A Guest Post by Islandboy
The EIA released the latest edition of their Electric Power Monthly on November 27th, with data for September 2018. The table above shows the percentage contribution of the main fuel sources to two decimal places for the last two months and the year to date.
In September, as usual for this time of the year, the absolute amount of electricity generated declined with the mid summer demand for air conditioning falling away. Coal and Natural Gas between them, fueled 62.64% of US electricity generation in August, with the contributions from most other major sources edging up slightly. The contribution from Natural Gas was essentially flat at just over 40%, down from 40.19% in August, despite the decrease in the amount generated from 164,954 GWh to 142,745 GWh. Generation fueled by coal decreased from 115,218 Gwh to 96,743 GWh resulting in the percentage contribution falling from 28.07% to 27.12%. The amount of electricity generated by Nuclear plants decreased from 72,282 GWh to 64,725 GWh with the resulting contribution actually rising from 17.61% to 18.14% in September. The amount generated by conventional hydroelectric fell from 21,398 GWh in August to 18,663 GWh in September with resulting contribution remaining essentially flat at 5.23% as opposed to 5.21% in August. The amount generated by wind fell from 19,507 GWh to 17,991 GWh with the resulting contribution rising from 4.75% to 5-04% in September. The estimated total solar output fell from 10,000 GWh to 9,153 GWh with the resulting contribution rising from 2.44% to 2.57%. The contribution of zero carbon or carbon neutral sources rose from 30.93 in August to 32.01% in September. It is interesting that the contributions from Natural Gas and Coal are almost exactly interchanged from the beginning of the period covered by the graph up to September 2018.
The graph below helps to illustrate how the changes in absolute production affect the percentage contribution from the various sources.
The chart below shows the total monthly generation at utility scale facilities by year versus the contribution from solar. The left hand scale is for the total generation, while the right hand scale is for solar output and has been deliberately set to exaggerate the solar output as a means of assessing it’s potential to make a meaningful contribution to the midsummer peak. In September 2018 the output from solar at 9,153 GWh, was 3.36 times what it was four years ago in September 2014. It is now safe to say, this year solar energy peaked in June, the month of the summer solstice with 10,869 GWh generated for the month
The chart below shows the monthly capacity additions for 2018. In September Natural Gas contributed 33.58 percent of new capacity. With 45.78 percent of new capacity coming from Wind and Solar contributing 20.25 percent, Natural Gas, Solar and Wind made up 99.61 percent of new capacity in September. The only capacity added that was not fueled by Natural Gas, Wind or Solar was three battery installations, one each in the states of Texas, Michigan and Massachusetts. In September 2018 the total added capacity reported was 1,459.1 MW, compared to the 515.4 MW added in September 2017.
The chart below shows the monthly capacity retirements so far for 2018. The scale on the Y axis has been adjusted to start at 20% since there is no month in which coal capacity was retired where the poportion of coal capacity retired was less than that figure and between January and June, the minor contributors were so small that, they are barely visible even with the scale starting at twenty percent. In September the only retirements noted were gas turbines at a 117 MW Auburndale Peaker Energy Center in Florida and the 4.1 MW Hunterdon Cogen Facility in New Jersey, 607.7 of Nuclear capacity at Oyster Creek in New Jersey and 294.4 MW of Conventional Steam Coal at Edgewater in Wisconsin.
Edit:The first comment on this thread is from Nick G, asking for a chart that shows the actual magnitude of the capacity additions and retirements better than the two charts above. Below is a chart for monthly net additions/retirements and another for the year to date.
Following the report on the edition of the EPM with data for March, there was some discussion about coal consumption for the production of electricity. At the request of peakoilbarrel.com member Shyam, I am including a table of the top ten states in order of coal consumption for electricity production for September.
Islandboy,
Could you add a chart (or table) that shows the YTD capacity additions, retirements and net changes side by side, with it scaled by GW rather than percent? The current charts don’t tell us how much GW capacity has been added and subtracted.
Thanks for your work!
I think there’s an EPM report where I did precisely that. I’ll look through them to see if I can find it. IIRC it was based on something I saw that presented it like that and come to think of it, it might not have been in an EPM thread at all. I’ll look into it.
edit: Found it in less than eight minutes, here it is:
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-oct-11-2017/
Look at the last two charts in that report and tell me what you think.
Those charts are great! If you could include them as a standard thing, I think they’d be very helpful.
In the first (annual) chart, I’d keep 2010 as the starting point, and add the current year YTD when you get enough months to be meaningful – perhaps three.
From Fred at the last thread end-
https://techxplore.com/news/2018-12-sun-renewable-energy-grid.amp
We sure need something like that to get fast tracked!
Come on Musk or Bezos, quit playing around with rockets.
The white hot liquid silicon storage system might need some rocket science from Musk or Bezos, but for very large stationary storage systems the only pertinent issue is levelized cost of electricity, which means reducing capital cost as much as possible for collection, storage and recovery per unit of electricity.
In thinking about this goal many years ago, I developed what I thought would be the best system for rock-bottom cost storage of sensible heat. I tried to give the system info away at a concentrating solar power (CSP) conference in San Francisco in 2008, but no one was interested, mainly due to the fact that storage was not yet needed in large amounts. Since then, CSP has failed to get much traction, mostly due to space and environmental concerns. Ten years later, I think it is just about too late to start building out a new energy system for the world. It would have to be done with fossil energy and there isn’t much of the carbon budget left.
The cheapest way to store moderately high temperature sensible heat (500-700C) is in pebble bed storage. Not many things are cheaper than crushed rock. The cheapest way to contain the pebble bed is with gravity, no tank needed. The cheapest good insulation is volcanic cinder, also contained by gravity. Add in a stainless steel foil layer to separate the cinder from the pebble bed and a cross-linked polyethylene tarp to keep the rain off the cinder, use air as the heat transfer medium and you get storage costs in the range of $2-$3 per net kWhe of storage capacity. The “Holy Grail” of battery storage is $100 per kWh, so the advantage of heat storage is obvious. The more heat storage needed, the more the system efficiency, since scale effects reduce the ratio of surface area to volume as the storage system gets larger. Seasonal storage of heat with low percentage loss is very possible.
I’ll admit that white hot silicon can offer a better thermodynamic efficiency than 600 degree C rock, but just think of the capital costs involved in storing and handling such a material! Sometimes a lower-tech solution can far out perform stuff that needs rocket science to build. Since most of CSP is unchanged since the work of Frank Shuman in 1912, I often wonder what could have happened if we had ever taken the issues of fossil fuel depletion and carbon pollution seriously. But we didn’t, we won’t and now it’s too late.
Great idea. Is this just a pile or is it placed in an excavation?
You are absolutely correct about lower tech, more economic solutions being the best during this time period. Much higher odds of being implemented at scale.
My original concept was to mine a rock stratum that came near the surface, crush and screen the rock and place the pile back in the excavation, but just piling it on the surface is fine too. The very bottom of the pile never gets hot, so the cold air distribution plenum can be any kind of steel, but the hot plenum needs to be stainless for corrosion resistance at high temps. The tarp covered cinder insulation covers the pile and extends out from the base slightly. Since dry earth is a pretty good insulator, it only needs to be several feet wide at the base.
The only tricky part of a pebble bed system that uses a distinct stratification separation of the hot/cool interface is to have the face velocity of the air at the interface be slow enough that the aggregate can absorb heat fast enough that the temperature transition zone is shallow. The bigger the storage in relation to the source, the slower the air moves and the shallower the transition zone.
white hot silicon can offer a better thermodynamic efficiency
Oddly enough, they’re planning to convert heat to power with PV! Even with the best multi-junction tech I can’t imagine they could do better than 50% efficiency.
“might need some rocket science from Musk or Bezos”
I was referring to their money. Its needs to be channeled to energy storage solutions, not rocketeering, IMHO
Yep! Low tech can be better and more cost effective than high tech at times.
Donald Sadoway’s molten metal battery comes to mind.
http://news.mit.edu/2016/battery-molten-metals-0112
How would you use that heat? Water based turbine or a lower working temperature fluid?
NAOM
Conventional Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HRSG) as the air/steam heat exchanger (both ways) and steam turbine for electrical generation. The temperatures that can be collected by CSP and stored by a pebble bed are perfect for off the shelf steam technology. The fluid used by the solar receiver can be either water or air, but the pebble bed uses air.
Thanks.
Searching back through the cobwebs of memory in about 1975 General Atomic built a solar collector at Sandia labs in New Mexico. The solar collectors used a heat tranfer oil Therminol-66 to deliver heat to a heat exchanger that boiled a Freon based fluid which ran a turbine. I was involved as an engineer at GA designing parts of the collector system.
I wonder if a system like this would work with the pebble bed. Possibly using the hot air exiting the pebble bed to boil the phase change fluid. I don’t remember the oil or Freon temperatures but if anyone is interested I can probably find them somewhere.
That pebble bed would be much too hot for the Therminol. Maybe run the Freon lines straight through but it is at the hot end for that too.
NAOM
“The temperatures that can be collected by CSP and stored by a pebble bed are perfect for off the shelf steam technology. The fluid used by the solar receiver can be either water or air, but the pebble bed uses air.”
But steam is corrosive and therefore set an upper limit for the tempereature in the engine and therefore of the conversion efficiency.
With CSP you can of course reach very high temperatures and store heat at these high temperatures (ceramic beads as fluid). The current bottleneck is the engine or the heat exchangers.
CSP can indeed go much hotter than pebble beds will allow due to the melting temperature of rock. But going to really high temperatures greatly increases the cost of the storage medium and heat conversion equipment, as you say, and I doubt that the increase in Carnot efficiency would cover the increased costs. It’s all about the cost of the electricity and capacity produced.
OK, my point was that with CSP and ceramic beads as fluid you can store heat at temperatures of about 800-1200 °C, IIRC the DLR in Braunschweig does this for years.
In principle this tempeartures allow a much higher electric yield than liquid or air based systems.
On the other hand you need new heat exchangers and modified turbines, there it has some issues.
All simple engines that run with water steam are limited to around 500 °C due to corrosion issues.
“Since most of CSP is unchanged since the work of Frank Shuman in 1912, I often wonder what could have happened if we had ever taken the issues of fossil fuel depletion and carbon pollution seriously. But we didn’t, we won’t and now it’s too late.”
Agree! Although the R and D, and deployment still needs to be done, atleast pretending that it will make a difference. It will be important to the smaller population that settles out after the big contraction.
I suspect the is a good use for having a range of storage temps/mediums. Some types for big installations, and others for smaller ones. Some type for electrical (steam) generation, and others for thermal applications. Some for for overnight, and other for longer term storage.
Well, there is a pretty big jump between the low temperatures needed for space heating and hot water and that needed for electricity generation. That said, I once worked on an actual OTEC plant at Keahole Point in Hawaii that generated electricity from a boiler temperature of 80 degrees F and a condenser temperature of 43 F. The only advantage of OTEC is that the heat storage already exists for free and is huge (the tropical ocean surface), but the capital cost for a low temp electricity producer like OTEC is huge too.
Rankine cycle turbines can be used for intermediate temperatures, but it’s pretty easy to get and store high temperatures with CSP so why stop at intermediate temperatures. I always thought CSP would prevail over PV for industrial production of electricity since a mirror will always be cheaper than a PV module of the same size and conversion efficiency is similar. So far, so wrong.
For heat engines one wants the highest temperature/money ratio possible. We still get the best ratio from fossil fuels, but they have other problems.
“but it’s pretty easy to get and store high temperatures with CSP so why stop at intermediate temperatures.”
Heat exchanger and working medium are still an issue.
If you look close at the first chart, you can see that wind drops off each summer.
And solar can be seen just starting to fill that shortfall.
It would be interesting to see these two sources charted only, at a scale that shows them well.
Something like this, maybe. This assumes equal amounts of annual wind and solar kWhs, for comparison’s sake. We can see how adding the two together smooths things out. The range of variation goes from about 55% to 135% of the mean, to about 75% to 115% – it seems to reduce variation by about 50%.
Yep Nick, although would be good to see as total energy output rather than percentile. But thank you.
It appears to some fortunate complimentary timing between the two sources, atleast on a national basis.
Not exactly what you’re looking for but, something that was very quick and easy for me to do, being a slight variation of the graph in the lead post. The graph below shows the combined output of Wind and Solar combined, compared to the total. I had done a similar graph for wind some time ago and the shape of the lines is not very different. The reason for this is that solar output has been a fraction of wind up to now but, that is changing with solar capacity growing significantly faster than wind.
In January 2018, the month with the lowest output from solar and the second highest wind output, the output from wind was more than five times the output from solar. In July, the output from wind was at it’s lowest for the year and solar was close to it’s maximum monthly output for the year, with the result that wind output was only about 1.6 times that of solar. The result is that solar appears to be somewhat lessening the trough in wind output during the summer months.
What is likely to happen in the ensuing years, as solar capacity approaches and them exceeds wind capacity, is that wind will be seen to be complimenting the lower output from solar in the winter months.
That would be another good standard graph to add. Speaks a lot.
NAOM
Islandboy – what are the units on that last table of coal consumption by top 10 states?
The source data is under the heading “Consumption of Coal for” Table 2.8.A Electricity Generation by State by Sector and is in thousands of tons.
When is Pakistan going to stop burning coal?
Probably a lot sooner than you might imagine and probably not for any reasons that you might be capable of groking.
Speaking of groking: Calls of the Great Blue Heron
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Blue_Heron/sounds#
I doubt that Pak coal consumption will ever reach zero, unless they enact policies to increase the singing of songs among the populace and get smart about creating more GDP that way.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1445923
The article says coal accounts for less than 1% of Pakistan’s power generation right now.
It will be relatively easy for them to eliminate coal in a few years when it becomes overwhelmingly obvious that coal is uncompetitive and dirty.
And then, when they can breathe better, they can sing all day long.
Seriously?! The people who come up with this shit deserve a ton of coal in their Christmas Stockings…
https://peakoil.com/consumption/resources-are-almost-5-times-as-abundant-as-they-were-in-1980
According to this piece, thanks to ever increasing human population… Wait for it!
Drum roll please!
We now have five times the available resources we had in 1980
P]eople often assume that population growth leads to resource depletion. We found the opposite. Over the past 37 years, every additional human being born on our planet appears to have made resources proportionately more plentiful for the rest of us.
Just curious, who the fuck, are, ‘THE REST OF US’?!
I think it is way past time to send out the guys iin the white coats and the big butterfly nets to round these idiots up once and for all!
Fred, why are you upset about delusional nonsense from a libertarian thinktank?
Of course there is more abundance, lots more people, lots more people with higher standard of living, lots more machines to make stuff now aided by computer systems. Lots more raping of the earth and environmental destruction.
It won’t last long. A balloon always looks biggest before it pops.
“The people who come up with this shit deserve a ton of coal in their Christmas Stockings…” Coal supplied by the U.S.A.?
TRUMP’S MAKING U.S. COAL EXPORTS THE GREATEST THEY’VE EVER BEEN
“U.S. exports of coal used by power stations are set to hit a record this year on increased global demand for the nation’s high-energy-content fuel. Steam-coal shipments will probably jump 58 percent to 58 million metric tons this year, according to Guillaume Perret, founder of Perret Associates Ltd., a London-based research company. He expects exports to reach 65 million tons by 2025.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-01/trump-s-making-u-s-coal-exports-the-greatest-they-ve-ever-been
And yet US coal production continues to decline – increases in exports are being overwhelmed by falling domestic consumption,
Yale has a really good environmental site: https://e360.yale.edu
Here’s a recent paper showing impacts to date of recent climate change https://e360.yale.edu/features/redrawing-the-map-how-the-worlds-climate-zones-are-shifting
REDRAWING THE MAP: HOW THE WORLD’S CLIMATE ZONES ARE SHIFTING
Rising global temperatures are altering climatic zones around the planet, with consequences for food and water security, local economies, and public health. Here’s a stark look at some of the distinct features that are already on the move.
THE TROPICS ARE GETTING BIGGER AT 30 MILES PER DECADE
THE SAHARA DESERT HAS GOTTEN 10 PERCENT BIGGER SINCE 1920
THE 100TH MERIDIAN HAS SHIFTED 140 MILES EAST
TORNADO ALLEY HAS SHIFTED 500 MILES EAST IN 30 YEARS
PLANT HARDINESS ZONES ARE MOVING NORTH IN THE U.S. AT 13 MILES PER DECADE
THE PERMAFROST LINE HAS MOVED 80 MILES NORTH IN 50 YEARS IN PARTS OF CANADA
THE [AUSTRALIAN] WHEAT BELT IS PUSHING POLEWARD AT UP TO 160 MILES PER DECADE
The numbers are averaged and I should think all effects, except maybe for the tornados, are currently at the fastest seen and accelerating. There have been reports that permafrost melt only gets significant at 1.5°C, but I don’t see how that can be reconciled with this data showing the permafrost line is moving, and quite quickly, and presumably the marginal area thins before disappearing (possibly the whole of the permafrost land is thinning but will only be seen as the extent line movement starts to accelerate). I should think the effects in Siberia are at least as much, maybe more as the temperature anomalies seem higher there on average.
“There have been reports that permafrost melt only gets significant at 1.5°C, but I don’t see how that can be reconciled”
I suppose it depends on how rapid the change has be to be considered ‘significant’
Speaking of the 1980’s, here is Edward Abbey’s view of history and modern times. As well as his view of what needs to be done.
The Nightmare Of Modern History, Edward Abbey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIL5MKxVAtM
“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. ”
–Edward Abbey
I was led to believe that for the sacrifice of just a few $ out of our paychecks every month, the Paris agreements were supposed to stop all this bad stuff from happening. Where did we go wrong this time?
studebaker- That is big mistake you are making- to let yourself be “led to believe”
Do that too much you’ll get a disgraceful ‘leader’ like Trump for president. How do you think the people who paid to go to Trump Univ feel about what “they were led to believe”?
The way I see it- Huge changes are coming no matter what.
TRUMP’S ENVIRONMENTAL ROLLBACK ROLLS ON
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it would end rules limiting carbon emissions on new coal plants. Romany Webb, senior fellow at the Sabin Center, cited three other far-reaching measures taken by this administration so far.
• The EPA and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) unveiled a proposal in August this year to weaken greenhouse gas emission and fuel economy standards for light-duty vehicles. The proposal would increase vehicle emissions by approximately 713 million metric tons of carbon dioxide
• Also in August, the EPA proposed to replace and water down the Clean Power Plan, a central plank of the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan, which aimed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants by 30%
• In January this year, the Department of the Interior proposed to make over 90% of the outer continental shelf available for future oil and gas development. Some 94% of the outer continental shelf was previously off limits to drilling
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46471447
At least he’s got the US economy running OK. … no wait, DJIA falling fast, deficit at highest for decade (he at least appears to be correct about it being easy to win a trade war, you just need to make sure your opponent is led by a fuckwit like Trump and victory is assured).
So far, these are just proposals. The weakening of CAFE standards, for instance, is being fought by everyone including parts of the auto industry.
Which works quite well for the repugs, since they have at the least eliminated a strengthening of the CAFE standards and brought the whole thing down a notch.
Meanwhile other countries are looking at a total elimination of ICE in the not far future.
Makes us proud, doesn’t it?
If we can’t pull around on CO2 and the worst fears are realised Trump will go down as the most hated figure in history – the one who ended civilisation.
NAOM
THE HUMAN FOSSIL-FUEL ADDICTION
“According to a new estimate, global carbon emissions will hit a record-breaking 37.1 billion metric tons in 2018. The drivers of these trends are both meteorological and economic, the researchers reported. An especially cold winter in the eastern US and a hot summer across the country increased fossil fuel emissions from the heating and cooling of homes and other structures. A decline in the price of oil led to the purchase of larger cars and trucks in the US. Meanwhile, a sluggish economy in China has leaders there incentivizing heavy industry and instituting coal-power projects that had been on hold.”
https://www.space.com/42660-global-carbon-emissions-record.html
Great! As if there wasn’t enough grim news out there.
EARTH’S MAGNETIC POLES COULD START TO FLIP. WHAT HAPPENS THEN?
As Earth’s magnetic shield fails, so do its satellites. First, our communications satellites in the highest orbits go down. Next, astronauts in low-Earth orbit can no longer phone home. And finally, cosmic rays start to bombard every human on Earth. This is a possibility that we may start to face not in the next million years, not in the next thousand, but in the next hundred. If Earth’s magnetic field were to decay significantly, it could collapse altogether and flip polarity – changing magnetic north to south and vice versa. The consequences of this process could be dire for our planet. Most worryingly, we may be headed right for this scenario.
The decrease in geomagnetic field is much more important and dramatic than the reversal,’ said Dr. Thouveny. ‘It is very important to understand if the present field will decay to zero in the next century, because we will have to prepare.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-12-earth-magnetic-poles-flip.html#jCp
No problem, man will have eliminated all those issues by then … including himself!
NAOM
That article is nonsense. Sometimes Phys . org republishes less reputable articles
Debunked: Earth’s magnetic field to reach zero this century – can’t be right
I agree, scary bedtime story, no real evidence of massive loss of life every time the magnetic poles flipped or diminished.
That leaves:
Asteroids
Super volcanos
Nuclear War
Man
AI
as major existential threats
“As Earth’s magnetic shield fails, so do its satellites.” Hardly a existential threat but one that would have to be addressed which is exactly what the authors were saying. Nothing more. The fastest studied reversals occurred over human lifetime and seeing as we’re currently launching “major” satellites weekly I’m sure the current satellite fleet could me replaced quickly but things might be a bit tricky in the “nul period” with high cosmic ray flux before a proper field was/is restored. OTOH, as you say, Super volcanoes and/or Nuclear War would/will be quite uncomfortable events.
From the phys.org article: If Earth’s magnetic field were to decay significantly, it could collapse altogether and flip polarity – changing magnetic north to south and vice versa. The consequences of this process could be dire for our planet.
Most worryingly, we may be headed right for this scenario.
“could be dire for the planet”
Apparently I read more extensively on this subject, the internet is full of dire consequences from a magnetic pole reversal. Claims of massive cosmic radiation, oxygen deprivation, loss of ozone layer, etc.
I prefer NASA’s take on the subject where they try and add a bit of sense to many disastrous claims on the subject.
Reversals are the rule, not the exception. Earth has settled in the last 20 million years into a pattern of a pole reversal about every 200,000 to 300,000 years, although it has been more than twice that long since the last reversal. A reversal happens over hundreds or thousands of years, and it is not exactly a clean back flip. Magnetic fields morph and push and pull at one another, with multiple poles emerging at odd latitudes throughout the process. Scientists estimate reversals have happened at least hundreds of times over the past three billion years. And while reversals have happened more frequently in “recent” years, when dinosaurs walked Earth a reversal was more likely to happen only about every one million years.
The fossil record shows no drastic changes in plant or animal life. Deep ocean sediment cores from this period also indicate no changes in glacial activity, based on the amount of oxygen isotopes in the cores. This is also proof that a polarity reversal would not affect the rotation axis of Earth, as the planet’s rotation axis tilt has a significant effect on climate and glaciation and any change would be evident in the glacial record.
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-poleReversal.html
Best to nip those dire consequences in the bud.
“Best to nip those dire consequences in the bud.”
Agreed, there’s never been any extinction event correlation with reversals (to my knowledge). But, as I mentioned, for a civilization reliant on electronics having a planet bathed in cosmic rays might have some weird (dire) consequences. Can you imagine the effect of “fried” or even injured cel phones on our addicted civilization? Maybe they’ll be selling cosmic ray hardened cel phones next — for only an extra $500. And, you wouldn’t want a stray cosmic ray affecting the compass in your ICBMs would you?
COSMIC RAYS DAMAGE AUTOMOTIVE ELECTRONICS
Technology decision makers must anticipate sources of failure that will impact programmable logic systems specifically. While the concept of bombardment of neutrons from space (cosmic rays) sounds a bit like something straight out of a Star Trek episode, neutron-induced errors are a dangerous reality for many types of electronic equipment.
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1272750
There is no evidence of the planet being bathed in cosmic rays during these events. That would be hazardous to life on earth and a dire condition.
As NASA says new magnetic poles form, so other than aurora being in new places the effect is fairly minimal.
I can imagine the effect of billions of people using cellphones. Phone zombies. We have lots of evidence concerning that right now.
Having spent much of my life without them, life went on without little black boxes and there was not so much mental trash to deal with. Of course we didn’t know as much since that required reading books.
https://www.nasa.gov/analogs/nsrl/why-space-radiation-matters
But if you are going to Mars.
Previous studies have shown the health risks from galactic cosmic ray exposure to astronauts include cancer, central nervous system effects, cataracts, circulatory diseases and acute radiation syndromes. Cosmic rays, such as iron and titanium atoms, heavily damage the cells they traverse because of their very high rates of ionization.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-06-collateral-cosmic-rays-cancer-mars.html#jCp
However, I would not worry too much about the cell phones since they probably won’t work in high orbit and on a trip to the moon or Mars anyway.
If for some reason high levels of cosmic radiation occur on earth I would recommend long term immersion underwater, 20 to 30 feet might do.
“There is no evidence of the planet being bathed in cosmic rays during these events.”
Wrong. Trust me, a reversal involves a dramatic lessening of our geomagnetic field’s strength, then basically our shields are down, and cosmic rays reaching ground-level greatly increase. Geophysics 101.
And, switching poles leave Earth powerless to defend against blasts of radiation from the Sun for up to 200 YEARS, leaving us at risk from skin cancer and worldwide electronic communication blackouts, NASA scientists have warned. Feel free to believe otherwise if you wish.
Any evidence of that assertion? You know, other than trust me.
“Magnetic fields morph and push and pull at one another, with multiple poles emerging at odd latitudes throughout the process.”
Well that is going to fubar compasses.
NAOM
I agree with all your potential threats to disaster except two.
The earth’s magnetic field has flipped hundreds of times in the past and it never led to massive loss of animal life. Therefore it will not the next time it flips.
As to AI, that is a bullshit scenario that science fiction buffs have thought up. AI is not a threat and never will be.
Where did anyone suggest earth’s magnetic field flips led to massive loss of animal life? As you say, there have been numerous flips and no correlation with extinction events (at least that I know of).
HOW OFTEN DOES EARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELD REVERSE?
Earth’s magnetic field reverses every few thousand years at low latitudes and every 10,000 years at high latitudes, a geologist funded by the National Science Foundation has concluded. Brad Clement of Florida International University published his findings in the journal Nature. The results are a major step forward in scientists’ understanding of how Earth’s magnetic field works.
https://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/earth-sciences/report-27971.html
Stephen Hawkins warned us, others have too.
Here is an Origins projects debate on AI run by a fairly pro-AI physicist Lawrence Krauss.
Great Debate – Artificial Intelligence: Who is in control?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZe-A2aDOgA
I haven’t watched much of it, but it looks interesting.
Just saw this over at insideevs.com:
Musk Says Tesla Would Consider Buying Shuttered GM Factories
The embedded video is a 1 min 8 second clip from a Lesley Stahl interview of Musk for 60 Minutes, also on youtube:
Tesla CEO Elon Musk welcomes GM competition
Musk must be driving the Mitch McConnells of the word crazy. He has developed a cut like following. His company has very loyal customers, most of whom love their cars. His products (cars) are an embarrassment to high end luxury manufacturers, none of which have been able to deliver anything comparable to their customers to date, with the exception of Jaguar. His company is growing like crazy, employing thousands of people and exporting product all over the world, the capitaist’s dream! Just this week, insideevs reported Tesla Market Cap Surpasses Daimler. So why would he be driving Republicans and other right wingers crazy? He is producing these results with the help of Federal and state tax rebates that make it easier to sell their cars, notwithstanding the fact that the subsidies will soon no longer apply, decreasing on January 1, 2019, eventually ending with no subsidies at all. The most aggravating thing for right wing climate change denying types must be this quote from the video: “The whole point of Tesla is to accelerate the advent of electric vehicles and sustainable transport, try and hep the environment. We think it’s the most serious problem humanity faces.”
The man who should be their darling, sees the large scale reduction of CO2 emissions as his most urgent mission. Ain’t life a bitch? A man who most open openly opposes climate change denialism might be the one to turn around and provide jobs for many who embrace denial, advancing an agenda their heroes oppose!
Since 2000 the CO2 emission rate has been increasing annually at 0.78 Gt. In order to eliminate the rise we need to eliminate 167 million ICE passenger vehicles per year (without increasing other ICE vehicle use) or eliminate 193 coal power plants per year (without increasing other carbon fuels).
That would achieve a flat CO2 rate of emissions.
Musk Says Tesla Would Consider Buying Shuttered GM Factories
History repeating itself: Tesla’s current factory was a shuttered GM factory.
Gone Fishing,
“Any evidence of that assertion? You know, other than trust me.”
Sure, how much evidence do you want? BTW As I recall, the energies stopped by Earth’s magnetic field are typically up to 10 GeV, in equatorial regions; at polar regions, Earth’s field can stop only lower energies.
COSMIC RAYS REVEAL EVENT IN EARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELD HISTORY
“41 000 years ago, the Earth’s magnetic field faded and practically disappeared, leaving our planet unprotected from the bombardment of cosmic rays. Evidence for this event has been found in ocean sediment cores by a team from the Centre de Recherche et d’Enseignement de Géosciences de l’Environnement (CEREGE, CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université/IRD/Collège de France). In the cores, the researchers measured variations in concentrations of beryllium-10, a radioactive isotope produced by the action of cosmic rays on oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere. The work, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, is an important step towards developing a new method for studying the history of Earth’s magnetic field, which should shed light on why its strength has been declining over the past three thousand years.
The Earth’s magnetic field forms an efficient shield that deflects charged particles of cosmic origin headed for Earth. Far from being constant, the magnetic field has undergone many reversals, with the North magnetic pole shifting to the South geographic pole. Such reversals are always accompanied by a disappearance of the magnetic field. The last such reversal took place 780 000 years ago. The magnetic field can also undergo excursions, periods when the field suddenly drops as if it was going to reverse, before recovering its normal polarity. The most recent event of this kind, known as the Laschamp excursion, took place 41 000 years ago.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2012-11-cosmic-rays-reveal-event-earth.html#jCp
Ok, so the rate of cosmic ray bombardment doubled. That is about equivalent to going from sea level to Denver Colorado.
Yeah, altitude makes a (big) difference. Denver is what, a mile up? Being a pilot, you probably know cosmic rays penetrate commercial airlines, dosing passengers and flight crews so much that pilots are classified by the International Commission on Radiological Protection as occupational radiation workers.
High altitude aircraft, such as passenger jets, receive much higher doses, about 200 times as much as sea level.
On the other hand, the rates for tumors that are thought to possibly related to systemic radiation exposure such as lymphoma/leukemia, are not higher in Denver than at sea level cites.
I live a about 4,000 feet.
We seem to be slim (a certain social class, some look like escaped walruses).
But who knows– maybe systemic radiation is killing us.
I like the trout fishing.
(I actually lived at 8500 feet for numerous years-should I be dead?)
Most people can repair cellular damage, and probably chemical mutagens are causing most of the damage now so any difference is buried in that rate.
How are the people in the high Andes doing? Maybe they are adapted.
However the cellphones have a few more spots of damage in them and would eventually fail. 🙂
Some shocking statistics on how cellphones are damaged. No need for cosmic intervention. Cell phones don’t have much of a chance once out of the package. Also, they are not designed for real world use.
http://info.thew3solution.com/protection-plan-blog/5-shocking-mobile-phone-statistics-that-will-blow-your-mind
How not to drop your cell phone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvFeqL86JBk
Automotive and industrial supplier Schaeffler predicts that in 2030 some 30% of all newly registered passenger cars will be fully electric and 40% will be propelled by hybrid powertrains—i.e., 70% of all passenger cars will be using at least one electric motor as a source of propulsion.
https://www.greencarcongress.com/2018/12/20181208-schaeffler.html
It’s my opinion that all light weight vehicles manufactured in the world after the year 2029 should be carbon free during their use. The infrastructure required to supply the energy to the light weight vehicles will clearly need more time to become carbon free. The important thing here is as soon as possible a time line is set in the future to stop building ICE. If there are individuals or business that need vehicles that are not carbon free. They can stock up on them prior to 2030 until their needs are meet in the future carbon free or buy used.
Well, according to the new U.N. Report, by 2030, global carbon dioxide emissions must be 45% less than they were in 2010. What are the odds?
Maybe God will help. Because, 12 years seems like the blink of an eye and effective 2018 emissions are still increasing, aren’t they?
CO2 emission reduction? First we have to stop the rise. Maybe that will occur in the mid 2020s if we get organized. Might get 5 to 10 percent down by early 2030’s. After that too many problems and predicaments seem to come to a head making even a guess a waste of time.
Up page I commented
“Since 2000 the CO2 emission rate has been increasing annually at 0.78 Gt. In order to eliminate the rise we need to eliminate 167 million ICE passenger vehicles per year (without increasing other ICE vehicle use) or eliminate 193 coal power plants per year (without increasing other carbon fuels).
That would achieve a flat CO2 rate of emissions.”
Of course we could always collapse the civilization and after the initial infrastructure burn CO2 emissions would drop off to natural feedbacks.
Has anyone calculated how low the feedbacks would have to be to not increase temperature? I wonder if only about 10 percent of our current emissions would be enough to keep the temperature rising (slower but for a long time and decreasing albedo is not in our favor). I guess slower is better until the methane hydrates initiate rapid releasing.
Won’t matter if most of the ecosystems are in collapse or collapsed.
“What are the odds?”
That is not something with odds–
That is not going to happen.
Good answer.
Doug,
If you are truly a man,
who believes manmade creation of CO2 is
definitely going to cause the end of the world,
perhaps by 2030,
I cannot understand why you don’t put your money where your mouth is,
and stop contributing CO2 of your own?
In the meantime,
to those who deride how people like me drive “recycled”,
i.e. used, internal combustion vehicles,
what makes you think they are more worse for the environment,
then the electric cars you have decided to drive around?
Do you forget all the pollution,
that still comes from electrical generation?
Just because the tailpipe is empty,
doesn’t mean there are no consequences,
to your lifestyle.
Good day,
Ken
Hi Ken,
You’ll be glad to know that a gradual shift is occurring in the USA, with coal being phased out. Now we have more nat gas, solar and wind filling that gap. As a proud American, or at least an American, you no doubt rejoice that the largest state in the country, among others, uses little or no coal anymore for electricity. And that electric cars do a better job of transportation in regards to pollution and will become more and more common. You can bank on that.
Imagine that oil change and gas stations are no longer part of your life. [You could do yoga instead- please note that this is a joke].
And of course there are bad consequences of all of our lifestyles. Just by living as one of 7.7 Billion, we are all actors playing our part in the emerging Mass Extinction story. But it isn’t a play. It is real.
I live near a huge bay, along with millions of others of humans. It used to be teaming with wildlife, literally in the billions. For example, salmon used to run through here in the tens of millions, now in thousands. It is a relative dead zone now. Like much of this world.
I recall reading the story of an early explorer in Georgia (USA, then the British colonies I guess) coming across a river. There he saw alligators almost shoulder to shoulder across the whole river eating some the thousands of fish coming down the current.
Imagine a world where fish and other life choke the streams at times. Where bird migrations darken the sky, horizon to horizon.
Where trees were often hundreds of years old and the noise at night from animals could rival a city.
Luckily, I saw the edge of all that before it went mostly quiet.
It’s the outright killing, the development and the poisons that have done most of the work. Now global warming is just one more layer on top of that.
Morning Ken,
“Just because the tailpipe is empty, doesn’t mean there are no consequences to your lifestyle.”
I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I drive a SUV because we get several feet of snow where I live, and I wouldn’t even get up my driveway part of the year without a four-wheel drive vehicle. And, it’s true, the self-righteous EV wackos who charge batteries with fossil fuel generated electricity can be a tad irritating — especially when they see themselves as superior souls. And no, I don’t forget all the pollution that comes from fossil fuel electrical generation.
But, CO2, all by itself, isn’t going to end civilization. Because, there are a host of really bad things happening to our planet spearheaded by the fact that humans are destroying the natural environment at an ever-increasing rate. This is discouraging. And, as we continue adding 83,000,000 i-phone addicted zombies to our planet every year, EVs, at best, will simply prolong the agony.
Doug, so what year was the last baby born that you would accept upon the planet as not being an evil destructor of the world or a planet eating zombie?
Year? I can be more specific: Nov. 21st, 1940 — my birthday.
Ah, are you feeling guilty for not getting an EV?
Well, you shouldn’t. Really. You’re exactly right in thinking that you should get the vehicle you need, even if it’s not electric. But…that’s not a reason to get mad at people with EVs. No, it’s a reason to get mad at the car industry, for not making the EV you need.
Or…maybe not. After all, they’re in a competitive business, and they have to make the vehicles that make the most money, even if that’s because of the Chicken Tax light truck tariff, and a lot of industry advertising.
Maybe get mad at the oil industry, that’s fought EVs for 40 years, and prevented their expansion. Or the Kochs, who have single handedly been a big part of that blockade.
Or yourself, for not being an activist, and pressuring your representatives to do the right thing, and raise CAFE standards.
Have you called your representative lately? Have you donated money (even $5), and then called??
Everybody has a view, the US and the world is fracturing over the environment versus fossil fuels.
People keep thinking that things will stay the same or that we can keep them that way. That not only does not happen but we are now in time when massive changes are happening whether we like it or not.
Some people will jump ahead of the rest and try to anticipate the future while others doggedly anchor themselves in the past. We have tied ourselves tightly to electricity and computing already, so might as well jump on the band wagon and go all the way to fully Electric Life for a while. People should have fun with it.
What I do is work on what I can do locally.
Join the city council and work to get the sodium street lights replaced with solar panel driven LEDs and cut off the $15/mo/pole paid to Nevada Energy.
Join with the local miners to convert old mines to wind/solar/gravel batteries as this article points out: https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/giant-gravel-batteries-could-make-wind-power-consistent-energy-option
Make sure those LED street lights do not shed light at high angles as it causes severe light pollution in neighbouring properties. Choose LEDs that do not have a high blue content in their light. While our streets are much better lit, now we have LEDs, these are big problems with houses lit up to the horizontal with bright blue tinted street lights – bad for sleep.
NAOM
Yeah, the standard specification for street light LEDs seems to be a “temperature” of 3,000 degrees F.
Sadly, that’s too high. IOW, it’s too blue. But, the standard specification seems to be cheaper due to economies of scale, and it’s hard to get anybody to accept anything but the low bid.
Agree!! 2700K is the sweet spot.
(I think you meant 3000 K, for Kelvin. Thats the color scale.)
We had some new version HPS lamps shortly before they were replaced by the LEDs and those had the bulb sufficiently recessed that there was no light spill and the colour was acceptable, I wish they had left them. I have to use a tarpaulin as a shade but that still leaves the garden light flooded, need to come up with a new scheme but I do not want to raise the walls to look like a prison yard. Overall though, we needed the upgrade, just wish they had left the most modern generation of HPS or put in a better unit.
NAOM
Yes, indeed, K.
That’s great.
Do you have any power over building codes, especially for new construction? It would be nice to improve insulation, window and solar (both passive and active) requirements.
My earlier estimate using a logistic function gets all new vehicles as EV’s by 2032, essentially in agreement. The fact is that the energy used to produce, refine and distribute the fuel for ICE’s is large enough to run all the EV’s. That’s a mix of coal, natural gas and electricity.
The great part about moving to a more efficient vehicle type.
Meanwhile PV and wind keep eating away at fossil fuel burn at a good rate. But sadly not fast enough.
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/by-2023-the-world-will-have-one-trillion-watts-of-installed-solar-pv-capaci#gs.WiS07L8
Hi Fish,
Yesterday and today were sunny in the low 70’s after 2 inches of rain in a day and a half prior. Today you could already see the haze in the view of the snow capped local mountains. It’s criminal the current drive to EV’s and solar panels didn’t start 40 years earlier.
Carbon free transportation is a lot more important than the space race of the 60’s.
Been heavy rain here for weeks, all the aquifers are overflowing. Usually the springs run in the Spring, but the springs have been running in the cold fall and small creeks are running despite the below freezing temps. Local rivers are all high to near flood levels. Took three years to fully recover the aquifers but they are up now with weird timing.
Snow in North Carolina and Texas. Go figure.
We can thank the space race for developing PV tech and the oil crunches for bringing it down to earth.
“Growth in PV development emerged during the space race in the 1950s and 1960s. In conjunction with the need for space technology due to the complexity of supplying power PV cells were ideal power generators for satellites and spacecraft from the abundant solar radiation outside Earths’ atmosphere. Vanguard I satellite in 1958 had the first cells developed and has been used on nearly every satellite and spacecraft since developed.
The First common Earth-based applications were in rural telephone systems and radio transmitters. But, it was not until Oil shortages in the 1970s increased interest in Earth-based PV applications to aid in energy crises. The U.S government initiated PV research and development projects which established the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).During this time significant advancements were made in PV technology, materials, inverters and interactive systems. Furthermore, federal legislation introduced tax credits to promote renewable energy production and financial incentive programs are available to consumers in the United States, Europe and Japan to encourage use of PV technology.”
So it all works together in a way. The “space race” really is a sideshow and becoming mostly commercial now. The attempts to put men further into space will be interesting and dangerous. The biggest thing we learned was when men first looked back at the “blue marble” Earth and saw how fantastically small, beautiful and different it was than anything else we could see.
A wet, icy, cloudy planet with life all over it. Nothing else like it in the solar system. The Martians have been a big disappointment. No Venusians so far but I hear the Mercurians are really hot.
Yep, hobbyists were converting cars to EV back in the 70’s. I got hold of a set of plans that used a surplus F-111 motor/generator for the motive/regen system. Tried to get another guy to go along with me to build one but it fell through.
Good luck to you and yours. Best of health.
If we’re being realistic, things aren’t looking good kids.
COP24 FAILS TO ADOPT KEY SCIENTIFIC REPORT
Attempts to incorporate a key scientific study into global climate talks in Poland have failed. The report said that the world is now completely off track, heading more towards 3C this century rather than 1.5C. Keeping to the preferred target would need “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”. If warming was to be kept to 1.5C this century, then emissions of carbon dioxide would have to be reduced by 45% by 2030.
“Negotiators ran into serious trouble when Saudi Arabia, the US and Russia objected to the conference “welcoming” the document. Instead they wanted to support a much more lukewarm phrase, that the conference would “take note” of the report.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46496967
Meanwhile,
MACRON’S DEFEAT IN PARIS SOUNDS ALARM FOR EUROPE
Europe has seen many a critical juncture in recent years, from the Greek debt crisis to the anti-immigrant backlash against refugees and Britain’s Brexit vote. Rarely, though, have so many political vultures been circling around one leader with so much at stake for the world order. The grassroots protest movement was sparked by opposition to his environmental policy of hiking taxes on diesel and gasoline to fund incentives to buy cleaner cars and home housing systems. But it’s evolved into widespread anger about the rising cost of living and declining services in rural and small-town France.
https://ca.yahoo.com/finance/news/macron-defeat-paris-sounds-alarm-050119639.html
The fuel hike was only the straw that broke the camel’s back. Cuts to pensions, tax increases for the worst off and tax cuts for the top 1% and other issues were already creating the conditions for this, it was just the pot finally boiling over.
ANOM
France desperately needs reforms and won’t admit it. Macron is trying to make them bite the bullet. I don’t think he has lost yet by a long shot.
And these are relatively ‘good’ times in the world economy. Turbulence times ahead will lead to desperate voters. Beware the tyrant.
Apparently we are further down the descent of civilization than originally thought. Tough go to make changes when things have been descending for people for a couple of decades or more now.
Here many people make $15 an hour. After all is said and done that brings in about $18000 a year of actual cash in hand. They often end up working a part time job too.
Don’t try telling those people they need to pay more for gasoline and goods so that a few rich people can run around in electric cars.
You think this is tough time GF, just wait.
I didn’t say times were tough, I said it was a tough go to make changes in this social-financial environment.
We live in an exclusionary homeless techno-paradise with predators.
It’s a dying planet where people think that getting more stuff and money is what we should be doing. I am not sure it is even thinking, most likely social programming and sub-conscious desires.
People don’t have a place, a real home generally. They move around a lot, always have the mortgage company and the township ready to take their home away. Or they live in rented concrete and steel crypts.
No viable relationship with the land or nature. Which is the essence of our problems. It’s all just stuff and it’s all just rented. A dissociated mental state.
Apparently we are further down the descent of civilization than originally thought.
Indeed we are. It is incorrect to say civilization will collapse. What is correct is that civilization is collapsing. We are in the process of collapse. Creeping collapse, it just gets a little worse each year. Creeping up on us so slow that few people realize it is actually happening. Kinda like the boiling frog. Most won’t realize it is happening until total disaster happens to them.
Of course people know it is happening. Beside talks and seminars being on the internet, do you really think people whose father was a single blue collar wage earner and had a house, raised a family and went on vacations do not realize they now have two and half jobs in a family and are in debt to make things work? They know that things are going downhill but there is little they can do about it except work harder for the money the machines and rich took away from them.
Now in some places in the world it is dramatically apparent that there is economic collapse and civil unrest or war. So it’s not homogeneous.
Other places like China, some people are getting to be well off or rich, while many became wage slaves. The machines are now taking them out too.
List of countries by Fragile States Index
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_States_Index
Oh yeah, and their now grown kids can’t get a decent job even with a college degree now. In debt to start with and not many prospects.
I think most people know, at least the ones I have talked to about the subject.
This has been going on for at least forty years now in the US.
The case could be make that humans are not yet at the “descent of civilization”, but near peak civilization. We have record GDP, energy production, infrastructure, efficiency, information access and population. It’s probably more like a long climb to the top of the mountain and now close to the edge of the cliff. There are always pockets of decline during the climb.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/07/democrats-climate-change-infrastructure-schumer-1049704
Democrats will insist on climate change measures in infrastructure deal, Schumer says
“No doubt, a single infrastructure bill alone will not solve our climate problem,” Schumer wrote. “But it is an important and necessary first step to include at least some, if not many, of these ideas. Without them, Trump should not count on Democratic support in the Senate.”
“The case could be make that humans are not yet at the “descent of civilization”, but near peak civilization. We have record GDP, energy production, infrastructure, efficiency, information access and population. ”
Said the man in the rose colored glasses receiving his prize just before the rug was pulled out from under his feet.
You do realize that the global poverty line is set at $1.90 per day? Yet it keeps changing over time and when one examines it more closely, it may just be a numbers game.
http://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/international-poverty-line-has-just-been-raised-190-day-global-poverty-basically-unchanged-how-even
Besides all that, economic inequality has grown by leaps and bounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCu-XnVxhfk
http://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/
Of course the Affordable Care Act is not affordable nor does it even cover doctor visits.
But it’s all good because we can text now and have TV, even though 21% of the US population is on public assistance.
Fish, I feel you are misrepresenting or understood my comment. Which has nothing to do with inequalities and which is also nothing new in the history of man.
“Of course the Affordable Care Act is not affordable nor does it even cover doctor visits”
Your above comment is just factually wrong and the type of Republican comment that let’s the inequalities in the United States to escalate. The ACA offers Medicaid at no charge to individuals and families who’s incomes are less than 138% of the countries poverty level. Here in California that’s about an annual income of about $17,000 for individuals and more for families. Republican states with Republican governors have refused to accept this free money for this service for their citizens from the federal government. The ACA also offers financial assistance for those who’s income ranges from 138% to 400% of the poverty level. That’s up to $48,500 income for individuals with as much as $6000 assistance annually for those in their early 60’s in California in that upper range.
Also, all health insurance plans sold by the ACA’s exchanges cover doctor visits. It’s the individuals choice to choose a high deductible plan. The deductible limits who pays for the first early doctor visits annually.
I do wonder if you feel the world is decline. When do you feel that peak civilization occurred ?
Beach, your perception of the Affordable plan is skewed and does not fit the reality these people have to face. Just tried to help someone get it and so am familiar with the plans and numbers. I have helped several people in this area but that was several years ago.
Your Republican comment is just what I have come to expect from this site. Disagree or add to something and personal innuendos and attacks are the norm. If I am helping by pointing out the truth then that is just reality. The Republicans have steadily lowered public assistance since the 90s and are still complaining because it exists at all.
When do I think peak civilization occurred. If civilization is measured by war, death, destruction, pollution and environmental/ biosphere destruction, I think it was reached last century and continues to be a great civilization by all those measures.
If one measures a civilization by freedom, clean air, water, good food, a healthy and growing environment, lack of imposed existential threat for all species and a strong probability of a future for mankind and the biosphere, I am afraid that civilization has gotten a failing grade all around. So civilization never peaked in recent history, it just grew more nasty, industrial and technical leading toward increasing disasters.
Don’t be fooled by the glamour and glitz, that’s Hollywood.
Stay loose and be careful out there.
>The case could be make that humans are not yet at the “descent of civilization”, but near peak civilization.
Well maybe, but it is important to keep in mind that our technology is primitive compared to what it will be in a few decades, and we haven’t even started cleaning up the mess we’ve made of the world. We need to start adopting non-destructive resource use, but we also need to turn the clock back and start fixing the stuff we have broken.
KunstlerCast 310 — With Shaun Chamberlain, Editor of the Late David Fleming’s Book “Lean Logic”
Death of a Resumé
A Day In Pompeii
It’s funny, per the chart, the U.S. gets 67% of its electricity from fossil fuels. In Canada, that figure is less that 20%.
And yet, GHG emissions per capita are higher in Canada.
The oil and gas industry itself is the biggest emitter – a lot of oil sands production is simple arbitrage: turning energy in natural gas into more expensive energy in oil. The oil sands mining, plus the other mining and heavy industries in Canada are pretty high as is direct heating (in a colder climate), which is actually quite a high efficiency way of using fossil fuels (where I’d guess in USA A/C might be a similar or higher overall load compared to heating). Freight distances are long and overall – trains, boats, planes and trucks – I think it uses more for that than passenger vehicles (around 10 to 12% each).
For those who have not seen it before this is a pretty good site: http://www.bitsofscience.org.
It presents information as series of bite sized blogs (e.g.temperature change, mass extinction, sea level rise and the newest is climate impact on agriculture).
Some great graphics and information on the Queensland fires here (fire simulations are used to predict fire tracks so that fire fighting can be better directed to save buildings):
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-08/from-space,-the-ferocity-of-queenslands-bushfires-is-revealed/10594662
The fires were so intense they even penetrated rainforests — a phenomenal occurrence which has astounded and alarmed fire scientists.
“Rainforests are non-burnable. That’s one of their distinguishing features. So if a rainforest is burning, that’s really significant,”
Anyone know why the atmospheric annual growth rate in CO2/yr fluctuates so widely?
50 yrs ago the average rise was close 1 ppm/yr, and now is averaging over 2 ppm/yr, and some yrs up to 3ppm/yr.
But inter-year variation is something like 30-40%, which surprises me.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html
Despite this variation in growth rate, the rise in actual CO2 concentration has been very smooth.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/full.html
I’m guessing this has to do with ocean equilibrium factors?
[I’m guessing we will peak out at about 460ppm. Wild guess.]
A change in 0,5 ppm in one year is only 1 tenth of one percent change so should not be very noticeable in the overall CO2 record. We start getting 3 and 4 ppm jumps then things get crazy.
If you average out monthly ups and downs, which are mostly due to seasonal plant growth and decay, it’s a actually pretty smooth curve. Perhaps best to just look at year-on-year averages.
Land sinks take up about 30% of emitted CO2 (but falling recently) and there is about a plus/minus 50% swing around the average between a full La Nina year and a full El Nino, mainly due to rainfall rates and forest growth in Indonesia and South East Asia.
Fires, El Nino, volcanoes, disasters etc. Smooths out a lot when averaging but still has a lot of fluctuation. What did surprise me was a big dip in the early 90s and a big spike in the late 90s while the 2008 recession did not do much. Can anyone explain the dip and spike?
NAOM
The spike in the late 90’s was 1998 and that was a super El Niño.
Thanks. Anyone any ideas on the early 90s dip?
NAOM
Coal use plateaued in the early nineties before zooming up again when China and India started growing, and oil for electricity started to fall, so it could be just the effect of increased natural gas in the mix. The was a fairly big and extended recession in the west around then as well, but there could also be some noisy and fine grained weather effects on local forest etc. which would be difficult to pick out individually.
Still shows up in averages pretty strongly.
CLIMATE TALKS PAUSE AS BATTLE OVER KEY SCIENCE REPORT LOOM
Russia’s intentions were unclear, while the U.S. position appeared to be driven by President Donald Trump’s “cavalier attitude toward science in general and climate science in particular.”
It’s really an embarrassment for the world’s leading scientific superpower to be in this position of having to disbelieve a report that was written by the world’s scientific community including a large number of pre-eminent U.S. scientists.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-12-climate-key-science-looms.html#jCp
“Men occasionally stumble across the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” Winston Churchill
Didn’t Mao Zedong institute a cultural revolution opposing the intellectuals and educated while developing a cult following around himself?
Sound familiar?
.
Republicans arn’t embarrassed. More proud it seems.
They aren’t big on science anyway.
Conflicts with teaching creationism, you know.
Also, Gets in the way of profits sometimes, like scientific proof that cigarette smoking is related to developing lung, esophageal and bladder cancer. Very inconvenient.
They’re big on science, when the result is bigger weapons.
Beats using a helicopter and runs on electricity:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46500367
NAOM
Getting Ahead of Hindsight
That’s just one article of many that may hint that we haven’t quite yet figured out technology/energy/industrial-pollution with scale and numbers over time.
Sure, maybe something like that works or looks promising now— especially with limited thought and foresight– but try electrifying ‘everything’ for ‘everyone’ and see what happens. Run a simulation, a thought-experiment.
(My laptop has nagware that, whenever it’s turned on, keeps telling me it needs a new battery.)
Burning fossil fuels ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’, too.
See also here for a late reply.
Temperature highlights for November 2018:
-Globally, temperatures were more than 0.4°C above the average November for 1981-2010.
-In Europe, temperatures were generally above average, in particular in northern Scandinavia and around the Svalbard archipelago.
-Temperatures were much above average in north-western North America, but the central and eastern parts of the continent saw much below average temperatures.
https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-november-2018
We have enough fossil fuel right now to push the planet to it’s more normal state, warm. Once there it will take a very long time for weathering to reduce the CO2 levels and chill the planet again. Probably millions of years. With the temperate zone reaching up past the Arctic Circle and New York City being at the edge of the tropics, a lot of things are going to be quite different. What am I saying, New York City II, they had to move it back up into the inland hills. The old one goes under water long before then.
Nobody really knows what the future will look like, but with each passing day the probability of an ice free world looms larger.
Statewide average temperature ranks for November 2018. Missouri experienced its coldest November on record according to some temperature re-calibrations.
Whew, thank goodness. For awhile there, I thought we were toast! Thanks for the good news, Bob!
…Say, is that a cold blob in the middle there?! I hope it doesn’t come over here! With anthropogenic global warming, maybe things will warm up before it does!
Just as predicted by climate change and serves as more proof.
The average American has been brainwashed to believe that capitalism is good and socialism is bad. Nothing could be further from the truth!
https://eand.co/why-americans-get-socialism-and-capitalism-backwards-241c1a37e62f
You mean me handing my money over to a bank and they give me 1 percent while they make 4 to 6 percent on my money is not a good thing? Why, I’ll be jiggered! Who woulda thunk?
Republicans are against socialism and handouts but I bet they were first in the queue when their expensive homes were flooded, blown away or burnt.
NAOM
… or when their banks collapse, or their farm products don’t sell to China. Repubs love redistribution, just not to poor folks.
“just not to poor folks”
“just not to those who really need it”
Fixed
NAOM
No doubt if you want everything in your life to be provided to you for free, then socialism must look real good. However, under such a system, you will run out of available money to take from others sooner or later, and I bet the socialism lovers would be the first to complain about not being able to make money simply by having a unique business idea.
Oh get real Trumpite. No one said anything about wanting everything for free. What Americans want is what Canadians and most Europeans already have, medical care that is paid for by our taxes, not free.
We have medicare that our taxes pay for. But the insurance companies get more of our tax dollars than are returned to us via medial care. And a catastrophic medical need by anyone will bankrupt anyone so unfortunant. That should not happen.
But those goddamn stupid Trumpites yell “socialism” as if the word was the devil itself. You fucking right wing nutcases just make me sick.
Then why is it people flee socialist countries to come to America more than any other country?
Have you ever lived anywhere outside of the US?!
Try it sometime you might find out how ridiculous you sound! There are many places in the world that people might have reason to flee but socialism isn’t a major one…
I have traveled eastern Europe enough to witness the negative effects from socialism there in the past. My view is, socialism is basically sanctioned destruction of a country. Places like Poland or Hungary are really only now rebounding from the socioeconomic damage Soviet-style socialism caused. Others that were actually part of the Soviet Union, like the Ukraine or Belarus, are still largely waiting to be liberated. Personally, I am quite happy living under the capitalistic system where those who are willing to work hard are rewarded the most.
Wow, the anti socialism trolls are really out in full force. My post must really have struck a nerve.
For the record no one is advocating the authoritarian Soviet style dictatorship!
BTW, I was just in Hungary and I can tell that you don’t have fucking clue. All Hungarians have access to health care and it is quite good. The same can not be said for Americans!
No, not socialist troll, fossil fuel troll using the French protests against everything as a cover.
NAOM
Nothing like blowing one’s time online by chronically responding to trolling.
You are more stupid than tha average right wing nutcase. Those people are not fleeing socalists countries, they are fleeing facist Central American countries ruled by a dictator.
You may be thinking about Venezuela. Venezuela is ruled by a dictator. His country has nothing resembling socalism, just corruption. And those people are fleeing into Bolivia and Brazil, not to America.
And people are fleeing into Canada and European countries where they have socalized medicine. And they are definitely not fleeing socalist countries. The African countries they are fleeing have nothing even remotely resembling socalism.
I am not advocating socalism. I am advocating a single payer medical care system that covers catastrophic medical care for everyone, that’t it. Trump, and all you stupid right wing nutcases, want no medical care for anyone. If you get cancer, or some other catastrophic medical problem, and you are not rich, then you just want to let them die. If you are not rich then you deserve to die, that’s your motto.
Ron and Fred have gone to the trouble of calling you an idiot, but I don’t feel the need.
Until you provide a stat for this outlandish claim, you’re a liar.
So George, is it socialist Medicare or Social Security that you would like to get of first? Or just both?
… or socialized roads and sidewalks. oh no the Marxists are coming lol what a fanatic. Dudes probably never left his county.
Growing up, in school, we were taught the people of the USSR were good ordinary people, for the most part, but the socialist government system, they lived under, was immoral. I guess maybe there was a little exaggerating in that, but there are many reasons, why most people in this country would not want to see us turn to socialism.
Regards,
Ralph
Cass Tech ’64
Do we have a simple definition of capitalism vs socialism? Central planning vs decentralized private companies?
Did you go to public (socialist) or private (capitalist) school?!
Whatever you do, like Survivalist implied, do not avail yourself of SOCIAL SECURITY or Medicare, Medicaid.
The difference with Social Security & Medicare is that WE PAID in to those programs during our working years, therefore we earned the right to get our money back in retirement. They are different from socialism, which works by taking money away from working people in order to give free things to people who are able to work but don’t want to.
You are a fucking moron and a liar to boot! Goodbye!
Socialism is mainly about some form of collective ownership of industry and services. If you own a pension scheme and it owns shares in industry, that is a form of socialism. If police fire, schools and infrastructure are paid through taxes, local or otherwise, that is socialism. Welfare is something else, maybe the most socialist country around now, China, has very little welfare coverage. Communist states did not hand out a lot of unemployment welfare, they provided jobs for all and expected people to work, however unproductive and uninteresting the jobs were. Lack of welfare can put pressure for increased birth rates and tends to lead to poverty and social stresses, I think US in the coming years will be a prime example of that.
The other big plank of socialism is equal opportunity for good education for all. Scandinavian countries used to be, maybe still are, really good at that and have reaped the benefit. From what I’ve seen of US eduction it, and consequently the country as a whole, would strongly benefit from a big injection of real socialism, but many countries are now sadly following American example and going the other way, which is highly destructive.
Bruce Grano- sorry dude. You’ve got to do a better than that. For one thing, you may be unpleased to know that SS and Medicare are not savings accounts.
The money collected now funds the current yr payouts. In other words, every cent you and I have put in has already been spent.
There is no future guarantee, like a CD at the bank.
If you were hoping for a right to get some benefit back, well you better hope that people with some socialist sympathies are running things when you are of the age. You should be carrying a sign that says- Don’t F-ck With My Socialist Programs!!!
I went to public schools, Mr. Magyar. This was during the cold War “Duck and Cover” times, the teachers made us fear the communists and socialists could bomb us.
Regards,
Ralph
Cass Tech ’64
Carbon Dioxide looking good folks — Nov. 2018: 408,02 ppm (Nov. 2017: 405.12 ppm). Methane showing healthy growth as well, now at over 1850 ppm and climbing.
BTW Yesterdays CO2 = 109.83
I think that should be ppb not ppm for the methane.
Correct, sorry.
“As a matter of our policy, we want to end all of those subsidies [for electric vehicles]. And by the way, other subsidies that were imposed during the Obama administration, we are ending, whether it’s for renewables and so forth…It’s just all going to end in the near future. I don’t know whether it will end in 2020 or 2021.”
—-Larry Kudlow, White House economic advisor
This is some strange dystopian nightmare world, to wake up and find Larry Kudlow as the senior advisor on economics to ‘president’ Donald Trump.
Both of these guys are mental lightweights who like to dress up (and get manicures).
They are reality TV show quality characters, and even at that their value is as oddities.
On policy matters, they are mid-range 3rd graders.
What a f…king embarrassment.
Late stage capitalism was never going to be fun.
Unfortunately, this is what you get.
Try to get acquainted with this “strange dystopian nightmare world”– it will probably get worse.
A recovering alcoholic who once had a $100,000 per month cocaine habit must obviously be a superstar in micro economics. Perfect pick to master the realities of macro economics frameworks! Musk admitted he doesn’t even know how to inhale.
https://www.inquisitr.com/4824431/larry-kudlow-alcoholic-cocaine-addict-president-trump-pick-economic-advisor/
“Both of these guys are mental lightweights who like to dress up (and get manicures).”
Lip gloss too in some pics I’ve seen.
O tempora o mores!
Makeup, dress-up and lip-gloss, etc., would seem standard procedure for anyone in/for movies and other media, though, yes?
Fuck that. Embarrassment about that kind of thing seems, ironically, more for those still in diapers where that’s concerned.
“Grown men do not need leaders.” ~ Edward Abbey
So that you can ignore them too? ‘u^
45 per cent of US oil production are profitable only because of subsidies.
Will those subsidies end too? (of course not)
The WaPo article I got this from
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/10/02/forget-the-paris-agreement-the-real-solution-to-climate-change-is-in-the-u-s-tax-code/?utm_term=.a854c49e76b8
The infografic for the study
http://priceofoil.org/content/uploads/2017/01/subsidies-inforgaphic-jan-2017-final.pdf
The study
https://www.sei.org/publications/us-oil-subsidies/
Synapsid —
WATER FOUND ON ASTEROID
“Spectral observations made by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft identified hydrated minerals across the asteroid, confirming that Bennu, a remnant from early in the formation of the solar system, is an excellent specimen for the OSIRIS-REx mission to study the composition of primitive volatiles and organics.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181210150554.htm
With a new photo of Ultima Thule plus a long velocity correction it is going to be very interesting around the new year.
NAOM
Hi Doug.
Yep, saw that. Head outward from this here Earth and we find water wherever we look. Heck, even if we head inward we find it, 34 kilometers above the surface at Venus (well, water plus sulfur oxides, true, but if you squint…) My hat has been off to H2O for decades now.
There’s a good piece on Ceres today at Eurekalert. The place seems to be remodeling itself continually with water being the enabler.
21 November 1940 huh? When I’m asked I say “older than the atomic bomb”, but you can say “…than Pearl Harbor.” Or “Casablanca”–now that is class. (“You must remember this…”)
time for just a little port
Yeah, saw the piece on Ceres. Perhaps they’ll send a lander someday. Meanwhile we’ll have to go with meteorites I guess.
EAST ANTARCTICA’S GLACIERS ARE STIRRING
“NASA says it has detected the first signs of significant melting in a swathe of glaciers in East Antarctica. The region has long been considered stable and unaffected by some of the more dramatic changes occurring elsewhere on the continent. But satellites have now shown that ice streams running into the ocean along one-eighth of the eastern coastline have thinned and sped up. If this trend continues, it has consequences for future sea levels.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46517396
SUDDEN STRATOSPHERIC WARMING LINKED TO OPEN WATER IN POLAR ICE PACK
“In the depths of the long night that cloaks the Arctic in frigid darkness for three months each winter, a surprising patch of open water appeared, just to the north of Greenland. It was a polynya – an area of unfrozen water surrounded by the polar ice pack. Though not especially rare in some parts of the Arctic, the north Greenland polynya of Feb. 2018 was most unexpected. 50,000 km² of open water in the Wandel Sea, an area the size of the state of Kentucky or the province of Nova Scotia.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-12-sudden-stratospheric-linked-polar-ice.html#jCp
A Yugh Factor in Energy Transition in North America is the Normalization of NG Prices.
With Utility increases, total usage must be up higher than the EIA shows. The Storage to Consumption Ratio must be dropping. As of week 48 NG Buffer is at new lows. Is it time to get out the Popcorn?
http://americanoilman.homestead.com/GasStorage.html
The Earth is basically a water world and the oceans play a huge part in the carbon cycles. For those interested in the how and why CO2 rates vary, here is a description of the workings of the ocean system.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/OceanCarbon/page1.php
Summary: it’s complicated
I have edited the lead post to add a couple of charts post as suggested by Nick G in his top comment. Curious to know whether folks think I should use them in addition to the ones I already us or instead of them?
Thanks, interesting. My vote is yes.
NAOM
Yes add? Or yes replace?
Sorry, add. They make it clearer.
They look great, and are very useful.
Arctic warming-
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/11/world/climate-change-arctic-report-card-2018-wxc/index.html
Australia in midst of $20 billion wind and solar investment boom
The Coalition government tried to prevent it and failed, and haven’t stopped complaining about it ever since. And now we can see why: Australia is in the midst of an extraordinary investment boom in large scale wind and solar projects, and battery storage, far beyond what even the industry’s most ardent supporters ever imagined.
The latest estimates from the Clean Energy Council show that there is currently $20 billion of wind and solar farms either under construction or about to start because they have reached financial close.
This represents some 80 wind and solar farms with some 14.6 gigawatts of capacity – far beyond that which is required under the mandated renewable energy target, which the Coalition tried to scrap under the Abbott government but only got as far as reducing its target from 41,000GWh to 33,000GWh.
The large scale RET is not the only mechanism out there providing an incentive for new investment – state based schemes targets exist in Victoria and Queensland, and state governments and private companies are also contracting directly with wind and solar projects to secure a cheaper source of supply.
And, it should be pointed out, this does not include the $6 billion of wind and solar projects already completed, means that the total value of wind, solar and storage projects completed or underway this year is more than $26 billion. A further $2 billion is likely to have been spent on small scale rooftop solar in 2018.
Policy plan for rapid transition to 100% renewable-powered Europe handed to politicians
Politicians take note: “The energy transition is not a question of technical feasibility or economic viability, but one of political will.” Indeed, according to a new study, it is possible to rapidly transition to a Europe 100% powered by renewables and with zero greenhouse gas emissions. Solar PV leads the charge, followed by wind. Overall, eight policy recommendations have been laid out to achieve this bold goal by 2050.
A new study published by the Energy Watch Group and LUT University, and funded by Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt, states that it is not only possible for Europe to transition to a world powered 100% by renewables by 2050, but that it would create more jobs and be more cost effective than the present fossil fuel-led system.
At a RENAlliance panel on the sidelines of this year’s COP, the researchers presented what they say is a “technically feasible and economically viable energy pathway for Europe, in which the energy sector (comprising power, heat, transport, and desalination) can reach 100% renewable energy and zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.”
The transition can be made on existing renewable energy potential and technologies, say the researchers, who state, “The energy transition is not a question of technical feasibility or economic viability, but one of political will.”
Just saw a reference to this over at insideevs.com. Haven’t had time to read it yet but, thought others might want to go through it in the meantime. The guys at insideevs.com appeared to be impressed with the quality of the article:
EVs, Oil, And ICE: Impact By 2023 And Beyond
Summary
This article explores the timings and various impacts of EVs on Big Oil, and the ICE automotive industries, including shale oil plays, Ford, GM, Tesla, Rivian and others.
I find that ICE auto sales will drop 50% by 2025. Passenger car sales are down already with SUVs and Pickup sales to follow with Rivian and Tesla entering the space.
EV penetration into the global auto fleet should initiate an oil glut by 2023. Shale oil (high extraction cost) operations should become stressed first.
By 2031, there will be ~1 billion EVs in the global fleet of cars. This timing is 2 decades faster than many analysts are projecting.
Caveats: Dramatically lower oil prices will delay these projections and operational autonomous vehicle control will accelerate them. Some companies will soar, others will collapse.
Yep, and by the 2030’s most of the power will come from wind and PV. Thus making a matched set causing appreciable reduction in fossil fuel burning.
More importantly we need to start talking about and acting upon the taboo subjects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRPmLWYbUqA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq3w7cldgMU
WARNING
Security Alert
Please check you modem logs for intrusions from IP addresses starting in 176.119 these are in the Ukraine especially the rebel held area.
I have been seeing unusual traffic and finally nailed it today. When my modem (Huawei) first starts up and before it connects to the Telmex servers, it has reverted to an epoch date before picking up the real time from the servers. During this gap there is a connection being attempted to my modem from those IP addresses. Shortly after my modem is used to route packets from that IP address to a network in Mexico that includes the Mexico City Government site. All this is even before I have switched my computer on.
I have added the range of addresses to my modem’s firewall and will have to see how effective this is. I will be tracking this. It appears to be a problem within the Telmex network and it has been reported.
Stay safe online
NAOM
Danke!
WARMING, SEA-ICE LOSS: ARCTIC REPORT CARD TRACKS REGION’S ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES
“NOAA’s annual report card on the Arctic, released today, shows that the Arctic region experienced the second-warmest air temperatures ever recorded; the second-lowest overall sea-ice coverage; lowest recorded winter ice in the Bering Sea; and earlier plankton blooms due to early melting of sea ice in the Bering Sea.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181211121107.htm
DougL,
A release at Eurekalert/Space and planetary: Iron-60 spike in seabed sediment dating to base of Pleistocene! (Scattered presence for 10 million years before that but no spikes) Supernova or chain of supernovae sent increased muon flux, most harmful to large marine animals, less harmful the smaller the organism, at very time Megalodon (italics to be supplied by reader), shark the size of a schoolbus, goes extinct!
We pass over in silence that the beginning of the Pleistocene is signaled by changes in the marine-microfossil record and palaeomagnetic stratigraphy.
Look for this on excitable websites soon!
There is a lot of negative talk about continued loss of sea ice, glaciers, etc. and the continued warming of the planet. However, consider that the last time the Arctic Ocean increased it’s sea ice and became multi-year after having much open water, while the glaciers expanded, there was 200 year long global drought that broke many civilizations.
Considering that we were headed toward another glaciation, though probably not as severe as the last, we may have averted major changes in the hydrological system.
As panic sets in from the effects of global warming, cooling the planet and CO2 drawdown may become a massive fixation among many nations. We must be very careful about reversing the current trend as it could lead to another global drought and unanticipated climate changes.
Keeping Some of the Lights On: Redefining Energy Security
Loki’s Revenge
So, You Think Science Will Save the World? Are You Sure?
Science Is Getting Less Bang for Its Buck
Patrick Collison and Michael Nielsen
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/diminishing-returns-science/575665/
The writer Stewart Brand once wrote that “science is the only news.” While news headlines are dominated by politics, the economy, and gossip, it’s science and technology that underpin much of the advance of human welfare and the long-term progress of our civilization. This is reflected in an extraordinary growth in public investment in science. Today, there are more scientists, more funding for science, and more scientific papers published than ever before.
On the surface, this is encouraging. But for all this increase in effort, are we getting a proportional increase in our scientific understanding? Or are we investing vastly more merely to sustain (or even see a decline in) the rate of scientific progress?
The picture this survey paints is bleak: Over the past century, we’ve vastly increased the time and money invested in science, but in scientists’ own judgement, we’re producing the most important breakthroughs at a near-constant rate. On a per-dollar or per-person basis, this suggests that science is becoming far less efficient…It’s requiring larger teams and far more extensive scientific training, and the overall economic impact is getting smaller. Taken together, these results suggest strong diminishing returns to our scientific efforts.
The Present Phase of Stagnation in the Foundations of Physics Is Not Normal
Sabine Hossenfelder
http://nautil.us/blog/the-present-phase-of-stagnation-in-the-foundations-of-physics-is-not-normal
Nothing is moving in the foundations of physics. One experiment after the other is returning null results: No new particles, no new dimensions, no new symmetries. Sure, there are some anomalies in the data here and there, and maybe one of them will turn out to be real news. But experimentalists are just poking in the dark. They have no clue where new physics may be to find. And their colleagues in theory development are of no help.
Some have called it a crisis. But I don’t think “crisis” describes the current situation well: Crisis is so optimistic. It raises the impression that theorists realized the error of their ways, that change is on the way, that they are waking up now and will abandon their flawed methodology. But I see no awakening. The self-reflection in the community is zero, zilch, nada, nichts, null. They just keep doing what they’ve been doing for 40 years, blathering about naturalness and multiverses and shifting their “predictions,” once again, to the next larger particle collider.
I think stagnation describes it better. And let me be clear that the problem with this stagnation is not with the experiments. The problem is loads of wrong predictions from theoretical physicists.
Great!
Another physics/science is dead story…
We have discussed this before!
Meanwhile the real scientific story is that humans are making the planet uninhabitable for most life other than bacteria.
Unfortunately that science is being totally ignored!
It would be interesting to know how much of the money nominally spent is going on actual research and how much is now for applying for grants (a lot I’d guess), admin, teaching, conferences, playing fortnite etc. As universities switch more towards businesses it’s not surprising they lose some of their original benefits.
I think the negative impact from technology (internet and social media) on individual thinking versus group think also has a big impact.
Duhhh, the problems are getting more complex and demand much more computer power and complex instrumentation to solve. Therefor, more expensive.
Back when I was working we leveraged our abilities by using hybrid techniques and multiple detection systems.
The bang is still there, answers that would never happen without complex, sophisticated methods and abilities.
Fred, you might find this interesting, especially the bit about acidification. Unfortunately you’re the only one here who seems to actually understand this stuff.
ARCTIC PERMAFROST MIGHT CONTAIN ‘SLEEPING GIANT’ OF WORLD’S CARBON EMISSIONS
“We call it the sleeping giant of the global carbon cycle,” said Professor Örjan Gustafsson, an environmental scientist at Stockholm University in Sweden. “It’s not really accounted for in climate models.” The researchers have been comparing the temperatures of permafrost on land and underwater. About 10,000 years ago, the temperature of both permafrost types was about -18˚C. They found that permafrost on the ground has now warmed up to about -10˚C but under the sea it has reached 0˚C. “That was surprising,” Prof. Gustafsson said. “I had no idea that sub-sea permafrost was thawing so quickly.”
The team’s findings point to much higher levels of ocean acidification than that predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in their report published in 2014, which largely considered the effect of anthropogenic carbon emissions. “Acidification could be 100 times more severe,” Prof. Gustafsson said. “Ocean acidification by permafrost carbon from land is a new mechanism we hadn’t thought about much, and we didn’t think it was so strong.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-12-arctic-permafrost-giant-world-carbon.html#jCp
DougL,
The water above sub-sea permafrost gets no colder than 0 degrees C but the air above terrestrial permafrost goes down to -40C in those parts. Easier for permafrost to warm up below water than beneath land.
Fred, you might find this interesting, especially the bit about acidification.
Yeah, ‘interesting‘, in a Chinese curse, kind of way… More like depressing, especially because so few people seem to grasp the profound implications. Much more fun to watch Pelosi, Trump and Schumer squabbling over the border wall and the government shutdown.
I think I’m going to need to pick up Synapsid’s Port habit, just to stay sane. 😉
Cheers!
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