Comments not related to oil or gas go in this thread, please.
Sat, 2019-04-06 09:53 — Sheila Newman
I have just learned, regretfully, of the death of Jay Hanson. My first report was that it occurred in a diving accident. Subsequently, it has been clarified that he fell ill after diving, and died that night. Jay Hanson lived in Hawaii. He was the founder of multiple energy resources or peak oil lists from the 1990s, starting with the incredibly popular Dieoff website and DieOff list which looked at peak oil, population numbers, and scarcity. An intermediate list was Killer Ape-Peak Oil. The last list of which we are aware was [America2Point0] which Hanson closed ‘until further notice’ on 20 December 2016. Hanson was teetotal for many years and studied evolutionary psychology. He believed that humans would be ultimately unable to deal with resource scarcity or human induced climate change because they could not cope with major environmental and evolutionary problems involving themselves.
His list gave rise to a number of other lists, such as EnergyResources and ERT, as people formed different views on the energy resources and human survival outlook.
Jay Hanson’s dieoff page can be found in its old and new forms by clicking on the links: http://www.jayhanson.org/oldindex.htm and http://www.dieoff.org/. There is a 2003 interview by Scott Meredith at http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/hansn_02.htm. It was my own participation in the DieOff list and subsequent ones, especially EnergyResources, and then the Australian Running on Empty one (roeoz) that caused me to edit two editions of a multi-scientist authored book called The Final Energy Crisis, Pluto Press, UK, 2005 and 2008. The first edition was initiated and partly edited by Andrew McKillop, and finished by me, Sheila Newman, and the second edition, in 2008, was entirely edited by me, with mostly new articles.
The whole ‘peak oil’ and energy resources debate or story or study is not over by any means. Fracking is a desperate and ruinous sort of pause, which has been used to crank up demand. It seems that we have already entered the oil wars, however most of the public have little ability to understand this, due to the influence of the corporate press and similar on our education systems, which focus less and less on science and history. US-NATO activity in the Middle East, the East and South America – notable threats towards Venezuela – are signs of this.
Jay Hanson was a charismatic internet figure, and it seems odd today that his death is not being widely reported. He was likable, trenchant and a little despotic, with many avid and admiring acolytes and friends.
This article and obituary is a very quick response to the sad news. My condoleances to his family and close friends, and to the movement he began.
Jay Hanson, my internet friend. He was probably more responsible for starting the whole Peak Oil Awareness Movement than any other person. May he rest in peace.
Thanks to Sheila Newman. Without your reporting, Jay’s death would have gone completely unreported.
My first report was that it occurred in a diving accident. Subsequently, it has been clarified that he fell ill after diving, and died that night.
Which pretty much tells us squat! Granted his exact cause of death really is probably none of our business and his family should be left alone at this difficult time!
BTW this is a good interview with him done by Jason Bradford back in 2008.
https://www.resilience.org/jay-hanson-interview/
Things haven’t got any better since then!
Posted on the end of last thread-
‘and old people like him have used an unfairly large amount of resources according to the Guardian-
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/10/climate-crisis-todays-children-face-lives-with-tiny-carbon-footprints
Well , of course this will be true. We are certainly beyond the peak of carbon fuel/capita in the world. And their children will use use even far less.
Nonetheless, just like the generations before them, when given the chance they burn fuel frivolously, by and large.
a USA centric side-note. A ‘millenial’ told me that their generation was far more progressive than prior ones. They were not too happy when I showed the data indicated that they voted more conservatively than the baby boom generation did when at the same age range.
I’m not too impressed with generation divisions. People are pretty similar across time. Circumstances change.
De-Growth- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth
[Degrowth thinkers and activists advocate for the downscaling of production and consumption – the contraction of economies – arguing that overconsumption lies at the root of long term environmental issues and social inequalities. Key to the concept of degrowth is that reducing consumption does not require individual martyring or a decrease in well-being.[2] Rather, “degrowthers” aim to maximize happiness and well-being through non-consumptive means—sharing work, consuming less, while devoting more time to art, music, family, nature, culture and community. ]
‘So, can this concept take root on Wall Street and Main Street, in a thousand cities of India, in Lagos.
If there is de-growth, do I still get my Social Security check, my Medicare coverage, my Universal Basic Income, my paycheck, my government subsidized fuel or bread?’
If there is de-growth, do I still get my Social Security check, my Medicare coverage, my Universal Basic Income, my paycheck, my government subsidized fuel or bread?’
No you don’t because the system that promised you that will cease to exist. And you and everyone else are back at square one. Time for a new system.
Cheers!
‘No you don’t because the system that promised you that will cease to exist. ‘
Indeed. We better start to wrap our minds around that. Expectations of government programs to fund any aspect of your life may prove to be entirely unfulfilled.
Try to sell that to a voter. Fear of it is how Trump got elected.
Anybody actually expecting to collect enough by way of an old age check or pension check to live out his years comfortably had best pay CLOSE attention to Fred, when he says, ” No you don’t because the system that promised you that will cease to exist”.
I will go so far as to say that “the system” might hold together long enough for people who are already at retirement age, or very close, to get some, maybe even most of the benefits they have been promised.
But barring miracles on the technological and economic fronts, there’s just no way society is going to be able to generate enough REAL wealth to provide a dignified and comfortable living in their old age for people who are now middle aged or younger…….. unless they provide for themselves, by investing NOW in things that will STAY valuable, and or CONTINUE to earn good returns, a few decades down the road.
The USA and numerous other well educated ( occasionally in the case of individuals at least! ) countries are headed to a time when both parents max out on the promised benefits, meaning social security and medicare in the USA, while having only one child. That child will probably put of having a kid or two of his or her own. Grandchildren, or at least ones of wage earning age, are going to be even scarcer than children , perhaps.
So…… are the one point four kids you and your significant other put thru university going to make enough to pay your maxed out Social Security benefit, and your Medicare benefit, and compensate on the local tax level for the exemption you get on your property because you are old farts?
Do you really think that when thing are REALLY tight that everybody will continue to buy brand name cereals and status beer and clothes they will never wear more than a couple of times?
Half of what the stock market is all about is about high profits based on discretionary spending by a couple of hundred million people, who are willing to pay more for Pepsi or Coke than for the store brand, more for shoes with a swoop on them than equally durable and comfortable shoes, etc.
Personally I don’t believe ANY industry is necessarily going to last long enough, and be profitable enough, to pay the sort of old age pensions promised to tens of millions of people who spend many years working in them…….. and this goes DOUBLE for individual companies.
Sure APPLE and TESLA have cult like followers and buyers FOR NOW……. but there are other computers, and other phones, that work just as well, and the cults aren’t likely to last too much longer. Other companies will build great electric cars…… there’s nothing all that magical about an electric car, except the battery, and there will be a dozen or more major battery manufacturers, just as there are a dozen or more manufacturers of engines and transmissions these days.
I have been SHOWN that a two thousand dollar pc works about as well , and maybe sometimes better, as a two thousand dollar APPLE……. by people who actually own both. Apples are so incredibly good that people somehow make up their mind that comparing the cheapest Apple with the cheapest PC is a fair comparison…. when the cheapest APPLE usually costs three or four times as much, lol.
Put so called rot gut liquor in a glass with the usual ice and other ingredients and serve in in the dark, and hardly anybody can tell you which drink was made with forty or fifty dollar booze and which was made with fifteen dollar booze.
Put a blindfold on almost anybody, and put them in sixty thousand dollar car, and take them for a ride, and then put them in a thirty thousand dollar Ford or Chevy….. and hardly ANY of them can tell the difference.
Who was it at the old TOD site that used to remind us often to “Get thee hence to the non discretionary side of the economy”?
OFM, my £200 ($260) Chromebook purchased in 2014 is my only computer and compares well with friends’ MacBooks at five times the price…
>>Who was it at the old TOD site that used to remind us often to “Get thee hence to the non discretionary side of the economy”?<<
That would be good ole westexas, Jeffrey Brown.
I miss him.
If oceans grow plankton…the oil is indefinite and CO2 not a issue.
Yeah. Just have to wait a few tens of millions of years.
CamCon- “If oceans grow plankton…the oil is indefinite and CO2 not a issue.”
Well Cameron, statements like that is exactly why you are not voted to any position of responsibility… Except perhaps in Trumps cabinet.
Is that what your going for?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shitposting
Jesus mother of God. Or was it Mary?
Either way, I pray you are just messing around. Really I do.
LOL! Defective spambot alert!
Let the die-off begin.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Dylan Thomas
Here is one antidote to die-off
https://teamhuman.fm/episodes/ep-127-extinction-rebellion/
That was amazing pwnage of John Kerry! Trump’s climate change trials are going to look like that. ??
I am pretty sure I have never seen a comparable combination of stupidity and arrogance in my 75 years. That guy is worse than Trump!
Trump’s climate change trials
Are you serious?! Don’t worry, that’s just a rhetorical question.
Ok they’re going to be climate change panels but the intent is the same as a trial.
I think we’ve seen that movie before. I don’t think the sequel is going to be much of a box office hit either. While they are at it, maybe the conservatives should try to bring back a couple reruns of the Scopes trial…. That level of bread and circus might keep the public distracted from the brewing constitutional crisis, at least for a little while!
https://medium.com/rollingstone/journey-to-antarctica-what-scientists-think-of-trumps-latest-climate-tweet-1f664552564d
Journey to Antarctica: What Scientists Think of Trump’s Latest Climate Tweet
Looks like we may have that open water event in the arctic this year. It’s hitting new lows for this time of year….
Haven’t been around in awhile, I did finally get a Tesla – makes other cars seem like a joke. The self driving feature is getting better in leaps and bounds.
I owe Jay Hanson a nod of gratitude for his dieoff site. That was one of the things in the early 2000s that helped wrench open my eyeballs, somewhat unwillingly, and I’ve never been the same since. The one critique I have in retrospect is that was overwhelmingly depressing (I know – but true also!), but the level of doom was so high it took me a good five years to recover from it. On some level I’m sad for him that he’s left us now that it’s starting to get so interesting!
Rest in Peace, Jay.
Carbon, soil and trees galore.
Hot Soil, Methane, Hot Science March 6, 2019 – More dangerous warming methane is pouring into the atmosphere. Later in this hour, UK scientist Euan Nisbet tells us where it is coming from, and no, not from the Arctic. First the visionary scientist Thomas Crowther from ETH Zurich on carbon, warming, the Arctic, and a plan to plant a trillion trees to help stabilize the climate. Yes we can – and the kids have already started.
https://www.ecoshock.net/downloads/ES_190306_LoFi.mp3
or
https://www.ecoshock.net/downloads/ES_190306_Show.mp3
Speaking of doom….
Oh, it could get very bad. …
Maybe the Russians want to undermine the Saudi oil industry.
https://www.computerworld.com.au/article/659893/triton-intrusion-discovered-second-industrial-facility/
Or maybe not, who knows?
Just about a year ago:
https://www.npr.org/2018/03/23/596044821/russia-hacked-u-s-power-grid-so-what-will-the-trump-administration-do-about-it
Past global warming similar to today’s, but in two pulses
Bowen, Gingerich and their colleagues report that carbonate or limestone nodules in Wyoming sediment cores show the global warming episode 55.5 million-to-55.3 million years ago involved the average annual release of a minimum of 0.9 petagrams (1.98 trillion pounds) of carbon to the atmosphere, and probably much more over shorter periods.
That is “within an order of magnitude of, and may have approached, the 9.5 petagrams (20.9 trillion pounds) per year associated with modern anthropogenic carbon emissions,” the researchers wrote. Since 1900, human burning of fossil fuels emitted an average of 3 petagrams per year—even closer to the rate 55.5 million years ago.
Each pulse of carbon emissions lasted no more than 1,500 years. Previous conflicting evidence indicated the carbon release lasted anywhere from less than a year to tens of thousands of years. The new research shows atmospheric carbon levels returned to normal within a few thousand years after the first pulse, probably as carbon dissolved in the ocean. It took up to 200,000 years for conditions to normalize after the second pulse.
The new study also ruled as unlikely some theorized causes of the warming episode, including an asteroid impact, slow melting of permafrost, burning of organic-rich soil or drying out of a major seaway. Instead, the findings suggest, in terms of timing, that more likely causes included melting of seafloor methane ices known as clathrates, or volcanism heating organic-rich rocks and releasing methane.
https://news.umich.edu/past-global-warming-similar-to-today-s-but-in-two-pulses/
Rest in peace, Jay.
Hickory Smoke/Farts
Yes, some people seem to like to get that personal echo-chamber/mirrored room (with a nod to the late Leonard Cohen for that)/wilful ignorance tweaked just right, and advertise it like the cherries on top of their sundaes that they eat increasingly nearer to their asses, since that’s where their heads appear headed.
Alas, reality includes Hickory, but also me, Fernando and Nick G and all the rest of reality that can seem to ‘come out of nowhere’, perhaps especially if some have a tendency to ignore that which they don’t like or agree with or whatever and their increasingly self-limiting views approach the ‘rectal’ in nature.
No one knows ‘what will really happen’, but that’s the point: Paying attention to reality might put one closer to ‘what will really happen’ than not.
Of course, some people like to create their own realities for themselves, but also for others.
‘We have not managed to land successfully’: Israel’s moonshot fails
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/apr/11/we-have-not-managed-to-land-successfully-israels-moonshot-fails
Oh well—–
Space X just pulled off a triple booster recovery today.
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=TXMGu2d8c8g
Arabsat-6A Mission
You can track it, and the other 18,000 or so objects that we have put in orbit, here:
http://stuffin.space/
😉
Beresheet has been renamed Ohsheet.
NAOM
I actually happen to be an evolutionary biologist and to have also been deeply worried about overpopulation and resource depletion since I was a little kid. So I was aware of both the inclusive-fitness optimization nature of human beings and of the sustainability crisis before I encountered the dieoff site back in the days. It helped me a lot to put all the pieces together that I hadn’t quite organized properly in my thinking.
It is too bad he never wrote a proper book that both puts it all out in an organized and systematic way and can be officially cited and referred to. The dieoff site was tremendously informative but I am sure the way it looked was off-putting to many casual observers.
So now you have this situation in which all the big-shot academics and popular authors have written countless books on these subjects yet none of them put all the pieces of the puzzle together and walked all the way to where the evidence and logic lead. And the only person that did that is now gradually fading from collective memory.
Perhaps someone will edit and organize his writings together and fill that gap now that he is gone. It’s not going to make a difference with respect to the larger problems, which is why he himself never bothered with it, but it’s just the right thing to do.
GM, as an evolutionary biologist are you able to recommend any good sources of information/discussion on the coming wave of genetic modification of organisms that seems on the verge of a momentous explosion?
I’m particularly interested in discussions/books/presentations that could be understood by people who have some science training, but are not specialists in your field.
Thanks.
Do you mean CRISPR?
The books haven’t been written yet, and I actually doubt the most important discussions to be had will actually be given much publicity.
I myself suspect the people with access to technology are going to do great damage to the gene pool of their descendants while thinking they are doing exactly the opposite. Because what is an adaptive modification in the context of the comfortable existence of advanced technological civilization is often exactly the opposite in the wild.
And here we all know what the current trajectory of humanity is.
They could in principle use it to fix the damage that civilization has done so far by relaxing natural selection but they just don’t think in such terms.
The books haven’t been written yet, and I actually doubt the most important discussions to be had will actually be given much publicity.
And given the profound level of ignorance displayed by the most of the members of congress on the topic of climate change, it is probably a safe bet to assume that even if they were, it is highly doubtful that the general public is equipped to grasp the implications.
Available soon on Amazon prime:
The Bioethics of CRISPR for Dummies
BTW while the ethics of applying gene editing technology to the human germline may seem an obvious candidate for public concern on multiple levels,
I think that topics such as having the technology to create gene drives capable of driving an entire species of disease carrying mosquitoes to extinction or creating economic monopolies by holding patents on genetically modified crop seeds that are resistant to herbicides marketed by those very same monopolies are equally in dire need of public discussion.
Unfortunately what I see, is a deeply ignorant public, that is profoundly ill equipped to tackle such issues!
Have You Come A Long Way, Baby?
Some readers might appreciate a special trip to the archive for this subthread as well as this one. Enjoy.
Highlight:
“Many talk about ‘mechanical’, ‘electric’ and ‘disruptive’ technologies and so forth, but rarely ever, social and ‘nature-integrative’ ‘technologies’ and true social progress (equality, ethics, democracy, etc.) and these may truly be what’s needed for our and the bees’ and other species’ survival, including the keystones. Keystone is a good word, because in an architectural context, when you remove the keystones, the structures can collapse.
Clichéd technological ‘progress’, even if it’s somehow seen to be cutting-edge or along the lines of the current ‘disruptive corporate narrative’, say, like creepy (‘CRISPR’) genetic engineering, Solar Impulse or self-crashing cars, seem really just superficial, feel-good and/or ‘fool’s errand’ treatments of the symptoms of our cancerous predicaments.” ~ Caelan MacIntyre
Chinese scientist vanishes after claiming to have made first gene-edited babies
Perhaps this could serve as a starting point. I believe that there are too major areas of ethical concern. Human germline modification and gene drives applied to biological control of wild species.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959437X18300212
Ethical issues in genetic modification and why application matters
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/20477724.2017.1453585?journalCode=ypgh20
Debating the ethics of gene drives
Yes GM.
And thanks for the links- I’ll check them out.
I am very concerned about the ‘monkeying’ around with the genetics of other organisms, as well. Fred mentioned mosquitos as an example. People are working hard on altering the photosynthetic pathway. Consider if altered ocean algae and phytoplankton gets an advantage. Or if one country/company puts out a more virulent wheat stem fungus, for which only they have the kill switch.
99.9% [plus] of us has close to zero level of knowledge to digest the implication of the possibilities on all this. Let alone take a role in decision making.
99.9% [plus] of us has close to zero level of knowledge to digest the implication of the possibilities on all this. Let alone take a role in decision making.
While at the same time the technology of gene editing is now available to DIYers for relatively low cost. A second year biology undergrad probably has the knowledge to use currently available off the shelf technology to do something like this.
Check out this guy’s youtube videos about editing yeast genes to produce spider silk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx8TcGrCOSI
That yeast-silk video is eye-opening. Even if you don’t have a molecular/ biochem background, you can get the gist of what is now routinely feasible.
Yep!
People are working hard on altering the photosynthetic pathway. Consider if altered ocean algae and phytoplankton gets an advantage.
Botany and plant physiology are definitely not my forté but I came across the work of Dr. Joanne Chory at the Salk Institute which you may find interesting as well!
https://www.salk.edu/scientist/joanne-chory/
Joanne Chory has spent more than 25 years using Arabidopsis thaliana, a small flowering mustard plant, as a model for plant growth. She has pioneered the use of molecular genetics to study how plants respond to their environment and has made major discoveries surrounding how plants sense light and make growth hormones. The basis of Chory’s approach involves mutating Arabidopsis genes and then observing the effects on a plant—does it grow faster or taller? Does it stop sending new shoots out in the direction of the sun? Does it need less water? In this way, her team has been able to describe the function of multiple pathways that control plant growth.
Chory and her team run a vertically integrated program, using genetics, genomics, cell biology, x-ray crystallography, biochemistry and ecological approaches. This has allowed them to determine one of the most complex signaling networks that control growth and development in response to environmental change.
Unfortunately we currently have a bunch of scientifically illiterate morons running our country… and they are supported by the financial elite!
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/business/dealbook/goldman-trump-2020.html
DealBook Briefing: Goldman Says Trump Could Squeak a Win in 2020
Civilization is currently designed to destroy all life on this planet. Scientific information will be used to assist and prolong this civilization. Otherwise it will generally be ignored.
The [very] short version on photosynthetic pathway work that is going on at major research inst. in the world focuses on the process of photorespiration. This is a segment of photosynthesis that is seen as wasteful of energy, and there has been successful attempts to diminish flow into that pathway.
The outcome thus far has been remarkable.
Its a big deal, one way or another.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/genetically-engineered-tobacco-does-more-efficient-photosynthesis-65286
tobacco is a commonly is a plant for such research (like a white mouse), not selected for its product
That prediction about trump re-election is unfortunately very true. Incumbancy and low unemployment give him a big lead (over 10 points they say).
I would not be too worried about gene drives. The problem with those is they don’t really work. It’s not even a new idea that was only made feasible by CRISPR, people had been trying it using other methods for many years prior. It never really worked because real life populations do not conform to the toy models on which these designs are built.
I would not be too worried about gene drives. The problem with those is they don’t really work… /…because real life populations do not conform to the toy models on which these designs are built.
While I do agree with your point about real life populations not necessarily conforming to models tested in the lab, there is still room for the precautionary principle to be applied. To be fair they have been shown to work in the lab and there are reasons to be concerned about the possibility of how they might be applied, by whom and for what reasons or agendas. I for one can still find reasons to worry and I think I’m not alone in this respect.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6069294/
Abstract
Gene drives are systems of biased inheritance that enhance the likelihood a sequence of DNA passes between generations through sexual reproduction and potentially throughout a local population and ultimately all connected populations of a species. Gaps in our knowledge of gene drive systems prompted the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Foundation for the NIH to ask the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to convene an expert panel to provide an independent, objective examination of what we know about gene drive systems. The report, “Gene drives on the horizon: Advancing science, navigating uncertainty, and aligning research with public values,” outlines our understanding of the science, ethics, public engagement, governance, and risk assessment pertaining to gene drive research.
Jay would notice this:
Fox mentions Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for 42 days running – 3,181 times.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/12/fox-mentions-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-for-42-days-running
I am worried about her safety, and that of Tlaib and Omar.
Tesla Model 3 Battles Dodge Hellcat, AMG CLS 53 In Brief Drag Race
The first is a 2019 Mercedes-AMG CLS 53, packing a boosted 3.0-liter inline six good for 429 horsepower (320 kilowatts) and a published 0-60 time of 4.4 seconds. The second vehicle is a bit more intimidating, which can only mean a freaking Dodge Challenger Hellcat with its supercharged V8 ready to clobber everything. It’s a long-term tester with TFLC so it only has 707 hp (527 kW) under the hood, but traction willing it’s enough to shoot the devil child to 60 mph in just 3.4 seconds.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/enthusiasts/tesla-model-3-battles-dodge-hellcat-amg-cls-53-in-brief-drag-race/ar-BBVTm3w?ocid=spartanntp
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613277/chinese-scientists-have-put-human-brain-genes-in-monkeysand-yes-they-may-be-smarter/
I expect Fred and GF and maybe a couple of others who are better qualified than I am will say something to throw some light on this experiment.
I know just enough about such topics to be dangerous, lol, but I anticipate that given time, it will eventually be possible to enhance the intelligence of monkeys and the great apes this way, or some similar way, which leads us to dealing with some very troubling ethical questions.
I also anticipate that eventually such enhancements will be incorporated into the genome in such a fashion that they are reliably inherited.
One of my favorite old time sci fi writers put animals in his novels that were of sufficient ( enhanced ) intelligence to work and talk with people.
As an aside, speaking as a former pro educator, I strongly recommend that kids be encouraged to read quite a bit of science fiction during their formative years. It teaches a person to think critically, to understand that what is considered fantasy, or impossible, today may be reality tomorrow, to understand that just because the AUTHORITIES say something is so is no guarantee it’s so.
This reading should also be accompanied at the time, or later, with some REAL science classes, the sort with labs and homework and math that challenges the kid to use everything he has hopefully learned in algebra, etc.
I know just enough about such topics to be dangerous, lol, but I anticipate that given time, it will eventually be possible to enhance the intelligence of monkeys and the great apes this way, or some similar way, which leads us to dealing with some very troubling ethical questions.
I also anticipate that eventually such enhancements will be incorporated into the genome in such a fashion that they are reliably inherited.
It is already possible right now!
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612997/the-crispr-twins-had-their-brains-altered/
China’s CRISPR twins might have had their brains inadvertently enhanced
New research suggests that a controversial gene-editing experiment to make children resistant to HIV may also have enhanced their ability to learn and form memories.
Ethics be damned! If the recent cases of celebrities indicted for fraud in the college admissions scandals are any indication, I’m willing to bet that the ultra rich are not going to let a little thing like ethics get in the way of genetically enhancing their offspring…
Cheers!
Simps IIRC
It’s not as simple as “putting human genes in monkeys” that makes the differences between a human and a monkey.
We don’t really understand the process of brain development well enough to be able to tell which genes, if any, are responsible for those differences, but we do know enough about developmental biology to suspect that the genes themselves are not the key distinguishing feature (even if a few genes are really important). The main differences are derived from how cell growth and proliferation is regulated and how cells are organized with respect to each other during brain development, and this is often much more about gene regulation than it is about the genes themselves.
Indeed [gene regulation], but we still shouldn’t be fumbling around with this stuff, in my opinion.
GM, you mean epigenetics?
I don’t know what he means but epigenetics and gene modification are two different things.
ep·i·ge·net·ics
NOUN
biology
the study of changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expression rather than alteration of the genetic code itself.
I have no problem with “fumbling around” with this stuff. It’s how we learn stuff. If we didn’t fumble around with the genetic code we would be totally ignorant of DNA and all related subjects.
From the other thread-
Hugo-
” response to a huge problem of installing millions of charging points down every single road and car park space.
Software does not charge a car, chargers need to be installed in there millions by the curbside on every single road with houses, so people can charge their cars over night.”
True Hugo, it is a huge problem, but also one that will get a huge response as the requirement for more charging stations grows. So far no significant bottle neck in Calif, or China (as far as I know).
Your point about many residences not having a good spot for chargers is true. Definitely something to think about when you shop for a home. In my neighborhood I see charging cords draped across the sidewalk on some streets. In most places they would be stolen. Homes with good charging stations will be worth more.
Chargers will be installed like parking meters on streets.
People without home chargers, and parking spots will more often have to use ride services like Lyft.
If you have a charging station, old friends and relatives who you havn’t seen in a long time will start showing up much more often- ‘oh hey, is that a charger? I’m getting low’
And, this may be a good sector to invest in.
btw- there is an App for mobile phones called PlugShare . It is a mapped based source of all the public chargers in the country, with crowd sourced info. Really outstanding. Not sure if other countries have it too.
btw- “Privately-held ChargePoint operates the largest network of electric vehicle charging stations, with sites in the U.S., Europe and Australia. The company claims over 22,300 charging locations in operation. Building this network has been a culmination of a long list of partnerships with parking facility owners, employers and municipalities as well as alliances with electric car manufacturers.”
Additional information-
I plug a vehicle in overnight to my garage regular 120v plug, and get 32 miles range (my electric max) in about 6 hrs. The Chrysler car has a program to ask you what time you would like to charge, so as to correspond to the cheapest ‘off-peak’ hours.
I charge up after 11pm at 7 cents/kwhr, and during the day, at peak time, I get credit from my PV panels at 43 cents/kwhr.
I might purchase a faster charging unit if we get a replacement EV for our other ICE vehicle at some point. I already have the dedicated electrical outlet (240v) ready to go, work provided by the PV installer.
Hi Hickory,
I suppose Hugo hasn’t read anything much, if anything at all, about the way the electric utility industry is DROOLING at the prospect of selling all the juice electric car owners could ever possibly want…. juice they have no market for, as a rule, in the middle of the day as well as in the small hours of the night, except maybe during extremely hot or cold weather.
When surplus generating capacity is available, all they have to pay for is the extra fuel, to supply that extra juice, lol.
Forty two cents for thirty two miles, now THAT’S WORLD CLASS BARGAIN, especially considering that you are probably selling enough some days to cover your electricity for driving EVERY day, with a lot left over.
How big is your personal pv system?
OFM,
Maybe I was misleading , but to clarify-
I get 32 miles electric for 84 cents on my utility rate plan, theoretically. I say theoretically because I also have the PV system [6.6 kW]. Over the longrun that cost/mile would be lower, depending on how long you run the analysis.
And keep in mind this is a big vehicle that you can put a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood laying down behind the front row.
If I did not have the particular rate plan, and was paying the Calif typically peak electric rate of about 25 cents/kwhr, it would cost $3.00 to charge up for that 32 miles.
A smaller passenger car like a Bolt would do much better.
Also, keep in mind that slow charging a lithium battery can result in much longer battery life.
I’ve had my Fiat 500e for about six months now, and 5,000 miles, and I also charge mine using only a standard 120V 20A outlet. I’m not sure how long it takes. I plug it in when I get home, and it’s full in the morning. It takes five seconds.
You could do the same thing with a Tesla too, if you were driving similar daily miles.
I’ll never willingly go back to petrol.
A friend has a 500e, and I used to ride in it frequently.
It worked great in The Bay, but it would have problems in Bend OR.
With 90 million single family homes in the US, it will be a long time before enough EV’s are produced to fill those driveways and garages. Urban folk will have to use charge points or make deals with their landlords and towns. Of course cars-as-a-service might expand very quickly in urban areas so no need to own a vehicle.
Another thing about urban people and charging….. Anybody who can afford a new car these days, especially any car in the thirty and up price class, generally lives either in a free standing house or an apartment building that’s well kept up, with a landlord who understands that landing quality tenants requires providing quality amenities… such as charging stations.
There are going to be exceptions of course.Some people who live in rat nest sized apartments in places such as New York or San Francisco are paying a couple of thousand bucks rent, or more, for places that don’t even have a parking spot, but taken all around, this sort of housing is the exception, rather than the rule, for tenants with decent incomes.
It’s going to be years and years before electric cars are actually CHEAP on the used car market, cheap enough that people who live in less than desirable housing are going to be buying very many electric cars.
Homeowners and landlords will find it very much to their financial advantage to install charging stations…… which really need not be much more than an outlet, either 120 volt or 240 volt here in Yankee Land. A 240 volt outlet equivalent to the one required for a typical electric hot water heater or clothes dryer can deliver about seven thousand watts continuously…. that’s over fifty kWh over eight hours, say ten pm until six am. Hardly anybody will need more than that to do do all his driving the following day.
And it won’t even have to be a SMART outlet. The car itself will be programmable to turn on the juice at the best time to get any off peak pricing.
Plenty of used Volts around for $12-15k. Mileage under 50,000. Electric range is 36-42 miles Winter to Summer. Good enough for most folk’s commute.
Once there were no gas stations but now there are many. Many of those will start to change with an added incentive of a tacked on convenience store for a quick recharge of coffee at the same time.
NAOM
Fastned EV Chargers | Fully Charged
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-7iu6ZeGuE&t=3s
Needs coffee and buns 🙂
NAOM
I can see the headlines now … “National Obesity Epidemic Gets Worse With All the Pastries Consumed During the Recharge.”
We are confronted with what amounts to a multidimensional game of chess, where the stakes are: the survival of the ecosphere, our entire civilization and ultimately our species itself.
So far the response of our leaders to this challenge, has not even risen to the level of mastering a 2 dimensional game of checkers, they seem to be content with patting themselves on the back for beating a mentally challenged strawman opponent, at an infantile game of tic tac toe!
Either we somehow achieve radical change now, or we can all kiss our asses goodbye!
Hi Fred,
Do you really mean it when you say ALL of us? I strongly suspect that you are simply employing a bit of hyperbole, or as advertising people call it, harmless puffery and exaggeration.
I’m very hopeful that some people will pull thru the baked in crash.
In the meantime, the old fossil fuel industry dikes are leaking like sieves in a lot of places now.
https://electrek.co/2019/04/10/tesla-powered-vw-bug-electric-conversion/
I wonder how long it will be before somebody like me can buy a kit to convert an older pickup truck , at a price that actually makes it feasible from the point of view of a person who doesn’t have a lot of ready money.
Five thousand I would jump on, fifteen, no dice.
Do you really mean it when you say ALL of us? I strongly suspect that you are simply employing a bit of hyperbole, or as advertising people call it, harmless puffery and exaggeration.
Ok, what’s say 10% of 8 billion?
That many may survive in pockets around the world if our global agriculture starts to fail on a grand scale. It is looking more and more likely that such an event could indeed occur. Optimal temperature curves shifting to the right, catastrophic floods and droughts, ecosystem services severely impacted by massive insect dieoffs, fisheries and marine ecosystems impacted by ocean acidification and temperature rise and shallow water anoxic conditions. Mountain Glaciers drying up. Sea level rise making coastal cities all over the world uninhabitable due to melting of Greenland and Antarctic glaciers. Major oceanic and atmospheric currents such as the AMOC and the Jet Stream being disrupted and multiple tipping points being passed and setting off feedback mechanisms such as methane being released from melting permafrost. etc…
Yeah, I guess if one has not been keeping up with even a small portion of the current scientific literature one might call all of the above hyperbole, harmless puffery and exaggeration. But they would be wrong!
So if you were a betting man, OFM, what would you estimate are the odds for survivability of the average human being?
Permafrost levels of Viking burial grounds in Greenland prove a warmer climate there around 900 years ago. Ancient Roman sea ports and docks indicate the seas were around 24 inches higher back then. From such, we deduce that man can control his destiny, but not the world’s climate.
Hi Larry,
Actual evidence shows a drop in sea level of 130 mm since Roman times. That is -.065 mm per year. This has reversed in the past 150 years and is now rising at 2 mm per year (30 times faster).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X04003516
One would expect a slow drop in sea level as the glaciers and ice caps resumed growth. That has ended and reversed.
I will let you figure out the Greenland “green” on your own. Hint: Look up Medieval Warm Period.
Or we could deduce that it may be unwise to introduce additional forcings into an unstable system.
Larry Butler, GoneFishing,
Roman ports and docks on the coast of Italy are in a highly seismic area. There are stone columns in buildings there near Ostia, the main port for Rome, that have holes in them that were bored by shipworms (marine clams), showing that the land had been submerged below sea level for quite some time after the buildings were built there and then lifted back above sea level. We’d see similar evidence along the whole coast of the Mediterranean if the cause were elevated sea level but we don’t.
We do have plenty of evidence for the seismicity in the form of Vesuvius, Etna, Stromboli, and the island Volcano off the coast of Sicily. These are subduction-related volcanoes, as are the volcanic chains of the Andes, the Cascades, and the Aleutians, all of which are in notably earthquake-prone settings around the Pacific. In western Eurasia the corresponding setting stretches from the south of France where volcanic necks left from eroded-away volcanoes often have castles on them, all the way east past Thera to Mt. Ararat.
Yes, local changes in sea level height can come from a number of factors, isostatic adjustment, landslides, deposition and erosion, changes in ocean currents, gravitational changes, and as you bring forward, seismic shifts.
I think we can all agree that the changes of late are generally global and caused by warming of water and melting of ice.
The big question is how much and how fast?
and how much acceleration?
NAOM
Saw a sign today at the entrance to a restaurant. A very well designed and permanent sign that all customers had to walk by twice.
“God Bless Electricity” was the lead sentence.
A new religion of the electron?
Another of our local butchers has put up a PV array, 48 panels worth. The guys who are using a lot of refrigeration are grokking it. Free shade for the flats above the butcher, should make their lives cooler.
NAOM
George Carlin – Saving the Planet, Plastic, The Big Electron
At 6:35
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqaEE9vzV2M
“God Bless Electricity” was the lead sentence.
Followed by: The Devil is in the Details? 😉
How Big Business Is Hedging Against the Apocalypse
By Jesse Barron
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/11/magazine/climate-change-exxon-renewable-energy.html
Unlike almost every other future event, climate change is 100 percent certain to happen. What we don’t know is everything else: where, or how, or when, or what the changes mean for Facebook or Pfizer or notes of Chinese-government debt. Navigating these thickets of complexity is theoretically what Wall Street excels at; the industry prides itself on its ability to price risk for the whole economy, to determine companies’ values based on their likelihood of generating earnings. But traders are compensated on their quarterly or yearly performance, not on their distant foresight. It takes confidence to walk into your boss’s office talking about sea levels in Mozambique in 2030, when your colleague has a reason to short-sell the Turkish lira this week. Practically no one in the financial system is directly incentivized in the near term to worry about the biggest risk conceivable.
The simplest response is to keep investing in companies that, like Exxon, conduct their business as usual while adapting where they can. Another response is to forget about the immediate term and go long on more sustainable bets.
Other strategies display more cleverness. Electric vehicles and green power grids require, for their batteries, valuable minerals and metals. Spot prices for nickel and cobalt fluctuate by double-digit percentages on commodities exchanges, while investors eye shares in lithium mines. Anticipating future food crises, strategists at Merrill Lynch advise clients to snap up vertical farms and “smart hydroponics”; anticipating water shortages, they also recommend investing in Chinese wastewater-recycling businesses.
As the earth becomes hotter, the air becomes less dense. In June 2017 in Phoenix, airlines grounded multiple jets because their wings couldn’t achieve lift in the 119-degree heat. Assuming more 119-degree days, aerospace companies like MTU Aero Engines and Rolls-Royce are “lightweighting” some of their machines to adapt. In Australia, an agribusiness conglomerate waits for family farms to fold for lack of rainfall, then considers buying their land at a discount. With drought conditions, the chief executive told The Australian Financial Review last year, “we are seeing more opportunities than would have been there normally.” A real estate manager in Dallas told a Bloomberg reporter that he purchased hotels right before Hurricane Harvey to take advantage of the need for short-term housing, and made a 25 to 30 percent return. The Harvard endowment has bought up vineyards in California, acquiring their water rights in the midst of a long drought.
By the middle of the century, the climate of the Southeastern United States will most likely be tropical, no longer ideal for peach trees but perfect for the Aedes aegypti species of disease-bearing mosquito. In response, some investors are going long on firms conducting clinical trials for dengue and Zika vaccines: One asset manager told me he knew of multiple “Zika strategies.” Pharmaceutical companies foresee robust demand for antimalarials, products typically confined to poor countries; they can look forward to a market in the rich parts of the globe. In Miami, where the expensive neighborhoods lie low near the water, there may be a wave of “widespread relocations,” researchers warn, as the flight from the coast serves to “gentrify higher-elevation communities” like Little Haiti. One study warns that speculators may already be “hedging on South Florida’s gradual exodus” to the central and northern parts of the state. In Greenland, mining companies buy previously useless land rights in order to extract the minerals that melting ice will shortly expose. In addition to uranium and molybdenum — a silvery metal used in steel alloys — the miners expect to find rich reserves of oil, which they fully expect to burn.
Good examples of the kind of disruptions that are pending.
Dunno about 5K but sooner or later I think even that will be doable. For now you’d have to work hard to get in under 10K. Speaking for myself I’m a bit frustrated because I hang out with a couple of grease monkey buddies and mechanics who have a fully equipped shop with all the necessary tools, lifts, presses, welding equipment, dyno, you name it they have it and I’ve been bugging them to start doing some EV conversions. They do restorations on classic cars and work on race cars for a couple professional teams. Sometimes I even get my hands dirty there though I usually do trouble shooting and computer diagnostics… 😉
But hey Check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4CPBHj0UQk
The Garage Converting Classic Cars to Electric Vehicles | Freethink DIY Science
http://www.evtv.me.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/vidarch.html
EVTV Motor Werks – Archive of Past Episodes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zOeBYIeAkg
356 Porsche Speedster Electric Car Build – EVoutpost
Trust me I’ve, been looking for cheap conversion options myself! I might even go so far as to make a new career out of it.
“Electric has gone Audi”
Great one minute ad for Audi’s new e-tron SUV (it’s not for you) :
https://youtu.be/5lloWmgHj6Y
Iran has some issues—-
https://desdemonadespair.net/2019/04/iran-expands-flood-warnings-tens-of-thousands-evacuate-after-record-floods-kill-at-least-70-people-iran-is-under-water.html
Golestan received 70% of its annual rainfall in just one day in mid-March.
I’m sure that the self proclaimed anthropogenically induced climate change skeptics, will tell us that the climate has always changed and that floods like this one, or the recent flooding in the US mid west, and dozens of other ones, all over the world, are just weather that can’t be attributed to climate change.
Unfortunately they are dead wrong!
Fred, catastrophic floods are often described as being “biblical” in size.
(Genesis 6:14–16): the ark is to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.
Good luck with that. Dave!
As Bill Cosby said:”What’s a cubit?”
Thousands of years of poor land management are hard to reverse. The should start by building a few million check dams. Every dry wash in the province needs a low dam every kilometer or so.
The horrific incident of the 5 year old boy being thrown off the balcony in the Mall of America today (Saturday, April 13) is providing a real time unfolding of how the Main Stream Media is being completely exposed for the untruthful fraud that it is, alongside the public now both disseminating and learning of actual truth.
To wit …
Reuters just tweeted out the headline “Man Arrested after boy falls from balcony …”.
The ferocious backlash from virtually ALL of the hundreds of immediate comments called out that being thrown off a balcony is NOT the same as falling.
Furthermore, it is being both sleuthed and reported that the mother fucker’s real name is not Emmanuel Aranda but Abdised Mohamed, a Somali ‘refugee’.
The Great Awakening continues apace in both the US and the world.
For people to continue to ignore the massive deceptions so long perpetrated by established entities is to shun basic civic responsibilities.
The rapidly growing legions of people – whatever their political/social/economic inclinations – are starting to see how corrupt once trusted institutions truly are.
What is this? What massive deceptions? What “established entities” are you talking about? What Great Awakening? What rapidly growing legions of people? And what “once trusted institutions” are you talking about?
This whole post has Fox News, Hate Radio, Donald Trump stink all over it. What’s your agenda Coffeeguyzz?
The most corrupt, once trusted institution?! Would that be the current POTUS by any chance.
And what Ron said!
Coffee- I don’t know what you are smoking, but its making you sound deranged.
You sure didn’t get all up in arms publicly a few months ago when some guy stabbed a random girl at the train station and she bleed to death [he white, she black], just a about 5 miles from where I live.
Where was your outrage then?
What did your favorite media have to say about it?
Even a single word?
Also, the very first line of that Reuters post say the boy was thrown or pushed off the third floor. Maybe try to get beyond the soundbite level of news intake. You might sound less like Trump, the idiot.
You’re a fruitcake. “Ignore.”
While ‘Fruitcakes’ can be safely ignored people spouting ultra nationalist fascist propaganda cannot!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aERXL6ZQKFE
The Politics of Responsibility: a Response to the Crisis of Democracy (Prof. Dr. Timothy Snyder)
Inequality, populism and terrorism are omnipresent. What should be done? At the opening of the 23rd Karlsruhe Dialogues “The Responsibility Society: Between Challenge and Overload” discusses Prof. Dr. Timothy Snyder (Richard C. Levin Professor of History, Yale University and Permanent Fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences IWM) on “Responsibility Policy: An Answer to the Democracy Crisis”.
Sounds like coffeeguyzz is into QAnon
The crowd-sourced, social media swarm that is betting Tesla will crash and burn
By Russ Mitchell
https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-short-sellers-musk-20190408-story.html
It’s a sunny day in March and “Machine Planet” is flying a single-engine Cessna over Northern California. He’s cruising at 1,500 feet toward a massive lot leased by electric-car maker Tesla. His mission: to burst the Tesla bubble. And make some money doing it.
What he sees today makes his eyes widen: more than 100 car-carrier trailers, the kind you see on highways hauling new cars to dealers. They’re lined up in neat rows. Empty. Idle.
“Ten days left in the quarter, and they’re just sitting there,” said Machine Planet, peering down at the remote landscape outside Lathrop. Tesla bought those trailers to aid what Chief Executive Elon Musk said will be an unprecedented wave of new car deliveries in March. But to Machine Planet — that’s the name he uses on Twitter — the scene just confirms his suspicions that there are lots all around the U.S. filled with unsold Tesla cars. (He and others claim to have counted 52.)
If you spend any time on the Twitter hashtag $TslaQ, you know what this means to Tesla short sellers. They believe the lots full of new Model 3s — and Models S and X vehicles, too — show Tesla has reached a cliff in demand for its vehicles. When the rest of the world finally admits the company’s days as a fast-growth story are numbered, they say, its stock price will crash, creating a bonanza for investors who, like Machine Planet, have bet big that Tesla’s shares are grossly overvalued.
In April 2018, laid up after surgery, he listened to a lively conversation about the short case on the irreverent financial markets podcast Quoth the Raven.
“I found there was this whole community of people studying this company. I got sucked in completely over the next two months.”
He started shorting.
He had nothing against Musk at the time. “It was purely financial. My opinion of Musk was very neutral,” he said. “The double landing of SpaceX rockets? I was impressed as anybody else.”
But he noticed car-buyer demand was a big topic on $TslaQ. Contributors posted Google satellite shots of lots in remote locations, far from the company’s Fremont factory, where cars were being stored.
One spot was in Lathrop, not far from Stockton, in an unirrigated section of the Central Valley known as the “dust bowl.” A couple of $TslaQ contributors had spotted an ad for Tesla jobs there. They found what seemed like hundreds or thousands of Model 3s being trucked into a lot through a gate and behind fences. But they couldn’t get a good look inside.
“So I flew to Lathrop,” Machine Planet said. “There was this amazing moment when I realized the entire facility was packed with cars.” More than 3,000, he said.
“That was entirely the moment where we went from kind of believing Elon about demand and not being able to build enough cars to [finding evidence that] the cars are either not sold or not salable.”
I’ll believe Tesla has built more cars than the company can sell when I see big full page ads in the paper bragging about how much the local Tesla dealer is discounting the price, lol.
People are going to believe whatever they WANT to believe, whatever suits their personal set of prejudices and family/ clan/ tribal/ national loyalties.
I have known this since I was a very young man, as the result of reading lots of classic literature. The authors of the great books written a hundred, two hundred years, a thousand years ago, understood this as clearly as the sight of the sun on a clear day at high noon.
The social science establishment is finally getting around to actually accepting it, although the research proving it has been around for half a century or longer now.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds?utm_source=pocket-newtab
“Stripped of a lot of what might be called cognitive-science-ese, Mercier and Sperber’s argument runs, more or less, as follows: Humans’ biggest advantage over other species is our ability to coöperate. Coöperation is difficult to establish and almost as difficult to sustain. For any individual, freeloading is always the best course of action. Reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or even to help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data; rather, it developed to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.
“Reason is an adaptation to the hypersocial niche humans have evolved for themselves,” Mercier and Sperber write. Habits of mind that seem weird or goofy or just plain dumb from an “intellectualist” point of view prove shrewd when seen from a social “interactionist” perspective.
Pogo got it right, we have met the enemy, and they is us.
Twain got it right. Ain’t we got all the fools in town on our side, and ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?
“If reason is designed to generate sound judgments, then it’s hard to conceive of a more serious design flaw than confirmation bias. Imagine, Mercier and Sperber suggest, a mouse that thinks the way we do. Such a mouse, “bent on confirming its belief that there are no cats around,” would soon be dinner. To the extent that confirmation bias leads people to dismiss evidence of new or underappreciated threats—the human equivalent of the cat around the corner—it’s a trait that should have been selected against. The fact that both we and it survive, Mercier and Sperber argue, proves that it must have some adaptive function, and that function, they maintain, is related to our “hypersociability.”
Mercier and Sperber prefer the term “myside bias.” Humans, they point out, aren’t randomly credulous. Presented with someone else’s argument, we’re quite adept at spotting the weaknesses. Almost invariably, the positions we’re blind about are our own.”
It’s all about us and them, our friends , our families, our tribes, our religion, our culture, our nation, versus THEM, THEIR friends, THEIR families, THEIR tribes, THEIR religion, THEIR culture, THEIR nation.
This is why you can’t reason with a Christian about matters touching on his religion, why you can’t convince a Trump follower that Trump is a grossly incompetent scumbag, why people who believe a woman who wants an abortion should have one are not only unable but actually UNWILLING to understand that many tens of millions of people actually do believe that abortion is murder.
I don’t even pretend to know the solutions to our current cultural problems, other than that time will solve most of them, one way or another, in ways that put some of us in cultural heaven and some of us in cultural hell.
Better education is an enormous help, but anybody who thinks education can change things swiftly, in human time frames, still doesn’t quite get it. It takes two or three generations for education to really do its work, to ACCOMPLISH the job, because the oldest generation will never abandon its beliefs, and the middle generation will only modify its own beliefs to the extent it’s forced to do so by bricks upside its collective head. The younger generation must become the middle/ older generation in order to finally effect change at the grand scale.
I read people like this all over the web trying to talk down Tesla, SpaceX and anything Musk. They usually negatively exaggerate most everything they say. No telling who they all are, but the usual suspects would be anyone whose living depends on the current ICE culture combined with those trying to make a buck shorting the stock.
Technology Is Easy; Ethics Is Hard
And then there appear others who, in ‘defense’ of the likes of Tesla et al, like to bung, like square pegs into round holes, those who might question them and/or other so-called technologies (elite-derived for example) into neat little categories, oh, like people whose living depends on ‘current ICE culture’.
I’m not even sure how trash-talking Space X would even have to do with a lifestyle dependent on ‘ICE culture’, unless we are all supposed to someday soon all have our own personal spaceships? Oh, wait, isn’t that sort of what has been ‘promised’ already?
And don’t forget the Hyperloop. (tragic-sounding pseudo-LOL)
I have a hard time seeing how truly getting our acts together on the only planetary home we have has much to do with electric vehicles, space rockets or underground speed-tunnels for electric cars– or even much so-called technology in general, unless we are talking about learning how to life in harmony on this planet. Then we’re talking.
The ICE culture types are definitely involved because SpaceX is Musk and Musk is fairly universally dis-liked by many of them. Not all, of course. But Musk has gored so many sacred cows that his enemies are many and powerful. Need I name them?
Your goals of “learning how to live life in harmony” are only possible with the electric revolution we are undergoing. With climate change and the destruction of the animal and plant kingdoms, it is a long shot but regardless Musk is doing orders of magnitude more than the hand wavers in the past have done. His greatest accomplishment may well be the others that he has inspired or forced to be inspired.
Big money like Musk has the power to do whatever they want just by spinning it to be in the public’s best interest. The hope is by election Day, they can flip enough voters to support the agenda.
Tesla solar production twice its EV charging, claims huge emissions savings
In the company’s first “impact report” released overnight, Tesla says more than 10 billion miles (16 billion kilometres) have been driven by its fleet, while supercharging network has produced more than 595 gigawatt- hours (GWhs) of energy, saving the equivalent of over 75 million gallons of gasoline.
Tesla Energy has installed over 3.5GW of solar installations, which have cumulatively generated more than 13 terawatt- hours (TWhs) of 100% clean, emissions-free electricity, more than twice the 5.26TWhy consumed by all the Models 3, X and S.
Over their expected 35-year life of the solar installations, the solar will likely generate 86.5TWh of energy. That’s about enough to power most of Australia’s main grid for six months.
“We believe the faster the world stops relying on fossil fuels and moves towards a zero-emissions future, the better,” the company says in its statement.
“Tesla’s products offer a complete solution – sustainable generation, storage and usage – all capable of being powered by the sun. We envision a world powered by solar energy, running on batteries and transported by all-electric cars.
“This issue (rising emissions) is Tesla’s entire reason for existing. We are focused on creating a complete power and transportation ecosystem from solar generation and energy storage to all-electric vehicles.”
Just in case anyone has any doubts about what Musk’s ultimate goals are. Unlike some other folks he is actually trying to make a difference in a significant way. So far I’d say he’s making a good go of it!
The Curious Case of Non-Renewable Renewables
That’s patently ridiculous, Songster.
I mean, explain that to the rest of the animals on the planet that don’t need an electric ‘revolution’– and crony-capitalist-derived– in order to live in harmony with nature.
Some seem to keep wanting to spin this false dichotomy between either fossil fuels or non-renewable renewables, and in/via the current (crony-capitalist plutarchy) status-quo context.
Not so good news
This one is for Fred Maygar in particular.
I poached it right out from under his nose, his own home turf, to post it here FIRST, lol.
It’s a long read, but a very enjoyable one.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/lionfish-invaded-army-divers-chefs-fighting-back-180968999/
Oh yeah, I’ve personally seen small ones on my local reefs. The problem is that the big breeders are down on the deeper reefs just a bit too deep for the average weekend warrior spear fisherman. The good news is that I’ve also seen this fish for sale at some local fish mongers and even a local supermarket. And they are good eating, I know because I’ve tried them myself.
BTW in their native habitat these fish do have natural predators such as grouper and sharks so there is some hope that our native groupers and sharks will eventually learn to eat them and start to even out the score. There is an ongoing effort to teach local predators to recognize them as prey.
I still see ocean acidification as a much bigger threat to our marine environment and reefs!
Cheers!
They actually taste quite good—- (we ate them in Guam)
But be careful.
Yep, it’s OK to keep pouring oil, chemical products and agricultural runoff into the ocean. It’s OK to trawl the ocean bottoms into dead zones.
But don’t be a living creature that might reduce sport fishing. Nope, those two legged monsters will kill you as fast as possible.
But don’t be a living creature that might reduce sport fishing.
That is a rather unfair characterization of the havoc these voracious invasive predators are causing populations of native species and consequently harming the entire reef ecosystem.
It’s not just about an inconvenience to the recreational fishing industry.
Since these fish don’t get to be very large, and from the looks of them, don’t produce much in the way of salable flesh, I’m wondering how much they are NECESSARILY going to sell for, at retail, in order for people to go after them commercially.
It’s obvious enough that there aren’t enough of them to net them like cod, etc. or catch them in quantity from party boats, with anywhere from five or six to fifty or more customers on board putting hooks is the water.
Don’t know much about boats and the open sea, but I doubt you can go out on the open water paying for a sports fishing boat and associated expenses and a couple of people to run it for less than five or six hundred bucks a day, and cheap at that. A thousand is probably more like it, especially if you go out a long way.
If you take four sports fishermen or divers, and they catch only a couple of hundred pounds of fish total …….. there’s almost no hope of their actually recovering their expenses for the day unless the fish on ice bring at least three or four dollars a pound……..
Since these fish don’t get to be very large, and from the looks of them, don’t produce much in the way of salable flesh,
They actually get to be about an average length of 15″ and weigh a good pound and a half. 2 lbs not unheard of. They go for over $9.00 a lb on average since they are a premium white fish meat. They are quite tasty!
https://civileats.com/2019/01/02/floridians-answer-to-invasive-lionfish-if-you-cant-beat-em-eat-em/
Haven’t seen any around here or I’d plan some hunting this summer. Do they cut the spines off for sale? One note about ceviche, don’t risk it around here. They use a lot of reef fish and those can have Ciguatera poison.
NAOM
They use a lot of reef fish and those can have Ciguatera poison.
Back in the day, Ciguatera poisoning was the topic of my Dive Master dissertation.
By ” voracious invasive predators ” you are speaking about humans, correct?
Only the one’s that don’t belong to my immediate tribe 😉
Esteemed FredM,
Indeed the Magyar are known to have brought only sweetness and light to wherever they arrived on their travels.
As did their relatives the Huns, earlier, and we shouldn’t forget the Pechenegs and of course the Seljuk, and then the Ottomans after Genghis and his merry men came by to say hello…but they were all of different tribes, of course.
The finest cuisines on the planet are to be numbered among their gifts; those folks know how to set a table.
Time for more Port.
Indeed the Magyar are known to have brought only sweetness and light to wherever they arrived on their travels.
As did their relatives the Huns…
Ah! This is an unsettled debate to this day, There are many different schools of thought but the Huns and the Magyars are not all that closely related and descend from different tribes. My surname notwithstanding, while the Magyars were a fierce nomadic people they had a highly developed culture and were very skilled artisans and craftsmen. They were known far and wide for their horsemanship, bravery and for being fair and just with both friend and foe! Perhaps ‘sweetness’ wasn’t exactly their forté… 😉
http://hungarianhistory.freeservers.com/magyars.html
Orientalist Theory
Scholars known as orientalists believe that the origin of Magyars and their language is not found in the Urals, but in Central Asia known as the Turanian Plain or Soviet Turkestan which stretches from the Caspian Sea eastward to Lake Balchas. Ancient history has traditionally called this region Scythia. Folklore holds that the Magyars are related to the Scythians who built the great empire of the 5th century B.C. After the Scythian empire dissolved, the Turanian Plain witnessed the rise and fall of empires built between the first and ninth centuries A.D. by the Huns, Avars, Khazars and various Turkic peoples, including the Uygurs. The Magyars subsequently absorbed much of the culture and tradition of these peoples and many Onogur, Sabir, Turkic, and Ugrian people were assimilated with the Magyars, resulting in the Magyar amalgam, which entered the Carpathian Basin in the later half of the ninth century A.D.
Scholars of Far Eastern history believe that the Magyars were also exposed to the Sumerian culture in the Turanian Plain. Linguists of the 19th century, including Henry C. Rawlinson, Jules Oppert, Eduard Sayous and Francois Lenormant found that knowledge of the Ural-Altaic languages such as Magyar, helps to decipher Sumerian writings. Cunei form writing was found to be used by the Magyars long before they entered the Carpathian Basin. The similarity of the two languages has led orientalists to form a Sumerian-Hungarian connection. The orientalists speculate that a reverse of the Finno-Ugrian theory may be possible. The theory holds that if the proto-Magyars were neighbors of the proto-Sumerians in the Turanian Plain, then the evolution of the Hungarian language must have been a result of Sumerian rather than Finno-Ugrian influences. The theory in turn holds that rather than being the recipients of a Finno-Ugrian language, it was the Magyars who imparted their language to the Finns and Estonians without being ethnically related to them. What scholars site for added evidence for this theory is the fact that the Magyars have always been numerically stronger than their Finno-Ugrian neighbors combined. The theory believes that the Finns and Ugors received linguistic strains from a Magyar branch who had broken away from the main body on the Turanian Plan, and migrated to West Siberia.
Of course Modern day Hungarians are more a result of a multinational melting pot.
E FredM,
You need not concern yourself with the speculations (their number is legion) about a connection between Sumerian and Hungarian. Szilard was right about the Hungarians.
No-one has spoken up so authoritatively about the Sumerians yet, that I know of, nor of the Elamites their neighbors. Room for more Gish gallops here!
I was intrigued by the use of the name “Turanian.” I urge you to look into the works of the noted scholar Robert E Howard, where you may rejoice among histories of Turanians, Picts, Hyborians, and many others. It is a sad loss to Broad-brush linguistic theorizing among Hungarian linguists of the 19th Century that they had no chance to read his books.
E Synapsid,
I was intrigued by the use of the name “Turanian.” I urge you to look into the works of the noted scholar Robert E Howard,
I shall do that, thank you!
BTW, I like him already:
The oil boom in Texas was “one of the most powerful influences on [Howard’s] life and art”, albeit one that he hated. Howard grew to despise the oil industry along with everyone and everything associated with it. The oil boom heavily influenced Howard’s view of civilization as a constant cycle of boom and bust in the same manner as the oil industry in contemporary Texas. A town such as Cross Plains was built by pioneers. The boom brought civilization in the form of people and investment but also social breakdown. The oil people contributed little or nothing to the town in the long term and eventually left for the next oil field. This led Howard to see civilization as corrupting and society as a whole in decay
Source Wikipedia
E Fred M,
A preparatory note:
Robert E Howard is the creator of Conan the Barbarian.
LOL! Yes, I found that out pretty quickly!
FYI! The Magyars were many things, barbarian was not one of them!
Millions of pigs are being culled in China. Hundreds of millions, I think, but the article isn’t too clear.
https://www.bloomberg.com//news/articles/2019-04-11/hog-apocalypse-in-china-leaves-farmers-fortifying-pigsties
In January it was only 900,000.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-swinefever/china-has-culled-more-than-900000-pigs-due-to-african-swine-fever-idUSKCN1P90I1
But Bloomberg says the pig population is expected to drop 40%, and there were nearly 500m pigs in China in 2014.
If they can’t get a handle on it, this outbreak could easily wipe out half the hog farmers in China.
But I don’t know anything about how well they are organized to prevent it from spreading. Just one person visiting a farm with an outbreak can result in a new outbreak hundreds of miles away.
This is the sort of thing that sleeper agents of a foreign power or political movement could make happen for the purpose of weakening an enemy, but I am not suggesting that such is the case. I’m just pointing out how easy it would be to arrange such an economic disaster, if the bad guys are reasonably competent.
A different take on climate change. There are more links at the bottom of the page if yoyTL;DR it.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/10/magazine/climate-change-pinkertons.html
NAOM
Could be interesting.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/extinction-rebellion-protesters-set-up-camp-in-hyde-park-ahead-of-protests-across-london-a4117806.html
Environmental protesters begun action to bring London grinding to a halt today, blocking a major bridge in central London with trees as they embarked on action in cities around the world in a fight against climate change.
Members of Extinction Rebellion had trees delivered and blocked Waterloo Bridge with trucks as they mounted their protest today.
They wrote online: “We have taken Waterloo Bridge!”
The activists, who have set up camp in Hyde Park, pledged to block five central locations including Parliament Square in a non-violent act of resistance and rebellion that campaigners say could go on for weeks.
See also research done by: Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan.
https://www.ericachenoweth.com/research/wcrw
Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan. Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, August 2011).
Though it defies consensus, between 1900 and 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts. Attracting impressive support from citizens that helps separate regimes from their main sources of power, these campaigns have produced remarkable results, even in the contexts of Iran, the Palestinian Territories, the Philippines, and Burma.
Combining statistical analysis with case studies of these specific countries and territories, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan detail the factors enabling such campaigns to succeed-and, at times, causing them to fail. They find that nonviolent resistance presents fewer obstacles to moral and physical involvement, information and education, and participator commitment. Higher levels of participation then contribute to enhanced resilience, a greater probability of tactical innovation, increased opportunity for civic disruption (and therefore less incentive for the regime to maintain the status quo), and shifts in loyalty among opponents’ erstwhile supporters, including members of the military establishment. They find successful nonviolent resistance movements usher in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war. Presenting a rich, evidentiary argument, this book originally and systematically compares violent and nonviolent outcomes in different historical periods and geographical contexts, debunking the myth that violence occurs because of structural and environmental factors and is necessary to achieve certain political goals. Instead, Chenoweth and Stephan find violent insurgency is rarely justifiable on strategic grounds.
Some of my comments/quotes on the issue from Culture Change:
Even MSM is starting to get the message:
Venezuela’s military, despite U.S. expectations, has not turned on Maduro
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/venezuelas-military-despite-us-expectations-has-not-turned-on-maduro/2019/04/13/bd0928de-5d2b-11e9-9625-01d48d50ef75_story.html?utm_term=.48a9949807f9
A bit more needs to realized, but this is a start.
This just in at reneweconomy.com.au:
Solar dominated renewable energy world possible by 2050, and cheaper
A global energy system – including heat and transport – that is 90 per cent renewables and dominated by solar, is not only possible by 2050 – it will also be cheaper.
A 4-year study from Finnish-based LUT University and the German-based Energy Watch Group looked at how to meet the 1.5°C target of the Paris climate treaty, and found that the most effective, quickest and cheapest means was to switch just about everything to electricity, and power it with solar and other renewable energy technologies.
“A global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport, and desalination before 2050 is feasible,” the study concludes. In fact, the authors say, it could be done quicker than that.
“Existing renewable energy potential and technologies, including storage, is capable of generating a secure energy supply at every hour throughout the year.
“The sustainable energy system is more efficient and cost-effective than the existing system, which is based primarily on fossil fuels and nuclear. A global renewable transition is the only sustainable option for the energy sector, and is compatible with the internationally adopted Paris Agreement.
“The energy transition is not a question of technical feasibility or economic viability, but one of political will.”
The first sentence is what Nick G has been saying like, forever.
First sentence says ‘possible by 2050’. By my recollection Nick has been saying ‘possible now’ for quite some time.
Surv- exactly.
It ain’t going to happen ‘now’, but we better try to push for that goal far before 2050.
“It ain’t going to happen ‘now’”
The fact is Nick has been right all along. The two of you are only arguing the semantics of the word “now”. Anybody with a little common sense on the subject would understand “now” in Nick’s posts doesn’t mean 2019 or 2020 or even 10 years from now. Your understanding of Nick’s posts is just a sign of your own ignorance on the subject at hand. This is a process of replacing major infrastructure that was designed to last 30 to 50 years.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/eias-electric-power-monthly-march-2019-edition-with-data-for-january-2019/#comment-673889
Thanks Island for posting the link. Great source of information.
KEY FINDINGS from your link
“A global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and desalination before 2050 is feasible1. Existing renewable energy potential and technologies, including storage, is capable of generating a secure energy supply at every hour throughout the year. The sustainable energy system is more efficient and cost effective than the existing system, which is based primarily on fossil fuels and nuclear. A global renewable transition is the only sustainable option for the energy sector, and is compatible with the internationally adopted Paris Agreement. The energy transition is not a question of technical feasibility or economic viability, but one of political will.
The state-of-the-art scientific modelling of the “Global Energy System based on 100% Renewable Energy – Power, Heat, Transport and Desalination Sectors” study simulates a transition to 100% renewable energy of the entire world, structured in nine major regions and 145 sub-regions on an hourly resolution of 5-year time periods from 2015 until 2050. The modelling computes the cost-optimal mix of technologies, based on locally available renewable energy sources.
By 2050, the world’s population is expected to grow from 7.2 billion in 2015 to 9.7 billion. Final energy demand is expected to grow by about 1.8% annually, driven by energy services for higher level of living standard, and is accompanied by massive energy efficiency gains.”
Repeat because of importance –
” The energy transition is not a question of technical feasibility or economic viability, but one of political will”
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/now
NOW, ” The energy transition is not a question of technical feasibility or economic viability, but one of political will”
Now how is your Trump coal doing for your survival?
“Anybody with a little common sense on the subject would understand “now” in Nick’s posts doesn’t mean 2019 or 2020 or even 10 years from now.” ~ HB
Only in the world of HB and Nick, and perhaps that of Javier’s too, would the definition of the word “now” be gilded with such pedantic sophistry.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/now
Ah, but I never said it was possible to implement it “now” (not that I remember, anyway). I believe it rarely occurred to me that anyone would think that I meant literally overnight Or…at least…that’s what I was trying to say. Perhaps I FUBARed it. hmmm.
I remember a few oily guys who objected that a transition away from FF couldn’t be done overnight. I agreed, but said…the tech was available now, and we could and should do it ASAP. Somehow that didn’t make them happy.
Jeez. We’re not writing books here, we’re writing relatively short comments. If you thought that a comment of mine was unrealistic because of the timeframe, you could just say so and I would have clarified it.
So…are we clear now??
Huntington beach-
“Your understanding of Nick’s posts is just a sign of your own ignorance on the subject at hand. ”
Thats pure bullshit. We are just being real. Real world.
For example- we arn’t about to just do away with fossil fuel in agriculture anytime soon. Really. No matter how much Nick has tried to say it.
I’m not into cheerleading. It doesn’t teach me anything, or inspire me at all.
And, I’ve always said that ag was one of the hardest spots, along with aviation.
Now, in the medium to long run it won’t be that hard. If nothing else we’ll be able to use cheap surplus renewable power to create synthetic liquid fuel for combines, tractors and planes. It’s perfectly doable with tech that exists now, but everyone persists in assuming that liquid fuel has to come from fossils.
Now…if you disagree, just say so and explain specifically what you disagree with. I’ll clarify, and we can make some actual progress in the conversation, instead of just grumping at each other.
More news to continue the discussion about whether plastic bag bans are really doing anything useful.
Are Plastic Bag Bans Garbage?
Greg Rosalsky
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/09/711181385/are-plastic-bag-bans-garbage
University of Sydney economist Rebecca Taylor started studying bag regulations because it seemed as though every time she moved for a new job — from Washington, D.C., to California to Australia — bag restrictions were implemented shortly after. “Yeah, these policies might be following me,” she jokes. Taylor recently published a study of bag regulations in California. It’s a classic tale of unintended consequences.
Before California banned plastic shopping bags statewide in late 2016, a wave of 139 California cities and counties implemented the policy themselves. Taylor and colleagues compared bag use in cities with bans with those without them. For six months, they spent weekends in grocery stores tallying the types of bags people carried out. She also analyzed these stores’ sales data.
Taylor found these bag bans did what they were supposed to: People in the cities with the bans used fewer plastic bags, which led to about 40 million fewer pounds of plastic trash per year. But people who used to reuse their shopping bags for other purposes, like picking up dog poop or lining trash bins, still needed bags. “What I found was that sales of garbage bags actually skyrocketed after plastic grocery bags were banned,” she says. This was particularly the case for small, 4-gallon bags, which saw a 120 percent increase in sales after bans went into effect.
Trash bags are thick and use more plastic than typical shopping bags. “So about 30 percent of the plastic that was eliminated by the ban comes back in the form of thicker garbage bags,” Taylor says. On top of that, cities that banned plastic bags saw a surge in the use of paper bags, which she estimates resulted in about 80 million pounds of extra paper trash per year.
Plastic haters, it’s time to brace yourselves. A bunch of studies find that paper bags are actually worse for the environment. They require cutting down and processing trees, which involves lots of water, toxic chemicals, fuel and heavy machinery. While paper is biodegradable and avoids some of the problems of plastic, Taylor says, the huge increase of paper, together with the uptick in plastic trash bags, means banning plastic shopping bags increases greenhouse gas emissions.
Yup, we have to put our garbage out in plastic bags. If checkout plastic bags, which are a good size for my rubbish, were banned I would have to buy bags that are larger and more wasteful. The option of once a week or fortnight does not work in the tropics, rubbish needs to go out every 2 or 3 days or it will walk itself out.
NAOM
Trump Says the U.S. Is ‘Full.’ Much of the Nation Has the Opposite Problem.
By Neil Irwin and Emily Badger
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/upshot/trump-america-full-or-emptying.html
President Trump has adopted a blunt new message in recent days for migrants seeking refuge in the United States: “Our country is full.”
To the degree the president is addressing something broader than the recent strains on the asylum-seeking process, the line suggests the nation can’t accommodate higher immigration levels because it is already bursting at the seams. But it runs counter to the consensus among demographers and economists.
They see ample evidence of a country that is not remotely “full” — but one where an aging population and declining birthrates among the native-born population are creating underpopulated cities and towns, vacant housing and troubled public finances.
Local officials in many of those places view a shrinking population and work force as an existential problem with few obvious solutions.
“I believe our biggest threat is our declining labor force,” said Gov. Phil Scott of Vermont, a Republican, in his annual budget address this year. “It’s the root of every problem we face.
“This makes it incredibly difficult for businesses to recruit new employees and expand, harder for communities to grow and leaves fewer of us to cover the cost of state government.”
Or if you look at a city like Detroit, “many of the city’s problems would become less difficult if its population would start growing,” according to Harvard economist Edward Glaeser. “All sorts of things like the hangover pension liability become much more solvable if you’re actually looking at new people coming in.”
America’s metropolitan areas remain among the least dense in the world, said Sonia Hirt, a professor of landscape architecture and planning at the University of Georgia. Nationwide, the United States has less than one-third of the population density of the European Union, and a quarter of the density of China.
“Factually speaking, the country is not actually full — that’s impossible,” Ms. Hirt said. “The real question is, if you continue on the current path of immigration, does this bring more benefits than it brings costs?”
Anybody who actually believes ““I believe our biggest threat is our declining labor force,” said Gov. Phil Scott of Vermont, a Republican, in his annual budget address this year. “It’s the root of every problem we face.
“This makes it incredibly difficult for businesses to recruit new employees and expand, harder for communities to grow and leaves fewer of us to cover the cost of state government.”
IS AN IDIOT.
The biggest problem we have, in terms of jobs, is that we have no work that pays well enough for poorly educated and unskilled workers to earn a respectable living………. BECAUSE we have a huge surplus of such workers, meaning employers can hire them for peanut wages with no benefits.
SUPPLY AND DEMAND IS REAL.
The last thing we need is to allow large numbers of poorly educated unskilled workers into this country.
THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES IS REAL.
IT’S A FACT THAT PEOPLE VOTE ACCORDING TO WHAT THEY BELIEVE.
THE TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE LIKE HALF OF MY RELATIVES ( POORLY EDUCATED, UNEDUCATED, WITH VERY LIMITED SKILLS) WHO FEAR FOR THEIR JOBS HAVE EVERY POSSIBLE REASON TO BELIEVE THAT MORE IMMIGRANTS MEAN MORE MISERY FOR THEM.
THOSE TENS OF MILLIONS, INCLUDING HALF MY RELATIVES, ARE STRONGLY PREDISPOSED TO VOTE FOR TRUMP AND TRUMP TYPE POLITICIANS.
BE FUCKING CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR, BECAUSE YOU MAY GET IT!
HRC lost by a hair for many reasons, such as her arrogance, her email stupidity, her currying of the middle and upper class while figuratively giving the middle finger to the traditional foot soldier core of the party, the working class voters in places such as the last three states that put Trump over the top………. failing to even show up to let them know that they were important to her, that they weren’t being taken for granted.
ENOUGH of them rewarded the snub by voting for Trump.
Bottom line, the liberal/ Democratic party wing is engaging in a nit wit circular firing squad scenario, with various candidates trying to out holy ( I’m holier than thou, you retard, we should open the borders the way they were open a couple of centuries ago ) each other in order to capture an early lead in the primary process.
I love politicians such as AOC, but she will be doing the country a great favor if she backs off somewhat on her rhetoric…… because the Republicans are going to murder the Democrats by cherry picking it in attack ads.
I doubt if she will, to any real extent, as I see it, because she is building her brand, her own following, among young voters of the Sanders sort, NOW, for when she runs for the Senate or governor, and eventually the WH, if the stars line up in her favor. Later on, she will sound more sober, more conventional……. but for now, she may be doing the D’s and the country more harm than good. It’s too early to say for sure.
I love politicians such as AOC, but she will be doing the country a great favor if she backs off somewhat on her rhetoric…… because the Republicans are going to murder the Democrats by cherry picking it in attack ads.
Nah! I strongly disagree! She and others should take a page out of the Extinction Rebellion happening right now in London! Increase the pressure!
Here’s a musical version of that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8qOp4egKnU
Tim Minchin performs music from Matilda The Musical on Today.
Hi Fred,
I agree about the pressure, but in my humble opinion, I simply think it could be applied in a bit more sober sounding tones and words.
The biggest single discrete short explanation for the failure of the liberal, well educated wing of our political system to win so many elections is that the liberal and well educated camp in this country consistently and grossly overestimates the intellectual resources of the social conservative camp.
It’s not STUPIDITY, as such, although many liberals continue to shoot a few more of their own toes off, calling social and cultural conservatives stupid. It’s much more, far more, a lack of the knowledge necessary to come to the same conclusions as the liberal camp, when judging the same question.
AOC, and many another firebrand of the leftish wing, could just slightly alter her WORDS, while leaving her message intact, thereby making it much harder to cherry pick a sentence or two from her speeches, making her look like an idiot or a communist or worse, to a typical lower class Republican voter.
I’m pretty busy right now, but later today I will post another comment illustrating what I’m trying to get at.
1865 — US: President Abraham Lincoln dies, 7:22 am.
WOW! JUST, FUCKING WOW!
.
Lmao!
Yeah, I’m somewhere between doing the same and bawling my eyes out!
Nah, they should have raked the floors.
NAOM
I have been in that cathedral, from what I have heard so far, it is a devastating loss.
As for the current POTUS, every time I’m 100% sure that he has gone as low on the stupidity scale as humanly possible, he somehow manages to go one rung lower still!
Unfucking believable!
Je ne sais pas comment c’est possible!
‘As for the current POTUS, every time I’m 100% sure that he has gone as low on the stupidity scale as humanly possible’
Hey, when knee jerk is all you’ve got, go big with it.
Very long time since I visited it, I recall being very impressed. Once again a restoration has turned into a destruction, there seems to be a lack of oversight on these sorts of projects.
NAOM
Generally speaking I would imagine that a restoration of an 800 year old historical treasure and land mark would be done by highly trained conservators and not by your average Joes. The speculation so far is some accident or equipment malfunction. I’m sure we will know more in the coming days. In any case, a sad day!
Edit: some good news!
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3006295/terrible-fire-breaks-out-paris-historic-notre-dame-cathedral
Firefighters save Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral after massive fire guts roof and burns down spire
Main towers of the building saved after hours-long battle with flames, Paris fire chief Jean-Claude Gallet says
One firefighter injured, no civilian casualties reported
I’ve been there also—
Things are coming apart-
Been there 800 years.
This is a fantastic opportunity to show actual intelligent design in the rebuilding of that structure.
The embedded CO2 and methane are already loose in the atmosphere, now more will be produced to rebuild. Let’s see if the powers that be can show they “so love the world” as to do it correctly.
“that be can show they “so love the world”
Maybe they can install a tiny plaque in memory of the hundreds of tribes who were shown the genocide pathway for declining to convert. I do not understand why people, who are otherwise aware, somehow pretend to ignore the history.
patriarchal, pedophilic organization like the Catholic cult
While that is definitely true, there are probably a lot of highly skilled artisans, and art historians, many of them left leaning atheists who happen to work on these historical treasures. The Notre Dame Cathedral transcends the Catholic Church, Paris, and France. It belongs to all people everywhere in the world!
I’ve been there—
Lets restore it.
I’d be there in a New York minute. I even did some art restoration work and art handling. From what I understand the call has already gone out from Macron to recruit the best artisans in the land and no expense will be spared, so to compete against that skill level would be pretty hard.
Right next to the statues of the burning and hanging “witches”.
This is a fantastic opportunity to show actual intelligent design in the rebuilding of that structure.
What would you suggest?! A carbon fiber reinforced spire and roof support structure?
Conservators working on conserving and restoring an 850 year old Medieval historical architectural icon tend to be rather conservative in the methods and materials they employ.
Would you also like to see the Sistine Chapel ceiling brightened up with acrylic paints?
I think a good roof covering of PV panels and some solar thermal collectors on the walls would do fine. Spray foam insulate the inside. Those towers look like the perfect place to put battery storage for the neighborhood.
EDIT: Forgot, need to change out those old windows for some new high end ones (smaller too).
I think a big pulldown screen for showings of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and other old films. Fix up that organ for background music. Be great for community night.
Sistine Chapel needs work? The Italians can do that work.
There appears to be a lot of deterioration of the stone. It’s especially noticeable on the chimeras, gargoyles, and detail work.
Time and pollution will continue the destructive process, and the heat of the fire may have wreaked some real additional havoc on the stone.
It seems possible that drones with scanning equipment could be used to create digital 3d archives of the entire cathedral, preserving a historical snapshot. Those could then be manipulated to ‘restore’ features back to their original dimensions in the model, and CNC milling used to create replicas, in stone, of any feature as needed.
Such archives should be made of all major historical sites, look what happened to the Buddhas. See my link, below, for information on the deterioration.
NAOM
Seems to have changed a lot over those years
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/apr/16/the-culture-inspired-by-notre-dame-paris
NAOM
The electric car naysayers are going to have to find new reasons to badmouth electric cars and trucks one right after another.
The ” batteries can’t be recycled ” argument is headed to the land fill.
https://electrek.co/2019/04/16/tesla-battery-recycling-system/
For those who want to print shirts etc the Extinction Rebellion logo can be found here:-
http://www.extinctionsymbol.info/
NAOM
Damn! Sounds like we really are all fucked after all! Seems like those worst case scenarios weren’t bad enough! Maybe I should have published my RCP 10.0 scenario graph!
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/new-climate-models-predict-warming-surge
New climate models predict a warming surge
By Paul VoosenApr. 16, 2019 , 3:55 PM
For nearly 40 years, the massive computer models used to simulate global climate have delivered a fairly consistent picture of how fast human carbon emissions might warm the world. But a host of global climate models developed for the United Nations’s next major assessment of global warming, due in 2021, are now showing a puzzling but undeniable trend. They are running hotter than they have in the past. Soon the world could be, too.
In earlier models, doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) over preindustrial levels led models to predict somewhere between 2°C and 4.5°C of warming once the planet came into balance. But in at least eight of the next-generation models, produced by leading centers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and France, that “equilibrium climate sensitivity” has come in at 5°C or warmer. Modelers are struggling to identify which of their refinements explain this heightened sensitivity before the next assessment from the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But the trend “is definitely real. There’s no question,” says Reto Knutti, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. “Is that realistic or not? At this point, we don’t know.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoV4dEtRBr0
Space Jam: That’s all folks
Anyone thinking the world–decades into the future–turns out exactly as predicted by a model, is incredibly naive. These people are failing to understand some of the basic difficulties with climate modeling, expressed in the following research…
Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model
Sci. Bullitins (2015)
60(1):122–135
Anyone thinking the world–decades into the future–turns out exactly as predicted by a model, is incredibly naive.
Agree 100%!
But there is a difference between predictions and scenarios. No one is making predictions. However, to suggest that professional climate modelers fail to understand the basics of the pitfalls of their own models is an assertion that borders on the ridiculous!
The problem, at the end of the day is about risk assessment of climate sensitivity.
In assessing how fast climate may change, the next IPCC report probably won’t lean as heavily on models as past reports did, says Thorsten Mauritsen, a climate scientist at Stockholm University and an IPCC author. It will look to other evidence as well, in particular a large study in preparation that will use ancient climates and observations of recent climate change to constrain sensitivity. IPCC is also not likely to give projections from all the models equal weight, Fyfe adds, instead weighing results by each model’s credibility.
Even so, the model results remain disconcerting, Gettelman says. The planet is already warming faster than humans can cope with, after all. “The scary part is these models might be right,” he says. “Because that would be pretty devastating.”
“Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model”
That is not a credible scientific study.
It’s actually amazing what we can do in predicting natural variability of climate. Excepting sporadic volcanoes, it’s actually as straightforward as predicting tides.
This floating city concept is one way to cope with climate change
By Tom Metcalfe
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/floating-city-concept-one-way-cope-climate-change-ncna995081
As glaciers melt and sea levels rise, coastal cities are looking for ways to cope with the growing threat of flooding. Seawalls are one option, and green technologies another. But one startup is making waves with its concept for urban areas designed not to resist rising water but to float on it.
“Cities are getting hit with new types of extreme weather that they weren’t designed for — think of Sandy here in New York,” Marc Collins Chen, CEO of the startup, Oceanix, said of the 2012 hurricane. ”We have taken into account that this must be a future-proof, a climate-proof city for the future.”
Illustrations of what the company calls Oceanix City show a leafy enclave built on floating concrete platforms, each covering almost five acres and moored to the seafloor in shallow waters. The platforms are linked by walkways to form cohesive communities with all the trappings of urban life, with a sustainable twist: buildings made of timber from sustainable forests; greenhouses, vertical farms and underwater gardens; renewable power sources like wind and solar; sewage and waste-recycling systems; and desalination plants to provide potable water.
“Think about it as an urban extension to a coastal city,” Collins Chen said. “It’s just affordable housing, maybe schools, maybe hospitals — whatever it is that the city really needs, but on floating infrastructure as opposed to on land.”
The principle of OLR being linear with temperature versus being proportional to T^4 has been known since the 1950’s. Here is a modern paper on the subject comparing satellite clear-sky OLR and surface temperature.
Here we present
a simple semianalytical model that explains Earth’s linear OLR
as an emergent property of an atmosphere whose greenhouse
effect is dominated by a condensable gas. Linearity arises from
a competition between the surface’s increasing thermal emission
and the narrowing of spectral window regions with warming
and breaks down at high temperatures once continuum absorption
cuts off spectral windows.
******
so that, once the atmosphere is optically thick, the temperature
of the emission level, where 1, becomes independent
of surface temperature. Fig. 3 confirms that, at optically thick
frequencies, the emission to space varies little as the surface
warms from 240 K to 320 K. Earth’s ability to shed more heat
with warming therefore crucially depends on its spectral window
regions.
********
The rapid
increase of surface emission via 4T3
s is strongly counteracted
by the closing of spectral window regions due to the increase
in atmospheric water vapor. Even though the cancellation is
not exact, it always gives rise to a wide range of temperatures
over which the feedback remains essentially constant
https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~dkoll/publications_files/Koll2018_PNAS.pdf
See Figure 4 in the paper, which shows transmission reaching zero at about 310K.
Below is a figure showing the deviation from T^4.
Basically, the hotter it gets, the faster it gets hotter.
Selfie Deaths Are an Epidemic
Kathryn Miles
https://www.outsideonline.com/2393419/selfie-deaths
A 2018 study published in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care found that of the 259 verifiable selfie-related deaths recorded from 2011 to 2017, more than a quarter occurred while the selfie-taker was engaged in what the study authors call “non-risky behavior.” To unpack that further, the authors found that the majority of deaths involving young men do appear to have been caused by risky behavior, while the actions of over half of females who died taking a selfie were deemed “non-risky.”
So, what’s really going on here?
Sarah Diefenbach is a professor of consumer psychology at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich and lead author of the 2017 research article The Selfie Paradox. She says that, extreme or otherwise, we take selfies for all kinds of reasons: to communicate with people we love, to build self-esteem, to curate our self image, to chronicle our personal histories, and—increasingly—to build our personal brands.
The branding may be new, Diefenbach says, but the desire to control our images and communicate with our community is not. In fact, she contends, this kind of behavior is part of our very DNA.
Our species evolved as hypersocial creatures uniquely concerned about how others perceive us. We have a much longer childhood than most other mammals, and that is by design: we need that time to figure out how to assimilate into our culture and assert an identity. “We have always had a very basic need for self-presentation,” Diefenbach explains.
Will Storr, author of the 2017 book Selfie: How the West Became Obsessed, agrees. He says we’ve always wanted to document our feats in living color—we just had to wait for technology to catch up before we could do it efficiently.
Prior to front-facing cameras, Storr says, we found other ways to grab the attention that comes with a selfie. Aristocrats commissioned portraits of themselves. Explorers carried cameos of loved ones. Pioneers hung sketches and silhouettes of themselves on cabin walls. Beginning in 1925, people began queuing up to mug for photo-booth cameras. Two decades later, Edwin Land brought us the Polaroid camera, making our instant image gratification that much easier.
The problem, experts say, is what happens inside our brain while we’re snapping the photos. Psychologists call it selective attention or inattentional blindness. The basic concept is this: our brain can’t possibly process all the stimuli it receives at one time, so it makes choices about what to privilege and what to ignore.
That’s exactly what happens when we take a selfie: our attention is focused on the camera and the shot, not where we are placing our feet or what’s around us. We literally have no idea that we are about to step off a cliff or tumble over a waterfall. Put another way, we don’t intend to engage in risky behavior; we just don’t realize we’ve wandered into that realm until it’s too late.
Selfie Deaths Are an Epidemic
A 2018 study published in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care found that of the 259 verifiable selfie-related deaths recorded from 2011 to 2017, more than a quarter occurred while the selfie-taker was engaged in what the study authors call “non-risky behavior.”
Seriously?!
259 verifiable selfie-related deaths recorded from 2011 to 2017 is NOT an epidemic!! Compared to say the the opioid epidemic or automobile crashes…
Annual Global Road Crash Statistics. … Nearly 1.25 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 deaths a day. An additional 20-50 million are injured or disabled. More than half of all road traffic deaths occur among young adults ages 15-44.
So…
No more non oil Open Threads is that it?
Do tell.
No, that is not it. It just works out some time that the open thread is petroleum. Nothing has changed.