A Guest Post by Islandboy
The EIA released the latest edition of their Electric Power Monthly on April 24th, with data for February 2018. The table above shows the percentage contribution of the main fuel sources to two decimal places for the last two months.
With the spring equinox drawing closer, the absolute contribution from Solar continued to climb from it’s low in December rising from 4917 GWh in January to 5812 GWh, with the corresponding percentage contribution climbing to 1.90% as opposed to 1.32% in January. Nuclear generated 64790 Gwh, 13% less than it did in January but, the decrease in total generation resulted in the percentage contribution to the total increasing to 21.14% from 20% in January. The gap between the contribution from All Renewables and Nuclear continued to narrow in February with the 1.14% increased contribution from Nuclear as opposed to the the 2.83% increase in the contribution from All Renewables resulting in a difference of 1.56%. The amount of electricity generated by Wind decreased by about 10.8%, (2898 GWh) but as a result of the reduced total generation, the percentage contribution increased from 7.19% to 7.81%. The contribution from Hydro increased 171 Gwh (0.76%) in absolute terms with the decrease in total generation resulting in the percentage contribution increasing by 1.54%. The combined contribution from Wind and Solar increased to 9.71% from 8.51 % in January and the contribution from Non-Hydro Renewables also increased to 11.23% from 9.94%. The contribution of zero emission and carbon neutral sources, that is, nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, landfill gas and other biomass increased to 40.72% from 36.75% in January.
In 2016 and 2017, only a very slight up tick in the use of Petroleum Liquids for electricity generation was observed, unlike previous years when the use of Petroleum Liquids jumped by up to 1% in either January or February compared to the typical levels for the rest of the year. The unusually cold weather in January 2018 resulted in significant up tick (1%) in the use of Petroleum Liquids similar to that seen in the years prior to 2016 but in February it returned to levels more consistent with previous years.
The graph below helps to illustrate how the changes in absolute production affect the percentage contribution from the various sources.
The chart below shows the total monthly generation at utility scale facilities by year versus the contribution from solar. The left hand scale is for the total generation, while the right hand scale is for solar output and has been deliberately set to exaggerate the solar output as a means of assessing it’s potential to make a meaningful contribution to the midsummer peak. In February 2018 the output from solar was 5812 Gwh, 4.2 times what it was four years ago in February2014. If the summer output continues to follow recent trends, close to 12,000 GWh should be generated in a single month some time this coming summer.
The graph below shows the monthly capacity additions for 2018. Last month I changed the format of the chart so as to reduce the amount of changes I have to make to the source table each month. By putting the year to date figures at the bottom of the table, when I fill in the data for each month, the Year to Date figures will be updated without any input from me. In February 2.5 percent of capacity additions were Conventional Hydroelectric. Solar added 16 percent and and Wind contributed 80.19 percent of new capacity for a joint contribution of 96.19 percent. Batteries had a relatively minor capacity addition of 0.69 percent and capacity additions fueled by Other Waste Biomass amounted to 0.62 percent. In February 2018 the total added capacity reported was 480.1 MW, roughly 872 MW less than February 2017.
The chart below shows the monthly capacity retirements so far for 2018 with the same format changes as the chart above for the same reason. In February, 66.45 percent of the retirements were Coal fired plants (1208 MW) and 33.55 percent were fueled by Natural Gas (610 MW).
2018 has continued to go adversely for fossil fuel interests in the electricity generating sector, especially for coal with 90 percent of retirements for the year to date. Other fossil fuel interests have nothing to celebrate with only 1.3 percent of new capacity added year to date using fossil fuels.
EARTH’S AVERAGE CO2 LEVELS CROSS 410 PPM FOR THE FIRST MONTH EVER
“April was the first month in recorded history with an average concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide topping 410 parts per million. To put this latest reading into perspective, at the beginning of the industrial revolution around 1880, the CO2 level stood at 280 ppm. It climbed to 315 ppm in 1958, the year Mauna Loa started record-keeping. It surpassed 400 ppm in 2013, before becoming a dangerous new norm for several years. Then around mid-April, the planet breached 410 ppm for the first time. These CO2 levels, according to NOAA’s climate department, haven’t been seen on Earth in 3 million years, when temperatures were 3.6° to 5.4°F warmer, and sea level was 50 to 80 feet higher than today.”
https://www.ecowatch.com/earth-co2-levels-fossil-fuels-2565799028.html
“These CO2 levels, according to NOAA’s climate department, haven’t been seen on Earth in 3 million years”
Well, homo sapiens are 200-(maybe 300, we shall see) thousand years old.
We are in new territory fellow homo sapiens! By a long shot.
There’s good research showing plants achieve better growth with higher CO2, except only to a certain extent. Nonetheless that extent seems to be about 2.5 to 3 times present CO2 levels, meaning we still have a sizable reserve of where CO2 can go before we have to start worrying on this front.
As far as impacts on society/homo sapiens, climate science is a very difficult science to understand due to complex interrelated variables that must be accounted for. The science isn’t as simple as increase X results in detrimental effects Y because algorithmic systems are coming into play here.
As far as impacts on society/homo sapiens, climate science is a very difficult science to understand due to complex interrelated variables that must be accounted for.
Not really. Actually it is quite simple. “If we continue on our current path, we’re pretty much totally fucked!”
Gone Fishing, posted this TED talk, in the last non petroleum thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6zzp60qE4s
Coming Soon to a Neighborhood Near You: The 6th Mass Extinction | Barry Sinervo | TEDxSantaCruz
So, what part of that talk don’t you understand?!
Why was there so much snow in April? When will this global warming that you talk about arrive? How long do I have to wait?
Since you are in Australia, you should probably look at the calendar and figure out what season April is supposed to be in and what the local climatology is for that time of year. That’s not our problem.
Say, has the ice gone off Minnetonka Lake yet? I’ve been paying close attention to Minnesota’s lake ice out this year. The unbelievably cold April will cause records to fall that few thought possible. If Minnetonka still has ice by May 5 midnight, that ties the record for latest ice out set in 1857. According to modern science, that would have been a completely different climate back then. The White Bear Lake record from 1950 is probably going to fall as well. As long as there is still ice on that lake by midnight. https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/ice_out/index.html?year=2018 is the website for everyone to check on status.
Hey Bob Frisky, Why aren’t you taking a look at the Minnesota ice-out dates yourself? This is my contribution:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/02/more-ice-out-and-skating-day-data-sets/#comment-695312
Every year ON AVERAGE, the ice-out date is coming in earlier.
https://i2.wp.com/img706.imageshack.us/img706/9683/v4hb.jpg
Still waiting for Lake Minnetonka ice out
Author: Boyd Huppert
https://www.kare11.com/article/news/still-waiting-for-lake-minnetonka-ice-out/89-548981147
At Tonka Bay Marina the going boats in. But just a few hundred feet away, it’s still not ice out.
Ice half-a-foot thick is still being measured across wide swaths of Lake Minnetonka.
Gabriel Jabbour, the owner of Tonka Bay Marina, had two sturdy-hulled boats out most of the week breaking up ice. He wasn’t trying to open up the lake, but rather prevent intact sheets of ice from being pushed by wind, and potentially smashing his pier.
“If you break it in small pieces it will not have that force,” Jabbour says.
The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office Water Patrol was back on Lake Minnetonka Friday too, in an airboat that will carry deputies over both water and ice.
On Saturday, Lake Minnetonka will likely tie a latest ice out record set in 1857.
“Some of the bays are open, others are not, but until one of our boats can cross the lake from one side of the lake to the other unobstructed, it’s winter,” Hennepin County Sheriff Richard Stanek said.
Jabbour has the perspective of a man who’s spent 45 years on Lake Minnetonka. “In Minnesota we have the land of extreme,” he said. “Last year was unbelievably early, this year is unbelievably late. And stay tuned. Who knows.”
Didn’t have any snow here, just record warmth.
NAOM
David, you may be interested to know that in some areas of the world, if the air and ocean warms then those areas experience higher snowfall. Very cold air cannot hold as much water vapor as warmer air, and thus do not provide as much snow. Much of the northern subartic and artic zones are quite arid for this reason. This is well known and shouldn’t be a surprise to those who care to study climate.
How long will it take before global warming is obvious to you? 23 years. By then the kick in the face will be to hard to ignore.
April 2018 in Poland was warmest in over 200 years of measurement.
And in Spain it was really cold. It’s so cold tonight I’m running my natural gas fired furnace. This is the first time in a decade that furnace has been used in May. Must be La Niña
Why was there so much snow in April?
Really dumb question from someone who is obviously either a troll or too fucking lazy to do a basic Google search! About 12,600,000 results (0.45 seconds)
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2018/01/if-global-warming-is-real-why-is-it-snowing/
When there’s a heavy snowstorm, meteorologist Marshall Shepherd inevitably gets the same question.
Shepherd: “I will get people that will tweet me, and say, ‘Hey Dr. Shepherd, I got 20 inches of global warming in my yard, what are you guys talking about?’”
Shepherd is a professor at the University of Georgia and host of the Weather Channel Show, “Weather Geeks.” He says in northern states, warmer temperatures can actually lead to more heavy snowfalls. That’s because warmer air holds more water vapor, which is the fuel for snow. Plus, he says, there’s the big difference between weather and climate.
That leaves the other 12,599,999 Google search results for you to sort through…
When will this global warming that you talk about arrive? How long do I have to wait?
About 94,200,000 results (0.43 seconds)
https://psmag.com/news/climate-change-has-already-affected-nearly-all-life-on-earth
Instead of developing plans to move to a greener, zero-emissions economy, we’re still arguing over the pace, causes, and consequences of climate change.
But we should stop treating the major impacts of climate change as if they are something that could happen in the future. As a recent paper in Science describes, climate change has already left a “broad footprint” on our planet. Most life on Earth spawns, hatches, buds, blooms, develops, migrates, or hibernates in a way that is governed by climate. All of these processes have already been broadly altered by climate change, argue the authors, an international group of biologists from various fields who surveyed several decades of biological studies. Nearly every ecosystem on the planet has been modified by global warming, and these changes “point toward an increasingly unpredictable future for humans.”
I guess it would be probably be way too much to expect, but you can actually read peer reviewed scientific papers or listen to scientific lectures and talks from academics giving different scientific perspectives in multitudes of different scientific fields that all point to the impacts that climate change is having right now!
My personal focus tends to be in the environmental sciences. Link to paper in Science mentioned above.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6313/aaf7671
Accumulating impacts
Anthropogenic climate change is now in full swing, our global average temperature already having increased by 1°C from preindustrial levels. Many studies have documented individual impacts of the changing climate that are particular to species or regions, but individual impacts are accumulating and being amplified more broadly. Scheffers et al. review the set of impacts that have been observed across genes, species, and ecosystems to reveal a world already undergoing substantial change. Understanding the causes, consequences, and potential mitigation of these changes will be essential as we move forward into a warming world.
My suggestion, which will probably fall on deaf ears, is to first of all educate yourself about the scientific method and learn for yourself how and why science actually works. Then learn some basic math and science, physics, chemistry and biology so you can at least grasp the basic concepts put forth in the scientific literature.
Last but not least, try getting your information about the world from somewhere other than Faux News and it’s subsidiaries!
Graph of global climate change impacts on biological systems that are occurring now, from the science paper linked in my comment above.
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The “key” words in David’s comment are “in April”. Getting more snow in the winter months might not be unusual, but Aprils not a winter month. There’s not supposed to be significant snow in April because the month is supposed to be too warm. Amazingly this year there was a lot of snow because the month was so cold. The scientific consensus doesn’t explain what we experienced.
Amazingly this year there was a lot of snow because the month was so cold. The scientific consensus doesn’t explain what we experienced.
That’s bullshit!
When I lived in New England and New York State, I experienced quite a few surprise April snow storms.
And science absolutely does explain the current stuck Jet Stream pattern causing extreme cold spots in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere.
Thanks Fred, I was going to repost here but you saved me the trouble. What did you think of the extinction event that has been going on for several million years previous to man’s intervention?
Fish, sorry but you are just making shit up here. There is no ongoing extinction event that begun several million years ago. There was a minor extinction event that was very short lived 2 million years ago. That was caused by either a nearby supernova or an asteroid impact in the Pacific. There was another such minor and short-lived extinction event 14.5 million years ago that was likely caused by climate change. Those were minor extinction spikes that lasted only a few thousand years and in no way can be compared to a major extinction event such as we are experiencing today.
Your post implies that there was an extinction event that begun several million years ago and that very same extinction event is still happening today. That is pure baloney.
The Holocene extinction, otherwise referred to as the Sixth extinction or Anthropocene extinction, is the ongoing extinction event of species during the present Holocene epoch, mainly as a result of human activity.
The Timeline Of The Mass Extinction Events On Earth
RPatt said “Fish, sorry but you are just making shit up here. There is no ongoing extinction event that begun several million years ago.”
At least I can read a graph and don’t talk our of my lower orifice. You think I put together that graph in the TedX talk? Whew, bizarre.
Carefully look at the graph, you can use the pause function. Compare the loss of families over several extinction events and then apologize.
“Your post implies that there was an extinction event that begun several million years ago and that very same extinction event is still happening today. That is pure baloney. ”
Bullshit, that is not what I said, now you are making up more stuff. What I said is that humans were in addition to an extinction event that had already started millions of years before. Look at the evidence, many species went extent in that period, long before humans show up. It’s an Ice Age, climate change is an ongoing repeating event.
My original post.
“Coming Soon to a Neighborhood Near You: The 6th Mass Extinction | Barry Sinervo |
This talk describes the global evidence for climate change as the cause based on our decades-long global collaboration on lizards and frogs.
Dr. Barry Sinervo leads a multinational research team of scientists, working from the equator to the polar regions. The UCSC professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology was recently awarded $2 million to study impacts of climate change on California ecosystems at the UC Natural Reserve System, the world’s largest system of university-administered natural reserves, featuring examples of most major California habitats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6zzp60qE4s
Take a look at the graph of number of families at 2:37, it appears as if we have been losing more families, for millions of years now, than in some previous mass extinctions before people came along. So we are the second calamity in a long term climate change calamity.”
End original post.
You wrote: What did you think of the extinction event that has been going on for several million years previous to man’s intervention?
Really now Fish, you are reading something into that chart that is just not there. Obviously, he meant that to show the current Holocene Extinction. Else he would have mentioned it in his talk. He did not.
Every extinction event has a name. And here they all are, even the minor ones:List of extinction events
Okay, I am sorry for saying you just make shit up. I did not realize you were just misreading a chart.
See the chart below, I did not misread it. The delta x (change in time) over the circled red section is millions of years. It is you who cannot read a graph.
I wanted to discuss that segment of time, but I have come across enough evidence lately that shows that fast extinction event was already occurring before man came along. Next I have found evidence that even after man came along he was only a partial cause of extinctions and depopulations up until modern times.
So no more “discussion” is needed on my part.
Fish, I am glad you have that evidence. You should publish it then the rest of the world would have it also. So far, you are the only one with such evidence.
Gee Patt, getting exercise jumping to conclusions? No, I get my info from actual scientific research not unidentifiable bloggers.
Look below at the paper I posted for Fred.
Read the book: Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution
Here is a video showing that the extinction of the Australian Megafauna was mostly due to climate change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJDrOmPXzJs&t=2785s
Fish, I do apologize for my language yesterday. I should not have put it in that context. I simply think you misunderstood the chart. That’s what I should have said instead of what saying you make shit up.
Again, I am sorry.
The chart below shows how the number of species has grown over the last half a billion years as well as the major extinction events. Obviously, the latest Holocene Extinction event is not shown. But the article does talk about it.
Edit: The chart didn’t show up. Too big I guess. But it is shown at the link below.
Is our Ecological Footprint connected to the Sixth Great Extinction?
It is said that the Sixth Great Extinction will occur due to the disastrous for the universe species Homo Sapiens, and began about 100,000 years ago. Moreover, it is estimated that half of all the current species living in earth today, including plants, animals and birds, will die off before 2100. (“The Sixth Great Extinction”)
Come on, at least use real biologists and paleontologists to do your predictions.
I was not making any prediction, and did not post the link as a prediction. I was posting it as History! The chart is historical and is repeated dozens of times here in one form or another by many paleontologists.
Mass Extinction Charts
What seems to be different at present, is the current rate of extinction as compared to the conventionally accepted background rate. See extinction primer below. Followed by link to recently published study.
http://www.bio.miami.edu/tom/courses/bil160/bil160goods/10_extinct.html
Extinction:
Extinction is a normal part of evolution. There is a normal background rate of extinction, punctuated by mass extinctions. Of all the species which have ever existed, 99.9 % are now extinct!
Punctuating this normal background are mass extinctions which result in the extinction of a large number of taxa”
The Ordovician-Silurian Extinction (439 Ma) in which 85% of species became extinct.
The Devonian Extinction (345 Ma) in which 85% of species became extinct.
The Permian Extinction (253 Ma) in which 50% of all animal families and more than 90% of species became extinct! All trilobites became extinct.
The Triassic Extinction (213 Ma) in which 76% of species became extinct..
The Cretaceous Extinction (65 Ma) in which 20% of the families of plants and animals on land (50% in the sea) and 85% of all species became extinct. All dinosaurs became extinct.
Extinction rates for species, other than humans, are presently much higher than during most of geological history. Current extinction rates may be as much as 40 times the normal “background” rate for extinction.
The present extinction rate may be so high because humans have been: 1) destroying habitats (genetic drift and demographic stochasticity important in the small populations left), 2) introducing competing and predatory species and parasites, and 3) overexploiting resources.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279042244_Accelerated_Modern_Human-Induced_Species_Losses_Entering_the_Sixth_Mass_Extinction
Accelerated Modern Human-Induced Species Losses: Entering the Sixth Mass Extinction.
Abstract:
The oft-repeated claim that Earth’s biota is entering a sixth ” mass extinction ” depends on clearly demonstrating that current extinction rates are far above the ” background ” rates prevailing in the five previous mass extinctions. Earlier estimates of extinction rates have been criticized for using assumptions that might overestimate the severity of the extinction crisis. We assess, using extremely conservative assumptions, whether human activities are causing a mass extinction. First, we use a recent estimate of a background rate of 2 mammal extinctions per 10,000 species per 100 years (that is, 2 E/MSY), which is twice as high as widely used previous estimates. We then compare this rate with the current rate of mammal and vertebrate extinctions. The latter is conservatively low because listing a species as extinct requires meeting stringent criteria. Even under our assumptions, which would tend to minimize evidence of an incipient mass extinction, the average rate of vertebrate species loss over the last century is up to 114 times higher than the background rate. Under the 2 E/MSY background rate, the number of species that have gone extinct in the last century would have taken, depending on the vertebrate taxon, between 800 and 10,000 years to disappear. These estimates reveal an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the last few centuries, indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way. Averting a dramatic decay of biodiversity and the subsequent loss of ecosystem services is still possible through intensified conservation efforts, but that window of opportunity is rapidly closing.
The graph does not exhibit a background rate, it exhibits a high rate of extinction for the last few million years and then essentially an extreme drop during modern times.
My take is that the continuous oscillating climate change of the Ice Age makes it tough to stay alive at times, so there was already and ongoing set of extinctions and reductions in population/range when we arrived on the scene.
Even during the last 50,000 years extinction has been a mixed bag, not just humans. I think you will find this interesting and informative.
Species-specific responses of Late
Quaternary megafauna t o climate and humans
Woolly rhinoceros and Eurasian woolly mammoth experience a five- to tenfold increase in effective population size between 34 kyr BP and 19 kyr BP (Fig. 3), at least 10,000 years after first human contact as inferred from the overlap between estimated ranges and archaeological sites (Supplementary Figs 1.2 and 1.5). This result directly contradicts models of population collapse from human overkill (blitzkrieg)2 or infectious diseases following the first human contact (hyperdisease)28.
We find no evidence that Palaeolithic humans greatly impacted musk ox populations, in agreement with previous conclusions that humans
were not responsible for the extinction of musk ox in Eurasia10.
http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/index.php?s=1&act=pdfviewer&id=1332208953&folder=133
The red circled area is what interested me. However, as with most things, preconceptions and promoted myths reign. Looking into the complete evidence is verboten in most society and involving climate change will just bring out the trolls and the blockheads. Probably be getting our share of creationists too.
The red circled area is what interested me. However, as with most things, preconceptions and promoted myths reign. Looking into the complete evidence is verboten in most society and involving climate change will just bring out the trolls and the blockheads.
First, I’m not disputing the fact that the red circled area shows an ongoing extinction process that has been underway for quite some time. Certainly for a couple of million years before the appearance of Homo sapiens on the scene.
Second, I accept that it is difficult to pin down a precise background rate of extinction over periods of millions of years and that it is an area of research particularly fraught with controversy.
Third, while Barry Sinervo, in his TED talk, did not explicitly refer to a specific background rate of extinction for the pre Holocene period. There is quite a lot of research that contends that something different is now afoot and that we are beginning to see impacts that are likely the result of Human civilization coupled with a ballooning of the human population and of domestic livestock associated with human agriculture.
Which brings us back to what some are now calling the Anthropocene with its increase in extinction rates over past epochs. I don’t think anyone is arguing that humans are the sole cause of the currently ongoing mass extinction across multiple groups of flora and fauna. Only that they/we are a significant contributing factor.
Final point: Life on earth is fragile!
I don’t think anyone is arguing that humans are the sole cause of the currently ongoing mass extinction across multiple groups of flora and fauna. Only that they/we are a significant contributing factor.
I would argue Homo sapiens are the primary, and near sole cause, of the current extinction. If there is another cause it is so minor that were it not present, we would not notice the difference.
I am having trouble posting charts here so I will wait until the middle of the month when I post my OPEC charts and will post charts in the non-petroleum page that, I believe, will leave little doubt that Homo sapiens are, if not the sole cause of the Holocene extinction, are the near sole cause.
I will save my thunder until then.
I will just add. The ice ages started about 2 million years ago and ended about 12,000 years ago. During that period we had an ice age about every 100,000 to 150,000 years. There were a higher rate of extinctions during the periods when the ice ages were at their maximum. That was only to be expected. However we are not currently in any ice age and, were it not for humans the flora and fauna would be recovering from ice age extinctions. But obviously that is not happening.
Fortunately not everyone in a position of leadership in the US is a propagandizing, ideological denialist. Some must deal with in your face reality on a daily basis. Case in point:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/04/the-head-of-the-u-s-coast-guard-isnt-afraid-to-talk-about-climate-change/
The Head of the U.S. Coast Guard Isn’t Afraid to Talk About Climate Change
Even as other government agencies have quietly banished references to climate change, the head of the U.S. Coast Guard does not shy away from the subject that the White House has made practically taboo.
Adm. Paul Zukunft, who retires next month, almost never specifically uses those two words. Instead, he talks about rising sea levels, melting polar ice, and increasingly severe hurricanes. “As a first responder with a U.S. population that is migrating towards the coasts, it presses us into service,” he says in an interview with Foreign Policy.
But Zukunft focuses on the effects, not the man-made emissions driving the rising temperatures. “I don’t assign causality,” he says. “I just know that I own the consequence piece of this one when it comes to mass rescues.”
Over six weeks in 2017, the Coast Guard rescued about 11,000 people from the devastation caused by three major hurricanes: Harvey, Irma, and Maria.
Zukunft says climate change is also crucial to understanding why the United States needs to start paying attention to the Arctic.
Homo Erectus were around 1.9 MYA and used tools from at least 1.76 MYA. The evidence continues to grow showing that they were rather good at making weapons and hunting with them. There was a recent find of a slaughter of many, now extinct, giant baboons. Homo Sapiens are just carrying on the tradition, the biggest difference is that there’s just ever more of us.
After retirement, Mr. Zukunft needs to move to a German speaking country and lecture about climate change there. His name is perfect for the job! ?????
Fred, when I look at that red circled line I see that the slope is equivalent to previous major extinction events. Also evident is the slope change at initiation, a greater than 90 degree turn, larger than some previous mass extinctions. The length of time is also similar.
The recent extinction rate is already starting from reduced and highly constrained populations (on land) and would show very little, islands of low population. Might be too low to enter the fossil record since the odds of being fossilized are generally extremely low. In the end, the traces left will be from us and the latest large wild animals might not show at all for this time period.
Think about it, the modern human burial procedure might be an excellent system to produce human fossils Encased in concrete (minerals supplied), already buried deep under soil and preserved with chemicals. Modern humans and their stuff will show up magnificently in the fossil record of land animals. Amplified by many orders of magnitude compared to more natural methods of fossilization.
A scourge of primates around the globe.
Future paleontologists (of whatever species) will be tripping over us, there will be a mass market in our bones.
I wonder if they will find circuitry embedded in us, an I-phone appendix. Probably call them jewelry. 🙂
Like any good dog or animal, we leave our mark.
And Troy Slavski is a pretty good name for a Russian Troll… Where will you be lecturing? At the Volgograd troll farm?
I think that graph has a granularity of about 5 million years. The data is pretty sparse and with fairly large error bars for both x and y. The sharp tipping point is an artefact of that and could easily be out 5 million years either way.
Five million year granularity? Come off it George, then all traces of the Ice Age (2.3 million years) would be obliterated. Yet we seem to have events down to a few thousand years or so. Where do you come up with these “facts”?
Every few years, new geologic time scales are published, providing the latest dates for major time lines. Older dates may change by a few million years up and down, but younger dates are stable. For example, it has been known since the 1960s that the famous Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, the line marking the end of the dinosaurs, was 65 million years old. Repeated recalibrations and retests, using ever more sophisticated techniques and equipment, cannot shift that date. It is accurate to within a few thousand years. With modern, extremely precise, methods, error bars are often only 1% or so.
1 percent of 3 million years is 30,000 years. That is far different than the 5 million year error you propose.
So where did this 5 million year granularity come from? You are joking, I right?
Gone fishing,
George Kaplan was talking about that chart.
How accurately can you estimate from that chart? I would say the 5 million year estimate is a good one for the ability to estimate based on that chart alone.
Wouldn’t you agree?
No
They may know the numbers better, recently anyway, but they aren’t plotted like that on the chart, they are plotted to the nearest 5 million, and bon’t give the right perspective, especially if, as you were doing, you try to compare gradients.
Bullshit, the points on the chart are less than one million years apart.
Will you now have to turn off this CO2 sensor because of volcano eruption in Hawaii?
2,500 years ago to ask hard questions you had to travel to Delphi, Greece to ask the oracle.
Now, you can just ask the mysterious deity known only as Google. Just point your laptop in the direction of California, and type an incantation known as Search Terms as follows: mauna loa co2 affected by volcano
And you get:
“Most of the time, the observatory experiences “baseline” conditions and measures clean air which has been over the Pacific Ocean for days or weeks. We know this because the CO2 analyzer usually gives a very steady reading which varies by less than 3/10 of a part per million (ppm) from hour to hour. These are the conditions we use to calculate the monthly averages that go into the famous 50-year graph of atmospheric CO2 concentration. These periods of elevated and variable CO2 levels are so different from the typical measurements that is easy to remove them from the final data set using a simple mathematical “filter.“
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/mauna-loa-co2-record/
This site gives access to all the many stations providing atmospheric readings. The four in blue provide continuous CO2 monitoring, a couple also sample methane continuously as well. The others are flask samples so take a bit of time to analyse. The ones int the Arctic are the most interesting as they see the early increases that then gradually continue southwards.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=SPO&program=ccgg&type=ts
Nah! No need! We’ll just toss a few climate science denialists into the caldera as a sacrifice to the the volcano gods. That should solve the problem… 😉
410 parts per million equates to a carbon dioxide volume of merely 0.0041 of any given volume of air or 0.41 percent.
You got your zero’s wrong Larry.
I don’t think so. I’m not a sheeple.
Baaaaaaa!!!
Look it up Larry.
Meh
410/1,000,000 = .000410
Just move the decimal point 6 places left to convert from ppm to absolute
410
1 move 41.9
2 moves 4.10
3 moves .410
4 moves .0410
5 moves .00410
6 moves .000410
times 100 for percent needs 2 moves right
1 move .00410
2 moves .0410
Feeling sheepish?
NAOM
You’re not grade 7 math either, are you Larry?
So what Larry.
Did rush limbaugh or sean hannity tell you that because it was a trace gas it couldn’t matter?
If so, thats idiots speaking. Or they are trying to brainwashing you with stupidness.
Did you know that just a little trace amount of plutonium, or sarin, or arsenic can kill you?
Understanding these kind of ideas are why its good to stay in school beyond 4th grade. And maybe not drink so much.
“Did you know that just a little trace amount of plutonium, or sarin, or arsenic can kill you?”
How substances in trace amounts can cause large effects
“Your children can drink that water, it only contains a trace of arsenic (0.01 ppm is the WHO and US EPA limit).”
https://www.skepticalscience.com/CO2-trace-gas.htm
For anyone concerned that capacity retirements are larger than new capacity added so far this year, the changes are relatively small with total US utility scale capacity of 1,081,000 MW at the end of Feb 2018.
306,458,000 MWhr were generated in February 2018 at utility scale power plants in 672 hours, so average output from all power plants was 306,458,000/672=456,039 MW, so the average capacity factor for all power plants was 456,039/1,081,000=42.2% in February 2018. Year to date the net retirements (retirements minus additions) has been about 2700 MW or about 0.2 %.
US net generation has been relatively flat since 2008.
Electric powered humans or just a case of the walking undead?
Hot Robot At SXSW Says She Wants To Destroy Humans | The Pulse | CNBC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0_DPi0PmF0
Customer Service Robots Debut in Malls, Airports
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7j6dQmTLDk
Can’t you just wait until the grandchildren can’t find a job because they have been automated away with machines and AI? What, me work?
The idea that “robots will replace humans” is another way of saying that “labor productivity will dramatically increase”.
For better or worse, there’s no sign of that happening. Growth in (labor) productivity has slowed down pretty sharply recently in the US, and that seems to be the continuing trend.
“According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, for the first time since the global financial crisis, multifactor productivity growth was negative in 2016. Multifactor productivity is the most basic measure of how well the economy is turning inputs, like wood and steel, into outputs, like tables and cars. After growing each year from 2010 through 2015, the latest data show that, in 2016, productivity declined by 0.2%.
The productivity decline of 2016 is part of a long term trend. Economist Robert Gordon has shown that US productivity growth slowed from a pace of about 3% per year between 1930 to 1970, to an average of about 1% since—excluding a brief spurt in the late 1990s and early 2000s.”
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/us-productivity-is-negative-but-economists-arent-sure-why
“The idea that “robots will replace humans” is another way of saying that “labor productivity will dramatically increase”.”
Its also a way of saying that tens of millions of people will lose their jobs.
Those robots will have to run using lawnmower engines. This will create a huge market for lawnmower engine repair mechanics.
LOL! Surely you jest Mr. Leanme!?
https://www.superdroidrobots.com/shop/category.aspx/gear-motors/7/
SuperDroid Robots – DC Gearmotors, Gear Motors, Robot Motors
33 Ready to Ship! DG-158A 24VDC 135 RPM Wheel Chair Motor Pair. This is a set of wheelchair motors and make great heavy duty robot motors. One left motor and one right motor. They are right angle gear drives with a release and electric brakes. They are 24VDC and the operating speed is 135 RPM. TD-111-135
Obligatory disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated nor have I been assimilated by superdroidrobots. However I do contend that resistance is futile. 😉
The lawn mower engine is used to drive a generator. I’ve been mentoring a group of high school students as they try to build a self navigating vehicle for a contest. They are now in their first year of college, and can enter the national contest until their senior year, so theoretically they gave three years to finish the prototype.
The vehicle has already been built, the software allows it to track a line on the floor, it can also navigate a labyrinth. But it runs out of battery power fairly fast. The problem robots have is the same we see with electric vehicles, the power density stinks. If they load more batteries the vehicle weighs too much, has too much inertia, and can’t navigate the labyrinth at competitive speeds. They looked into solar panels, making the vehicle look as if it were wearing a large hat, but that’s useless.
So the problem with robots is simply the need to stay plugged via a wire to the grid. And this makes those walking robots you see come out of Boston dynamics do very short time span tricks (if you look carefully the ones indoors are also hooked up to an overhead cable).
So the problem with robots is simply the need to stay plugged via a wire to the grid.
So I guess wheelchair users, must all use very very long extension cords, eh?
If the only tool you have in your toolbox is a hammer than every problem looks like a nail.
While I won’t presume to predict the future, I highly doubt it will be populated by robots with lawn mower engine generators. Even if that’s how you are solving the power problem for now, with those kids you are mentoring.
In any case, ‘MORE POWER TO YOU’ (pun intended) for taking the time to mentor those kids in the first place! Don’t forget to mentor the girls, even the lesbians, some of them may have a lot of talent even if they see the world from a different perspective than you do… 😉
Maybe checkout the Hungarian Robot Builders and start an international exchange of ideas.
https://www.meetup.com/Hungarian-Robot-Builders-Meetup/
Around here girls arent interested in hard core engineering, nor do they find it interesting to get in a home electronics lab after school hours. This is probably related to their sex. Women just don’t seem as interested in these subjects.
Regarding the bit about lesbians, I’m not sure what you are aiming at. Is this supposed to be a new American cultural imperative, to mention homosexuality in every discussion?
Regarding the wheel chairs, it’s evident they have to recharge quite often. Plus they don’t have to be entered in labyrinth navigating competitions where the time from entry to exit determines the winner. These vehicles have to move fast, have sensors to look in all directions, and a chip programmed to allow them to search the optimum escape route as fast as possible.
The robots we see nowadays all have the same issues, either they do frequent battery changes, or they are tethered to the grid, or they carry a small gasoline engine coupled to a generator. Thus far nobody has a solution to store electricity in light weight devices to compete with gasoline.
Around here girls arent interested in hard core engineering, nor do they find it interesting to get in a home electronics lab after school hours. This is probably related to their sex. Women just don’t seem as interested in these subjects.
Wow! you really need to get out in the real world a bit more. This is the 21st century not the 19th, for god’s sake get with the times.
I’m willing to bet there are plenty of girls, even where you live who absolutely are interested in engineering and robotics. I personally know at least a half dozen female engineers who would tell you in no uncertain terms what they think of people who have views like yours!.
http://robohub.org/25-women-in-robotics-you-need-to-know-about-2017/
As for the reference to lesbians, it was more because of the way you equated them to communists in some protest you had commented about recently. Again, it was more a reaction to your bald faced and rather arrogant misogyny and blatantly homophobic knee jerk discrimination, than any intent on my part to be politically correct.
Quite frankly I’m kind of past all that and have worked with all kinds of human beings and have learned never to prejudge anyone.
The statistics show that in this area where I live the number of females interested in hard core engineering and science is nearly zero. The guys I mentor went to a high school where students are allowed to choose tracks, and specialize. I went to their graduation ceremony last year, and about 15% of the technology section were female. However, not one of them enters the science and technology contests, they limit themselves to the basic school activities.
What we see at the contests is roughly a 20 to 1 male to female ratio. I’m told most of these girls go do go into science and technology track plan to go into biology, chemistry, or health fields. They just aren’t too interested in the combination of electronics and programming needed to build robots.
If I referred to a particular group of lesbians as communists it must have been because they were lesbian communists using gender identity as a weapon to advance communist ideas. I don’t like communists, period. Centrist, libertarian and slightly right of center lesbians are fine with me. Far right lesbians are not, they are almost as bad as left wing lesbians.
I’ve been aware, and for a fairly long time, of the sex difference thing vis-a-vis career choices, and even did a small review since that related Google issue popped up, and there, Fernando appears to know what he is talking about. Likewise with the robot and battery thing.
Caelan, provide a peer reviewed link from a reputable scientific journal to back up what you are claiming. You are wrong and what you say is not based on any science. Hearsay and opinion don’t provide a very good basis for replacing facts and Fernando is just as wrong as you.
Fred, if you are making the claim that we’re wrong, the onus would appear to be on you to prove that and/or support your own claims to the contrary.
Have you? And if so, where might they be, please?
In any case, here’s but one bit from a cursory search, (to say nothing of what I’ve already read about):
Quantifying the promise of ‘beyond’ Li–ion batteries
“There is a growing consensus that future specific energy improvements in Li–ion batteries may not ever be sufficient to allow mass market adoption of electric vehicles, as we approach the physical limits of storage capacity of current Li–ion batteries.”
Its also a way of saying that tens of millions of people will lose their jobs.
Well, yes. But…it doesn’t seem to be happening.
Let me say it again:
The impact of automation (aka “robots”) seems to be slowing down, not accelerating.
There’s no sign of an impending collapse in the number of jobs. And, the US unemployment rate is now at 3.9%, the lowest since about 2000.
There’s no sign of an impending collapse in the number of jobs. And, the US unemployment rate is now at 3.9%, the lowest since about 2000.
Yeah, but those are mostly shitty low paying jobs, without benefits.
Slightly dated story but still relevant since things have not gotten better since it was written.
https://qz.com/666311/why-americas-impressive-5-unemployment-rate-still-feels-like-a-lie/
HOLLOW PROMISES
Why America’s impressive 5% unemployment rate feels like a lie for so many
On Apr. 14, Bloomberg News announced that jobless claims in the US have reached their lowest level since 1973. “All other labor market data are telling us that the economy is creating a lot of jobs,” economist Patrick Newport told the outlet. “This is further confirmation that the labor market is strong.”
That same day, thousands of fast food workers, airport workers, home care workers, and adjunct professors took to the streets across the country to protest brutal labor conditions and demand a $15 minimum wage. Most of these workers make far below $15 per hour. Some make as low as $7.25 per hour, the current federal minimum wage. Most lack benefits. Some, like adjunct professors, have contingent, temporary jobs, sometimes consisting of only one poorly paid course per year. Many low-wage employees work two or even three jobs in an attempt to cobble together enough income to cover basic needs.
According to the US Bureau of Labor, all of these workers are considered “employed.” They are viewed as part of the American economy’s success story, a big part of which is our 5% unemployment rate.
I totally agree.
But…inequitable and exploitive working conditions are a different problem. An important problem, but…different.
But…inequitable and exploitive working conditions are a different problem.
Not if they are swept under the rug to create a false sense that things are all well and good because we have such supposedly robust employment levels.
“Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics”!
Automation and machinery has already eliminated countless millions of jobs. It has also had the effect of producing repetitive products at extremely high rates, thus allowing us to consume minerals, materials, plants and animals, and energy at very high rates. Bringing us much earlier to a series of building disasters in the environment, population, social and military.
How wonderful to rush ahead faster and faster while losing ground at the same time by stealing from the future. Even a robotic Red Queen will reach the limits of how fast it can run and then drift backwards away from it’s charging point.
Unlike the old corporate signs, the new one is “Don’t Think”.
But don’t worry, it’s all good and it’s definitely all natural. But what will the machines and robots do when Yellowstone blows. Short out and grind to a halt along with the whole mechanical/electrical system.
Nothing beats Nature. Two mm of damp ash shorts out and wrecks the power systems. Moving parts don’t do well either. Every move, every breath of wind stirs up the highly abrasive ash. Warning, conductive when damp.
Every move, every breath of wind stirs up the highly abrasive ash. Warning, conductive when damp.
Might be the perfect ecological niche for the evolution of silicon based AI life forms… imagine a sparking piezoelectric extremophile equivalent of the slime mold 😉
Warning, conductive when damp.
Short circuits all the way.
Warning, conductive when damp.
You want damp?!
Have you ever witnessed an electric eel hunting?
They’re producing 600 volts inside their wet electrical battery like organs while completely immersed in water and releasing electric current into the water surrounding their bodies to stun their prey.
They have a rather unique physiology to say the least, having managed to evolve some rather impressive organic insulators.
The only short circuits that happen are the ones in their prey’s nervous system before they become the eel’s dinner.
Evolution and natural selection do some pretty impressive stuff if left to their own devices, I’d bet they can handle eliminating short circuits when damp, if their survival depends on it 😉
Automation and machinery has already eliminated countless millions of jobs.
Sure. If they hadn’t “destroyed” all those farming jobs, you and I would both be uneducated farm workers. We’d have no time or money for debating online.
Good point Nick. One farmer can now produce more than a hundred farmers could before the tractor and all the mechanical farming equipment we have now. Not to mention fossil fuel produced chemical fertilizers and the rest of the green revolution.
What it did was free people to get industrial jobs and give them free time to pursue other endeavors.
But it was all powered by fossil fuels. And I am not nearly as optimistic as you guys that we can keep this massive farming and industrial machine going when they are gone. I think you are living in a dream world.
Yea, but here is the problem:
10 Calories in, 1 Calorie Out – The Energy We Spend on Food
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/10-calories-in-1-calorie-out-the-energy-we-spend-on-food/
It’s a resource allocation question.
To grow 225 acres of corn_125 acres of hay takes 900 gallons of diesel
https://pubs.ext.vt.edu/content/dam/pubs_ext_vt_edu/442/442-073/442-073_pdf.pdf
One transatlantic flight https://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/ICCT_transatlantic-airline-ranking-2014_0.pdf
uses roughly 36300 gallons so one LA / Dusseldorp flight would allow 40 farmers to do their thing.
it’s a function of how we prioritize….
Rgds
WP
Weekend Peak has an excellent point. If we don’t increase efficiency, change how we run the system and reduce the demand for fossil fuels with alternatives it will come down to allocating the dwindling resources that are left.
But it was all powered by fossil fuels. And I am not nearly as optimistic as you guys that we can keep this massive farming and industrial machine going when they are gone. I think you are living in a dream world.
Well, there’s always permaculture, right? 😉
In any case I’ve been eating a lot more chocolate flavored cricket protein bars instead of cows,
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Chirp, chirp, chirp…
.
Even a relatively simple capitalist idea could resolve some of the “robots will kill all our jobs” issue. If ordinary people could “invest” in a robot on a production line somewhere and actually earn a salary from that robot then people who have surplus capital could secure a stipend from that labor. (issues of maintenance and utilities could be resolved through co-ops of pooled money – much like people who own condos).
But we live in late-capitalism where even large capitalists cannot earn a legitimate profit and have begun cannibalizing on each other. Part of this could be a result of a dwindling amount of surplus energy to drive all these dreams and nightmares (but that’s crazy talk – even here).
two cats- that robot ownership model of income is interesting to imagine. I suspect the most likely outcome will be ownership by a small number of big companies that will charge fees for renting their time/labor.
I see the deployment of robotic mechanisms in agriculture here in Calif really ramping up. These systems allow much less human labor to get the job done, but are generally large systems that no small farmer will be able to afford. These will be owned by very large operators, or will be rented to them.
Bottom line- the scenario where there is a farther concentration of wealth is the most likely. Of course there will be plenty of opportunity for smaller operators who are quick on their feet, or who have capital to put to work.
Our future?
Don’t Feed The Animals Or Why I Learned To Stop Worrying and Feed Myself
The robot-replacing-industrial/retail/etc.-labor/wage-slavery issue seems like somewhat of a ruse/distraction from a ‘greater reality’ of high-energy entropy ‘replacing’ that kind of high-energy-based pseudoeconomy labor.
IOW, ‘What, you lost your jobs to robots?’. Maybe, but more likely, or at least more fundamentally, you lost your jobs to entropy– to it being tied an economic system tied to high-energy that’s slowly diminishing.
An increasing number of people may have to be farming and making their own things more locally, ideally sooner, rather than shit-hits-the-fan later, if they know what’s good for them.
The Great Depression was apparently predominantly the simple result of self-domesticated people suddenly losing their food/livelihood networks/supply-chains, rather than out of pure physical/food constraints, irrespective of the Dust Bowl.
Personally, and given the above, I’m partial to the ideas of local blacksmithing, etc., shops than some distant corporate robot/AI factory run by sociopsychopaths and that have little to do with locality or real responsibility or technology for the people, and in part manufacture, for the other sociopsychopathic organizations, such as the governments, United Nations, NATO, etc., so-called smart weapons
to use to bomb, terrorize, displace, murder, genocide, etc.for reasons of security and democracy.Islandboy,
A suggestion for figure 3 (total utility scale vs solar) is to use TWhr rather than GWhr to make easier to read the scales. For utility scale from trough to peak is about 100 TWhr and for solar in 2017 winter (2016/17) to peak was about 6 TWhr, so for solar to take up the entire summer peak would require solar output to increase by a factor of 17. The difference between winter and summer peak is smaller (about 35 TWhr) so PV solar output would only need to increase by a factor of 6 to take care of that difference. Peak solar output has increased by a factor of 3 in the past 4 years, if the rate of increase remains constant then perhaps in 2 more years solar takes care of most of the peak summer to peak winter difference and perhaps 5 or 6 years to get to the 100 TWhr level and fill the entire spring to summer change in output at the utility scale with the winter to summer change in PV output. Increases in wind power would also help, but wind has not been growing as rapidly and may not help as much in summer.
Wind lately (2013-2017) has been growing at about 10% per year, while PV (utility scale) has been growing at about 44%/year. Wind grew at about 24% per year from 50 TWhr to 200 TWhr, so perhaps PV will grow at a similar rate going forward (US utility scale PV in 2017 was about 49 TWhr of output), this implies about 6 years to increase output by a factor of 4 and in 10 years output increase by about a factor of 9, but only if the 24% annual growth rate is sustained for 10 years, seems too optimistic.
In Bend Oregon, we have several sizable solar installations.
Considering the hydro available, it is quite interesting.
http://www.bendbulletin.com/business/5511749-151/solar-farm-rising-near-us-highway-97
Hightrekker,
Everything go ok? Glad to see you are back. Be well.
Yea, operation on heart was successful.
I’m waiting for a ride back to Bend from Portland.
Time will tell, but it looks good, even the heart magicians here are positive.
Welcome back and congrats.
Well, if that doesn’t get you, maybe this will:
😉
Older men on e-bikes behind rising death toll among Dutch cyclists
OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!
That’s absolutely horrific!!!!!
Especially if you actually look at the numbers…. YAWN!
Note: the Netherlands has a population of roughly 17 million inhabitants.
In 2017, 206 cyclists were killed in the Netherlands, 17 more than in 2016 and the highest number in 10 years. The same year 201 people lost their lives in cars (30 fewer than the previous year).
A quarter of the cyclists were on e-bikes, which have an integrated electric motor to propel cycles to speeds of around 20mph.
Disclaimer: I’ll be 65 this month and I will continue pedaling my bamboo bicycle in Hollywood Florida. My guess is, I’d still be a helluva lot safer on an e-bike in Amsterdam.
BTW, Caelan, have you actually done the math? So how many over 65, male e-bikers, were killed in the Netherlands in 2017?
How does that number compare to per capita traffic accident fatalities in the US?
I skimmed the article, Fred, it was just for fun.
Note to readers: Careful about inviting Fred to a live comedy act. 😉
Happy ‘prelated’ birthday, BTW.
You had a congenital ventricular septal defect repaired?
Yep, a VSD.
Took quite a few technicians, but they did it rather quickly.
No one in Bend could do it, but Portland had the talent.
Dennis, I had to add two columns to the spreadsheet with the energy data in TWh instead of GWh and then change the chart to use those two columns. I couldn’t figure out an easier way to get LibreOffice to change the scale. I’ve uploaded the adjusted chart. Is it now what you suggested it should be?
Yes thanks.
A permaculture food forest in the deserts of Jordan
Can Agroforestry and Perennial Farming Solve Drought?
“
TFN #8: Calling in Sick to Riot
I really liked to see the French arrested 200 commies. Here in Spain we had the lesbians out in force bitching about a sexual assault case decision and doing their bit for gender politics, and commie unionists threatening a strike, but communist thugs were kept in line. Poll results showed Ciudadanos keeps rising and the disguised commies, the Podemitas, keep going down in the polls. Being associated with the human tragedy in Venezuela isn’t helping the Reds at Podemos at all.
I see you still lean to the conservative side…
Dude, I was kicked out of school by the communists when I was a teenager, escaped from Cuba, lived in a refugee camp, and worked my butt off to get a degree. Eventually I had the opportunity to work in several communist countries, lived in Moscow, and then moved to Venezuela, where I saw the Castro influence drive Chavez and Maduro to destroy the country. I get personal communications, first hand accounts, photographs, videos, messages begging for help to escape, asking for medicines, and questions asking me what should they do. It’s a daily those of suffering, and moves I make to try to help as much as possible.
On top of that when I mention what’s been going on I get communists insult me, call me a worm, an extreme right Nazi…you name it. As far as I can tell communists today are worse than Nazis, I’m seeing a genocide take place in Venezuela, 4 million Venezuelans have already fled the country…and many on the left continue to defend it and attack those of us who try to stop this tragedy. So you want me to forgive the left for the crimes they committed in the 20th century, and stay silent about what they do now, or not warn you that communism is by far the deadliest menace faced by human civilization?
4 million, about 1/8th of the population?
NAOM
That’s what they say. A few days ago I saw the live streaming of an OAS meeting focused on the Venezuela crisis. One of the experts mentioned the four million.
This guy headed a mission to the Brazil-Venezuela border, and reported about 700 persons were crossing the border per day. He also pointed out many of them were looking for food and medicines, and returned to Venezuela, but there was no control over those numbers. The Brazil border refugees are carrying all sorts of diseases, because the vaccination programs in Venezuela were largely discontinued several years ago. There has also been no provision for those sick with HIV AIDS, high blood pressure, and other chronic diseases, so they are seeing a large number of sick people, and are afraid of epidemics breaking out in Brazil.
Trinidad has a firm policy: any Venezuelans who come in boats are dragged out to the Venezuelan coast. Guyana is also tossing Venezuelans back over the border.
Colombia is taking them in, but they have hundreds of thousands. So they live in parks, and the price of a prostitute along the Venezuelan border is down to $2.50.
Many who get to Colombia, move on to Ecuador, Peru, Chile, etc. Panama is refusing to take more, but Argentina welcomes them. And of course we won’t see the USA left organize caravans for refugees from Venezuela to travel to the USA.
Europeans, of course, look the other way, although here in Spain there are about 250,000 Venezuelans. Most of them are legal.
We are also seeing Chavistas flee with their stolen money. So the USA OFAC and European financial agencies are trying to track that money. In some cases these individuals are being arrested (Chavez’ ex nurse just got jailed in Madrid, they say she stole several hundred million dollars).
Venezuela is just another example of what happens when communists take over. I think it can be classified as a genocide, the number of dead must exceed 100,000 but it gets worse by the day. And it seldom makes the news.
This guy headed a mission to the Brazil-Venezuela border, and reported about 700 persons were crossing the border per day.
Maybe Brazil should learn from Trump and build a wall! /SARC!
Venezuela is just another example of what happens when communists take over.
No, it’s an example of what happens with any corrupt and very inept authoritarian regime puts all their eggs in a single fossil fuel based basket and expects to live happily ever after, even when the shit hits the fan. I guess the communists have destroyed Syria too, eh?
Thanks.
I just heard an update, the number of Venezuelans fleeing the communist dictatorship is about 2000 per day. The main exit points are Brazil, Colombia, and by boat and air.
The government just jailed the top management of Banesco, the largest private bank, and took it over claiming it had bank accounts moving bolivars to buy dollars overseas. Coupled to the jailing of chevron managers who refused to sign papers which violated the law, this has caused a growing exit flow of higher level managers of the few multinationals left in Venezuela.
The head of the Army, General Padrino, gave a speech declaring himself to be Marxist and absolutely loyal to Maduro’s communist ideals, and to Fidel Castro’s guidance. To those of us who watch their speeches and and their behavior it’s easy to discern they are under the mentorship if not partial control of the Castroite dictatorship.
Hi Fernando,
Nice to catch you on this side of POB, a bifurcation I was unsure was a great idea…
You’ve mentioned before hereon that you lean libertarian, yes? If so, what does that mean to you and/or what’s your idea of something that works in that regard?
Also, where do you think Cuba’s going to go with the new guy?
Lastly, what’s up over there WRT Catalonia? I haven’t kept track of news of it in awhile.
I might make a sweep over your site via your handle when I have more time.
You’ve mentioned before hereon that you lean libertarian, yes?
Please, lets look at events.
Fernando escaped a collapsing right wing dictatorship in Cuba, and migrated to Fascist Spain under Franco.
It is perfectly clear to his political orientation.
I escaped Cuba in December 1966 when I was 14 years old. I was sent to Spain on a charter flight with 152 children and 4 Dutch chaperones. I was one of 8000 children secretly sold by the regime in exchange for hard currency. The UN had established refugee camps for us in the outskirts of Madrid, mostly because it was warmer, and the staff spoke Spanish.
They had a system to place us with volunteer families who agreed to take us in until relatives showed up. I was lucky because I had very good grades, was healthy, and was a really good chess player. This put me at the top of the list, and the following year 1967) I was placed with a family in a Jewish neighborhood in the NY City suburbs. They treated me well, made me a room in their basement, and I went to a Jewish school where my chess skills were really appreciated, so I was quite popular. I’ve always had a lot of luck. One reason why I help Venezuelans escape and send them medicines is as a form to pay back all the help I got when I was younger.
And I’m bothering to tell you my story to silence your commie bullshit AND also because I want people to know that I was really really helped by many people in Spain and in the USA so I could get to write this story. Without them, I would have died in Cuba many years ago.
Gee, I’m older than you comrade!
Caelan, given reality, being libertarian today means I support the right to own hunting rifles and pistols, marihuana legalization, and as few as possible nanny state laws. I do feel those under 18 have to be supervised and kept away from drugs, and everybody should wear seat belts. I’m for free speech, like what Jordan Peterson says, and support building a huge wall on the Mexico border to allow legal immigration of carefully screened individuals and families who will integrate into USA western civilized English common law respecting culture (which happens to be the best humanity has created).
Regarding Cuba, the regime is unlikely to change because Raúl Castro remains Communist party chairman, his son Alejandro controls the security services, and his ex son in law controls GAESA, the military conglomerate which makes deals with foreign multinationals to rent them slave labor (when a corporation makes a deal in Cuba, it forms a joint venture with GAESA, part of the deal is to have the JV use Cuban labor at rates close to what’s paid in free Caribbean nations, but this is paid to GAESA, the Cuban slaves receive 8% of what’s charged in local pesos, so what multinationals do is cooperate with a form of serfdom or slavery).
The Castro regime insists Marxism has to work (which of course doesn’t). But over the years it has evolved to accept multinational investments (mostly Canadian and European), and allows a very small private sector, which it chokes down whenever it starts being successful.
The Castro regime is involved in the ongoing destruction of Venezuela and what has now become a calibrated genocide and massive refugee exodus. They are willing to go to extremes to remain in partial control of Venezuela because that’s where they have been getting most of their income. Therefore the dictatorship’s survival hinges on whether they can get the genocidal regime in Caracas to survive. They have good odds because most countries really don’t care when communists are murdering people. Nowadays communist influence in the US and Europe is quite strong, the left owns a lot of media, and USA foreign policy is more focused on making blunder after blunder in the Middle East to satisfy Israel lobby guidance.
I file JP under ‘useful idiot’
http://hipcrimevocab.com/2018/03/10/jordan-peterson-useful-idiot/
It is quite astounding.
“One could hardly think of a better way to kneecap a genuine Leftist movement than unleashing the divisive identity politics seen on college campuses”
Bingo! we have a winner—–
Jordan Peterson must be driving the left completely nuts, I’m noticing his YouTube videos are now being subtitled in Spanish and other languages, and are getting more and more hits. The kids I work with had been watching them and I didn’t know about it. They tell me he’s quite popular with boys.
Yeah, quite popular with boys who can’t get laid.
Contrapoints on Jordan Peterson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LqZdkkBDas
Jordan Peterson interview on channel 4, this video seems to have rocketed Peterson to fame
https://youtu.be/aMcjxSThD54
Fernando sees everything authoritarian as “communist’. Well, that is certainly one side of the coin, and the other side is right wing fascism.
Authoritarian/Totalitarian governments are the grand enemy of all of us, and can come from both ends of the spectrum.
Where he seems to have difficulty is seeing that most socialist leaning peoples are not at all in favor of authoritarianism, quite the opposite in fact. He finds it convenient to just brush them off as ‘communists’.
That was the ploy of fascist McCarthy in the 50’s, and he looks like a cruel idiot now, just as he did then.
If I’ve got you wrong on this Fernando, by all means set me straight.
He is a right wing elite, who was traded for resources with a Fascist Dictatorship (Franco’s Fascist Spain).
It can’t be much clearer.
He is lucky Cuba had the insight to trade him, rather than execution (who knows with his older relatives– right wing oppressors are not looked kindly by the general population)
He knows far more than me about oil– so that is his strong point.
Many friends did this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venceremos_Brigade
You are wrong. Don’t forget I escaped from a communist dictatorship, and eventually I moved to Venezuela, where I’ve been observing communists destroy a country and start committing genocide. I have family and friends involved, I see the suffering close up. And I don’t see any fascist dictatorships committing genocide at this point in time.
Interestingly, although communism is a sick, murderous political idea which has caused the death of tens of millions and has contributed nothing but suffering and misery, today we see people marching with red flags and openly defending it. And their numbers are much larger than the tiny crowds we see with Nazi flags or openly defending Mussolini.
So I have a good reason to focus on fighting communism: one because it’s personal. It’s very very personal. And two because it’s a much bigger threat than fascism. I think Putin is fascist, and I don’t think he’s a threat. The Chinese communists are now moving towards fascism, and in 20 years that communist/fascist hybrid will be the biggest threat to humanity. But right now communists are doing more killing and impacting the people I know.
Sounds pretty clear to me- you Fernando are not opposed to authoritarianism in general, just that which comes form left field.
Those like General Pinochet, Ferdinand Marcos, General Samosa, are just fine with you, as long as they leave your ruling class money in your pocket.
Just because a person favors policies that work towards the ‘common good’ rather than working to protect the
interests of the ultra wealthy, does not make that person a communist. Just an average citizen.
Have you considered taking a reading comprehension class?
And I don’t see any fascist dictatorships committing genocide at this point in time…I think Putin is fascist, and I don’t think he’s a threat.
Syria is Putin’s client state. There are much larger and clearer forms of genocide happening in Syria than we’re seeing in Venezuela.
It’s a crony-capitalist plutarchy pseudotechnobomb clusterfuck– call it what you will.
James Howard Kunstler, along with some on here, and many elsewhere talk incessantly about it like an intellectual prison they seem to be trapped in.
Collapse, or let’s say, natural constraints, can’t come soon enough.
There’s no genocide taking place in Syria. Syria is undergoing a civil war which includes multiple factions.
One of these factions is ISIS, a Sunni offshoot of the USA invasion of Iraq in 2003 (ISIS was the result of US building Camp Bucca and placing former Saddam Republican Guard and security types together with Salafists who had been taught Saudi beliefs).
Another faction is Jaysh al Islam, also a Salafist outfit, more closely financed and controlled by the Saudis. I suggest you read up on Salafist beliefs and their relationship to the radical Muslim clerics financed by Saudi Arabia in radical terrorist cradles in places like Brussels.
The Assad side is Allawite, a Shiite offshoot. The Allawites are backed by the Christians, who see Assad as a much better alternative than a Salafist nut who’ll try to impose sharia and drive them out of Syria.
There’s also Kurds, Sunnis who don’t give a hoot about any Arab rulers, fighting from the Aleppo suburbs to the Iraq border. The Kurds mostly fight ISIS and Turks.
The current propaganda campaign you see demonizing Assad is driven by a strange alliance: the Saudis and Israelis. The Saudis want to control Syria, and the Israelis want to keep Golan and cut off arms supplies to South Lebanon, where the Shiite community has gradually evolved into hard core warriors able to go toe to toe with the Israeli army.
In Venezuela there’s no war. What we see is a government denying food and medicines to people, in what appears a cold blooded move to reduce the population of chronic patients, oldsters, and the poor who won’t support the regime. Under current international law this qualifies as a crime against humanity and a genocide.
There’s no genocide taking place in Syria.
Wow! You have to be a truly extra special piece of work to deny that there is genocide happening in Syria!
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/international-open-letter-calls-syrian-genocide-180227155538993.html
International open letter calls for end to ‘Syrian genocide’
Letter, signed by over 200 artists, writers and musicians, says governments should take steps to stop the bloodshed.
Being wilfully blind, Fernando,you are ignoring all the murderous right wing dictatorships present right now, from Burma to Turkey to Russia to Syria to Saudi Arabia, and of course you think Batista is great.
Wake up, You are a tool.
You are exactly like a typical Hitler supporter. Super dangerous. Deluding yourself into thinking that communism is the only big enemy while supporting right-wing totalitarianism.
Thanks for the insight, Fernando. Lots to chew there.
I rarely read the non-petroleum threads, so maybe someone already posted this link. It’s from a couple of weeks ago.
This is the most relevant to me.
“Without hope, goes the truism, we will give up. And yet optimism about the future is wishful thinking, says Hillman. He believes that accepting that our civilisation is doomed could make humanity rather like an individual who recognises he is terminally ill. Such people rarely go on a disastrous binge; instead, they do all they can to prolong their lives.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/26/were-doomed-mayer-hillman-on-the-climate-reality-no-one-else-will-dare-mention?CMP=share_btn_tw
I call this the Shockley Effect. It’s what happens when someone is very good in their specialty, and they think that makes them an expert on anything else they choose.
I see several errors in this article: the idea that he can say that catastrophe is certain; that fossil fuels are essential to modern life; and that capitalism is related to resistance to change (everyone hates to see their specific livelihood disrupted…).
Sigh.
The article says this:
“Instead, says Hillman, the world’s population must globally move to zero emissions across agriculture, air travel, shipping, heating homes – every aspect of our economy – and reduce our human population too. Can it be done without a collapse of civilisation? ‘I don’t think so,’ says Hillman. ‘Can you see everyone in a democracy volunteering to give up flying? Can you see the majority of the population becoming vegan? Can you see the majority agreeing to restrict the size of their families?’”
He is pessimistic that the necessary steps will be taken.
Right now there isn’t an indication that the world will move to a largely fossil-free economy fast enough to moderate change.
I think it will eventually out of necessity. But will the global economy make transitions smoothly or will it do so only to as a result of increasing natural and economic disasters?
I am not focused on doomsday scenarios, which is why I rarely read the non-petroleum posts. If you think the world is imminently ending, get off the computer and spend what time you have left with friends and family.
But I also expect major disruptions. I am seeing them now, though too many people refuse to acknowledge that our future won’t look like our past.
He makes a lot of unwarranted assumptions. For example, fossil fuels are not required for flying; real meat very likely won’t be needed to give the sensation of meat eating; and the great majority of people in the world are already limiting the size of their families.
OTOH…I agree with you – I expect major disruptions as well. They could be largely avoided with optimal planning, but I too am pessimistic about that.
The “must move to zero emissions” statement is simple dogma. One point these guys forget is that roughly half the anthropogenic CO2 being emitted is taken by carbon sinks. The carbon sinks function at variable speeds, trees moving north into tundra, and other “greening” we observe with satellites are a fast response. A fast response is seen in the shallower ocean layers taking CO2 (which drives pH down). A slower response would be deeper ocean layers gradually taking CO2, as well as the erosion which puts ions in the water to make more carbonates, some of which turn into rock deposits.
CO2 uptake by sinks is very hard to model, but the empyrical rule can be used to state with confidence that, if we cut emissions to 1/3 of the peak value, the CO2 concentration should stabilize or drop. Remember the sinks take more than 1/3 of emissions and gave done it for years. Therefore a reduction to 1/3 of peak implies the sinks will take more CO2 than is emitted. And thus CO2 concentration stabilizes and drops.
To create the disaster scenarios, the IPCC built RCP8.5 and the EPA built a similar case. These assume huge emissions volumes including increases in the use of coal to way beyond resource limits. I think most of you agree we do have resource limits and there will be peak fossil fuels no matter what we do. The key is to tie the limits we think are within reasonable ranges, estimate the peak concentration, and focus on wether the sinks can absorb the CO2. Thus the cumulative CO2 mumbo jumbo we read about is pure baloney. The system reacts to both cumulative AND rate.
What is being done is to build emissions to ungodly RATES so the sinks are overwhelmed, this drives concentrations into danger territory. One can argue this is possible, but the IPCC and others selling the zero emissions dogma should make it very clear that their carbon sink model is set to be choked, so that concentrations do rise to extreme levels. I happen to think the combination of exaggerated resources, the use of very high emissions, the choking of carbon sinks, and very optimistic estimates of carbon capture and rebewables performance amount to fraud. This is more than scientific fraud, because it involves engineering, project management, and economics, all of these fields conjugated into a fraudulent political case.
I believe we ARE running out of fossil fuels, and we do need to get alternatives installed, piloted, tested, and made as efficient as possible. This is also needed because it’s nutty to rely on highly unstable nations like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Venezuela, etc. But this should not be done by lying, and that’s what’s going on. What we need is adults working on the problem, and the politics should be limited to making sure we don’t let communists insert their bullshit about not growing the economy, dedevelopment and such ideas. They introduce these concepts because they know socialism/communism destroys economic growth, so they use the global warming boogie man to justify their stupid ideas.
A fast response is seen in the shallower ocean layers taking CO2 (which drives pH down).
Explain that to the marine organisms…
Here’s a pretty good primer as to the basic chemistry: https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/Assets/Nemo/documents/lessons/Lesson_3/Lesson_3-Teacher's_Guide.pdf
First, CO2 reacts with water to form carbonic acid (H2CO3-):
(1) CO2 + H2O -> H2CO3
–
Carbonic acid can then dissociate into bicarbonate (H+ CO3-):
(2) H2CO3 -> H+ + HCO3-
–
Bicarbonate can then dissociate into carbonate ions (CO3 –)
(3) HCO3 -> H+ + CO3 —
(1) CO2 + H2O -> H2CO3-
(2) H2CO3 -> H+ + HCO3-
(3) HCO3 -> H+ + CO3 —
When first viewing these equations it may appear that both hydrogen ions and carbonate ions increase in solutions as a result of CO2 dissolving in seawater. This is not the case! This would be true if the reactions above only occurred in a single direction but chemical equations can actually go in either direction. A more correct representation of this would be:
(4) CO2 + H2O H2CO3-
(5) H2CO3- H+ + HCO3-
(6) HCO3 H+ + CO3 —
It is ultimately the rates of occurrence and net direction of the above reactions that determine seawater pH and carbonate availability. First when CO2 dissolves in seawater the primary reactions that occur are (1) and (2) going in the direction as listed.
Equation (2) shows that formation of carbonic acid results in an increase in the
hydrogen ion concentration (and thus a decrease in pH). This leaves equation (3) as a key player in determining carbonate availability in seawater. Chemical reactions inseawater can send any of the above equations in either direction as the system tries to maintain equilibrium. As more CO2 dissolves and H+ ions increase in solution, equation (3) will shift in the opposite direction (to the left) to produce bicarbonate. Thus in the system’s attempt to reduce the hydrogen ion concentration, it binds hydrogen and carbonate ions together thereby reducing carbonate availability to marine organisms.
Explain that to the marine organisms that need carbonate to build shells and other structures…
Graph source: Smithsonian Ocean Portal
Esteemed Fred M,
The double equilibrium arrows don’t show up in the text.
Esteemed Synapsid,
You are indeed right!
I guess I could have gone in and manually edited the text
Instead I’ll just put the blame on Ron and Dennis for not allowing special characters or allowing the insertion of small image files directly into the text at the appropriate places where necessary. Argh! @#!%$^&*!!!
Here’s the equations with the arrows.
.
Carbonic acid doesn’t have a charge, Mr. Magyarország. ???⚛?
You don’t have a clue what you are talking about:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/carbonic-acid
Read the part about calcification.
Look at equation (2.7) in that document then look at your equation (4). Your chemical notation is wrong. I would mark you wrong if I were still a basic chemistry TA. If you don’t want to listen to me, Mr. Magyarország, listen to Ulenspiegel (aka “wipe my ass” in Plattdeutsch). ????⚛
Hey Slavic Troll,
Take it up with NOAA!
So there was a typo in their text… Whoop Dee Doo! That’s where the original text came from! I just copied it and pasted it, here. Go ahead, write them a letter!
Then see my response to Ulenspiegel below.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/eias-electric-power-monthly-april-2018-edition-with-data-for-february/#comment-638774
Or just skip straight to the 6 min. Youtube video on ocean acidification that I included at the end of my comment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgBozLCGUHY
Unless you are trying to argue that CO2 is not already causing a significant reduction in ocean pH, which in turn is having an impact on marine organisms that build shells and structures out of CaCO3 such as coral reefs?
Seems to me your only real Intent is to troll!
Your chemical equation (4) is still wrong!
On both sides should be the same net charge. :-)))
OR
H2CO3 has NO!!!! negative charge. :-))))
That entire sequence was copied and pasted from the link I provided. So you can file your complaints there.
While technically it is correct that carbonic acid by itself has no net charge, once it has formed in water, it dissociates.
And as we know, pH is the negative log of the Hydrogen ion concentration, (H+) which has a positive charge and both Bicarbonate ,(HCO3-) and Carbonate (CO3*2-) have negative charges.
Therein lies the rub. It is therefore rather disingenuous to focus on the fact that carbonic acid has no net charge. That’s NOT the problem.
Here’s a 6 minute video of what actually happens when water absorbs CO2 and how it effects ocean pH and marine organisms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgBozLCGUHY
Ocean Acidification
“That entire sequence was copied and pasted from the link I provided. So you can file your complaints there.”
No. You spoil your argument by making basic mistakes, that you copied the stuff does not matter per se.
Nobody believes that you can argue with a set of equilibria when you are unable to detect a simple chemilal mistake, that is my point.
From recent carbon budget numbers it seems to me the ocean sink is getting saturated, at least at the step of surface absorption. If it’s proportional to atmospheric concentration then it should be linear, but it’s turning over. The slower, and maybe ultimately rate determining, steps are transport to the deep oceans and then precipitation out as rocks. I think they are so slow as to be of no real relevance at the moment.
Also recent numbers might suggest that land sinks are heading towards becoming sources, although the data set is a bit short.
George Kaplan,
The data seems pretty noisy if we look at atmospheric carbon growth and land plus ocean sink from 1959-2016.
The acceleration (Pg C/year squared) of each is about the same and total carbon emissions (fossil fuels, industry, and land use) have accelerated at about 2 times the rate (0.122 Pg C per year squared).
Edit: Vertical axis mislabeled it should be
Pg C/year.
For land and ocean sink (earth system sink) a straight line seems to work.
The ocean surface is getting warmer and CO2 solubility is reducing thus changing the rate.
Gonefishing,
Hasn’t the partial pressure of CO2 increased from about 0.00028 to about 0.00041?
The drop in CO2 solubility due to the 0.7 K increase in Global average sea surface temperature (1880-2017) is only about 3%.
The ocean takes up 92 Gt carbon per year, a 3 percent reduction in the rate of uptake is
2.76 Gt C per year.
Gonefishing,
The ocean both absorbs and emits carbon dioxide, the net carbon dioxide added to the ocean was 9.56 Pg in 2016, without the decrease in solubility of 3% (due to increased ocean surface temperature), it might have been 9.86 Pg C, a difference of 0.3 Pg CO2. The increased mole fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere 0.00041 (vs 0.00028 in 1800) would result in about a 6.7 Pg C increase in net uptake of CO2.
https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/faculty/zeebe_files/Publications/ZeebeWolfEnclp07.pdf
paper linked above suggests CO2 in the ocean is linearly proportional to the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The important thing over a human sort of time scale is the rate the CO2 not the eventual equilibrium concentration. That rate depends on the difference between the actual concentration in the surface water and the equilibrium concentration, which in turn is the partial pressure times the Henry coefficient. That coefficient goes down with temperature, i.e the CO2 has less affinity to go into the water. Also as the water takes in more CO2 the concentration goes up (it can’t be transferred to depth fast enough). Therefore raising the temperature and raising the concentration is reducing the driving force, hence the ocean sink is slowing down compared to what would be expected from PCO2 rise, and in some ocean areas may already have become saturated (the Arctic – it’s always the Arctic first it seems).
Dennis,
1)the rate change needs to be calculated on the total
2) the CO2 that is not absorbed cannot be returned to the atmosphere
3) dissolution due to increased partial pressure may be linear, but at what rate, this is a rate problem
4) Oxygen levels are reducing in the ocean
But beyond the shoulda, woulda, coulda discussion, let’s get into the real research.
;However, when the entire 29-year period is considered, oceanic trends converge with atmospheric trends in all three regions; it takes 25 years for this long-term trend to emerge and overcome the influence of decadal-scale variability. Furthermore, in the southernmost biome, the data suggest that warming—driven by a multidecadal climate oscillation and anthropogenic forcing12,13—has started to reduce oceanic uptake of carbon in recent years. http://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo1193
https://news.wisc.edu/climate-change-reducing-oceans-carbon-dioxide-uptake/
Climate impacts on multidecadal pCO2 variability in the North Atlantic: 1948–2009
The North Atlantic is the most intense region of ocean CO2 uptake in term of units per area. Here, we investigate multidecadal timescale variability of the partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) that is due to the natural carbon cycle, using a regional model forced with realistic climate and preindustrial atmospheric pCO2 for 1948–2009. Large-scale patterns of natural pCO2 variability are primarily associated with basin-averaged sea surface temperature (SST) that, in turn, is composed of two parts: the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and a long-term positive SST trend. The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) drives a secondary mode of variability. For the primary mode, positive AMO and the SST trend modify pCO2 with different mechanisms and spatial patterns. Positive AMO is also associated with a significant reduction in dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in the subpolar gyre, due primarily to reduced vertical mixing; the net impact of positive AMO is to reduce pCO2 in the subpolar gyre. Through direct impacts on SST, the net effect of positive AMO is to increase pCO2 in the subtropical gyre. From 1980 to present, long-term SST warming has amplified AMO impacts on pCO2.
https://www.biogeosciences.net/13/3387/2016/
SST trends are a major long term factor that is modified by ocean upwelling and current changes.
Gone Fishing,
There are flows into and out of the ocean for CO2, it is the net flow that matters not the total. As the concentration of CO2 (and related ions) in the ocean will be determined by this net uptake of CO2.
I am calculating rates, the Pg of CO2 per year absorbed by the ocean.
The actual data suggests that the rate that CO2 emissions are sequestered by the Earth System has accelerated at a constant rate from 1959-2017. As the rate of increase in emissions is reduced, this rate of increase in the rate of sequestration will also be reduced.
Fernando,
I do agree the RCP8.5 scenario is not realistic, but Michael Lynch would suggest it is too low 🙂
RCP4.5 will still cause problems, and that scenario is definitely realistic.
The cumulative emissions is important because the rate of removal of accumulated emissions in the atmosphere is very slow, look at the rates that atmospheric carbon was reduced during glacial interglacial cycles. It takes on the order of 100,000 years for atmospheric CO2 to fall from 280 ppm to 190 ppm or by 50% (with no anthropogenic emissions.) In 20,000 years atmospheric CO2 falls about 27%, if we reach a peak of about 510 ppm (as would be the case for RCP4.5), it would take roughly 20,000 years for atmospheric CO2 to fall to 400 ppm and about 100,000 years for atmospheric CO2 to fall to 340 ppm.
I think your carbon model is too simplistic. Excess carbon emissions are taken up at roughly 50% from 1950 to the present. The carbon in the atmosphere remains relatively stable at near zero anthropogenic carbon emissions.
If this were not the case, atmospheric CO2 would not have been relatively stable (from 257 to 283 ppm) for the past 11,500 years. Carbon is removed from the atmosphere (once initial 50% of excess emissions are removed). Just run your model backwards from 1850 and see what atmospheric CO2 would be vs ice core data.
Plant growth shuts down at 150 ppm. Then everything dies. So was getting down to 190 ppm a good thing or a bad thing?
Plant growth shuts down at 150 ppm. Then everything dies.
Well right now we happen to be faced with opposite side of that coin. Even though plants are absorbing more of our CO2 emissions, as the greenhouse effect increases temperatures, plants actually release more CO2 through respiration. Increased temperatures also cause droughts and extreme weather conditions such as flash floods none of which are conducive to continued plant growth also diminishing the beneficial effects of plants as carbon sinks.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-05/plants-are-ramping-photosynthesis-help-absorb-all-our-carbon-dioxide
Plants are ramping up photosynthesis, helping absorb all our carbon dioxide
Yeah, BUT, not so fast!
The scientists found that despite increasing emissions from human activity, the growth rate of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere actually held steady from 2002-2014. Without the help of plants, Keenan says, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would already be at about 460 ppm. “That’s something we don’t expect until about 2050 or 2060,” he adds.
The catch, Keenan explains, is that while plants take in atmospheric carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, using it to grow and support their metabolism, they also release carbon dioxide through a process called respiration. And respiration, Keenan notes, is highly dependent on temperature.
“So, as CO2 is going up, plants take more CO2 from the atmosphere,” Keenan says. “But as temperatures go up, they also release more CO2 into the atmosphere, because of the effect of temperature on respiration.”
…“The kind of extreme temperatures we expect to see because of this CO2 is most definitely detrimental to plants, due to increased drought mortality, [and] increased fire frequencies globally. It really is quite a scary scenario we’re looking at.”
So this idea that all plants automatically do better with increased CO2 is a rather simplistic and discredited view that doesn’t really hold water, (pun intended) out in the real world, where things are quite a bit more complex and dicey as a consequence of all the variables, tipping points and feedback loops.
When you pass a tipping point in a complex nonlinear system you eventually might end up with the system settling into a new stable pattern but you probably can’t reverse the changes if it turns out the new pattern is detrimental to your needs for survival.
And they burn more in hot dry conditions.
Hi David,
I think aiming for 250 to 320 ppm would make sense.
For the past 11,000 years atmospheric CO2 has been in the 250-316 ppm range, with the exception of the past 60 years or so.
If it goes below 250 ( in 30,000 years or so), we’ll dig up some coal and burn it.
Dennis, you are looking at a drop from 280 to 180 in a COOLING environment where plants are dying from the cold. I’m looking at stabilization and gradual drop over thousands of years from around 630 ppm, in a world that should be getting slightly warmer for several centuries. When you model these sinks you have to keep track of lots of variables, and make sure your analogs do run in the same direction.
I believe you ARE smart enough to understand that RCP8.5 isn’t achievable. I’ve written quite a bit about this problem over the years, and I noticed feeble attempts to defend it. But for the most part I’m getting ignored. This makes me raise the ante and claim they are committing fraud.
Fernando,
You still have to explain why CO2 remained stable for 11,000 years, I noticed you didn’t try to defend that.
During glacial interglacial cycles, temperatures were warm during the interglacial, much like the Holocene, (or warmer during the Eemian compared to Holocene prior to 1970 CE). I don’t expect 630 ppm, an RCP4.5 scenario is likely to top out around 530 ppm or so, or that’s what the current carbon models suggest when driven by my medium fossil fuel models.
Where your model fails is the assumption that carbon will continue to be sequestered at high rates once the carbon has accumulated in the atmosphere. The assumption is incorrect based on what mainstream climate and carbon models suggest.
In short, take your model and reported emissions from 1750 to 1950 and see if it works. I am confident it will not. I have used a Bern type model, adjusting coefficients to data from 1850 to 2015 and the result is pretty good, but not perfect as the model is quite simple.
Over the longer term, using a fossil fuel scenario where carbon emissions fall to zero in 2099 and total carbon emissions from all sources (fossil fuel, cement production and land use change) from 1750 to 2099 are 1135 Gt of carbon (4159 Gt CO2), the atmospheric carbon using this simple Bern model gives the result in the chart below.
Note that atmospheric CO2 remains at about 450 ppm for thousands of years. An Earth System sensitivity of 4.5 C per doubling of CO2 and a fall in CO2 like during glacial interglacial transitions would result in about 436 ppm in 10,000 years, suggesting an equilibrium temperature of about 2.9 C above pre-industrial Holocene temperature (similar to 1980-2000 temperature average based on Marcott 2013 and Mann 2008 estimates).
We need to limit carbon emissions aggressively and then will need to remove carbon from the atmosphere in the future.
click on chart to enlarge
Dennis, do a thought experiment as follows:
Emissions are 100 units per year, sinks take 50 units per year.
The sinks removal rate is a function of CO2 atmospheric concentration AND temperature. These seem to change rather slow once we remove ENSO and seasonal effects.
Now take the emissions rate down in a single step change to 33 units per year, and ask yourself:
1. Will the sinks remove 50 units or 16,5 units?
2. If the sink removal is 50 units, and emissions are 33 units, does atmospheric CO2 concentration
A. Go up
B. Stay the same
C. Go down
Fernando,
No more than 33 units will be removed, the main driver is the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere.
If you believe it will 50, you would be wrong.
Model below uses real data for emissions and CO2 from 1850 to 2016, then assumes emissions are fixed at 2016 levels until 2018 then they fall to one third in 2019 (40.3 to 13.4 Pg CO2) and fall be one third again in 2060 (13.4 to 4.5 Pg CO2), emissions fall to zero in 2100.
Total CO2 emissions from 1850-2100 are 2947 Pg CO2 (804 Pg Carbon).
Spreadsheet with model at link below
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vR_cC4wfM33wd67tJxYMPkOfgI2YRja5
Model below uses real data for emissions and CO2 from 1850 to 2016, then assumes emissions are fixed at 2016 levels until 2018 then they fall to one third in 2019 (40.3 to 13.4 Pg CO2) and fall be one third again in 2060 (13.4 to 4.5 Pg CO2), emissions fall to zero in 2100.
Should read:
Model below uses real data for emissions and CO2 from 1850 to 2016, then assumes emissions are fixed at 2016 levels until 2018 then they fall to one third in 2019 (40.3 to 13.4 Pg CO2) and fall by one third again in 2060 (13.4 to 4.5 Pg CO2), emissions fall to zero in 2100.
Typo in original where “be” should have been “by”, highlighted using bold text above.
Fernando,
Look at the historical data for emissions and change in atmospheric CO2. From 1950 to 1960 average CO2 emissions were about one third of today’s level. CO2 went from 311 to 317 ppm, up not down. Or from 1850-1910, average annual CO2 emissions were 3.5 Pg CO2 per year (today’s level is about 40 Pg CO2 per year) and atmospheric CO2 increased from 285 ppm to 300 ppm (about 44% of 208 Pg of cumulative CO2 emissions were sequestered over the 1850-1910 period).
I will go with the empirical evidence.
“One point these guys forget is that roughly half the anthropogenic CO2 being emitted is taken by carbon sinks. ”
In related Don’t Feed The Troll news, the very first post on this thread, by Doug, says
EARTH’S AVERAGE CO2 LEVELS CROSS 410 PPM FOR THE FIRST MONTH EVER
These CO2 levels, according to NOAA’s climate department, haven’t been seen on Earth in 3 million years, when temperatures were 3.6° to 5.4°F warmer, and sea level was 50 to 80 feet higher than today.”
Have you seen the new movie “Back to the Future Eocene” ? 🙂
Is that the one where Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble hit 85 mph in a vintage DinoLorean?
.
Problem is they didn’t have a containment field and took the whole planet with them!
And the Panama Isthmus was open, and Antarctica didn’t have a huge ice cap which happens to be driving winds which cool down the Atlantic circumpolar current.
Also, Antarctica is parked over the South Pole and got turned into a giant planetary refrigerator. The oceans started cooling millions of years ago, before the ice sheet built up on Antarctica. The fossil fuels will run out long before there is a climate response. An interesting component of that is peak Chinese coal production which might happen as soon as 2020 according to a paper by some Chinese academics. That 4 billion tonnes per annum equated to 50 million barrels per day in energy terms.
The fossil fuels will run out long before there is a climate response.
There is already a very detectable climate response, just because you deny reality doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/independent-evidence-confirms-global-warming-instrument-record
Independent Evidence Confirms Global Warming in Instrument Record
A new compilation of temperature records etched into ice cores, old corals, and lake sediment layers reveals a pattern of global warming from 1880 to 1995 comparable to the global warming trend recorded by thermometers. This finding, reported by a team of researchers from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, the University of South Carolina, the University of Colorado, and the University of Bern in Switzerland, resolves some of the uncertainty associated with thermometer records, which can be affected by land use changes, shifts in station locations, variations in instrumentation, and more.
Is this guy for real?
David,
I guess I will go with mainstream scientists on this. Over tens of thousands of years, the ocean temperature equilibrates and whether the level of the ocean is low enough so water flows between North and South America is of little consequence.
The continents have been close to their current positions for about 5 million years, and the Antarctic has had a permanent ice cap for the past 23 million years.
The current ice age (Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation) began about 2.58 million years ago. Oceans have been cooling for 40 million years or so, since Antarctica separated fully from South America. It is also thought that the Himalayas and their formation and continued rise has been an important factor reducing atmospheric CO2 over the past 70 million years. Human agriculture over the past 8000 years may also have been a factor in increasing greenhouse gas and delaying the onset of another glaciation.
Is there a reason why science denier and fascist has not been banned yet? He degrades discourse here.
I am not focused on doomsday scenarios, which is why I rarely read the non-petroleum posts. If you think the world is imminently ending, get off the computer and spend what time you have left with friends and family.
Neither the author of that article nor anyone else except a few fanatics believe the world is imminently ending. It is a rhetorical trick to change the context of your opponent’s argument in order to defeat it.
Well, imminent is a relative timetable. A collapse could be imminent in 5 years, 20 years, or 80 years depending on what timeframe one is considering.
The point I was trying to make is that if collapse is coming and there is nothing I or anyone can do about that, I don’t want to spend what time I have left focused on the end. Just as I don’t want to spend my entire life focused on my death.
However, I choose to believe that human actions can have an effect, so I will focus on what can be done.
The climate change and the CO2 levels don’t provide me with any plan of action. So I’d rather look at issues like changing voter sentiment, ways a change in the global order might facilitate a decline in fossil fuel use, etc.
I know those topics come up here, but I don’t want to look for them amid the data I skip over.
However, I choose to believe that human actions can have an effect,
But of course. Human actions are what got us into this damn mess in the first place. But I think it is way too late to fix anything. Don’t look now but we are already in full collapse mode. It is just a very slow process and may take another one hundred years. Give or take a few decades.
So I’d rather look at issues like changing voter sentiment,
Hey, lots o luck with that one.
I am confused. You highlight my use of imminent. I thought you said the only people who think that are using it to distract from other issues.
But you are saying that rather than imminent, it is already here.
Okay, I got that. But if I can do nothing, then I won’t focus on that. I’ll cherish the time life on Earth has left.
That’s why I don’t spend much time on the non-petroleum topics. It just tells me I am going to die and so will much of everything around me.
Okay, perhaps I should clarify it a bit. The collapse is already here for every other species of megafauna on the planet except Homo sapiens.
Most Homo sapiens now live in a cocoon that shields them from what is really happening in this world. They see welfare as human welfare only and to hell with every other species.
Let me put it another way, the population collapse is well underway and already way past the crisis stage for every species of megafauna except Homo sapiens.
So yes, the collapse is well underway. Every species is dying in massive numbers except Homo sapiens. And we will just keep taking their territory and food until they are all gone. And the vast, vast, majority of humans are totally unaware that their numbers will soon suffer the same fate.
But that collapse, the Homo sapiens collapse, is likely 75 to 125 years away.
Wind and Solar will not reduce CO2 emissions by much.
I will qualify the above statement. If Global population was steady at current levels and GDP per person were also steady and equal then wind and solar would make a large contribution to Co2 reduction.
The problem is global population is growing by 85 million per year and 6,000,000,000 existing people are consuming more and more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
Most Americans who consume vast amounts of oil, coal and food have little idea how desperately people in other countries wish to have a life style that they have.
China installed a very respectable 52 Gw of solar in 2017
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/01/22/china-officially-installed-52-83-gw-worth-solar-2017-nea/
It also installed around 23Gw of wind in 2016 and 2017.
http://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/2017/07/china-to-add-25-gw-of-wind-power-per-year-for-10-years.html
With all that new wind and solar, most people would think coal consumption would go down each year.
Yet in 2017 coal consumption increased.
https://www.reuters.com/article/china-energy-coal/corrected-chinas-2017-coal-consumption-rose-after-three-year-decline-clean-energy-portion-up-idUSL4N1QI48M
On top of that bad news China’s gas consumption has increased dramatically which should have ensured coal consumption fell.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Chinas-Natural-Gas-Consumption-Soars.html
There are 1.6 billion people without electricity and they want to use as much as you.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/world-without-power/
There are 1.6 billion people without electricity and they want to use as much as you.
Ok, but I’m willing to bet they will not be getting it from a grid supplied by fossil fuel generation. I’m also willing to bet that we will not survive on a planet with 9 to 10 billion inhabitants, especially not by burning more fossil fuels. While I have no idea what form population reduction will take, I’m willing to bet we see a lot more smart microgrids in the developing world powered by wind and solar with some form of storage as backup.
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2018/0220/Off-grid-solar-energy-takes-root-in-West-Africa
Off-grid solar energy takes root in West Africa
Companies from around the world are working quickly to access West Africa’s growing off-grid energy market. The movement is building an electric future for millions of residents in the region living outside of the grid.
I grew up in a country where millions of people didn’t have access to telephones. Copper based landlines were beyond their purchasing power, then along came a totally different technology paradigm, cellphones. Now everyone has one with internet access included. Piggybacking on that technology are all kinds of apps providing things like access to social networks, alternative banking systems, access to health care, etc… etc… Nobody was predicting any of that even a mere 25 years ago.
I think that in most of the developing world, fossil fuel powered electrical grids will be superseded by alternative energy.
Peter,
Population will peak and decline, so an assumption that population will continue to grow forever is likely to be incorrect.
Also fossil fuel output will also peak and decline, probably by 2030 so we should get to work to replacing fossil fuel use with wind, solar, and nuclear power.
See following website for alternative population projections which differ from UN projections
http://www.oeaw.ac.at/fileadmin/subsites/Institute/VID/dataexplorer/index.html
And we know that civilizations peak and decline. So what about just civilization? Is it not likely that it will also peak and decline? Or is there something about Homo sapiens that will make them see the light before it is too late. Perhaps God will step in and save things?
Nah!
Ron,
Some civilizations peak and decline. Perhaps human civilization in general will eventually peak and decline, reductions in total fertility ratios(TFR) to under 1.5 will reduce human population, these fell from 5 to 2.5 from 1965 to 2005, better health and education are likely to reduce TFR further in the future, as population falls there will be less pressure on the environment. Depending upon how far this proceeds population could be quite low by 2200, maybe 2.5 billion.
peter,
Population projections based on work linked below
http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/11189/
OTOH experts who study such things claim the world’s population will soar to 11 billion by 2100 and HALF will live in Africa:
• By 2050, the global population will rise from 7.3 billion to 9.7 billion
• Africa’s population of 1.2 billion is expected to rise to 5.6 billion by 2100
• UN study claims probability population growth will end this century is 23%
• Predictions were made at the 2015 Joint Statistical Meetings in Seattle
• Africa’s population of 1.2 billion is expected to rise to 5.6 billion by 2100
And just how many wild animals will be left if Africa if their population gets anywhere near that number? There will be no elephants, giraffes, rhinos, gorillas, chimps, and damn few lesser apes or even monkeys. They will all be gone.
But not to worry, humans are all that counts. As long as people survive to 2100, then the population may just may, start to decline and all will be right with the world. Well, that is if you really don’t give a damn about wild animals or the environment that supports them.
And just in case you think I may be exaggerating;
African elephant population declining at 8% per year
“And just how many wild animals will be left in Africa if their population gets anywhere near that number?”
None, even now they’re doomed as poachers upgrade their guns with night-vision sights and satellite technology. Meanwhile, POPULATION OF NIGERIA IS SET TO OVERTAKE THAT OF THE US BY 2045
http://www.businessinsider.com/nigerian-population-to-exceed-us-by-2045-2013-8
“And just how many wild animals will be left in Africa if their population gets anywhere near that number?”
Yeah, but it might be a great environment for the Ebola virus to evolve into a more lethal form… /sarc
Hi Doug,
There are many experts not all have the same opinion.
Wolfgang Lutz is a very well known in the field of Demography.
see https://global.oup.com/academic/product/world-population-and-human-capital-in-the-twenty-first-century-9780198703167?cc=us&lang=en&
Data based on the work at link below:
http://www.oeaw.ac.at/fileadmin/subsites/Institute/VID/dataexplorer/index.html
Dennis
For the global population to decline the death rate would have to exceed the birth rate.
This can only happen in one of two ways.
The number of babies born falls by over 85 million a year. or
The number of people dying increases by 85 million per year.
Why would the death rate increase by 85 million per year, that is the equivalent to all the people killed in the 6 years of WW2, every year.
A fall in the birth rate of that magnitude would leave the world short of 2.5 billion workers who would pay for the 2 billion retired people in 2070.
Either way the transition will be very difficult, I guess lots of retired people will die much earlier due to lack of food, heating and health care.
Peter,
Lots of retired people save money for retirement. For those who don’t, the rest will need to pay higher taxes, the wealthy can easily afford higher tax rates.
Dennis
I am amazed you could utter such thoughtless statements.
How on earth do you think any country could pay pensions, care costs and hospital costs for an elderly population which is double in size, while the number of those working is reduced by one third?
This is just one element of the costs of a balloning elderly population.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/24/nhs-faces-staggering-increase-in-cost-of-elderly-care-academics-warn-dementia
A person with dementia needs 24 hour care, how much of a teacher’s or policeman salary do you think they can put aside each month after tax, mortgage, food, bills?
Most people can not put away more than £150-£200.
Care home costs are £700 -£900 per WEEK.
No investment can pay that kind of return.
I know elderly people today whose pensions and investments can only pay a fraction of the care costs. So their homes have been sold. After working all their lives they have nothing left.
Rich people simply move to countries with lower taxes such as Monaco and Hong Kong
http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/2098446/how-ultra-rich-get-richer-thanks-tax-havens-such-hong-kong
Peter,
The problem will need to be overcome. As I said their can be increased tax rates on the wealthy to pay for care of the elderly, not saying this won’t be a problem. Just that there are many potential solutions.
I’m quite fond of un-Denial. Gets a few good points across on a regular basis
https://un-denial.com/2018/05/03/by-dahr-jamail-update-on-the-state-of-the-planet-how-then-shall-we-live/
Re: overpopulation- nature has a cure for this. Any history buff can likely tell you all about it. Google images for Russian Famine if you’d like to ruin a nice day. I guess the question is how much porcelain gets broken before we get our numbers rebalanced.
Jack Alpert- https://youtu.be/VdksoUuAXDc
Surface air temperature for April 2018
https://climate.copernicus.eu/resources/data-analysis/average-surface-air-temperature-analysis/monthly-maps/surface-air-8
Remote Sensing Systems reports tropospheric temperature anomaly measured by satellites has been dropping since the 2016 peak. The tropical Pacific is still slightly colder than normal.
I just tweeted the Arctic ice mass and thickness as reported by DMI here https://twitter.com/fernandoleanme/status/993421677093584898
http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html
From RSS. TLT, recent.
RSS for full data set the temperature anomaly trend is 0.193 K/decade (1979-2018), for BEST LO Temp anomaly it is 0.188 K/decade (1979-2018).
RSS chart at link below
http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html
BEST data at page linked below
http://berkeleyearth.org/data/
Chart below moves the BEST LO anomaly by rescaling so that the 1979-1998 monthly mean is zero (rather than the 1951-1980 mean being zero for the original data set). Basically 0.2555 is subtracted for each monthly temperature anomaly in the original BEST LO data.
The two data sets are fairly close over the 1979-2018 (March) period.
I’m waiting to see whether the anomaly drops another 0.2 degrees c, and then I’ll go to Climate Lab Book and see what it says about the match between climate models and real data.
Unfortunately we don’t get to see timely updates of climate models run for the CMIP5 proyect, but with actual emissions, so that we can see how well they do in the 10 to 20 year prediction range. The Cliimate Lab Book models were run with outdated emissions data.
You might do better taking a course in statistical analysis.
One can put actual emissions data in the CMIP3 models from 2005-2017, it’s the forward projections that are a problem, though RCP4.5 seems pretty reasonable based on my estimate of fossil fuel resources.
See http://www.magicc.org/
Arctic sea ice extent for April 2018 averaged 13.71 million square kilometers (5.29 million square miles). This was 980,000 square kilometers (378,400 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average and only 20,000 square kilometers (7,700 square miles) above the record low April extent set in 2016. Given the uncertainty in measurements, NSIDC considers 2016 and 2018 as tying for lowest April sea ice extent on record.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2018/05/arctic-winter-warms-up-to-a-low-summer-ice-season/
You were gone for quite a while. Were you on sabbatical? Rehab? Jail? In any event, welcome back!
Thanks Dave. Lol no jail for me yet, although I did work health services in one for a bit. I had to go off the grid for a bit and get my cash crops planted. No mobile devices allowed at that site, if you nomsayin.
The Arctic ice and weather seems to be set up for quite high losses in the near future with high temperature air incursions from Atlantic and Pacific sides and clear skies over a lot of the area. The thicker ice concentration has moved to the Siberian side where it will see a longer melting season (all the peripheral seas have fully melted in recent years), and the normally thick ice north of Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago is pretty thin and loose and easy to export to the melting zones in Greenland Sea and Baffin Bay if it doesn’t melt in place first.
One of Judith Curry’s predictions was for a big ice rebound this year, I think she is going to be proved very wrong.
And in Antartica the temperature anomaly is predicted to hold above 4 K for for a week or so starting in a couple of days.
We don’t normally allow functionally illiterate individuals into positions of critical leadership.
We shouldn’t allow mathematically, scientifically and technologically illiterate individuals into those positions either. The meme of being proudly ignorant has long outlived its usefulness and is profoundly damaging to us as individuals, to our families, our society, our economy, our democracy, our nation as a whole and it’s place on the world stage.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/06/technical-ignorance-is-not-leadership/
Technical ignorance is not leadership
There is a peculiar pattern that I have noticed among elites in the United States outside Silicon Valley, which is the almost boastful ignorance of technology. As my colleague Jon Shieber pointed out today, you can see that ignorance among congressmen throughout the whole Facebook/Cambridge Analytica saga. Our president has rarely sent an email, and seems to confine his mobile phone activities to Twitter. One senior policymaker told me a few months ago that she doesn’t know how to turn on her computer.
Such a pattern is hardly unique to politics though. Hang out with enough business executives, lawyers, doctors, or consultants, and you will hear the inevitable “I don’t really do the computer,” with an air of detached disdain.
Yet it isn’t just the technical challenges that this class avoids, but anything to do with implementation in general. In the policy world, wonks spend decades debating the finer points of healthcare and social spending, only to be wholly ignorant at how their decisions are actually implemented into code.
And it is these technically illiterate ignoramuses, who are in a position to make critical policy decisions about all the disruptive technologies that are emerging and progressing at breakneck speed and how those technologies will ultimately affect the lives of all our citizens. Am I the only one who finds this particular state of circumstances to be more than a tad worrisome?!
One the biggest surprises of my working life was talking to the Chief Information Officer of a $4B organization, and having her tell me proudly that she didn’t use an portable electronic organizer because she didn’t want to look like a geek!
Unsurprisingly, she was not very good at her job. But…how did she ever get it in the first place? Because she was a good salesperson. Social skills, like salesmanship, seem to be what brings people to leadership.
Pathological extroversion/narcissism, sociopathy…these seem to be selected for, in our leadership.
I’ve known high level management, in large organisations, that have needed their secretary to switch on their computer as they do not know how.
NAOM
Computers arent the only technology. Most political leaders are lawyers, social scientists, accountants, comedians, former military, etc. They can’t change a tire nor do they know the difference between a photon and an electron.
Your CV up as a post: https://wentworthreport.com/cuba-explained/
What genuine, for real, no-bullshit ambition on climate change would look like
New scenarios show how to hit the most stringent targets, with no loopholes.
By David Roberts
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/5/7/17306008/global-warming-climate-change-scenarios-ambition
As The Daily Caller’s Jason Hopkins reports, California is widely expected to become the first state in the U.S. to require solar panel installations for nearly all new homes.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-05-07/taxpayer-about-rescue-elon-musk-again
…
Whats wrong with these people? Everyone knows that A Maxi Vegamatic 2.0 is more important than a PV Array. US PV prices are almost 50% above Market Price. Thank you, Obama/Trump. Sort of Like Bill Clinton Taxing Social Security??
Where did I see that AGA says that NG needs to be $4.00+ at the wellhead for the industry to be viable? Rock.N.Roll
I bet that California already mandates insulation in new construction and a thousand other things. Sad when the government makes people put something on their houses that adds value, helps society, makes for cleaner air and pays for itself.
On the other hand I hear that as soon as California secedes from the Union they will stop requiring things like seat belts and air bags in cars and trucks because most people find them to be a nuisance and an imposition on their god given right to occasionally fly through windshields…/sarc
Being the 5th largest economy on the planet, maybe it will start a trend?
CA is always ahead of everyone else in the US——
California Warns of a Second Energy Crisis
By Mark Chediak
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-03/california-warns-of-a-second-energy-crisis-as-customers-defect
California’s chief utility regulator is warning that the state could find itself in the throes of another energy crisis if it doesn’t address the droves of customers defecting from utilities.
The state is going to find it increasingly difficult to ensure it has enough electricity to keep the lights on as more Californians leave utilities to buy their power directly from resources like rooftop solar panels and community choice aggregators that contract directly with generators, California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Picker said. As much as a quarter of the state’s energy demand may be sourced outside of utilities by the end of this year, he said.
“We have a hodgepodge of different providers,” Picker said in a telephone interview. “If we aren’t careful, we could slide back to the kind of crisis we faced in 2000 and 2001.”
California’s chief utility regulator is warning that the state could find itself in the throes of another energy crisis if it doesn’t address the droves of customers defecting from utilities.
LOL! So let me get this straight. The chief utility regulator is warning of a looming energy crisis because utility customers are giving the utilities the middle finger and getting their energy from sources other than that which is monopolized by the utilities. You really can’t make this stuff up, eh?
.
Note you can read the report about California’s future energy crisis.
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/uploadedFiles/CPUC_Public_Website/Content/Utilities_and_Industries/Energy_-_Electricity_and_Natural_Gas/CCC%20Paper.pdf
Tks, I will read it. I just skimmed some of it and the impression I got was that the foxes guarding the hen house are worried that the chickens seem to be taking matters into their own hands to the detriment of the fox network.
I am seeing a LOT of solar panels going up on roofs of shops that operate a lot of refrigeration, butchers, greengrocers, ice cream suppliers etc, seems a no-brainer. It would be great to see a ban on the sale or installation of boilers and a mandate for solar water heating given the amount of sun we have here. Even instant water heaters would be good as there are, now, many on the market unlike when I built. Am looking for a flat panel water heater to link into my boiler and I think I have found one that is not the cold climate tubes type, payback < 2 years.
NAOM
California is going to have an economic shock in the next few years as the upper middle class and rich folk start migrating in large numbers to avoid the high tax load. Governor Moon Beam’s partially built high speed train track and dusty solar panels will be what’s left of the leftist elite’s dreams as low riders and taco stands replace what used to be.
That must be why home prices are so low in California.
It’s live Yogi said, nobody lives there any more, it’s too crowded. 🙂
another typo. “live” in comment above should have been “like”.
Dennis – why not just login and correct the original?
Hi George,
I just do what everyone else would do, others can’t correct their mistakes, so I figure I shouldn’t either, except for a post, those typos I correct when I see them.
US tax law just changed this year. Call a California based accountant, tell him you make $300K per year, have a $600K home with $25000/year in interest payments, save as much as possible in an IRA, and tell him to estimate your total tax load in A) Los Angeles California, B) Chicago, Illinois and C) Austin, Texas. You can estimate your electricity and natural gas bills on your own. Then figure out where you would want to live under CURRENT 2018 tax law.
” figure out where you would want to live under CURRENT 2018 tax law”
If money were all that mattered, then Calif wouldn’t be a high choice for many, but there is this little item called quality of life that ranks high on the choice scale for most.
Fernando,
Those with income over $350k got hit with AMT anyway, so not much has changed, local and state taxes are not deductible under AMT.
Taxes have always been higher in California and for upper middle class that were already paying AMT, little has changed, in fact marginal tax rates are a bit lower.
It is true that the republican tax bill just passed is a kick in the face of states that have high property and income taxes,. including Calif. Some people will have to move I suspect, unless the congress changes hands and at least partially rolls back the tax plan.
On the other hand, I don’t expect the property values to drop much because there is a ongoing surge of people who would like to live in vibrant, pretty places with progressive multi-multiculturalism, good climate and jobs- like Calif. So far the frenzy for homes on the market continues.
Money talks, sh*t walks.
Yep–
California just passed the UK, and is the 5th largest economy on Earth.
Without it, the US would be more third world than it already is.
While no longer a CA resident, it is the player we all bow down to.
http://fortune.com/2018/05/05/california-fifth-biggest-economy-passes-united-kingdom/
Hi Hickory,
Yes it hurts some for sure, it’s going to be difficult for Republicans in high tax states to defend, hopefully this will mean fewer Republicans in Congress.
Leanme, you have been out in the humidity too long
California is home to Tomorrowland
A Massive Marine Extinction in Earth’s History Was Just Discovered
The scientists found that, in addition to megalodon, species of big sea cows and baleen whales also went extinct 2-3 million years ago. As many as 43 percent of sea turtle species, 35 percent of seabirds and 9 percent of sharks also died out at this time.
The drivers of the die-out are not precisely known, but the researchers note that violent sea level fluctuations coincided with the extinction event. Coastal habitats were significantly reduced as a result. Marine mammals that megalodon feasted on started to decline, while new competitors evolved.
https://www.seeker.com/earth/animals/researchers-discover-a-previously-unknown-marine-extinction-event
From their related link, If confirmed, It will be rather difficult to reconcile such a high rate of climate change without monumental ecosystem disruptions and an associated potential massive extinction event. So last ones out please turn off the lights. Thanks! 😉
https://www.seeker.com/the-climate-is-changing-170-times-faster-than-normal-because-of-humans-2261628278.html
CLIMATE
Humans Are Changing the Climate 170 Times Faster Than Normal
A newly developed formula shows how much the planet has warmed due to human activity vs. natural forces.
BY KIERAN MULVANEY PUBLISHED ON 02/14/2017 3:52 PM EST
It’s no secret that Earth has undergone numerous convulsive changes in its history, from mass extinctions and climatic changes to cataclysmic collisions and long-term periods of immense volcanic eruptions – or multiple combinations of the above. But it is also undeniably clear that human activities have caused massively accelerated change – to the extent that some scientists argue that the Holocene Epoch, which began 11,700 years ago following the end of the last great Ice Age, has now given way to a period that should be called the Anthropocene.
But how to measure definitively the degree to which this latter change is outpacing more natural ones? That’s a question that occurred to Owen Gaffney, anthropocene analyst and communicator at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Future Earth, and Will Steffen, an emeritus professor of the Australian National University and one of the earliest and strongest proponents of the Anthropocene designation.
Yes, the myth that primitive humans were so devastating to the giant mammals and birds has been steadily ripped apart in the last decade or so . It is turning out to mostly be climate change, which is an unforgiving ever present destroyer of the environments.
Yes, modern unthinking, unplanning mankind is a force of Nature to be reckoned with. Rushing forward into our tech future has produced climate change at almost the speed of some abrupt climate changes of the past and maybe we will get the two awards for being top climate changer. The “fastest climate changer on the planet award and the “stupidest big brained creature ever produced award”.
Although we might lose out to large asteroid strikes which are essentially immediate in devastation (unless we have full scale nuclear war, then we are definite award winners).
We can have a new song:
“We broke the planet, but we didn’t break the climate change record.”
Of course there already is a “We broke the planet” song
http://www.broadjam.com/songs/billburnett/dear-god-we-broke-the-planet/Play
Stay cool. Don’t feed the trolls, they are everywhere.
We can have a new song:
“We broke the planet, but we didn’t break the climate change record.”
Up until now, that is!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2018/05/07/another-extreme-heat-wave-strikes-the-north-pole/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a60c34de28df
Another extreme heat wave strikes the North Pole
In four of the past five winters, the North Pole has witnessed dramatic temperatures spikes, which previously were rare. Now, in the lead up to summer, the temperature has again shot up to unusually high levels at the tip of the planet.
Scientists say this warming could hasten the melt of Arctic sea ice, which is already near record low levels.
In just the past few days, the temperature at the North Pole has soared to the melting point of 32 degrees, which is about 30-35 degrees (17-19 Celsius) above normal.
Much of the entire Arctic north of 80 degrees latitude is abnormally warm. The temperature averaged over the whole region appears to be the warmest on record for the time of year, dating back to at least 1958. It is about 18 degrees (10 Celsius) above the normal of 4 degrees (minus 16 Celsius).
I’m sure someone will chime in and tell us how the Arctic sea ice is actually increasing and what an exceptionally record cold April we have had in Minnesota. How anthropogenic climate change is a hoax and more CO2 is good for plants. How climate change is not caused by humans and that the climate has always changed. That human caused climate change is not causing an extinction event. And why, if we try to transition away from fossil fuels we will destroy the global economy. Unfortunately, not one of those things is true!
It’s getting harder and harder to stay cool…
Well what is our climate’s “correct” temperature supposed to be at? Nobody knows for certain.
“Well what is our climate’s “correct” temperature supposed to be at? Nobody knows for certain.”
Of course we know. Temperature varies latitudinally around the earth as a normative state. This differential climate system has become more homogenous as polar -equator temperature trend toward a new lesser equilibrium causing Arctic transgressions into the mid-latitude regions and less commonly into the equatorial regions and visa-versa. The now diffuse latitudinal climate boundaries have chaotic implications for biological systems and ocean heat transport systems.
I could go on, but to put it more simply, the correct global average temperature is 1.82 degrees C lower than currently measured. In other words just slightly lower than when we started mucking up the system by burning fossil fuels, reducing forests and changing a large percentage of the landscape.
If we use Marcott 2013 for Global Temperature estimate from 11,290 BP (or -9340 CE) to 1840 CE and NOAA LO estimate from 1880-2017 to determine average Holocene temperature, then the average over the entire period has been similar to the 1975 to 2004 average Global land ocean temperature anomaly. The estimate is 0.004 C cooler if we ignore modern temperatures after 1850 CE. That would shift the range to the 1974-2003 average Temperature anomaly.
So if we consider “pre-industrial” Holocene global temperature as the Global Land Ocean Temperature before 1850 CE as our baseline, 2017 Global LO temperature was about 0.54 C above the pre-industrial Holocene average temperature, assuming the Marcott et al 2013 estimate is correct.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/03/response-by-marcott-et-al/
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1198
According to Google scholar the paper linked above has 578 citations.
“Well what is our climate’s “correct” temperature supposed to be at?” If you’re a mosquito I think 80 degrees (27 C) is about ideal.
Depends upon which life stage one is talking about. Eggs can stand below freezing temperatures and larvae tolerate cool water temps. Eggs can hatch successfully at 13C and above.
Happy Spring.
” It was days of swarming black flies before I noticed there were also mosquitos..” quote from a Canadian canoeing expedition
“Well what is our climate’s “correct” temperature supposed to be at?”
Well Pops, that is true question. What is the temperature supposed to be? Just what is ‘correct’?
And, How many people should be in the world?
How much wild-land should there be?
And, Just how badly should we fuck up this place?
In the long frame of geologic time, the climate of the earth is all over the place- hotter, colder, wetter, drier, windier. But in the span of human history it has been fairly stable. We now threaten to play God with it. Unstable conditions are dangerous when when you have 7.5B people counting on stable food supplies, for example.
20 thousand years ago it was a lot colder. Then it climbed, dropped again, climbed even higher, probably hit a peak about 9000 years ago, and started dropping slowly. Then it had some oscillations, including the medieval warm period, followed by the little ice age. Today the temperature is about 1 degree C higher than it was when the last cold spell ended in the 1800’s. And it’s likely to increase at least another degree C. We may even be forestalling another return to the ice age. And that’s a pretty decent outcome.
Fernando,
Based on Marcott et al 2013 temperature peaked about 5000 years ago (-5000 CE), if we take the mean Global Temperature from -9430 CE (11,290 BP) to 1840 CE (110 BP) and set that to a zero anomaly. The peak “pre-industrial” temperature was 0.27 C (from -5000 to -5100 CE) above the pre-industrial mean temperature. For the past 5 years the average global land ocean temperature has been 0.46 C above the pre-industrial mean and about 0.2 C above the pre-industrial peak.
The 21 year average Global LO temp anomaly from 1997-2017 was 0.31 C. The one sigma uncertainty on the Marcott estimate is about 0.13 C.
Nobody knows for certain.
What we do know absolutely for certain is what upper limits we can not transcend.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02082017/heatwaves-deadly-heat-humidity-wet-bulb-human-survivability-threshold
Heat Waves Creeping Toward a Deadly Heat-Humidity Threshold
…The researchers focused on a key human survivability threshold first identified in a 2010 study, when U.S. and Australian researchers showed there is an upper limit to humans’ capacity to adapt to global warming. That limit is expressed as a wet-bulb temperature, which measures the combination of heat and humidity for an index of physical human misery. When the wet-bulb temperature goes above 35 degrees Celsius, the body can’t cool itself and humans can only survive for a few hours, the exact length of time being determined by individual physiology.
That survivability threshold is reached when the air temperature climbs above 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and the humidity is above 90 percent. Higher temperatures require less humidity to become deadly, so when the air temperature is 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the wet-bulb survivability threshold is reached when humidity hits 85 percent.
When humidity is 90% and surface temperature is over 32 degrees we invariably get clouds which reach way up into the upper atmosphere (that’s because hot humid air rises like a rocket). These clouds usually grow into huge gray masses with thunder and lightning, strong winds, hail, tornadoes, and gobs of rain. The rain usually cools the ground a bit. What these pseudo scientists forget is that in tropical areas we get huge amounts of rain when it gets hot and humid. In Lake Maracaibo the worst we see is the 48 hours just before the rainy season starts. But as it turns out Mother Nature does seem to have a regulation mechanism, the higher humidity brings cloud cover, and then suddenly it starts pouring.
What these pseudo scientists forget is that in tropical areas we get huge amounts of rain when it gets hot and humid.
Riiight! And the best you can come up with is an ad hominem? Wet bulb temperatures are based on the following:
https://www.weather.gov/tsa/wbgt
WetBulb Globe Temperature
Weather.gov > Tulsa, OK > WetBulb Globe Temperature
WetBulb Globe Temperature (Prototype-Under Development. Not to be used for operational use)
The WetBulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) is a measure of the heat stress in direct sunlight, which takes into account: temperature, humidity, wind speed, sun angle and cloud cover (solar radiation). This differs from the heat index, which takes into consideration temperature and humidity and is calculated for shady areas. If you work or exercise in direct sunlight, this is a good element to monitor. Military agencies, OSHA and many nations use the WBGT as a guide to managing workload in direct sunlight.
We are talking about direct sunlight not tropical downpours. You may disagree with all the military leaders in the world, but most of them understand that human physiology has limits.
BTW, if it rains and cools down after you have already dropped dead from heat exhaustion, it really isn’t all that helpful! /sarc
“what is our climate’s “correct” temperature supposed to be at? ”
10/27/15
A new study published in Nature by scientists at Stanford and UC Berkeley has made waves for its finding that thus far we have dramatically underestimated the damage human-caused climate change will do to the global economy.
By looking at data from 160 countries across the 50-year period from 1960 to 2010, the authors found that an average local temperature of 13°C (55°F) is economically optimal, particularly for agricultural productivity. That temperature roughly reflects the current climate in many wealthy countries like the USA, Japan, France, and China.
If regional temperatures are cooler, then warming benefits the local economy, but past that peak temperature, warming reduces economic productivity. The robustness of this result is particularly interesting. The study found that it held true for both rich and poor countries, and that the relationship held for both the 1960–1989 and 1990–2010 time frames
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/oct/27/global-warming-could-be-more-devastating-for-the-economy-than-we-thought
My quote was an analog of “I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy” . Not meant for critical analysis.
“In just the past few days, the temperature at the North Pole has soared to the melting point of 32 degrees, which is about 30-35 degrees (17-19 Celsius) above normal.”
Not to worry, it’s dropping down again.
Ultimately unless we go back on a pendulum to the state more similar to the world that existed before the 1960’s, I think we will keep spiraling downwards to extinction. We may be the cause of our own extinction. It will happen if we do nothing to stop the machine in our culture producing remorseless self-hate, nihilistic sociopaths intent on ruining the world because they are too pathetic and weak to take in life by the reigns, realize how ultimately evil their beliefs are, and make a footprint which isn’t reliant upon suicidal hatred of the dominion they have been granted.
Volcanic initiated Ice Age causes mass extinction event.
Cold extermination: One of greatest mass extinctions was due to an ice age and not to Earth’s warming
The Earth has known several mass extinctions over the course of its history. One of the most important happened at the Permian-Triassic boundary 250 million years ago. Over 95% of marine species disappeared and, up until now, scientists have linked this extinction to a significant rise in Earth temperatures. But researchers have now discovered that this extinction took place during a short ice age which preceded the global climate warming. It’s the first time that the various stages of a mass extinction have been accurately understood and that scientists have been able to assess the major role played by volcanic explosions in these climate processes.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170306091927.htm
Climate change is a killer.
Poll: Convicted ex-coal CEO in the lead one day ahead of West Virginia Senate primary, sparking panic in GOP.
http://hill.cm/O9F75Cc
Well I stand corrected– Late stage capitalism can be fun sometimes—–
Is it late stage capitalism (I didn’t know there was stages), or a failing democracy?
Note- a well functioning democracy in a land of well-informed voters would likely have rules in place that helped the capital markets function for the greater good, rather than a few
Capitalism is the paved highway. Regulations are the painted lines and signs. The loser anarchist drives their vehicle on the wrong side of the road.
Capitalism isn’t the problem. The poorly educated are the problem.
With thirteen years to educate a person, it is not the poorly educated that are the problem, it is the poor education system that is a strange and dysfunctional morph of the system of more than a century ago. Maybe if they spent more time teaching children how to think, use their own minds, rather than on facts and passing tests, the young adults might be more prepared for a changing world. This is not a game of trivial pursuit, nor should school be a form of mental slavery.
Some of the European nations seem to have developed better education systems, maybe we should get down off of our high ponies and ask for some help?
” it is not the poorly educated that are the problem, it is the poor education system that is a strange and dysfunctional morph of the system”
I don’t think we’re that far apart here and I’m not qualified to say what the solution is here. Maybe we produce the same percentage of non thinkers as we did 50 or 100 years ago. But in todays economy, there is little room for success for a non thinkers with 13 years of education. 50 years ago a high school education could get one a well paying factory or construction job. Enough to buy a home and rise a family. Not today.
Failure generates discontent in our world of entitlement. There is more to education than just going to school. I think discipline is mostly learned from parents which is part of the system. Doesn’t a poor education system produce poorly educated ?
Entitlement is a big problem. One never learns when one thinks one is special and never really wrong.
I see that the US has been rising in the PISA results from 37th to now about 25th a few years ago.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3b48d3/what-students-in-europe-learn-that-americans-dont
We really shouldn’t have high expectations for American schools with watered down science texts, creationism and religion clawing at the system, scattered and unfocused math curricula, and a general heavy emphasis on other activities (sports) while TV, computer games and the ever present smart phone competes for the rest of the student time.
Finland does really well and spends half the time at it.
But your answer is quite expected. The typical American is so sure of our superiority that they can never accept that others have progressed beyond us and we can learn from them.
BTW. the typical American does not know how to listen and rarely can accept being wrong about anything. Maybe that is the biggest problem, a bunch of blockheads, ideas and conclusions get set in concrete.
“If you’re American, your teachers probably didn’t teach you proper posture or how to put a condom on in the dark.”
Maybe if half of America wasn’t rised with religious sexual guilt. Americans could have sex with the lights on.
Don’t be so hard on them.
Maybe they are just trying to conserve energy. 🙂
If you look at collapsing societies, be it a horse in the Roman Senate, or the mysticism of a waining England, these absurd situations arise.
Yea, there are stages——- I guess a history degree from UC did it to me.
What book do you feel best explains these stages?
Are there any history books for the lay person that you would most recommend?
I have this one queued up to read next-
‘Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent’
Here is what main stream media suggests:
https://themillions.com/2017/11/a-late-stage-capitalism-reading-list.html
(“Late capitalism” is a term used by Marxists to refer to capitalism from about 1945 onwards, with the implication that it is due to come to an end.
Often referred to “golden age of capitalism” by other members of society).
King Coal (1948)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0AJ1bkG8GU
https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles#.WvEBjIgvyM_
Union of Concerned Scientists
Why electric vehicles?
Electric cars and trucks are powered by electricity, which as an energy source is cleaner and cheaper than oil. Even when the electricity comes from the dirtiest coal-dominated grid, electric vehicles (EVs) still produce less global warming pollution than their conventional counterparts, and with fewer tailpipe emissions (or none at all).
Electric vehicles are practical too: 42 percent of US households could use a battery-electric or plug-in electric vehicle. Doing so would save drivers billions in fuel costs and greatly reduce the amount of global warming pollution we emit.
In fact, widespread adoption of electric cars and trucks could save 1.5 million barrels of oil a day by 2035. To get there, we need smart government policies that incentivize investment in clean vehicle technology—helping move America toward a cleaner, safer, Half the Oil future.
For those actually interested in evolutionary paleontology and specifically mass extinctions, this talk is quite thorough and exemplifies the use of more modern techniques that are changing how we view the past and how extinctions operate. Since we are in the midst of a long ongoing extinction event, some people might want a more relevant and accurate view of the process.
Mass Extinctions, Ray-Finned Fishes, and the Closing of Romer’s Gap
Conrad Wilson, University of Calgary, explains how recent work on Early Carboniferous fossil sites from Nova Scotia and around the world provide new insight into the evolution of ray-finned fishes and how the development of the modern vertebrates may have been influenced by the mass extinction at the end of the Devonian Period (419 – 359 million years ago).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxWwu-8JLO4
The pleistocene extinction explained in just three minutes.
Or if you are really interested, and I suspect that most of you are not, there are about thirty or forty Youtube videos here: Pleistocene Estinctions. Some of them are as short as one or two minutes and some much longer. It all depends on your interest in the subject. But the first one I listed at the top is one of the best. And anyone should have three minutes to spare.
Did the changing climate shrink Europe’s ancient hippos?
“The German fossil from Untermaßfeld is the largest hippo ever found in Europe, estimated to weigh up to 3.5 tonnes,” said Mazza. “The Collecurti specimen was also large, but interestingly even though it was close in both time and distance to the Colle Lepre specimen the latter specimen was 25% smaller. A final specimen, an old female from Ortona in central Italy, was smaller again. It was 17% smaller than the Collecurti fossil and approximately 50% lighter.”
The team found that a clear size threshold separated hippo specimens which heralded from different parts of the Pleistocene age. The hippos from the early Pleistocene were the largest ever known while smaller specimens emerged during the middle Pleistocene. Larger specimens briefly reappeared during the late Pleistocene.
“We believe the size difference was connected to the changing environmental conditions throughout the Pleistocene,” said Mazza
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121025095403.htm
THE BATTLE OF THE GAS-SUCKING MEGA GIANTS IS SET TO BEGIN
Off the coast of Western Australia, a battle between mega giants is unfolding. The combatants involve the world’s biggest semi-submersible platform, the longest sub-sea pipeline in the southern hemisphere, and the largest floating facility ever built.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-44003521
“When you have physical growth on a finite planet, pressures are going to mount to stop the growth.”
-Dennis Meadows
I have seen a number of Whopping Big Cranes around, but never saw any Gas-Sucking Megabeasts. Maybe they are population/range constrained and near extinction. 🙂
I chortle when I read articles stating that natural gas gives off a lot less CO2 when burned relative to coal. It does, but if one takes into account the methane leakage in the process, natural gas has the same or worse global warming potential as coal. More snake oil salesmen at work.
“I chortle when I read articles stating that natural gas gives off a lot less CO2 when burned relative to coal.” That’s true, in the end (literally) it’s irrelevant what we burn.
I chortle when I read articles stating that natural gas gives off a lot less CO2 when burned relative to coal.
What does that sound like? Can you upload an example to SoundCloud?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysEOCdLMIzc
https://www.soundsnap.com/tags/chortle
What’s your assumed methane leakage rate for the Prelude system Shell is building?
The “Blitzkreig” hypothesis of animal extinctions by early humans is under heavy fire, mostly due to the simple lack of evidence. Of course the more intransigent will never except new evidence or see that major climate changes such as glaciations and desertification could possible be causes for extinctions and population/range reduction.
Death of the Megabeasts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJDrOmPXzJs&t=2432s
Of course the more intransigent will never except new evidence or see that major climate changes such as glaciations and desertification could possible be causes for extinctions and population/range reduction.
Really now? I have read many books and watched perhaps a hundred youtube videos on the subject. I have never read or heard of anyone denying that climate change, glaciations, and desertification could cause extinctions. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, agrees that climate change, or the onset of the ice ages, were the cause of major extinctions during the early Pleistocene. However over 4 times as many megafauna species went extinct during the late Pleistocene as went extinct in the early and middle Pleistocene combined. Go here and count them:
Quaternary extinction event
The Late Pleistocene extinction event saw the extinction of many mammals weighing more than 40 kg. The proportional rate of megafauna extinctions is consecutively larger the greater the migratory distance from Africa.
In Subsaharan Africa, 8 of 50 (16%) genera of mammalian megafauna were driven to extinction.
In Asia, 24 of 46 (52%)
In Europe, 23 of 39 (59%)
In Australasia, 19 of 27 (71%)
In North America, 45 of 61 (74%)
In South America, 58 of 71 (82%)
There is no evidence of megafaunal extinctions at the height of the Last Glacial Maximum, indicating that increasing cold and glaciation were not factors.[13] There are three main hypotheses concerning the Pleistocene extinction:
The animals died off due to climate change associated with the advance and retreat of major ice caps or ice sheets.
The animals were exterminated by humans: the “prehistoric overkill hypothesis” (Martin, 1967).[14]
The extinction of the woolly mammoth (by whatever cause, perhaps by humans) changed the extensive grasslands to birch forests, and subsequent forest fires then changed the climate.[
Everywhere except Africa, the mammalian megafauna was almost entirely wiped out in the Late Pleistocene. Why were mostly large animals wiped out, and why in only the Late Pleistocene? Well, I might give you a hint. That was when Homo sapiens came out of Africa and spread over the entire earth.
However none of that really matters right now. No matter what you thought caused the extinctions in the Pleistocene, there is absolutely no doubt as to what is causing the Anthropocene extinction. That’s why we call it the Anthropocene extinction.
The Anthropocene is a proposed epoch that begins when human activities started to have a significant global impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems.
Amazing how African humans didn’t seem capable of wiping out the large mammals but other humans did? Interesting conundrum there that flies against the human Bliztkrieg hypothesis. Lions, tigers, wolves, bears, elephants, buffalos still exist, along with many other large animals. Hmmm.
Also there is almost no evidence of humans in Australia being the primary cause of the death of the Megabeasts there. Another problem for the Blitzkrieg hypothesis. I guess Australia turning to mostly badland desert had little effect and huge predators just laid down for the humans to kill.
Drying inland seas probably helped kill Australia’s megafauna
They found evidence of a drastic shift between 50,000 and 45,000 years ago, and reasoned that newly arrived fire-wielding humans altered the vegetation in a way that suited emus and not Genyornis, which then disappeared.
But that was before the discovery of the catastrophic drying phase, which was recorded at the same time in both of the lakes we investigated. We found that the environment was already changing by the time the first Australians arrived. The overflowing mega-lakes of pre-50,000 years ago had begun to shrink, and reliable supplies of freshwater were in a state of collapse. This was a time of environmental upheaval, and the roots of the episodic boom-to-bust ecosystems that we see today.
As for the demise of Genyornis, we suggest a far simpler explanation: these giant birds were unable to adapt to the loss of huge expanses of lakeshore and riverine habitat, coupled with the shift to dryland plants. The demise of the other megafauna is less precisely dated, but they too must have been affected by such a catastrophic environmental shift.
https://theconversation.com/drying-inland-seas-probably-helped-kill-australias-megafauna-37527
It seems the American West dried out about 8,200 years ago. The Middle East turned to desert just in time to trap large animals from migrating south as the climate/vegetation changed and died in Europe with the oncoming glaciers. No longer an escape route to India or Africa.
Yep, it all comes together nicely with the icing on the extinction cake being many hungry predators and many starving animals.
You Just Missed the Last Ground Sloths
If people really showed up on Cuba and other sloth-bearing islands around 5,500 years ago, then humans and ground sloths coexisted for over a thousand years and the “blitzkrieg” model of extinction starts to crumble. Humans may have still been responsible for the extinction of the sloths and other species, but the record doesn’t show the pattern of rapid die-off that has sometimes been used to pin our species as the chief cause of megafaunal extinctions.
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/29/you-just-missed-the-last-ground-sloths/
Amazing how African humans didn’t seem capable of wiping out the large mammals but other humans did? Interesting conundrum there that flies against the human Bliztkrieg hypothesis. Lions, tigers, wolves, bears, elephants, buffalos still exist, along with many other large animals. Hmmm.
Why did early humans not exterminate all the large mammals in East Africa like they purportedly did in the Americas and the Pacific?
Because the animals in East Africa had evolved with humans.
Humans were latecomers in the parts of the world you reference. When they arrived, they set an existing ecosystem out of balance, and the results were some extinctions. That is usually the case when an aggressive species enters a new ecosystem.
But because humans evolved in Africa, the large species there evolved right with us, and did not go extinct.
And then we have this from IFLScience:
Humans, Not Climate Change, To Blame For Ice Age Animal Extinction
Okay, you can read if for their conclusions, I am not going to bother to post them here.
“Humans were latecomers in the parts of the world you reference. When they arrived, they set an existing ecosystem out of balance, and the results were some extinctions. That is usually the case when an aggressive species enters a new ecosystem. ”
Which is why so many large mammals in Europe, Asia and North America survived to modern times. I love it. Logical ladders with missing rungs. I am sure that the really scary predators were easy pickings. Smiladons, cave bears, short faced bears, dire wolves and American lions were nothing to shake a spear at and could not be outrun.
This is getting funnier all the time, sort of like the Lilliputians arguing over which end of the egg should be cracked. Sorry Ron, just was trying to present some of the more modern evidence and logic ladders that have come up. Maybe I don’t know enough yet. It’s a fascinating subject.
You are right, it makes little difference now with the lions and other large animals cornered in the hot parts of the world and the cold adapted ones facing both human and climate onslaughts.
Humans are now the major killers and reasons for environmental and biological changes. Of course it’s all natural, just a different method this time. It’s now a case of murder/suicide. Hopefully a few creatures and plants will get through.
Now we kill everything for any and every reason including inconvenience. An amazing species that messes it’s own nest.
Human Behavior : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkSuxbdGZM0
Here is another video I found interesting (not about extinction)
A Revised Chronostratigraphy for Dinosaur Provincial Park
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNUqDIfxgKk&t=1918s
This paper also supports your thesis with regards Australian megafauna extinction due to climate change and occurring before widespread introduction of Homo sapiens into these habitats.
http://legacy.earthsci.unimelb.edu.au/basinstudies/Publications/Selwyn%20symposium%20proceedings%20copy.pdf#page=11
However I also think there is plenty of evidence that once they arrived on the scene, Homo sapiens, certainly had a rather significant impact by becoming a new and additional environmental stressor, thereby adding to the already existing damage caused by previous climate change.
Which in no way absolves us from what is occurring today, in large part due to climate change that we are responsible for. When there are dramatic and fast shifts in climate patterns there is a higher likelihood that major extinction events will ensue. It doesn’t matter what the underlying cause of the climate change might be. Right now it happens to be us!
I agree Fred, we are both the devastators and the executioner this time around. We don’t need any help from changing climate, we change the climate now and much more. It could very well be that our type of intelligence is an evolutionary dead end (in all ways).
Fish, I just finished watching your excellent Youtube video. It was fantastic. I enjoyed every minute of it. And I also agree with its conclusion, humans wiped out the megabeasts.
Thanks again for the link.
Very funny.
Fish, I was not trying to be funny. Did you not even bother to watch the video all the way to the end. It was the humans “fire stick farming” that changed the landscape and wiped out the megabeast source of food. That and over-hunting was what wiped out the megabeast.
I agree completely with the conclusion of this video. To others on this list. This is an extremely interesting and informative video. It is not boring at all but every minute of it is entertaining. I invite everyone with the time to do it, to watch it. Then tell both Fish and I what you thought.
Thanks for the laugh Patt, I predicted your response when I put up that video. After millennia of climate change, loss of vast regions of food, highly reduced and isolated population, I am sure that man, the predator, played a role in the demise of these creatures.
Your penchant to believe a story that says “men changed the face of an entire continent” is understandable, but just another story. The increased fires could have been mostly increased drying. They also state that the rainforests were destroyed, without bulldozers and chainsaws. Must have been really dry and on the edge, which means it was going anyway.
Have you seen Australia? Most of it is not very productive of life.
It was mostly climate change. Climate change is a killer. Man played a minor role in a long term change. At least that was the main gist of the video.
Man played a minor role in a long term change. At least that was the main gist of the video.
Really now? I think the main gist of the video was that man played a major role, The major role. And that was the clear conclusion they came to at the end of the video.
Climate change or no climate change, it is far too much of a coincidence that everytime humans arrive in any ecosystem, all the major megafauna suddenly goes extinct. That happened all over the world. Climate change is something that happens gradually. Humans entered other ecosystems suddenly, and the megafauna disappeared at exactly that time, or shortly thereafter, just as suddenly.
No, there is no doubt about it. Humans are the cause for the large majority of Ice Age Extinctions. And they are responsible for all the Anthropocene extinctions.
Ron, I look across the big picture and a broader swath of time. As the video says, climate change dried out the continent and what vegetation was left was much poorer nutrition. That implies that the megaanimals were reduced to a much smaller territory and lower value food, both of which would have reduced population (and maybe caused some extinctions) at a minimum. Now with both men and animals cornered and hard pressed it wouldn’t take much pressure to push species over the brink. Man is an omnivore and that is known factor for survival, probably the large predators went when the herbivores went.
Man could hunt, scavenge, steal eggs, eat plants, and keep putting some pressure on, though I doubt he changed a continent. The continent had already changed.
Fish, I have apologized to you for saying that you just made shit up. I hope you accept my apology. I hope we can get on with a serious discussion of this subject. I simply think you are wrong, but you are honestly wrong, you do not just make shit up.
I am seriously sorry I made such a silly mistake. I hope we can get over that and move on.
No problem, I realize you take hard stances in your opinions. It’s not me personally being wrong, it’s professionals in the field and at universities being wrong. That is where I get these “wrong” ideas from, I don’t make them up. I have no skin in the game and know the “facts” (conjecture) might change again. I just enjoy exploring the new results that come along and hope to get some more insights about them through discussion. Mostly a dud there. As with climate change, people choose a stance and stick there. A lot like religion.
Having been in analytical chemistry for a long time, I particularly enjoyed the Argon standard problem. Very annoying but part of the game.
Even more amusing was when our global standard for distance measurement was tied to the speed of light instead of a fixed object.
That certainly fixed the speed of light, didn’t it? 🙂
Good summary:
EARTH’S ORBITAL CHANGES HAVE INFLUENCED CLIMATE, LIFE FORMS FOR AT LEAST 215 MILLION YEARS
“…If you were wondering, the Earth is currently in the nearly circular part of the 405,000-year period. What does that mean for us? “Probably not anything very perceptible,” says Kent. “It’s pretty far down on the list of so many other things that can affect climate on times scales that matter to us.” Kent points out that according to the Milankovitch theory, we should be at the peak of a 20,000-some year warming trend that ended the last glacial period; the Earth may eventually start cooling again over thousands of years, and possibly head for another glaciation. “Could happen. Guess we could wait around and see,” said Kent. “On the other hand, all the CO2 we’re pouring into the air right now is the obvious big enchilada. That’s having an effect we can measure right now. The planetary cycle is more subtle.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-ancient-scientists-climate-deep.html#jCp
on this date—-
1945 — Germany surrenders (VE Day), ending World War II in Europe
That was over 1 trillion miles ago, no way to get back there.
Volcanic activity seems to be doing well around the world with 34 active eruptions and many others unsettled. Seismic events in Yellowstone, near Los Angeles and off coast of Alaska. Kilauea is looking more interesting by the day, further evacuations possible.
There was actually an interesting head’s up I remember reading about last year to expect upticks in volcanic activity this year. The rationale was tidal impacts from the moon, sun, and major planets being positioned just right so as to effect maximum straining across earth’s crust.
The April 2018 climate summary is out. It was the nation’s 13th coldest April. An unprecedented 22 states had a top 10 coldest April in history, including 2 with the coldest April ever.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/us-maps/1/201804#us-maps-select
The biggest story was the low temperatures during the month of April. 9 states experienced their coldest April low temperatures on record.
Fascinating stuff as always Bob. I remember reading once (maybe it was here?) how the scientists were saying it was daily low temperatures showing more warming than high temperatures. Now it looks like that’s another piece of the theory they will need to revise.
Now it looks like that’s another piece of the theory they will need to revise.
And which THEORY would that be?
Before you answer that question, please define THEORY, tks!
Just curious? Is there actually some point to your continually posting these local weather maps? You do realize we live on a planet and there is a global climate. You have heard of the Jet Stream, right? Here’s how all of that works. It even explains why we had a colder than normal April in some parts of North America.
The Arctic Meltdown & Extreme Weather – Jennifer Francis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it_B5bnjmm4
It’s funny, they cite something which is exactly in line with climate warming predictions as maybe the last desperate attempt to support their denier delusions, while all the important spatial and temporal trends just keep on going up (I think they have to avoid looking at those or the cognitive dissonance would melt their brains).
From that journal of ultra left wing liberalism, Nature! /sarc
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0157-2
Relationships among conspiratorial beliefs, conservatism and climate scepticism across nations
Abstract
Studies showing that scepticism about anthropogenic climate change is shaped, in part, by conspiratorial and conservative ideologies are based on data primarily collected in the United States. Thus, it may be that the ideological nature of climate change beliefs reflects something distinctive about the United States rather than being an international phenomenon. Here we find that positive correlations between climate scepticism and indices of ideology were stronger and more consistent in the United States than in the other 24 nations tested. This suggests that there is a political culture in the United States that offers particularly strong encouragement for citizens to appraise climate science through the lens of their worldviews. Furthermore, the weak relationships between ideology and climate scepticism in the majority of nations suggest that there is little inherent to conspiratorial ideation or conservative ideologies that predisposes people to reject climate science, a finding that has encouraging implications for climate mitigation efforts globally.
You can also read article about this paper here:
https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-denial-conservatism-2567319606.html
No problem Fred, the three preceding months for the continental US were all above average temperature. I smell cherries.
Jennifer Francis?
She is a denier nightmare!
Interesting, so we have a localized strong cool spell embedded in the big trend of gradual global warming. Fascinating to watch it all unfold.
I predict considerable warming as we move into summer in the northern hemisphere, followed by cooling into fall. Of course, this is speculative.
I’m with you Hickory, time to get out the shorts and swim suit, here comes half global warming again – for months. It’s already 30F warmer than April! At that rate the north will reach boiling temps by September!
These ‘missing charts’ may change the way you think about fossil fuel addiction
In 25 of the last 26 years, we burned more fossil fuels than the year before.
The only year in the last quarter century with a decrease was 2009. That was caused by a sharp global recession. And within a year, that rare respite was wiped out by a massive surge that followed.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2017/07/13/analysis/these-missing-charts-may-change-way-you-think-about-fossil-fuel-addiction
For those interested in a low carbon world it doesn’t look very good.
From your link: “Headlines around electric cars and carbon policy suggest our oil dependency is on a slippery downward slope. Recent data from 2016 suggests the opposite: our worldwide addiction is getting stronger.”
So, how about another ditty from the EV crowd, one about exponential growth, et cetera.? What, do EVs already account for a whopping 0.02 percent of of car sales? Let’s see, exponential projected from 0.02 percent? Really? Or, you could be cynical and Google SUVs and Light Trucks sales and find pieces such as “Trucks now more popular than cars in San Diego” or “Ford notes accelerating shift in consumer preference from cars to beefy vehicles (trucks and SUVs).”
To be fair, I do see a lot of EVs in Norway, population five million (and a major oil producer).
I think it will be along time before EV’s make a dent in fossil consumption, but those who have EV’s (or good hybrids) are going to be traveling down the road for much cheaper/mile than those with ICE vehicles, over the next 5 yrs.
That’s the response I expected. BTW where I live (Western Canada) most families own two vehicles – a large SUV and a pickup truck. The truck will typically be a F-250 or F-350 equivalent and be quite new, a monster. Never seen an EV (here) or even heard them mentioned.
What are typical gas and diesel prices?
They’re all over the place, changing day-to-day (depending on the latest Trump announcement. 🙂
Gas here seems to average $1.30 CAN per liter, or correctly litre, where one liter = 0.264 US gal.
I suppose diesel goes for about the same price, but I rarely buy the stuff so don’t pay much attention.
Hi Doug,
Any change from the high oil price period from 2011-2014 to today in amount of large vehicles?
Eventually oil output will peak, prices will rise and behaviors will change, peak oil is likely between 2022 and 2027, cars are already made at the levels needed, only a matter of making electric motors and batteries over time.
I guess you’re claiming it will take many years to accomplish the transition (maybe 30 to 50), I agree it will take many years, but think it will be 15 to 20 years until 95% of new light vehicle sales are EVs and plugins, then another 10-15 years to turn over the fleet to 95% EVs and plugins (so a total of 25 to 35 years).
In 2017 about 1.23 million plugin vehicles were sold worldwide, 25% annual growth in sales gets the total to 97% of 2017 sales levels in 20 years.
From 2014 to 2017 the average annual growth rate in plugin vehicle sales Worldwide was 56% per year. A 50% growth rate in plugin vehicle sales Worldwide gets us to the 2017 annual sales rate of all light duty vehicles (cars SUVs, and pickup trucks with GVW less than 8500 pounds [3900 kg]) in 12 years.
My guess is the average growth rate will be between 25% and 50% over the next 15 to 20 years, with higher rates in the earlier years and lower rates later until close to 100% of annual vehicle sales are reached.
Note that Model T sales in the US increased at an average annual rate of 54% per year from 1909 to 1924.
The Tesla Model 3 may be for EVs what the Ford Model T was for ICE vehicles, and sales growth may be quite strong until the vehicle market is saturated with EVs.
Gasoline prices near me are starting to cross the $3 per gallon range, lowest at $2.84.
So let’s say a person drives a total of 50 miles commute and has a Prius hybrid. That costs $3 per day in fuel to say make $200 per day. If it’s a more standard car it’s $6 per day to make $200 or a difference of $3 (i.e, a coffee and a newspaper).
Not sure if the price of fuel makes much difference except to the very poor. The worker making a standard pay can just cut back on a simple luxury and more than make up for the extra cost of fuel.
When I cut cable TV, it essentially paid for my monthly use of fuel! So much for incentives. Hah!
When dealing with the most intelligent species on earth, they can usually quickly figure ways around most any negative “incentive”.
Therefor an increase in fuel costs cuts the rest of the economy down first but doesn’t do much to solve the problem.
The solution is to provide transport that does not use liquid fuels or produce emissions. Then no matter how far they travel or don’t travel makes no difference to the climate or the environment. Let the wind turbines and solar panels limit them. End of story.
Hi Dennis — “Any change from the high oil price period from 2011-2014 to today in amount [number] of large vehicles?”
To me it’s odd how (why) so many people in Western Canada are currently buying “monster trucks” in defiance of environmental concerns, fuel prices, common sense, etc. In some cases, it stems from an in-your-face pissing contest – a little boy mentality. But, I have a sickly 75-year-old neighbour who just bought a F-450 who wouldn’t carry a loaf of bread in the back for fear of getting crumbs in the box. He’s a kindly man concerned about the environment: claims it’s a safer vehicle than a car. So, God alone knows the rationale of this obscene obsession. For the record I own a 20-year-old F-250 (ex-Forestry truck) that I license three months a year that I use to pick up fire wood, exchange propane bottles, occasional trips to the lumber yard/dump, etc. My car is an all-wheel-drive Subaru because it works well in snow, which we get a lot of in winter. All the while Norwegians are racing to embrace EVs. Sorry for the OFM style response. To answer your question — I’ve no idea.
In urban/suburban Calif plugin hybrids and electrics are becoming almost common.
I believe it will take an additional breakthrough in battery power/cost to make a big dent in heavier duty vehicles, such as solid state lithium, unless oil prices begin to escalate quickly.
Yep, in The Bay they are common.
(been there off and on from 1967)
I’ve moved to rural Oregon, and a F 250 is a compact.
The age of the electric vehicle (EV) will be here sooner than you think.
Out of 1 billion cars in the world, only 2 million are electric. But that will soon change, as costs diminish, and more governments encourage the adoption of EVs to cut carbon emissions and fight urban pollution.
According to Bloomberg, by 2040, 54 percent of all new car sales will be for EVs. Millions of new EVs will take a big bite out of oil demand and displace 8 million barrels of transport fuel (gasoline and diesel) every day.
Global EV sales are estimated to increase from 1.2 million in 2017 to 1.6 million in 2018 and 2 million in 2019. By 2025, some states have decreed that EVs must make up 15 percent of all new car sales.
http://321energy.com/editorials/oilprice/oilprice050518.html
SUV’s have gotten much smaller and more efficient over the years. Still not great miles per gallon, but they will become hybrids as will the trucks in the next 5 years or so. Then when gasoline is over $4 a gallon, those little electrics will start to look great. Unless the electric power prices rise too.
Yup and pickups get bigger and bigger,
WATCH OUT FOR THAT TRUCK!
“A change in fuel standards has led to even heavier, more dangerous pickups. For the past few years, a quirk in federal policy has made it easy for Americans to keep supersizing their rides: Under CAFE rules that took effect in 2011, bigger cars have lower mileage requirements. For the first 30 or so years CAFE was on the books, the rules divided the market into cars and light trucks but held all vehicles in each class to the same fuel-efficiency standard. Automakers that sold only gas guzzlers, whether big cars or big trucks, had to pay penalties. That changed with a reconception of CAFE that began under President George W. Bush in 2008 and culminated in rules the Obama administration promulgated for 2011 and beyond.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-19/bigger-pickups-are-result-of-change-in-fuel-standards
Yeah, trucks are heavily subsidized. The subsidies include the “chicken tax”; a free license to pollute; and free security services (aka “the war on terror”).
As long as that’s true, there will be a lot of them.
The sensible solution would be to remove the subsidies. That would mean removing the US $25k truck import tariff; charging oil consumers for pollution; and charging oil consumers for the roughly $500B per year spent on the US military to police the M.E. The true cost of fuel might easily be in the range of $2.50 (US, $3 CA) per litre. That would incentivize a pretty fast transition to EVs.
2nd best is arbitrary regulations forcing greater efficiency and a conversion to EVs. The kind of regs that the US’ Current Occupant is trying to roll back, but that nevertheless are spreading around the world.
Yup and pickups get bigger and bigger,
WATCH OUT FOR THAT TRUCK!
Check out UPS’s new electric truck!
https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/09/ups-electric-trucks-arrival/
UPS has new electric trucks that look straight out of a Pixar movie The company partnered with Arrival to design the delivery vehicles.
UPS and Fedex have a wide range of pilot programs, which are gradually expanding. They’ve got hybrids, air storage, pure EVs, fuel cells, etc.
These companies are cautious, but they want to be competitive, as well as prepared for oil price increases.
Attention astronomy buffs:
BURSTING PULSAR FOUND TO ‘HICCUP’ DURING CRUCIAL STAGE OF ITS LIFECYCLE
“….the neutron star in this system has an incredibly strong magnetic field; more than 100 billion times that of the Earth, and 100 times as strong as any other known transitional pulsar…. This exciting discovery will allow us to explore the messy physics of these cosmic hiccups in a more extreme environment than ever before. It shows that, even six years after being decommissioned, the RXTE satellite is still helping us to do great new science.”
J M C Court et al. The Bursting Pulsar GRO J1744−28: the slowest transitional pulsar?, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters (2018). DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/sly056
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-pulsar-hiccup-crucial-stage-lifecycle.html#jCp
Very interesting magnetar. Thanks for posting.
New electric generation capacity-
Nat gas #1 in Marcellus territory
Wind #2 in the plains
Solar #3 Texas, N Carolina, Calif
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/eia-gas-to-outpace-renewables-for-2018-us-gen-additions/522980/
Maybe this has some relevance to discussions above respecting extinction(s) in Africa?
78,000 YEAR CAVE RECORD FROM EAST AFRICA SHOWS EARLY CULTURAL INNOVATIONS
“…moreover, no notable break in human occupation occurs during the Toba volcanic super-eruption of 74,000 years ago, supporting views that the so-called ‘volcanic winter’ did not lead to the near-extinction of human populations, though hints of increased occupation intensity from 60,000 years ago suggests that populations were increasing in size.”
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-05/mpif-7yc050718.php
More joyful news on the environmental front:
CLIMATE CHANGE THREATENS MARINE PROTECTED AREAS
“New research found that most marine life in Marine Protected Areas will not be able to tolerate warming ocean temperatures caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The study found that with continued ‘business-as-usual’ emissions, the protections currently in place won’t matter, because by 2100, warming and reduced oxygen concentration will make Marine Protected Areas uninhabitable by most species currently residing in those areas.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180508170905.htm
Fucking rabbits!!
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/5/eaar4292
RESEARCH ARTICLE APPLIED ECOLOGY
DNA from lake sediments reveals long-term ecosystem changes after a biological invasion
Abstract
What are the long-term consequences of invasive species? After invasion, how long do ecosystems require to reach a new equilibrium? Answering these questions requires long-term, high-resolution data that are vanishingly rare. We combined the analysis of environmental DNA extracted from a lake sediment core, coprophilous fungi, and sedimentological analyses to reconstruct 600 years of ecosystem dynamics on a sub-Antarctic island and to identify the impact of invasive rabbits. Plant communities remained stable from AD 1400 until the 1940s, when the DNA of invasive rabbits was detected in sediments. Rabbit detection corresponded to abrupt changes of plant communities, with a continuous decline of a dominant plant species. Furthermore, erosion rate abruptly increased with rabbit abundance. Rabbit impacts were very fast and were stronger than the effects of climate change during the 20th century. Lake sediments can allow an integrated temporal analysis of ecosystems, revealing the impact of invasive species over time and improving our understanding of underlying mechanisms.
Fucking humans!!
Rabbits? Aren’t Homo sapiens the ultimate invasive species? Impacts very fast and stronger than the effects of climate change during the 20th century!
I just get tired of adding sarcasm tags… so sometimes I just leave them off 😉
Attention astronomy buffs (interesting article, no math required)
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES SHED LIGHT ON NEUTRON STAR INTERIORS
The gravitational-wave detection last year of a neutron star merger has revealed details on neutron star structure, ruling out exotic quark matter in the objects’ cores. As astrophysicist Feryal Özel (University of Arizona) explained in the July 2017 issue of Sky & Telescope, for neutron stars size really does matter — the smaller the star, the higher its core density. Previous measurements have pointed to a maximum neutron star radius between 10 and 11 km. That may not sound very different from 14 km, but it would be enough to raise the central density by more than a factor of two. “This is enough to have a profound effect on the amount of repulsion the particles experience,” Özel wrote, which would introduce the possibility of a quark-filled core…Given their extremely high density, astronomers aren’t certain what neutron stars look like on the inside. Some of their ideas are based on nuclear physics, while the concept of quark matter in particular is based on the physics of high-energy particles. The various approaches can give different predictions about neutron stars’ internal structure.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/gravitational-waves-neutron-star-interiors/
Where’s The F lux
The most mysterious star in the universe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gypAjPp6eps
File this under “We don’t have a clue what we discovered”
“…in the universe” Wow, that’s pretty mysterious given the universe contains roughly two trillion galaxies so let’s say about 10^19 stars. 🙂
For those who take YouTube titles too seriously and miss the point, we will change it to “one of the most mysterious stars in our galaxy” which is how astronomer Tabetha Boyajian describes it.
As the talk exemplified, we have not even thoroughly examined our nearby space let alone the vastness of the rest. It took a legion of ardent observers to find this one anomaly. How many will we find or is this fairly unique? We need to scratch the surface a little further and spend less time on picking apart YouTube video titles.
The big question is “Will it help us with our current plight or are we just further entertaining ourselves and wasting more time/resources?”
The big question is “Will it help us with our current plight or are we just further entertaining ourselves and wasting more time/resources?”
Oh good gravy, it’s all about scientific research. Scientific research is not about entertaining ourselves or wasting time and resources. Was the Hubble Telescope about entertaining ourselves? Was it a waste of resources? Not no but hell no. We are all much wiser about the nature of the cosmos because of the Hubble Telescope just as we became much wiser because of the work of Edwin Hubble.
But then you may ask, “but what practical value does that have? I don’t really know but I think that just being a little smarter today than we were yesterday has some practical value. Well, to me it does anyway.
“Will it help us with our current plight or are we just further entertaining ourselves and wasting more time/resources?”
That’s a good question. It’s unlikely learning about something lightyears away is a useful pursuit but you never know: those little green people beaming a message that will help us in some way? And, maybe it’s less useful learning about esoteric astrophysics than working to salvage Earth for grandchildren. Or, perhaps we should spend our diminishing resources having the biggest military machine or a smarter cel phone than anyone else on block. You tell me.
Sometimes it seems we are in a race: learning as much as possible before we self destruct. Just think, sitting under an apple tree, with a bottle of Champaign, reading a definitive theory of everything, a final theory, the single, all-encompassing theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe while the ICBMs fly overhead — racing to destroy the planet.
Since I’m personally unlikely to properly comprehend the ToE I suppose I’ll have be content, eyes closed, listening a piece of music by Bach. Ideally, Partita for Violin No. 2. But today I’ll simply walk my dog in the forest and enjoy watching the swallows preparing for a new batch of kids: near as I can tell there are 11 nesting pairs hard at work (in their squirrel proof nest boxes).
Good time to start putting our knowledge in easily read durable states away in secure locations.
Yes, that might be the wisest move. And, it’d be a treat for future paleontologists; nice to see you thinking long term.
That was a great youtube video but I was not impressed with her take on “It might have been aliens”. Even though she said she favored a natural explanation, just saying that it might have been some kind of very advanced alien civilization causing such an enormous change in the output of light from a star was just going a bit too far.
I spoke with a professional astronomer about this earlier and it seems the consensus is irregular bands and clots of dust possible combined with extreme “solar” activity. At least that seems to fit the spectral data fairly well. Little green people, unlikely. She is an excellent speaker and I enjoyed the talk.
Later observations indicate some dust. Wonder what is keeping the dust orbiting together yet not condensing. Would have to be huge to cut 20 percent of the light of the star. Any mass estimates?
Planetary accretion from dust takes several million years based on meteorite data. That’s for Earth. Of course with billions of stars there will be a wide range of time scales and other variables.
Then the infrared dimming should be much less than the optical dimming.
Yes but infrared probes particles with sizes of up to a few microns . In protoplanetary disks, this implies that such spectra are mainly sensitive to dust in the innermost regions.
The main objective is the differential between optical and infrared. If the infrared spectrum shows a much lower reduction of starlight then the dust is confirmed.
They were not claiming the output of light from the star was changing, the claim is that there are object (s) transiting the star.
Cape Morris Jesup, Greenland’s northernmost station:
“During the month of February, only a few years exhibited hourly air temperatures rising above 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit): once in 1997, five times in 2011, seven in 2017 and 59 times in 2018.”
As we all read in a message posted in the previous non-petroleum topic:
“So? Your point? We can all access weather records if we want.
Yes, record highs and lows for certain places are likely to occur when the system is being perturbed with increasing energy and changing latitudinal differentials.
Was explained decades ago, here is a more up to date analysis. It explains that one side of the Jetstream has cold air and the other has warm air, nothing new just the deep stuck loops are new.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wOw_jDUNH8
There is lots of info on the internet, keep learning.”
–GoneFishing, 05/03/2018 at 9:30 am
I am glad you are starting to pay attention. But can the Id have an Iota of Understanding?
Looks like energy is sporadically building in the north. Greenland overall has been fairly cool so far this year, with little melt area compared to other years.
Your eight-minute speed date with the Pacific Meridional Mode
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/your-eight-minute-speed-date-pacific-meridional-mode
The last extinction was heaven sent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGbwzpQUtXk
https://news.ku.edu/2018/01/30/new-research-suggests-toward-end-ice-age-human-beings-witnessed-fires-larger-dinosaur
Fish, thanks a million for this youtube Nova link, and the second link as well. But the first, the NOVA link, is extremely interesting. It answers a question that I previously had no answer for, the extinction event of 13,000 years ago.
Thanks again,
Ron
It would be interesting to see a follow up comment from the ‘The Skeptical Physicist’, Mark Boslough, to see if the evidence presented is extraordinary enough to finally convince him of the validity of such a hypothesis.
Though the NOVA presentation was pretty convincing to me, throughout it I kept wondering where the archaeological evidence of the asteroid or comet impact might be found and more importantly, why there was no mention of any evidence that I had ever heard of, of any groups of humans witnessing and in some way documenting the events and telling the stories about what must have been such an absolutely extraordinary event.
why there was no mention of any evidence that I had ever heard of, of any groups of humans witnessing….
Fred, are you serious here? 😉 It is extremely unlikely that any such event would have been witnessed by cave writing people of that day.
Edited because I was a little snockered last night when I wrote this. Fred, again, please accept my apologies.
Rock paintings?
NAOM
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/turkey-worlds-oldest-writing-pictograph-319107
Fred, are you fucking serious here? You have to be joking. Human witnessing 13,000 years ago? Oh, no, I am sorry, it was 12,900 years ago. You know, the age when all those textbooks were written.
Ron I know all that. I’m not that ignorant and I wasn’t suggesting written records. And yes, somewhere someplace early humans had to have witnessed these extraordinary events! So please don’t insult my intelligence!
I was thinking more along the lines of some remnants, perhaps cultural myths, maybe cave paintings of a great fire. Perhaps a fire based creation story in ancient religions.
As notanoilman, mentions, rock paintings have been around since before the extinction of our cousins the Neanderthals about 35,000 years ago, so well before that extinction event took place humans were indeed telling each other stories in ways other than through writing and we know that for a fact.
So it would not be totally impossible to conceive that there might be some hints pointing to such a cataclysmic event in our relatively recent past.
Also, Australian Dream Time stories go back further than that event. I wonder if anything is in those?
NAOM
Sorry Fred, but I did put a smiley face in my post. 😉 Anyway, please accept my apologies.
However no human would have likely witnessed the event if it happened in the Arctic, or the ocean, or most other places on earth. It would just have gotten darker for a few years. Unlikely any cave painting would have recorded that.
At any rate, I thought the evidence was overwhelming. True, the iridium was only three times normal but those diamonds were the clincher. And the black line in the sediment. The only other time such black line was in the sediment was from 65 million years ago.
Fred, wasn’t the plethora of hexagonal diamonds and 10 percent of the earth being scorched enough? That plus massive climate change. The only civilizations that might record such an event would be in the Middle East and Egypt, and they were just starting their stone building phase.
If you want to follow up on it, that Turkish monolith article I left for Ron has been claimed by some to record the comet strike. I have no way to verify such claims.
Also this:http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/archaeologists-find-12000-year-old-pictograph-gobeklitepe-003441
Fred, wasn’t the plethora of hexagonal diamonds and 10 percent of the earth being scorched enough?
Um, I think I clearly stated the following in my comment:
;”Though the NOVA presentation was pretty convincing to me…”
I will check out your link.
If you want to follow up on it, that Turkish monolith article I left for Ron has been claimed by some to record the comet strike. I have no way to verify such claims.
Whether anyone can or has verified it, such stories are precisely what I might expect to have trickled down to us, despite Ron’s suggesting that I’m some sort of idiot for even thinking about it.
Fred, please accept my apologies.
Again, it would be extremely unlikely that such an event would have been witnessed by any cave painting civilizations. The Clovis people in North America did not make cave paintings or any other type of art.
Apology accepted!
However I wasn’t even suggesting that the actual impact itself would have been witnessed by any humans but rather that the immediate consequences such as the massive forest fires might have impressed whatever groups of humans were around at the time.
As per link posted by GF.
https://news.ku.edu/2018/01/30/new-research-suggests-toward-end-ice-age-human-beings-witnessed-fires-larger-dinosaur
The event would have been visible around the globe and the aftermath would have been quite memorable.
I was wondering if stories like Sodom & Gamora (sp?) may have descended from these events. Note I said ‘like’, I do not mean to imply that this was one of them. Many early writings were taken from spoken history that was passed down through the years. After a few thousand years of re-telling they may have morphed but stem from a historical event. Remember, it is thought that the story of Noah derived from the collapse of natural dams that inundated huge areas in pre-writing times. These events may well be remembered similarly.
NAOM
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had rings of surveillance satellites to tell us when 50 meter or larger rocks are headed to earth?
At least we could try to evacuate densely populated areas that look like they would get hit. A lot more sensible then putting hundreds of billions of dollars into Mars missions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrGFEW2Hb2g
We need to learn from history, not just study it and watch it happen again. It will.
I don’t even remember my birth!
Sounds like you were born at a very early age…
I was born at home, but when my mother saw me she was taken to the hospital…
See no evil hear no evil:
TRUMP WHITE HOUSE AXES NASA RESEARCH INTO GREENHOUSE GAS CUTS
President Donald Trump’s administration has quietly axed US space agency Nasa’s monitoring system into greenhouse gases, a US journal has revealed. The Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), a $10m-a-year project which remotely tracks the world’s flow of carbon dioxide, is to lose funding. Science magazine reports that its loss jeopardizes the ability to measure national emission cuts – as agreed to by nations in the Paris climate deal.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44067797
The hell with Trump, his entire administration and all his idiotic supporters.
The rest of the world is watching! It will take a long time to fix the damage being done to the status of the US and it’s place as a world leader.
You’d honestly look into the friendly faces of these proud Americans at the Trump campaign rally this evening and tell them they are idiots?
The worlds stupidest idiots
It’s now embarrassing being a white American male. I’m shopping for a T-shirt that says- “Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for the idiot”. Not one person of color in your picture of Trump Idiots.
Not all Republicans are racists, but most racists are Republicans. The party of whiny poorly educated white males and submissive women.
There were 3 African American gentlemen visible during the part where everybody turns to the fake media and makes specific hand gestures while booing.
You can’t put lipstick on a pig
What other excuse could there be besides idiocy? Brainwashing perhaps.
Does Trump really believe that the US is currently an energy NET Exporter? He DID SAY “NET Energy Exporter”. Talk about total lack of Energy Literacy/Fantasy Land. It is important that his base is educated in this one obvious fact.
Trump Won Because Voters Are Ignorant, Literally
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/10/the-dance-of-the-dunces-trump-clinton-election-republican-democrat/
Joe Pientka was the second FBI agent – along with Strzok – who interviewed General Flynn. The fact that his name was just publicized lends credence that AG Sessions and OIG Horowitz are about to reveal the results of the 17 month long investigation conducted by the 500 person OIG staff this week or next.
Relevance?
The US political world is about to be rocked in extremis.
Enjoy the show.
Enjoy the show.
No real need to watch it, We can just read the reviews later…
The US needs a political system more like Denmark’s with 9 functioning political parties…
On many issues the political parties tend to opt for co-operation, and the Danish state welfare model receives broad parliamentary support. This ensures a focus on public-sector efficiency and devolved responsibilities of local government on regional and municipal levels.
The degree of transparency and accountability is reflected in the public’s high level of satisfaction with the political institutions, while Denmark is also regularly considered one of the least corrupt countries in the world by international organizations.
Source Wikipedia
Electricity Consumption by Country.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC?year_high_desc=true
United States per capita consumption is nearly double that of Germany, while China is only at 4,000kw/hours.
Estimates are that by 2050 China consumption will be at 8,000Kw/h per person.
Against this huge increase in demand wind and solar do not have a chance.
In 2017 China installed nearly half the world’s new solar capacity at 52Gw and a massive 53Gw of wind power. Consumption of natural gas increased by 8%.
To put that into context, the UK has a total of 75Gw of generating capacity and the expensive nuclear power station being built is rated at 3.2Gw and will provide enough electricity for 6 million homes.
Yet in a year China installed this vast amount of solar and wind, its gas consumption increased and so did it’s coal consumption.
This should make anyone who thinks solar and wind are the answer to carbon emissions think again.
The only reason China coal consumption fell in 2014 2015 and 2016 was due to several new nuclear power stations coming online during that time.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-power.aspx
How China will produce double the electricity it does today is difficult to imagine.
“Estimates are that by 2050 China consumption will be at 8,000Kw/h per person.”
Is that 8000 kWh Annually? A 10 kW PV array will produce +/- 12,000 kWh (12 MWh) Annually. A single 300 watt panel produces ~ 1.2 kWh/day Annual average in many areas. It will be all about how much roof a family has. One can do a lot with a Megawatt hour+ per month.
“How China will produce double the electricity it does today is difficult to imagine.”
I agree Peter, but I don’t trust human beings to manage nuclear energy flawlessly.
Against this huge increase in demand wind and solar do not have a chance.
That’s a “hand waving” argument. I’d call it the “that sounds really big!” argument.
You need to actually do the calculations: how fast are wind and solar growing, how much would it likely grow by 2050, what would be the cumulative installed capacity by then?
Actually, a doubling of consumption from 2018 to 2050 is only 2% growth per year – that’s much lower than the wind & solar growth rate.
But, why don’t you do the numbers?
Nick
China has installed 293GW of solar and wind.
https://renewablesnow.com/news/to-the-point-china-adds-70-gw-large-solar-wind-capacity-in-2017-599051/
It’s total installed capacity is 1777Gw
https://blog.energybrainpool.com/en/chinas-electricity-system-in-2017-record-pv-expansion/
Wind and solar produce only 5% and 2% of all consumption.
If wind and solar were to produce the anticipated doubling of Chinese consumption then China would have to install 4,186Gw of wind and solar.
Trouble is at night time there is no solar and wind fluctuates from 50% of installed capacity down to 3%. So coal, nuclear and gas would have to provide most of China’s demand during winter nights.
Perhaps by then we will have some wonderful batteries that will save us. Just like biofuels have greened the aviation industry.
‘Against this huge increase in demand wind and solar do not have a chance.’
Perhaps, but their full scale deployment is sure a better tactic than sitting on your hands.
Calif, for example, now gets about 1/4 of its annual consumption from renewables (27% as of 6/2017),
and Texas 18%.
That is good news for the economy of the USA.
“How China will produce double the electricity it does today is difficult to imagine.”
That depends on a lot of stuff including one’s world view. Let’s take a look at some data from the web site China Energy Portal. In particular the data for the most recent quarter (Q1 2018) shows a 78.4 TWh (6.9%) increase in thermal electricity production (mostly coal) versus a 5TWh (33.5%).
Extrapolating that growth has new solar production out pacing thermal by 2013. The 2017 electricity & other energy statistics page shows a 209TWh (4.9%) increase in electricity production from thermal sources (mostly coal) in 2017 with a corresponding 50.8 Twh (75.4%) increase in solar production for the same period. Extrapolation of the 2017 annual data has new solar production out pacing new coal production by 2021 and by 2027 the single year’s new production from solar would be more than the total amount generated by all sources in 2017 (see chart below).
Those are very unrealistic projections so let’s leave the growth rate for coal the same and halve the growth rate of solar to 37% per annum. That still has new solar production out pacing coal by 2024 and exceeding the total 2017 production in 2034. Still too optimistic? Okay, let’s halve the solar growth rate again to 19% per annum. That has new solar production out pacing new thermal production by 2030 and exceeding the total 2017 production by 2046.
It’s that exponential growth thing, it’ll bite you on the ass every time! Just in case anybody new to these topics comes wandering by, I refer to the late professor Albert A. Bartlett’s presentation Arithmetic, Population and Energy (home page) also available on YouTube. For those who have not yet watched Prof. Bartlett’s talk, it is well worth the roughly one hour it takes to watch in terms of getting a good grasp of how exponential growth works.
Islandboy
Yes the solar will produce a great deal during the day time in summer time particularly between 10AM though to 3pm
https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/china/beijing?month=1&year=2018
but in the months of November, December, January, February and March
they have 13-14 hours of darkness and wind variations will continue to increase as more wind turbines are added.
https://phys.org/news/2017-01-insights-fluctuations-energy-implications-policy.html
In the next 5 years or so the limitations of wind and solar will become only too obvious.
The limitations are already obvious in South Australia, California and Germany where renewables’ market share has increased significantly. Even Texas – of all places – is looking at supply problems this summer.
When alternate sources such as nuclear and fossil fuels get displaced by wind/solar, they cease to operate and go out of business.
When wind/solar are unable to meet demand, shortages and high pricing ensue.
Gail Tverberg wrote her VERY lengthy analysis correlating the rising expenses involved the more wind/solar contribute to the mix.
Should be required reading for interested observers of this topic.
Exactly
Germany is already having to sell (give away for nothing) solar and wind. No wonder real power generators are going out of business.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/renewable-power-germany-negative-electricity-cost-2017-12
Trouble with the likes of Islandboy, is that they are so mesmerized by clean energy that they cannot see the obvious catastrophe of a country facing regular blackouts.
They hope that some kind of storage will appear that will make all these problems go away.
“Trouble with the likes of Islandboy, is that they are so mesmerized by clean energy that they cannot see the obvious catastrophe of a country facing regular blackouts. “
Oh please! I am not mesmerized by clean energy. I live in the tropics, 18 degrees north to be exact and as such I have to deal with excess solar energy every day, unless we get a cloudy spell. At this very moment, I am in my apartment with a 20 inch, “high velocity” (that’s what it said on the box), commercial grade (noisy) fan pulling cool air through the window and creating a light breeze inside the apartment. With the summer solstice approaching, I am probably gonna have to run that sucker 24/7 any time I am in the apartment until about October, since the three months following the solstice are usually significantly warmer than the months preceding it.
I also have eight 270 PV modules (a.k.a. panels to laypersons) giving me about 2.2kW, currently connected to a 3kW grid tied inverter. Below is a screen shot from the “portal” page of the inverter manufacturer, showing the daily output so far this month. The three days with no output are days I disconnected the PV array from the inverter on purpose. I will let readers guess why I did that (hint: my electricity meter was due to be read on the 8th). In my experience, solar PV works very well, with the minor quibble that it does not work when the sun isn’t shinning. Grid tied inverters let system owners deliver excess power to the grid when available and simply draw power from the grid when the PV array is producing less than what the premises is using. So, we are sort of treating the grid like a battery but, that’s a whole other discussion.
If you’ve been around here long enough you might have read my accounts of how the island where I live (Jamaica), like many islands, is heavily dependent on oil to generate electricity and this dependence has caused all sorts of financial problems whenever the price of oil goes up. This has been the case since the oil shocks in the seventies and frankly I am fed up with it. I finally see a glimmer of hope for relief from the “rent seekers” that are the fossil fuel suppliers in the form of solar and wind to complement our small amount of hydroelectric generation. You see, we here in the islands face the prospect of “the obvious catastrophe of a country facing regular blackouts” if fuels get more expensive and we are not prepared to give up a lot of other stuff (food?) to pay for the fuel. In the longer term when global oil production starts to decline, we are going to have to transition away from oil anyway. What would you suggest tropical islands transition to? Coal? Natural Gas? Nuclear?
There is a Jamaican saying that goes something like “Nuh swap black dog fi monkey!” (Don’t swap black dog for monkey) which basically speaks to jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, if you get my drift. I sometimes wonder if your (Peter’s) financial well being is tied to the status quo, the success of the FF industries. It certainly seems that way. In which case, to add salt to your wound, hopefully by the end of this month I will have acquired my EV and will be increasing the power of my PV system to cope with charging it. Solar works bitches!
Island
Solar is great as long as their is a grid which has plenty of reliable power to keep it stable.
As you say you use the grid as a battery and that battery is powered by oil. Take away that oil and you got no power after sunset.
As the proportion of solar and wind increase the intermittency effect will amplify.
Jamaica has a population of only 3 million and I take it, it does not get very cold.
Take a look at this website, changing the dates to winter you will see that China, India, Pakistan etc, totaling over 3 billion people are in darkness for the same 8 hours.
https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html?day=15&month=1&year=2018&hour=23&min=10&sec=0&n=&ntxt=&earth=0
Anyone who thinks batteries will keep 3 billion people and all the factories powered and keep people warm is deluded.
http://www.beijingholiday.com/beijing-winter-tours/beijing-winter-weather.html
China uses 3.8 billion tonnes of coal, with it’s electricity consumption due to double it will take a Herculean effort to get that down to 2.5 billion tonnes by 2050. Which is still far too much pollution for the planet.
Anyone who thinks batteries will keep 3 billion people and all the factories powered and keep people warm is deluded.
That’s a “hand waving” argument. You might want to find evidence and numbers for that idea.
Sadly, if you look long enough you’ll probably be able to find someone who makes a presentation that at least looks vaguely plausible, written by someone who’s under the influence of fossil fuel propaganda. But if you look carefully, you’ll find that they’re flaky. Sometimes looking at the ads on the website can give you a clue.
If you do some real research, you’ll find that battery costs have dropped dramatically. Combined with cheap solar, a 24 hour setup is quite affordable.
Applying a current energy/industrial model to future energy/industrial civilization is much like feeding coal to a gasoline engine to prove it won’t work.
Systems and methods will be very different in the future. Energy needs will be quite different. Applying current dysfunctional systems to highly advanced smart systems with all new technologies and materials is just stupid.
We are already using battery systems and that is just one of the “solutions”. People like Peter assume everyone is stupid and cannot change or adapt. A very bad assumption when it comes to human activity.
We are already using battery systems and that is just one of the “solutions”
I agree.
It may surprise Peter, but grid system operators already have a wide range of effective, smart methods: they just need to be used more widely.
“Applying a current energy/industrial model to future energy/industrial civilization is much like feeding coal to a gasoline engine to prove it won’t work.” ~ GoneFishing
Maybe if it was liquefied. ‘u^
But your metaphor is inspiring from another perspective; the perspective of presupposing that a shift in the, as you write, ‘energy/industrial model to future energy/industrial civilization’ using the same garbage sociopolitical/pseudoeconomic model that got us into this fine mess in the first place will come up anywhere near roses– and as its messes and self-reinforcing feedbacks further cascade.
Just another reminder, while I’m at it, that oil companies are ostensibly among the largest investors, if not the largest investors of so-called renewable energy systems– this, while some appear to try to somehow dichotomize the two.
When alternate sources such as nuclear and fossil fuels get displaced by wind/solar, they cease to operate and go out of business.
You say that like it is a bad thing!
Gail Tverberg wrote her VERY lengthy analysis correlating the rising expenses involved the more wind/solar contribute to the mix.
Seriously?!
Should be required reading for interested observers of this topic.
While you are at it, pick up a copy of Creation Science, Proof that the Earth is flat and only six thousand years old!
“Creation Science 101” by Roy Zimmerman – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIwiPsgRrOs
“When alternate sources such as nuclear and fossil fuels get displaced by wind/solar, they cease to operate and go out of business.” ~ coffeeguyzz
Like a lot of things, it seems to depend, such as, for example, if alternative energy buildout knocks out utilities too soon, and/or electricity prices (perhaps as a result) ramp up too soon– and in the current context of increasing financial/economic constraints/chaos in general. This may seem to threaten to render increasing pointlessness to significant alternative energy buildout.
Also, Fred, you mentioned a concern you have for something along the lines of ‘quitting civilization cold turkey’. Well, given the above, that might be what happens. That’s in part why I recommend that the onus should be on what to do in terms of self and local resilience.
It’s about getting our priorities straight, priorities like good food, potable water, clothing, shelter and good land, etc., from a local resilience standpoint, and a planet we can actually live and thrive on.
Anyone who thinks that photovoltaic panels and windmills are priorities and attempts to make it the predominating narrative is not thinking straight. But then, it’s indicative of an entire culture.
A new paper about warm water incursions from Pacific into the Arctic: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079661117302215 and an older one about inflows of warm water from the Atlantic: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6335/285.full
And discussed at Yale Environmental (a great site) here: https://e360.yale.edu/features/alien-waters-neighboring-seas-are-flowing-into-a-warming-arctic-ocean
Highlights
The Bering Strait inflow to the Arctic increased from 2001 (∼0.7 Sv) to 2014 (∼1.2 Sv).
This is due to increasing far-field, pressure-head forcing, not local wind changes.
Concurrently heat and freshwater fluxes strongly increased …
Seasonal data show winter freshening, pre-summer warming, summer/fall flow increase.
A new climatology … for the strait, including seasonality for heat and freshwater.
Arctic sea-ice loss is a leading indicator of climate change and can be attributed, in large part, to atmospheric forcing. Here, we show that recent ice reductions, weakening of the halocline, and shoaling of the intermediate-depth Atlantic Water layer in the eastern Eurasian Basin have increased winter ventilation in the ocean interior, making this region structurally similar to that of the western Eurasian Basin. The associated enhanced release of oceanic heat has reduced winter sea-ice formation at a rate now comparable to losses from atmospheric thermodynamic forcing, thus explaining the recent reduction in sea-ice cover in the eastern Eurasian Basin. This encroaching “atlantification” of the Eurasian Basin represents an essential step toward a new Arctic climate state, with a substantially greater role for Atlantic inflows.
May have something to do with current state of sea ice just north of Greenland, which used to be hard, thick, year round MYI and is now not even at 100% concentration (in May!).
https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/sea-ice-concentration/
It’s pretty interesting watching these once in a planet lifetime changes, despite it indicating we are probably screwed, and getting there faster each day.
This year now lowest for global sea ice and likely to become more clearly differentiated over the next week given the heat wave in the Antarctic and the clear skies and warm air and water incursions into the Arctic.
Sadly we don’t have enough accounts of sea ice before 1979. At least not demonstrably sound measurements, which in any case makes it nearly impossible to believe the Arctic hasn’t ever gone through periods like now. Maybe the current observations really are anomalous such that if there was good data all the way back to 1900 for example, we could see sharp downward forcings in Arctic sea ice over the century, but with too little in the way of reliable measurements aside from accounts of open seas in the 1930’s, its so difficult to say. All we know is earth apparently went through a very warm period back in the 1930’s followed by a trailing cold period much like a stepwise mathematical function. Presumably there were times before that also experienced wide changes which would be difficult to account for by contemporary observers. This is actually one of the things I considered most difficult to keep in mind when studying the climate for my Master’s; out of necessity climatology must involve moving averages as well as variable time changes considered seasons which inevitably change in step functions, occasionally dramatically and sometimes not. Over centuries and millennia there’s no reason to doubt climate will change, but in shorter time periods like a few years, we just don’t have the needed data to say one way or another that this is for sure what will happen at a 95% confidence.
I feel current academic research would be better served by monitoring heat fluxes and oceanic temperatures. With this you would get intuitive senses of why atmospheric patterns are evolving as they are because these conditions are sort of like atmospheric transporters, if you will, so you would gain much insight on the overall weather patterns that will shape ice conditions over the near and medium term time frames.
Going back to the 1930’s warm period, if there are any charts/pics from that time frame I would be real curious about analyzing the oceanic temperature and pressure setup in those years, as it would have been presumably very similar to now which could explain why we are witnessing increased Arctic heat waves. Obviously the conditions then wouldn’t have been completely the same but just looking at the placement of tropospheric features at both the surface and upper levels would be very useful all the same.
Sadly we don’t have enough accounts of sea ice before 1979. At least not demonstrably sound measurements, which in any case makes it nearly impossible to believe the Arctic hasn’t ever gone through periods like now.
Oh for Fuck’s sake, from under which bridges do you idiotic trolls continually come crawling out?!
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-piecing-together-arctic-sea-ice-history-1850
Guest post: Piecing together the Arctic’s sea ice history back to 1850
A guest article by Florence Fetterer, principal investigator at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in the US.
New sources
We’ve used a range of new data sources to fill gaps and extend the Arctic sea ice record back to 1850. We’ve also updated the record with the latest satellite data.
These are some of the sources of information we used to create our sea ice dataset:
The sea ice edge positions in the North Atlantic, between 1850 and 1978, derived from various sources, including newspapers, ship observations, aircraft observations, diaries and more.
Sea ice concentration data from regular aerial surveys of ice in the eastern Arctic by the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia, beginning in 1933.
Sea ice edge positions for Newfoundland and the Canadian Maritime Region from observations, for 1870 to 1962.
Detailed charts of ice in the waters around Alaska for 1954 to 1978, originally the property of a consulting firm (the Dehn collection).
Arctic-wide maps of ice cover from the Danish Meteorological Institute from 1901 to 1956.
Whaling ship logbook entries that noted ship position along with an indication of whether the ship was in the presence of ice (see image of whaling ship below).
First, there is no point in the past 150 years where sea ice extent is as small as it has been in recent years. Second, the rate of sea ice retreat in recent years is also unprecedented in the historical record. And, third, the natural fluctuations in sea ice over multiple decades are generally smaller than the year-to-year variability.
Someone is apparently not doing their job fumigating those hard to reach dark and dank places under the bridges where all the trolls hide during the daytime. Either that or we need a lot stronger spray!
Yes, these trolls are a lot like mosquitoes except mosquitoes are smarter.
And mosquitoes are a lot less annoying…
Interesting googling that name!
I say we find that bridge and we destroy it!
Our duty is to the future.
-Lloyd
Camille,
‘NOTHING EVEN COMES CLOSE’: WESTERN ALASKA SEA ICE AT LOWEST EXTENT SINCE 1850, DATABASE INDICATES
A scientist with the National Weather Service said the amount of sea ice off Western Alaska coasts this spring was the lowest in more than 150 years of record-keeping. The long-term look is based on the online Sea Ice Atlas created in 2014 by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said Rick Thoman, a weather service climate scientist. The database provides a long-term look at coastal sea ice from sources such as recent satellite data and historical records that include whaler’s logs and Danish and Norwegian ship records.
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/environment/2018/04/11/western-alaska-sea-ice-at-lowest-extent-in-150-years-says-nws-scientist/
Do you think we will have a brick in the face moment?
Famine is such an incident. If fossil depletion get rolling at the same time we have food production disruption from climate changes in a major food producing zone, the scenario for responding to a big event will be very very ugly.
On a long enough time line the brick in the face seems a certainty. We, meaning in our lifetime, depends on age I guess. I tend to think I might, so I have a bit of a prep going on.
Did you ever see the movie Blow with Johhny Depp? He was a cocaine dealer living in a house full of boxes of cash stacked throughout. My place looks similar but it’s cans of food. Lol.
If there’s no brick in the face I’ll eat it in rotation and not restock, or give it to the food bank. If there’s a brick in the face moment I’ll keep a low profile and eat tins for a few years while everybody else does whatever it is people do in a famine.
More wasted tax dollars? I think not.
NICER MISSION FINDS AN X-RAY PULSAR IN A RECORD-FAST ORBIT
Scientists analyzing the first data from the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) mission have found two stars that revolve around each other every 38 minutes—about the time it takes to stream a TV drama. One of the stars in the system, called IGR J17062–6143 (J17062 for short), is a rapidly spinning, superdense star called a pulsar. The discovery bestows the stellar pair with the record for the shortest-known orbital period for a certain class of pulsar binary system.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-nicer-mission-x-ray-pulsar-record-fast.html#jCp
Meanwhile, more wasted tax dollars?
GREENLAND SCOPE JOINS BLACK HOLE QUEST
A radio telescope that will help image the shadows of giant black holes in the centers of galaxies opened for business last week in the high Arctic. Erected in December 2017 at Thule Air Base in northern Greenland, the Greenland Telescope is the northernmost component of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a network of radio telescopes that observes these shadows.
Some anticipated discoveries for the Greenland Telescope include:
• Participating in imaging the event horizon of a black hole, the point of no return for infalling matter. This feat has never been accomplished.
• Testing Einstein’s theory of General Relativity in environments where extreme gravity exists.
• Probing the physics around black holes with unprecedented detail.
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/greenland12m/
In ten years wind and solar power percent of total net electric power generation increased by more than eight times. That is more than 3 doublings in 10 years. That marks it for over 60 percent of total power generation by 2030 even with increasing demand. Much sooner if the flat line demand trend continues for much longer.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/2/27/17052488/electricity-demand-utilities
Solar’s growth appears to be accelerating. From the Original Post:
In February 2018 the output from solar was 5812 Gwh, 4.2 times what it was four years ago in February2014.
That’s a doubling every two years. That would get the grid to 100% solar in just 11 years. Is that sustainable? Not so much on the utility side, which cares about matching up the supply of that power with demand. But, as the price of solar continues to plummet it will be increasingly more attractive, and that will drive further price reductions in a virtuous cycle. Utilities will be pushed to replace existing power, which is increasingly more expensive than new power from wind and solar.
And, residential consumers don’t care that much about the big picture at the grid level, so we can expect rooftop solar to continue to accelerate, at least until utilities gang up to create political barriers. That will be vary by state: some free market tea-party advocates like self-generation.
Meteor and asteroid impacts
Meteors with a radius of between five and ten metres collide with the Earth’s atmosphere about once a year, releasing about as much energy as the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, but are too small to reach the surface.
Impacts from bigger bodies are less common – the largest during recorded human history is the Tunguska event, in Siberia in 1908, in which a body estimated at a few 10s of metres across exploded just a few miles above the Earth’s surface, releasing as much energy as 10–15 megatons of TNT. (By way of comparison, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slamming into Jupiter in 1994 released the equivalent of more than 6 000 000 megatons of TNT.)
http://www.iop.org/resources/topic/archive/meteor/index.html
Finding Michigan’s 5-mile crater
A space rock longer than three football fields smashed into what today is Calvin Township (pop. 2,037), about 30 miles northeast of South Bend, Ind. It hit about 450 million years ago, long before humans or even dinosaurs.
If it struck today, millions of people would die. A massive firestorm, spreading from a fireball 18 times brighter than the sun, would erupt immediately from a blast so catastrophic, it’s difficult to imagine. Earth’s Northern Hemisphere would be clouded with ash and dust, perhaps for decades, said Randall Milstein, who discovered the crater.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/02/01/michigan-crater-meteor-targets/1057426001/
I wonder how many small craters are out there unrecognized for what they are.
Do these numbers for liquid fuel consumption on farms look right? They’re not as high as I expected. If corn only takes about 5 gallons of fuel per acre, that’s only about $15 for fuel consumption. At 160 bushels per acre and $3.40 per bushel that’s $544 for the value of the crop produced, so fuel is less than 3% of the value of production. Even if fuel prices doubled that should only increase crop prices by 3%.
At 2.8 gallons of ethanol per bushel, even if you discount ethanol by the 70% BTU factor you still get a ratio of more than 60 gallons of fuel produced per gallon of fuel input (liquid fuel return on liquid fuel invested). Certainly there are other energy inputs, but they’re cheaper and easier to substitute with renewables (process heat for drying can come from solar heat, electricity can be wind/solar, etc). Fertilizer is the biggie: that energy comes from natural gas. NG provides hydrogen, which could come from renewable electrolysis (which provides 4% of industrial H2 currently).
Data sources:
About 4 gallons per acre for all farming: “U.S. farmers spent $5.84 billion on diesel fuel and $2.30 billion on gasoline in 2005.” That’s about $8B. At about $2.50 per gallon that was roughly 3b gallons. For 750M acres, that’s about 4 gallons per acre. https://sustainable-farming.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/consfuelfarm.pdf
About 5 gallons per acre for corn: “Diesel fuel used for field operations varies with management practices. A range of 4 to 6 gallons per acre is common, particularly if one primary and one or more secondary tillage operations are used (Figure 1). Seeds must be planted, grain harvested, and weeds controlled (typically with spraying). Fuel used for these operations is typically 2 to 2.5 gallons per acre, which represents fuel consumption for a no-till system. The energy required for tilling soil can be an additional 2 gallons of fuel per acre or more.”
https://store.extension.iastate.edu/Product/Energy-consumption-for-row-crop-production-Farm-Energy-PDF
2.5-4 gal/acre for corn: http://www.farmdoc.illinois.edu/manage/newsletters/fefo05_17/fefo05_17.pdf
It’s never that simple Nick.
How Much Energy Does It Take to Make a Gallon of Ethanol?
Assuming an average efficiency corn farm and an average
efficiency ethanol plant, the total energy used in growing
the corn and processing it into ethanol and other products is
81,090 BTUs. Ethanol contains 84,100 BTUs per gallon and
the replacement energy value for the other co-products is
27,579 BTUs. Thus, the total energy output is 111,679 BTUs
and the net energy gain is 30,589 BTUs for an energy output input
ratio of 1.38:1.
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph240/dikeou1/docs/ethanolnetenergy.pdf
Basically, ethanol has a small gain in energy over the fossil fuel inputs needed to make it. The “other” byproduct energy gain is in food type products.
Is there an overall reduction of CO2? We know there is a reduction in food growing land and some soil loss involved.
My take is we are mostly fooling ourselves over the energy, when just making more efficient cars would do the same thing or better. The original mandate was put in place to reduce carbon monoxide output from ICE’s, not to save energy. The vehicle loses about 3 percent efficiency using E10, which should be included in the losses.
Use of a 10% ethanol blend results in a 25-30% reduction in carbon monoxide emissions by promoting a more complete combustion of the fuel. So if mpg increased by 30 percent there would be no need for ethanol. Say 25 mpg to 32 or 17 to 22 mpg (trucks).
That means hybrids have more than solved the problem and there is no need for ethanol as a fuel once we convert most vehicles. The farmers and ethanol producers will lobby hard against that.
All this is fully solved by using BEV’s and renewable energy.
Well, I was focused on liquid fuel.
I agree that electric transportation is the main show. But…isn’t it interesting how little in the way of liquid fuel inputs are needed to produce an output of liquid fuel in the form of ethanol?
Yes, liquid petroleum products are one of the lesser amounts of energy in the system (ignoring the inputs into making them). Even when bulk transport and other transport inputs for processes are added it probably only doubles it.
The whole process is not energy efficient and was primarily for pollution reduction, which is easier and far less damaging to the environment with mandated mpg gains.
With all those other energy inputs, did it even reduce pollution?
The system is self-promoting and self-protecting. It produces a lot of defective “solutions” if not critically examined and rectified. Improper government “green” mandates are more harmful than no action at all.
I don’t think it was primarily a “green” mandate. Climate change deniers and renewable opponents often use ethanol as an example of a “green” mandate that backfired, and I think that’s inaccurate in a couple of ways:
First, ethanol wasn’t primarily a “green” mandate. It did help replace MTBE as an oxygenate, and it did also help replace lead as an anti-knock additive (to raise octane), but it’s primary advocate was ADM, and it’s primary political “fuel” was helping provide more demand for corn farmers in Iowa (and elsewhere). If you look at the historical record, that’s fairly clear.
Second, ask yourself: if there was a stiff carbon/fuel tax on gasoline, wouldn’t ethanol be competitive even if it was charged for it’s impact on soil, etc.? I strongly suspect it would be. Then add a stiff tariff to pay for oil wars, and I suspect you’d have a hard time holding back corn farmers from converting their entire production to ethanol.
And, that would be ok. Given the harm that oil pollution and oil wars do, I suspect that ethanol is a bargain.
I was speaking in general about “green” solutions not ethanol in particular. Although ethanol stands out as a grim reminder of a harmful poorly designed and unnecessary “solution” to the CO problem. I guess CO is not in the environmental category Nick?
“Second, ask yourself: if there was a stiff carbon/fuel tax on gasoline, wouldn’t ethanol be competitive even if it was charged for it’s impact on soil, etc.? I strongly suspect it would be. Then add a stiff tariff to pay for oil wars, and I suspect you’d have a hard time holding back corn farmers from converting their entire production to ethanol.”
First of all ethanol is a carbon based fuel and is made from fossil fuel inputs. So it would have to have that stiff carbon tax on it also.
That whole carbon tax scheme is idiotic. Give big tax breaks and subsidies (including exclusion from environmental law compliance) to fossil fuels while on the other hand charge the public for using the stuff is simply the biggest shell game ever.
Just another example of poorly thought out economic “solutions” instead of just going directly at the problem.
Two thoughts:
1st, opponents of change often raise the argument of “unintended consequences”. They argue “if you can’t even get something as simple as ethanol right, how can you expect to successfully engineer a massive change like moving away from fossil fuels??”. And…that premise is wrong: ethanol was *primarily* intended to raise corn prices…and it worked. It also successfully created a large domestic supply of liquid fuel.
2nd, ethanol is not a fossil fuel. The energy in corn and the energy in corn ethanol is from the sun. The fact that we currently use fossil fuels for processing (to transfer nitrogen from the atmosphere into the ground, till and harvest, dry out the corn, and distill the ethanol) is real and important, but they don’t make ethanol a fossil fuel except in a metaphorical sense.
More importantly, all of these energy processing inputs (except for the liquid fuel, which as we have seen is very small) can be easily done with renewable power.
Tesla plows through front doors of a Silicon Valley Starbucks
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Tesla-Starbucks-Los-Gatos-photos-Silicon-Valley-12906808.php
Doesn’t appear to be on AP– so just a everyday occurrence in The Bay.
BTW, more interesting, to me anyway, than idiot humans ignoring warning labels and driving into things in a Tesla or other vehicle, is the news about that mega Tesla battery in Australia and how it is functioning. Pretty impressive, IMHO!
https://247wallst.com/energy-business/2018/05/13/teslas-giant-australian-battery-is-a-more-massive-success/
Tesla’s Giant Australian Battery Is a More Massive Success
Most of the attention on Tesla Inc.’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) installation of a giant 100 megawatt-hour (MWh) battery in South Australia was centered on the company’s offer to install the system within 100 days or the Australian state would not have to pay for it. Tesla beat the December 1, 2017 deadline by nearly two weeks.
Even more impressive, however, a new report from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) found that in its first four months of operation the big battery (officially the Hornsdale Power Reserve) has already taken a 55% market share in South Australia’s frequency control and ancillary services (FCAS) market and lowered the price to the market by 90%. That is not a typo. The report also noted that the giant battery takes that 55% of revenue even though it represents just 2% of the state’s capacity.
Not too shabby, eh mates?
Where’s Old Farmer Mac?
I hope everything is okay with him.
I agree. I miss his 5000 word essays lol. I hope he’s doing ok. I recall he had a older father he cared for at home. A very honourable thing to do. I hope they’re both ok.
I was wondering that also—–
Sent Old Farmer Mac a note. Will let you know what I hear.
thanks
Sorry to anyone who couldn’t access the blog, it was temporarily down, but should be ok now.
Growth in daily CO2 looking good folks. Lots of exploding pingos in Siberia as well so next ice age may be held off for awhile. BTW, with a new satellite tool called VIIRS, or Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, researchers have found more than 7,000 flare sites. Russia flared the largest volume of gas (25 billion cubic meters, about half what the state of Colorado produces in a year), according to the study, while the US had the highest number (2,399) of flares.
May 11, 2018: 411.71 ppm
May 11, 2017: 409.79 ppm
Meanwhile, further studies of melting ice sheets commence.
Scientists to probe massive ice stream’s stability
It is going to be one of the biggest projects ever undertaken in Antarctica.
UK and US scientists will lead a five-year effort to examine the stability of the mighty Thwaites Glacier.
This ice stream in the west of the continent is comparable in size to Britain. It is melting and is currently in rapid retreat, accounting for around 4% of global sea-level rise – an amount that has doubled since the mid-1990s.
Researchers want to know if Thwaites could collapse.
https://nation.com.pk/01-May-2018/scientists-to-probe-massive-ice-stream-s-stability
https://understandrisk.org/event/ur2018/
What is Understanding Risk?
UR is a global community of 7,000+ experts and practitioners active in the creation, communication, and use of disaster risk information. Members share knowledge and experience, collaborate, and discuss innovations and best practice in risk assessment. The community convenes every two years at UR Forums – five-day events that highlight groundbreaking work, facilitate nontraditional partnerships, and showcase new technical know-how in disaster risk identification.
https://understandrisk.org/topic/changing-risk/
Because risk is likely to evolve under climate change—according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “a changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration, and timing of extreme weather and climate events” (IPCC 2012, 7)— there is increasing interest in understanding climate change’s impacts and calculating losses under future adverse climate events. Using the modelling techniques and approaches developed to model disaster risk, experts have demonstrated the potential to determine future loss under climate change. However, since the fundamental data sets that enable the risks of today to be quantified are the same as those required to determine the impacts of adverse events in the future, it is critical for both the disaster and climate change communities to continue investing in fundamental data and innovation.
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPEbIEc1n0s&feature=youtu.be
Climate change and the need to change behaviour in the West
The West has headed East and next it will enter the Dark Continent. Even if the West would go gung-ho renewable/efficiency it will be erased by the gung-ho growth of the other high population regions.
The US is lagging way behind anyway. Under Obama the end result was mix of every energy source. Under Trump, looks worse. Maybe the market will save us.
If these lecturing types want to be taken seriously they need to quickly change their lifestyles to reflect their beliefs. When you have some of the biggest carbon footprints of anyone–due to flying around the world just to present and lecture at conferences–you risk turning your work into a farce.
Oh fuck, I really get tired of hearing this shit. People must live in the world they were born into. If they want to make lectures and try to change the world they must do so within the world that is available to them. They must fly. If they became hermits and did not travel but within a few miles of their residence, in fear of using a gallon of fossil fuel, this would mute anything they have to say.
Again, people must live in the world they were born into. To expect them to do anything different is just fucking stupid.
well said Ron.
I deal with this continually—-
The argument was “if they want to be taken seriously” not whether they are right or wrong (which would be a true tu quoque fallacy) and might be correct. However Kevin Andersen has and Mayer Hillman had very low carbon footprints, both refusing to fly, and I’m not sure they have made much more of an impact in consequence. There’s also a difference between taking someone seriously and actually doing something as a result. Most people have their own, to them important, reasons for maintaining a status quo, most expect these sort of issues to be led by the government (probably without really knowing what the “government” is or does in detail), and these days many are manipulated and driven to group-think, celebrity obsessed, dumbness lauding zombiedom, whether deliberately or otherwise, by smart phones, social media and sophisticated advertising. So I doubt many are going to change before the first mega disasters start hitting, which is probably going to need 10 to 100 million dead or displaced over a short time from a single identifiable cause, and maybe not even then.
The argument was “if they want to be taken seriously”..
And my argument is: “You don’t have to become a hermit to be taken seriously” That is just goddamn stupid. Only a right wing Trumpite would say: “Hey, you flew here in an airplane so nothing you say can be believed.”
Right wing Trumpites look for every excuse to deny global warming and climate change. And they look for every excuse to discredit the scientists who lectures about the subject. These people are idiots, they should be ignored not argued with.
When you have some of the biggest carbon footprints of anyone–due to flying around the world just to present and lecture at conferences–you risk turning your work into a farce.
Really?! You have to be quite the imbecile to seriously believe that climate scientists flying to lecture at conferences have “some of the biggest carbon footprints of anyone”.
I’m willing to bet that hundreds of thousands of corporate executives, business men, academics and experts in non climate related fields such as medicine, vacationing tourists, government officials, diplomats, the military etc etc… have far far greater carbon footprints. I’ll give just one example, Scott Pruitt, current head of the EPA!
Jason T., I’m guessing that ‘T’ stands for TROLL!
It seems fairly common knowledge, at least in these peak oil circles, that the USA uses a disproportionate quantity of energy and resources per capita, which I think Jason T. may have also had in mind, yes?
But fear not! Mega-batteries are on the way!
Potential carbon reduction from scientists communicating information about global warming and climate change effects =100 percent.
Potential carbon increase from right wing misinformation and troll attacks upon real information = 100 percent.
It’s not about personal carbon footprint, it’s about how much destruction and death one aims at with one’s actions.
Time to man up JT, you are a danger to humanity and the world in general.
Now, where have I read that kind of logic before… Oh yes, that’s right…
“…since you are on here on this site, posting with composted leaves and dirt you are obviously not using anything that might have contaminated the planet right? When are you going to get off your high horse and quit your holier than thou attitude?” ~ Fred Magyar
Ok, folks, let’s all wrap it up, send one last comment of goodbye to POB, and then file into our caves.
😀
THE ARCTIC’S CARBON BOMB MIGHT BE EVEN MORE POTENT THAN WE THOUGHT
“What we can definitely say is that the importance of methane was underestimated until now in the carbon studies,” said Christian Knobloch, a researcher at Universität Hamburg in Germany and the lead author of the study, published in Nature Climate Change.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/03/19/the-arctics-carbon-bomb-might-be-even-more-potent-than-we-thought/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f57f3849d5dd
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DcspPUMU8AAmy1b.jpg
Tesla with Autopilot slams into truck stopped at red light
https://www.sfgate.com/news/us/article/Utah-police-Tesla-slams-into-truck-stopped-at-12909775.php
probably just a few software glitches to work out—-
“police say it’s unknown if the Autopilot feature was engaged”
Everybody jumps on Autopilot but I never hear anyone say “police say it’s unknown if he was using a cellphone”*
NAOM
* Applies to about 50% of the drivers I see.
Hey, I’m with you on this one——-
I have yet to be rundown by a Tesla.
Tesla’s senior vice president of engineering, Doug Field, is leaving the company for what the auto maker is characterizing as a leave of absence.
Late Friday, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg reported that Field wasstepping back from his duties at Tesla, amid ongoing production problems with its Model 3 sedan. A Tesla spokesperson told CNBC that “Doug is just taking some time off to recharge and spend time with his family. He has not left Tesla.”
The WSJ reported that Field’s absence would be temporary. Tesla, however, declined to answer CNBC’s questions about when he was expected to return. Field, who was formerly a VP of hardware engineering at Apple, joined Tesla in 2013. He was responsible for development of new vehicles there, including the Model 3 electric sedan, which is the company’s first EV designed for the mass market.
Tesla’s future hinges on efficient, high volume production of the Model 3. But the company has so far failed to hit its production goals for the vehicle, and has yet to release the $35,000 base model of the car to eager drivers.
In the first quarter of 2018, Tesla produced 9,766 of its higher-priced Model 3 vehicles, up from 2,425 in the prior quarter. When it first unveiled the Model 3, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said it could manufacture 20,000 of them monthly by the end of 2017.
In the first quarter of 2018, the Model 3 became the best-selling electric vehicle in the U.S. More than 450,000 people have signed up to purchase the car, putting down a $1,000 refundable deposit to do so. Tesla doesn’t report how many people have requested refunds for vehicles they have paid to reserve.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/tesla-says-top-vehicle-engineer-doug-field-is-taking-time-off-amid-model-3-production-woes/ar-AAx9aar?ocid=spartanntp&ffid=gz
For Fuck’s sake why are people so fascinated with Tesla car crashes?! Tesla has very explicit terms of use on it’s current level of Autopilot features. Driving a Tesla is a human driver’s responsibility and requires hands on the steering wheel at all times! Furthermore it is a feature intended to assist in highway driving. It doesn’t stop stupid distracted people from driving into things.
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/teslas-autopilot-the-smart-persons-guide/
So what is a “driverless” vehicle? And what is “autonomous driving technology?” A deeper look at Tesla’s Autopilot provides insight into the bigger picture of driverless car research. Autopilot does not turn a Tesla into a driverless car. It is Tesla’s autonomous driving feature that aims to assist drivers on highways. Autopilot-enabled vehicles can automatically steer, change lanes, and apply brakes—but still require a human behind the wheel.
I once knew a pilot called Otto.
Autopilot on cars is stupid. Humanity can’t even make a driverless train. Indeed they seem to have enough train troubles WITH drivers.
I don’t know what Tesla calls it’s driver assist, but if it is autopilot then I’d suggest it’s a poor name for it.
What kind of idiot needs help changing lanes and steering?
“What kind of idiot needs help changing lanes and steering?”
Two years ago I purchased a new vehicle. The base models offered “Driver Awareness Package” for an additional $770 and the Premium models made the Awareness Package standard. At the time, I put very little value on the package after driving for over the last 40 years without an accident and would not have included it if I went with one of the base models. But, there was other options in the premium model that I did want that I couldn’t get in the base model. I ended up buying the premium model that included the Awareness Package.
I have to say now after two years, I see the value in the Awareness Package and would want it on future vehicles. Just it’s ability to detect objects behind you backing up and see objects in ones blind spot changing lanes is worth it.
http://www.cadillac.com/configurator/DDP/cadillac/US/b2c/en/2017/xt5/xt5/Y65_Detail.html
Driver Awareness Package
Includes:
Safety Alert Seat
Forward Collision Alert
Following Distance Indicator
Lane Keep Assist with Lane Departure Warning
Front Pedestrian Detection
IntelliBeam® headlamps
Front Automatic Braking
Our Driver Awareness Package helps keep you safe on the roads. But the best and most reliable Cadillac safety feature is you. Being aware of signs, traffic, and your surroundings means you’ll always be in control – but just in case, we offer these extra features to give you peace of mind and keep you even further from harm’s way.
With the high number of people engrossed on their Stupid Phones while stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on SF Bay area freeways, a growing number are allowing the autonomous features to start/stop their cars and cut down on the horrendously high number of low speed fender benders that have become a maddeningly, routine happening … frequently involving 3 to 5 cars.
Sure, the mentally handicapped need assistance driving. I see evidence every day of the inability of people to do the simplest functions and their inability to function within society.
Tesla Car-Crash Schadenfreude
Society sucks some serious shit and should be functioning for people, rather than against.
FWIW, humans didn’t evolve with the car, perhaps in the same subtly-related sense that flying insects didn’t evolve with ‘flying’ car windshields.
While flying insect populations are apparently down in many areas, perhaps human populations will begin to ‘adapt’ similarly in the face of society as a metaphoric flying car windshield.
Aside from the car-crash porn maybe, that might be partly why some people are ‘fascinated’, so to speak, with Tesla car crashes, incidentally.
As for another possible, and maybe the most likely, reason; ‘schadenfreude’.
Motorcrash
“humans didn’t evolve with the car”
Bullshit, it’s called the wheel. The question is- How evolved are you?
As for another possible, and maybe the most likely, reason; ‘schadenfreude’.
Yep! Coming from you, that makes perfect sense! That is exactly the motivation behind most trolling.
You are really not interested in facts, science or discussion of any ideas. You are a contrarian for contrarianism’s sake. You are a knee jerk reactionary who seems to be anti all renewables whether it is in a Tesla or a decentralized solar PV microgrid providing electricity to a village in Africa.
You defend trolls like Jason and Bob the cold blob weather man, you support ultra right wing mysogenistic authoritarians like Fernando Leanme, and you always supported our old friend, climate change cherry picking denialist, Javier. You do have some rather odd bedfellows, to say the least.
But claiming ‘schadenfreude’ as the most likely reason does make perfect sense!
(Points at self with surprised look on face.)
What, who? Me?! Schadenfreude?! About electric car crashes and assorted Earth-defeating and self-defeating issues with the crony capitalist plutarchy?!
😀
There may be new technology available down the road to assist drivers with autopilot.
DHL is implementing electric delivery vehicles on a large scale.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxGAW_FuoMY
Note: The e-bike is the backbone of DHL’s e-mobility.
I’m a wealth adviser to the richest millennials — here are 6 surprising things I’ve learned about how they view money
Jake Halladay, Contributor
http://www.businessinsider.com/rich-millennials-money-tips-according-to-wealth-adviser-2018-5
The pace at which wealth is being created is unprecedented.
It has never been easier to start a business. Combining the power of social-media marketing and very little money, someone can create a highly profitable business almost overnight. I’ve seen an apparel brand generate revenue over $5 million in less than nine months and another apparel brand grow to over $1 billion in revenue in five years. Companies can grow and scale much more quickly than in the past.
Robert Frank of CNBC reported that millionaire households in the US grew by more than 700,000 last year to over 11 million. The number of households worth $5 million to $25 million grew by 84,000, to 1.35 million. The number of households worth more than $25 million jumped by 10%, increasing by 16,000 to a total of 172,000.
Creating relationships with this new generation of wealthy millennials as a financial adviser is thrilling. I am inspired as they use their newfound wealth to shape the world for the better. Needs and desires are different than they were in the past and it’s important to be flexible and open to the changing environment that encompasses the investment world. As we grow in this age of technology and innovation, I look forward to what these inspired entrepreneurs will bring to the table.
Robert Frank of CNBC reported that millionaire households in the US grew by more than 700,000 last year to over 11 million. The number of households worth $5 million to $25 million grew by 84,000, to 1.35 million. The number of households worth more than $25 million jumped by 10%, increasing by 16,000 to a total of 172,000.
That’s nice but then there is the reality of how the majority of Millennials actually live!
More Millennial households are in poverty than households headed by any other generation.
Source Pew Research
https://www.romper.com/p/this-study-confirms-millennials-are-the-poorest-generation-to-date-everyone-nods-in-agreement-2302400
A study conducted by Pew Research Center found that, while not many households were headed up by a millennial, a significant percentage of the homes that were did not fare well. The study looked at 17 million households living below the poverty level; 5 million of those people were Baby Boomers (people between the ages of 52 to 70), 4.2 million were Generation X’ers (between the ages of 37 to 52) and 5.3 million were millennials (people born between 1977 to 1995). Considering that only about 28 million millennials living in the United States were the head of their household, that’s a significant amount.
From way back in the good old days, when even in the US, climate science was not yet an ideological issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXxFrmFK6F8
Roger Revelle’s 1980 Discussion of CO2 and Climate Risks
Way back in the 1950’s serious warnings were being put out. We can thank the Air Force for the detailed study of infrared atmospheric interactions. Who do we thank for not taking real action for 6 decades?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6YyvdYPrhY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdALFnlwV_o
Who do we thank for not taking real action for 6 decades?
Who do ya think?!
The Big Oil companies like the Exxon Mobiles of the world, together with the automobile companies in cahoots with people like Edward Bernays, father of propaganda and marketing, The Mad Men of the Advertising Agencies and the idiot snake oil salesmen who came up with the entire theory of Neoclassical Perpetual Growth based Economics and managed to sell all of that as the fantasy of The American Dream to a gullible populace.
If I had the option go back in time and eliminate the person who has done the most harm to our planet in its entire history, Edward Bernays would top my list.
What?! You thought this kind of slick promo was actually just some innocent product placement ad?! No, it was deep and malevolent brainwashing propaganda and we are still under its influence today.
.
Edward Bernays?– I would have to go along with that one——
You think those commercials and ads are very effective?
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/a-dangerous-question-does-internet-advertising-work-at-all/372704/?utm_source=atlfb
Both Sides Ignore the Major Finding of Recent Climate Research
As we can see, actually both sides are to blame for making climate change the current politically hot issue it is.
No, climate change is scientific fact, plain and simple.
However if you look at how the politics of it stack up in all the nations around the world, it is only in the US where conservative idealogues reject the science out of hand! There are not two sides to this issue anywhere else in the world. This is a peculiarly USian problem. Why do you think that might be?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0157-2
Relationships among conspiratorial beliefs, conservatism and climate scepticism across nations
Abstract
Studies showing that scepticism about anthropogenic climate change is shaped, in part, by conspiratorial and conservative ideologies are based on data primarily collected in the United States. Thus, it may be that the ideological nature of climate change beliefs reflects something distinctive about the United States rather than being an international phenomenon. Here we find that positive correlations between climate scepticism and indices of ideology were stronger and more consistent in the United States than in the other 24 nations tested. This suggests that there is a political culture in the United States that offers particularly strong encouragement for citizens to appraise climate science through the lens of their worldviews. Furthermore, the weak relationships between ideology and climate scepticism in the majority of nations suggest that there is little inherent to conspiratorial ideation or conservative ideologies that predisposes people to reject climate science, a finding that has encouraging implications for climate mitigation efforts globally.
There were only two nations in the world who were not signatories to the Paris Climate Accord, The US and Syria, since then even Syria has signed on leaving the US as the sole remaining country not on board.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2017/11/07/u-s-now-only-country-not-part-paris-climate-agreement-after-syria-signs/839909001/
The United States is now the only country on Earth that’s declined to be a part of the Paris climate agreement, after Syria announced Tuesday it would join the landmark 2015 pact.
In an address to delegates at a global climate meeting in Bonn, Germany, Syria’s deputy minister of local administration and environment, M. Wadah Katmawi, said his country would join the Paris deal “as soon as possible.”
Conservative Americans are definitely on the wrong side of history on this issue!
OCEANS ABSORB LESS CARBON DIOXIDE AS MARINE SYSTEMS CHANGE
“The oceans are by far the largest carbon sink in the world. Some 93 percent of carbon dioxide is stored in algae, vegetation, and coral under the sea. But oceans are not able to absorb all of the carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels. In fact, a recent study suggests that the oceans have absorbed a smaller proportion of fossil-fuel emissions, nearly 10 percent less, since 2000. The study, published in the current issue of Nature, is the first to quantify the perceived trend that oceans are becoming less efficient carbon sinks.”
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6323
There are several factors that may be responsible for what’s going on,” Khatiwala said. “Increasing acidity is only one of them. Faster emission growth rate is another, perhaps more important, cause, as could be changes in ocean temperature and circulation.”
Haven’t some of the seagrass areas died in recent decades? I wonder why they don’t mention oxygen depletion zones.
Oceans suffocating as huge dead zones quadruple since 1950, scientists warn
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/04/oceans-suffocating-dead-zones-oxygen-starved
2 and 7 percent of coastal ecosystems are lost each year … Wow! I bet that’s accelerating, and how can there be such a large range, in reality it’s likely at the high end – so maybe all gone except for protected areas in 20 to 30 years.
The southern oceans are the biggest single sink and they lag a bit behind the others in terms of warming and acidification so there’s probably a significant built in lag to come in the loss of efficiency even without further emissions.
Fred, you might find this interesting (enough variables to make your head spin),
THE OCEAN’S CARBON BALANCE
“Like much research, Feely and Le Quéré’s work creates almost as many questions as answers: What other climate cycles affect the oceanic carbon sink? Will the Southern Ocean return to normal as Antarctic ozone recovers? Will the increasing severity of global warming finally cause much of the ocean surface to stratify? In time—with continuing study—these questions will be answered, to be replaced with new ones.”
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCarbon/
In time—with continuing study—these questions will be answered, to be replaced with new ones.”
IMHO, we, are very quickly running out of time to make the necessary changes.
Meanwhile Trump and his idiots fiddle, while the earth burns.
.
Totally agree. Time is short, direction is unfocused. although I do find the moaning of people here and on other media about how renewables don’t work, how hard it is for power companies and coal companies. That is music to my ears since it the sign that some change is going in the right direction. Slow but at some progress.
Now we need to take the rest of the living world seriously instead selling off the preserved areas to fossil fuel interests, businesses and developers. When I hear them moaning I will know that there is some intelligence in the human animal.
Hope we slow down enough that the ocean life does not crash to oblivion. Could only be a few decades away at this rate. Time to put the brakes to the floor and steer hard elsewhere.
Now we need to take the rest of the living world seriously instead selling off the preserved areas to fossil fuel interests, businesses and developers.
I think that especially with regards the worlds oceans, the vast majority of people are laboring under this profound misconception, that we have these quasi infinite resources of water. Nothing could be further from the truth. The oceans belong to ALL of humanity not the fucking 1% such as the fossil fuel interests, businesses and developers!
To me, this graphic from the USGS showing all the water on the planet, pretty much says it all. THAT’s ALL THERE IS FOLKS! We had damn well better start taking care of it or we will lose it. Then we are all dead! Including the stupid 1%!
.
quasi infinite? what happened to semi-infinite? 🙂
Ah, but there is a subtle but very important difference!
Semi-infinite being half of infinite is still infinite, while
quasi infinite, is not quite, or almost infinite and therefore actually finite… 😉
Cheers!
We live on a razors edge
Yep! And this thin blue line is our atmosphere.
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So we have a possible named storm in The Gulf?
Early, but not totally out of sync.
This guy, Tripical Tidbits is his website, is pretty good. I imagine he’ll be up and running for the new season soon.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Meridionaljet
Levi is usually right on.
I follow his analysis a bit——
Elon Musk is a pretty good example of what happens to a man who only surrounds himself with sycophants. Trump is a good one too. Perhaps they both should consider getting a few smart people who disagree with them to join the entourage.
https://tinyurl.com/y7gfqdsq
Hope that link works. Should get past the pay wall if needed.
Elon looks so smart and suave leaning against one of his cars there. His shoes look expertly-polished, jacket seems to have some velvet/velour trim and jeans and v-neck t-shirt provide a tasteful casual counterpoint. Pedal-to-the-metal perfection personified.
The day of that call, Tesla stock fell to $285.00
Then apparently it must have gone up again…
Today:
Market Summary > Tesla Inc
NASDAQ: TSLA
301.06 USD −3.96 (1.30%)
Closed: May 11, 7:59 PM EDT · Disclaimer
After hours 300.60 −0.46 (0.15%)
BTW, TSLA is not just automobiles… they have a few other irons in the fire, like giant batteries. And Elon also has Space X and his Boring company too. His net worth is 19.6 billion USD. Not too shabby, eh?
https://electrek.co/2018/05/11/tesla-giant-battery-australia-reduced-grid-service-cost/
Tesla’s giant battery in Australia reduced grid service cost by 90%
When an issue happens or maintenance is required on the power grid in Australia, the Energy Market Operator calls for FCAS (frequency control and ancillary services) which consists of large and costly gas generators and steam turbines kicking in to compensate for the loss of power.
Electricity rates can be seen reaching $14,000 per MW during those FCAS periods.
Tesla’s 100MW/129MWh Powerpack project in South Australia can provide the same service cheaper, quicker, and with zero-emissions, through its battery system.
It is so efficient that it reportedly should have made around $1 million in just a few days in January, but Tesla complained last month that they are not being paid correctly because the system doesn’t account for how fast Tesla’s Powerpacks start discharging their power into the grid.
Whatever you may think of Elon comparing him to an imbecile like Trump is more than a tad unfair, I’d say, no?
And here I thought the Dutch only made wood shoes:
DUTCH FIRM ASML PERFECTING ‘MICROCHIP SHRINK’ FOR TECH GIANTS
“Headquartered in Veldhoven, near the Belgian border, it builds sophisticated lithography machines to enable the world’s top chip makers—Intel, Samsung and Apple supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC)—to produce the smallest, most powerful, most cost-effective microprocessors on the planet.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-dutch-firm-asml-microchip-tech.html#jCp
Meanwhile, down the road:
LIGHT COULD MAKE SEMICONDUCTOR COMPUTERS A MILLION TIMES FASTER OR EVEN GO QUANTUM
“In the long run, we see a realistic chance of introducing quantum information devices that perform operations faster than a single oscillation of a lightwave,” said Rupert Huber, professor of physics at the University of Regensburg, who led the experiment. “The material is relatively easy to make, it works in room temperature air, and at just a few atoms thick, it is maximally compact.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-semiconductor-million-faster-quantum.html#jCp
Actors were paid to support Entergy’s power plant at New Orleans City Council meetings – “They paid us to sit through the meeting and clap every time someone said something against wind and solar power”
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2018/05/actors-were-paid-to-support-entergys.html
Well, at least it provided some cash to the proletariat.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-sPcjZ2o4d34/WvhcEyYue0I/AAAAAAAAoi0/ekDGGeLdZdsaWb6QSW5y7o0g9Ks1To_YwCHMYCw/image%255B6%255D?imgmax=800
Islandboy – do you mean summer solstice rather than spring equinox?
No, I meant spring equinox. The post was written in the context of “data for February” so, in February we had “the spring equinox drawing closer”. In the next installment with data for March, I will probably talk about solar output rising as we leave the spring equinox (in March) and head towards the summer solstice.