implement, this will mean that half the panels will get the job done, compared to current panels, then total system costs will fall substantially, because the panels already cost less than the associated infrastructure such as racking, inverters, labor, permitting, etc.

    1. Guess they should have bought the better panels.

      Storms tend to wreck the oil industry in bigger ways than the solar industry.
      “For most of the past two weeks, more than 90 percent of the Gulf’s production has been sealed off, knocking out about a quarter of the country’s total oil production. As of yesterday afternoon, personnel had been evacuated from 596 production platforms, or 83 percent of the manned platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Personnel from 101 rigs, or 84 percent of those in the Gulf, also had been evacuated. ”
      http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091202240.html

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