EIA’s Electric Power Monthly – February 2019 Edition with data for December 2018 and the complete year results for 2018

249 thoughts to “EIA’s Electric Power Monthly – February 2019 Edition with data for December 2018 and the complete year results for 2018”

1. We all owe Island Boy a big thank you for his work here.

   I’m gratified to see wind and solar production getting up towards ten percent of our total electrical usage.

   Does anybody have good links about any HVDC power lines under construction here in the states, or anywhere else?

   It’s my understanding that most hydro generating stations are compelled to run at considerably less than full capacity, except during periods of exceptionally heavy precipitation, due to a lack of sufficient water in the reservoirs.

   When we get enough long distance transmission in place, we will be able to dial back hydro when the wind and sun farms are cranking, and save the water in the reservoirs for load balancing and back up at night and or when the wind calms down. There’s a potential for a huge net savings not only in the purchase cost of coal and gas for generation, but equally or more important, a huge net reduction of pollution, both greenhouse gases, ash, mine tailings, and so forth.

2. Thanks Island Boy!

3. Game over?

   https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47485847

   NAOM

   1. Perhaps a hurricane worth of precip. will make its way up to the ice sheet in the future.

      Furthermore:
      Methane reached a preliminary record high value in November 2018 (1867.2 ppb). Note there is a seasonal cycle.
      November 2017’s global methane abundance was 1858.8 ppb.

      Recent Global CH4
      November 2018: 1867.2 ppb
      November 2017: 1858.8 ppb
      Last updated: March 05, 2019
      https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends_ch4/

      1. Increasing methane reduces the level of hydroxyl radical, thus extending the lifespan of methane. Looking to the future, a large burst of methane from the Arctic would not only increase global warming but would increase ozone, stratospheric water vapor and swamp the hydroxyl radicals that clean the atmosphere (they exist at less than 1 part per trillion now and only for one second).

   2. If “game over” is truly your belief or that of anyone else here, then I recommend using some of the important mental health coping resources listed here.

      Emotional support in face of climate tragedy

      If you have come to recognise that climate change will lead to a near term collapse in our way of life, or even worse, then this can be a very difficult realisation to process, integrate into our lives, or communicate to other people.

      In my experience, the key thing is not to sit with these emotions on your own. If you have people who you can talk to about this without them thinking you must be confused, insane or depressed, then that’s ideal. However, many people feel very lonely in their realisation. Therefore, here are some links to resources that I have found helpful, as they enable you to get in touch with others.

      1. Let the crabs roam free, don’t put them in boxes.

         1. This sign is in the Anne Kolb Nature Center about 3 miles from my home.
            .

            

4. Thanks for the excellent work Island Boy.

   I wonder which political party, and throw in the EU, will be first to officially endorse geoengineering to combat climate change?
   Within the coming decade I think it is likely we will see this position taken by one of these entities.
   I could also see Russia and OPEC countries being gung-ho for geoengineering, if it would allow them to keep selling fossil fuels. They may require their select customers to endorse the plan.

   1. I could also see Russia and OPEC countries being gung-ho for geoengineering, if it would allow them to keep selling fossil fuels. They may require their select customers to endorse the plan.

      I’m sure they and many others even here in the US, will try to push geoengineering solutions so that the status quo can be maintained.

      https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/grandfather-climate-science-leaves-final-warning-earth-n978426

      Wallace Smith Broecker, the ‘grandfather’ of climate science, leaves a final warning for Earth
      Days before his death, Wallace Broecker urged scientists to consider deploying a last-ditch solar shield to stop global warming.

      BTW he was not saying he was for implementing geoengineering solutions only that we should do the research so as to have an understanding of the risks.

      However anyone who thinks geoengineering is a good idea will have to contend with an ever growing backlash from a new generation of global activists a la Greta Thunberg. She and her contemporaries want a livable planet and they will not go down without a fight. They consider fossil fuels and CO2 emissions to be public enemy number 1.

      Disclaimer: Since I do not own Tesla stocks, I do not personally care one way or another if Tesla Inc. survives or goes belly up but I do think that regardless, Elon Musk has single handedly already changed the world. In response to one of many comments in the last thread pointing out the myriad challenges faced by Tesla, I reminded readers that Elon does not run an automobile manufacturing company. He runs a technology company that is among other things in the process of disrupting transport and how we use energy, the world over. I also mentioned that Elon is far from a one trick pony and among his many pursuits is space exploration and he is the man behind SpaceX. Which brings me to this article and my bolded text in the excerpt below.

      https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/with-dragon-russian-critic-says-roscosmos-acting-left-behind/

      …Finally, Lukashevich addressed the fact that Russia must now fill that big budget hole.

      I would like to point out something else interesting—from one point of view this is a good thing, because we were carrying astronauts, we were getting basically for free $400 million a year at about $90 million per seat for each foreign astronaut. That is more than the entire cost of the rocket and the ship and launch operations taken together. This means as long as we had at least one foreign astronaut on board, we were launching for free. For us this wasn’t just a freebie—it was a narcotic. It allowed us to do absolutely nothing and still earn money. And now, this narcotic is going to be cut off, and we will be forced to do something. Either we will pass into history along with all of our space achievements, like Portugal, with its discovery of America and the voyages of Magellan and so forth, or we will have to seriously do something.

      We are going to have to get down off of the needle: if our economy is sitting on an oil-gas needle [referring to Russia’s primary economic dependence on oil and gas exports] then our space program has also “sat upon a needle” and become dependent on this American money. So now we must demonstrate what we are really made of. Are we really worthy of the glory of Gagarin?

      So in closing my point is simply this, we are all of us and I mean all of us, going to have to get off the oil-gas needle. Because if we don’t we can kiss our asses goodbye! As Greta says: “I don’t want your hope, I want you to panic!”

      Cheers!

      1. Hi Fred,

         You are just about always dead on, and in this case, talking about Tesla and Musk, I put that portion of your comment dead center in the bullseye.

         And while I also agree with your assessment of the political side of the environmental debate, I want to add something to it, which may sound contrary to the spirit of the argument for just getting away from fossil fuels and cleaning up.

         Indulge me for a minute. I have seen farmers stick an improvised bayonet in a cow to save her life. I know people who have had their legs amputated to save their life. I have personally helped set so called “backfires” to help get a wild fire under control.

         ( For those unacquainted with wildfire control, sometimes you get out in front of the fire, when circumstances are suitable, and actually create a firebreak by clearing as much fuel along a line as you can, and then actually setting the grass and or woodland on fire deliberately, to widen the fire break. This works because you put your back fire in a spot that you can control it, keeping it small, and usually it has to travel AGAINST the wind as well. You can widen a ten foot cleared fire break this way up to fifty meters or more, before the uncontrolled fire reaches the burnt out line and you can stop it at that point from jumping the nice wide break so created. )

         My points are one , that geoengineering may be necessary, and two, while we must take care to keep the pedal to the metal on efficiency, conservation , electrification of transportation, etc, we MUST NOT move too fast to shut down the fossil fuel industries, because there is going to be a whiplash effect on the deployment of renewable energy, and retrofitting older infrastructure for energy efficiency, etc, during any economic slowdown.

         People, communities, local, state or regional, and national governments generally find it necessary to cut back on funding earmarked for long term projects in order to better fund short term projects and needs in tough times.

         It’s a paradox, but it’s reasonable to argue that we NEED a robust fossil fueled economy IN ORDER to transition to a renewable energy economy. We may very well have to keep right on burning oil and coal in order to QUIT burning oil and coal, for some time to come.

         So….. the question is, will the operation kill the patient? At least a couple of people ( older diabetics) I used to know died as the result of their operations to have their lower legs removed. But they would have died anyway, from sepsis and shock.

         Ron and folks who share his doomer beliefs may be right, it may be too little too late already, and maybe the end of life as we know it is within sight, or just over the visible horizon.

         I used to share that belief, but given that renewable energy is moving so fast, in terms of falling costs and increasing productivity, I am now of the opinion that some people in some places have a fair to good shot at a successful transition to a renewable and sustainable industrial economy. This hope is of course based on the hope that the climate doesn’t go completely nuts, and that we avoid a flat out nuclear and biological WWIII, etc.

         1. Much like nuclear energy, geo-engineering is both non-scalable and very dangerous.

         2. All fair points OFM, at the end of the day we are probably damned if we do and damned if we don’t. If we transition too slowly we run out of time and we have killed civilization. If we do it too fast the, patient can’t cope with the changes and dies regardless.

            The hope that the climate doesn’t go completely nuts, and that we avoid a flat out nuclear and biological WWIII, etc. is quickly fading for the simple reason that we are killing the biosphere faster than it seems capable of adapting.

            Natural systems are subject to non linear dynamics and we are playing with fire as we are pushing towards passing numerous tipping points.

            Cheers!

            1. Here’s an example, just one of too many to count, of non linear dynamics and ecosystem collapse in Australia.

               https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/07/whole-thing-is-unraveling-climate-change-reshaping-australias-forests

               ‘Whole thing is unravelling’: climate change reshaping Australia’s forests

               Australia’s forests are being reshaped by climate change as droughts, heatwaves, rising temperatures and bushfires drive ecosystems towards collapse, ecologists have told Guardian Australia. Trees are dying, canopies are getting thinner and the rate that plants produce seeds is falling. Ecologists have long predicted that climate change would have major consequences for Australia’s forests. Now they believe those impacts are unfolding.

               G’day mate!

            2. Yet we have stuff like this being spouted on the last non-petroleum thread:

               “It’s also not the USA contributing most of the pollution per capita…it is other countries contributing more (China, Russia, Bangladesh, India, and so on). They will not jump on board with the idea of reducing pollution or emissions because they have a different mindset and most of them are at a structural disadvantage financially. Besides, these countries are where we get the majority of our consumables these days, and where we have decided to place many of our manufacturing facilities. If we impose our will on them categorically, not only would our own economic output suffer massively, the cost of all our goods would shoot through the roof, and the economy would take a massive nosedive because people would buy less stuff. No politician would run on that sort of ticket…there aren’t enough hippies out there to help them win elections.”

               Bold mine. This is straight out of the Koch brother playbook, especially the bold part. This brings to mind a quote that has been attributed to North American native Indians:

               When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.

               Actually, I see this focus on the economic effects of global warming mitigation as whining about the fact that the people voicing the concerns will no longer be the ones making money from the production and consumption of energy. There will likely be lots of money to be made but, the main problem is that it will probably not be the likes of Koch Industries, Murray Energy, Peabody Energy, BP, Shell, Exxon Mobil et al that will be getting the lion’s share.

               It is a paradigm shift to go from extracting FF resources that are finite and limited in their geographic distribution to extracting energy from the sunshine and the wind, largely available everywhere. Think about it. You dig up some coal, sell it to me, I burn it for the energy and poof! it’s gone. If I want more energy, I’ve got to buy more coal from you. Contrast that with a wind turbine or some PV panels and batteries, that are able to extract energy from the sunshine or the wind for as long as the wind blows or the sun shines. Once the turbines or panels have been acquired, the need to go back to the seller stretches out over decades as opposed to hours or days for FF.

               The folks at the top of this economic pile are desperate to continue the status quo, where all of us have to pay a fee to them, for the luxury of having convenient electricity or transportation. With the current administration things appear to be going to plan for them. Case in point:

               Murray Energy Dusts Itself Off After a Brush With Insolvency

               The largest privately owned U.S. coal miner has come a long way from last year when it openly discussed going bankrupt, citing regulations that curbed demand from U.S. coal-fired power plants. Chief Executive Officer Robert Murray, an early backer of Donald Trump’s election bid, asked the administration for an emergency order last year to prop up the industry and help his company avoid going bust, but was turned down.

               Murray Energy didn’t opt for court protection, and instead wound up acquiring parts of bankrupt rivals. Now the company’s 2021 second-lien notes are trading above 70 cents on the dollar, up from 31 in April.

               Does anybody here think there is a limit to the desperate measures that owners of Koch Industries, Murray Energy, Peabody Energy (previously known as the Peabody Coal Company, the largest private-sector coal company in the world) will be willing to undertake to convince the public that global warming is a non-issue? I’m all ears!

               1. Besides, these countries are where we get the majority of our consumables these days, and where we have decided to place many of our manufacturing facilities. If we impose our will on them categorically, not only would our own economic output suffer massively, the cost of all our goods would shoot through the roof, and the economy would take a massive nosedive because people would buy less stuff. No politician would run on that sort of ticket…there aren’t enough hippies out there to help them win elections.”

                  Well apparently no hippies needed, one politician has already accomplished all of that in one fell swoop!

                  https://www.marketwatch.com/story/forget-what-donald-trump-said-tariffs-are-a-tax-on-american-consumers-2019-03-06

                  Opinion: Forget what Donald Trump said: Tariffs are a tax on American consumers

                  Published: Mar 6, 2019 3:02 p.m. ET

                  After falling for years, prices of major appliances turned higher when President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on imported washing machines.
                  President Donald Trump’s trade war provided the kind of real-world experiment that practitioners of the dismal science so desperately crave, but the results weren’t all that different from what their econometric models predict.

                  In a new paper, “The Impact of the 2018 Trade War on U.S. Prices and Welfare,” economists Mary Amiti of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Stephen J. Redding of Princeton University and David Weinstein of Columbia University document what economists have told us for decades: that tariffs are a tax on the consumer.

                  Trump may say, and believe, that “billions of dollars will soon be pouring into our Treasury from taxes that China is paying for us,” but China isn’t paying the taxes. U.S. consumers are.

                  And as for the president’s belief that tariffs will “cure” the nation’s trade deficit, which he sees as a sign of weakness, today’s data suggest otherwise.

                  Cheers!

               2. Your highlighted piece is exactly what will happen if we do not make the change.

                  NAOM

         3. OFM: “Indulge me for a minute.” Starts taking about bayoneting a cow or something.

            Ten minutes later, “Wait, what was I talking about? Uh I hope we don’t have a war.”

      2. Fred- “However anyone who thinks geoengineering is a good idea will have to contend with an ever growing backlash from a new generation of global activists a la Greta Thunberg. She and her contemporaries want a livable planet and they will not go down without a fight.”

         I wouldn’t be surprised if a push for geo-engineering comes from the younger of us. ‘Greta’ is just one version of a young person, and even someone of her ilk may lean towards attempting such solutions if they are both desperate, and become convinced they have a workable project. [‘The Greta Project- 2033″ by Fred M.]

         btw- while I believe study of earth sciences is critical, I have no confidence in human beings to manage things well. For example, just how good are our models of complex natural systems?

         1. I wouldn’t be surprised if a push for geo-engineering comes from the younger of us. ‘Greta’ is just one version of a young person, and even someone of her ilk may lean towards attempting such solutions if they are both desperate, and become convinced they have a workable project. [‘The Greta Project- 2033″ by Fred M.]

            I gather you are not exactly a fan of Greta’s! But Greta and her contemporaries are already against the great geoengineering experiment we have been engaged in for the last 100 years or so, of heavy CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. I, for one, would be very surprised if a serious push for geo-engineering comes from the younger of us… From the old guard, fossil fuel lobbyists, neo-classical economists, nationalists, authoritarians, and the ilk of those who support all of BAU, and cling to the paradigms of the past, I would certainly expect nothing less! Of course, I have no crystal ball to peer into to see the future so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

            btw- while I believe study of earth sciences is critical, I have no confidence in human beings to manage things well.

            Neither do I!

            For example, just how good are our models of complex natural systems?

            It really doesn’t depend on any models to determine the simple fact that the precautionary principle should be applied in spades when dealing with any complex non linear system. Much more so when it is the very finely tuned and balanced system on which we depend for our very survival and for which we have no back up!

            1. “I gather you are not exactly a fan of Greta’s!”
               O’Contrare. I salute her and those who are aligned.
               Yet there are too many versions of young and idealist people to count.
               And so many people have now grown up with technology, it is often seen as the way fix things that are broken, or inefficient, or (the worst) a bore.
               Walking gently, quiet time, living simply are so unfashionable.
               I brought her name up more as example of the age cohort than her specific orientation. That cohort never knew a day without being plugged in, and looking at a screen.
               It will be ‘natural’ to look to a technological fix.
               In fact, all age cohorts may come to see geoengineering as a last resort.

               1. Hickory, just curious have you actually sat down and had a serious conversation with any Millenials recently?!

                  The young people on this panel look and sound a lot like my nieces and nephews and my own son who has Aspergers like Greta. I suspect you underestimate their views and pent up anger at having been lied to for a long time and most of all, being told to be good kids, stay quite and let the adults run the show. They just aren’t buying that anymore.

                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXuzdoKs9pI

                  Climate Education is Screwed Up!

                  Here 3 millenial women from International Schule Berlin whose research project revealed just how screwed up climate education is in the developed world. In their survey of texts from different nations, the *least effective* supposed ‘climate solutions’ were presented the most often (recycling and changing light bulbs) and the single most effective means of reducing emissions (having one less child) was never mentioned *at all*. In fact, any of the important solutions that would offend any established industry (eating less meat, living without a car, avoiding non-essential flights) were seldom if ever mentioned. In short, our youth are being trained for ‘Business-As-Usual’ in a world that will be anything BUT usual. Current education is screwed up in more than just climate. But waking up at all to the problem will help.

               2. Indeed I have. I have 4 very close family members in the age range, and get to hang out with their friends as well sometimes. They all characterize themselves as progressive.
                  I don’t see them as any more idealistic or rebellious than the generation(s) before them. Maybe even less so.
                  But lets remember, we all just see a small slice, and people of all generations are all over the place on their attitudes.
                  Also keep in mind that I was referring to the future, when these kids will be adults. Things change, as do attitudes.

               3. Also keep in mind that I was referring to the future, when these kids will be adults. Things change, as do attitudes.

                  Ok, point taken. Though I think you might agree that when we were their age, we didn’t worry all that much about the possibility of there not being any future at all. Yes, some of us might have worried about the horrors of nuclear war but not mass extinction.

               4. A global nuclear war is unlike mass extinction?

      3. A great idea for geoengineering would be to simply shut down a lot of modern agriculture, which releases a lot of carbon from the soil instead of sequestering it.

         Here is one example:
         40% of the land for corn (maize) crop in the US is for ethanol. Roughly 90 million acres are used for corn, so that’s 36 million acres for ethanol. There are about 4000 m2 to the acre, so 144 billion m2 are being used this way. The land is being eroded and thus decarbonized for this.

         In Iowa, about 4 KWh /m2/day is available to horizontal solar panels. At 20% efficiency, that’s 0.8 KWh / m2/day. That’s an annual average, so it’s about 300 KWh /m2/year.

         The US uses about 4000 bn KWh /year of electricity. That is the theoretical output of roughly 13 bn m2 of solar panels.

         So it seems you could replace the output of the entire US electricity industry with less than 10% of the land now used to produce ethanol. Another 10% would be enough to replace the entire oil industry.

         Similar calculations apply to countries like Germany, where rapeseed is used instead of corn.

         You may be wondering how this is possible, but keep in mind that 10% of the liquid fuel consumed in the US is ethanol, and its production is based on photosynthesis, which is about 1% efficient. Cheap mass market solar panels are are 20% efficient, and really good ones are nearly 50% efficient.

         1. I went into PVWATTS (https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php) and entered an address of 123 Main Street, Ames, Iowa with a 1 meter squared panel sitting horizonally. The program calculated 1176 kwh of AC Energy produced in a year. Dividing by 365 produces 3.22 kwh/m2/day.

            There is a factor which can be applied that converts noon time kw’s to daily kwh’s and that factor is around 4. Your 0.8 is about 1/4th the 3.22 value.

            I think you have the right idea. I have a 5kw set of panels on my roof and drive electric whenever I can for those very reasons.

            1. My source on that was NREL as well (https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html) but maybe I was ready the chart wrong.

         2. The land now used by the fossil fuel industry is more than enough to support PV for the whole nation. I like the closure in that scenario.
            Turn the excess fields of corn into forest and prairie preserves, carbon drawdown and ecosystem benefits. If we mostly stop eating meat, no need for a lot of the farmland.

            Okinawa diet
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okinawa_diet

         3. So it seems you could replace the output of the entire US electricity industry with less than 10% of the land now used to produce ethanol. Another 10% would be enough to replace the entire oil industry.

            Instead of 10%, it would only be about 3.5% to replace the transportation portion of the oil industry.

            For instance, passenger travel is about 70% of the transportation part of the oil industry: that entails about 3 trillion vehicle miles, and at about .3 kWh per vehicle mile that’s less than one trillion kWhs.

            1. Yep, we have been totally conned. The wasted energy from the fossil fuel system for just one year could build enough PV panels to run the whole transport system and much more. Those panels last about 30 years.
               So why the hell are we drilling? We should be building.

   2. Geoengineering is part of the Kyoto Protocol. For example, it requires countries to include data about forest clearing in the carbon balance.

      Bush’s withdrawal from the Kyoto agreement is already having consequences, because the biofuel boom in Europe is being blamed for deforestation in the US. Kyoto was designed to prevent that.

      The best way to sequester carbon is in the top 6 inches of topsoil. The nice thing is that plants can help you do it so you don’t need any fancy gizmos.

      One company already doing this is Ondernemers zonder grenzen from Belgium. They get Kyoto money by plowing furrows on contour to stop runoff in the Sahel.

      https://www.ozg.be/

      This is what it looks like from space.

      https://www.google.com/maps/place/Gorom-Gorom,+Burkina+Faso/@14.4158904,-0.2692511,257m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0xe277223ed29bf57:0x66261779561c5b33!8m2!3d14.4431072!4d-0.2291565

      The Israelis have also done some impressive reforestation, but it is a lot more expensive. In the long term, it probably isn’t much better.

      https://www.google.com/maps/place/Israel/@31.2966547,34.810238,1810m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x1500492432a7c98b:0x6a6b422013352cba!8m2!3d31.046051!4d34.851612

5. For HB,

   You tried, as usual, to discredit anything I post, in the last non petro thread, by slinging mud at the source. That won’t work with me, lol, I’ll call you on it.

   It’s true that the Washington Examiner is tilted to the right, but not the way Fox and talk radio are tilted, etc.

   The W E posts the facts, mostly, as pointed and agreed on by major liberal leaning papers such as the NYT and Washington Post and LA Times, etc.

   Here’s a typical W E article, and an excerpt from it.
   https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/dictators-rugs-and-an-ostrich-coat-paul-manaforts-life-in-the-swamp

   Before joining President Trump’s campaign to “drain the swamp” of Washington corruption, Paul Manafort perfected a revolving door between respectable Republican politics and dictators who gave him millions of dollars.

   Now, the former Trump campaign manager, 69, will trade six homes and an ostrich coat for a federal prison cell and a monochrome uniform, with a judge awarding him Thursday what could be a de facto life sentence.

   Manafort has been held in jail since June after trying to influence witness testimony, and sentencing guidelines call for 19 to 24 years in prison. In a separate federal case, he could get an additional 10 years next week.

   The W E is far better balanced that YOU are.

   Here are a couple more paragraphs from the same article, for good measure.

   A richly detailed indictment accused him of using un-taxed income held in bank accounts in Cyprus and the Caribbean to buy $934,350 worth of rugs from a store in Alexandria, Va., where he owned a home, and $849,215 in clothes from a store in New York, where he owned a Trump Tower condo and a mansion in the Hamptons.

   At trial, jurors were told about and shown images of a $15,000 ostrich skin jacket, a $9,500 ostrich vest, and a $18,500 python skin jacket.

   Before coming to epitomize the “swamp” that Trump pledged to drain, Manafort got his national political start working in President Gerald Ford’s White House and on his unsuccessful 1976 campaign. After working on President Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign, he co-founded a lobbying firm with longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, who was indicted in January for allegedly lying about efforts to contact WikiLeaks, and witness tampering.

   Perhaps it would be better to criticize the message, rather than trashing the messenger. That’s a typical Trump type tactic, you know.

   Incidentally, if anybody wants to read it, here’s the link that HB trashed, painting the messenger as a Trump type, when he uses the exact same tactics as Trump, trashing the messenger, rather than dealing with the message.
   https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/can-democrats-love-the-voters-hillary-hated

6. For Ron, and everybody who posted their agreement about his oh thee of five eight thirteen am.

   Hey, I don’t have ANY argument with your beliefs and position, other than that I’m TRYING to get you to think about ways to win over SOME of that 35 percent. I’m sorry you interpret what I have written here as an ultimatum of sorts, or a threat or warning.Believe me, I’m not trying those tactics. I’m trying to get it across that you can stick by your principles, which I share, almost to a T, and still win over SOME of that thirty five percent.

   I don’t want to post a freaking BOOK every time I post a comment, mine are TLDR already too often.
   But anybody who has has critical reading skills, and has actually READ my countless previous comments, knows that I maintain that elections are mostly won in the middle in the USA, excepting deep blue and deep red communities or states.

   I have often posted remarks to the effect that when I mention evolution when there’s only old conservative white men around, no preacher, no wife, they don’t bat an eye, they BELIEVE in evolution, eighty percent or more of them, although they are often to be seen in church, and PUBLICLY they say they believe in the KJB, as the literal word of God, if pushed to comment.

   These guys may never have read a book, except in elementary school, but they have televisions, and they watch them, and they know about dinosaurs, and how many kinds of animals are in this world, and how many could be put on a wooden boat, etc. Just because they are ignorant in many respects is no indication they are STUPID. They can think just fine, within the limitations of the data they have between their ears to work with.

   And they don’t want to hear anybody trashing their old parents, who as likely as not didn’t get more than a few months, most years, in school, if they grew up in the thirties, etc, in the back woods, and had to drop out early to work. It’s not their fault they are uneducated.

   When you talk down to and about these people as if they shouldn’t even be allowed to vote, and that’s the UNWRITTEN message in code coming from a lot of D’s such as old HB, etc, you PISS THEM OFF immensely, and they give you the straight finger by voting for Trump. Incidentally, they also gave the straight finger to the REPUBLICAN establishment by voting for Trump in the primaries, but voted for him in the election, as the lesser of two evils, or their actual savior, depending on their personal beliefs.

   So IF you LAY OFF the bad mouthing of such church goers, you do have a shot at getting their vote. I have posted several techniques that I have used personally to move maybe as many as five or six, three or four for sure, from the R column to the D column. I got two just by pointing out that when the D’s take over, if they ever do, that their constant worries about their chronic health problems will be history, as far as being able to afford medical care. This took a while, a lot of quiet one on one conversations, but I did giterdone, over the course of a couple of years or longer. I got another one , a young cousin, who’s a hunting and fishing freak, and was raised to be a hard core R type. But he has brains, and I talked him into taking biology and chemistry his freshman year, and got him to thinking about working for some outfit such as the National Park Service, or the Va state Fish and Game, etc, where he could help preserve the natural world he loves above everything else. He will be applying for any sort of intern job with such an agency, if he can find one, or else he will take temporary positions with the Park Service, etc, during his summers. Needless to say, a year’s university level study of biology resulted in the scales falling off his eyes, in terms of environmental law and policy, lol, and the D’s versus the R’s.

   Now here’s ANOTHER point that I did not make clear my last few comments, my bad, by no means are all the people who are working class people who voted for Trump, etc, are actually Christians in any sense except that they are or MAY BE nominally members of that religion. Half of all the people I know personally who voted for Trump don’t set foot in a church more than once or twice a year, for a funeral or wedding, or maybe the week the church holds a series of meetings referred to as HOMECOMING. Then they may go a night or two to meet and greet and catch up with old friends from school days, see relatives that have moved away but choose to visit the old community that week, etc. A full third of them never set foot in a church AT ALL, except for the aforementioned weddings and funerals.

   The so called Bible Belt is just about like places such as LA or Seattle, in this one respect. A third of the people in such cities, which are universally referred to as deep blue, actually vote R. A full third of the people here in SW Virginia vote D, habitually, and a lot more than a third in some communities. This in case you folks I’m preaching at don’t realize, is politically COAL COUNTRY. It USED to be textile and furniture country, and still is, politically.

   You can steer ENTIRELY clear of religion, with the best practice being to not even MENTION it, when going for THIS kind of voter. He doesn’t give a damn about Jesus, and he doesn’t really believe in Hell, etc, or else he WOULD be in church, instead of saying two or three cuss words in every sentence, like me, unless there are ladies or preachers nearby.

   The D’s do not have to win over the whole thirty five percent. If they win over five percent of them, and five percent of other fence sitting or independent voters, they’re basically home free, in terms of the WH and congress. They’re home free in swing congressional district, swing small cities and towns and counties , etc, in respect to local elections as well.

   Even children know you are apt to get more of what you want with respectful words and smiles than you are with a message that pisses off the recipient. All too many people who are decent, educated, compassionate, and intelligent people some how forget that you WIN FRIENDS and INFLUENCE PEOPLE with a positive message, making an effort to meet them halfway, when the subject is R voters.

   So BACK OFF on talking about these people as if THEY DO NOT HAVE RIGHT TO THEIR OWN BELIEFS, right or wrong, as YOU see things, IF you want their vote. You may not like it, nor do I , but they ARE citizens, and they DO have the right to vote, and the more you piss them off, the less likely they are to stay home, and the more likely they are put down their remotes, and waddle out to their cars, and get to the polls, and vote for R’s.
   I’m not worried about bad mouthing them myself, in direct contradiction to my own advice, here in THIS forum, because I have never yet run across a real R conservative who actually reads it. There may be one or two lurking, harvesting info they use in managing their businesses or investments . I don’t know about that.

   The GLBT community, the minority community, the arts and entertainment community, the educational community, etc, and most well educated people, especially YOUNG well educated people ARE ON BOARD with the D message, and so long as they aren’t out of work, etc, they will STAY ON BOARD.

   You don’t need to stroke their fur towards their heads, the way you stroke a dogs fur, to put him in a fighting mood, to get their vote. You HAVE their vote.

   And you can have probably half of Trump’s thirty five percent, IF the D party actually gets it’s shit together and starts ACTING like it gives a fuck about working people, as WORKING PEOPLE SEE THINGS.

   You must NOT forget. It’s what a voter BELIEVES that determines his vote, not objective facts.
   You most assuredly do not want to run candidates who talk about working class people as deplorables, or who are so arrogant that they ASSUME they have the working class vote.

   I hope I have made myself clear.

   It looks like I’m going to be tied up pretty tight again for a few weeks or months, so I probably won’t be posting very much or very often for a while. But I will lurk and read, because I learn a lot here.

   Incidentally I have often posted my belief that demographics are destiny, and that the R core vote is fast dying off and moving into nursing homes. It’s astounding how few people are in countless churches these days, and how few children there are among the younger adults seen at services.

   Even the worst educated parents mostly want their kids to get an education, and move up in the world. My parent’s sacrificed like hell to see us kids get to go to school, although a couple of us didn’t . Three of the five of us did. We learned all about biology and chemistry and deep time. There are five kids among the three of us. None of them will ever be Jesus freaks.

   The future belongs to the liberal establishment….. if it manages its affairs competently.

   1. ‘ if it manages its affairs competently.’

      Thats a big if. Huge.

   2. Mac, I try to read all of your posts despite their length 😉 because I often detect a fair amount of wisdom within them. In terms of politics, I think you are about as shrewd as the best of them and as far as your old adversary HB is concerned, I believe he might have spent too long, too far away from the “deplorables” to understand where you are coming from. People who have had limited access to education and who are religious or superstitious are very hard to convince with logical academic or scientific arguments but, they sometimes have good intuition and a surprising grasp of the realities of the world.

      For example, I expect that one of the most popular aspects of Trump’s 2016 campaign was his promise to “drain the swamp” and get rid of the influence of big money in DC. They counted on the fact that he is supposedly independently wealthy as evidence that he doesn’t need lobbyist money and could oppose the monyed interests. What they did not factor in was that, one, he is maybe not as wealthy as he claims and two his ego drives him to strive to be like those moneyed interests that might be far wealthier than he is. As a result of his wannabe status, he does not want to be seen as doing anything to damage the interests of people like Charles Koch. He’d much rather be as rich as the Kochs.

      I find it remarkable that this early in the 2020 race, Bernie Sanders appears to be doing very well. Sanders in my view gets what Mac is saying about the working class voters in the blue states and appeals directly to them with his rhetoric. They can see that the wealth gap is widening and that the top tenth on one percent are doing far better than the bottom half of the US population. They know that the deck has been and continues to be, stacked in favour of the very rich. Sanders is the Democratic candidate that appears to be appealing to the US voters that sense that something is awry and that, the centrist politicians are unlikely to do anything that will change the balance of power in DC. I am somewhat surprised that Elizabeth Warren is polling as badly as she is but, on the other hand, she does not have the same sort of wide ranging, consistent set of talking points that Sanders has.

      As far as the Trump voters go, they are probably still blinded by his con game but, the veneer might wear off the closer the election gets. Trump is also benefiting from low energy prices and an economy that has been booming,,, up to now. I sense that working class Trump supporters see all the other prospective republican candidates as corporate puppets, in the game to serve their big money donor masters and still think Trump is “independent”. If it emerges that Trump has been kept out of bankruptcy by Russian interest and is looking out for the interests of his Russian saviors, it will be interesting to see if his base will accept those findings.

      We live in interesting times and I for one am interested in your views from the political trenches as the US approaches it’s next election cycle. Make sure to keep us up to date!

      1. “HB is concerned, I believe he might have spent too long, too far away from the “deplorables” to understand where you are coming from”

         Well SolarMan, I’m not sure were you get that idea except from maybe my screen name. But rest assured I don’t live behind a gated community and dine with the snobs. I do own property in the deep south and have visited it regularly. I know in the south when whites are alone together. They demean people of color. I know this because I have heard and seen it with my own eyes and ears. Racism is deplorable. I won’t even mention the deplorable hate that currently separates children of color from their parents at United States southern border.

         I also know gun violence is out of control in the states. Almost 8 years ago, after 25 years of marriage my brother-in-law who couldn’t hold down a job, never finished high school, anti-government Republican, a history of drug abuse and drinking, under depression medication supplied by my sisters employers insurance was given by his mother a 30 odd six rifle which was his fathers. Then blew my sisters head off in her sleep about 2 months later. I know guns kill innocent people and gives the power to take someones life to those who shouldn’t have it. Anyone who fights civil society control of these deadly weapons has blood on their hands. Yes, deplorable.

         America was formed under the idea of separation of church and state. Just a few days ago I challenged OFM with the question “who’s forcing conservative working women to have an abortion ?”. He just ignored it and went on another HRC rant. But let’s be clear. The evangelicals in America are attacking our democracy with their religious beliefs and forcing them on others. That’s right, deplorable.

         Island, let me take you one step farther. These are all wedge issues. Used and generated by the rich and powerful to divide Americans to maintain power and increase their wealth. Similar to the cons Trump is pulling on the deplorables. Who are really the biggest victims of the policies OFM claims they vote for because of spite.

         Trump loves the poorly educated. Those are his own words.

         1. “America was formed under the idea of separation of church and state. Just a few days ago I challenged OFM with the question “who’s forcing conservative working women to have an abortion ?”. He just ignored it and went on another HRC rant.”

            HB, you don’t actually know shit from apple butter.

            YES, the law of the land, enshrined in the Constitution itself, calls for freedom of religion, and forbids the establishment of a state supported religion.

            Anybody who DOES know shit from apple butter knows that it was written that way by men who wrote it expecting it to protect THEIR OWN religious establishments and beliefs from government interference.

            It never crossed their old WASP minds for more than a New York Minute that one day their descendants would be in the position of dealing with competition from OTHER religions. To the extent that thought DID occur to them, they were forced to leave it to their descendants to cope as best they would be able, but you can rest assured that they were NOT interested in creating a secular society. Virtually all of them were either truly deeply religious, or extremely skilled at faking such beliefs.

            Darwin was still a century down the road in the future back then. Such schools and universities as existed were mostly owned and operated by religious institutions of one sort or another, and staffed by believers as well.

            Anybody who knows shit from apple butter about history in general, and about American history in particular, knows these things.

            And as as usual, you manage to totally miss the point about religion and abortions.

            NOBODY is forcing women, religious or otherwise, to have abortions in this country. I don’t for the life of me understand how you avoided choking to death on your own foot.

            You say you deplore violence. Well , we have at least ONE thing in common. So do I.

            A great many women who take their religious beliefs seriously, especially white women in the south, believe that abortion is MURDER.

            It’s not hard for a person of normal intelligence to understand that a person who believes abortion is murder opposes abortion….. with the possible exception of people who believe in murder. There are a few of that sort around, we call them psychopaths.

            You aren’t intellectually capable of grasping and dealing with the obvious fact that other people can and do hold beliefs contrary to your own, and that they are , according to the laws of this land, ENTITLED by their own constitutional rights, to believe whatever they please about what’s murder and what’s not.

            It’s not all that complicated, they oppose abortion because they see it as the murder of a human being. If you sit down someplace where it’s very quiet, a couple of hours every day, and concentrate on this thought for a few months, you might actually get it.

            And incidentally, it’s not just old white women who go to church who are opposed to abortion. I met some younger black people who viewed abortion as whitey’s tool of genocide, years ago, when I lived in the city and made a point of meeting people of all kinds.

            I’m not asking anybody to compromise his or her own principles. I’m simply trying to get D ‘s to see how they can win more elections, by modifying their message a little , putting MORE emphasis on the worries and fears of working class people, which NECESSARILY means less emphasis on some other parts of the overall platform. The message can only be so big, before it becomes too diluted to work effectively.

            1. I’m not asking anybody to compromise his or her own principles. I’m simply trying to get D ‘s to see how they can win more elections, by modifying their message a little , putting MORE emphasis on the worries and fears of working class people, which NECESSARILY means less emphasis on some other parts of the overall platform.

               Mac, for the Democrats to abandon their position on the separation of church and state, and for insisting that women turn over control of their bodies to the state, would be the absolute epitome of compromising their principles.

               1. Dagnab it Ron,

                  You flat out somehow STILL manage to miss my point. I’m NOT talking about abandoning the separation of church and state. NOT AT ALL.

                  You are blinded by your own prejudices to the point that you cannot see that you can win the votes of LOTS of religious people by paying attention to their fears and worries. Not all of them are single issue abortion voters, or single issue homophobes, etc.

                  PLENTY of them understand that programs such as Medicare, food stamps, school lunches, etc, are precisely the same sort of things that their God requires them to do, and to support.

                  IF you ( the rhetorical YOU is intended) will quit belittling and insulting them, and insisting that they have no right to live as they please, which you claim for yourself, lol, then LOTS of them will gladly meet you halfway.ENOUGH of them to put some D’s in offices that are now occupied by R’s, can ya GET IT?

                  I’m talking about putting MORE emphasis on the things that matter the most to working class people, who ARE the fucking majority of people in this country, after all, and this necessarily means putting a little less emphasis on the things that piss these people off, when making speeches, writing press releases, running campaigns.

                  A campaign can only be so big, there’s only so much money, so many people, available to run it. In this respect, decisions made must be made on a zero sum game basis. You can’t spend the same million twice, and you can’t give the same speech twice on the same day at the same place. You have to prioritize your use of limited resources. There’s only so much money, only so many campaign rallies, etc.

                  We can chose to spend a given million talking about the fears and worries of working people, or we can choose to spend that SAME million talking about the worries and fears of a much smaller group of people,such as the GLBT group. It should be remembered that MOST of the people who are members of the GLBT voting block group are ALSO working class people.

                  I’m talking about ADJUSTING PRIORITIES, in terms of campaigning. I am NOT talking about abandoning principles.

               2. Dagnab it Mac,

                  The point you are trying to make is a point that does not exist. Well perhaps in 1 or 2% of Trump supporters it exists, but not in the 35% that is Trump’s base. They all think the sun rises and sets in Donald Trump’s ass. They all think all Democrats are socialists devils that want to outlaw God, Christmas, and guns.

                  But by far the most undesirable trait these people hold, in my opinion anyway, is that they are full of hate. They listen to hate radio and watch hate television. And they hate all people who are of a different culture or color than they are.

                  But on the other hand, they are full of love. They love God, Jesus and all people who believe exactly as they do. The only joy most of them ever get is when they contemplate the eternal torture their loving God will inflict on all those who believe different from themselves.

                  But Mac, you know my opinions on free will. These people were born into their horrible hate filled world they live in. The racist and religious nonsense they believe was drummed into their heads since birth. It’s not their fault. They deserve our pity, not our wrath. But their world view is set in stone. It will never be dislodged. I will never compromise my principles in a vain attempt to reason with them.

               3. Have to go with Ron on this one.

                  https://www.youtube.co/watch?v=s6GHEOOAXRI

                  The historical jesus was an apocalyticist.

                  He predicted the apocalypse within his lifetime.

                  I must go now………

               4. I’m atheist and I believe the Democrats stepped over the line with the infanticide law proposed in Virginia. I saw the committee meeting and it was nauseating.

   3. “when I mention evolution when there’s only old conservative white men around, no preacher, no wife, they don’t bat an eye, they BELIEVE in evolution”

      Pussywhipped- when a man loses his tentacles to his woman

      Now that’s deplorable

      https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pussywhipped

      1. Most of the old women who have spent their lives on farms can whip your ass, with one hand tied behind their back, HB.

         One thing people all over have in common is that it’s best to get along with your wife, your mother in law, and the cops.

         Few people in forums such as this one seem to realize it, but religious communities are among the most successful and resilient of all human communities, in historical terms. Religion has survival value, and the members of such communities understand that paying respect to community values, even if it’s only lip service, is a good move.

         Sometimes you keep your mouth shut, because that’s the best course, in terms of community cohesion.

         Christians who believe in evolution generally don’t find it prudent to disturb the community, or risking their domestic tranquillity, by broadcasting this belief.

7. Here’s a link to a daily news letter I have somehow missed until now, unless it has just started up. It’s about CURRENT renewable energy news, pun intended.
   Note that it indicates that even in NC, which is the worst gerrymandered state by a mile, and generally considered red to blazing red, the people support the New Green Deal to the tune of fifty five to sixty percent.

   https://electrek.co/2019/03/08/egeb-europe-climate-grid/

   Bookmark it, if you haven’t already.

8. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47492624

   The lights are out in Venezuela.

   1. The lights are still out in Venezuela. Search around and you will see satellite photos taken at night. It looks totally black. The Guri hydroelectric power plant had three turbines fail, the country went black, and now they don’t have the kit or the personnel to handle a black start.

      It’s hard to get information because smart phone batteries are running out. I heard a reliable report the main Caracas morgue was full and refusing to accept more corpses, regime big wigs are tweeting in unison and retweet each other blaming the empire, the opposition, and saying they’ll jail everybody. I saw a 20 minute video of Guaidó giving a speech downtown, where the opposition marches had never reached. Heard the crowd broke through when police refused to stop them. Meanwhile the regime motorcycle gangs were reported to be shooting at protesters in El Paraíso. I know people there, but I can’t get through, the land lines are all out, and their cell phones are turned off.

9. One for Crabs

   http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190304-human-evolution-means-we-can-tackle-climate-change

   NAOM

10. I always look forward to seeing these charts, so thank you Islandboy.

    But now that 2018 is done, it seems like the green line has stalled vs. 2017 whereas before it was rising slowly, but steadily.

    I find it hard to square this with all the talk of falling costs for renewables, and stuff like Xcel’s renewable plan. Do folks think it is just a pause, and then will push up again, is it due to federal policies / subsidy changes, just a bad year for hydro (one of the wettest in U.S. history…), or has something structural changed that is limiting renewable growth.

    With the expected nuclear retirements, that green line has to turn upward hard and soon to make progress, and when I read the news it is full of good news stories, but I come back here, and it seems like it is stuck in neutral. What am I missing?

    1. United States : Baker-Hughes Rig Count
       Released On 3/8/2019 1:00:00 PM For wk3/8, 2019
       Prior Actual
       N. Amer. Rig Count 1249 1216
       U.S. 1038 1027
       Gulf of Mexico 22 22
       Canada 211 189

       I see the continuing drop in rig counts although oil prices are rising as an indication that the oil companies are seeing little future in oil field exploration.

       1. Jay Woods,

          Probably better to discuss rig counts on the “open thread- petroleum”.

          http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-petroleum-march-7-2018/

    2. Your question actually spurred me to find an error in my spreadsheet, where the figures for 2017 and 2018 for Non-Hydro-Renewales and All Renewables had plain numbers instead of a formula calculating the sum of the components. The way I manipulate the spreadsheet meant that the numbers for absolute generation under those two headings were incremented by 1 for 2018. Since the total generation for 2018 was significantly higher than 2017, an increase by one unit of absolute generation is going to translate to a decrease in the share of generation. The clue was that the line for the share generated Non-Hydro Renewables had sloped down, despite the fact that the two main contributors, wind and solar were both up. Hydroelectric was down by enough to limit the growth in the absolute amount generated by All Renewables to roughly 25.5 TWh resulting in the share generated by all renewables remaining essentially flat (down 0.06%).

       The result of this correction is that I can report that in 2018, the share generated by Non-Hydro Renewables actually exceeded 10% (10.08%) for the first time in modern history! I have updated the chart so you will non see the orange line for Non-Hydro Renewables at 10% rather than under it and the green line for All Renewables flat at 17% rather than declining. Thanks for helping me catch that.

       The reason why the growth in generation by All Renewables appears to have paused is partially explained by the record demand in 2018 coupled with the slight decline in Conventional Hydroelectric generation. Non-Hydro Renewables actually generated 33.8 TWh (8.7%) more in 2018 than they did in 2017. If solar installations continue increasing at anywhere close to recent rates, solar will generate more electricity than wind by the middle of the next decade. For 2018 utility scale solar generated about a quarter of the amount generated by wind and when distributed, smaller scale generation is factored in, solar generated slightly more than a third of the electricity generated by wind!

       1. Interesting, so I guess with high demand, there was heavier usage of the fossil fuel plants, so that held down the share of renewables even though they rose in absolute terms. Just goes to show the challenges of decarbonizing even in the easiest sector to take on.

    3. Some Guy

       Yesterday’s (March 8) ‘Today in Energy’ page on the EIA site concisely addresses some of your questions with specific emphasis comparing future grid scale solar, wind, and CCGT gas additions.

       Outstanding, short, data rich piece with the graphic projecting $40/$50 Megawatthour (4 to 5 cents per kilowatthour) for LCOE – Levelized Cost Of Electricity – for CCGT plants over the next 3 decades being possibly the most significant information presented.

       1. Both onshore wind and utility scale solar PV are already lower than CCGT a year ago

          1. GF

             If you are using Lazard Freres LCOE annual reports as the basis for your statement, you may want to both look it up and notice the qualifying footnotes.

             Not going to re-check myself, but pretty sure the tax credits were incorporated into the LF analysis.

             (The EIA specifically does use these credits and notes it in their presentaion. This is why, as the EIA states, new wind will drop to zero after this year).

             1. You might want to review this CG:

                https://www.taxpayer.net/energy-natural-resources/oil-and-gas-subsidies-overview1/

                Carbon tax is going to rear it’s ugly head in the near future making an already stressed fracking system even more so. Doubt if the FF subsidies will hold for much longer due to global and local pressures.

                1. GF

                   Interesting that you use the term ‘carbon tax’ as the more forward looking of the anti hydrocarbon populace is shunning – like Dracula avoids sunlight – the use of the dreaded ‘T’ word.

                   Even a cursory look at Australia, Ontario and recently the gilets jaunes shows how strong the response has been to this approach.

                   We shall see.

                2. Then there’s Washington state, where even though they have an abundance of greenie hippie dippie types and a governor now running for president under a climate change agenda, activists failed to get the general public to pass a carbon tax when put to a vote last year.

                3. Krell,
                   a carbon tax would likely pass in WA state if it was part of a thoughtful bill put forth by the legislature, rather than the referendum version crafted by activists.
                   better yet, these kind of things work much better on a national basis.
                   so don’t jump to early conclusions about a carbon tax based on that referendum. it will likely be a mistake

                4. Krell

                   Can add Maine to the list of anti carbon tax activities.
                   Local politician wanted to explore adopting the tax and got shot down.

                   Seems to be a pattern emerging …

             2. Coffeeguyzz,

                You are wrong. The lazard estimates do not include tax subsidies.

                See page two of report linked below (less fuzzy chart there).

                https://www.lazard.com/media/450784/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-120-vfinal.pdf

                For those that do not want to check the report, the no subsidy estimates are $41 to $74 per MWhr for natural gas CC (combined cycle), $29 to $56 per MWhr for wind, and $36 to $46 per MWhr for utility scale Solar PV. The cost of Solar PV especially continues to drop while the cost of natural gas is likely to rise as resources deplete.

                

                1. Dennis,
                   Is it true that the natural gas well owners are getting less than 50 cents per therm?

                2. Gone fishing,

                   The Henry Hub price for natural gas in January 2019 was $3.11 per million BTU or 31.1 cents per therm. In most places in the US wellhead prices would be below this level as it costs money to move the gas to the Hub, I do not know how much the transport cost for natural gas is.

                   Short answer is yes.

                3. Dennis

                   The page #2 from LF’s report shows the cost numbers sans subsidies/credits, but they are included in various other spots throughout that highly informative presentation, as I am sure you are aware as you have gone over it.

                   Today was the first time I actually got into the nitty gritty of this stuff and I am highly impressed with the efforts LF brought to bear on a highly contentious topic.

                   Some observations for you or anyone interested in getting into this …
                   Page #9, footnote #4 has US wind capacity factor range from 38% to 55%. Kinda high.

                   Footnote #5 uses cost of natgas at $3.45/mmbtu.
                   Henry Hub today is $2.77/mmbtu, but I do not know generator’s true cost nor how Lazard Freres implemented it.

                   Most jarring – to me – info was on pages #17 and 18 describing key assumptions.
                   Offshore wind is at nosebleed heights.

                   Net output for CCGT plants seems low whilst capital costs seem high, based on projects coming online in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

                   I am in no position to question the overall accuracy of these guys as their resources are both professional and extensive.

                   However, I would strongly recommend you look long and hard at last Friday’s Today In Energy piece from the EIA. They unequivocally posit an end to future US wind development starting in 2023 when subsidies expire.

                4. Coffeeguyzz,

                   Much depends on the assumptions the EIA is making about the cost of natural gas. Consider the development of export terminals in the US for LNG and the possibility that natural gas prices may rise as more natural gas is exported. Also as more pipelines are available to transport natural gas from Pennsylvania and Ohio to other areas, the local price of natural gas will rise in those two states. This will make combined cycle power less competitive with solar PV and wind power.

       2. What about the methane leakage problem? I like that we have so much natural gas and liquids, but we need to solve the problem of methane leakage or it is all for nothing.

          1. Songster

             You might be surprised if you do a little digging on this methane issue, particularly the sources and the percentages thereof to the total that is introduced to the atmosphere.

             Ranging from swamps, rice farming, bovine, sheep and goat emissions, termite/ant generation … fairly long list, actually.

             I used to get a kick at seeing the facial expressions on people when they learned that compostable spoons/forks/knives were usually created by corn/rice/potato refuse, put on trucks/trains/ships to arrive in – generally – Asian countries, wherein the material was shipped to factories to make the utensils.

             Upon completion, they would be put back on trucks/trains/ships and arrive at Oakland or Long Beach, offloaded onto trucks, stored in warehouses until ultimately arriving at the office break room, used once, discarded in the green compostable waste bin where they would supposedly be deposited in large, compost landfills.

             After a short time, the utensils would naturally degrade producing … methane.

             BTW, if you spend any time truly reading up on this fascinating stuff, you may find it highly enlightening to broaden your sources in this hyper politicized world so as to get a wider ‘take’ on things.

             Paraphrasing Katie Couric, seeking information rather than confirmation can be very stimulating.

             (Research on the bacterial breakdown of methane in termite hills is pointing to novel, mitigating avenues, as just one example of a broader perspective).

             1. CG, here is an educational video for fossil fuel promoters.
                Might give you a few more talking points.
                Good News on Climate Change! We’re Safe. We’re Adaptable. Six points for Discussion.
                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_CHy9ql4M&t=406s

                And for the more general audience;
                Climate Debate – Mann vs Curry & Moore June 2018
                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVXHaSqpsVg&t=1s

                1. GF

                   Just quickly scanned the first several comments – and their thumbs up/thumbs down evaluations – from both videos.
                   Will watch later.

                   Hmmmm …. lookin’ like there may be a whole passel of sceptical folks out there.

                   Jes sayin’.

                2. Just quickly scanned the first several comments – and their thumbs up/thumbs down evaluations – from both videos.

                   Bro, science is not a popularity contest! The laws of nature are not determined by thumbs up/thumbs down evaluations on some social media platform.

                3. Fred

                   Laws of nature are exactly that, impervious to the whims and foibles of we humble humans … thankfully.

                   Howevuh, those hundreds of expressed opinions carry great weight on the future course of our societal decisions.

                   Shame that there is a dearth of widely respected, broadly accepted sources in this Cyber Age.
                   Seems like the Dreaded Other (aka folks who disagree with me) are held in such scorn all across the board.

                   Referring to popularity contests …
                   Does that imply that “97% of scientists” is no longer a meaningful metric?

                   Askin’ fo a fren.

                4. Referring to popularity contests …
                   Does that imply that “97% of scientists” is no longer a meaningful metric?

                   Askin’ fo a fren.

                   Well, I think you can safely tell your fren, that the considered ‘opinions’ of thousands of career scientists in countries all over the world, who are experts in hundreds of varied scientific fields ranging from geoscience, atmospheric physics and chemistry to biosciences and ecosystems dynamics, and who publish their research in peer reviewed scientific journals. Still carry a lot more weight than the uneducated opinions of 97% of the commenters such as those following those Youtube videos.

                   Jes sayin’!

                5. Fred

                   Actually, your sentiments that the opinions of a worldwide cohort of educated scientists carries more weight than a group of uneducated opinions on Utube is not only incorrect, the implications cast a far more pervasive shadow than one may realize.

                   Fact is, the number of people reading/observing/increasingly engaging in these cyber formats is exploding rapidly.

                   The gorillions of people forming their world views/opinions from online sources dwarfs the number of engaged professionals … and this directly leads to effective communication … which morphs into government/policy decisions.

                   This global warming topic is but one – albeit a stunningly polarizing one – of a myriad number of issues pressing upon us in today’s world.

                6. The gorillions of people forming their world views/opinions from online sources dwarfs the number of engaged professionals … and this directly leads to effective communication … which morphs into government/policy decisions.

                   Yeah, but only if you think it makes sense for governments to have policies to deal with the fear of zombies! Personally, I’d prefer that not happen, but opinions may and do vary 😉

                   http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/03/should-we-have-government-policies-to-deal-with-fear-of-zombies/

                   I give out when people talk about crime going up, but the numbers are definitely down. And if you go, “The numbers are down”, they go, “Ahh, but the fear of crime is rising.” Well, so fucking what? Zombies are at an all-time low level, but the fear of zombies could be incredibly high. It doesn’t mean you have to have government policies to deal with the fear of zombies.
                   Dara O’Briain:

                7. The “97% of scientists” paper was fraudulent. Several critiques were written over the years which show the figure was made up by Cook et al. What the paper does prove is that Nature publishing house can print garbage as “peer reviewed science”.

             2. BTW, if you spend any time truly reading up on this fascinating stuff, you may find it highly enlightening to broaden your sources in this hyper politicized world so as to get a wider ‘take’ on things.

                Yeah, like maybe try reading some of the actual fascinating scientific literature, or is that just a bit too broad and apolitical for you.

                Maybe start with a little review on what happens when tipping points are passed or do you think non linear dynamics and chaos theory are ruled by partisan politics?

                https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-arctic-climate-tipping-points-methane-and-the-future-of-the-biosphere/5631112

                The Arctic Climate Tipping Points: Methane and the Future of the Biosphere

                As extreme temperatures, the rate of sea ice melt, the collapse of Greenland glaciers, the thawing of Siberian and Canadian permafrost and increased evaporation in the Arctic drive cold snow storms into Europe and North America, and as hurricanes and wild fires affect tropical and semi-tropical parts of the globe, it is becoming clear Earth is entering a period of uncontrollable climate tipping points consequent on the shift in composition and thereby the state of the atmosphere-ocean system. Analogies with geological methane-release events such as the 56 million years-old Paleocene-Eocene boundary thermal maximum and mass extinction (PETM) event, and even with the 251 Million years-old Permian-Triassic (PT) boundary and mass extinction event when some 95 percent of species were obliterated, are becoming more likely.

                As is well known to students of the history of the climate, once a temperature threshold is breached, abrupt events follow as a consequence of amplifying feedbacks, often within short time frameworks, examples being (1) stadial[i] freeze events which followed temperature peaks during past interglacial peaks due to cooling of ocean regions adjacent to melting ice sheets, such as the north Atlantic Ocean[ii] and Antarctica[iii]; (2) the intra-glacial Dansgaard–Oeschger (D-O)~1400 years-long warming events[iv] during the last glacial period; (3) the Younger dryas stadial freeze (12,800–11,600 years- ago[v]) and the Laurentian stadial freeze[vi] (8200 years-ago). In some instances it only took a temperature rise of about 1-2 degrees Celsius to trigger extensive ice melt, a flow of cold melt water into the oceans and thereby a regional to global freeze event, over periods ranging from a millennium to a few centuries. The abrupt transitions into and from stadial conditions could occur over a few decades and even few years[vii]
                

                So what’s on your reading list? BTW termites are indeed fascinating.

                https://www.pnas.org/content/115/52/13306

                Termite mounds mitigate half of termite methane emissions
                Philipp A. Nauer, Lindsay B. Hutley, and Stefan K. Arndt

                Abstract
                Termites are responsible for ∼1 to 3% of global methane (CH4) emissions. However, estimates of global termite CH4 emissions span two orders of magnitude, suggesting that fundamental knowledge of CH4 turnover processes in termite colonies is missing. In particular, there is little reliable information on the extent and location of microbial CH4 oxidation in termite mounds. Here, we use a one-box model to unify three independent field methods—a gas-tracer test, an inhibitor approach, and a stable-isotope technique—and quantify CH4 production, oxidation, and transport in three North Australian termite species with different feeding habits and mound architectures. We present systematic in situ evidence of widespread CH4 oxidation in termite mounds, with 20 to 80% of termite-produced CH4 being mitigated before emission to the atmosphere. Furthermore, closing the CH4 mass balance in mounds allows us to estimate in situ termite biomass from CH4 turnover, with mean biomass ranging between 22 and 86 g of termites per kilogram of mound for the three species. Field tests with excavated mounds show that the predominant location of CH4 oxidation is either in the mound material or the soil beneath and is related to species-specific mound porosities. Regardless of termite species, however, our data and model suggest that the fraction of oxidized CH4 (fox) remains well buffered due to links among consumption, oxidation, and transport processes via mound CH4 concentration. The mean fox of 0.50 ± 0.11 (95% CI) from in situ measurements therefore presents a valid oxidation factor for future global estimates of termite CH4 emissions.

                The problem isn’t termite CH4 emissions, it’s anthropogenic CO2 emissions that if they continue to rise at current rates could push us past certain climate tipping points! Now go back and read up on the PETM and the marine extinction it triggered…

                https://phys.org/news/2017-01-climate-science-bedeviled.html

                Climate science bedeviled by ‘tipping points’

                Of the many things that keep climate scientists awake at night, tipping points may be the scariest.

                To start with, these thresholds for deep, sometimes catastrophic change in the complex web of Earth’s natural forces, caused by man-made global warming, are largely invisible.

                You can’t see them on the horizon, and could easily cross one without noticing.

                Also, there is no turning back—at least not on a human timescale.

                Ice sheets with enough frozen water to lift sea levels more than a dozen metres; powerful ocean currents that keep bone-chilling winters at bay on both sides of the Atlantic; monsoon rains upon which hundreds of millions in Asia depend for food—all are at risk of irretrievable disruption.

                “There are points-of-no-return where, for example, a certain amount of warming triggers unstoppable collapse of glaciers off of Antarctica, even if the planet cools again,” explained Ben Strauss, vice president of the US research group Climate Central.

                Think of someone leaning back on two legs of a chair, suggests Sybren Drijfhout, a professor at the University of Southampton.

                “The tipping point is when you’re exactly in between two states,” he said. “A tiny perturbation”—a gentle shove—”will make the system tip over.”

                1. Fred

                   Make you an offer as you are far more scientifically inclined than I ever hope to be …

                   I will read up on the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum and ponder its ramifications/potential modern day implications IF you would consider carefully reading and analyzing Professor Valentina Zharkova’s 2015 landmark study on the solar Magnetic Field and Terrestrial Climate.
                   And, sincerely, get back to us on your findings.

                   As Professor Zharkova has both a BS and MS in Applied Mathematics and Astronomy along with a PhD in Astrophysics, I put a little faith in her views … all the more so as I need to take off ma boots and count on ma toes when numbers get past 10.

                   Using your academic, open minded background, I would be interested in your ‘take’ on Professor Zharkova’s work.

                   Fred, as of yesterday, Lake Superior has an ice cover of almost 95%.

                   Who knew?
                   Who cares?
                   What does that even mean?

                   I’m not sure, Fred, but the mere fact that you, I, and everyone reading these words – around the globe, no less – is even aware of this factoid bespeaks to the stunning Information Age in which we live.

                   And THAT is behind those hundreds of ‘thumbs up’ votes on GF’s videos.

                   New, new world we are living in.

                   (Is anyone else hot in heah?)

                2. Ok I’ll take a look at Professor Valentina Zharkova’s 2015 landmark study on the solar Magnetic Field and Terrestrial Climate.

                   As for:
                   Fred, as of yesterday, Lake Superior has an ice cover of almost 95%.

                   Who knew?
                   Who cares?
                   What does that even mean?

                   A lot of people know and care. The short answer is that it means it’s still winter in the northern hemisphere! The longer answer might be better addressed by someone like Dr. Jennifer Francis.

                   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtmuBoolHQg

                   New England Aquarium
                   Published on Mar 8, 2018
                   Jennifer Francis, Ph.D., Research Professor I, Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, speaks about the question on everyone’s minds: why is the weather so crazy? And is it related to climate change?

                   In this presentation, Dr. Francis will explain new research that links increasing extreme weather events with the rapidly warming and melting Arctic during recent decades. Evidence suggests that Arctic warming is causing weather patterns to become more persistent, which can lead to extremes such as droughts, cold spells, heat waves, and some flooding events.

                3. Lake Superior being 95% iced up shows you just how historically extreme this winter has been, and why I’m anxious for global warming, a.k.a. spring, to come here faster. I’ve had just about all I can handle of heating bills this year.

                4. Messes up the migrating birds.

                5. I’ll tell you what makes me nervous about global warming. It’s March 11, I live above the 51st parallel, and my roses are budding.

                6. Ok, I looked up the paper and here is a link.
                   peer-reviewed paper

                   The paper was never intended as a paper on climate science at all. The controversy around it was purely a concoction of the media and a good example of misunderstanding and miscommunication of science. It was featured on WUWT a blog notorious for climate change denial.

                   Basically it is research paper about sunspots and the media hyped it as proof of a new mini ice age by connecting it to the mini ice age of 1645 and 1715 during a period called the Maunder Minimum.

                   Here is a debunking of the story:
                   https://www.iflscience.com/environment/mini-ice-age-hoopla-giant-failure-science-communication/

                   This month there’s been a hoopla about a mini ice age, and unfortunately it tells us more about failures of science communication than the climate. Such failures can maintain the illusion of doubt and uncertainty, even when there’s a scientific consensus that the world is warming.

                   The story starts benignly with a peer-reviewed paper and a presentation in early July by Professor Valentina Zharkova, from Northumbria University, at Britain’s National Astronomy Meeting.

                   The paper presents a model for the sun’s magnetic field and sunspots, which predicts a 60% fall in sunspot numbers when extrapolated to the 2030s. Crucially, the paper makes no mention of climate.

                   The first failure of science communication is present in the Royal Astronomical Society press release from July 9. It says that “solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s” without clarifying that this “solar activity” refers to a fall in the number of sunspots, not a dramatic fall in the life-sustaining light emitted by the sun.

                   The press release also omits crucial details. It does say that the drop in sunspots may resemble the Maunder minimum, a 17th century lull in solar activity, and includes a link to the Wikipedia article on the subject. The press release also notes that the Maunder minimum coincided with a mini ice age.
                   Bold mine.

                7. Fred

                   While staunchly avoiding discussing the global warming issue, this particular exchange (Zharkova’s paper and its public presentation) may offer an invaluable case study on this entire Misinformation, Information, Propaganda miasma that seems to have engulfed the world.
                   From your iflscience site, the day after your piece (authored by a Michael Brown) came out, an unattributed piece on this topic contained these quotes …
                   ‘The conditions during this next predicted minimum will still be chilly: “It will be cold, but it will not be this ice age when everything is freezing like in the Hollywood films,” Zharkova chuckled.’
                   “During the minimum, the intensity of solar radiation will be reduced dramatically. So we will have less heat coming into the atmosphere which will reduce the temperature.”

                   Article titled ‘There Probably Won’t Be A “Mini Ice Age” in 15 Years’.

                   Again, the number of additional, online articles surrounding this report is exploding as the “spin” is off the charts.

                   (BTW, I downloaded and read the 8 page report. The solar fuzzy heads must be very impressed by this remarkable research which, in fact, is exclusively devoted to the dynamo related emanations of the solar magnetic field).

                8. Yeah and anyone who thinks we are headed towards a mini ice age, I have a ground floor investment opportunity they may be interested in! I will be starting a Miami based snow removal business. I promise a huge return on investment.
                   Cheers!

                9. The AGW aspect is the easy part of climate science. No brainer that it’s occurring. Trying to predict El Nino’s is the difficult part.

          2. For the record, I really like natural gas.
             So clean I can burn it in the kitchen open flame.
             So much better than wood or coal, in just about every way.
             Great price for the energy it gives.
             It was pleasantly warm in the house all day.
             I hope we have plenty for a long time.

             Its the seven billion people that is the monster problem.
             The top 6.3 billion problems on the list. [you and me]
             The next problem after that is using energy on frivolous things, and inefficient methods.

             I am also rejoicing that solar and wind are reasonably affordable when deployed in prime locales (as Lazard study data shows).
             Do keep in mind that the Lazard data reflects renewable (and fossil fuel) production from the most favorable spots. Thats where the activity is concentrated, of course.

       3. Thanks – I guess if we want to survive, we’d better hope their projection is very wrong.

          I’d be surprised if anyone is still adding fossil fuel plants in the 2040’s. Even the 2030’s might be a stretch.

11. A great idea for geoengineering would be to simply shut down a lot of modern agriculture, which releases a lot of carbon from the soil instead of sequestering it.

    Here is one example:
    40% of the land for corn (maize) crop in the US is for ethanol. Roughly 90 million acres are used for corn, so that’s 36 million acres for ethanol. There are about 4000 m2 to the acre, so 144 billion m2 are being used this way. The land is being eroded and thus decarbonized for this.

    In Iowa, about 4 KWh /m2/day is available to horizontal solar panels. At 20% efficiency, that’s 0.8 KWh / m2/day. That’s an annual average, so it’s about 300 KWh /m2/year.

    The US uses about 4000 bn KWh /year of electricity. That is the theoretical output of roughly 13 bn m2 of solar panels.

    So it seems you could replace the output of the entire US electricity industry with less than 10% of the land now used to produce ethanol. Another 10% would be enough to replace the entire oil industry.

    Similar calculations apply to countries like Germany, where rapeseed is used instead of corn.

    You may be wondering how this is possible, but keep in mind that 10% of the liquid fuel consumed in the US is ethanol, and its production is based on photosynthesis, which is about 1% efficient. Cheap mass market solar panels are are 20% efficient, and really good ones are nearly 50% efficient.

    1. I think if that is what we mean when we talk about geoengineering then that makes a lot more sense than dumping SO2 into the stratosphere or fertilizing plankton with iron in the oceans and fantasizing about building solar shields in orbit. Let’s first cut emissions to as near to zero as possible. Change our diets and stop all our unnecessary consumption of superfluous goods. Restrict population, reforest and try to preserve wetlands first and then after we have done all that, maybe then we can come up with other ideas on how to sequester carbon or even extract it from the atmosphere. BAU has to go and the sooner the better!

       Cheers!

       1. It think artificial meat / lab grown meat might shut down a lot of modern agriculture in the 30s and 40s anyway.

12. Following in Utah’s footsteps, Tennessee is likely to be the next state to require all high school students to learn the virtues of capitalism and American exceptionalism. Lawmakers have grown increasingly alarmed by young people’s infatuation with socialism. The lack of a proper civics education is frequently cited as a significant reason why today’s youth are being swayed away from capitalism.

    https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/05/governor-bill-lee-state-of-the-state-full-speech-tennessee/3028501002/

    During the past two years of traveling on the campaign trail, an issue I was constantly asked about was civics and character education.

    At face value, this may seem like a small issue.

    However, in the last year it was reported that young people between the ages of 18 and 29 in this country have a more favorable view of socialism than capitalism.

    And last week I read about a recent study that said in 49 of 50 states a majority of residents would fail the U.S. citizenship test.

    I can’t help but feel that these two statistics are somehow connected.

    President Reagan said that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

    This demands answering an obvious question; how will our children know of our cherished American values if we do not teach them?

    We all desire a more perfect union, but we cannot expect future generations to build upon the incredible progress our country has made if we fail to teach them the history and values that made it possible.

    So, let me say this: whatever may be going on in other states or in our nation’s Capital, in this state, our children will be taught civics education, character formation, and unapologetic American exceptionalism.

    1. Rather ironic for Utah, since at it’s core Mormonism is a socialist ideology.

    2. “American exceptionalism stems from the American Revolution, becoming what political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset called “the first new nation”[4] and developing the American ideology of “Americanism”, based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, democracy, and laissez-faire economics”

       liberty – steadily fading away
       egalitarianism – not much anymore
       individualism – not even on the horizon
       republicanism – muddled
       democracy – the representative form has become somewhat of a failure or at least crippled
       Laissez-faire ” is an economic system in which transactions between private parties are free from government intervention such as regulation, privileges, tariffs, and subsidies. ” Government is into every transaction, requires permits and licenses for most everything and definitely has tariffs and subsides.

       Please teach those kids that we have a lot of work to do to achieve any of the aims originally set out for Americanism.
       Maybe we are exceptional in that most citizens don’t realize how far America drifted from it’s goals and how little they perform their duties as citizens.

    3. in this state, our children will be taught civics education, character formation, and unapologetic American exceptionalism.

       You forgot to add world history…

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tUctFu46_c
       Tomorrow Belongs to Me – Cabaret

       Edit: I thought I’d mention evolutionary history as well, just to put things in a larger perspective, only the ignorant think they are exceptional! We are all of us just an ephemeral part of the fabric of life… no more, but also no less exceptional than other life forms that inhabit this planet.

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66SPUQEgEKk

       The Low Anthem: Charlie Darwin

       Set the sails, I feel the winds a’stirring
       Towards the bright horizon set the way
       Cast your reckless dreams upon our Mayflower
       The haven from the world and her decay
       Who could heed the words of Charlie Darwin
       Fighting for a system built to fail
       Spooning water from the broken vessels
       As far as I can see, there is no land
       Oh my god
       The water’s all around us
       Oh my god, it’s all around
       Who could heed the words of Charlie Darwin
       Lords of war just profit from decay
       And trade…

       1. Oh liberty, oh liberty, blub, blub, blub

          Ain’t no wall high enough…

          And then there was the tsunami of 8000, years ago just to make life terrifying for the Britons of the time. Goodbye to Doggerland.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EPNZWBk7i8&t=2134s

          

          1. Thanks, interesting. I had forgotten about Time Team so I may watch some more of those videos.

             NAOM

             1. Don’t know if you are into historical exploration but I used to do things like are on Martin Zero’s channel. Check it out.

                1. Thanks, noted. I’ll look into that later as I have things to do right now.

                   NAOM

    4. Tennessee is also one of the states with a law that has science teachers lead debates of climate change theory with students comparing the strengths and weaknesses of the theory.

       School lessons targeted by climate change doubters
       By Michael Melia

       https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/article227176779.html

       A Connecticut lawmaker wants to strike climate change from state science standards. A Virginia legislator worries teachers are indoctrinating students with their personal views on global warming. And an Oklahoma state senator wants educators to be able to introduce alternative viewpoints without fear of losing their jobs.

       Instruction on the topic varies widely from place to place, but climate change and how humans are altering the planet are core topics emphasized in the Next Generation Science Standards, developed by a group of states. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have adopted the standards, and 21 others have embraced some of the material with modifications.

       Still, a survey released in 2016 found that of public middle- and high-school science teachers who taught something about climate change, about a quarter gave equal time to perspectives that “raise doubt about the scientific consensus.”

       By early February, the Oakland, California-based nonprofit National Center for Science Education flagged over a dozen bills this year as threats to the integrity of science education, more than the organization typically sees in an entire year.

       Several of them — including proposals in Oklahoma, North Dakota and South Dakota — had language echoing model legislation of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which says teachers should not be prohibited from addressing strengths and weaknesses of concepts such as evolution and global warming.

       Similar measures became law in Louisiana in 2008 and Tennessee in 2012. In states where they may not be feasible politically, Discovery has urged legislators to consider nonbinding resolutions in support of giving teachers latitude to “show support for critical thinking” on controversial topics. Lawmakers in Alabama and Indiana passed such resolutions in 2017.

       Florida state Sen. Dennis Baxley is pressing legislation that would allow schools to teach alternatives to controversial theories.

       “There is really no established science on most things, you’ll find,” the GOP legislator said.

       Elsewhere, lawmakers in Connecticut and Iowa, which both adopted the Next Generation Science Standards, have proposed rolling them back. Connecticut state Rep. John Piscopo, a Republican who is a Heartland Institute member, said he wants to eliminate the section on climate change, calling it “totally one-sided.”

       Other bills introduced this year in such states as Virginia, Arizona and Maine call for teachers to avoid political or ideological indoctrination of their students.

       “If they’re teaching about a subject, such as climate change, and they present both sides, that’s fine. That’s as it should be. A teacher who presents a skewed extension of their political beliefs, that’s closer to indoctrinating. That’s not good to kids,” said Virginia state Rep. Dave LaRock, a Republican.

13. Climate emergency with Dahr Jamail

    https://youtu.be/wEKGp3gT_vs

    1. So much for ‘Unapologetic American Exceptionalism!

    2. Dahr is great.
       Real time experience.
       And very left.
       With Hedges– not for the unrealistic.

14. Here you go Islandboy,

    Bloomberg Launches Alternative To Green New Deal

    Michael Bloomberg will not run for president. That was the main outtake from the businessman and philanthropist’s op-ed for Bloomberg the other day. But the more important outtake was his announcement of a new climate change initiative: Beyond Carbon.

    “I will launch a new, even more ambitious phase of the campaign — Beyond Carbon: a grassroots effort to begin moving America as quickly as possible away from oil and gas and toward a 100 percent clean energy economy,” Bloomberg said.

    https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/Bloomberg-Launches-Alternative-To-Green-New-Deal.html

15. Thousands of New Millionaires Are About to Eat San Francisco Alive
    By Nellie Bowles

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/style/uber-ipo-san-francisco-rich.html

    Big wealth doesn’t come in monthly paychecks. It comes when a start-up goes public, transforming hypothetical money into extremely real money. This year — with Uber, Lyft, Slack, Postmates, Pinterest and Airbnb all hoping to enter the public markets — there’s going to be a lot of it in the Bay Area.

    Estimates of Uber’s value on the market have been as high as $120 billion. Airbnb was most recently valued at $31 billion, with Lyft and Pinterest around $15 billion and $12 billion. It’s anyone’s guess what prices these companies actually will command once they go public, but even conservative estimates predict hundreds of billions of dollars will flood into town in the next year, creating thousands of new millionaires. It’s hard to imagine more money in San Francisco, but the city’s residents now need to start trying.

    Welcomed finally into the elite caste who can afford to live comfortably in the Bay Area, the fleet of new millionaires are already itching to claim what has been promised all these years.

    They want cars. They want to open new restaurants. They want to throw bigger parties. And they want houses.

    One recent night, in a packed room with a view of the Bay Bridge and an open bar, real estate investors gathered. Standing at the front presenting was Deniz Kahramaner, a real estate agent specializing in data analytics at Compass.

    “Are we going to see a one-bedroom condo that’s worth less than $1 million in five years?” he asked the crowd. “Are we going to see single family homes selling for one to three million?”

    No, he said, not anymore. The energy rose as he revealed more data about new millionaires and about just how few new units have been built for them. San Francisco single-family home sale prices could climb to an average of $5 million, he said, to gasps.

    1. San Francisco is nearly empty, thanks to dirt stupid zoning laws. It would be no problem to quadruple the number of apartments there, and that would bring down prices.

       Up thread the are talking about how Tennessee wants to teach kids the importance of capitalism, but when it comes to city panning nobody seems to understand that artificially restricting construction with dumb zoning laws makes prices go up.

16. US Wind and Solar output clearly show that the amount of investment in renewables is a fraction of what is needed.

    https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/usa/

    A carbon tax, such as in Great Britain would speed up the transition.

    https://www.theccc.org.uk/tackling-climate-change/reducing-carbon-emissions/how-the-uk-is-progressing/

    China CO2 emissions have increased both in 2017 and 2018.

    https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china/

    In order for the worst effects of climate change to be avoided CO2 cuts of 5% per year are needed.

    Since consumption of natural gas is increasing and oil consumption will at best be flat, that leaves cutting coal consumption by about 8% per year.

    https://www.carbonbrief.org/iea-china-and-india-to-fuel-further-rise-in-global-coal-demand-in-2018

    Cutting coal consumption by 400 million tonnes each year would require investment in renewable energy increasing from $250 billion to $2.5 trillion per year.

    If I remember that would cost about $1,200 for the average American to do their bit.

17. To express our predicament as simply as I can, it is this:

    In order to prevent environmental collapse bringing about the death of more than six in every seven humans on the planet, we (all of us) simply have to stop using fossil carbon fuels today.

    But if we stop using the fossil carbon fuels that currently provide the world with 85 percent of its power, our highly complex and interconnected oil-dependent economy will crash; resulting in a global famine that will kill more than six in every seven humans on the planet anyway.

    https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2019/03/06/the-green-deal-is-hopium/

    1. Well, that is kind of black and white. Maybe we could push the replacement of FF a lot faster and at the same time use various carbon drawdown procedures to slow then reduce the atmospheric levels of CO2. It’s a long shot but at least it’s a shot. It will still be a rough ride, but maybe not a sheer cliff.

       One way or another we are going to leave this con game they call the fossil fueled civilization. As Kunstler put it “too much magic”.

    2. Yep. its a predicament
       Not a problem.
       The Dahr Jamail interview made that explicit.

18. GF says” Maybe we could push the replacement of FF a lot faster and at the same time use various carbon drawdown procedures to slow then reduce the atmospheric levels of CO2. It’s a long shot but at least it’s a shot. It will still be a rough ride, but maybe not a sheer cliff. ”

    I totally agree with this scenario.

    If somehow it’s possible to get the attention of the public and so get across the gravity of the climate problem, the public would get behind the New Green Deal, and and the NGD can be the REAL DEAL.

    Leviathan , the nation state, can work miracles , once aroused and fearful of its own continued existence.
    There’s no reason at all, other than a lack of political will power, that the USA can’t build out wind and solar farms and HVDC transmission lines, etc, sufficient to totally do away with using coal and natural gas for space heating, etc, and give up using coal for generating electricity, within ten years, easy as pie. We could cut back on using gas for electrical generation by ninety percent or more, just keeping some gas generation plants ready to run in the case the weather turns really crappy in terms of wind and solar power a few days now and then, which must be expected.

    Those of us who can afford new cars could be driving electric cars exclusively within a decade, and the remaining older conventional cars would be going to the scrap yard in ever increasing numbers as used electric cars get older and cheaper.

    Everybody ought to be on his knees, figuratively speaking, praying to the Mountain or River or Snake or the Deity that best pleases him for a series of WAKE UP events sufficient to get the attention of the public.

    Getting government, ours and others, to commit to a wartime type environmental and economic policies may be the only workable solution to the climate problem.

    1. OFM

       There are massive hurdles in reaching anything like 100% renewable energy.

       The statement that the wind is always blowing somewhere, is meaningless when it comes to powering a country.

       Wind speeds unfortunately correlate over very large areas. European wind data shows when wind power is high in the UK it is often high in France and Germany. When it is low in the UK it is often low in Germany. So there is nowhere to export wind from.

       https://euanmearns.com/quantifying-wind-surpluses-and-deficits-in-western-europe/

       If the United States built enough wind turbine capacity to theoretically meet demand at peak. Those turbines would meet demand for perhaps 100 hours in a year. The other 8,660 it would not.
       During 8 hours of darkness in the United States wind power could vary by a factor of 10.

       Fact is sometimes there is very little wind anywhere. So storage solutions are needed.

       If the United States built these 4 plants and did that 2000 times they would store enough electricity for about 3 hours.

       https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/11/09/us-regulators-approve-the-worlds-largest-battery-projects/

       When you consider that you would have to manufacture and install 10 times as many wind turbines and solar panels. The United States simply does not have the engineers and technicians to build that kind of infrastructure in 10 of even 20 years.

       The fact is, over the last 100 years, the United States has built an energy infrastructure based on burning coal and gas and the entire transportation system is based on burning oil.

       1. Hi Hugo,

          Those of us who know at least a little about wind and solar power are well acquainted with the facts you have pointed out, and to the best of my knowledge, no knowledgeable environmentalist or renewable energy advocate disputes the magnitude and difficulty of the transition to renewable energy.

          Such people ALSO know two additional facts that ( oh unfortunate word, but no other serves !) TRUMP the fossil fuel argument…. the facts of depletion and pollution in general, and climate change due to pollution in particular.

          How much do you think WWIII is going to cost? Unless we give up ff’s sooner, we will fight WWIII over whatever remaining supplies of them still exist, later on, for dead sure, pun INTENDED.

          1. OFM, most assuredly a transistion to a carbon free and low energy society will involve many changes at the both the physical level and societal level. No, things will not be the same, though they might be similar in some respects.
             Right now people are conned and sold a bill of goods for most of technology, their homes and businesses. Everything is tethered to massive use of external energy just to accomplish everyday things. A person or household might spend over three hundred thousand dollars on energy in a lifetime. The term frugal is somewhat despised in the US. That must change.
             Good for the energy companies (in the short term), bad for the person and the planet.
             I suspect that a major energy overhaul will commence in the US in a few years.
             Residences have an R8 to R10 insulation value, those will need to be upgraded to R3o in most place at a minimum (Squirrels build their leaf nests walls a couple of body thicknesses and need no external heat to survive high winds and minus temps. Imagine if we built our houses to at least a shoulder width wall thickness with modern insulation).
             Commercial buildings and especially high rise glass/reinforced concrete are R2 and most will have to be let go, not worth the refit economically. Luckily they have relatively short lives of 50 to 60 years, some less. Many will soon be ready for replacement anyway.

             Look at Europe, running a place the size of US at half the energy with more people. The US will have to go far below that and it is quite possible to do that since we are not only wasteful but the dependence on thermal energy guarantees much higher efficiency when ambient temperature collection systems are utilized. Transport can be made clean and very efficient, as we are starting to show now.
             I won’t go into the huge amount of details now, but it is quite possible to run a modern civilization on less than 20 percent of the energy we now employ.

             As far as storage goes, not a lot is really needed. Energy dependent industries will move to where sun and wind are stronger and more reliable. Heat can be easily and cheaply stored and accessed when needed. Electricity can be used mostly during peak production and minimized at other times.
             Intermittency is the way nature works, we need to model that. It’s not a dirty word. Our ancestors knew all about that.
             There is plenty of available energy, there is lots of high tech insulation, rock and water for heat storage, batteries and other chemical storage where and when needed. Lots of work to do, no loss of jobs just different ones and probably many more. Exciting times refitting a society and civilization to meet more natural standards and deal with the coming weather chaos/temperature changes.

             Will industry be 365/24/7 everywhere? No, not most of it, but life will be. Hard and fast decisions need to made as to what we keep (upgrade), what we get rid of and how much we really need. The economy will have to be streamlined, growth will be toward a lower energy and lower material need system, one that can last hundreds of years or more. Goals will need to be changed and how we interact will have to change also.

             As you say, the alternative to alternatives is deadly.

          2. OFM

             I think a WW3 would fix lots of problems.

             http://www.climateaction.org/news/world_cannot_sustain_increasing_population_growth_warns_un

             https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/16/water-shortages-to-be-key-environmental-challenge-of-the-century-nasa-warns

             https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JikGRSbsueU

             We will not go to war over oil and gas. Electric vehicles and a huge supply of LNG will avert that.

             We will go to war over water, Food and fish. These are running out much quicker.

       2. Hugo and OFM, You make valid points.
          Some will argue it is feasible/possible, and I agree, if the proper attitude of urgency was approaching universal.
          But transition attempts in the USA (as just one example of many) so far have been feeble. Other big populated countries like Russia, China, India, Japan, Indonesia are doing very poorly in their own right.
          EU likes to congratulate itself, but its a massive energy hog as well. Take away the imported nat gas, coal and oil and its forests will all be cut down within a few years.

          We are going so slowly, you can bet on a hotter world that is short on energy.
          In the USA it is too bad that the ‘new green deal’ is largely seen as a pie in the sky leftist scheme, rather than coming as centrist infrastructure deal that it could/should have been. Failure of the political system- short-term planning. Demonization of fossil fuel transition by the right wing media is largely to blame. How many more decades will it take before they recognize that Al Gore was forward thinking, not a nut-case a s they portrayed.

          1. EU likes to congratulate itself, but its a massive energy hog as well.

             That is a true statement!

             However when compared to the average American’s attitude, I have to say that the Europeans I have recently had contact with, tend to accept the reality of an urgent necessity to embrace radical change. Furthermore it is an acceptance that seems to exist across all political spectra. They may differ in their views with regards specific solutions but there is not a huge difference between the right and the left when it comes to accepting the basic underlying reality of the science of climate change.

             1. “but there is not a huge difference between the right and the left when it comes to accepting the basic underlying reality of the science of climate change.”

                hmmm. How do we get there, Why so different?

                1. hmmm. How do we get there, Why so different?

                   My guess is culture and education. For example it doesn’t matter if you are in right wing, authoritarian Poland or liberal socialist Sweden, stuff like this just doesn’t happen in Europe!

                   https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jaguar-attacks-selfie-woman_n_5c850aafe4b0ed0a0014753c

                   A woman was attacked by a jaguar at an Arizona zoo after witnesses said she crossed a safety barrier to take a selfie, according to the zoo…

                   …The jaguar did not get out of its enclosure, the park said in a statement…

                   …Ollson said it’s the second time that the jaguar has attacked someone who crossed the barrier, however. He said the injuries in the previous incident, which happened about a year or two ago, were minor.

                   Seriously?!

                2. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47454610

                3. LOL! To be fair he built his own enclosure and didn’t have to sneak into it. Ok so there are some really stupid Europeans as well but when it comes to climate change denial I still think we have a bigger problem in the US than in Europe.

                   Cheers!

                4. “built his own enclosure and didn’t have to sneak into it”
                   I’d have classed that as a double dose of stupid. I wonder if he will get a Darwin.

                   NAOM

                5. I wonder if he will get a Darwin.

                   Since he ‘s dead, and has removed himself from the gene pool, I’d say he got one! Too bad two lions had to die as well!

       3. Thanks to windy weather, German electricity is 60% renewables so far for the month.

          https://www.energy-charts.de/energy_pie.htm?year=2019&month=3

          There is no way to compete for market share through price cuts, because wind and solar have zero cost at the margin. The fossil fuel industry is already facing an existential crisis. The problem is profitability.

          Look at retail in America today. One big retailer after another is crashing and burning, and about 500 of the 1500 shopping malls ever built are dead. Just about everyone agrees that the culprit is online retail. But online retail is only 10% of the market. What’s killing retail? Price pressure from online retailers are killing profits.

          Thermal power plants need high capacity factors to make money. Renewables are taking that away from them. So the old industry will die.

          If renewables and batteries can’t fill the gap, efficiency will have to. But the old industry is on the ropes one way or another.

       4. And we would see the bird population evolve to fly higher and dive steeply to get to the ground to avoid turbine blades.

19. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/10/republican-green-new-deal-attack-1250859

    1. Bunch of lying dinosaurs.
       The ME,ME, ME MINE, MINE, MINE mindset is beyond juvenile and is up for a Darwin Award.

    2. The Green New Deal is communist trash talk. And it has a lot of excellent material the GOP can use to hang Democrats in the 2020 elections.

       1. Yep, the primary theme of the 2020 elections is setting up to be about socialism. Once they learn what the Democrats’ socialist proposals would mean to their freedoms and ways of life, my guess is Americans will soundly reject the Democrats just as they have every time before when the party has veered way too far to the left.

          1. Hey Dave, care to tell us exactly how you define socialism? Does it include things like public roads, public schools, social security, Medicare, etc…

             For the record the following countries have socialist systems of government.
             Denmark.
             Finland.
             Netherlands.
             Canada.
             Sweden.
             Norway.
             Ireland.

             Here are the top 10 happiest countries and how they measure on the Cantril ladder:
             Finland: 7.632. Manfred Gottschalk | Getty Images. …
             Norway: 7.594.
             Denmark: 7.555.
             Iceland: 7.495. …
             Switzerland: 7.487. …
             Netherlands: 7.441. …
             Canada: 7.328. …
             New Zealand: 7.324.

             The United States, it appears, is getting richer but not happier. America came in 18th, down four places from last year. It has never broken into the Top 10, ranking 11th in the first index.Mar 14, 2018

             BTW, by coincidence the wealth in America is not evenly distributed! It is held by an ever smaller minority,

             1. Fred, try to focus on Fernando’s comment of how, in the first two months of this year alone, the Democrats have given the GOP amazing material for crafting attacks during the 2020 election cycle. Thus, I will define socialism just as the thousands of attack ads are going to: giving free stuff we can’t afford to people who don’t work and don’t want to work, while reducing the overall dignity of work for those who do.

                Depending on the demographic the ads are targeted towards, we will see the “people” who benefit from socialism further defined with xenophobic and racist undertones. For more neutral advertising, California’s failed high speed choo choo train boondoggle can be used proficiently to slam the socialist message within the Green New Deal.

                Meanwhile, the most compelling subplot ads during the cycle will focus on the Democrats’ infanticide blunders in Virginia and New York and their willingness to completely destroy the private insurance industry, eliminating millions more jobs in the process and igniting fear in people who happen to have good private insurance plans. Both subplots will be useful in crafting an overall message of how Democrats are against individual liberty, which, of course, implies being against the foundational ideals of the United States itself.

                1. “I will define socialism just as the thousands of attack ads are going to: giving free stuff we can’t afford to people who don’t work”

                   Brainwashed – Brainwashing is the concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by certain psychological techniques. Brainwashing is said to reduce its subject’s ability to think critically or independently, to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into the subject’s mind, as well as to change his or her attitudes, values, and beliefs.

                   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwashing

                2. I think the localized ads Republican groups ran in 2018 invoking George Soros as funding many Democrat initiatives were a test run to determine a useful messaging strategy for 2020. I mean, the ads connecting Soros and Kaepernick to the Democrats were seemingly pretty effective in an election that was otherwise bad for Republicans, so why wouldn’t Republicans want to reuse one of the few things that worked for them in 2018?

                3. Looking like POTUS will be making climate theories part of the 2020 campaign also.

                   

                4. Those countries listed above are capitalists with a high tax regime which enables the government to have a compassionate set of policies. What happened in Europe was that Socialists who had intended to implement Marxism (as in Soviet or Castroite socialism) had to go at it gradually, and the people realized they didn’t really want the full treatment. Most socialist parties have lost traction, and today Sweden (as an example) has a much lower share of the economy in government hands.

                   One way you can discern these radicals are marxists is the lines they toss during interviews. For example, Ocasio likes to say capitalism has to end. That’s pure Fidel Castro. What Ocasio seems to have cobbled together is an ideology very similar to Die Linke’s, the old German communists who have heavy participation by East German regime supporters (including Stasi agents). As it turns out, Die Linke runs an office in New York using the Rosalux brand. So I suspect the Justice Democrats who gave Ocasio and the other communists inside the party their entry into politics (they are the result of a casting call made by Justice Democrats to take Congress under the Democrats’ noses), are linked to Rosalux. And Rosalux has links to European communists and the Castro network.

                5. Jeez, you must really love Jobim’s, One Note Samba!

                   Any one who wants the whole show
                   Re mi fa so la ci do
                   He will find himself with no show
                   Better play the note you know

                   For the record, at this point just about anyone with half a brain. understands why the current incarnation of neo-classical economic thinking aka predatory capitalism needs to end, before it kills the planet and destroys civil society! Even the top capitalists know that by now! Because Greta Thunberg told them so at Davos and it is having repercussions throughout the world…

                   I’m pretty sure you are not a multi billionaire so why are you pushing their agendas against the interests of the people?!

                   BTW, If AOC had wanted to, she could have actually officially joined the Communist Party of the United States of America, which is a legal political party headquartered in NYC.

                   Last time I checked, she was a registered member of the Democratic party! And as no one less than Nancy Pelosi herself, has said: “We are capitalists!”

                   Maybe you should move to Havana or Caracas and help liberate those places instead of spouting your BS here!

                   I realize this may be a really difficult concept for you to grasp but being against predatory capitalism does not make one a communist! Communism is also a failed ideology!

                   I kind of doubt you can get past your programming and brainwashing but there are other ways of participating in and organizing society other than communism and capitalism.

                   https://shows.pippa.io/teamhuman/episodes/ep-123-live-from-portland-slow-media

                   Show Notes
                   Playing for Team Human Today is lifelong activist, warrior, and witch Blaed Spence AND writer, professor, and author of Slow Media, Jennifer Rauch.

                   Today’s show continues our ‘live from the road’ series as Douglas brings Team Human to the Bunk Bar in Portland, Oregon for an event in collaboration with XRAY radio.

                   Douglas opens with a monologue arguing that politics are still stuck in the television age. What might politics look like when we are not reduced to mere spectators but instead become engaged as active participants?(@1min30s)

                   Blaed Spence joins Douglas on stage for a conversation about the subversive act of looking away from our screens and into each other’s eyes. For Spence, it’ about embracing the opportunity for the awe, wonderment, imagination, and ultimately, true connection. (starts at @12min30s)

                   Author and professor Jennifer Rauch then joins the stage asking us to imagine ourselves as more than just “eyeballs and wallets.” Like Spence, Rauch argues that looking away from our devices and engaging in Slow Media practices creates the space for us to use all media more thoughtfully and autonomously. “We’ve internalized the logic of faster, more efficient, more production, but there is a whole world of experience that is beyond quantification.” (starts @ 39mins)

                   This episode ends with a group conversation and audience Q&A. (@67mins)

                   Fernando, while I realize your brain is encased in ideological concrete, perhaps there are others out there who might read and start exploring outside the box ideas.

                   Cheers!

                6. Dave has it right. I would add that Bernie Sanders has spent his life praising the USSR and Castro. And he did this knowing very well the USSR had giant concentration camps in their gulags where anybody who blinked against the communist regime would be sent to serve long sentences.

       2. Fernando, this one is for you!

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boXoOQyjyck

          Fugazi – Five corporations

          Moves so slowly
          Grows so smoothly
          Takes so neatly
          It’s as if they belong
          And they’ve been here all along

          Grows so smoothly
          Moves so slowly
          Takes completely
          It’s as if they belong
          And they’ve been here all along

          This one’s ours
          Lets take another
          This one’s ours
          Lets take another
          This one’s ours
          Lets take another
          This one’s ours
          Lets take another

          Check the math here
          Check in ten years
          Clusterfuck theory
          Buy them up and shut them down
          Then repeat In every town

          Every town will be the same

          This one’s ours
          Lets take another
          This one’s ours
          Lets take another
          This one’s ours
          Lets take another
          This one’s ours
          Lets take another
          This one’s ours
          Lets take another
          This one’s ours
          Lets take another
          This one’s ours
          Lets take another
          This one’s ours
          Lets take another

          Five corporations
          Five corporations
          Five corporations
          There is a pattern

       3. McCarthy died a disgraced man after his anti-communist crusade was rejected by this country in the 1950’s, and he was censured by the Government.
          So take your failed ideology and propaganda have fun in your own country, manipulate your own elections.
          Thats a sweet way of saying fuck off FL

          1. Looks like you are upset because you can’t muster a rational argument. The Green New Deal is full of neomarxist baloney, and I may be doing you a favor by pointing this out, rather than becoming an advisor for a GOP candidate and working the document over with a two by four in a campaign. That document, and Ocasio interviews have wonderful material we could use to carve a Democratic candidate a new evacuation organ in his or hers digestive tract.

             1. Fernando

                Sshhhhh … The folks with progressive political inclinations are increasingly challenged to even become aware of all the alternative, deplorable views as they are – a priori – beneath consideration, don’tchano.

                Heck, even Rahm Emanuel’s piece from The Atlantic contains some uproarious observations including “Earth to Democrats”.

                The mere fact that Republican legislators are rushing proposals such as the GND to a vote should be, in Emmanuel’s view, a wake up call to Reality.

                1. Reality?
                   CG, the GND or any form of it will be corporate scammed just like all the other environmental laws and rules. FF companies are often exempted from the laws, because they could not operate within them. If they have trouble getting permits and problems with the laws, they just go to court or lobby and pay until they get their way.

                   The GOP and their corporate owners not only get their cake and eat it too, they want everyone else’s cake.

                   Reality is that the American system is a corptocracy running hard for the cliff. Reality is coming fast and hard.

                   If global warming was a fire, the FF corporations would be tossing gasoline on it and the governments would be studying it and trying to read the fire extinguisher instructions while paying the FF corps to keep throwing more gasoline.

                   So keep enjoying the fossil fuel burn, for a while.

                2. Coffeeguy- “Sshhhhh … The folks with progressive political inclinations are increasingly challenged to even become aware of all the alternative,”
                   Are you sure you are not talking about the people who voted for trump? Ideologues and partisans on both sides walk and talk like naivety is a virtue.

             2. FL- What I don’t like about your comments regarding USA policies is that as a foreigner you spout destructive propaganda , labeling everyone who doesn’t agree with you a communist. We have had enough of those destructive simplifications in this country for a long time.
                In reality, a fairly small percentage of Americans are ‘communist’, probably less than 1%.
                Most like capitalism, with a socialist flavor, to varying degrees.
                Most elderly people really like the socialist programs of Medicare and Social Security, for example.
                I am certainly capitalist leaning, but believe heavily in some regulation (and wealth redistribution) to prevent excessive accumulation of wealth and power among the few.
                Something like 50 people hold as much wealth as the poorer 3.4 Billion of the earth at this time.

                I personally do not believe in heavily taxing working people. I work fulltime, and pay plenty already.
                So I am fairly rational about these issues, and far from radical or communist as you would carelessly suggest. Even if I was, its none of your fucking business. I really resent your infantile interjections-ala Joeseph McCarthy. In short, you are not welcome to the political discussion of the USA. Apply for citizenship is you wish to manipulate and misrepresent.

                Fernando, I choose not to watch Fox news. You are a foreign version of that ideology. Therefore I put you in the playpen with others who deserve no attention from me. You have earned the ignore button. Wish I could say I was sorry for your life history, but I just don’t find you likable enough to muster the emotion. Adios!

                1. Hickory, the term “Democratic Socialist” was coined by German communists after East Germany collapsed. They knew communism wouldn’t sell, so they changed their label.

                   Let’s recall that Marxist-Leninism, as taught in the Soviet empire (where I was a slave in my youth), taught us (brainwashed most of us) that a) capitalism was evil, b) socialism involved state ownership of the means of production and commerce, and c) society would evolve towards communism, where there would be no private property at all, and everybody would give as much as they could, and receive what they needed (the detail they left out was the fact that the communist party leaders decided who “needed” what).

                   Socialism, therefore, is integral to Marxism, and it involves increasing the government’s share of the economy, by creating industrial and service structures run by government bureaucrats.

                   Socialism has an interesting side branch: national socialism as conceived by Adolf Hitler, which instead of putting everything under government ownership, would create a government command system to dictate to private enterprise every detail of how they were to function.

                   Both nazism (a member of the fascist family), and socialism, involve the elimination of individual choice and freedom, censorship, and the use of violence, including torture, concentration camps and genocide, to achieve their ends. So we see that both extremes, fascism and socialism, are similar in practice, the differences being mostly cosmetic as far as a regular joe working in a factory is concerned.

                   I use the term communists for what you call socialist because communists do explain socialism is a way station to their utopia, which of course isn’t possible to achieve. In the US you have a hard core of communists who are selling themselves as “Democratic Socialists” (call them DSA) copying the East German nomenclature and strategy, which takes them to sell neomarxism. These DSA communists use the European neomarxist recipe, which has four pillars: 1. Identitarian ideology, whereby they define homosexuals, minorities they define as such, women, and inmigrants as “aggrieved and underprivileged classes”. 2. Encouraging illegal inmigration to swell the “minority underclass”, 3. Encouraging radical feminism which claims the “white capitalist patriarchate” abuses women. 4. Using measures to control climate change as a Trojan Horse to introduce “climate justice” and the type of legislation they know will turn countries into giant gulags.

                   I study these modern communists closely, because they are the enemy. Fortunately they are fairly open about their aims (for example Ocasio mentions “capitalism must end” or similar words in several interviews, and I have minutes of DSA meetings written by their leaders where they discuss the need to hide their real aims from those attending their meetings “because they are not ready”. I also saw a document where the DSA author wrote they had to increase recruiting activity in sectors such as the electricity generation and distribution industry, so they could eventually induce large strikes and cause governments to collapse and yield to them.

                   These guys are easy to identify because they cone out jumping in defense of the two ugliest dictatorships ever seen in the Western Hemisphere: Castro’s and Chavez’s. When we drill down and research those who come out defending them, we see they are communists (or what you call socialists or sometimes progressives, a name I consider a backwards designation for retrogrades who want to take humanity back 100 years to the early years of the Soviet empire).

                   I realize what I explain doesn’t sit well with a community taught to think of itself as morally superior dogooders, when in reality they are like a zombie army snapping their jaws, on their way to destroy civilization. What we see in Venezuela isn’t an accident, it’s what these zombies do. We have seen them defend that monster for many years, and so now here we are, millions of Venezuelans in a desperate diaspora, hundreds of thousands dead who didn’t have to die, and 30 million living in a socialist dystopia, drinking sewage and roaming streets looking for food scraps.

                2. In the US you have a hard core of communists who are selling themselves as “Democratic Socialists” (call them DSA) copying the East German nomenclature and strategy, which takes them to sell neomarxism.

                   The US certainly has it’s fair share of problems but you are a despicable liar!

                   …so now here we are, millions of Venezuelans in a desperate diaspora, hundreds of thousands dead who didn’t have to die,

                   Provide proof of that statement! You are a liar!

                   https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13081

                   Since April 4, 2017, violent anti-government protests have rocked Venezuela. Characterised by deadly clashes between state security forces and opposition demonstrators, vandalism and destruction of public institutions, and the assassination of Chavista supporters, the unrest has left 126 people dead to date. Hundreds more have been injured.

    3. If an obvious lie is the best counterargument you can come up with, you don’t have any arguments.

20. Just in Time electrons or else.
    “Much of Venezuela is still in the dark — now four days running — after the worst blackout on modern record in Latin America enveloped the country last Thursday evening” Blame Entropy
    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-10/dozens-reported-dead-venezuela-after-mass-blackout-reaches-four-days

    1. We blame the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV. This is the Chavez/Maduro party, which includes narcos and a large number of motorcycle gangsters. The situation is tragic, but we already know destruction and murder is what communists do.

21. Fred, hope your dives don’t go like this

    https://cheezburger.com/96009217/this-man-survived-after-being-spat-out-by-a-whale-in-a-scene-reminiscent-of-the-biblical-jonah

    NAOM

    1. LOL! Any dive you survive is a good dive 😉

       1. +1 that

    2. notanoilman,

       Picture the scene: Baleen whale quietly feeding on sardines in the manner of baleen whales everywhere for many generations and then this guy gets in the way.

       My sympathy lies with the whale. Poor thing had its lunch interrupted, and besides, its eyes are on the side of its head.

       1. Heh, probably sucked up a few porpoises in its time too 😉

22. We have to fix fashion if we want to survive the climate crisis
    By Elizabeth Segran

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90311509/we-have-to-fix-fashion-if-we-want-to-survive-the-next-century

    Fashion brands, I’m talking to you: Enough is enough. Stop making me think it is normal to shop all the time, not just when I need something. You make flimsy dresses in cheap factories, and I snap them up. You drop new items every day, then send me emails–freakily customized to my tastes–telling me I must buy them right now, or they will sell out. And I believe you. To make room for new outfits, I schedule regular trips to Goodwill to donate the old ones, which will likely end up in a landfill anyway. (In California alone, Goodwill spends $7 million on dumping clothes.)

    In 2015, the fashion industry churned out 100 billion articles of clothing, doubling production from 2000, far outpacing global population growth. In that same period, we’ve stopped treating our clothes as durable, long-term purchases. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has found that clothing utilization, or how often we wear our clothes, has dropped by 36% over the past decade and a half, and many of us wear clothes only 7 to 10 times before it ends up in a landfill. Studies show that we only really wear 20% of our overflowing closets.

    For the past few years, we’ve pointed the finger at fast-fashion brands like H&M, Zara, and Forever21, saying that they are responsible for this culture of overconsumption. But that’s not entirely fair. The vast majority of brands in the $1.3 billion fashion industry–whether that’s Louis Vuitton or Levi’s–measure growth in terms of increasing production every year. This means not just convincing new customers to buy products, but selling more and more to your existing customers. Right now, apparel companies make 53 million tons of clothes into the world annually. If the industry keeps up its exponential pace of growth, it is expected to reach 160 million tons by 2050.

    I’m not exaggerating when I say that making so many clothes is destroying the planet. Decades of discarded clothes are literally clogging up our oceans and landfills. In the United States alone, we send 21 billion pounds of textiles into landfills every single year, and since most modern clothing contains some plastic-based fibers, they will never decompose. And speaking of plastic pollution, synthetic fabrics that get swept into the oceans live there forever, choking animals that mistake them for food. The fashion industry currently relies on 98 million tons of oil to make synthetic fibers; it contributes 20% to the world’s water pollution thanks to toxic dyes; and it generates 1.2 billion tons of greenhouse gases.

    1. We could save enough on clothing and cosmetics alone, with plenty left over, to pay for everything we need in terms of building out the renewable energy industries, and thus mostly getting away from using fossil fuels for transportation and electrical generation.

       I remember when I was a kid that Momma bought us nylon shirts to wear when working if the weather was suitable for nylon, not too cold, because nylon shirts lasted more or less FOREVER, used almost every day, for years, being passed down from older to younger kids.

       So fossil fuels and synthetic clothing aren’t necessarily bad things, in terms of clothing.

       1. Cotton Kills – one of the 1st things taught in survival school. You will quickly expire in cotton upon grid collapse. Will a hemp jacket really last decades?

          1. yep, cotton kills.
             Anyone with backcountry experience learns that soon, or suffers the consequences. .

       2. I can’t save anything in that area. I own four pair of pants, four shorts, two suits, about ten shirts, and a bunch of T-shirts. And they are always the same. The key to being cool lies in the way you walk, and look at people. Sometimes I carry an old “Africa and Middle East Region” bag I got me 30 years ago, back in the days before the Chinese made everything and we could look for the Union label.

    2. I’m not exaggerating when I say that making so many clothes is destroying the planet. Decades of discarded clothes are literally clogging up our oceans and landfills. In the United States alone, we send 21 billion pounds of textiles into landfills every single year, and since most modern clothing contains some plastic-based fibers, they will never decompose. And speaking of plastic pollution, synthetic fabrics that get swept into the oceans live there forever, choking animals that mistake them for food. The fashion industry currently relies on 98 million tons of oil to make synthetic fibers; it contributes 20% to the world’s water pollution thanks to toxic dyes; and it generates 1.2 billion tons of greenhouse gases.

       That excerpted paragraph underscores precisely why I think that any discussion of political left vs, right wing ideology or socialism and communism vs. capitalism is almost completely irrelevant at this point. That discussion is so 19th and 20th century. There is a massive and radically disruptive paradigm shift already underway on many levels. Welcome to the 21st century!

       I have posted this link on previous occasions but maybe a few readers like Fernando Leanme and Dave Hilleman can watch it and at least try to understand where I’m coming from. BAU is already dead! It’s time to have it’s funeral, give ourselves a brief time to mourn and then move on.

       The future is already here, it just isn’t evenly distributed!
       William Gibson

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wHT-FsCJjM
       The Biggest Revolution in 3D Printing is Yet to Come

    3. “Right now, apparel companies make 53 million tons of clothes into the world annually. ”

       So 14 pounds of clothing per person per year is too much? Maybe we can cut back to 5 pounds per person per year to satisfy the eco-maniacs who miss the major problems and try to deflect to minor issues. Those minor issues will solve themselves as society changes to a low carbon/low energy existence.

       About half is from cotton which is heavily pesticide and chemical fertilizer ridden non-food agriculture that uses up close to 3percent of global farmland.

       My experience with synthetics is they last much longer than cotton and have much better insulating and wind shielding properties. By using synthetics it’s easy to keep room temps in the 50’s during winter months, potentially saving vast amounts of energy for a very small expenditure in money and embedded energy.
       Synthetic insulation is reducing FF use every day of the year on a global level. That can last for 100 years or more and is somewhat reusable. So FF are not all bad. They should not be used for primary energy but they do have valuable uses that save lots of energy and reduce the non-food farmland.

       As far as clothing entering the ocean, that is a societal problem of not properly disposing of waste and the general outdated view that the world is trash bin, not a materials problem. That might work if there were just a few hundred million people but not anytime in the last 2000 years and certainly not in an high tech industrial civilization at any level.

       It’s good to be frugal but beware of eco-maniacs. They are always looking for something to justify their existence and will side track efforts from the major problems and predicaments.

       Maybe we can 3D print clothing that weighs next to nothing. 🙂

       Uh-oh, I use up about 5 pounds of shoes each year. That means I will end up naked at 5 pounds of clothing each year. Bummer, especially October to May.

       1. Uh-oh, I use up about 5 pounds of shoes each year. That means I will end up naked at 5 pounds of clothing each year. Bummer, especially October to May.

          Just encase yourself in a silk cocoon 😉

          1. Didn’t come with spinnerets.

             1. https://www.thoughtco.com/silkworms-bombyx-domestication-170667

                Silk fibers are water-insoluble filaments that animals (chiefly the larval version of moths and butterflies, but also spiders) secrete from specialized glands. Animals store the chemicals fibroin and sericin–silkworm cultivation is often called sericulture–as gels in the insects’ glands. As the gels are excreted, they are converted into fibers. Spiders and at least 18 different orders of insects make silk. Some use them to construct nests and burrows, but butterflies and moths use the excretions to spin cocoons. That ability that began at least 250 million years ago.

                1. I used to have silkworms, however I still am not equipped with spinnerets.

                2. Jeez, having spinnerets is so Permian-Triassic 😉

                   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx8TcGrCOSI

                   Spider Beer Overview: Making Yeast Produce Black Widow Silk

                   Cheers!

       2. 5lbs – plenty for me but I do need to get some new shorts and shoes, well within that limit.

          NAOM

          1. Much of global population lives further north. Shorts and sneakers don’t cut it.

       3. Even if synthetic clothing is conscientiously disposed of somehow, how do we resolve the microfiber problem? Every time an article of synthetic clothing is laundered, microfibers are released into the wash water. Sewage treatment does not remove them and they pollute waterways, and ultimately the seas. It’s just one more uncontrolled experiment with our natural environment the effects of which are impossible to predict.

          “Exactly how much microfiber pollution exists in the environment is a subject of research and debate. The United Nations has identified microfiber pollution as a key outgrowth of the 300 million tons of plastic produced annually. And a 2016 study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology found that more than a gram of microfibers is released every time synthetic jackets are washed and that as much as 40 percent of those microfibers eventually enter waterways.”

          https://phys.org/news/2018-03-microfiber-pollution-laundry-room.html

          1. Better filters.
             Next fleece garment I purchase, I will weigh and over time see how much fiber goes into my septic tank. No fish or wildlife will be harmed in this experiment.

             The real horror polymeric molecule is lignin. A long time ago plants developed this highly cross-linked natural polymer which allowed them to grow taller and larger. The problem was that nothing could digest it. Thus as trees died, they just piled up and eventually formed coal. Coal then allowed a swollen brained hominid to industrialize and produce major global devastation, including synthetic polymers.
             So really, it’s all the plant’s fault. Without lignin, humans would still be low population and dependent upon wood for heat and power, a very limiting factor. Or maybe we would have jumped right to solar and wind power, missing most of the fossil fuel age.

             Of course eventually fungi developed that could digest lignin but it was too late, sealing the global fate far in the future.

             1. Well described snapshot of that history.

    4. You need to see the quantity of used American apparel that is on sale in the street tiangis here. Whole bundles get sent down for sale here. If you are concerned about waste of perfectly good apparel consider starting a business shipping it south and selling it.

       NAOM

23. Can China recover from its disastrous one-child policy?
    by Lily Kuo and Xueying Wang

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/02/china-population-control-two-child-policy

    Faced with a population that is shrinking and ageing, Chinese policymakers are attempting to engineer a baby boom after more than three decades of a Malthusian family planning regime better-known as the one-child policy. Central policy planners have loosened restrictions on family sizes, and now all married couples can have two children. There is talk of the limits being dropped altogether, and amid aggressive propaganda drives, local officials are experimenting with subsidies and incentives for parents.

    Demographers warn that China’s population will begin to shrink in the next decade, potentially derailing the world’s second-largest economy, with a far-reaching global impact. China’s birthrate last year was at its lowest since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, with 15.23 million births, dramatically lower than the 21-23 million officials had expected.

    By 2050 as much as a third of the country’s population will be made up of people over the age of 60, putting severe strain on state services and the children who bear the brunt of caring for elderly relatives.

    Local governments across China are struggling to reverse the declines with subsidies, propaganda initiatives and new regulations on workplace leave.

    Some worry that such measures will turn coercive, with the authorities deploying an extensive family planning apparatus to encourage births. Officials once restricted population size through heavy fines, forced abortions and sterilisations.

    Critics say that less invasive but still punitive measures would probably emerge gradually at local level under the guise of other causes such as preventing sex-selective abortions. Several provinces have banned abortions after 14 weeks, and Jiangxi province in the south requires the signature of three medical professionals before the procedure can be performed. More provinces have put in place obstacles to getting divorces, including a test or mandated cooling-off period.

    1. Hi Cats,
       I’m a big fan of the Guardian,and the writers and editors pretty much have their hearts in the right place, but their hearts interfere with their heads, to the extent they cannot think, in many cases.

       There’s no short answer, so everybody be warned, this is a long one.

       I’m no fan of authoritarian government, but in times of emergency, it’s the only known workable way of getting things done FAST. We Yankees went that route, to a very substantial extent to fight WWII for example.

       The Chinese government, when it put in the one child policy was mostly operated on the basis of actual scientific planning, in some respects, including THIS one, and the leadership was WELL AWARE that China was actually in extreme danger of widespread famine and economic collapse as the RESULT of OVERPOPULATION.

       The one child policy slowed population growth substantially, and contributed to economic growth substantially, because small families are able to do more productive work such as in factories, rather than just digging in the dirt to provide food for their too numerous kids.

       Any body who knows the basics of the biological sciences and economics, such as agricultural production plotted against available farmland and water supplies, etc, would NECESSARILY find himself in the position of supporting this one child policy, because he would KNOW that failing to do so would lead to DISASTER later on.

       It’s better to do something proactive, even if it’s something one finds repulsive, than to allow something a HUNDRED times worse to happen later on.

       China has now turned an economic corner, and can sell enough goods abroad to import food as necessary, for now.

       And now that China IS more prosperous, and better educated, with the government loosening the chains substantially, it’s necessary to loosen them even more, to prevent the people from rising against the government, if they become too unhappy.

       And now the government is probably calculating that China WILL be able to continue to thrive and grow economically, with over population no longer being an existential question. Maybe the government is right about that. Maybe not. I think China will be far better off with a declining population, for a lot of reasons based on biology, geology, international politics up ranging right up to hot resource wars, etc.

       But if anybody cares to seriously look into the history of empires, and is not blinded by his own leftish leaning political prejudices, he will be seriously alarmed by the fact that China is buying up farmland in other countries by the tens of thousands of hectares, and building up the military at a substantial pace. The people who live on this farmland are at high risk of being displaced, or being turned into defacto slaves, just as they have been in the colonies of western countries in the past, and still are, to some extent, even today.

       An hour or two spent investigating what China is doing in neighboring countries is enough to send chills down your back, in terms of what life is going to be like for the people of those countries. They’re fast losing the basis of their livelihoods, as for instance fishing and agriculture, etc, due to Chinese actions.

       And for what it’s worth, I’ve NEVER seen ANY evidence that leads me to believe that continued population growth is NECESSARY OR ESSENTIAL to economic prosperity. If anybody is interested in debating this point, I’m READY.

       So far as I’m concerned, people who believe that are either simply ignorant of economic realities, as opposed to the propaganda of big business interests, or unwilling to examine the evidence, because they’re right wingers and thus automatically opposed to anything that smacks of socialism or government activism as they see things.

       I’m also ready to argue that China as a nation, and the Chinese people, as individuals, will be substantially better off with a falling population, but this reply is too long already.

       I will post another later pointing out why I believe these arguments are true.

       1. Summary: the Guardian sucks.

    2. Cats- this is exactly the kind of demographic crises the world needs- in every country. On an even bigger scale. We must learn how to manage it as best we can. On child per family may be too many.

       1. Hickory,

          See the chart below from

          https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol28/39/

          Note the line for total fertility ratio of 1.0 (one child per women on average for the World) where World population falls from 8 billion in 2050 to about 1 billion in 2160 and nearly zero in 2250 (black line in chart below.)

          It might be a good idea for 100 years, but after that birth rates would need to increase to replacement level, perhaps to stabilize World population at around 500 million or whatever number ecologists believe is sustainable.

          

          1. Thanks for the chart Dennis.
             1 kid per family until 2100, then re-access, would be a reasonable path.
             I suppose I shouldn’t hold my breathe for it to happen.

       2. Bart_at_EB Mod @ Tom W • 4 days ago

          “Weird how Population is one of the first thing to come to people’s minds. We know that emissions and resource use is vastly skewed toward the wealthy few percent.

          Logically, it would make more sense to reduce the number of wealthy individuals, e.g. through taxation. Faster, more humane, more do-able, more within our capabilities.

          It’s as if we have a blind spot.”

          PERMÆA @ Bart_at_EB • 2 hours ago

          “Good point, Bart, and a related one I’ve made before as well (on Peak Oil Barrel), at least insofar as WRT the idea of how many humans Earth could support which would depend on their particular footprints. I suggested, we might be regarded to have ‘3’ pairs: One; our actual physical ones; another, our ‘sociotechnological’ ones (apparently currently demanding more than one Earth can handle); and a third set being what we could have if we shrunk our effects (and therefore that particular pair of footprints) on the planet.

          Given this, and as an aside, the idea did occur as to whether the dinosaurs might have somehow messed up the carbon cycle enough, what with their physical sizes and population numbers, to lead to their demise. In looking into that, however, it seems that the consensus is still WRT an extraterrestrial-body impact and/or maybe a (resulting?) rash of volcanic activity.”

          1. Caelan as usual manages to miss the real point by a mile at least.
             It’s true that RICH people, meaning the ones with private jets, etc, have large to very large personal carbon footprints, in most cases.
             BUT the REASON they are able to be rich is that all the rest of us in prosperous western countries, and elsewhere, are so productive, and thus able to produce enough stuff and generate enough money that some of us CAN get rich. Even Louis the Fourteenth, or the Russian czars, didn’t have jets or even refrigerators or telephones, until the great masses of us lower economic class types made these things possible.

             And we of the masses are about to even CONSIDER giving up our cars and trucks, central heating and air, vacations, meals out, nice cars and trucks, etc etc etc.

             A rich individual may have a personal carbon footprint a hundred times larger than a typical working class person, but there are thousands of working class people for each truly rich person.

             Nobody really knows how to tax the rich, because they and their lawyers and accountants and bought and paid for politicians are usually two or three steps ahead of the rest of the political establishment.

             1. OFM,

                Good accountants and tax lawyers certainly know how to tax the rich effectively and close any existing loopholes in the tax laws.

                You are correct that for the most part the middle class refuses to elect representatives that might enact such legislation. A depression might change that fact, we will soon see (in about 11 years).

                1. I’m pretty sure I paid more tax than trump over the last 20 yrs.
                   Lets see the documents that prove me wrong.

                2. ‘In about 11 years’? ‘The middle class refuses to elect representatives that might enact such legislation’?
                   Haha, you’re so cute sometimes, Dennis.

             2. “Caelan as usual manages to miss the real point by a mile at least.” ~ OFM

                I don’t exactly give a shit about any point per se, Glen–imaginary, retroactively manifested, hair-split or otherwise– and sometimes don’t, depending– hence your off-the-mark ‘as usual’ addition, incidentally. I just threw that 2 cents into the mix as a related aside/food for fodder. Besides, that was Bart’s you may be referring to.

                My point(s), if I were to make one(/them) and really dig in, might at least begin to run along the lines of what is wealth, etc.., such as if we’re running down the planet/communities/individuals, and/or how systems of rules (so-called ‘laws’, as if they’re things of immutable physics) can ‘encode for poverty’, and stuff like that.
                My points might rip or otherwise threaten the ‘tapestries of schemas’– often found, as per allegories, in the minds of the prisoners of Plato’s Cave and The Matrix– and cause some stress and/or annoyance, etc..

                Let’s just be happy that I don’t bother digging in and leave it at that. ‘u^

                1. So Caelan,
                   What will you do once you manage to elect yourself President and Dictator for Life, after having one last election, with one man having one vote, one time?

                   ( And of course with your henchmen making sure there won’t be many opposition voters allowed to vote?)

                   It IS rather helpful to face up to reality when talking about real problems.

                2. “What will you do once you manage to elect yourself President and Dictator for Life, after having one last election, with one man having one vote, one time?”

                   He will pardon Trump for his crimes and paving the way

                3. Whose reality, Glen? Are you suggesting you have some kind of absolute handle on it? If so, then maybe you should be asking that ‘simulated’ question for yourself.

                   You could be on your deathbed in the hospital, still babbling on about any number of infinite points that one or another, or your personal nurse, somehow misses. It becomes pretty meaningless.

                   I’ll ask you instead what of your book as well as your father, your absence and return to POB… seeing as some people hereon seem to want to make the virtual reality of the internet and POB some sort of meaningful ‘hangout’.

                   What do you do and/or like to do when you’re not babbling incessantly about nothing?

    3. “Can China recover from its disastrous one-child policy?”
       Nothing like schizophrenic government control.
       It’s a Darwin Award world.
       Just remember, whether you stop having children by accident, voluntarily or by government edict, you just awarded your whole line back to the one celled animal ancestors a Darwin Award.

       The Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek honor, originating in Usenet newsgroup discussions around 1985. They recognize individuals who have supposedly contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool via death or sterilization by their own actions.

       1. While the world churns toward disaster, they worry about money.

          https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/south-koreas-fertility-rate-set-to-hit-record-low

24. https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/11/18259580/tesla-price-hike-stores-reversal

    Some people MIGHT argue that Musk and Tesla management know how to get tens of millions of dollars worth of free publicity with a press release. I’m one of them , lol. ANY publicity, other than about fatal wrecks, etc, is good publicity for Tesla.

25. Amazing Magna Model S Upgrade. How many types of Electric drivetrains? The answer is 42.
    https://youtu.be/atOpOU-8Vkg?t=260

26. The Venezuela blackout is now causing thousands of deaths, there’s large scale looting, and water supplies dried up. This has people taking contaminated water from polluted rivers, so I expect a surge of epidemics. This is an interesting experiment you can use to see what can happen to a developed nation if it moves to 100% renewables and the wind fails to blow for several days in a row.

    1. This is an interesting experiment you can use to see what can happen to a developed nation if it moves to 100% renewables and the wind fails to blow for several days in a row.

       No, it is an example of the proverbial canary in the coal mine, pun intended, of what happens to a society that put all it’s eggs in the fossil fuels basket with no thought to a back up plan and it begins to suffer the consequences when that system reaches its limits and begins to fail systemically!
       And to be clear I am not minimizing the corruption and incompetence of the Maduro government.

       And please stop with this bullshit about what happens to renewables such as solar when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind when the wind doesn’t blow. These are engineering problems that have demonstrable real world solutions already being deployed around the world.

       1. Speaking of instability, with the current unstable GOP presidency causing world tensions to rise while overshoot and environmental problems surge worldwide it’s best to realize that the current geopolitical alliances can change quickly.
          It was not long ago that Canada and the US were eying each other for invasion, even after the US had aided Britain in World War I.

          In 1921, Canada developed a secret plan to invade the U.S.

          Less than a century ago, simmering tensions between the two countries led generals on both sides to draw up plans to invade their neighbor. Canada’s 1921 plan for a ‘pre-emptive invasion’ of the northern U.S. was called Defence Scheme No. 1. America’s plan to knock out Canada, developed a few years later, had a rather more belligerent title: War Plan Red.

          https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/in-1921-canada-developed-a-secret-plan-to-invade-the-us

          The globe looks like it is on the verge of some major political realignments.
          Russia-China alliance?
          https://www.politico.eu/blogs/the-coming-wars/2019/02/russia-china-alliance-rule-the-world/

          1. Like Ireland becoming an independent country and remaining a member of the EU post Brexit?

             Yep a lot of things will be shifting geopolitically in the coming decade.

             But I believe history will show both Brexit and Trump’s foreign policy and trade tariffs to have been unecessary self inflicted wounds that may yet prove devastating to world peace and stability.

    2. Ridiculous- “This is an interesting experiment you can use to see what can happen to a developed nation if it moves to 100% renewables and the wind fails to blow for several days in a row.”

       Sure, that is the take home message if you have highly distorted agenda to propagate (propaganda).
       More accurately, it is what happens when you have a poorly maintained centralized (and thus vulnerable) system.

       A stable system is one that is decentralized with innumerable sources that can operate both independently and in a clustered format, that can feed a local grid network, as well as participate in a larger regional grid. Redundancy, flexibility, and many point sources of generation.
       This is the system that a developed and thoughtful country will implement.
       With a wide variety of generating sources.

    3. Also would need no sunshine, no water flow in rivers, no pumped hydro storage, no EVs that could be connected to grid for backup, no hydrogen produced for emergency backup, no thermal storage using excess energy produced when sun is shining, wind blowing, or rivers flowing, no existing battery storage. Of course this would be world wide as most nations would be widely interconnected with HVDC transmission lines.

       Some people lack imagination.

    4. “The Venezuela blackout is now causing thousands of deaths”
       Cite?
       Not the numbers I am seeing.

       NAOM

    5. Fernando, what do you like to do? What makes you happy? This? Venezuela? Are you its self-fashioned savior of a sort with a Cuban sociopolitical chip on your shoulder? Did they redistribute disproportionate land-grabs and give the commons back to some measure? I think Chavez tried that, yes? If so, why should he have if things were fine?

       But back to you…
       What about swimming? Or a sauna or board-game with some friends over drinks, maybe at a cafe or something? A bike ride around the countryside? A picnic? A craft or other group meetup? A hobby? Carpentry? A new piece of craft for the home? Tennis?

       Life is short.

       It seems to me that Venezuela is a warm and fertile place that can produce all the peace, food and welfare it needs, but doesn’t seem to because of people and their force or threats thereof and rules (AKA laws) and indoctrination in their regard.

       So how about we let Venezuela collapse and get mired in her miseries if she cannot do anything about herself?

       Ditto with what/whoever comes next. That way, maybe we learn. Or not.

27. See- “they”* are already planting the seeds for the reverse experiment to commence.

    https://phys.org/news/2019-03-dose-solar-geoengineering.html

    *- Who are they? Verdict is still out on that. It may be Koch Bros, or the UN Biosphere Protection Committee, or the Society of Petroleum Engineers, or OPEC, or the Greta Collective Action Group [GCAG], or Putin, or Greenpeace. Or a collaboration of any number of strange bedfellows.

    1. *- Who are they? Verdict is still out on that.

       Nope!

       “we have met the enemy, and he is us!”

       No one want’s to deal with fucking reality! We are in a planetary emergency because of continuing use of fossil fuels! And everybody everywhere wants to deny reality and continue with BAU!

       https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/12/trudeau-faces-a-national-energy-crisis-thats-at-the-tipping-point.html

       Canada’s PM Trudeau is facing a national energy crisis that’s at the tipping point

       Far north of Texas, another great North American oil reserve sits, waiting — some say — to be further exploited. The province of Alberta is Canada’s main oil producer: 97 percent of the country’s proven reserves — 166.3 billion barrels — can be found in its oil sands. The reserve, buried beneath a layer of muskeg and forest in the northeastern part of the province, holds a reservoir of heavy crude oil known as bitumen, mixed with sand, clay and water. That oil is recovered by either mining or drilling: Both methods are more expensive than the means used to recover conventional oil reserves.

       The Alberta oil sands already produce 3.6 million barrels of oil per day, and plans are to increase that to 3.9 million by 2027, but the province is facing a problem of oversupply. The infrastructure is in place to produce the oil, but the oil sands only have access to the North American market via crude-by-rail. The price differential between the unrefined bitumen produced in Canada and what American refineries can get for the synthetic crude they make out of it isn’t favorable to the Canadian market.

       The bottom line: “Low oil prices have put the Alberta economy in crisis,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the Chamber of Commerce in November.

       Enough of this bullshit! All of this is insanity cubed! I think I need to disappear for a while and reasess things. I’d go fishing but there are hardly any fish left worth catching on my local reefs and they’ve torn down all the little bars along my beach and put up multi million dollar condos, Marriott Hotels and a Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort to name just a few of the things that have destroyed my peace and quite. All of that is going to sink into the ocean in a few years but we are building more roads, parking garages and airports!

       Granted, maybe I’m the one that’s crazy!

       1. “Enough of this bullshit! All of this is insanity cubed! I think I need to disappear for a while and reasess things.”

          If you have not seen this, best to watch it before reassessment. Might as well deal with most of it at once. Reality sucks but at least one knows the ground one stands upon.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PflgOr0FSDs

          1. Reality sucks but at least one knows the ground one stands upon.

             Oh I’ve known for a long time. I went to the town hall meetings to voice my opposition to this monstrosity! Yet there it is in all its glory and splendor waiting for a direct hit from a Cat 5 hurricane to take it out… It;s only a matter of time!

             https://www.realestatelawblog.com/new-projects-help-revitalize-hollywood-florida/

             New Projects Help Revitalize Hollywood, Florida
             SEPTEMBER 10, 2015 INSIGHT DAVID BLATTNER David Blattner
             Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort, the Jimmy Buffett themed resort, is nearing completion on Hollywood, Florida’s famed Broadwalk after years of anticipation. The 349-room, 17-story hotel will be the first destination resort hotel to open in Hollywood since the Diplomat Hotel re-opened in 2002 as the Westin (now Hyatt) Diplomat Resort. The hotel is expected to become the first Margaritaville to earn the Four Diamond ranking. City leaders are optimistic that the hotel will not only bring family and convention business to the beach, but other investors and developers will come to Hollywood because of Margaritaville’s success.

             The good news for Hollywood is that others see the city’s potential and a number of other projects are in the planning stages, and some are under already well under construction. For example, The Related Group has passed 50% of pre-sales for its 407-unit, 41 story hotel/condo, Hyde Beach House. Located on the southern end of the beach, Hyde Beach House will be the tallest building in Hollywood.

             There was a town ordinance at one time prohibiting buildings over 4 stories tall on Hollywood Beach. Thank you, Real Estate Law Blog!

28. 166 billion barrels sounds like a hell of a lot……. until you consider that we collectively use a couple of billion barrels in less than a MONTH, unless my mental arithmetic is off. So Canada, if the oil could be produced that fast, could supply the world for about seven years or so.

    What could possibly go wrong ? After all, Venezuela has oil too, lol.
    There’s no need to even think about running OUT….. for at least another ten to twenty years.
    But I don’t have any problem imagining gasoline being five or six bucks a gallon WITHOUT a high fuel tax before the worms get me.

29. I wonder why red NC , with the worst gerrymandered congressional districts in the USA, in favor of the R’s of course, ranks second among all the states in solar power capacity?

    Maybe there’s SOMETHING to be said for NC style politics and business.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/19/the-us-states-leading-the-way-in-solar.html

    1. “Maybe there’s SOMETHING to be said for NC style politics”

       It’s called autocracy driven by racism

       “A democracy is a government chosen by its citizens. An individual without the input of the country’s citizens governs an autocracy. Autocratic rulers make economic, social and political decisions without consent from the citizens.”

       https://www.reference.com/government-politics/opposite-democracy-b55a12f1cc524f01

       “RALEIGH, N.C. — Federal prosecutors investigating potential election crimes have demanded documents for a grand jury reviewing a North Carolina congressional race that’s still undecided and being rerun after last year’s contest was deemed tainted.

       The state elections board on Tuesday provided a grand jury subpoena issued last week showing the U.S. Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section in Washington, D.C., is conducting a criminal investigation. The subpoena demands “all documents related to the investigation of election irregularities affecting counties within the 9th Congressional District.””

       https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/justice-department-issues-subpoena-north-carolina-election-investigation-n982296

       1. GOOD MORNING , HB!
          I’m glad to see you’re your usual sourpuss self, and as usual unwilling to see anything except in black and white. Your comment is good for half a dozen more votes for Trump and company, in the event that many Tarheels happen to read them.

          Believe it or not, a lot of very ( socially ) conservative people are well enough and more than well enough, educated to understand (and given time to reflect) act on the environmental front, if their attention is once focused on environmental questions.

          But I have never been able to convince any of these people, who are my next door neighbors, politically, economically, and socially as well, to actually read this blog more than once or twice. Two or three comments of the sort you post demeaning people rather than discussing issues are enough that they will never visit this site again.

          Anybody else may note that in MY comment, I truthfully pointed out that NC is red, in terms of government, because the R’s have gerrymandered the state to the point it’s the worst by a mile in the entire country in that respect. I try to tell it like it is, communicating truthfully, rather than just spewing partisan and poisonous vomit.

          Also note that except in cases of extreme gerrymandering, the people usually actually get what they want, in terms of choosing between parties, and ultimately, governing philosophies.

          All we need to do is move two or three people out of the R column, on average, to return control of the government to the D’s nationally, and in many cases also at the local and state level.

          Throwing mud at people who are your potential friends is not helpful.

          1. Good morning Mac,

             “But I have never been able to convince any of these people, who are my next door neighbors, politically, economically, and socially as well, to actually read this blog more than once or twice. Two or three comments of the sort you post demeaning people rather than discussing issues are enough that they will never visit this site again.”

             “because the R’s have gerrymandered the state to the point it’s the worst by a mile in the entire country”

             “Throwing mud at people who are your potential friends is not helpful”

             If the truth hurts, you need to change your ways. Quality over quantity. I have higher standards than you Mac.

             The Democrats are a big tent party, but there is no room in it for autocracy, fascism, racism, homophobia and misogyny.

30. Cruise Automation (parent company GM) of SF, announced hiring of 1000 additional employees.
    https://getcruise.com/

31. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/03/new-fuel-cell-could-help-fix-renewable-energy-storage-problem

    I doubt that this new tech will be commercialized at scale within ten years at best, if it is EVER scaled up economically.
    But when you read about something like this two , three , four or more times a year, maybe you get a feeling that someday we really will have superduper cheap batteries.

    1. It’s more of the same. It’s like making syncrude from natural gas, it’s always just around the corner. We have the technology to make the nicest crude you ever saw, and waxes, and diesel, but the prices keep it away.

32. Food for thought.
    https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-03-13/what-happens-when-communities-say-no-to-solar-and-wind/
    Don’t click on it unless your attention span is at least ten minutes, lol.

    Ditto this one
    https://www.railjournal.com/in_depth/how-china-builds-high-speed-rail-for-less

33. https://electrek.co/2019/03/12/tesla-fires-almost-half-its-global-recruiting-team-in-attempt-to-cut-costs/

    I don’t see that this is anything other than the usual business as usual kind of thing, unless the people being laid off are engineers involved in research and design or overseeing existing manufacturing processes.

    Research and design work has to continue, to be ready with newer vehicles coming online later…… but you can’t recruit people to work in and run manufacturing or sales or shipping or anything else more than a few months ahead of the time you actually plan on PAYING THEM to come aboard, lol.

    It should be obvious that the current factory operations are fully staffed, to the extent they NEED people currently. Skilled workers, truckers, machine operators, and tradesmen hoping to get on with a top notch company fill out applications years ahead, hoping to be hired eventually…. but I’m willing to bet Tesla has a fair sized hard drive full of applications from such people already, with more arriving daily.

    1. Tesla isn’t competitive long term unless they learn to make cars. I saw a video by an engineering testing firm which took a Tesla apart and documented all sorts of poor design and flaws. They said the battery management system was the best, and the rest of the car ranged from mediocre to lousy.

       I suspect they’ll be bought by General Motors to get the battery management and software bits, and keep the naneplate, but change the vehicle itself to be more like say a Buick.

       1. Fernando (and Dennis)

          If you haven’t yet seen the short video from the Tesla mechanic “35 pounds of dirt trapped in Tesla … ” it may shed some further light on your comment.

          Seems like the ‘mystery’ of rear bumpers falling off these cars may be due to the entrapment of water/dirt/slush in the undercarriage.
          Added weight causes some problems.

          Whoops.

          1. 35 pounds makes a difference in a two ton plus vehicle? What happens when one puts luggage or groceries in the trunk? Are you joking with us?

             Edit: Found three instances so far of bumper cover coming off.
             “Nair says it appears the bumper cover separated from its screws, and the theory on Twitter goes that a piece of shielding was missing, torn or loose. Without it, rainwater got into the bumper cover, and the weight of accumulated water tore the plastic piece away.”
             So they forget a piece now and then. 🙂

             Or the shield gets broken.
             https://insideevs.com/tesla-model-3-rear-bumper-rain/
             Guess they will have to fix this if it is a real problem, two or three instances could just be assembly errors. Maybe bigger washers and some Velcro to put it back on quickly. 🙂

             1. I read everything I can find on Tesla cars, and I haven’t heard anything about bumpers falling off.

                Having said this much, slush and or dirt is commonly trapped inside the unibodies (and the frames of pickups and suvs as well!) of virtually every kind of car I have ever heard of, bar NONE, and I still hang around a garage where some of my friends work.

                MILLIONS of Hondas, Toyotas, Nissans, Fords, Chevys and Mercedes are sitting in wrecking yards TODAY because they have rusted out beyond repair.

                I have a Chevrolet in my yard this minute that I’m stripping as my own personal source of used but still good engine and driveline parts to use on another Chevy. Waste not want not. I’ve got good bit of fast appreciating land I have bought over the years with the money I COULD have spent on cars.

                Maybe a few Teslas have trapped water and crud in the back bumper which have subsequently frozen and expanded and broken loose the fasteners along the bottom edge, making the bumper flap like the bumpers do on fifty million older Chevy trucks.

                The Ford fans in my neighborhood put bumper stickers on their trucks that read:

                This is Ford country. On a quiet night, you can hear the Chevys rust.

                But newer Chevys are no more prone to rusting out than other makes.

                I once owned a mid nineties Toyota less than ten years old that rusted so bad and so fast that the frame actually broke completely thru just in front of the rear springs. So I cut it off behind the cab, and spliced on the rear half of the frame from another Toyota pickup that DIDN’T rust out, but was wrecked in the front.

                Teslas as far as I can tell are actually very reliable, in terms of the owners having to pay for any repairs, because whatever tends to go wrong seems to go wrong while the car is still under warranty. Sky Daddy help you if you wreck one though, and have to pay for fixing it out of pocket.

                1. The superset society that manufactures Tesla, etc., is ‘unreliable’.

                   And we’re trapped…

                   You think you’re going somewhere in your car?

                   Think again.

             2. Maybe the bumper got bumped.

                NAOM

          2. ‘The good is the enemy of the mediocre.’

             Yes, I heard about that Tesla issue. But, one-way Mars and the Hyperloop? It’s all so loopy, and I’ve written that Musk is still in the sandbox, so to speak, playing with his Tonka and Hotwheels toys. Maybe add that Tintin rocket too.

             Too much ridiculousness from those who command too much power and resources. Hence collapse. (No surprise.)

             “…and the rest of the car ranged from mediocre to lousy.” ~ Fernando Leanme

             “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” ~ Nick G at various times and places

             Let’s not flatter ourselves, Nick. Here’s my edit for you:

             ‘The good is the enemy of the mediocre.’ Title track.

             And if you work for so-called government, might that be closer to the truth than you want to admit?
             Recall what I wrote a few years ago hereon about the idea of society averaging out to average intelligence.

             At least there are gondolas/aerial cableways (which make much more sense than quite a few things):

             Mexico City Wants to Build 34km (21mi) of Urban Gondolas

             “This week Mexico City’s mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, released details of a massive urban gondola project which is comprised of four lines and 34 kilometres (21 miles). Yes, that’s 34km of ropeways!

             Officials estimate that this network, known as the Cablebús, could transport a staggering 117 million passenger trips per year when it is complete. If built, Mexico City may one day be home to the world’s largest network of Cable Propelled Transit (CPT) systems and steal the coveted title away from La Paz’s Mi Teleférico network (estimated to be 32.7km when fully built).

             Today, some readers might recall that the region is already home to the 4.7km (2.9mi) Mexicable which opened in 2016.”

             Lost and found:

             “PV’s and EV’s don’t seem to be pushing the FF and ecocide needles down while they dance to the tune of the ecocidal crony-capitalist plutarchy (CCP)” ~ Caelan MacIntyre

             “Your argument that PV’s and EV’s don’t seem to be pushing the FF and ecocide needles down is just plain stupid. It’s like someone claiming that using a bucket to bail water out of a sinking boat is a bad idea because the boat is still sinking.” ~ Fred Magyar

             Actually, if you want to use that analogy, since non-renewable renewable energy systems come embedded with fossil fuels and are products, to boot, of essentially a suicidal system, it seems more like attempting to fill a sinking ship with water-logged sponges with the rationale that you can wring a few out back overboard and attempt to bail out with drips and drabs, the still-sinking ship a little now and a little later (with the sponges, rather than buckets, and before they fall apart).

             Of course, later may be too late for civilization, the climate, other species and the ecosphere in general (so maybe adding waterlogged sponges into a sinking ship, while seemingly benign, and if it’s the best or only thing you can think of, might not be the greatest idea or well thought-out).

             There is no point in having anything a photovoltaic system might power if there is no viable planet left on which to power them.

             My Name Is Ruin

             

       2. In the meantime on a more upbeat note, Tesla will unveil the Model Y SUV tomorrow. And they have begun taking 20K deposits on their semi’s.

          1. It has to be nature-approved. No nature-approved, no car. Fleetingly, sure, in the geological timeframe sense. So you want your nature-unapproved car? Then you can get it for a fraction of a second, like you get your fossil-fuels, your industrial agro, your previous civilizations and maybe even your survival as a species…

             Did you see that interview (most recent) on RT with host Chris Hedges and Extinction Rebellion’s co-founder, Roger Hallam, by the way?

             What are you doing about it?

             1. Caelan, I fully recognize what you are saying. The only thing I know to do at this point is to educate. I spend much time explaining to anyone that I can what is coming at us. I do that in person, on blogs, websites and any other venue that I can find. On a personal level, I do what any person would do who cares about future generations I try to live as lightly on the planet as I can. I have converted my small farm from a fossil fuel, chemical model to as sustainable as I can make it. But I am just one person with limited resources. I do think that eating less or no meat is an excellent way to reduce our footprint. I am trying, but we shall see.

                I am a huge proponent and user of EV’s because they are the superior solution to ICE vehicles. Superior for the climate, for simplicity of maintenance, and for performance. If there becomes no where to drive I will hook it up to my house for my battery storage.

                That doesn’t mean I think EV’s will save the planet. I really have no solution that I think will save us from what is coming. I doubt your gondolas are going to help much either. And yes, I did watch the Roger Hallam interview.

                1. I am a huge proponent and user of EV’s because they are the superior solution to ICE vehicles. Superior for the climate, for simplicity of maintenance, and for performance. If there becomes no where to drive I will hook it up to my house for my battery storage.

                   That doesn’t mean I think EV’s will save the planet. I really have no solution that I think will save us from what is coming.

                   You might like this:

                   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLZKdkgB85k

                   Here’s an EV designed from the ground up to disincentivize individual ownership and promote community sharing. It is solar powered for short distance driving, can be charged when needed for longer range and can be connected to your house or the grid right out of the box. You can even plug standard AC appliances directly into its standard household outlet. Some of it’s body panels and components can be 3D printed from open source code free of charge. The vehicle can be purchased for about 25,500 euros. Which is a price point that Tony Seba had predicted for a few years from now so it is quite a bit ahead of the curve.

                   It’s definitely not going to save the planet but it is quite a start in the right direction as compared to your standard ICE vehicle…

                   Cheers!

                2. Thanks, Fred. I appreciate the link. Almost 19 miles driving per day by just parking it in the sun. Nice…

                3. If this was, say, ~1970, EV/ICEV comparisons and swapping one for the other might be more apples-to-apples/no-brainers, but that’s not how it is now. We live in a different world with issues far more pressing.

                   In fact, Fred’s comment seems to reflect that the age of a certain level of ‘super-individual’ transport, irrespective of whether it’s internal combustion or electric, is untenable.

                   As for gondolas, well, they are mentioned as part of the mix of transition transportation potentialities and as relatively underrated/overlooked as important forms.

                   Anyway, it’s nice to hear about your approach to your farming endeavors and so forth and my best wishes in their regards.

34. I found this tidbit fr the EIA interesting:
    >Although 4.7 GW of U.S. natural gas-fired capacity retired in 2018, 93% (4.4 GW) of those retirements were from natural gas steam and combustion turbine units, which are less efficient natural gas-fired generating technologies

    19.3 of new gas capacity was built, but note:
    >Almost 90% of the 19.3 GW of the natural gas-fired capacity in the United States added in 2018 were combined-cycle generators, the most efficient natural gas-fired generating technology.

    This suggests that improvements in power plant technology are as important to the growth of gas as improvements in drilling technology. If fracking is so great, why are gas plants closing? If it weren’t for the new plant technology, gas would be crashing out of the electricity market. There is a lot of talk about nuclear plants retiring, but about 8 times the capacity of gas plants(4.7GW) as nuclear plants(0.6GW) was retired in 2018.

    One way to tell the story is “Gas is killing coal and nuclear.” Another way is “Combined cycle is killing traditional thermal.” The second way makes more sense, because it explains why gas is killing gas as well.

    Another point: New capacity was 31.3 GW, but there were large retirements of gas, coal and nuclear, so net new capacity was 31.3 – 4.7 – 12.9 – 0.6 = 13.1 GW

    Wind and solar together were 6.6+4.9=11.5 GW. So net new wind and solar were 11.5/13.1 = 88% of net new electricity capacity.

    https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=38632

    1. Incidentally, this points to a way forward for the coal industry: Build combined cycle coal plants. Sadly for coal companies, this tech does not exist, but maybe grinding the coal to fine powder might make it possible. I guess not though. In Germany they have gotten massive efficiency improvements with finely ground lignite in the so-called BoA plants, but they still don’t compare with combined cycle gas plants.

       The BoA plants are also sort of turbo charged, because they use waste heat to heat and dry the fuel before it enters the combustion chambers, significantly improving efficiency. This is reminiscent of the way turbo chargers use waste energy from pistons to pre-compress air going in to the pistons. But this is weak compared to combined cycle, which uses waste heat from gas turbines to boil water and generate electricity.

       1. Alimbiquated

          Your comment that Combined Cycle is killing traditional thermal is exactly correct.

          If you do some reading on the various models of CCGT plants, you will see that 1, 2, or 3 ‘trains’ (gas fired turbines) of approximately 350 to 500 Megawatts each can be ramped up within a few minutes to produce juice.

          This short ramp time is the biggest advantage of gas versus coal generation as the Steam boilers either need to have unmarketable combustion to occur to maintain required temperatures or – more commonly – a 12 to 24 hour ramp time.

          The newest HELE coal technology from Japan shows great promise from an efficiency perspective, but it is the – presumed – low cost of the fuel that will be its biggest selling points.

          As far as CCGT technology impacting shale gas development when considering frac’ing/horizontal drilling, both realities are playing a role.

          The rapidly evolving LNG technology (liquefaction, transport, storage) is starting to also manifest in the global marketplace.

          The century’s long supply, coupled with exceptionally low cost, of natgas will continue to provide strong impetus towards utilizing this fuel source.

          1. I didn’t know about HELE, but it’s interesting that BoA also claims very fast ramp up times. The grind the coal to fine powder, dry it, and store it in silos. When demand increases the blow it into the combustion chamber with hot air. They claim “Each unit can modify its output by a good 500 MW in just 15
             minutes”.

             https://www.rwe.com/web/cms/mediablob/en/1580694/data/1575258/1/rwe-power-ag/fuels/kw-neurath-boa-2-3/impressions-of-the-event/blob.pdf

             That quickly heats the flame, but you still have to boil water. I guess combined cycle gas is faster because it starts generating off the gas turbine before the water heats up.

             But I suppose BoA is dead now anyway. The Germans will very likely close down 12 GW of lignite by 2022, and most of it will be in the West, where these plants were built.

             1. The many benefits of methane and carbon burn. As the crops fail and the cities go underwater, those that are young now will appreciate all that methane and carbon burn in ways we can only imagine.

                The Global Impacts of Rapidly Disappearing Arctic Sea Ice

                Few people understand that the Arctic sea ice “death spiral” represents more than just a major ecological upheaval in the world’s Far North. The decline of Arctic sea ice also has profound global climatic effects, or feedbacks, that are already intensifying global warming and have the potential to destabilize the climate system. Indeed, we are not far from the moment when the feedbacks themselves will be driving the change every bit as much as our continuing emission of billions of tons of carbon dioxide annually.

                By my calculations, the terrestrial warming in the Arctic is roughly equivalent to a 25 percent boost in global CO2 emissions. This, combined with the warming caused by the loss of Arctic sea ice, means that the overall ice/snow albedo effect in the Arctic could add as much as 50 percent to the direct global heating effect of CO2.
                

                https://e360.yale.edu/features/as_arctic_ocean_ice_disappears_global_climate_impacts_intensify_wadhams

                And then the natural methane is released as the Arctic heats up.
                Thanks FF people for trying to model the PETM in almost no time at all.

                Will anyone born after 1990 lead a full life? Well, it will be exciting anyway

                1. Thanks FF people for trying to model the PETM in almost no time at all.

                   Sigh! That’s a concept, the implications of which, the FF people really don’t grasp at all!
                   .

                2. Sure, it’s like trying to introduce the concept of a sphere at a Flat Earth Society meeting.

                3. I was born in 1990! ??

35. Good example of grid upgrade for wind- Iowa to Chicago

    https://www.utilitydive.com/news/independent-developer-proposes-25b-underground-transmission-line-adding/550399/

    1. Now if they could only do that in suburbia…and Puerto Rico.

36. I think I had read last week that there was a recent climate report that had lots of folks feeling particularly bummed out, like to the point that therapists/counselor types were seeing the pattern. Did anybody else here come across that story or know the report?

    1. http://peakoilbarrel.com/eias-electric-power-monthly-february-2019-edition-with-data-for-december-2018-and-the-complete-year-results-for-2018/#comment-668756

       The emotional support resources are for people who need help after reading the #DeepAdapation report, but that’s the author’s website and the actual report is there as well.

37. For the folks keeping an eye on the New England electricity situation, tomorrow (Friday, March 15) could prove interesting as that is the deadline for the Millstone nukes to be participants in the ISO’s Forward Capacity Auction … essentially committing to staying open for the forseeable future.

    The plant’s owner – Dominion – has been adamant that they will forego the auction and start the retirement process absent firm, above market pricing from local utilities.

    The massive amount of 2,000 Megawatts that are provided day in and day out are unquestionably essential for that region’s grid.

    This is just one more example of how CCGT plants are driving out all competition in a free market, competitive environment.

    The recent grid additions from the Towantic and Salem Harbor CCGT plants (about 1,500 Mw combined capacity), along with the near 500 Mw from Bridgeport Harbor plant which is opening in a few weeks, continues to put New England in the lead for gas fueled electricity percentage-wise of the total amount generated.

    The huge (1,000 Mw) CCGT Burrillville plant is fitfully wending its way through the permitting process.

    The fact that New England is leading the nation (world?) in the parcentage of electricity derived from natgas plants while simultaneously preventing new gas supply is simply astonishing.

    1. … Almost forgot the Killingly Energy Center in Connecticut.

       Another 650 Mw CCGT plant supposed to start construction in a couple of months.

    2. I heard in years past, that nat gas distribution network in much of New England is very difficult due to very thin soil (repeated glaciation scraping).
       Beyond questionable decision making, I wonder how much the soil conditions are affecting the nat gas distribution network.

38. I move for a vote on establishing The Church of the Ecological Apocalypse immediately, with yours truly being the high priest, because I came up with the idea first.

    Our goal will be first of all to get some attractive young women to hang around with me to run all my chief priest errands, and after that to convert the masses, and teach them to pray for WAKE UP EVENTS.

    Prayer changes people, and people change things, and if we get enough converts, surely some of them will proactively change things.

    Do I hear a second!?

    Seriously, it seems to be ridiculous to the point of insanity to believe that the free market, or capitalism, is going to provide means of avoiding a crash and burn end of life as we know it.

    The market might actually giterdone, if time weren’t of the essence, but the market in general terms supplies solutions to existing problems. Once the shit is TRULY in the fan, in terms of climate, etc, there will be neither time nor resources enough to invent and deploy solutions.

    And NO, the shit is not really in the fan now, it’s only headed to the fan. We’re just getting some little shit sprinkles for now. The shit storm, twenty or thirty inches of it, is not yet here.

    But if the people of the world can somehow be convinced that their children and grandchildren are literally at very high risk of dying young and hard if we don’t go proactive…….

    Leviathan MIGHT be able to save us.

    Suppose Uncle Sam were to mandate the construction of wind and solar farms to the extent that we spend just one fourth as much on renewable electricity as we spend on military hardware?

    Suppose the construction of new railroads, to replace the ones that have been abandoned, were to be approached the same way the construction of a new road, deemed essential to the war effort, is constructed during wartime? The engineers come, survey a route, and a few days later, the dozers are at work.

    If anybody wants to know why the Chinese are able to build high speed rail so fast, and so economically, compared to OUR costs, one of the biggest reasons is that they don’t piss away years settling with property owners acquiring right of way, and they don’t pay any attention at ALL to people worried about their VIEW.

    Any solution SHORT of an authoritarian, wartime type program to get away from fossil fuels is sure to fail, as evidenced by so many of the comments posted here by our best informed members.

    Any great responses will be incorporated into my novel, which I hope to live long enough to finish.

    And if I live that long, I will provide an autographed boxed copy on disk or thumb drive to any regular here who sends me his mailing address, free of charge, not even postage!

    1. OFM-
       This would be the first honest ‘spiritual’ institution in the history of the world!
       “Our goal will be first of all to get some attractive young women to hang around with me”

    2. To OFM
       “and teach them to pray for WAKE UP EVENTS”

       We already had them, the world is in zombie mode now just running ahead with little reaction to what are clearly apocalyptic occurrences. No one said that destruction has to be a some big events, death by a thousand cuts is still death.
       I will post one on the new non-petroleum thread. No house stands if it’s foundation crumbles.

39. Read and be inspired.
    https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/13/building-integrated-photovoltaics-emerging-thanks-to-nzeb-goals/

    California is leading the way here and Germany is leading the way in Europe.

40. Its about time Florida gets started with solar-

    https://www.utilitydive.com/news/fpl-proposes-countrys-largest-community-solar-project-at-1490-mw/550489/

    That state is way behind the curve, especially when considering its potential.

    1. As a resident of the Sunshine State, I support any project that helps reduce fossil fuel use. However I’d be more impressed with incentives for the implementation of distributed generation via roof top solar, integrated with smart microgrids and opening the door to using EVs as battery back up solutions.

       FPL is a monopoly and therefore too much a part of the status quo and BAU! We need systemic change but I guess that is an order of magnitude more difficult to achieve! Still, better than nothing.

41. In 2018 US renewables produced about 650 million megawatts of energy. If all that was used to run EV’s it would displace 200 million petrol cars. That would mean a drop in demand of 100 billion gallons of gasoline which is 73 percent of all gasoline consumption in the US.

    Despite the government tariff on imported solar panels, growth is still continuing. What we need now is EV production to catch up to renewable growth, thus displacing the need for much of our petroleum industry and greatly increase the health, welfare and security of the nation and the world.
    The economic benefits are huge since we pay about 1 billion dollars a day just for gasoline. At $2.60 a gallon you get 25 miles. At a nickel a kWh off a solar roof you get 25 miles for 31 cents. Of course the environmental and health benefits are huge also.

Comments are closed.