Comments not related to oil or natural gas production in this thread please.
166 thoughts to “Open Thread, July 26, 2018”
To followup on previous topic- Nikola Motors is developing hydrogen fueled hybrid trucks.
They have awarded a Norwegian company a contract to supply 448 hydrogen electrolyzers with capacity of 1GW to be delivered by 2020, for their initial fueling network.
So, their trucks will be electric powered with hydrogen as the energy storage medium.
People have proclaimed this to be an expensive arrangement previously, but apparently this company sees the mechanism as cost competitive in a peak oil world.
The horrible fantasy of nuclear energy to power the world. Even to power 10 percent of world is a nightmare fantasy. Nuclear energy is not scalable and it is very dangerous. Plus the known dangers of all that uranium mining, which would run out of known resources long before a target of even 50% electric power demand could be met.
As Abbott notes in his study, global power consumption today is about 15 terawatts (TW). Currently, the global nuclear power supply capacity is only 375 gigawatts (GW). In order to examine the large-scale limits of nuclear power, Abbott estimates that to supply 15 TW with nuclear only, we would need about 15,000 nuclear reactors. In his analysis, Abbott explores the consequences of building, operating, and decommissioning 15,000 reactors on the Earth, looking at factors such as the amount of land required, radioactive waste, accident rate, risk of proliferation into weapons, uranium abundance and extraction, and the exotic metals used to build the reactors themselves. https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html
The large amounts of land required with access to water cooling for 15,000 reactors is probably not available unless one does not isolate them.
“One station would need to be built and another decommissioned somewhere in the world every day”
No way to handle the nuclear waste, even now with just 2 percent of global energy being supplied.
With today’s accident rate there would be a major accident every month.
There is not enough known uranium resource, just a few years at full capacity and only 50 with the current number of reactors.
The effect of pursuing this would be to make thousands of nuclear reactors that would be shut long before the end of the century and then the process of spending the next century trying to decommission the units, while having nowhere or any safe way to store the waste.
Just one more dangerous DEAD END.
George Carlin in one of his standups said maybe plastic, but I said maybe nuclear waste…
Let’s say, 250 million years, give or take, and we might see something that makes the Cambrian Explosion (if I have my natural history correct) look like a watery kindergarten project, what do you think?
Strangely-alluring image (my favorite representation online of the plant) below (which can be selected for a larger version) is of one of the earliest land plants, called cooksonia. Imagine briefly visiting the planet right about then, with all kinds of living activity just under the water, yet with little else of life on the land…
I’ll repost this here since there’s a new post. A look at how democracy, the US, and the world may be coming to an end.
It is the duty of all Americans to try and hang on long enough that it is nature that takes us down.
Interesting article on the trajectory of the nation/world. A coherent summary, much of which resonates strongly with me. Thanks.
General Motors-Tesla Merger
“If Musk decides to try and help the people of Flint Michigan I’m very certain nobody will beat him to the punch.” ~ Survivalist
My intuition or whatever, keeps saying, “Musk (his industries) is(/are) (a ‘front’/’frontman’/’mould’ of/for) government.”. What with subsidies and other funding, that’s not entirely off the mark in any event.
Space X? Tesla? Gigafactory? Underground car subway? ‘Manned Mars mission? Self-driving? Civil promos like Puerto Rico, South Australia, submarine rescues and Flint Michigan water? While Tesla’s profits tank and Musk apparently Twitters while he’s supposed to be on or at least at the job?
The whole thing looks like a (somewhat desperate) governpimp clusterfuck…
That presentation actually gives me some hope we might actually be able to mitigate some of the problems that we have caused by treating the planet and its atmosphere as waste sinks. Now if we can just figure a way to have fewer of us and more other creatures.
This sounds smart, if you believe in modern industrial civilization attempting to adapt-
3B$ pumped hydro energy storage project at Hoover dam [storing wind and solar energy]
Not sure what you mean by that. Its an energy storage plan, in effect replacing a massive battery.
When there is excess daytime solar or wind energy, the electricity is used to run a big pump 20 miles below the Hoover dam, pushing the water back up into Lake Mead above the dam. When the electricity demand is high but the suns gone down (say 8pm), the water runs down through the dam generators (not damn generators).
This isn’t a new solution to energy storage, just a big example of it, in the neighborhood of a huge solar resource.
Edward Abbey stopped thinking, did and said what was needed at the time. We are on our own now. What do you think?
Sounds like a great idea to me, integrated renewable energy capabilities to get around the intermittent sun/wind “problem” so many FF and nuclear advocates moan about all the time. Even though the “solutions” have been presented, studied, published and been in place for many years in actual commercial and residential sites. Pumped hydro is just one of many.
Have had a pumped storage facility in my area for decades, works fine. I just wonder why they are pumping the water 20 miles to get it back up into the reservoir.
The problem is not energy, it’s the use of the wrong energy sources for the wrong reasons.
” I just wonder why they are pumping the water 20 miles to get it back up into the reservoir. ”
Simply the geography I suppose. Its a crazy steep and rugged canyon. The first road down to the river is right at about 20 miles with a flat spot where they could stage the intake and pumping station. The only exception is a dam service road with pretty much no space for facilities at the bottom other than what is already being used for dam operations. Fascinating to look at the work they have done on that canyon with google earth.
Destroyed one of the great salmon runs on Earth.
But, rape and scrape, it is the future!
But, rape and scrape, it is the future!
Late stage capitalism is the new necrophilia.
Dear Humanity,
You can stop raping the coral reefs now! They are dead!
@ # grabmycoralpussy
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Wave your magic twanger Froggy and make it all better in a whoosh!
Or we can toss fantasy and just make things better incrementally, day after day, with maybe exponential results until we end up in a good place, with a chance to heal and not be fully destroyed.
There ain’t no way back home. Edward Abbey knew that in his bones. He knew that what he experienced would be gone and never be the same. He enjoyed what was there, when it was there.
So get down to the hard work of making something better, but ease back often and enjoy what is still left. No one will ever see it again, not ever. It’s a once in a lifetime experience.
No one will ever see it again, not ever. It’s a once in a lifetime experience.
“One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothing can beat teamwork.”
– Edward Abbey, as quoted in The Monkey Wrench Gang
Monkey Wrench Gang?
Obvious solution—-
Hickory and all,
They’ve been doing this at Grand Coulee Dam for years and years. Water pumped up into the upstream end of the Grand Coulee forms Banks Lake, 27 miles long.
1. The Manchurian Candidate: He’s being blackmailed or has been a Russian asset for years.
The Wannabe Dictator:
2. He believes that countries should be run like companies —essentially autocracies.
3. The Deadbeat: He’s not only not rich, but he’s badly in debt, and Russian billionaires are among his main creditors.
You will have to read the whole article to really appreciate what this article is all about. Before I read this I believed it was #1. But now I overwhelmingly believe it is #3.
I’d add a subplot to #3 (and it explains much of his approach to other issues).
He is simply pretty stupid when it comes to many topics.
Sure, he is a brilliant salesman and manipulator of the weak-minded,
but he is barely above moron level when it comes to issues like history and geopolitics.
His most advanced reading is comic books on the toilet,
and even then he skips the dialogue. Just the pictures.
I doubt his attention span could handle a comic book. Maybe daily pages?
NAOM
I’d add a subplot to #3 (and it explains much of his approach to other issues). He is simply pretty stupid when it comes to many topics.
Yep, If anyone had any doubts about how stupid Trump really is about everything, then this comment from him, should completely and unequivocally erase any shadow of a doubt.
Trump Predicts 9 Percent Growth, Budget Surplus by End of Presidency
But Donald Trump is no typical politician. And so, when the Commerce Department revealed Friday that the U.S. economy had grown 4.1 percent last quarter, the president did not respond by cautiously tempering expectations for future growth. Instead, Trump assured Sean Hannity that the economy is “going to get better”; that he will cut the trade deficit in half; deliver 8-to-9 percent GDP growth; and turn the projected $1 trillion budget deficit into a surplus.
“The economy, we can go a lot higher,” the president told Hannity in a surprise radio interview Friday afternoon. “We have $21 trillion in debt. When this really kicks in we’ll start paying off that debt like water.”
Only problem is there are 60 million plus Americans who truly believe him to be a ‘Stable Genius’!
The only good thing about the 60 million support of Trump is that they picked an inept leader. Next time they may pick one who is more capable- in the image of someone like Putin, Erdogan or Orban.
Good comment, Fred. My thoughts exactly.
Why not all three, and it doesn’t have to be open blackmail, just Trump knowing that Putin might know or eventually find out something, if so it would be more than getting pissed on, maybe something involved with item #3 with a clear paper trail that he could be tried for like money laundering or tax evasion.
#1 and #3 are not mutually exclusive.
Putin probably has trump on tape from back in the 90’s getting lap dances from under age strippers. St Petersburg was a bit nasty back in the mid 90’s. Trump in mid 90’s Russia would have been running around grabbing ass like a drunk frat boy in Phuket. He doesn’t sound like the type that could resist a honeypot.
Psychiatrist: Trump Mental Health Urgently Deteriorating
GF, thanks for the link. This thing is getting really scary. And to realize that about 36% of the American people, Trump’s base, haven’t a fucking clue as to what is going. They actually think the man is a great leader. And that is scary. I must post your link again in hopes more people will click on it. I wish it would go viral.
I think a lot of his base have a clue as to what is going on. Listen to the last minute and a half of the video again.
The Trump supporters I talk to are not necessarily happy with him but are still supporting him because he is helping to achieve the anti-socialist and anti-ethnic agenda. They are very fearful of a Bernie Sanders type president coming in and are also paranoid about “foreigners” and ethnic groups.
Agreed Gone Fishing. And I think the issue of abortion is one that most of us don’t realize how important it is to many fundamentalists. For evangelicals to vote for someone who has such obviously poor morals speaks to that. As long as they think someone will put arch conservatives on the supreme court, they will ignore all other features.
Yes, it seems that way to me too. Probably a big separation of church and state fight coming up in the future.
I knew somebody that was just like Trump, same attitude, same everything. A doctor told me that person was a psychopath, then warned me, clearly, ‘never turn your back to him’.
NAOM
The whole system is sociopathic, but many are ‘turning their backs to it’, including on this forum.
“Snowden relinquished a reported $200,000 salary requiring ‘relatively little work’, he said, ‘living a privileged life in Hawaii making a ton of money’ perpetuating an ‘architecture of oppression’ on the backs of private citizens.” ~ Erik Franco
A malignant, narcissistic.(narcissist-paranoid-unempathic-sadist) know-nothing, con artist with pre-dementia as the most powerful man on the planet? I think I’m going to fear him. Maybe the best we can hope for is that Putin really is pulling his strings so Trump doesn’t have much control.
Well nobody’s perfect. ‘u^
Ants, termites and bees for examples seem to have figured that out and so ‘extracted out’ particular qualities for particular specializations. Then again, maybe some soldier ants, for example, aren’t cut out to be soldier ants.
If humans want to continue to be ‘eusocial’ or ‘advanced eusocial’ or whatever, then they might have to do somethings similar, at least at the human levels of consciousness, or they’ll keep declining and/or collapsing their civilizations (‘hives/colonies/etc.’) and ecosystems…
But that’s probably related to an apparent paradox, or the apparent paradox, itself; that humans are too complex for specialization.
Ron, you et al. appear to be looking at/gossiping too much about the lead clown, down his baggy overalls and under his fluffy wig, etc., of the bread-and-circuses circus. We need to get out of the B&CC, and/or at least shift the narrative/paradigm.
James Howard Kunstler is ‘stuck’ doing similar once or twice a week ad nauseum about that circus convolution– bla bla Pompeo bla Russian collusion bla bla bla Golden Golem of Greatness bla bla bla…– and maybe Dmitry Orlov too, behind a paywall. It’s apparently accessible without the commodification of something like $1 a month, via learning Unspell (which might help uptake of Orlov’s Unspell and therefore, I guess, some more money), to be able to read it… Can you make this stuff up, and would you want to?
Many of the goals and methods of peace movements have been oriented around action by the state, such as appealing to state elites and advocating neutralism and unilateralism. Indeed, peace movements spend a lot of effort debating which demand to make on the state: nuclear freeze, unilateral or multilateral disarmament, nuclear-free zones, or removal of military bases. By appealing to the state, activists indirectly strengthen the roots of many social problems, the problem of war in particular…
Many people’s thinking is permeated by state perspectives. One manifestation of this is the unstated identification of states or governments with the people in a country which is embodied in the words ‘we’ or ‘us.’ ‘We must negotiate sound disarmament treaties.’ ‘We must renounce first use of nuclear weapons.’ Those who make such statements implicitly identify with the state or government in question. It is important to avoid this identification, and to carefully distinguish states from people…” ~ Brian Martin, ‘Uprooting War’
Startling to hear a professional analysis. I shared this with my ‘network’.
Thank.
Although this is from from an optimal site upon which to share the following info, take it or leave it as you so wish …
At about 1:00 PM EST – today – Qanon posted a picture of Robert Mueller reading a newspaper one seat away from Donald Trump Jr.
They were in waiting lounge area of D.C. airport.
The implications of all this are way beyond the scope of this comment.
However, if the background of this entire “Qanon” is, in fact, valid – and this picture might indicate an immanent climax, of sorts – all of our worlds – most especially those of the ‘normies’ (just regular, trusting folks, irrespective of political outlook) are about to explode bigtime.
Should know more in the coming hours/days.
LOL! Normies My sincerest condolences to all of them, because they can’t handle the truth!
Edit
Trump junior is standing in line with body guard behind him.
This is some strange stuff and is already #1 listing in Google images for this search.
I simply can’t imagine any significance whatever to this blather.
“If China encounters a financial crisis, Xi could quickly lose what the Chinese call, ‘The Mandate of Heaven’. That’s a term that describes the intangible goodwill and popular support needed by emperors to rule China for the past 3,000 years. If The Mandate of Heaven is lost, a ruler can fall quickly. Up to half of China’s investment is a complete waste. It does produce jobs and utilize inputs like cement, steel, copper and glass. But the finished product, whether a city, train station or sports arena, is often a white elephant that will remain unused. Chinese growth has been reported in recent years as 6.5–10% but is actually closer to 5% or lower once an adjustment is made for the waste.”
“…to think that China consumed more cement over a recent three year period than the US consumed during the entire 20th century, for results like this, is simply appalling… and it’s fast looking like it was all wasted…
More than anything, the story of both the phantom recovery and the blow-off phase of the commodity boom, has been a story of China. The Chinese boom has quite simply been an unprecedented blow-out the like of which the world has never seen before…”
“Without sand, there’s no concrete, computer chips, glass, electronics (and more, see the overview in Peak Sand). Civilization ends if we can’t make computer chips or concrete (essential for supply chains for every single thing).
Sand mining also ruins ecosystems, lessens biodiversity, impairs water and food security, makes storm surges and tsunamis more destructive, ruins drinking water with salty water, and salinization of cultivated land reduces and even prevents land from being farmed…
The high profits generated by sand trade often lead to social and political conflicts, including violence, rampant illegal extraction and trade, and political tensions between nations. For example, in India, the ‘Sand Mafia’ is considered one of the most powerful and violent organized crime groups, and hundreds of people have been killed in ‘sand wars… “
“China plans to put more money into infrastructure projects and ease borrowing curbs on local governments to help soften the blow to the economy from the Sino-U.S. trade war…
FILE PHOTO: Two dogs wander on a waste land, covered by green dust after buildings in the area were demolished, in the outskirts of Beijing, China November 8, 2017. Picture taken November 8, 2017. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo
China’s trade war with the United States has clouded the outlook for the world’s second-largest economy and roiled financial markets. A sharper slowdown in the Chinese economy could fuel job losses, a concern that Beijing has raised…
The amount of infrastructure spending this time will depend on how the trade war evolves, said four sources who are familiar with government policy…
‘In the short term, the most effective way is to boost infrastructure investment‘, said one policy insider who advises the government…”
Network Of Tesla Powerwall Batteries Saves Green Mountain Power $500,000 During Heat Wave
I’ve been watching the Red Tide forecast for South Florida from NOAA.
The west coast has been hit pretty hard recently causing fish and sea turtle kills. Even a whale shark has recently washed up on the beach.
Iowa utility Alliant will pay $110 million penalty to end its power purchase agreement with the local Nuclear Plant 5 years early. The nuc plant will then be closed down.
The utility will replace the nuc power with wind energy, expecting to save about $300 million overall.
According to: https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/amsr2/grf Arctic ice area just started hitting new daily low records (extent is not quite as low, relatively, yet). It hasn’t been a particularly warm or sunny summer there but the ice seems to be just disintegrating, especially on the Pacific side this week, but maybe the Atlantic getting hit at the end of he week. I don’t think any studies can keep up with the changes in the Arctic so any speculation can never be proved wrong so I’m going to say the lack of hard, multiyear ice is a big factor. Even the thicker ice now is just pushed up, fairly new ice still not having expelled all the brine, so it falls apart and melts much easier (and at slightly lower temperatures I think, though the whole liquid/solid phase change phenomena in solutions is rather complicated). There was also early clearing of the Baring Sea that allowed the water to warm up on the Pacific side and apparently incursion of warmer currents from the Atlantic further north under the ice than before (I think sea surface temperatures on both sides have been 2 to 3 degrees above “normal”). Plus all the thick ice north of Greenland has gone so the Nare’s Strait opens early and allows the Lincoln Sea area to get mashed up and transported out. Be interesting to see if 2012 record low is beaten even without particularly extreme late summer weather.
The big difference between 2012 and now is the thickness of the ice. The 2012 ice area at this date had a significant amount of thick ice (multi-year) but right now the Arctic Ocean has much thinner ice, mostly down around 1 meter (annual ice). Paul Beckwith explains this change on the video below at about 7 minutes into the video.
Looks like even a moderate warm spell in August could open up the Arctic Ocean more than in 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdtK2oH4M0c
Watching the ice concentration maps lately, there is significant loss of concentration from day to day now.
Yep, its getting too hot to concentrate, so a lot of us are experiencing a significant loss of concentration from day to day now… 😉
That is only half in jest. Billions of people will be at serious risk!
Conclusion: Results of the present study, conducted in a real work environment, confirmed the impairment of cognitive functions, including selective attention and reaction time, under heat stress conditions.
Also heat is known to increase levels of aggression.
And there has been a dusting of grey soot from big Siberian fires this year.
Thin ice might be a proximate cause, though PIOMAS doesn’t seem to agree with it being much thinner than 2012 or 2016 in July, but why is it thin when the weather hasn’t been particularly exceptional?
I wonder what the trend of subsurface temp of the Arctic Ocean is, say 20 ft down. Anyone seen data on this?
Thinning of ice could occur from weakening below, as well as surface warming.
I haven’t seen systematic data sets, and if there is a recent one I’m sure there’s nothing to compare it with, but there are a lot of changes going on. The thinner ice and open water means storms can mix up the deeper waters more easily. The thermohaline interaction is pretty sensitive as a cause and effect, and I don’t think there’s a clear understanding of how it reacts. The changing AMOC circulation plays some part in warmer water getting in under the ice on the Atlantic side.
ps that Hycom US Navy presentation that Paul Beckwith shows completely changed earlier this year with a new software version so I don’t think it’s valid to compare with earlier years, but the rapidity that it shows the ice to be thinning at the moment is valid.
Really? They blew away their historical comparison and many years of work/money?
Any source to that claim?
It used to say ARCc now it says GLBb. Different models with different coordinate systems.
I am not surprised at the lack of good data. We are more concerned with sports statistics apparently.
Winter begins in about 5 months (it will be here before you know it), but the ice growing season begins well before that.
No kidding. The overall ice starts to expand in September, about when Autumn starts, the central area is forming new ice well before then. – I think everybody here knows that it can get cold before winter starts. Actually it will happen almost exactly at the time we know it because it will show up on the various data sets that are available for free viewing. Maybe if you gave it a few weeks of really hard thinking you might be able to add something useful to the discussion, just one sentence would do, instead of feeding your cognitive dissonance at the cost of our collective boredom.
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I have often mentioned my concern that ocean acidification is a far greater threat to marine ecosystems overall than the increasing warming of seas in and of itself. Unfortunately, here is more evidence of that.
For those who might be averse to detailed chemical, biological and ecological scientific analysis, this is a more layperson’s friendly link to the gist of the Nature paper I link further down.
Ocean acidification is disrupting marine ecosystems, study shows
“These CO2 seeps provide a vital window into the future,” Sylvain Agostini, researcher at the University of Tsukuba Shimoda Marine Research Center, said in a news release. “There was mass mortality of corals in the south of Japan last year, but many people cling to the hope that corals will be able to spread north…”
Bold mine. IMHO, Those people are completely delusional!
…“It is extremely worrying to find that tropical corals are so vulnerable to ocean acidification, as this will stop them from being able to spread further north and escape the damage caused by water that is too hot for them,” Agostini said.
Bold mine. Don’t Worry, be Happy!
Ocean acidification drives community shifts towards simplified non-calcified habitats in a subtropical−temperate transition zone
Article | OPEN | Published: 27 July 2018
Ocean acidification drives community shifts towards simplified non-calcified habitats in a subtropical−temperate transition zone
Sylvain Agostini, Ben P. Harvey, Shigeki Wada, Koetsu Kon, Marco Milazzo, Kazuo Inaba & Jason M. Hall-Spencer
Scientific Reportsvolume 8, Article number: 11354 (2018) | Download Citation
Abstract Rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are causing surface seawater pH and carbonate ion concentrations to fall in a process known as ocean acidification. To assess the likely ecological effects of ocean acidification we compared intertidal and subtidal marine communities at increasing levels of pCO2 at recently discovered volcanic seeps off the Pacific coast of Japan (34° N). This study region is of particular interest for ocean acidification research as it has naturally low levels of surface seawater pCO2 (280–320 µatm) and is located at a transition zone between temperate and sub-tropical communities. We provide the first assessment of ocean acidification effects at a biogeographic boundary. Marine communities exposed to mean levels of pCO2 predicted by 2050 experienced periods of low aragonite saturation and high dissolved inorganic carbon. These two factors combined to cause marked community shifts and a major decline in biodiversity, including the loss of key habitat-forming species, with even more extreme community changes expected by 2100. Our results provide empirical evidence that near-future levels of pCO2 shift sub-tropical ecosystems from carbonate to fleshy algal dominated systems, accompanied by biodiversity loss and major simplification of the ecosystem.
Maybe it’s just me, but this is a very depressing paper but no great surprise to me.
But hey, the economy is booming, population is on right on track for 9 billion plus, ignorant humans. And, at least in the US, we have a Stable Genius in the White House, with 60 million hard core supporters… What could possibly go wrong, eh?!
You don’t think the toxic/mutagenic/psychoactive mix of chemicals people are exposed to everyday from every source is not changing how people think and act?
It’s not normal to have a large percentage of children with learning disabilities and personality disorders.
We may be looking at a population with a large percentage of undefined mental disorders and malaise.
Humans were probably not a huge bargain to begin with, but bathe them in a mix of industrial chemicals from before birth and increasing throughout life and there has to be a change, especially to such a complex brain.
You don’t think the toxic/mutagenic/psychoactive mix of chemicals people are exposed to everyday from every source is not changing how people think and act?
I happen to think many things for many reasons! Among the things I think…
Hope is a four-letter word
I think there might be some wisdom to be gleaned from the paper below that can be applied to how we deal with our current plight.
I am of course comparing dealing with climate change to managing a terminal disease. While it is possible that Homo (some species) will survive the coming mass extinction, our current civilization most definitely will not!
Format: AbstractSend to
Sociol Health Illn. 2016 Jul;38(6):899-915. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.12403. Epub 2016 Feb 11.
Hope is a four-letter word: riding the emotional rollercoaster of illness management.
Nowakowski AC1.
Abstract In this autoethnography, I explore the process and emotional experience of trying a new drug to improve my quality of life. In so doing, I synthesise personal history with extant research on chronic illness by analysing ways in which my experiences reflect and reject social norms. I also incorporate perspectives from research on aspirations and attainment, and the mental health consequences of cyclical disappointment. By weaving together lessons from each of these literatures, I articulate an integrative psychosocial understanding of the micro-level processes and experiences involved in illness management as well as the ways that experiences of illness management may require integration of varied sociological insights concerning health. In closing, I draw out theoretical implications for understanding the integration and variation of insights from many areas of health research in the lived experiences of people with chronic conditions. A Virtual Abstract of this article can be seen at: https://youtu.be/5aoaWGItDgM.
And BTW: As a father to a supposedly non normal child who grew up just fine despite all expectations to the contrary…
It’s not normal to have a large percentage of children with learning disabilities and personality disorders.
Well, that sure side-stepped the point I brought up. I don’t like to make excuses for the polluters, nor should we have to suffer and band aid the results of all the pollution that makes them profit and the people pay for with their money and their lives.
Schools certainly tried to beat the creativity in us and I mean that literally.
NAOM
Well, that sure side-stepped the point I brought up. I don’t like to make excuses for the polluters,…
No, I got the point! And wasn’t in any way intending to let polluters of the hook for their crimes.
Granted I did wander off on a couple of tangents but given all the toxic chemicals I have been exposed to during my stay on this planet, I should be allowed at least that much upon occasion.
This is my favorite look at the Arctic ice. If you go through the years one at a time you can see how hard it is to predict how high or low the bottom will be. To me the biggest give away is that every single year since 2002 has had a bottom below the 1981-2010 average. Progress of a sort. Nasty sort.
“It was expected that the coal mine’s production would be increased tenfold to 35 million tons per year to satisfy the power plant’s needs. Similarly, to the issues of establishing a mutually acceptable pricing formula and determining the capital structure of the proposed joint venture, connecting the manifold dots would require some time before the project is a robust and coherent one. Russia, always eager to find new coal export outlet against the background of a tightening domestic market which uses increasingly less of it in its power generation, sees the project as another way of bringing money and jobs to the Far East, whilst China would benefit greatly from the relatively low production costs and the outsourcing of all environmental risks. From now on it will all depend of the two sides’ deal making skills to see the project through.”
Meanwhile, as we continue to trash Earth, NASA is busy finding us a new place to live. Beware though, like Noah’s ark, there will be strict limits to your carry-on luggage.
TESS’S PLANET HUNT BEGINS
NASA’s newest observatory in space has started its search for planets around other stars, officials said Friday, as astronomers zero in on worlds that are ripe for research by follow-up missions like the James Webb Space Telescope.
India, watch India’s growing use of coal. Been saying this for years. They of little faith pooh-poohed my warnings several years ago. I shall be justified!
India, population 1.3 billion and growing, what could possibly go wrong?!
Crop failure and bankruptcy threaten farmers as drought grips Europe
Lets be honest– stupidity is a Repug selling point– it is going to be a tough gig.
Michigan’s Largest Utility to Stop Burning Coal By 2040 Michigan’s largest utility, Consumers Energy, has announced it will stop burning coal by 2040 in an effort to slash greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change, according to the Associated Press. The company, which services 6.7 million of the state’s 10 million residents, plans to get 40 percent of its energy from solar and wind power by then, with the rest coming from natural gas and hydropower. https://e360.yale.edu/digest/michigans-largest-utility-to-stop-burning-coal-by-2040
At least the air will be cleaner. They are operating from the delusion that natural gas is less of a GHG emitter than coal. At least it looks good on paper.
Coal to renewable is not a single step process. Gas is an intermediary step in the transition. Not to implement it would mean running on coal for longer. It too will fade.
NAOM
NAOM, yep. With this kind of effort I expect the average lifespan to fall rapidly after 2040.
The problem in my opinion is that 2040 is way too late! Should of done that 40 years ago.
2040?
We may be trading for weapons and food with the tribe in the next valley by then.
They are operating from the delusion that natural gas is less of a GHG emitter than coal. At least it looks good on paper.
And why would you in any way expect the people in Michigan to be any less delusional than the people who put together the IPCC reports. Who knows maybe they really believe that it is possible to keep global temperature rise below 2.0° C, as in the fantasy scenarios depicted in the IPCC graph below? Perhaps they have never heard of self reinforcing feedback loops or tipping points. Maybe they think Negative Carbon Emissions Technologies are a real thing. Or they are counting on completely eliminating current cement manufacturing processes as a source of CO2 emissions.
I’d bet about 95% of humanity is delusional when it comes to CO2 emissions and the consequences thereof.
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BTW if you want delusion, click on the opinion piece at the bottom of that page you linked to. Though perhaps delusion is not quite the right term. Maybe tilting at windmills or demolishing straw men is a better descriptor of his writing style.
I doubt he has any inkling as to the real reasons why nuclear will never be a significant part of the solution. It’s simply because there is cheaper and better technology already available off the shelf. It isn’t cost effective without massive subsidies.
Why Nuclear Power Must Be Part of the Energy Solution
By RICHARD RHODES
Hey the guy is a Pulitzer Prize winning author! And to be fair, he is in good company, even James Hansen thinks nuclear has to be a part of the solution. You should see the rage heaped upon me recently when I made the point over at realclimate.org that despite his excellent work as a climate scientist it did not automatically follow that he was infallible in everything, even when far outside his field of expertise. Though I did allow that he was entitled to his opinion just like everyone else.
Trouble is, this is a 2014 chart which would be based on research up to, probably, 2012, maybe earlier with the delay from measurement to publication. Most of the feedback work has only been done recently and these estimates only base on hard data not known unknowns. They may know that a feedback loop exists but they cannot add it into the chart without the hard numbers hence these charts will always be several years behind the times when generated and falling further behind the times as the years go by.
1.5% no firkin way, 2% yeah right! By 2020 warming and climate change will be obvious to the man on the Clapham Omnibus (2025 for Republicans) and people will start to ask why nothing was done … but it will be too late. Governments have acted like a parachutist who says ‘no need to pull the ripcord, I don’t have any problems while free-falling’. By the time the ground rush starts it will be too late or they will choose to open on impact, all that will remain is to cross their legs left over right.
NAOM
When and if global warming is ever taken seriously, watch out, the acts of desperation will be many and some will be very dangerous.
I had a discussion with a data scientist recently. In that discussion, I learned a quote I had never heard before but actually rings very true when people insist on using cherry picked model data in debate. The quote is. “All models are wrong. Some are useful.”
In truth this was a discussion over financial models instead of climate models, but there’s no difference.
Just curious, which cherry picked model data are you referring to?
The graph I posted depicts IPCC scenario outcomes with their respective error bar ranges. Which in turn are based on climate models run against the various scenarios.
Re IPCC scenarios: Because projections of climate change depend heavily upon future human activity, climate models are run against scenarios. There are 40 different scenarios, each making different assumptions for future greenhouse gas pollution, land-use and other driving forces. Assumptions about future technological development as well as the future economic development are thus made for each scenario.
BTW the RCP2.6 scenario outcome depends on Negative Emissions Technology, which does not yet exist. So regardless of the climate model used it is based on pure fantasy.
True indeed Kevin.
You can bank on the models being inaccurate, since they are based on assumptions, educated guesses and small data sets, but often they are
the best wrong we’ve got.
Ha, CO2? I was talking about methane, the real kickslammer in global warming.
And I was talking about examples of delusional thinking.
Fred wrote”Or they are counting on completely eliminating current cement manufacturing processes as a source of CO2 emissions.
I’d bet about 95% of humanity is delusional when it comes to CO2 emissions and the consequences thereof. ”
Darn, the repetitive mention of CO2 threw me off the track. Must be late onset ADHD. My ladyfriend would agree, but she holds me to the 99.9% pay attention rule. On a good day it’s only 98%. 🙂
For the record, the comment about CO2 emissions from cement manufacture was intended to be sarcasm… I thought it kinda irrelevant to even add it to the IPCC scenarios graph given all the other potential sources of GHC gases they neglected to mention…
I would seriously watch Antarctica, the insolation on the Southern Ocean has been high for thousands of years, peaking just recently at about +50 w/m2 compared to 11,000 years ago.
The ocean is a great heat sink but eventually ice will give way.
The open Arctic of the 2020’s will probably shoot global temp up quickly by about 1C and local temps up by several C, giving Greenland a kick in the sheet as well as causing a lot more Arctic rain.
While they remain the dominant source of energy supply, there was a shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy in the U.K. last year. The country is “comfortably” on track to exceed its 30% renewables target, says the government.
The growth in renewables was due to increased generation capacity, particularly for wind (22.6%) and solar (7.3%), and favorable weather conditions.
Despite the continuing onslaught of bad energy news in the U.K., including a proposal to end solar export tariffs for homeowners next year, and the approval of fracking in Lancashire – in the face of fierce opposition – renewables are doggedly continuing on their path to dominance.
The government has just released its ‘Digest of United Kingdom Energy Statistics 2018’, which shows that while fossil fuels were still clearly the leading source of electricity generation in the U.K. last year, at 80.1%, their grip is loosening, with renewables increasingly picking up the slack.
If this can be happening in the UK (same latitude as parts of Canada), it is only a matter of time before the solar energy poison starts killing FF in the US!
Not sure that solar is the best trending renewable alternative in the UK but the transition is happening nonetheless and at an ever increasing speed at that.
It is interesting to hear these panelists in the UK and what they have to say about Trump and his agenda. Ironically since this talk is only from June 2018, what with changes in the current US administration happening so fast, it is already dated because Scott Pruitt has recently left the administration. Who knows, Trump himself may soon be gone as well! Godspeed to the transition!
Expect Africa (and others?) to follow Japan’s path folks: And islandboy, I don’t see myself as a troll but rather as a realist!
BUCKING GLOBAL TRENDS, JAPAN AGAIN EMBRACES COAL POWER
“Most of the world is turning its back on burning coal to produce electricity, but not Japan. The nation has fired up at least eight new coal power plants in the past 2 years and has plans for an additional 36 over the next decade—the biggest planned coal power expansion in any developed nation (not including China and India). And last month, the government took a key step toward locking in a national energy plan that would have coal provide 26% of Japan’s electricity in 2030 and abandons a previous goal of slashing coal’s share to 10%.”
POWER-STARVED AFRICA DEVELOPS APPETITE FOR COAL, DISMISSES ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS IN WEST
“The concerns about coal expressed by environmentalists and climate researchers in the West are voiced here mostly by white expatriates and foreign nongovernmental organizations. Coal in Africa is an abundant resource for a continent still hustling to catch up with the developed world. South Africa, the economic engine of the region, gets 93 percent of its electricity from coal, one of the highest percentages in the world.”
I continue to believe that people will eagerly burn coal despite a warming or choking atmosphere, if they see it as affordable. Despite what we may want to see.
Japan imports 95% of their energy, as of 2015, and if memory serves nuclear power hasn’t been exactly a walk in the park for them.
Rapidly developing places like India and Africa, which are on the path to huge population and electrical consumption growth over the next 3 decades, will build out solar and wind, but also massive coal baseload capacity.
Australia isn’t about to curtail exports out of the kindness of their heart.
This coal train isn’t about to come screeching to halt, voluntarily.
Oh Doug, I don’t see you as a troll at all! I do recognize you as a “realist” since I share many of you reservations about the future of our civilization on this planet. The trolls I am referring to are the ones that do “drive by” posts here using classic anti-renewable or climate change denier memes about government impinging on their personal freedoms or imposing unnecessary, burdensome costs on the economy. There’s also the one that I believe posts from an island to the south and west of your wife’s country of birth, the island just across the channel from France.
Personally, I have reverted to a state of hope, having seen my worst fears of 2008 vintage failing to materialize. In fact I made some purchases of solar panels etc. back then, thinking that maybe that was the beginning of the Peak Oil s__t hitting the fan and that they would be better as currency than the cash I used to buy them. Fortunately the modules I bought were heavily discounted as prices have fallen steeply since then. Heavily discounted modules today would cost about half what I paid for mine and the results of the Chinese government’s May announcements, slowing the growth of solar in China have not even kicked in yet! As a result of that lesson hitting me in the pocket book, I am much less likely to proclaim doom for the future so forgive me for deciding to highlight news that I consider hopeful as I lean to the side of stuff I think has a good chance of mitigating against global warming and Peak Oil etc.
Hope springs eternal.
On the other hand it is my considered belief that US investors in electricity generation are on to something. Looking back at the data for capacity additions in 2017, more than half of the new capacity in 2017 was from renewable sources, primarily wind and solar. The rest was mostly natural gas but notably, there was no new coal fired capacity. So far this year essentially all the new capacity has been natural gas fired or solar or wind. Last year more than half the retired capacity was coal fired with natural gas and a small amount of petroleum liquids making up most of the balance. So far this year almost 80% of the capacity retirements have been coal. The story continues to be lots of retirements of coal fired plants and no new coal plants on the horizon as far as I am aware.
The reason for this might be found in the following article:
One of the reasons the supremacy of oil may be challenged in the coming decades is the rapid rise of renewable energy resources, now on the verge of being the cheapest forms of energy, certainly in electricity generation.
A June 2018 study by Bernstein documents the persistent drop in the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) from renewable generation over time with projections of where future cost reduction potential lies.
The report argues that the cost of onshore wind, offshore wind and solar power is likely to be well below the cost of fossil fuel generation nearly everywhere.
Few dispute such findings. Cheap and plentiful electricity supplies will make electrification of the global economies so much easier.
Similar results were reported in a March 2018 study from Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems for Germany. According to the latest data, utility-scale solar PVs and on- shore wind are already the best options available based on the LCOE metric.
Maybe the US electricity sector is ahead of the curve with this information or maybe it’s just the natural gas eating their lunch that has got them spooked. At any rate with wind and more recently solar undercutting the LCOE of natural gas, it would be extremely foolish to invest in new coal fired capacity in the US at this time. It would appear that memo has made the rounds!
I put the news you highlighted down to inertia and believe that the investors in these new coal plants in Japan and Africa are going to end up facing considerable losses as the costs renewable energy continue to fall. These power companies do not trust the new technology, nor are they comfortable with it. In the case of solar, it makes a royal mess of the business model of central generation with nationwide grids to distribute the power. Solar may turn out to be the great liberator, freeing billions of people from the tyranny of centralized electricity monopolies. As a result, utilities are continuing to do what they have always done, ignoring the threat from renewables.
In my own neck of the woods, the local electricity utility is completing construction of a brand new, 190 MW natural gas fired, combined cycle gas turbine plant to be commissioned in June 2019. I do not believe that plant will ever recover the investment made in it but, the local utility falls into the same category as those in Japan and Africa. These utilities need large amounts of capacity in a very short time frame and they need to spend as little as possible on the technology with the lowest fuel costs possible. The only thing that fits that bill in most cases is coal. Even in my neck of the woods there was talk of a new big coal fired plant next to an alumina plant that has been acquired by a Chinese company, with the hopes of further processing of the alumina, possibly aluminum smelting!
I am firmly in the Seba (Tony) camp on these matters in believing that we are on the cusp of a “Clean Disruption” and that a lot of these investors in the status quo are going to end up in a lot of pain.
Robert Scribbler has some interesting things to say and show about the latest European heatwave.
2018 European Heatwave Was Made Two to Five Times More Likely by Climate Change
Climate change isn’t like a thing where we can say without significant doubts that it was the cause of a specific weather event. If you try to do statistical simulations you can perhaps say it was more likely, but statistics haven’t been developed to take into account natural cycles. The Earth has warmed and cooled according to natural cycles. We last saw the hotter end of one of these natural cycles back in the 1930’s when the summer heatwaves then were even hotter than this year’s.
Statistics has been developed that can take account of long cycles. Statistics would say that a previous heat wave was entirely possible, just not as likely as they are now in a warmer world. The statistics base their predictions on the state of the world now not on the reasons it got this way so whether it’s natural cycles or man made GHGs doesn’t make a difference (the fact that natural cycles say we should be slightly cooler than average and are in fact much hotter is important, but doesn’t influence the analysis of the probability of extreme events).
If you are not perchance, an ambulance chasing lawyer, you definitely missed your life’s calling! Cuz, you sure as hell wouldn’t make it any math or science related field. Especially not one in which honesty and high ethical standards are valued!
Maybe as a backup plan you could apply for a position as a full time climate denying troll! I believe Putin, Trump and the Kochs are still hiring.
Oh, I see, my bad… Carry on!
How much more obvious does it have to be? Does every square kilometer of the globe have to be covered by dark red heat anomaly? Might happen one day, but will not matter much at that point.
Perry Smart Houston,
The topic is record high temperatures world-wide. The high temperatures in the 1930s were in North America. The global spike in a chart of temperature for the time disappears if the North American data are removed.
“The publication of Podesta files exposed WikiLeaks to the same bigotry and bullying that Nader had faced back then, where the Democratic Party with their ardent middle class devotees blamed him for George W. Bush’s presidency and called him a spoiler. Now, the Democratic establishment, with MSNBC cable news stations and commentators, recycles the old tactics of defamation. They branded Assange as a Trump supporter and Russia’s intelligence asset. By even filing the lawsuit against the organization, they directed their vengeance to this whistleblowing site about the loss of Clinton’s campaign.
Yet, just as Nader’s third party presidential efforts could not spoil the election that was already so rotted, WikiLeaks could not ruin the political campaign that was so corrupted to the core. It is not WikiLeaks, but Americans who have been compromised. It is we who have fallen for a manufactured national politics that is designed to divide and conquer us every four years with new packaged candidates of the same product.
We have lost the revolutionary spirit that founded this nation, its vigilance toward government and have settled for the lesser of two evils. By engaging in our self-righteous crusade for defending our allegiance to leaders, parties and to the flag we plead to, we have betrayed our own interests and ideals…
Cruel treatment of Assange is no longer a character assassination and imprisonment of one innocent man. What is at stake is the death of the sacred heart of democracy that remembers our inherent obligation to one another. In his earlier blog, Assange wrote about the moral courage required in our age:
‘Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love.’
“
Caelan, there is no doubt that Ralph Nader did cause Al Gore to lose to George W. Bush, absolutely no doubt whatsoever. And anyone, including the Democratic party, is justified in blaming Nader for that stupid selfish act. So what’s the motive of the author of this article in bringing that up?
Also, there is no doubt that Assage did assist the Russians in helping Donald Trump get elected. Why on earth would anyone defend that sonofabitch?
The website that posted this article, ANTI MEDIA, showed their true colors with another article found on their website: “In Refusing to Defend Assange, Mainstream Media Exposes Its True Nature”
Just like Trump, they are attacking the media. By attacking the media they are attacking the Constitution of the United States. They are attacking the First Amendment. But at least they have the correct name for their website, ANTI MEDIA.
The Republican game plan for longer than Caelan has been alive is divide and conquer. The Republican base are brain dead religious simple minded followers. Which is hard to divide. On the other hand, the Democrats are mostly self thinking bunch of ducks who are hard to organize. It than becomes easy to introduce a third party and peel off a significant portion of the Democratic base.
Nader, Sanders, Stein
More often than not, the democrats are their own worst enemy
“There is no doubt that Ralph Nader did cause Al Gore to lose to George W. Bush, absolutely no doubt whatsoever.”
The American voters caused Al Gore to lose to GWB.
Many nations seem to have more than 2 political parties and do just fine.
Oh, get over it. This is not “many nations” this is the United States of America. Ralph Nader was a liberal, Al Gore was a liberal. George W. Bush was a conservative. Ralph Nader was a selfish sonofabitch. He knew he would help split the liberal vote. He knew he had no chance of being elected. He did it for his own glory.
It happened eight years before when Ross Perot and George H. W. Bush split the conservative vote and allowed Bill Clinton to become president. Senior Bush has hated Perot ever since, he said: “he cost me the election”. Now Ross Perot thought he had a chance but Ralph Nader knew he had no chance whatsoever. When vanity candidates run they do it for their own selfish reasons.
If the US had three or more legitimate parties, like Canada, that would be different. But we do not. Vanity candidates are spoilers and nothing more. And a certain percentage of the American electorate is just too stupid to realize that. They vote for the vanity candidate without realizing they are throwing the election to their most despised candidate instead of their second choice, who had a real chance of winning.
Ralph Nader is a selfish sonofabitch.
I agree w you on this Ron, however I’m also going to blame the voters who voted for Nader. They had a choice, and in effect they elected Bush.
Republicans are not the only party with stupid voters.
“Ralph Nader is a selfish sonofabitch”
Is Sanders any different than Nader ? He only registered as a Democrat to ride the party for a presidential race. He has already gone back to being an Independent. He made a shitty attempt of reuniting the party after he lost to HRC. The Russian exploded Sanders selfishness and today we have the idiot Russian Trump.
Yes, Sanders is different from Nader. Nader ran as a third party candidate and was on the ballot in 43 states and DC, siphoning votes from Gore. Sanders was on no ballots whatsoever in the general election. Therefore he could not possibly siphon votes from Clinton.
Sanders tried to get the Democratic nomination at the convention. He failed. That is the way it is supposed to work and it did.
Sanders never had a snowballs chance in hell to steal the nomination at the convention. HRC had 90% of the parties loyalist and powers to be behind her. Anyone who believed other wise was under the same ether Trump voters sucked up.
After HRC lost to Obama, she picked herself up and embraced Obama in a full bear hug. Sanders was too “selfish” to do the same and a immature loser. Now the country is paying the price for it.
Sanders doesn’t deserve a free pass for his “selfish” actions. Let him run as an independent for 2020 and see were that gets him.
If the Dims would of nominated Sanders, we would be calling him President Sanders.
But the system is currently not allowing candidates like Sanders to run.(hint: Clinton and Trump are much closer than Sanders and Clinton)
We shall see how this unwinds.
We need more than a one party state–
But, not being into reformist politics, I’m more of a observer.
Take a look: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_sanders-5565.html
“Clinton and Trump are much closer than Sanders and Clinton”
“the system is currently not allowing candidates like Sanders to run”
“we would be calling him President Sanders”
Clearly the sun doesn’t shine were you have your head. Sanders is a loser, period.
“Senator Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in America, according to a new Harvard-Harris poll. In fact, the Vermont senator and former presidential candidate is the only politician in the U.S. who a majority of voters like. ”
“Just making a observation” were the sun doesn’t shine is a shitty observation
Being you like to write in word salad, here is something maybe you can understand –
oligarchy, daughter, dictator, communism, son-in-law, nepotism, mafia, Emoluments Clause, narcissist, bankruptcy, Donald Jr. Mueller indictments, lock him up, money laundering
Really HB, you need to step back and confront reality—-
It is hard, but the stats might help you release your anger?
I’m not a Dim or Repug— I’m just a observer.
Huntington. I was a Hillary voter (pragmatic I like to think), but Sanders had every right to run as he did. He conducted himself with dignity all along. It is important to have a competitor in the game, in case the primary candidate falls apart (health, scandal, poor performance), and also to stand up as a potential running mate.
After Hillary got nominated, he endorsed her.
And like many Hillary voters, I was very glad to have him bring up the issues that he did.
He was no Nader.
I agree, Nader “had every right to run as he did”. Nader “conducted himself with dignity all along. It is important to have a competitor in the game”.
Yes Sanders endorsed her. But he didn’t bring over a Nader amount of his voters. He couldn’t deliver. The same final result.
Well, some just couldn’t go there.
I was surprised she didn’t win– but maybe the proletariat is becoming a bit more literate?
But Trump—–
I think I get your point H.Beach.
I would like to see a third party candidate have a chance in this country, and if it was one that I had any enthusiasm for, then I would want them to do the following-
Announce up front, that if they did not end up having a rats chance in hell of winning, then they would throw their full support to a rival about 3 weeks out, and ask their supporters to do the same.
If Nader had done that we’d be looking at a very different outcome. btw-He might have been EPA secretary under Gore.
I would like to see a third party candidate have a chance in this country
You mean like in every other first world democracy?
Might have to abandon a late enlightenment government meant to keep a elite in power?
The white proletariat have been voting Republican against their own economic interest since the Nixon southern racist strategy and Reagan’s religious anti abortion strategy.
I would hope you do realize your list are Republican failed policies in which Democrats reached across the aisle to work together on.
Bush took America to war
Bush signed the Patriot Act
Trump approved the XL pipeline
Trump is deregulating Banking
Trump voters love shopping at Walmart
8 years of Republican Bush economy needed a bailout
I see your still getting your news from Facebook and Fox
Yes HB—-
You need a larger box.
I get it, from where you base your differences.
So, how are things going?
Hickory,
I have read to many of your posts. I realize we aren’t that far apart. I’m just not as nice as you.
Nader royally fucked us
Peace
“So, how are things going?”
I’m a white male citizen with a half a million dollar increase in portfolio value since the 11/8/16 election. The stock market is not the economy. The current policies are short sighted. Trump will tank it all before this is over. Trumps me first policies don’t hurt me. I’m not angry, just done caring about others who are to stupid to take care of themselves.
Just an observation from afar, well 500 miles or so south of Florida. I’ve been trying to figure out what happened in the US in 2016 since the election and I think after months of watching mostly people like Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert I’ve got it figured out.
The Russians had an influence that is more significant than many realize. HRC was a flawed candidate, tainted by the electorates experience with her from the time Bill was in office. Even some die hard democrats did not particularly like her. Bernie was a much better candidate (my favorite), much better at reaching out to young people and independents. Much more inspiring and more in line with what many swing voters seem to want, a change (remember Obama?). Bernie has an air of authenticity that HRC does not have and if he’s a fake, just putting on a show, he deserves something above the level of an Oscar for his performance and would be an even bigger shyster than Trump is.
Back to what happened in 2016. Since HRC was the anointed one and most of the polls had her wining, the Russian activity pushed away some of the people who might have voted for her who were not die hard “D” voters. In the end I think it was the belief that Trump could not possibly win that actually gave him the edge. Enough voters decided that since HRC had it in the bag they could just stay home on election day or make a conscience vote and vote green like OFM did.
I believe most Americans, basically all of them that did not vote for Trump are good natured sentient beings and are horrified that this monster of a man is their president! My gut tells me that all the Americans that are appalled that Trump is embarrassing their once respected nation on the world stage, in addition to all the corporate ass kissing that he is doing at home, are going to come out en masse in November and hand the GOP an ass whipping that is without precedent.
I agree Island— The Fall elections are the turning point, and Trump should get his ass kicked.
But you are in Jamaica, a country with much more political literacy——
The proletariat here, like our commentators here, know something is wrong, but are seeking simple solutions.
This isn’t a specific reply to Hickory per se, but just to tuck this off the cuff and into the tread here…
The ‘large-scale centralized nation-state’ system– human ‘social technology’, if you will– appears, paradoxically, out-of-scale, overcomplex and in fundamental dissonance and detachment with the human (and vice-versa), it’s ‘natural’ scale, numbers and vis-a-vis its ‘internal personal complexities’. (Ponder a nuclear power plant: Fukushimas and Chernobyls happen. Who were working there at the time? Were they the ‘proper’ people? Could they have been genetically-engineered for their respective jobs? Could Trump have made a difference? Stalin? But then what is nuclear energy without the centralized nation-state?)
Unlike social insects, humans are complex, but their systems appear to demand levels of specialization/behavioral oversimplification to some degrees, in conflict with their complexity– unlike social insects. At the same time, the overcomplexities of their systems challenge their abilities to cope with them, especially when they go awry.
“Brains much smaller than human or even mammalian brains are also known to be able to support social relationships, including social insects with hierarchies where each individual knows its place (such as the paper wasp with its societies of approximately 80 individuals) and computer-simulated virtual autonomous agents with simple reaction programming emulating what is referred to in primatology as ‘ape politics‘.” ~ Wikipedia
“The song’s lyrics are interpreted as a commentary on war and international diplomacy being like children’s games.” ~ Wikipedia
I’m out of pocket and with limited time at the moment, Ron, and before you tuck tail and run with some words along the lines of ‘This is the last comment I will make to you about this. Bye now.’, I might want to dig out a few words, if it can be found, on this spoiler thing, but for now, here’s a clip, maybe about you, along with many others…
“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”
The woman in the red dress is offered as metaphor for a (potentially dangerous) distraction. Notice also, the cop in the scene.
Ex-IEA official: Nuclear power can’t compete with solar power
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
Nobuo Tanaka, former executive director of the International Energy Agency
Nuclear power is “ridiculously expensive” compared with solar power and cannot compete from a financial standpoint, said the former head of the International Energy Agency.
During a lecture at a symposium in Tokyo on July 23, Nobuo Tanaka, former IEA executive director, said nuclear power is utterly “uncompetitive” with solar power generation in terms of costs for building or expanding nuclear plants.
“I was greatly shocked to hear that the IEA say that ‘solar becomes the cheapest source of electricity generation in many countries’ in its 2017 report,” said Tanaka, a well-known nuclear power advocate.
He has served as an executive board member of the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum Inc., which comprises nuclear plant manufacturers.
Hmm, uncompetitive, unscalable, unhealthy. The UN-Energy.
Any system that is incompatible with the ecosystem is on the wrong planet.
Nuclear is too cheap to meter! We need it because it is clean energy! It doesn’t emit CO2! Yet, it still needs to be subsidized to the tune of billions, wonder why?
Sounds like a BS cult to me.
Without loan guarantees, could a nuclear plant be built in the USA? I think not. Who would take the risk of billions in cost overuns on an already very expensive plant?
I don’t want my tax dollars at risk on that, and apparently I’m not alone.
And before a single new fuel rod is put into action, they better transport and bury the spent rods down about 8000 feet first. We have 2-3 refueling loads worth of spent fuel rods (still highly radioactive) in water ponds at nuclear plants throughout the country, on average. The cladding is flaking off. Waiting for a tornado to come wandering by.
The entire nuclear industry was/is dependent on the Price Anderson legislation that limited the liability of the utilities who purchased nuclear plants. If Congress undid that legislation I suspect that even the current plants that are economical would be shut down as soon as possible.
Ralph Nader’s group ran a TV ad in the 70s that showed the sun up close and discussed that 83 million miles was about as close as any of us should be to a nuclear reaction.
A BEAUTIFUL THEORY
Ultimately the debate going on in string theory centers on a deep question: What is the point of physics? Should a good theory be able to explain the particular characteristics of the universe around us or is that asking too much? And when a theory conflicts with the way we think our universe works, do we abandon the theory or the things we think we know?
String theory is incredibly appealing to many scientists because it is “beautiful”—its equations are satisfying and its proposed explanations elegant. But so far it lacks any experimental evidence supporting it—and even worse, any reasonable prospects for gathering such evidence. Yet even the suggestion string theory may not be able to accommodate the kind of dark energy we see in the cosmos around us does not dissuade some. “String theory is so rich and beautiful and so correct in almost all the things that it’s taught us that it’s hard to believe that the mistake is in string theory and not in us. But perhaps chasing after beauty is not a good way to find the right theory of the universe. Mathematics is full of amazing and beautiful things, and most of them do not describe the world,” physicist Sabine Hossenfelder of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies wrote in her recent book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray
String theory is untestable and unfalsifiable. It also, as I hear in many youtube videos on the subject, gives credence to the multiverse theory. And for that reason alone, I don’t like it. However if they ever find any hard evidence for the theory, or ever spot one of those other universes, I will turn on a dime. But I just don’t think that will happen.
Do you believe in dark matter and dark energy?
GF, these scientific theories are not something you believe or disbelieve. You suspend judgment until they are proven or disproven. However the effects of dark matter can be observed. Stars on the edge of the galaxy are moving way too fast. If only the observable matter in the galaxy were present, the stars would be flung way out into space. So there has to be a lot more matter in the galaxy than can be seen. Also, light is bent around galactic clusters way more than it would be if only the visible matter were present. So dark matter must be present.
Dark energy is a different matter. If the universe is accelerating in its expansion, then I think there has to be a cause. And that cause would have to be the force of the cosmological constant, that is, dark energy.
That being said, I think string theory is a little wild and will obviously never be proven one way or another. And I make no bones about it, I think the multiverse theory is a pile of shit. And don’t get me started on the many worlds theory, something totally different. The many worlds theory is just so absurd only someone who could believe any absurd theory could believe it.
Ron, I’m confused. Multiverse theory and many worlds theory are the same thing, no?
TWO of the strangest ideas in modern physics – that the cosmos constantly splits into parallel universes in which every conceivable outcome of every event happens, and the notion that our universe is part of a larger multiverse – have been unified into a single theory. This solves a bizarre but fundamental problem in cosmology and has set physics circles buzzing with excitement, as well as some bewilderment.
They are two totally different concepts and any attempt to combine them are just attempts to combine the ridiculous with the absurd.
However, I will give you a brief difference in words you can, hopefully, understand.
The multiverse theory is the theory that universes pop into existence, and in most cases right out of existence again many times a second, and have been doing that for many billions of years. Some of the universes continue to exist but the vast majority do not form stars, planets or anything else. That is because the laws of physics are different in those universes. Laws and sub-atomic particles just happen randomly and many trillions of trillions of trillions of universes are created before one is just right for the formation of stars, galaxies, supernovas, then second generation stars and then life. We just happen to be in the lucky one that was just right for all that.
The multiverse theory tries to explain the very fine tuning of the universe. That is, none of the universes are fine-tuned, they are all different. Out of an almost infinite number of universes, one just happened to have all the qualities that allowed stars, galaxies, rocky planets to form. We just won the lottery, that’s all.
The many world’s theory is the theory that the world, as it exists, splits off into other world’s billions of times a second. You, yourself split into another existence even though you are totally unaware of it. Schrodinger’s cat is alive in one universe but dead in another universe that just split away. That’s how they explain quantum mechanics.
The multiverse theory is absurd but the many world’s theory is far, far stupider.
Both theories are so stupid it is unbelievable that many, nay, even most physicist and cosmologists believe in the multiverse theory, and some even swallow the many world’s theory. They do it to keep from admitting that the universe is extremely fine-tuned and could not have just happened by accident. As Martin Rees put it: “It gets rid of God.”
If it gets rid of god it’s not the worst of all possible ideas.
Jim, you miss the point. That may be an excellent idea but doing it in such a very stupid way jut shows that some would do any stupid thing just to get rid of God. If one wants to get rid of God, they need to make a legitimate argument. They need to explain the fine-tuning of the universe without resorting to something totally absurd.
However in my humble opinion getting rid of God is misguided endeavor. What they need to do is get rid of religion.
For more on this subject go to Youtube and search on “The Fine-Tuned Unicerse”.
Multiverse theory and a lot of theoretical physics is nothing but modern day mythology.
Thanks Ron for the explanation and the link.
Meanwhile, to quote Martin Rees again, “The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it.”
Awesome concept 🙂
We have got ourselves into a box canyon.
But the scouts seem to be continuing on.
Might be time to turn around.
Do you believe in quantum field theory even though over the past several decades, there have been many attempts to put it on a firm mathematical footing by formulating a set of axioms for it, so far, all unsuccessful?
I don’t profess to understand it but there is something truly beautiful about quantum field theory. It would be perfect for them to find a way that it all compresses down to something really simple and the symmetry just pops out and everybody says “of course, how could it be any other way?”
Well, “The best theory comes from string theory, which states that dark matter is nothing but a higher vibration of the string. We are, in some sense, the lowest octave of a vibrating string.” And, “I hope we find evidence of dark matter in the lab and in outer space. This would go a long way to proving the correctness of string theory, which is what I do for a living. That is my day job. String theory is a potentially experimentally verifiable theory.” — Michio Kaku
Well, I hope he is correct. But it is a bridge too far to say that string theory, even if proven, verifies, in any way, the multiverse theory. However:
String theory is a potentially experimentally verifiable theory.
However, googling “How big is a string in string theory?”:
The strings of string theory are unimaginably small. Your average string, if it exists, is about 10-33 centimeters long. That’s a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter. If an atom were magnified to the size of the solar system, a string would be the size of a tree.
Really now? Dr. Kaku is going to verify that these little strings actually exist? If as he says, that is what he does for a living, I don’t think he is going to be out of a job any time soon.
Now I know there are ways to proving sub-atomic particles exist, even though they are too small to see even with the most powerful microscope. But they can be proven in other ways. But these strings are way, way, too small to be proven in any kind of laboratory experiment. And they are not, by any stretch of the imagination a sub-atomic particle.
Kaku is totally committed. I enjoy his shows, and his guests, but it has been quite a while.
After the Standard Model, we have been wandering in a nowhere land for quite a while.
We shall see—–
The quantum field theory may not have been proven as to exactly how it works, but there is ample evidence to support it. Read “The Quantum Enigma”. And I must have watched a hundred Youtube videos on the subject. I must admit there is no “mathematical footing” that explains it. But there is observational footing. There is the double slit experiment that clearly shows that observation, or consciousness, collapses the wave function.
The von Neumann–Wigner interpretation, also described as consciousness causes collapse [of the wave function], is an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which consciousness is postulated to be necessary for the completion of the process of quantum measurement.
This fact has clearly been demonstrated, over and over again, in the laboratory. Also quantum entanglement has been proven in the lab. That is what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance”. And he did not believe it. But it has since been proven by physical experiment. If Einstein had lived to view those experiments, he would have believed it too. So yes, I believe it.
Try to remember that calling people names, calling them ignorant, racist, stupid, etc, even though they ARE, doesn’t win anybody over to the righteous side of the environmental debate. Doing so simply reinforces them in their ignorance and determination to vote for Trump and company.
You can’t get thru to many or maybe even most of the people we often make fun of, but you CAN get thru to ENOUGH of them, if you work at it, to add two, three, or even half a dozen votes to your side, on election day.
Two or three voters out of each hundred is enough, on the national scale, to flip control of our government from one party to the other, if these changed votes are cast in the right precincts.
To followup on previous topic- Nikola Motors is developing hydrogen fueled hybrid trucks.
They have awarded a Norwegian company a contract to supply 448 hydrogen electrolyzers with capacity of 1GW to be delivered by 2020, for their initial fueling network.
So, their trucks will be electric powered with hydrogen as the energy storage medium.
People have proclaimed this to be an expensive arrangement previously, but apparently this company sees the mechanism as cost competitive in a peak oil world.
https://nikolamotor.com/press_releases/nel-asa-awarded-multi-billion-nok-electrolyzer-and-fueling-station-contract-by-nikola-47
‘Desperate times call for desperate measures.’
The horrible fantasy of nuclear energy to power the world. Even to power 10 percent of world is a nightmare fantasy. Nuclear energy is not scalable and it is very dangerous. Plus the known dangers of all that uranium mining, which would run out of known resources long before a target of even 50% electric power demand could be met.
As Abbott notes in his study, global power consumption today is about 15 terawatts (TW). Currently, the global nuclear power supply capacity is only 375 gigawatts (GW). In order to examine the large-scale limits of nuclear power, Abbott estimates that to supply 15 TW with nuclear only, we would need about 15,000 nuclear reactors. In his analysis, Abbott explores the consequences of building, operating, and decommissioning 15,000 reactors on the Earth, looking at factors such as the amount of land required, radioactive waste, accident rate, risk of proliferation into weapons, uranium abundance and extraction, and the exotic metals used to build the reactors themselves.
https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html
The large amounts of land required with access to water cooling for 15,000 reactors is probably not available unless one does not isolate them.
“One station would need to be built and another decommissioned somewhere in the world every day”
No way to handle the nuclear waste, even now with just 2 percent of global energy being supplied.
With today’s accident rate there would be a major accident every month.
There is not enough known uranium resource, just a few years at full capacity and only 50 with the current number of reactors.
The effect of pursuing this would be to make thousands of nuclear reactors that would be shut long before the end of the century and then the process of spending the next century trying to decommission the units, while having nowhere or any safe way to store the waste.
Just one more dangerous DEAD END.
George Carlin in one of his standups said maybe plastic, but I said maybe nuclear waste…
Let’s say, 250 million years, give or take, and we might see something that makes the Cambrian Explosion (if I have my natural history correct) look like a watery kindergarten project, what do you think?
Strangely-alluring image (my favorite representation online of the plant) below (which can be selected for a larger version) is of one of the earliest land plants, called cooksonia. Imagine briefly visiting the planet right about then, with all kinds of living activity just under the water, yet with little else of life on the land…
I’ll repost this here since there’s a new post. A look at how democracy, the US, and the world may be coming to an end.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176452/
It is the duty of all Americans to try and hang on long enough that it is nature that takes us down.
Interesting article on the trajectory of the nation/world. A coherent summary, much of which resonates strongly with me. Thanks.
General Motors-Tesla Merger
My intuition or whatever, keeps saying, “Musk (his industries) is(/are) (a ‘front’/’frontman’/’mould’ of/for) government.”. What with subsidies and other funding, that’s not entirely off the mark in any event.
Space X? Tesla? Gigafactory? Underground car subway? ‘Manned Mars mission? Self-driving? Civil promos like Puerto Rico, South Australia, submarine rescues and Flint Michigan water? While Tesla’s profits tank and Musk apparently Twitters while he’s supposed to be on or at least at the job?
The whole thing looks like a (somewhat desperate) governpimp clusterfuck…
Pardon the clickbait-ish header, BTW.
The Whale and the Wind Turbine: Innovation Inspired by Animals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWVc0wFWAEg
WOW!
That presentation actually gives me some hope we might actually be able to mitigate some of the problems that we have caused by treating the planet and its atmosphere as waste sinks. Now if we can just figure a way to have fewer of us and more other creatures.
This sounds smart, if you believe in modern industrial civilization attempting to adapt-
3B$ pumped hydro energy storage project at Hoover dam [storing wind and solar energy]
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/los-angeles-considers-3b-pumped-storage-project-at-hoover-dam/528699/
What would Edward Abby think?
“Although LADWP’s plan has enormous potential”
Grooaaan! Electric or gravitational?
NAOM
It’s all kinetic to me 😉
“Electric or gravitational?”
Not sure what you mean by that. Its an energy storage plan, in effect replacing a massive battery.
When there is excess daytime solar or wind energy, the electricity is used to run a big pump 20 miles below the Hoover dam, pushing the water back up into Lake Mead above the dam. When the electricity demand is high but the suns gone down (say 8pm), the water runs down through the dam generators (not damn generators).
This isn’t a new solution to energy storage, just a big example of it, in the neighborhood of a huge solar resource.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_energy
Hint: POTENTIAL ?
Edward Abbey stopped thinking, did and said what was needed at the time. We are on our own now. What do you think?
Sounds like a great idea to me, integrated renewable energy capabilities to get around the intermittent sun/wind “problem” so many FF and nuclear advocates moan about all the time. Even though the “solutions” have been presented, studied, published and been in place for many years in actual commercial and residential sites. Pumped hydro is just one of many.
Have had a pumped storage facility in my area for decades, works fine. I just wonder why they are pumping the water 20 miles to get it back up into the reservoir.
The problem is not energy, it’s the use of the wrong energy sources for the wrong reasons.
” I just wonder why they are pumping the water 20 miles to get it back up into the reservoir. ”
Simply the geography I suppose. Its a crazy steep and rugged canyon. The first road down to the river is right at about 20 miles with a flat spot where they could stage the intake and pumping station. The only exception is a dam service road with pretty much no space for facilities at the bottom other than what is already being used for dam operations. Fascinating to look at the work they have done on that canyon with google earth.
Destroyed one of the great salmon runs on Earth.
But, rape and scrape, it is the future!
But, rape and scrape, it is the future!
Late stage capitalism is the new necrophilia.
Dear Humanity,
You can stop raping the coral reefs now! They are dead!
@ # grabmycoralpussy
.
Wave your magic twanger Froggy and make it all better in a whoosh!
Or we can toss fantasy and just make things better incrementally, day after day, with maybe exponential results until we end up in a good place, with a chance to heal and not be fully destroyed.
There ain’t no way back home. Edward Abbey knew that in his bones. He knew that what he experienced would be gone and never be the same. He enjoyed what was there, when it was there.
So get down to the hard work of making something better, but ease back often and enjoy what is still left. No one will ever see it again, not ever. It’s a once in a lifetime experience.
No one will ever see it again, not ever. It’s a once in a lifetime experience.
Yeah! Ain’t that the truth!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kPocPwXzdM
Blade Runner Ending Scene
“One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothing can beat teamwork.”
– Edward Abbey, as quoted in The Monkey Wrench Gang
Monkey Wrench Gang?
Obvious solution—-
Hickory and all,
They’ve been doing this at Grand Coulee Dam for years and years. Water pumped up into the upstream end of the Grand Coulee forms Banks Lake, 27 miles long.
3 theories that explain Trump’s approach to Putin and Russia. Which makes the most sense?
1. The Manchurian Candidate: He’s being blackmailed or has been a Russian asset for years.
The Wannabe Dictator:
2. He believes that countries should be run like companies —essentially autocracies.
3. The Deadbeat: He’s not only not rich, but he’s badly in debt, and Russian billionaires are among his main creditors.
You will have to read the whole article to really appreciate what this article is all about. Before I read this I believed it was #1. But now I overwhelmingly believe it is #3.
#3 has been my favourite , for some time, and there are several articles that have the same idea. One that talks of kompromat and speculates about this is
https://www.newyorker.com/news-desk/swamp-chronicles/a-theory-of-trump-kompromat
NAOM
I’d add a subplot to #3 (and it explains much of his approach to other issues).
He is simply pretty stupid when it comes to many topics.
Sure, he is a brilliant salesman and manipulator of the weak-minded,
but he is barely above moron level when it comes to issues like history and geopolitics.
His most advanced reading is comic books on the toilet,
and even then he skips the dialogue. Just the pictures.
I doubt his attention span could handle a comic book. Maybe daily pages?
NAOM
I’d add a subplot to #3 (and it explains much of his approach to other issues). He is simply pretty stupid when it comes to many topics.
Yep, If anyone had any doubts about how stupid Trump really is about everything, then this comment from him, should completely and unequivocally erase any shadow of a doubt.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/07/trump-hannity-interview-predicts-9-percent-growth-surplus-by-presidencys-end.html
Trump Predicts 9 Percent Growth, Budget Surplus by End of Presidency
But Donald Trump is no typical politician. And so, when the Commerce Department revealed Friday that the U.S. economy had grown 4.1 percent last quarter, the president did not respond by cautiously tempering expectations for future growth. Instead, Trump assured Sean Hannity that the economy is “going to get better”; that he will cut the trade deficit in half; deliver 8-to-9 percent GDP growth; and turn the projected $1 trillion budget deficit into a surplus.
“The economy, we can go a lot higher,” the president told Hannity in a surprise radio interview Friday afternoon. “We have $21 trillion in debt. When this really kicks in we’ll start paying off that debt like water.”
Only problem is there are 60 million plus Americans who truly believe him to be a ‘Stable Genius’!
The only good thing about the 60 million support of Trump is that they picked an inept leader. Next time they may pick one who is more capable- in the image of someone like Putin, Erdogan or Orban.
Good comment, Fred. My thoughts exactly.
Why not all three, and it doesn’t have to be open blackmail, just Trump knowing that Putin might know or eventually find out something, if so it would be more than getting pissed on, maybe something involved with item #3 with a clear paper trail that he could be tried for like money laundering or tax evasion.
#1 and #3 are not mutually exclusive.
Putin probably has trump on tape from back in the 90’s getting lap dances from under age strippers. St Petersburg was a bit nasty back in the mid 90’s. Trump in mid 90’s Russia would have been running around grabbing ass like a drunk frat boy in Phuket. He doesn’t sound like the type that could resist a honeypot.
Psychiatrist: Trump Mental Health Urgently Deteriorating
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfnV4B7Fk7Y
GF, thanks for the link. This thing is getting really scary. And to realize that about 36% of the American people, Trump’s base, haven’t a fucking clue as to what is going. They actually think the man is a great leader. And that is scary. I must post your link again in hopes more people will click on it. I wish it would go viral.
Psychiatrist: Trump Mental Health Urgently Deteriorating
I think a lot of his base have a clue as to what is going on. Listen to the last minute and a half of the video again.
The Trump supporters I talk to are not necessarily happy with him but are still supporting him because he is helping to achieve the anti-socialist and anti-ethnic agenda. They are very fearful of a Bernie Sanders type president coming in and are also paranoid about “foreigners” and ethnic groups.
Agreed Gone Fishing. And I think the issue of abortion is one that most of us don’t realize how important it is to many fundamentalists. For evangelicals to vote for someone who has such obviously poor morals speaks to that. As long as they think someone will put arch conservatives on the supreme court, they will ignore all other features.
Yes, it seems that way to me too. Probably a big separation of church and state fight coming up in the future.
I knew somebody that was just like Trump, same attitude, same everything. A doctor told me that person was a psychopath, then warned me, clearly, ‘never turn your back to him’.
NAOM
The whole system is sociopathic, but many are ‘turning their backs to it’, including on this forum.
Edward Snowden: Don’t fear Trump, fear the surveillance state
NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden’s Greatest Fear Is That “Nothing Will Change”
A malignant, narcissistic.(narcissist-paranoid-unempathic-sadist) know-nothing, con artist with pre-dementia as the most powerful man on the planet? I think I’m going to fear him. Maybe the best we can hope for is that Putin really is pulling his strings so Trump doesn’t have much control.
Well nobody’s perfect. ‘u^
Ants, termites and bees for examples seem to have figured that out and so ‘extracted out’ particular qualities for particular specializations. Then again, maybe some soldier ants, for example, aren’t cut out to be soldier ants.
If humans want to continue to be ‘eusocial’ or ‘advanced eusocial’ or whatever, then they might have to do somethings similar, at least at the human levels of consciousness, or they’ll keep declining and/or collapsing their civilizations (‘hives/colonies/etc.’) and ecosystems…
But that’s probably related to an apparent paradox, or the apparent paradox, itself; that humans are too complex for specialization.
Ron, you et al. appear to be looking at/gossiping too much about the lead clown, down his baggy overalls and under his fluffy wig, etc., of the bread-and-circuses circus. We need to get out of the B&CC, and/or at least shift the narrative/paradigm.
James Howard Kunstler is ‘stuck’ doing similar once or twice a week ad nauseum about that circus convolution– bla bla Pompeo bla Russian collusion bla bla bla Golden Golem of Greatness bla bla bla…– and maybe Dmitry Orlov too, behind a paywall. It’s apparently accessible without the commodification of something like $1 a month, via learning Unspell (which might help uptake of Orlov’s Unspell and therefore, I guess, some more money), to be able to read it… Can you make this stuff up, and would you want to?
Startling to hear a professional analysis. I shared this with my ‘network’.
Thank.
Although this is from from an optimal site upon which to share the following info, take it or leave it as you so wish …
At about 1:00 PM EST – today – Qanon posted a picture of Robert Mueller reading a newspaper one seat away from Donald Trump Jr.
They were in waiting lounge area of D.C. airport.
The implications of all this are way beyond the scope of this comment.
However, if the background of this entire “Qanon” is, in fact, valid – and this picture might indicate an immanent climax, of sorts – all of our worlds – most especially those of the ‘normies’ (just regular, trusting folks, irrespective of political outlook) are about to explode bigtime.
Should know more in the coming hours/days.
LOL! Normies My sincerest condolences to all of them, because they can’t handle the truth!
Edit
Trump junior is standing in line with body guard behind him.
This is some strange stuff and is already #1 listing in Google images for this search.
I simply can’t imagine any significance whatever to this blather.
MUST BUILD!
Prepare for a Chinese Maxi-devaluation
Are NEW Chinese buildings really FALLING DOWN?
Science magazine on Peak Sand 2017
Exclusive: China eyes infrastructure boost to cushion growth as trade war escalates – sources
Network Of Tesla Powerwall Batteries Saves Green Mountain Power $500,000 During Heat Wave
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/07/27/network-of-tesla-powerwall-batteries-saves-green-mountain-power-500000-during-heat-wave/
There will be huge amounts of money to be made in power storage in the near future.
“Disabled Vehicles Use Right Lane”
— Lincoln Tunnel sign
NASA image of phytoplankton bloom in the Baltic this this July.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/92462/summer-blooms-in-the-baltic-and-barents
I’ve been watching the Red Tide forecast for South Florida from NOAA.
The west coast has been hit pretty hard recently causing fish and sea turtle kills. Even a whale shark has recently washed up on the beach.
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/hab/gomx_condition.html?region=swfl
Iowa utility Alliant will pay $110 million penalty to end its power purchase agreement with the local Nuclear Plant 5 years early. The nuc plant will then be closed down.
The utility will replace the nuc power with wind energy, expecting to save about $300 million overall.
sign of the times
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nextera-to-retire-iowa-nuclear-plant-in-2020/528824/
According to: https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/amsr2/grf Arctic ice area just started hitting new daily low records (extent is not quite as low, relatively, yet). It hasn’t been a particularly warm or sunny summer there but the ice seems to be just disintegrating, especially on the Pacific side this week, but maybe the Atlantic getting hit at the end of he week. I don’t think any studies can keep up with the changes in the Arctic so any speculation can never be proved wrong so I’m going to say the lack of hard, multiyear ice is a big factor. Even the thicker ice now is just pushed up, fairly new ice still not having expelled all the brine, so it falls apart and melts much easier (and at slightly lower temperatures I think, though the whole liquid/solid phase change phenomena in solutions is rather complicated). There was also early clearing of the Baring Sea that allowed the water to warm up on the Pacific side and apparently incursion of warmer currents from the Atlantic further north under the ice than before (I think sea surface temperatures on both sides have been 2 to 3 degrees above “normal”). Plus all the thick ice north of Greenland has gone so the Nare’s Strait opens early and allows the Lincoln Sea area to get mashed up and transported out. Be interesting to see if 2012 record low is beaten even without particularly extreme late summer weather.
The big difference between 2012 and now is the thickness of the ice. The 2012 ice area at this date had a significant amount of thick ice (multi-year) but right now the Arctic Ocean has much thinner ice, mostly down around 1 meter (annual ice). Paul Beckwith explains this change on the video below at about 7 minutes into the video.
Looks like even a moderate warm spell in August could open up the Arctic Ocean more than in 2012.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdtK2oH4M0c
Watching the ice concentration maps lately, there is significant loss of concentration from day to day now.
Yep, its getting too hot to concentrate, so a lot of us are experiencing a significant loss of concentration from day to day now… 😉
That is only half in jest. Billions of people will be at serious risk!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4300451/
Evaluating Effects of Heat Stress on Cognitive Function among Workers in a Hot Industry
Conclusion: Results of the present study, conducted in a real work environment, confirmed the impairment of cognitive functions, including selective attention and reaction time, under heat stress conditions.
Also heat is known to increase levels of aggression.
And there has been a dusting of grey soot from big Siberian fires this year.
Thin ice might be a proximate cause, though PIOMAS doesn’t seem to agree with it being much thinner than 2012 or 2016 in July, but why is it thin when the weather hasn’t been particularly exceptional?
I wonder what the trend of subsurface temp of the Arctic Ocean is, say 20 ft down. Anyone seen data on this?
Thinning of ice could occur from weakening below, as well as surface warming.
I haven’t seen systematic data sets, and if there is a recent one I’m sure there’s nothing to compare it with, but there are a lot of changes going on. The thinner ice and open water means storms can mix up the deeper waters more easily. The thermohaline interaction is pretty sensitive as a cause and effect, and I don’t think there’s a clear understanding of how it reacts. The changing AMOC circulation plays some part in warmer water getting in under the ice on the Atlantic side.
ps that Hycom US Navy presentation that Paul Beckwith shows completely changed earlier this year with a new software version so I don’t think it’s valid to compare with earlier years, but the rapidity that it shows the ice to be thinning at the moment is valid.
Really? They blew away their historical comparison and many years of work/money?
Any source to that claim?
It used to say ARCc now it says GLBb. Different models with different coordinate systems.
I am not surprised at the lack of good data. We are more concerned with sports statistics apparently.
Winter begins in about 5 months (it will be here before you know it), but the ice growing season begins well before that.
No kidding. The overall ice starts to expand in September, about when Autumn starts, the central area is forming new ice well before then. – I think everybody here knows that it can get cold before winter starts. Actually it will happen almost exactly at the time we know it because it will show up on the various data sets that are available for free viewing. Maybe if you gave it a few weeks of really hard thinking you might be able to add something useful to the discussion, just one sentence would do, instead of feeding your cognitive dissonance at the cost of our collective boredom.
.
I have often mentioned my concern that ocean acidification is a far greater threat to marine ecosystems overall than the increasing warming of seas in and of itself. Unfortunately, here is more evidence of that.
For those who might be averse to detailed chemical, biological and ecological scientific analysis, this is a more layperson’s friendly link to the gist of the Nature paper I link further down.
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2018/07/27/Ocean-acidification-is-disrupting-marine-ecosystems-study-shows/7661532699407/
Ocean acidification is disrupting marine ecosystems, study shows
“These CO2 seeps provide a vital window into the future,” Sylvain Agostini, researcher at the University of Tsukuba Shimoda Marine Research Center, said in a news release. “There was mass mortality of corals in the south of Japan last year, but many people cling to the hope that corals will be able to spread north…”
Bold mine. IMHO, Those people are completely delusional!
…“It is extremely worrying to find that tropical corals are so vulnerable to ocean acidification, as this will stop them from being able to spread further north and escape the damage caused by water that is too hot for them,” Agostini said.
Bold mine. Don’t Worry, be Happy!
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-29251-7
Article | OPEN | Published: 27 July 2018
Ocean acidification drives community shifts towards simplified non-calcified habitats in a subtropical−temperate transition zone
Article | OPEN | Published: 27 July 2018
Ocean acidification drives community shifts towards simplified non-calcified habitats in a subtropical−temperate transition zone
Sylvain Agostini, Ben P. Harvey, Shigeki Wada, Koetsu Kon, Marco Milazzo, Kazuo Inaba & Jason M. Hall-Spencer
Scientific Reportsvolume 8, Article number: 11354 (2018) | Download Citation
Abstract
Rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are causing surface seawater pH and carbonate ion concentrations to fall in a process known as ocean acidification. To assess the likely ecological effects of ocean acidification we compared intertidal and subtidal marine communities at increasing levels of pCO2 at recently discovered volcanic seeps off the Pacific coast of Japan (34° N). This study region is of particular interest for ocean acidification research as it has naturally low levels of surface seawater pCO2 (280–320 µatm) and is located at a transition zone between temperate and sub-tropical communities. We provide the first assessment of ocean acidification effects at a biogeographic boundary. Marine communities exposed to mean levels of pCO2 predicted by 2050 experienced periods of low aragonite saturation and high dissolved inorganic carbon. These two factors combined to cause marked community shifts and a major decline in biodiversity, including the loss of key habitat-forming species, with even more extreme community changes expected by 2100. Our results provide empirical evidence that near-future levels of pCO2 shift sub-tropical ecosystems from carbonate to fleshy algal dominated systems, accompanied by biodiversity loss and major simplification of the ecosystem.
Maybe it’s just me, but this is a very depressing paper but no great surprise to me.
But hey, the economy is booming, population is on right on track for 9 billion plus, ignorant humans. And, at least in the US, we have a Stable Genius in the White House, with 60 million hard core supporters… What could possibly go wrong, eh?!
You don’t think the toxic/mutagenic/psychoactive mix of chemicals people are exposed to everyday from every source is not changing how people think and act?
It’s not normal to have a large percentage of children with learning disabilities and personality disorders.
We may be looking at a population with a large percentage of undefined mental disorders and malaise.
Humans were probably not a huge bargain to begin with, but bathe them in a mix of industrial chemicals from before birth and increasing throughout life and there has to be a change, especially to such a complex brain.
You don’t think the toxic/mutagenic/psychoactive mix of chemicals people are exposed to everyday from every source is not changing how people think and act?
I happen to think many things for many reasons! Among the things I think…
Hope is a four-letter word
I think there might be some wisdom to be gleaned from the paper below that can be applied to how we deal with our current plight.
I am of course comparing dealing with climate change to managing a terminal disease. While it is possible that Homo (some species) will survive the coming mass extinction, our current civilization most definitely will not!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26865093
Format: AbstractSend to
Sociol Health Illn. 2016 Jul;38(6):899-915. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.12403. Epub 2016 Feb 11.
Hope is a four-letter word: riding the emotional rollercoaster of illness management.
Nowakowski AC1.
Abstract
In this autoethnography, I explore the process and emotional experience of trying a new drug to improve my quality of life. In so doing, I synthesise personal history with extant research on chronic illness by analysing ways in which my experiences reflect and reject social norms. I also incorporate perspectives from research on aspirations and attainment, and the mental health consequences of cyclical disappointment. By weaving together lessons from each of these literatures, I articulate an integrative psychosocial understanding of the micro-level processes and experiences involved in illness management as well as the ways that experiences of illness management may require integration of varied sociological insights concerning health. In closing, I draw out theoretical implications for understanding the integration and variation of insights from many areas of health research in the lived experiences of people with chronic conditions. A Virtual Abstract of this article can be seen at: https://youtu.be/5aoaWGItDgM.
And BTW: As a father to a supposedly non normal child who grew up just fine despite all expectations to the contrary…
It’s not normal to have a large percentage of children with learning disabilities and personality disorders.
Oldie but very goodie!
Ken RobinsonatTED2006
Do schools kill creativity?
https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity
Well, that sure side-stepped the point I brought up. I don’t like to make excuses for the polluters, nor should we have to suffer and band aid the results of all the pollution that makes them profit and the people pay for with their money and their lives.
Schools certainly tried to beat the creativity in us and I mean that literally.
NAOM
Well, that sure side-stepped the point I brought up. I don’t like to make excuses for the polluters,…
No, I got the point! And wasn’t in any way intending to let polluters of the hook for their crimes.
Granted I did wander off on a couple of tangents but given all the toxic chemicals I have been exposed to during my stay on this planet, I should be allowed at least that much upon occasion.
This is my favorite look at the Arctic ice. If you go through the years one at a time you can see how hard it is to predict how high or low the bottom will be. To me the biggest give away is that every single year since 2002 has had a bottom below the 1981-2010 average. Progress of a sort. Nasty sort.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
More ammo for the coal demise team:
IS THIS THE NEXT COAL MEGA-PROJECT?
“It was expected that the coal mine’s production would be increased tenfold to 35 million tons per year to satisfy the power plant’s needs. Similarly, to the issues of establishing a mutually acceptable pricing formula and determining the capital structure of the proposed joint venture, connecting the manifold dots would require some time before the project is a robust and coherent one. Russia, always eager to find new coal export outlet against the background of a tightening domestic market which uses increasingly less of it in its power generation, sees the project as another way of bringing money and jobs to the Far East, whilst China would benefit greatly from the relatively low production costs and the outsourcing of all environmental risks. From now on it will all depend of the two sides’ deal making skills to see the project through.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Coal/Is-This-The-Next-Big-Coal-Megaproject.html
Meanwhile, as we continue to trash Earth, NASA is busy finding us a new place to live. Beware though, like Noah’s ark, there will be strict limits to your carry-on luggage.
TESS’S PLANET HUNT BEGINS
NASA’s newest observatory in space has started its search for planets around other stars, officials said Friday, as astronomers zero in on worlds that are ripe for research by follow-up missions like the James Webb Space Telescope.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/07/27/tesss-planet-hunt-begins/
DougL,
India, watch India’s growing use of coal. Been saying this for years. They of little faith pooh-poohed my warnings several years ago. I shall be justified!
India, population 1.3 billion and growing, what could possibly go wrong?!
Crop failure and bankruptcy threaten farmers as drought grips Europe
https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/20/crop-failure-and-bankruptcy-threaten-farmers-as-drought-grips-europe
Worse and more of it.
Ohio: Democrat Richard Cordray puts Republican governorship in jeopardy
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/28/ohio-richard-cordray-governor-democrats-republicans
Lets be honest– stupidity is a Repug selling point– it is going to be a tough gig.
Michigan’s Largest Utility to Stop Burning Coal By 2040
Michigan’s largest utility, Consumers Energy, has announced it will stop burning coal by 2040 in an effort to slash greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change, according to the Associated Press. The company, which services 6.7 million of the state’s 10 million residents, plans to get 40 percent of its energy from solar and wind power by then, with the rest coming from natural gas and hydropower.
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/michigans-largest-utility-to-stop-burning-coal-by-2040
At least the air will be cleaner. They are operating from the delusion that natural gas is less of a GHG emitter than coal. At least it looks good on paper.
Coal to renewable is not a single step process. Gas is an intermediary step in the transition. Not to implement it would mean running on coal for longer. It too will fade.
NAOM
NAOM, yep. With this kind of effort I expect the average lifespan to fall rapidly after 2040.
The problem in my opinion is that 2040 is way too late! Should of done that 40 years ago.
2040?
We may be trading for weapons and food with the tribe in the next valley by then.
They are operating from the delusion that natural gas is less of a GHG emitter than coal. At least it looks good on paper.
And why would you in any way expect the people in Michigan to be any less delusional than the people who put together the IPCC reports. Who knows maybe they really believe that it is possible to keep global temperature rise below 2.0° C, as in the fantasy scenarios depicted in the IPCC graph below? Perhaps they have never heard of self reinforcing feedback loops or tipping points. Maybe they think Negative Carbon Emissions Technologies are a real thing. Or they are counting on completely eliminating current cement manufacturing processes as a source of CO2 emissions.
I’d bet about 95% of humanity is delusional when it comes to CO2 emissions and the consequences thereof.
.
BTW if you want delusion, click on the opinion piece at the bottom of that page you linked to. Though perhaps delusion is not quite the right term. Maybe tilting at windmills or demolishing straw men is a better descriptor of his writing style.
I doubt he has any inkling as to the real reasons why nuclear will never be a significant part of the solution. It’s simply because there is cheaper and better technology already available off the shelf. It isn’t cost effective without massive subsidies.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-nuclear-power-must-be-part-of-the-energy-solution-environmentalists-climate
Why Nuclear Power Must Be Part of the Energy Solution
By RICHARD RHODES
Hey the guy is a Pulitzer Prize winning author! And to be fair, he is in good company, even James Hansen thinks nuclear has to be a part of the solution. You should see the rage heaped upon me recently when I made the point over at realclimate.org that despite his excellent work as a climate scientist it did not automatically follow that he was infallible in everything, even when far outside his field of expertise. Though I did allow that he was entitled to his opinion just like everyone else.
Trouble is, this is a 2014 chart which would be based on research up to, probably, 2012, maybe earlier with the delay from measurement to publication. Most of the feedback work has only been done recently and these estimates only base on hard data not known unknowns. They may know that a feedback loop exists but they cannot add it into the chart without the hard numbers hence these charts will always be several years behind the times when generated and falling further behind the times as the years go by.
1.5% no firkin way, 2% yeah right! By 2020 warming and climate change will be obvious to the man on the Clapham Omnibus (2025 for Republicans) and people will start to ask why nothing was done … but it will be too late. Governments have acted like a parachutist who says ‘no need to pull the ripcord, I don’t have any problems while free-falling’. By the time the ground rush starts it will be too late or they will choose to open on impact, all that will remain is to cross their legs left over right.
NAOM
When and if global warming is ever taken seriously, watch out, the acts of desperation will be many and some will be very dangerous.
I had a discussion with a data scientist recently. In that discussion, I learned a quote I had never heard before but actually rings very true when people insist on using cherry picked model data in debate. The quote is. “All models are wrong. Some are useful.”
In truth this was a discussion over financial models instead of climate models, but there’s no difference.
Just curious, which cherry picked model data are you referring to?
The graph I posted depicts IPCC scenario outcomes with their respective error bar ranges. Which in turn are based on climate models run against the various scenarios.
Here’s a talk by Kevin Andersen discussing why those scenarios are based on delusional thinking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjTtohMgGk8
Re IPCC scenarios:
Because projections of climate change depend heavily upon future human activity, climate models are run against scenarios. There are 40 different scenarios, each making different assumptions for future greenhouse gas pollution, land-use and other driving forces. Assumptions about future technological development as well as the future economic development are thus made for each scenario.
BTW the RCP2.6 scenario outcome depends on Negative Emissions Technology, which does not yet exist. So regardless of the climate model used it is based on pure fantasy.
True indeed Kevin.
You can bank on the models being inaccurate, since they are based on assumptions, educated guesses and small data sets, but often they are
the best wrong we’ve got.
Ha, CO2? I was talking about methane, the real kickslammer in global warming.
And I was talking about examples of delusional thinking.
Fred wrote”Or they are counting on completely eliminating current cement manufacturing processes as a source of CO2 emissions.
I’d bet about 95% of humanity is delusional when it comes to CO2 emissions and the consequences thereof. ”
Darn, the repetitive mention of CO2 threw me off the track. Must be late onset ADHD. My ladyfriend would agree, but she holds me to the 99.9% pay attention rule. On a good day it’s only 98%. 🙂
Bill Burr and Nia – Bill Finds out He Has ADHD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2BxgCgY67I&t=330s
For the record, the comment about CO2 emissions from cement manufacture was intended to be sarcasm… I thought it kinda irrelevant to even add it to the IPCC scenarios graph given all the other potential sources of GHC gases they neglected to mention…
I would seriously watch Antarctica, the insolation on the Southern Ocean has been high for thousands of years, peaking just recently at about +50 w/m2 compared to 11,000 years ago.
The ocean is a great heat sink but eventually ice will give way.
The open Arctic of the 2020’s will probably shoot global temp up quickly by about 1C and local temps up by several C, giving Greenland a kick in the sheet as well as causing a lot more Arctic rain.
The expanding cities will do the rest.
Fat Boy, what you going to do?
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2ef8b3cd3ccf6aaa88ef691e0e711d61ec7a315b/0_172_4278_2567/master/4278.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=9347b1b969aec210d19d5d19a999e5fd
Donald Trump’s golf resort wrecked special nature site, reports reveal
Is this why the Koch brothers and their ilk (trolls) are getting the knickers in a knot?
2017 saw UK switch away from coal, gas to renewables
While they remain the dominant source of energy supply, there was a shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy in the U.K. last year. The country is “comfortably” on track to exceed its 30% renewables target, says the government.
The growth in renewables was due to increased generation capacity, particularly for wind (22.6%) and solar (7.3%), and favorable weather conditions.
Despite the continuing onslaught of bad energy news in the U.K., including a proposal to end solar export tariffs for homeowners next year, and the approval of fracking in Lancashire – in the face of fierce opposition – renewables are doggedly continuing on their path to dominance.
The government has just released its ‘Digest of United Kingdom Energy Statistics 2018’, which shows that while fossil fuels were still clearly the leading source of electricity generation in the U.K. last year, at 80.1%, their grip is loosening, with renewables increasingly picking up the slack.
If this can be happening in the UK (same latitude as parts of Canada), it is only a matter of time before the solar energy poison starts killing FF in the US!
Not sure that solar is the best trending renewable alternative in the UK but the transition is happening nonetheless and at an ever increasing speed at that.
It is interesting to hear these panelists in the UK and what they have to say about Trump and his agenda. Ironically since this talk is only from June 2018, what with changes in the current US administration happening so fast, it is already dated because Scott Pruitt has recently left the administration. Who knows, Trump himself may soon be gone as well! Godspeed to the transition!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ards0pQKb3k
Why Megatrends Trump Politics | Fully Charged Live 2018 Talk 10
Expect Africa (and others?) to follow Japan’s path folks: And islandboy, I don’t see myself as a troll but rather as a realist!
BUCKING GLOBAL TRENDS, JAPAN AGAIN EMBRACES COAL POWER
“Most of the world is turning its back on burning coal to produce electricity, but not Japan. The nation has fired up at least eight new coal power plants in the past 2 years and has plans for an additional 36 over the next decade—the biggest planned coal power expansion in any developed nation (not including China and India). And last month, the government took a key step toward locking in a national energy plan that would have coal provide 26% of Japan’s electricity in 2030 and abandons a previous goal of slashing coal’s share to 10%.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/bucking-global-trends-japan-again-embraces-coal-power
POWER-STARVED AFRICA DEVELOPS APPETITE FOR COAL, DISMISSES ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS IN WEST
“The concerns about coal expressed by environmentalists and climate researchers in the West are voiced here mostly by white expatriates and foreign nongovernmental organizations. Coal in Africa is an abundant resource for a continent still hustling to catch up with the developed world. South Africa, the economic engine of the region, gets 93 percent of its electricity from coal, one of the highest percentages in the world.”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/19/africans-rely-on-coal-for-economy/
I continue to believe that people will eagerly burn coal despite a warming or choking atmosphere, if they see it as affordable. Despite what we may want to see.
Japan imports 95% of their energy, as of 2015, and if memory serves nuclear power hasn’t been exactly a walk in the park for them.
Rapidly developing places like India and Africa, which are on the path to huge population and electrical consumption growth over the next 3 decades, will build out solar and wind, but also massive coal baseload capacity.
Australia isn’t about to curtail exports out of the kindness of their heart.
This coal train isn’t about to come screeching to halt, voluntarily.
Oh Doug, I don’t see you as a troll at all! I do recognize you as a “realist” since I share many of you reservations about the future of our civilization on this planet. The trolls I am referring to are the ones that do “drive by” posts here using classic anti-renewable or climate change denier memes about government impinging on their personal freedoms or imposing unnecessary, burdensome costs on the economy. There’s also the one that I believe posts from an island to the south and west of your wife’s country of birth, the island just across the channel from France.
Personally, I have reverted to a state of hope, having seen my worst fears of 2008 vintage failing to materialize. In fact I made some purchases of solar panels etc. back then, thinking that maybe that was the beginning of the Peak Oil s__t hitting the fan and that they would be better as currency than the cash I used to buy them. Fortunately the modules I bought were heavily discounted as prices have fallen steeply since then. Heavily discounted modules today would cost about half what I paid for mine and the results of the Chinese government’s May announcements, slowing the growth of solar in China have not even kicked in yet! As a result of that lesson hitting me in the pocket book, I am much less likely to proclaim doom for the future so forgive me for deciding to highlight news that I consider hopeful as I lean to the side of stuff I think has a good chance of mitigating against global warming and Peak Oil etc.
Hope springs eternal.
On the other hand it is my considered belief that US investors in electricity generation are on to something. Looking back at the data for capacity additions in 2017, more than half of the new capacity in 2017 was from renewable sources, primarily wind and solar. The rest was mostly natural gas but notably, there was no new coal fired capacity. So far this year essentially all the new capacity has been natural gas fired or solar or wind. Last year more than half the retired capacity was coal fired with natural gas and a small amount of petroleum liquids making up most of the balance. So far this year almost 80% of the capacity retirements have been coal. The story continues to be lots of retirements of coal fired plants and no new coal plants on the horizon as far as I am aware.
The reason for this might be found in the following article:
Renewables beat fossil fuels, and are getting cheaper
One of the reasons the supremacy of oil may be challenged in the coming decades is the rapid rise of renewable energy resources, now on the verge of being the cheapest forms of energy, certainly in electricity generation.
A June 2018 study by Bernstein documents the persistent drop in the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) from renewable generation over time with projections of where future cost reduction potential lies.
The report argues that the cost of onshore wind, offshore wind and solar power is likely to be well below the cost of fossil fuel generation nearly everywhere.
Few dispute such findings. Cheap and plentiful electricity supplies will make electrification of the global economies so much easier.
Similar results were reported in a March 2018 study from Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems for Germany. According to the latest data, utility-scale solar PVs and on- shore wind are already the best options available based on the LCOE metric.
Maybe the US electricity sector is ahead of the curve with this information or maybe it’s just the natural gas eating their lunch that has got them spooked. At any rate with wind and more recently solar undercutting the LCOE of natural gas, it would be extremely foolish to invest in new coal fired capacity in the US at this time. It would appear that memo has made the rounds!
I put the news you highlighted down to inertia and believe that the investors in these new coal plants in Japan and Africa are going to end up facing considerable losses as the costs renewable energy continue to fall. These power companies do not trust the new technology, nor are they comfortable with it. In the case of solar, it makes a royal mess of the business model of central generation with nationwide grids to distribute the power. Solar may turn out to be the great liberator, freeing billions of people from the tyranny of centralized electricity monopolies. As a result, utilities are continuing to do what they have always done, ignoring the threat from renewables.
In my own neck of the woods, the local electricity utility is completing construction of a brand new, 190 MW natural gas fired, combined cycle gas turbine plant to be commissioned in June 2019. I do not believe that plant will ever recover the investment made in it but, the local utility falls into the same category as those in Japan and Africa. These utilities need large amounts of capacity in a very short time frame and they need to spend as little as possible on the technology with the lowest fuel costs possible. The only thing that fits that bill in most cases is coal. Even in my neck of the woods there was talk of a new big coal fired plant next to an alumina plant that has been acquired by a Chinese company, with the hopes of further processing of the alumina, possibly aluminum smelting!
I am firmly in the Seba (Tony) camp on these matters in believing that we are on the cusp of a “Clean Disruption” and that a lot of these investors in the status quo are going to end up in a lot of pain.
Robert Scribbler has some interesting things to say and show about the latest European heatwave.
2018 European Heatwave Was Made Two to Five Times More Likely by Climate Change
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaIJXjjaOcg&t=297s
Climate change isn’t like a thing where we can say without significant doubts that it was the cause of a specific weather event. If you try to do statistical simulations you can perhaps say it was more likely, but statistics haven’t been developed to take into account natural cycles. The Earth has warmed and cooled according to natural cycles. We last saw the hotter end of one of these natural cycles back in the 1930’s when the summer heatwaves then were even hotter than this year’s.
Statistics has been developed that can take account of long cycles. Statistics would say that a previous heat wave was entirely possible, just not as likely as they are now in a warmer world. The statistics base their predictions on the state of the world now not on the reasons it got this way so whether it’s natural cycles or man made GHGs doesn’t make a difference (the fact that natural cycles say we should be slightly cooler than average and are in fact much hotter is important, but doesn’t influence the analysis of the probability of extreme events).
If you are not perchance, an ambulance chasing lawyer, you definitely missed your life’s calling! Cuz, you sure as hell wouldn’t make it any math or science related field. Especially not one in which honesty and high ethical standards are valued!
Maybe as a backup plan you could apply for a position as a full time climate denying troll! I believe Putin, Trump and the Kochs are still hiring.
Oh, I see, my bad… Carry on!
How much more obvious does it have to be? Does every square kilometer of the globe have to be covered by dark red heat anomaly? Might happen one day, but will not matter much at that point.
Perry Smart Houston,
The topic is record high temperatures world-wide. The high temperatures in the 1930s were in North America. The global spike in a chart of temperature for the time disappears if the North American data are removed.
Why Every American Needs to Defend Julian Assange’s Freedom
Caelan, there is no doubt that Ralph Nader did cause Al Gore to lose to George W. Bush, absolutely no doubt whatsoever. And anyone, including the Democratic party, is justified in blaming Nader for that stupid selfish act. So what’s the motive of the author of this article in bringing that up?
Also, there is no doubt that Assage did assist the Russians in helping Donald Trump get elected. Why on earth would anyone defend that sonofabitch?
The website that posted this article, ANTI MEDIA, showed their true colors with another article found on their website: “In Refusing to Defend Assange, Mainstream Media Exposes Its True Nature”
Just like Trump, they are attacking the media. By attacking the media they are attacking the Constitution of the United States. They are attacking the First Amendment. But at least they have the correct name for their website, ANTI MEDIA.
The Republican game plan for longer than Caelan has been alive is divide and conquer. The Republican base are brain dead religious simple minded followers. Which is hard to divide. On the other hand, the Democrats are mostly self thinking bunch of ducks who are hard to organize. It than becomes easy to introduce a third party and peel off a significant portion of the Democratic base.
Nader, Sanders, Stein
More often than not, the democrats are their own worst enemy
“There is no doubt that Ralph Nader did cause Al Gore to lose to George W. Bush, absolutely no doubt whatsoever.”
The American voters caused Al Gore to lose to GWB.
Many nations seem to have more than 2 political parties and do just fine.
Oh, get over it. This is not “many nations” this is the United States of America. Ralph Nader was a liberal, Al Gore was a liberal. George W. Bush was a conservative. Ralph Nader was a selfish sonofabitch. He knew he would help split the liberal vote. He knew he had no chance of being elected. He did it for his own glory.
It happened eight years before when Ross Perot and George H. W. Bush split the conservative vote and allowed Bill Clinton to become president. Senior Bush has hated Perot ever since, he said: “he cost me the election”. Now Ross Perot thought he had a chance but Ralph Nader knew he had no chance whatsoever. When vanity candidates run they do it for their own selfish reasons.
If the US had three or more legitimate parties, like Canada, that would be different. But we do not. Vanity candidates are spoilers and nothing more. And a certain percentage of the American electorate is just too stupid to realize that. They vote for the vanity candidate without realizing they are throwing the election to their most despised candidate instead of their second choice, who had a real chance of winning.
Ralph Nader is a selfish sonofabitch.
I agree w you on this Ron, however I’m also going to blame the voters who voted for Nader. They had a choice, and in effect they elected Bush.
Republicans are not the only party with stupid voters.
“Ralph Nader is a selfish sonofabitch”
Is Sanders any different than Nader ? He only registered as a Democrat to ride the party for a presidential race. He has already gone back to being an Independent. He made a shitty attempt of reuniting the party after he lost to HRC. The Russian exploded Sanders selfishness and today we have the idiot Russian Trump.
Yes, Sanders is different from Nader. Nader ran as a third party candidate and was on the ballot in 43 states and DC, siphoning votes from Gore. Sanders was on no ballots whatsoever in the general election. Therefore he could not possibly siphon votes from Clinton.
Sanders tried to get the Democratic nomination at the convention. He failed. That is the way it is supposed to work and it did.
Sanders never had a snowballs chance in hell to steal the nomination at the convention. HRC had 90% of the parties loyalist and powers to be behind her. Anyone who believed other wise was under the same ether Trump voters sucked up.
After HRC lost to Obama, she picked herself up and embraced Obama in a full bear hug. Sanders was too “selfish” to do the same and a immature loser. Now the country is paying the price for it.
Sanders doesn’t deserve a free pass for his “selfish” actions. Let him run as an independent for 2020 and see were that gets him.
If the Dims would of nominated Sanders, we would be calling him President Sanders.
But the system is currently not allowing candidates like Sanders to run.(hint: Clinton and Trump are much closer than Sanders and Clinton)
We shall see how this unwinds.
We need more than a one party state–
But, not being into reformist politics, I’m more of a observer.
Take a look:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_sanders-5565.html
“Clinton and Trump are much closer than Sanders and Clinton”
“the system is currently not allowing candidates like Sanders to run”
“we would be calling him President Sanders”
Clearly the sun doesn’t shine were you have your head. Sanders is a loser, period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_2016
“Senator Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in America, according to a new Harvard-Harris poll. In fact, the Vermont senator and former presidential candidate is the only politician in the U.S. who a majority of voters like. ”
https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-most-popular-politician-655315
“Just making a observation” were the sun doesn’t shine is a shitty observation
Being you like to write in word salad, here is something maybe you can understand –
oligarchy, daughter, dictator, communism, son-in-law, nepotism, mafia, Emoluments Clause, narcissist, bankruptcy, Donald Jr. Mueller indictments, lock him up, money laundering
Really HB, you need to step back and confront reality—-
It is hard, but the stats might help you release your anger?
I’m not a Dim or Repug— I’m just a observer.
Huntington. I was a Hillary voter (pragmatic I like to think), but Sanders had every right to run as he did. He conducted himself with dignity all along. It is important to have a competitor in the game, in case the primary candidate falls apart (health, scandal, poor performance), and also to stand up as a potential running mate.
After Hillary got nominated, he endorsed her.
And like many Hillary voters, I was very glad to have him bring up the issues that he did.
He was no Nader.
I agree, Nader “had every right to run as he did”. Nader “conducted himself with dignity all along. It is important to have a competitor in the game”.
Yes Sanders endorsed her. But he didn’t bring over a Nader amount of his voters. He couldn’t deliver. The same final result.
Well, some just couldn’t go there.
I was surprised she didn’t win– but maybe the proletariat is becoming a bit more literate?
But Trump—–
I think I get your point H.Beach.
I would like to see a third party candidate have a chance in this country, and if it was one that I had any enthusiasm for, then I would want them to do the following-
Announce up front, that if they did not end up having a rats chance in hell of winning, then they would throw their full support to a rival about 3 weeks out, and ask their supporters to do the same.
If Nader had done that we’d be looking at a very different outcome. btw-He might have been EPA secretary under Gore.
I would like to see a third party candidate have a chance in this country
You mean like in every other first world democracy?
Might have to abandon a late enlightenment government meant to keep a elite in power?
The white proletariat have been voting Republican against their own economic interest since the Nixon southern racist strategy and Reagan’s religious anti abortion strategy.
I would hope you do realize your list are Republican failed policies in which Democrats reached across the aisle to work together on.
Bush took America to war
Bush signed the Patriot Act
Trump approved the XL pipeline
Trump is deregulating Banking
Trump voters love shopping at Walmart
8 years of Republican Bush economy needed a bailout
I see your still getting your news from Facebook and Fox
Yes HB—-
You need a larger box.
I get it, from where you base your differences.
So, how are things going?
Hickory,
I have read to many of your posts. I realize we aren’t that far apart. I’m just not as nice as you.
Nader royally fucked us
Peace
“So, how are things going?”
I’m a white male citizen with a half a million dollar increase in portfolio value since the 11/8/16 election. The stock market is not the economy. The current policies are short sighted. Trump will tank it all before this is over. Trumps me first policies don’t hurt me. I’m not angry, just done caring about others who are to stupid to take care of themselves.
Just an observation from afar, well 500 miles or so south of Florida. I’ve been trying to figure out what happened in the US in 2016 since the election and I think after months of watching mostly people like Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert I’ve got it figured out.
The Russians had an influence that is more significant than many realize. HRC was a flawed candidate, tainted by the electorates experience with her from the time Bill was in office. Even some die hard democrats did not particularly like her. Bernie was a much better candidate (my favorite), much better at reaching out to young people and independents. Much more inspiring and more in line with what many swing voters seem to want, a change (remember Obama?). Bernie has an air of authenticity that HRC does not have and if he’s a fake, just putting on a show, he deserves something above the level of an Oscar for his performance and would be an even bigger shyster than Trump is.
Back to what happened in 2016. Since HRC was the anointed one and most of the polls had her wining, the Russian activity pushed away some of the people who might have voted for her who were not die hard “D” voters. In the end I think it was the belief that Trump could not possibly win that actually gave him the edge. Enough voters decided that since HRC had it in the bag they could just stay home on election day or make a conscience vote and vote green like OFM did.
I believe most Americans, basically all of them that did not vote for Trump are good natured sentient beings and are horrified that this monster of a man is their president! My gut tells me that all the Americans that are appalled that Trump is embarrassing their once respected nation on the world stage, in addition to all the corporate ass kissing that he is doing at home, are going to come out en masse in November and hand the GOP an ass whipping that is without precedent.
I agree Island— The Fall elections are the turning point, and Trump should get his ass kicked.
But you are in Jamaica, a country with much more political literacy——
The proletariat here, like our commentators here, know something is wrong, but are seeking simple solutions.
This isn’t a specific reply to Hickory per se, but just to tuck this off the cuff and into the tread here…
The ‘large-scale centralized nation-state’ system– human ‘social technology’, if you will– appears, paradoxically, out-of-scale, overcomplex and in fundamental dissonance and detachment with the human (and vice-versa), it’s ‘natural’ scale, numbers and vis-a-vis its ‘internal personal complexities’. (Ponder a nuclear power plant: Fukushimas and Chernobyls happen. Who were working there at the time? Were they the ‘proper’ people? Could they have been genetically-engineered for their respective jobs? Could Trump have made a difference? Stalin? But then what is nuclear energy without the centralized nation-state?)
Unlike social insects, humans are complex, but their systems appear to demand levels of specialization/behavioral oversimplification to some degrees, in conflict with their complexity– unlike social insects. At the same time, the overcomplexities of their systems challenge their abilities to cope with them, especially when they go awry.
“Brains much smaller than human or even mammalian brains are also known to be able to support social relationships, including social insects with hierarchies where each individual knows its place (such as the paper wasp with its societies of approximately 80 individuals) and computer-simulated virtual autonomous agents with simple reaction programming emulating what is referred to in primatology as ‘ape politics‘.” ~ Wikipedia
Games Without Frontiers
I’m out of pocket and with limited time at the moment, Ron, and before you tuck tail and run with some words along the lines of ‘This is the last comment I will make to you about this. Bye now.’, I might want to dig out a few words, if it can be found, on this spoiler thing, but for now, here’s a clip, maybe about you, along with many others…
You have to understand, most people are not ready to be unplugged
The woman in the red dress is offered as metaphor for a (potentially dangerous) distraction. Notice also, the cop in the scene.
Interesting!
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201807240045.html
Ex-IEA official: Nuclear power can’t compete with solar power
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
Nobuo Tanaka, former executive director of the International Energy Agency
Nuclear power is “ridiculously expensive” compared with solar power and cannot compete from a financial standpoint, said the former head of the International Energy Agency.
During a lecture at a symposium in Tokyo on July 23, Nobuo Tanaka, former IEA executive director, said nuclear power is utterly “uncompetitive” with solar power generation in terms of costs for building or expanding nuclear plants.
“I was greatly shocked to hear that the IEA say that ‘solar becomes the cheapest source of electricity generation in many countries’ in its 2017 report,” said Tanaka, a well-known nuclear power advocate.
He has served as an executive board member of the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum Inc., which comprises nuclear plant manufacturers.
Hmm, uncompetitive, unscalable, unhealthy. The UN-Energy.
Any system that is incompatible with the ecosystem is on the wrong planet.
Somehow, that made me think of Carlin’s soliloquy on religion, especially the part about ‘but he always needs MONEY!’ 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r-e2NDSTuE
Nuclear is too cheap to meter! We need it because it is clean energy! It doesn’t emit CO2! Yet, it still needs to be subsidized to the tune of billions, wonder why?
Sounds like a BS cult to me.
Without loan guarantees, could a nuclear plant be built in the USA? I think not. Who would take the risk of billions in cost overuns on an already very expensive plant?
I don’t want my tax dollars at risk on that, and apparently I’m not alone.
And before a single new fuel rod is put into action, they better transport and bury the spent rods down about 8000 feet first. We have 2-3 refueling loads worth of spent fuel rods (still highly radioactive) in water ponds at nuclear plants throughout the country, on average. The cladding is flaking off. Waiting for a tornado to come wandering by.
The entire nuclear industry was/is dependent on the Price Anderson legislation that limited the liability of the utilities who purchased nuclear plants. If Congress undid that legislation I suspect that even the current plants that are economical would be shut down as soon as possible.
Ralph Nader’s group ran a TV ad in the 70s that showed the sun up close and discussed that 83 million miles was about as close as any of us should be to a nuclear reaction.
A BEAUTIFUL THEORY
Ultimately the debate going on in string theory centers on a deep question: What is the point of physics? Should a good theory be able to explain the particular characteristics of the universe around us or is that asking too much? And when a theory conflicts with the way we think our universe works, do we abandon the theory or the things we think we know?
String theory is incredibly appealing to many scientists because it is “beautiful”—its equations are satisfying and its proposed explanations elegant. But so far it lacks any experimental evidence supporting it—and even worse, any reasonable prospects for gathering such evidence. Yet even the suggestion string theory may not be able to accommodate the kind of dark energy we see in the cosmos around us does not dissuade some. “String theory is so rich and beautiful and so correct in almost all the things that it’s taught us that it’s hard to believe that the mistake is in string theory and not in us. But perhaps chasing after beauty is not a good way to find the right theory of the universe. Mathematics is full of amazing and beautiful things, and most of them do not describe the world,” physicist Sabine Hossenfelder of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies wrote in her recent book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray
https://www.space.com/41320-string-theory-may-create-fewer-universes.html
String theory is untestable and unfalsifiable. It also, as I hear in many youtube videos on the subject, gives credence to the multiverse theory. And for that reason alone, I don’t like it. However if they ever find any hard evidence for the theory, or ever spot one of those other universes, I will turn on a dime. But I just don’t think that will happen.
Do you believe in dark matter and dark energy?
GF, these scientific theories are not something you believe or disbelieve. You suspend judgment until they are proven or disproven. However the effects of dark matter can be observed. Stars on the edge of the galaxy are moving way too fast. If only the observable matter in the galaxy were present, the stars would be flung way out into space. So there has to be a lot more matter in the galaxy than can be seen. Also, light is bent around galactic clusters way more than it would be if only the visible matter were present. So dark matter must be present.
Dark energy is a different matter. If the universe is accelerating in its expansion, then I think there has to be a cause. And that cause would have to be the force of the cosmological constant, that is, dark energy.
That being said, I think string theory is a little wild and will obviously never be proven one way or another. And I make no bones about it, I think the multiverse theory is a pile of shit. And don’t get me started on the many worlds theory, something totally different. The many worlds theory is just so absurd only someone who could believe any absurd theory could believe it.
Ron, I’m confused. Multiverse theory and many worlds theory are the same thing, no?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
And should they happen to be different, I’m fairly sure I subscribe to neither of them 🙂
When the multiverse and many-worlds collide
TWO of the strangest ideas in modern physics – that the cosmos constantly splits into parallel universes in which every conceivable outcome of every event happens, and the notion that our universe is part of a larger multiverse – have been unified into a single theory. This solves a bizarre but fundamental problem in cosmology and has set physics circles buzzing with excitement, as well as some bewilderment.
They are two totally different concepts and any attempt to combine them are just attempts to combine the ridiculous with the absurd.
However, I will give you a brief difference in words you can, hopefully, understand.
The multiverse theory is the theory that universes pop into existence, and in most cases right out of existence again many times a second, and have been doing that for many billions of years. Some of the universes continue to exist but the vast majority do not form stars, planets or anything else. That is because the laws of physics are different in those universes. Laws and sub-atomic particles just happen randomly and many trillions of trillions of trillions of universes are created before one is just right for the formation of stars, galaxies, supernovas, then second generation stars and then life. We just happen to be in the lucky one that was just right for all that.
The multiverse theory tries to explain the very fine tuning of the universe. That is, none of the universes are fine-tuned, they are all different. Out of an almost infinite number of universes, one just happened to have all the qualities that allowed stars, galaxies, rocky planets to form. We just won the lottery, that’s all.
The many world’s theory is the theory that the world, as it exists, splits off into other world’s billions of times a second. You, yourself split into another existence even though you are totally unaware of it. Schrodinger’s cat is alive in one universe but dead in another universe that just split away. That’s how they explain quantum mechanics.
The multiverse theory is absurd but the many world’s theory is far, far stupider.
Both theories are so stupid it is unbelievable that many, nay, even most physicist and cosmologists believe in the multiverse theory, and some even swallow the many world’s theory. They do it to keep from admitting that the universe is extremely fine-tuned and could not have just happened by accident. As Martin Rees put it: “It gets rid of God.”
If it gets rid of god it’s not the worst of all possible ideas.
Jim, you miss the point. That may be an excellent idea but doing it in such a very stupid way jut shows that some would do any stupid thing just to get rid of God. If one wants to get rid of God, they need to make a legitimate argument. They need to explain the fine-tuning of the universe without resorting to something totally absurd.
However in my humble opinion getting rid of God is misguided endeavor. What they need to do is get rid of religion.
For more on this subject go to Youtube and search on “The Fine-Tuned Unicerse”.
Multiverse theory and a lot of theoretical physics is nothing but modern day mythology.
Thanks Ron for the explanation and the link.
Meanwhile, to quote Martin Rees again, “The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it.”
Awesome concept 🙂
We have got ourselves into a box canyon.
But the scouts seem to be continuing on.
Might be time to turn around.
Do you believe in quantum field theory even though over the past several decades, there have been many attempts to put it on a firm mathematical footing by formulating a set of axioms for it, so far, all unsuccessful?
I don’t profess to understand it but there is something truly beautiful about quantum field theory. It would be perfect for them to find a way that it all compresses down to something really simple and the symmetry just pops out and everybody says “of course, how could it be any other way?”
Well, “The best theory comes from string theory, which states that dark matter is nothing but a higher vibration of the string. We are, in some sense, the lowest octave of a vibrating string.” And, “I hope we find evidence of dark matter in the lab and in outer space. This would go a long way to proving the correctness of string theory, which is what I do for a living. That is my day job. String theory is a potentially experimentally verifiable theory.” — Michio Kaku
Well, I hope he is correct. But it is a bridge too far to say that string theory, even if proven, verifies, in any way, the multiverse theory. However:
String theory is a potentially experimentally verifiable theory.
However, googling “How big is a string in string theory?”:
The strings of string theory are unimaginably small. Your average string, if it exists, is about 10-33 centimeters long. That’s a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter. If an atom were magnified to the size of the solar system, a string would be the size of a tree.
Really now? Dr. Kaku is going to verify that these little strings actually exist? If as he says, that is what he does for a living, I don’t think he is going to be out of a job any time soon.
Now I know there are ways to proving sub-atomic particles exist, even though they are too small to see even with the most powerful microscope. But they can be proven in other ways. But these strings are way, way, too small to be proven in any kind of laboratory experiment. And they are not, by any stretch of the imagination a sub-atomic particle.
Kaku is totally committed. I enjoy his shows, and his guests, but it has been quite a while.
After the Standard Model, we have been wandering in a nowhere land for quite a while.
We shall see—–
The quantum field theory may not have been proven as to exactly how it works, but there is ample evidence to support it. Read “The Quantum Enigma”. And I must have watched a hundred Youtube videos on the subject. I must admit there is no “mathematical footing” that explains it. But there is observational footing. There is the double slit experiment that clearly shows that observation, or consciousness, collapses the wave function.
The von Neumann–Wigner interpretation, also described as consciousness causes collapse [of the wave function], is an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which consciousness is postulated to be necessary for the completion of the process of quantum measurement.
This fact has clearly been demonstrated, over and over again, in the laboratory. Also quantum entanglement has been proven in the lab. That is what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance”. And he did not believe it. But it has since been proven by physical experiment. If Einstein had lived to view those experiments, he would have believed it too. So yes, I believe it.
Dunno, guess I’m not quite pure enough…
https://xkcd.com/435/
After a few days of cool weather, the heat from Europe has wandered over Greenland and parts of the Arctic pushing ice melt.
A long read worth the time needed for it.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/03/denialism-what-drives-people-to-reject-the-truth
Try to remember that calling people names, calling them ignorant, racist, stupid, etc, even though they ARE, doesn’t win anybody over to the righteous side of the environmental debate. Doing so simply reinforces them in their ignorance and determination to vote for Trump and company.
You can’t get thru to many or maybe even most of the people we often make fun of, but you CAN get thru to ENOUGH of them, if you work at it, to add two, three, or even half a dozen votes to your side, on election day.
Two or three voters out of each hundred is enough, on the national scale, to flip control of our government from one party to the other, if these changed votes are cast in the right precincts.