Winter’s cold just isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Will unusually cold springs such as this year’s become increasingly common in the future?
A significant area has been more than 15 °F below normal so far in April.
Yep another irrelevant Blue Blob post brought to you by Frisky Bob and meanwhile this past February, in the dead of the Arctic winter, temperatures were 45° above average. Ever hear of the Jet Stream? Well it is being disrupted by climate change.
BTW, GF, posted this in the last thread, what part of her talk do you not understand?!
The era of global cooling began mid-December 2017, as I have long forecasted and the winter season throughout the northern hemisphere has seen the weather of this new climate regime take hold – stretching from North America to Eurasia.
(snip)
I have long forecasted that by December 2017 the world would see the start of the new climate era of global cooling, a mini ice age, which will rival the previous Maunder Minimum.
Despite calls that I was wrong and that humanity is the cause of global warming, with ever rising temperatures, I continued to forecast and predict that global cooling would begin officially in mid-December 2017, just ahead of the Sun’s Grand Minimum.
The cause of climate changes is the Sun, which governs the Earth’s climate and its weather. Modulated by the planets of our solar system, all climate change comes from astrophysical causes and the effects are geophysical, resulting in various forms of ‘weather’ here, on Earth.
There’s much much more research to read at the link provided.
There’s much much more research to read at the link provided.
ROFL!! Are you fucking kidding us?! Theodore White is an astrologer!
GLOBAL ASTROLOGY
globalastrologyblog.blogspot.com/ ‘More Clouds, Less Sunlight, Torrential Rains, Great Floods, Heavy Snowfall & Colder Temperatures Europe, Russia, Asia, North & South America Greatly Impacted. Global Forecast by. Theodore White, astromet.Sci. If you are reading this then you will come to understand that the world is on the cusp of an historic change.
The only thing I’ve come to understand is that inmates are now running the asylum!
Phrenology was ahead of it’s time. 🙂
A head of its time.
Ha!
Anyone who believes in phrenology should have their head examined.
Away in a madhouse, confined to my bed,
From visions and nightmares that filled me with dread.
The doctor has sweetly inserted a probe
To sever completely my prefrontal lobe.
Electroshock therapy, mind-numbing pills:
They change my behavior to cure all my ills.
I love the asylum, my own padded cell.
I’ll stay here forever, for outside it’s hell.
Good Evening Mr. Magyar,
I shall admit, I am somewhat surprised to see Theodore White’s name appear on this discussion board. At the same time, I am quite familiar with his work, having taking a keen interest to his intensive climatology research a number of YEARS ago.
You may say whatever you wish in regard to the astrological underpinnings of said research, but I have found that many of Mr. White’s long-term forecasts (those which cover no more than perhaps one or two single seasons) have FREQUENTLY displayed a much higher degree of accuracy than any of the long-term forecasts shaped by those educated in what you likely consider the mainstream or contemporary sciences.
With the preceding in mind, the primary issue arises of how many said students of modern atmospheric sciences have been educated in the ways in which celestial bodies other than earth never-the-less interact with one another to produce the weather we experience on earth? The answer is likely few-to-none, yet earth simply does NOT exist in a vacuum. What happens elsewhere in space can AND does impact the lower atmosphere of our own planet, which (naturally) impacts both our short- and long-term weather observations.
Be well,
Walt
With the preceding in mind, the primary issue arises of how many said students of modern atmospheric sciences have been educated in the ways in which celestial bodies other than earth never-the-less interact with one another to produce the weather we experience on earth? The answer is likely few-to-none, yet earth simply does NOT exist in a vacuum.
Yes, to be fair, I can think of two celestial bodies that do have some impact on the earth’s weather, namely the sun and the moon. The moon’s gravitational pull does have some effect on both the atmosphere and the tides. The planets, not so much.
“The planets, not so much.”
True, not on a weekly or even generational basis, but on a century or longer basis, yes the planets have dramatic effects on the weather. A mile of ice or not on the ancestral villages and 5C cooler/hotter over the whole planet is probably noticeable even to climate deniers and Republicans. Well, on second thought, maybe not. But it’s all natural, so no problem.
BTW, I have ducks in my trees again. Is that some kind of portent? 🙂
Yesterday I actually saw a duck sitting on a picket fence. It looked a tad uncomfortable to say the least.
I’m glad you have worked out the cycles of volcanic eruption and continental drift.
Nuttin’ ta do wit dat Hickory.
“earth simply does NOT exist in a vacuum.”
Wait, what?
Things are looking worse every day in Venezuela.
It may not be much longer until an outright civil war erupts. I have a hard time understanding why it hasn’t happened already, but it’s definitely smoldering along, and is apt to erupt into roaring flames anytime.
Go to Google News and just type in Venezuela and hit enter.
That was going to happen two years ago!
But we shall see——-
In the meantime, Comey’s book is out.
Unfortunately for me, the nearest local book store hasn’t got it, and won’t get it, for at least a week or two. Guess I’ll have to buy it online, lol.
“A capacity factor of 60+ percent isn’t quite “baseload,” but it sure looks a lot less variable. So turbines like the Haliade-X would be more valuable even if the price of wind electricity stayed the same.
But of course it won’t stay the same; it has dropped 65 percent since 2009. A recent NREL report projected that innovations in wind power technology (of which bigger turbines is one of many) could drive it down another 50 percent by 2030. (Researchers at the University of Virginia are working on a design for an offshore turbine that will tower, no lie, 1,640 feet, higher than the empire state building.)
Say new US wind turbines reach an average hub height of 460 feet by 2025, roughly in line with current projections. According to NREL data, such turbines could hit capacity factors of 60+ percent across more than 750,000 square miles of US territory, and 50+ percent across 1.16 million square miles. ”
If we are willing to pay the price of building the necessary long distance transmission lines, we have the necessary wind and solar resources to actually do it… to go to one hundred percent renewable electricity…… given time enough.
But we’re going to need a hell of a lot of storage which hopefully will be dropping in cost, just as the costs of wind and solar power are dropping.
Hi OFM,
As long as there is sufficient interconnection of the US grid and widely dispersed wind and solar resources, overbuilding total wind and solar capacity so that electricity generated over an average year is 3 times average load would provide about 97% of average load hours from wind and solar, the balance could be provided by hydro, batteries, fuel cells, wind gas, and vehicle to grid along with demand power pricing that shows current power prices on a monitor at home or business and allows consumers and businesses to adjust their consumption based on current prices in real time.
Note that storage is relatively expensive so this would be the least cost option, overbuilding capacity is cheapest based on this 2013 study.
Hi Dennis,
Overbuilding three times is going to be expensive in and of itself.
My personal opinion is that we are collectively apt to be a lot better off maintaining enough fossil fueled and maybe nuclear capacity to get by with less overbuilding, and not getting all religious about doing away with the last ten or twenty percent of fossil fuel emissions due to generating electricity.
It seems very likely to me this would be far less expensive,in the short to medium term, meaning we could put the savings from doing less overbuilding of wind and solar capacity into conservation and efficiency programs, or any environmentally sound other program that makes a big bang per dollar spent.
I’m all for keeping the pedal to the metal on both wind and solar power, but we shouldn’t forget that if we take say thirty years to build out enough renewable capacity to give up fossil fuel electricity, as opposed to say twenty years………….
That extra ten years means ten more years to adapt to doing more with less, in every respect, from running factories to running household appliances. Ten more years to develop really cheap and durable batteries, ten more years to build more efficient electric cars, etc.
Of course in the very long run, we will be more or less compelled to give up fossil fuels due to depletion if for no other reason.
But lets not forget the time value of money!
For now, and for some time to come, maybe for another decade or two, we can do about as well, or better, spending our money on improving energy efficiency and conservation as we can by generating more renewable electricity.
We’re going to overbuild. At least in the US.
This is because this is not a centrally planned economy. A centrally planned economy might try to build an optimal plan. We have nothing even approximating central planning. We have the “wild west” of the free market, with booms and busts.
Solar and wind are in booms. Therefore they will overbuild, before a bust.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
We could replace all fossil fuels from 2040 to 2050, if non fossil fuel energy continues to grow at the rates of the past 10 years. It won’t happen overnight, but fossil fuels will become expensive as they peak and the cost of alternatives will fall. I am fine with using nuclear for backup, but it will be cheaper in the future to over build wind and solar and use times of excess power output to produce synthetic fuel which can be used in thermal power plants for backup.
Climate change is a concern and we should move away from fossil fuel as quickly as is reasonable.
Hi Dennis,
This study doesn’t say that 3x overbuilding is necessary, or the optimal least-cost solution possible. It says that 3x overbuilding can do the job, that’s all. Sufficient but not necessary.
The study had limited computing resources, so they didn’t try all the possible combinations – in particular, they tested batteries for all storage needs, and they tested wind-gas for all storage needs, but they didn’t test a combination of batteries for daily storage, and wind-gas for seasonal storage: that’s a much cheaper option, and it would allow much less overbuilding.
Does that make sense?
Nick,
It showed the least cost solution for the options they considered. To cover 99% of load hours without fossil fuels 3X was the best solution, but you are correct that wind gas was not considered, possibly that would be cheaper than overbuilding, one would have to run the study to find out. It’s possible that production of wind gas and running peaker plants might not be the least cost solution as the cost of new wind and solar power plants falls over time. A scenario with 90% coverage of load hours requires about 2 times average load hours output from wind, solar and backup (no wind gas included as backup).
Another possibility not considered in the study is hydro and pumped hydro as backup. Demand power pricing was also not considered.
So I agree, 3 times overbuild is likely a worst case scenario, probably 2 to 2.5 times (wind and solar output) average load would be adequate.
Greening of Antarctica—Professor Jane Francis
Professor Jane Francis describes how fossil plants in the Arctic and Antarctic provide clues to the planet’s climate over geological time. Over 50 million years ago both poles were covered by luxuriant vegetation, which gradually declined and disappeared as ice sheets advanced. Today, both regions are again showing dramatic warming, and if this continues unchecked in the coming centuries, parts of Antarctica may become green again.
“Per recent research, that would be 16-33% of the energy storage needed to allow for 80% solar+wind running the whole of the United States. This assumes you have a working semi-decentralized grid that does not exist. Power companies may NEVER allow such bidirectional power and revenue flow. Not going to happen in the SouthEast USA Anytime soon. Do not bet your life on the Grid! http://www.thestate.com/latest-news/article208435464.html
Informative graphs of Module and Inverter Marker Share. Market Leader Solar Edge gear has ZERO resiliency. There is no simple constant voltage output mode. Worthless without Strong central Grid or a fragile/propriety Korean battery that is not really a battery. How many missiles are aimed at S Korea?
Energy systems must be load and Battery Agnostic! It’s up to Solar City if Tesla Powerwalls function without internet. Failure to plan is planning to FAIL. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/04/11/the-customer-has-spoken-74-want-energy-storage/
(Probably would of been a bad name for incarceration? )
I just could not resist this title. However, it turned out to be quite an exceptional seminar exposing some of the details of how evolutionary paleontology works and doesn’t work.
The Giant Horned Crocodiles That Ate Our Ancestors The Department of Geoscience is a unit of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Brochu specializes in vertebrate paleontology and phylogenetics, which are evolutionary relationships between organisms. His research combines the study of modern animals and the fossil record to demonstrate how evolutionary relationships can be determined through time. He is an expert in crocodiles and travels the world to research specimens in museum collections. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTqOef6H5MM
Just be careful next time you go near the water in a warm region.
Just be careful next time you go near the water in a warm region.
I’d be more worried about driving on any highway… 😉
But I’ll bite and watch presentation!
It’s not as snappy as Jack Horner’s presentation but something one can get his teeth into.
On the more humorous side, here is how to make dinosaur names go extinct and cause a major problem at museums. Hiding in plain sight.
“That was ‘MarbleZeppelin’s last posting ever. Then only 2 months later ‘GoneFishing’ showed up to make his first post. Clearly as we see here you ‘GoneFishing’ write multiple messages a day also for hours at a time and have the same hobbies and interests.~ Kelsivictor
Random two-day sample from the last thread for GoneFishing:
04/11/2018 at 8:16 am, 04/11/2018 at 8:29 am,
04/11/2018 at 8:39 am, 04/11/2018 at 11:08 am,
04/11/2018 at 11:17 am, 04/11/2018 at 11:22 am,
04/11/2018 at 12:08 pm, 04/11/2018 at 12:14 pm,
04/11/2018 at 12:39 pm, 04/11/2018 at 12:58 pm,
04/11/2018 at 1:30 pm, 04/11/2018 at 4:49 pm,
04/11/2018 at 5:06 pm, 04/11/2018 at 5:36 pm,
04/11/2018 at 6:58 pm, 04/11/2018 at 8:17 pm,
04/11/2018 at 8:35 pm
------
04/12/2018 at 7:42 am, 04/12/2018 at 8:13 am,
04/12/2018 at 8:58 am, 04/12/2018 at 11:03 am,
04/12/2018 at 11:05 am, 04/12/2018 at 11:56 am,
04/12/2018 at 12:00 pm, 04/12/2018 at 1:05 pm,
04/12/2018 at 3:07 pm, 04/12/2018 at 3:56 pm,
04/12/2018 at 4:12 pm, 04/12/2018 at 3:58 pm,
04/12/2018 at 4:15 pm, 04/12/2018 at 4:29 pm,
04/12/2018 at 5:08 pm, 04/12/2018 at 7:27 pm,
04/12/2018 at 7:34 pm
Yikes!
Maybe it’s nothing, and/or does not reflect other threads/days/people, but this sample appears as essentially entire days spent at one site, never mind online on a computer.
So why or how is this relevant, and on a site like this? Well we’ll just let you think about it.
“I know there are some people who literally live their entire lives on Long Island.” ~ Kelsivictor
“Fragmented communities
Staring at their screens in silence…”
Maybe POB should have a chat room or chat box. There seems to be enough people around during the day looking for conversation.
The Gish Galloping Self-Parroting Gonefishing Club
And/Or maybe change the title of this blog?
What with the galloping number of their posts spread throughout a day, their apparent difficulty with ‘the outside/other‘ (what might contrast with or threaten their own notions), they seem to function quite well as their own parrot, gish gallop and club, their ‘projections‘, which, unsurprisingly, don’t appear to definitionally pass muster, and in any case are left unqualified, unsurprisingly again.
“Yes, we know all about…
…but WTF is anyone really doing about it?
…But WTF is anyone really doing about it?
…WTF is anyone doing about it? Nothing…
Mostly they don’t give a shit…
But what can one do?
…I can dream though, but not too much…” ~ GoneFishing
A couple recent studies are “circulating” through the science world. Saw a post in weather underground and many major publications are going with similar headlines “slowest in 1,500 years” etc.
this idea is of course not new, but until recently there haven’t been direct measurements of current flow rates (they’ve got a decade of data) and sea surface temps have gotten very precise in recent decades so they could fold that in as well to extrapolate out farther.
the other study is using grain size on the bottom of the ocean? rock polishers around the world raise their voice in a collective “hooray”.
Someone posted this really fantastic talk over at realclimate.org
https://client.cntv.at/egu2018/ml1
European Geosciences Union
General Assembly 2018
Vienna | Austria | 8–13 April 2018 | Webstreams
EGU.eu
Alexander von Humbold Medal Lecture by Filippo Giorgi
Granted it is just one more presentation in an ever growwing torrent of scientific findings and empirical data from multiple fields of inquiriy. However if one is willing to invest even a modest amount of effort in looking at the available science, the elephant examined by all those individually blind wise men, becomes ever clearer and harder to deny.
Even if we should choose to read only a thousand, scientific papers from say a 100 different fields and their subfields following the guidelines set forth in Nature: https://www.nature.com/nclimate/about/content
So about 3000 words per paper. If one compares that to reading a book at 250-300 words per page. A 55,000 word book should be about 200 manuscript pages. That comes out to roughly one book’s worth of relevant science per week. Not that much really. One can randomly pick a paper from just about any scientific field that is somehow related to climate change.
If one should take that url and enter it into an AI science reaserch site such as IRIS.ai
It alone will generate 381 related papers and group them by concept.
Sure, not all of them will be useful. However no one can legitimately deny the implications and consequences of climate change without making at least an effort to cast a wide net in the very vast available scientific literature.
Now if there are people out there who seriously believe that there can be some kind of global conspiracy among scientists across multiple fields of science, there is not much point in having a conversation with them.
Cheers!
Dennis: How close are you to receiving your Tesla Model 3?
Musk sure is something else, isn’t he?
My daughter picked one up at the headquarters about 3 weeks ago.
Wow. How does she like it so far?
Here’s JACK RICKARD’s report on taking delivery of his first of two Tesla Model 3s.
There are two embedded videos. In the first 30 or so minutes of the first video he tells the good, the bad and the ugly. Then in the second video he performs what he calls a rectal exam of the model 3. He has since received a wrecked model 3 which he will be dismantling for deeper insights.
One line seemed to stand out:
” The moment of the electric car is finally here. It’s been a ten year ride here at EVTV…It is my belief that we are quickly blazing through a firm early adopter advance, and the curve is about to turn vertical drawing in the super consumer and prosumer elements.”
And that, from a Trump supporting, climate change denialist. 😉
As far as EVs and renewables are concerned, he is right on the money, along with the likes of Tony Seba.
IMHO, whatever his politics, he embodies the true independent American entrepreneurial spirit of the backyard inventor.
From almost nothing fresh about the Model 3 a couple of weeks ago, now you get a long string of new hits when you google it.
It seems that production is now well over two thousand cars per week, indicating that a lot of problems involving suppliers and the assembly plant must have been solved, and leaving more men and talent available to work on the remaining problems.
My guess is that Tesla WILL hit five thousand cars per week within the near future, maybe even within the next six to eight months.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes a year. Nobody else in the car biz has ever expanded production from SCRATCH any faster, to my recollection.
Bringing out a new model when you’re already a big manufacturer is one thing. Adding a hundred thousand units to a million is only a ten percent ramp. You have the people, equipment, and parts suppliers in place, for the most part.
Tesla is in a different game altogether, a little company going for production increases in whole number increments.
Maybe I will live long enough, and still be driving, when today’s new electric cars are ratted out and cheap. I have never spent any significant amount of money on things that depreciate as fast as a new car, and never will.
I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night for feeling guilty about such foolishness, considering I could get three times the satisfaction out of the money by building a lake, or buying another little piece of land to maintain as a miniature wildlife preserve, or donate it to a charity or environmental organization.
Considering the large amount of new EV’s coming out worldwide from many companies, I would not be surprised to see BEV production hit 10 million per year globally in five years to 7 years.
The world’s largest car market just announced an imminent end to gas and diesel cars
“The world’s largest car market just announced an imminent end to gas and diesel cars” ~ GoneFishing
But not to cars…
I’ve also read that this kind of imminence is not necessarily imminent, what with deadline extensions and so forth.
And it’s not like where the remaining FF dregs are are necessarily peaceful either.
It might help to take a look at, or at least reflect on, the effects of car culture in general on the planet before espousing any of it, whether explicitly or implicitly.
Sometimes an authoritarian government with lots of technically literate people at or near the top anticipates and deals with problems more effectively than democratic or other authoritarian governments.
France is a democratic country, but French technocrats have enormous power, and are responsible for the fact that France has an electrically driven rail system, and more nuclear power , proportionately, than any other country…… the decision to go with these programs being based in very large part on French national security.
The Chinese so far as I know have a LOT of engineers and scientists in positions where they are capable of either setting policy, or at least exerting great influence on policy…… and they know that China will never have enough oil, or gas, or even coal, to support the expectations of the Chinese people for a better future……..
And they’re doing things proactively in a way that we Yankees aren’t, in terms of securing their economic future.
The only other country, in my opinion, that has such a realistic picture of what the future will be like, in respect to depleting and extremely expensive fossil fuels, over the coming generations, is Germany……….. as the result of the German people being well educated, and well aware of their own national history, and the lack of fossil fuel reserves of their own.
No matter how much they spend on renewable energy, electrified transportation, insulation, mass transit, etc, etc….. they see that spending it now is going to be infinitely more economical than paying the price, in money and security, later on, of still being dependent on imported fossil fuels.
We Yankees are of course burning thru our own remaining endowment of one time gifts of nature as if we don’t believe in tomorrow.
Maybe we’ll luck out and renewable energy will get to be so cheap and plentiful we really won’t need coal, oil, and gas, except maybe as industrial feedstocks.
But the proper conservative course of action would be to do all we can to conserve our ff endowment, stretching it out and making it last as long as possible………. because there are no GUARANTEES that renewable energy will ever be that cheap and plentiful.
OK, so BEV production — passenger cars only, not counting buses and trucks — was 1.2 million (globally) in 2017, up 57% from 2016, according to InsideEVs, who are usually fairly reliable.
The 50% annual growth is consistent (ranges from 40% to 60%). So 10 million per year will probably happen in 5 to 7 years, yes. Actually I’d expect 20 million per year in 7 years.
This might be an underestimate if the growth rate is accelerating (it seems to be).
For financial reasons, Tesla really really wants to hit 5000/week (or at least 4000/week) by October 1. I think this is actually pretty likely. Musk claims he sees “the path out of hell” clearly at this point; if the bottlenecks are late in the production line, they can always throw duplication at it (much harder if they’re earlier in the line).
The thing is that electric cars are fundamentally a better technology than combustion engine cars, IF you have a good battery.
The whole concept stands and falls with the battery. And now that batteries are getting really good, it looks like EVs are inevitable.
They are loving it. No long trips yet. They believe that it will be big enough for them with 1-2 kids. but I doubt that. Time will tell.
Shallow sand,
As far as I can tell, not close. Currently the non-owners (owners get to jump the line) with reservations on April 1, 2016 are getting invitations to configure their Model 3, with delivery about a month later (3 to 6 weeks). My “reservation” was more than a year later and last check the Tesla website says late 2018 for my expected delivery, typically things run behind schedule at Tesla so early 2019 (Jan or Feb) is probably more realistic.
Short answer, 9 to 12 months.
LOL! Could someone please remind me as to which planet we have actually been living on these past few days?!
What percentage of Greenland is green already during high summer, anybody know?
20.8346268%. Actually, I’ve no idea, that’s just a guess. You may recognize the 0.83…. as Gauss’s constant. Perhaps, like me, you were expected to know such numbers to nine, or so, decimal places. Well, it comes in handy when creating passwords. 🙂
Hi gang,
I am now living in Mexico, in a little town called Ajijic, pronounced Ah-hie-hic, just south of Guadalajara. Remember J is pronounced as H in Spanish. I am down here for at least one year. Well, it could be less or it could be more. But I am here to write a book. The book is not about Peak Oil or even world energy in general. It is about the world as it is. It is also about the debate between science and religion. And in the last few decades, a new entry has entered upon the scene. There is science, there is religion, and then there is the new atheism. Believe it or not, all three are in conflict with each other. That is true even though the new atheism seems to be totally unaware that most scientists are in disagreement with them.
And I am in disagreement with all three of them.
And that is what my book, my short book, will be all about.
Anyway, I will be posting an email to friends and family, about once a month, perhaps a little more often.
I will also be reporting on life in Ajijic, just in the off chance that anyone is interested. The email will be sent BCC, blind carbon copy. Your address will be the only one appearing in the address bar. And if you send a “reply all” I will be the only one receiving your reply… sorry about that.
So, if you are interested in reading my once a month or so email from Ajijic, then post me at: DarwinianOne@gmail.com
Thank you,
Ron Patterson
Bienvenido a Mexico y Jalisco.
NAOM
I have no idea what the fuck you just posted. I do not speak a word of Spanish. Well, I do know Si. Other than that I am lost.
Bienvenido = welcome
You going to need to learn, even in that area. I hope it goes well for you.
NAOM
Hot tip: No means no. Now I’ve doubled your vocabulary.
But careful, sometimes it means not.
Have fun down there.
Good luck Ron—
I spent most of last year in Puerto Vallarta.
Thanks for the update, Ron and best with your new location and book.
The Tesla Model 3 is not an electric car for the masses. I’m not saying it’s a bad car, just that it’s not really an affordable electric car.
The Model S is like super luxury electric, the Model 3 is luxury electric. There are a handful of electric cars for ordinary people (Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt, etc.) but even they require some subsidy to really believe they are affordable.
To this very day, there are no electric cars to compare with the Corolla, Camry, much less standard issue SUVs, pickup trucks, etc.
Would I personally buy and drive an electric car? Only as a secondary vehicle. There is nothing…NOTHING to compare with having your gasoline car. It is truly the one invention which has led to mobile freedom for the average person.
“Would I personally buy and drive an electric carautomobile? Only as a secondary vehicle. There is nothing…NOTHING to compare with having your gasoline carhorse and buggy. It is truly the one invention which has led to mobile freedom for the average person.”
See what I did there?
Give it another five years or so and there will probably be EVs with ranges of over 200 miles selling brand new for less than the price of a Toyota Yaris/Honda Fit/ Nissan Sentra. Tesla has already conquered the “super luxury” segment, is beginning to cause disarray in the “luxury” segment, is set to ruffle quite a few feathers in the class 8 freight truck market come late 2019 and is set to decimate the “exotic performance” segment when they start delivering the 2020 Roadster. There is one domino left to fall. The Ford F-150/Chevy Silverado/SUV segment. I am looking forward to what Tesla has up their sleeves in that department. We should see some sort of fancy reveal before the end of this year.
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
― Henry Ford
And yes, I do know that there is some doubt as to whether or not Henry Ford actually said those exact words but the point still stands! 😉
I wonder how much a company such as GM or Ford could knock off the price of a basic electric car if they were willing to build one that’s bare bones, JUST a car, or pickup truck, without any unnecessary money being spent on such features as air conditioning, clear coat paint, etc.
Maybe in a few more years, back yard gearheads will be able to buy a complete kit, competitively priced, that will convert a typical car or pickup truck to an electric vehicle.
All that’s really needed in the case of an ordinary compact pickup truck is a new rear axles assembly with the motor built into it, and a modular battery that can be arranged to fit under the hood and floor board where the engine, fuel tank, transmission are normally located, plus a wiring harness.
An older pickup truck converted this way can be expected to last more or less indefinitely so long as it doesn’t RUST away. Everything else is easily repairable.
The battery is the big deal. The motor / axle assembly can be completely standardized. You can swap the rear axle assembly from one make to another easily, it’s done every day.
There are tens of millions of older pickup trucks around that would be ideally suited to such projects. You can buy one with a worn out engine and transmission, but otherwise in good condition for as little as a thousand dollars, sometimes even less.
Because batteries have less energy per kilogram than gasoline, electric car makers are investing a lot in aluminum bodies.
Aa a side benefit, aluminum doesn’t really rust the way steel does. So electric cars will have longer lives than combustion engine cars, even ignoring the fact that they are much simpler.
It will take another 5-10 years until the numbers really grow, in my opinion.
The reason? Batteries.
The current Lithium-Ion design with lots of cobalt needed doesn’t scale to real mass production. First anything not-abundant has to be eliminated from battery design before they can get really cheap.
The first big generation of solid state batteries is expected to hit the street in 2025 – then a block for a cheap 200 mile car can created with about 150 KG weight.
The next generation, perhapt 2030 can then work with aluminiun / natrium / magnesium.
That’s the moment things can get really cheap, together with big stationary batteries. Before this, I don’t expect much impact on oil usage ( and CO2 production ).
But in the moment we’ll run against the wall of cobalt supply.
Work is ongoing, but at the very early stages, to make solid state Lithium batteries that do not have the wet electrolyte. I don’t know if that eliminates or reduces Cobalt (anyone?) plus the initial work has been done on existing battery production equipment which means an easier path to production. Should yield a doubling in capacity with higher safety bringing down costs.
NAOM
EDIT PS MIT is doing a lot of work on high temperature batteries that would work for stationary storage. I can see these taking over the role of grid reserve since they can be scaled up.
MIT? Probably Donald Sadoway and Ambri. Years ago he gave a great TED talk. Unlike Musk, he has failed to deliver the goods.
2nd link is Sadoway the 3rd Qichao Hu. Not really enough time to deliver goods on either but Hu’s start seems promising. It needs a Musk to pick this up and run with it. I am expecting the battery field to change a great deal in 5-10 years time, there is a lot of new work coming through.
NAOM
“To this very day, there are no electric cars to compare with the Corolla, Camry, much less standard issue SUVs, pickup trucks, etc”
Actually when one takes fuel cost and maintenance over the life of the car, the electrics are comparable to the Camry right now and costs are falling while range is getting greater.
Looks like five years from now the ICE will be more expensive all around, so use up the one you have.
dolph- cars like the tesla 3, chevy bolt and nissan leaf will like have a 10 yr ‘cost to own/operate’ much lower than comparable ICE versions. You can take that to the bank.
Is rarity of previously abundant species more important than extinction?
Rarity in mass extinctions and the future of ecosystems
The fossil record provides striking case studies of biodiversity loss and global ecosystem upheaval. Because of this, many studies have sought to assess the magnitude of the current biodiversity crisis relative to past crises—a task greatly complicated by the need to extrapolate extinction rates. Here we challenge this approach by showing that the rarity of previously abundant taxa may be more important than extinction in the cascade of events leading to global changes in the biosphere. Mass rarity may provide the most robust measure of our current biodiversity crisis relative to those past, and new insights into the dynamics of mass extinction.
It has become commonplace to refer to the modern biodiversity crisis
as the ‘sixth mass extinction’1,2. With three short words, we place the
biotic and environmental disturbance created by mankind on par
with the greatest biodiversity crises of the past half billion years. This is a
comparison that demands close attention as the ‘Big Five’ mass extinctions
include truly catastrophic events3,4, the biggest of which resulted in the
inferred extinction of > 75% of species alive at the time1,4. In addition,
mass extinctions have shaped the evolutionary history of the planet5–7.
Organisms that were ecologically dominant before a mass extinction frequently
do not survive, and rarely enjoy the same levels of dominance in
the aftermath6,8. However, there are fundamental differences between the
types of data upon which past mass extinctions have been identified, and
those upon which the current biodiversity crisis is being assessed. That
is, abundant marine fossil genera on multi-million year timescales for the
former9,10, and (often rare) terrestrial species on decadal to centennial
timescales for the latter1. So the question is critical: are we currently in
the midst of the ‘sixth’ mass extinction, and can we develop an appropriate
metric for the comparison of ancient and modern biotic crises?
The Big Five mass extinctions were profoundly disruptive events with
effects extending far beyond the loss of taxonomic diversity11–15. In addition
to extinction, all major mass extinctions are also characterized by
prolonged intervals of ecological change12,1
…the ‘Big Five’ mass extinctions include truly catastrophic events 3,4, the biggest of which resulted in the inferred extinction of > 75% of species alive at the time…
The end-Permian mass extinction is widely regarded as the largest mass extinction in the past 542 million years with loss of about 95% of marine species and 75% of terrestrial species.
Granted I may have a bit of a personal bias with regards marine ecosystems but I think that statistic is rather significant. Just MHO!
You need to brush up on your math again Fred. The symbol > means greater than, which if you think about it, 95% is included within range set of >75%.
Thanks for the remedial math symbol lesson and I’m sure I probably need to brush up on a lot more than just that. However, while >75% most certainly includes the 95% metric, I just wanted to underscore the fact that the marine environment seems to have suffered greater impacts than land based ecosystems.
In any case, I did preface my comment with it being but a minor quibble.
Even a 75% +, loss of all living species is rather consequential. Especially given the fact that we humans are included in the subset of the set of all living terrestrial species. So if our actions happen to initiate a similar event, our odds of surviving don’t look so great, eh? Then again, I may also have to brush up on my statistics and knowledge of set theory…
Population reductions are eco changing. The coy-wolf is a great example. I just saw one the other day and hear them singing at night at times.
They have moved into the open predator niche in the east and are thriving despite hunting pressure.
The other example is the crow, a highly intelligent and adaptive bird that even with large hunting pressure adapted well to “civilization” and are thriving.
As other species reduce and die off, some species increase their range and numbers or change and adapt quickly to the new conditions.
Either way, it’s a different world with different species numbers, types and distributions.
Meanwhile, the thrust and balance of nature and human nature continues even in the most laid back of places. “why are we making towers where the leopards are? The leopards will visit Mumbai again and again because this is where they live,” he says. “It is really their home.”
I’m a long time lurker on this great site, would love to hear your thoughts re Tony Seba’s commentary contained in this link, the gist of which I’ve copied and pasted below from a blurb about it.
Exponentially improving technologies such as solar, electric vehicles, and autonomous (self-driving) cars will disrupt and sweep away the energy and transportation industries as we know it. The same Silicon Valley ecosystem that created bit-based technologies that have disrupted atom-based industries is now creating bit- and electron-based technologies that will disrupt atom-based energy industries.
Clean Disruption projections (based on technology cost curves, business model innovation as well as product innovation) show that by 2030:
– All new energy will be provided by solar or wind.
– All new mass-market vehicles will be electric.
– All of these vehicles will be autonomous (self-driving) or semi-autonomous.
– The car market will shrink by 80%.
– Gasoline will be obsolete. Nuclear is already obsolete. Natural Gas and Coal will be obsolete.
– Up to 80% of highways will not be needed.
– Up to 80% of parking spaces will not be needed.
– The concept of individual car ownership will be obsolete.
– The Car Insurance industry will be disrupted. The taxi industry will be obsolete.
Well, they might need the left over energy to power air conditioners:
NEW CLIMATE CHANGE WARNING PREDICTS DEADLY HEAT BY 2030
“As the climate continues to change, the risks to human health will grow, exacerbating existing health threats and creating new public health challenges, and impacting more people in more places,” a White House overview of the report reads. “From children to the elderly, every American is vulnerable to the health impacts associated with climate change, now and in the future.”
Meanwhile,
100TH MERIDIAN: EAST-WEST DIVIDE BETWEEN MOIST AND ARID PARTS OF U.S. MAY BE SHIFTING
“Nearly a century and a half after explorer John Wesley Powell zeroed in on the 100th meridian west as the dividing line between the humid east and arid west of the United States, researchers say he was right — but that climate change is now moving the line eastward, into the traditionally fertile Midwest. The effects on U.S. farming and other pursuits could be huge.”
Yes, it will be tough on farming near the boundary as the rains decrease and the aquifers dry up. However, think how bad it will be as the West dries out even further.
Yeah, it’s time to give golf courses first dibs on water, maybe add an amendment to your constitution?
“Losing an average of three feet per year, the groundwater level around Willcox has dropped as much as 143 feet over the past 20 years. State hydrologists say farmers may eventually face tough decisions: spend the money to drill deeper or scale back production?”
No problem, we are already drilling tunnels under Canada and tapping your water for fracking and will soon be draining the Great Lakes to continue farming in the deserts. While everyone was busy trying to stop the oil pipelines, no one bothered with the new water pipelines. 🙂
We were going to invade but our current guy in charge doesn’t like foreigners plus you go back home usually. 🙂
Where are these tunnels tapping Canadian water for fracing?
Great Lakes Compact prohibits this 🙂
Way ahead of you here in NY 🙂
That is funny, you really think a Compact will stop anyone when our major cities and croplands are drying up? Not for long is my thought. Let’s hope they use pipes because canals and rivers lose a tremendous amount to evaporation and leakage.
But as need for fresh water potentially expands into even more of a crisis in the Western U.S. later this century, laws and policies protecting the Great Lakes could be attacked, overturned in a “national intervention,” Famiglietti said.
“And I think that for these reasons, that we do have water in some places — the northern half of the country has a lot more water than the southern half — and so as the population grows, and as climate continues to change, we probably will have to move water from where it is to where it is not, and that will require some rethinking of some of these policies and laws,” he said.
Keep your stick on the ice, we’re all in this together.
Most irrigation water in the West is wasted. A large part of the reason is an arcane assortment of legal land rights, that are no more sacred than the Great Lakes Compact.
If I were a Michigan or Illinois politician, my first argument would be that the west should clean up it’s act, both legal and practical, before it tries to take someone else’s water.
Hi Alimbiquated,
Yes, aluminum , and sooner than you might think, carbon fiber and other exotic materials are going to be used in ever increasing quantity in new cars and trucks, because light weight means greater fuel economy with a conventional engine, and longer range, using a battery, everything else equal.
But if you don’t live in the automotive rust belt, you can expect an old Ford Ranger to last at least twenty years, and possibly as much as your entire life, so far as rust is concerned, assuming it’s not rusty when you acquire it. ( Being a Chevy fan, and Chevy owner, I must admit that the people who have bumper stickers like this one DO have a point.
“THIS IS FORD COUNTRY. ON A QUIET NIGHT, YOU CAN HEAR THE CHEVY’S RUST. ”
And while I have a lot of respect for Japanese imports, in terms of their reliability and durability, I must say that they all to often rust out past further use, once past about fifteen to twenty years old, even here in western Virginia, which is only on the FRINGE of ” Rust Country”. Local roads are salted here on average maybe three or four times at the most, any one year, and we get a lot of rain too, which washes away the salt pretty quick.
Now if you live farther south, or in the dry parts of the country away from salt air and away from highway salt, you can reasonably expect just about any pickup truck body and chassis to last more or less indefinitely as far as rust is concerned.
And there aren’t any essential parts that can’t be replaced for peanuts as they wear out, compared to the price and payment on a new truck.
If I could buy a battery and electric motor/ axle assembly equivalent to the one in a new Model 3 I could do the conversion myself, with maybe a little help debugging the installation, which would mean paying a computer tech to look at it. I’m not good on computers. Now the battery would have to be modular, so I could fit it under the hood and floor boards without taking up needed space in the cargo box.
Such a conversion would likely go at least a hundred fifty miles in an old Ranger two wheel drive, and it would likely haul a thousand pound load at least a hundred plus miles.
That would be good enough to eliminate ninety five plus percent of my need for gasoline for a car or pickup truck. I wouldn’t even keep a conventional car or pickup truck if I owned such a conversion. I would just borrow or rent one for the three or four longer trips I average per year.
I’m thinking I might live long enough to buy such a conversion kit for say twelve thousand bucks, maybe even less.
Of course I would still need my big truck occasionally, but I drive it so seldom gasoline for it isn’t a serious problem…… considering it costs me fifteen to twenty bucks per hour for gasoline, but that hiring such a truck costs me about seventy to eighty bucks per hour, and I have to SCHEDULE hiring it. So I would keep the big one, which is pretty old, a seventy two, just to use it once every couple of months or so to haul gravel, logs, lumber and other bulky heavy materials.
The great thing about a REAL truck, one built for hauling real loads, is that such a truck will last just about forever, with good routine maintenance and an occasional repair. I can get any mechanical part for it within twenty four hours, even as old as it is.
I think a converted pickup would last at least two hundred thousand miles, , assuming good quality motor and battery. Say you pay two grand for the truck you convert……… this could be a very practical option for millions of light truck owners.
“NEW CLIMATE CHANGE WARNING PREDICTS DEADLY HEAT BY 2030”
That’s what the ground is for. Dig down a few feet and it’s a nice 55F, so one can live down there or run a bunch of piping to chill the partially above ground structure. Going out in the evening and at night might be an option.
Headlamps anyone?
BTW is there a website for that headline?
BTW is there a website for that headline?
Dunno but you can try and ask this guy…
.
Hell, we’ll need the spare energy to extract CO2 from the air and power carbon fixation projects, as well as to relocate all the people in flooded cities and replant all the crops which no longer grow in their old climate zones and so on.
“It is very hard to predict, especially the future.”
Niels Bohr
In any case I have a hunch that at least in my neck of the woods, The Greater Miami Florida area, the future need for roads, highways and parking spaces will very probably be out stripped by the need for anchorage, dock space and berths for various kinds of boats. Who knows, maybe they will be EBs, electric boats 😉
Meanwhile,
ANTARCTICA’S ICE RETREATING 5 TIMES FASTER THAN NORMAL, STUDY REVEALS
“According to the study, which was published this month in the academic journal Nature Geoscience, Antarctica’s frozen underbelly is melting and receding at a rate around five times faster than normal. In the centuries following an ice age, glacier grounding lines should retreat about 82 feet per year. But the ice under Antarctica is retreating at speeds peaking around 600 feet annually.”
And for the moment global sea ice has pretty much stopped growing – likely to hit new daily low records this week. Both poles are warm at the moment, the Antarctic is due to cool off but the Arctic is due for a new heat wave.
Yeah, Miami is pretty much going to be uninhabitable…. the sewer lines will all be below sea level and infiltrated by seawater. It’ll stink. I’d suggest moving somewhere with a *chance*.
In the US, we seem to have leaders that want to go back to the past. There are a lot of people that want to recede to early methods of food production and industrial production.
Here is the reality.
To even have 1 horse per 4 people in the US it would take up much more than all the farmland and rangeland in the US just to feed the horses. Meaning no food for the people or cows, sheep, chickens, etc. that we depend on. So no going back to horses. And I am not even talking freight movement, trains, airplanes, construction and farm machinery, just “replacing” people movement by cars using horses (an not as fast or as far). No “Back to the Past” is ever going to work.
If all cars in the US were EV’s, to power EV’s by PV alone would only take 0.02 percent of the land area of the US with no improvements in the EV’s or in the PV. Also, no food producing or wild land need be used in the process.
So those backward thinking dimwits that want to go back to earlier ways they seem to love so much, well it just could never work. There could never be enough horses or human labor to get the work done, move the stuff, move the people. Never. It didn’t even work very well back then, since at peak horse there were lots of trains and lots of fossil fueled machinery to do most of the work and most of the hauling.
People forget how much food is freed up by machinery and non-bio sources of energy. We would have a hard time feeding the people if they all worked hard every day (though it might reduce some of the overweight problem). And of course if things were done by hand and animal, or even simple machines, there would not even be enough food to feed the horses.
As far as Tony Seba is concerned, I think he is mostly right though he may be a few years ahead of in his timing and in the total takeover of cars as a service. I think he is warning us to embrace the change because it will happen fast and happen at large scale. I also think he is also not looking at the upcoming disruptions in aviation, which will change the need for cars, roads and avoid much of the passenger train demand.
If we keep cars we will need roads to get places, so I am not too sure about the reduction of roads in that case. If we use aircraft to their full extent, many roads can disappear.
Yes, it looks like city and dense population areas will be patrolled by robotic cars in the future, for a while. The more rural areas (the areas that provide the food, water and materials for those large populations) will handle things differently.
So to all the dimwits that think we can just go back to primitive ways or even to the “good ole days” I say shut up and stop promoting ways that can never work in the current global realities.
Plus who wants to do that except misanthropes?
I can see trying to save San Francisco or New York–
Miami? Please, give me a break———–
Houston? Now we are getting closer to reality.
Houston, we have a problem:
CITY IN A SWAMP: HOUSTON’S FLOOD PROBLEMS ARE ONLY GETTING WORSE
Houston-Harris County has experienced a run of 100-year floods—last year’s Tax Day flood was a 10,000-year event in some places, and Harvey was the largest rainstorm event on record in the continental U.S. “In terms of heavy rainfall, you take any threshold you want—6 inches in a day, 8 inches in a day, whatever—the likelihood of surpassing that threshold sometime in a given year has increased by about 30 percent over the past century,” said Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon.
Yep—–
We have a problem, in a city that promotes problems.
San Francisco and New York are steep. It’s possible to save them largely by moving back a block or two.
Miami — impossible. Porous ground. It’ll be like Venice (i.e…. floating in sewage) and then it’ll be uninhabitable.
Parts of SF and NY are steep—– (NY would lose a major part of the city).
But at this point, both worth some effort.
Miami- why make a effort?
It’s not just sea level rise. Anything less than 100 feet above sea level is in jeopardy. Coastal cities that have large rivers feeding into or around them are in double jeopardy. Inundations only have to occur at least once a decade to make an area uninhabitable. Great case for rewilding the coastlines.
•Category 1 hurricanes inundate just about all of the immediate south shore of the Island, including the north side of Great South Bay locations and both sides of the north and south forks.
•Montauk Highway (RT. 27A) is completely covered by flood waters during a Category 3 hurricane. Therefore, this road would be considered impassable during the storm.
•The highest storm surges (Category 4) would occur in the following regions: ◦Amityville Harbor – 29 feet
◦Atlantic Beach & Long Beach areas – 24 to 28 feet
◦South Oyster Bay, Middle Bay, & East Bay areas – 24 to 28 feet
◦Montauk Point is completely cut off from rest of south fork during a category 1 storm.
◦Much of the north and south forks are entirely under water during a category 3 hurricane.
◦A category 4 hurricane inundates the entire towns of: Amityville, Lindenhurst, Babylon, West Islip, East Islip, Bayshore, Gilgo Beach, Cedar Beach, Great South Beach, Fair Harbor, Cherry Grove, Cupsogue, Westhampton Beach, Watermill Beach, Wainscott Beach, Plum Island, Gardiner’s Island, Orient, Shelter Island (except for a few high points), Greenport, North Haven, Amagansett Beach, Napeague Beach, Montauk, Woodmere, Valley Stream, Linbrook, Long Beach, Atlantic Beach, Freeport, Merrick, Wantagh, Lido Beach, Jones Beach, and Tobay Beach.
“Going forward, due to sudden climate change, we will have anything but a stable and healthy ecosystem. There’s no reason to believe that the current episode of malignant growth will be any less damaging to the human population than the Toba eruption. Conversion to wind and solar power, which will require increasing and ongoing industrial activity, will at best only maintain ‘break-even’ for some proportion of currently existing technological cells for a short while, before sounding the death knell for the ecosystem. Creating solar and wind energy gathering devices does not at all address the tendency towards malignant growth and associated damages to the ecosystem.“
Escape the echo chamber First you don’t hear other views. Then you can’t trust them. Your personal information network entraps you just like a cult
“Something has gone wrong with the flow of information. It’s not just that different people are drawing subtly different conclusions from the same evidence. It seems like different intellectual communities no longer share basic foundational beliefs. Maybe nobody cares about the truth anymore, as some have started to worry. Maybe political allegiance has replaced basic reasoning skills. Maybe we’ve all become trapped in echo chambers of our own making – wrapping ourselves in an intellectually impenetrable layer of likeminded friends and web pages and social media feeds.”
First you don’t hear other views. Then you can’t trust them. Your personal information network entraps you just like a cult
Uhuh! Now go to the white board, grab a marker and write those words 1,000 times, Johnny!
Once you are done, march on down to your local community college and sign up for a course or two on critical thinking skills.
Thanks for commenting on what I just posted.
Now go and follow your own advice.
Next!
You need to read what you wrote, cult member Caelan. You seem quite impervious to information. Your primitivist doctrine is blinding you to reality.
“The lower EROI of renewables after accounting for intermittency (see below) will make the transition to renewables, if that is possible, very difficult…
Depending upon the penetration of renewables, including intermittency in the analysis greatly reduces the EROI of these technologies. Whether one corrects for the quality of energy output for these sources is best handled with sensitivity analysis.
EROI is not some flawed tool of the past, but a consistent yet evolving and improving tool becoming more and more important everyday as the depletion of our primary fuels continues and as replacement with renewables is increasingly considered. While EROI analysis is hardly precision science, mostly due to data limitations, nevertheless as I reviewed my older publications for this response I was impressed by the general consistency of our results…
…as our high quality fossil fuels are depleted and we contemplate shifting to renewable energies we will have a lower and lower net energy delivered to run the non-energy portion of society with very large consequences.
Comments
Tony H:
“…In a number of EROI analyses I have read for renewable energy sources, the authors have multiplied the electricity output by a factor to represent the quantity of fossil fuel displaced by the renewable electricity. This displaced fossil fuel energy then forms the energy output in their EROI assessment, rather than the actual electricity output. This is a clear example of deliberately misrepresenting data to support a preordained conclusion and attempting to bury this fact in the confusion of a complex mathematical analysis… Supporters of renewable energy tend to have a passionate ideological belief that the world should switch to these energy sources. They are often willing to distort information to support this preordained conclusion.”
Gail Tverberg:
“The IEA is an organization with an ‘agenda’ of promoting wind and solar. It has published this set… These may have more influence than Charlie Hall’s EROI calculations. An awfully lot of what they put together is based on a model approach–what we hope for, if everything goes according to plan…
The calculation they recommend grosses up the EROI so that it has an adjustment (presumably about 2.6) for the primary energy conversion, but there are no other adjustments for quality. This would seem to mean that they are thinking of the output as being a replacement for regular electricity, not intermittent electricity.”
“ …..They are often willing to distort information to support this preordained conclusion.”
No, no, no. EVs will save the world. It must be in the Bible somewhere, perhaps under Second Coming. Yes, 1 Corinthians 4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the EVs come. They will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God. — I think I’ve got that right.
No they aren’t in the Bible. They’re in the sacred Hindu Veda texts!
Ola will add 10,000 electric rickshaws to its India fleet over the next year
Ola announced today that it will add 10,000 electric auto-rickshaws to its fleet in India over the next 12 months. The program, called “Mission: Electric,” is part of its ambitious plan to put one …
BTW only a complete idiot thinks High End Luxury EVs such as TESLA are the future of transportation for 8 to 9 billion humans in much of the world. It is much more likely to be some form of ride sharing with vehicles such as Ola’s electric rickshaws.
Looks like I’m going to burn in hell then. ;D
(Maybe they have HV’s [hellectric vehicles] in hell.)
Doug,
Nobody claims they will save the world, just a small step in the right direction in my opinion. Better than burning fossil fuels, so with a combination of wind, solar, hydro, and EVs (maybe some batteries, wind gas, and /or fuel cells and demand pricing for electric power) a step in the right direction.
Do you have an alternative proposal?
Please stop reprinting this garbage; it’s been debunked more times than I can remember.
Nathanael; piece of advice:
Ease off on the filler.
It’s silly, useless and just augments, along with your anonymous moniker, the limits of your credibility, compared with, say, Charles Hall’s.
“EROI is not some flawed tool of the past, but a consistent yet evolving and improving tool becoming more and more important everyday as the depletion of our primary fuels continues and as replacement with renewables is increasingly considered.”
OMG, Charles Hall’s conclusions are (1) partially stupid, (2) not longer relevant and (3) based to a certain extend on crapppy papers like Weisbach et al (2012).
You should try to understand what you cite.
A typical response, if you don’t like the message then attack the messenger. Charles Hall’s opinions and comments, if they can be attacked, should be attacked on their merits, not on trying to slay the messenger that brings bad news.
I am all for renewable energy, and I hope carbon-based fossil fuels can one day be phased completely out. But I am extremely pessimistic that this can be painlessly done.
It will be done, one day, of course. But it will be done not because renewables will be found to be more economical. It will be done because we will just run out of the damned stuff.
I find the continued, very extreme optimism, of those who think it will all be very painless and very economical, just a little too hard to swallow. You guys continually blame someone else for the resistance to switching renewable energy. The world will switch to renewables when it becomes more economical to do so rather than continue to burn our precious oil and gas. And I say precious because we need it for hundreds of other things rather than transportation.
It is a tragedy what is happening. We are just burning the stuff. I know that is stupid. But that is just what humans do. They always choose the path of least resistance as well as the most economical path. It is just human nature.
I have to agree with you Ron, without a big economic advantage renewable energy would be an oddity and for remote areas until FF started to really run out fast.
Although it looks now like we will burn as much FF as possible for as long as possible, I still have some hopium for a renewable energy transistion in the next two decades.
Here is someone with extreme optimism and with the numbers showing extreme economic advantage speaking at a maritime trade fair held in Norway telling the big shippers to be ready for a world of hurt in the future as business models change rapidly and disruptions occur.
I still have some hopium for a renewable energy transition in the next two decades.
So do I fish, so do I. And there definitely will be a transition, just not likely in the next two decades. And it will be because fossil fuels will be running out. Their prices will skyrocket and renewables will then be cheaper in comparison. But it will be a very painful transition.
Ron, ten years ago renewables were not cheaper in the narrow economic sense. They are cheaper now, right now and going down. If one considers just a few of the impacts from FF burning such as health and environment the renewable energy (wind and solar) are a less than 1/100 the cost of FF.
We have a very poor and narrow way of accounting, which skews the view of and spreads the payment across the population. Right now we are paying many times the market cost of FF but it is distributed across disease, toxic environment and general long term environmental damage that is paid for by the public and by the world (all species including us).
So when someone says to me that FF are cheaper, I usually just shrug anymore and walk away. The false story is so deeply embedded it is not worth talking about.
Luckily, renewables are now cheaper in the simple market economic sense, so the penetration into the energy system grows at a high rate. Also, a growing awareness of the problems caused by burning FF and it’s eventual demise is somewhat aiding the growth of renewable energy.
Reality (as in greed, wars, politics, poor choices and major weather effects) will probably slow down the growth, so we might expect a 50% renewable energy takeover by 2040. That will be too late in many respects but much better than nothing.
Right now a PV panel costing $200 puts out over $50 worth of electric power per year. That is a payback time of 4 years. Panels may last as long as 30 to 50 years. That is over $2000 of grid power for only $200. That is a 10X advantage right now. All from 60 pounds of material.
Even when one considers the costs of installation and mounting plus inverters it’s still a 5X advantage now and in some places even better.
We all need to brighten up and use the sun. 🙂
Good luck in Mexico.
We have a very poor and narrow way of accounting, which skews the view of and spreads the payment across the population.
So when someone says to me that FF are cheaper, I usually just shrug anymore and walk away.
Yes, yes, yes, I agree completely. Fossil fuels are so much more expensive when you consider the environmental costs, and the costs of just burning the shit that we will need further down the road. Fossil fuels are just so much more expensive when you consider the big picture.
But the world of economics does not work from the big picture. It works from the economics of the moment. What does it cost right now.
If we could force the world to look at the big picture, at the true cost of burning fossil fuel then the world would work a lot different than it does right now. But that is not the case.
Capitalism works on the economics of the moment.
Fish, I do not deal with the world as it ought to be. I deal with the world as it is. Reality deals with the world as it is. You should do likewise.
Ron, I agree the human “reality” is a destructive dysfunctional narrow self-serving belief construct that many people actually believe works.
I shrug and walk away.
if you don’t like the message then attack the messenger.
Ron, you gotta read more carefully. He said “Hall’s conclusions are (1) partially stupid, (2) not longer relevant and (3) based to a certain extend on crapppy papers . ” He didn’t attack Hall personally.
And, he’s right. Mostly Hall’s conclusions are badly out of date – as in 20 years out of date. And occasionally stupid, like when he tries to include things that are clearly outside the realm of EROEI (e.g., the risk of nuclear meltdown; handling intermittency; non-energy social overhead, etc).
No, nick, you are wrong here. He did attack Hall’s conclusions, he attacked Hall himself. He said “Hall’s conclusions are (1) partially stupid, (2) not longer relevant and (3) based to a certain extend on crapppy papers like Weisbach et al (2012).”
To say Hall’s conclusions are stupid without quoting a single conclusion, or where or why a single one of them is stupid, is nothing more than saying that Hall is stupid.
Nick, get real! If I say “Nick’s conclusions are stupid” That is an attack on you, not the content of your conclusions. I am saying that what comes out of your head is stupid. That would be a direct attack on you. That is, I would be saying that you are too stupid to come up with good conclusions.
Of course, I would never say such a thing about you. Never because I think you are a very smart person and I would deeply respect your conclusions. I might not agree with them but I would respect them because they came from a very smart person.
But Nick, you need to learn when someone is attacking the man and when they are attacking his arguments. You could dissect his arguments and explain why they are wrong. Or, you could just say they are stupid, which would be a direct attack upon the man himself. An ad-hominem argument.
Okay, not that all ad-hominem arguments wrong, in fact some are spot on. For instance:
Alex Jones, who suggested the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, is being sued by parents whose children were killed in the 2012 massacre.
I don’t need to dissect Alex Jones’ argument. It is just stupid, stupid, stupid and comes from a very stupid man. That’s an ad-hominem attack by me and I am goddamn well proud of it.
And, I might add, I have likely have launched an ad-hominem or two on Trump in the past. And I just fucking loved it. 😉
Well, thank you for the compliment!
So….Hall. Well, the comment above didn’t say *all* of Hall’s conclusions are stupid – I thought he was addressing a specific set of arguments that had been presented above.
Why is that important? Because Hall’s early work was perfectly good. It was important work – 30 years ago there were real questions about the net energy of wind and solar. But now, it’s become obsolete. The field of net energy analysis is pretty sleepy right now because it’s perfectly obvious that wind and solar’s E-ROI are just fine.
But. Hall hasn’t updated his work. Instead, he seems to have started reaching for flaky arguments that are very poor, perhaps to stay “in the game”. He’s been trying to stretch EROEI to include obviously non-energy components. He allowed Pedro Prieto to add him as a 2nd author to a really sub-standard book on EROEI.
So, his recent conclusions are pretty unrealistic. A shame.
I agree that a transition away from fossil fuel may be very difficult and likely painful and disruptive.
My main argument is that it is possible. Higher fossil fuel prices and lower renewable and EV prices might make this transition happen more quickly than most of us believe possible.
When I look at changes in technology over the past 25 years (personal computers, broadband internet, smart phones, etc), I would have been highly skeptical of a future scenario that painted a picture of the changes that have occurred from 1993 to 2018, note that my predictions would have been far more conservative than what has happened.
My guess is that my predictions for the next 25 years will also be wrong, despite claims by most that my predictions are far too optimistic, despite that most predictions have about a zero percent probability of being correct as 1 divided by infinity (approximately the number of possible future scenarios) is roughly nil.
Here a scientific reply to a paper that is very Hall-like
• Additional explanations and clarifications of the authors’ original article have been produced.
• The criticisms offered by Raugei et al. (2017) are shown as not pertinent.
• Further investigations and data analyses is performed.
• The results strengthen the authors’ conclusions regarding the extended ERoEI for PV systems.
• The use of photovoltaic technology results in development of an Energy Sink.
Abstract
A paper by Ferroni and Hopkirk (2016) provided evidence that presently available PV systems in regions of moderate insolation like Switzerland and countries north of the Swiss Alps act as net energy sink. These findings were disputed in a paper (Raugei et al., 2017). Additional clarifications in support of our conclusions are explained, including mention of weak points in the argumentation by Raugei et al.
Our study is based on the concept of the extended ERoEI (ERoEIEXT) for PV systems, knowing that this is not the mainstream concept in the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), applying the Process-Based Life Cycle Assessment. The concept of the ERoEIEXT considers many possible energy contributions needed for assessing the envisioned transition from fossil fuel to other types of energy sources and here in particular to photovoltaics in regions of moderate insolation.
The conclusions of our original study remain unchanged. Any attempt to adopt an Energy Transition strategy by substitution of intermittent for base load power generation in countries like Switzerland or further north will result in unavoidable net energy loss. This applies both to the technologies considered, to the available data from the original study and to newer data from recent studies.”
Nobody who really knows doo doo from apple butter about energy pays any attention to Tverberg.
She has a brand, and a packaged show she does, and she apparently makes a living out of having it and doing it.
Ask her any sort of real question, and she freezes like a deer in car headlights, and makes some sort of response that’s not an answer at all. I know, I saw her once at a conference and asked her a a couple of questions. She was simply incapable of providing serious answers.
Energy returned on energy invested matters only under certain circumstances, such as when the initial energy supply is limited in absolute terms, such as by geology. You can’t go but so deep to dig coal for instance before the coal you extract is worth less than the energy you put into mining it.
And sometimes the energy might be readily available, but too expensive to waste it on an energy intensive industrial process. The natural gas that’s being burnt to extract tar sands synthetic oil is affordable for now……. but ten years from now, there may be such a good market for it that it will be sold to other customers rather than tar sands oil operators.
Now when we start talking about RENEWABLE energy in the form of wind and solar power, well now…….. THE POTENTIAL SUPPLY is for all practical purpose infinite, for now, and for decades to come at least.
So the question then becomes whether it is possible to capture and use this incredibly abundant energy in an economically effective way.
There is NO QUESTION any more that this is possible, because wind farms and solar farms are now productive enough and efficient enough that they generate enough electricity to offset the energy put into manufacturing the turbines and panels and erecting them within a short time frame, as little as four years or less.
Both wind and solar farms are in actual reality going to last more or less indefinitely, because replacing worn out turbines and generators , or failing solar panels, etc, is going to cost as little as a quarter of the cost of starting a new wind or solar farm FROM SCRATCH.
The permits will be grandfathered, the roads will be in place, the grid connections will be in place, the maintenance crews will be in place, no grading of the land will be necessary, there won’t be any political problems associated with refurbishing wind and solar farms as necessary.
The REAL costs, in terms of constant value money, of new turbine blades and new generators and new panels will fall by at least half and probably more by the time more than a very few of either turbines or panels will need replacing.
Likewise it’s very likely that the REAL constant money costs of super duper batteries suitable for storage on the grand scale will also fall at least by half and maybe as much as eighty or ninety percent.
And as the output of wind and solar farms grows and grows, we will actually need less and less storage for a reason not often mentioned in discussions such as this one…….. load shifting.
I expect to be able to buy a super duper refrigerator, with REALLY good insulation, for only a little more than an ordinary refrigerator ten years from now. Today such a refrigerator costs two or three or even more times as much as an otherwise comparably sized one.
With a smart meter, such a refrigerator will run almost exclusively on either wind or solar power, making it in effect IT’S OWN BATTERY.
Likewise anybody with space enough, and most houses have enough space, can install a super insulated extra large capacity water heater, and such a water heater, attached to a smart meter, will also serve AS IT’S OWN BATTERY.
Throw in a few million battery powered cars that can be charged up using no more than a 120 volt weather proof outlet in the parking lot while the owner slaves away from eight to five…… that’s going to put enough juice in the car to get it to and from work, even WITHOUT a real charging station.
If I were a young guy, and building a new house today, I would put a hundred tons of gravel in below my crawl space or slab, with resistance heater wires in it, and vents or water lines to circulate warm or hot water to radiators in the house…….. expecting to be able to buy wind and solar power dirt cheap at times production peaks ….. using the heat any time over the next few days or even weeks.
The thing is, there’s very little ‘eco’ in eco-modernism. Ecology is about the big picture: understanding the relationships between people, animals, plants, materials, and energy—how they co-evolve and are interdependent.
So, for an ecologist, any technology cannot be understood as separate from the context that created it. In contrast, eco-modernists see technology as simply a tool, which anyone could pick up and use. Their modernism becomes ‘eco’ when we take the machines of modernity and use them to decouple society from nature…
Similarly the idea of going 100% renewable and increasing total energy use, as advocated by ecomodern socialists like Aaron Bastani and Christian Parenti also has its faults. As Stan Cox points out,
‘…At least in affluent countries, the challenge is not only to shift the source of our energy but to transform society so that it operates on far less end-use energy while assuring sufficiency for all.‘…
The idea that there’ll be so much solar energy that ‘we won’t know what to do with it’ also merits a second glance. True, solar energy is practically infinite. But unlike the alternatives, it’s dissipated and difficult to collect, transport, concentrate, and store. It’s like trying to catch the rain when you’ve spent the last two hundred years drawing water from enormous underground reservoirs. It would mean more than democratising ownership of technology, but a total reboot.
And even if we were able to press that restart button, this luxurious future would require infrastructure, land, resources, and energy to build. These are unfortunately not super-abundant, but, by definition, limited. Simply grabbing technology from the machine of profit won’t solve this problem.“
Caelan, for deity’s sake, please get with the program! Japan just found a A “semi-infinite” supply of rare earth metals used in batteries, electric vehicles, and other green energy technologies…
Bro, think about that for a moment! A “semi-infinite” supply!!! That solves the entire problem right there! Semi = halved, therefore (∞/2) = ∞
The world is truly saved! We now have infinite resources from the bottom of the Japan sea.
A “semi-infinite” supply of rare earth metals used in batteries, electric vehicles, and other green energy technologies has been found in deep-sea mud about 1850 kilometers southeast of Tokyo, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Japanese researchers estimate the roughly 2499-square-kilometer region of seabed holds more than 16 million tons of rare earth oxides, including 780 years’ worth of the global supply of yttrium, 620 years’ worth of europium, 420 years’ worth of terbium, and 730 years’ worth of dysprosium, they write this week in Scientific Reports.
You also gotta love the roughly 2,499-square-kilometer estimate. If they had had a more precise measurement say 2,498.86597732 square-kilometer as opposed to 2,500 square-kilometers that might have put the entire (∞/2) = ∞ premise into question and the Japanese economy would still be doomed and the rest of world might not be able to build out renewables such as solar or wind or build EVs. That would be truly tragic.
Fred — As I recall, semi-infinite is a legit expression as in: a semi-infinite set being one bounded in one direction and unbounded in another (half-spaces are sometimes described as semi-infinite regions). OTOH, ‘roughly 2,499’ is sacrilege and even my nine-year-old Grandson knows better. God knows how any of this would apply to a reserve (resource) estimate for REEs in offshore Japan. 🙂
As I recall, semi-infinite is a legit expression as in: a semi-infinite set being one bounded in one direction and unbounded in another (half-spaces are sometimes described as semi-infinite regions
Fair enough! However just trying to grasp, let alone working with ‘Infinities’, can be a mind bending experience for a non-mathematician like myself. As I’m sure you know, The number of positive whole numbers is infinite and the number of positive even numbers while half of that, is still infinite. So why shouldn’t that apply to the amount of rare earths off the coast of Japan… 😉
The downside is they will soon discover how to economically mine methane clathrate and give us one more big FF power source while they sell the rare earths to enable the reduction of CO2 and methane.
Never underestimate the power of technology or the motivation of an overpopulated energy starved nation.
Japan has plenty of wind and solar resources. But, it’s utilities are very, very…uhmmm…shall we say, conservative.
Good point, sadly they are not in much of a hurry for renewable energy and they are trying to find out how to mine methane hydrate.
Hey what can you really expect from an Island nation that in the mid 21st century still doesn’t seems to have a problem with killing off whales and over fishing large pelagic fish such as Tuna. Despite all their advanced technology I find that general outlook to be quite backward and out of sync with current global realities.
Yeah, Japan is quite surprising in their conservatism.
They won’t allow any immigration due to xenophobia, and Japanese men are so sexist that Japanese women refuse to have children with them. So…their population is shrinking, and 28% of the population is over age 65.
They just left a medieval system not long ago, so not surprising there is a residue of that.
Good point.
Similarly, Russia had serfs until the 19th century, and was ruled by a Tsar up to WWI, and then they had a “dictatorship of the proletariat” up to only about 25 years ago. We shouldn’t be surprised that their culture isn’t very democratic.
Yea, but Russia went from serfs, to putting a satellite in space in 50 years.
Japan went from non-industrial to major modern industrial nation in about 50 to 60 years.
@Fish
That may apply to the economics but does it apply to society and the mental state of the people. I suspect that is a much slower, multi generation effect.
NAOM
Both Russia and Japan went through very long periods of stagnation and resistance to change. Then they had revolutions and invasions, and were shocked into massive economic change.
But…economic change, contrary to Soviet ideology, didn’t create cultural and psychological change: both Russians and Japanese continue to think in terms of tradition and obedience to authority, and perceive the outside world as threatening. Which is the same kind of culture that the Kochs, Trumps and Murdochs of the world are peddling.
Read my comment at 6:34 PM just above to get the answer.
To Mueller Ain’t Going Away we can now add My Attorney Got Arrested.
About Japanese zenophobia………
It’s worth noting that the Japanese are probably farther along in terms of solving their population problem than any other industrialized country in the world.
I point this out without passing judgement other than to say that anybody who TRULY believes in multiculturalism is short of critical thinking skills.
Some cultures cannot coexist, period, in time and place. Separation is necessary.
As someone who has been to Japan 20+ times, you are part of the few who grasp the situation.
Japanese…population problem
How would you define that? I think these writers, along with everyone else who writes about Japan’s population (Japanese or not), have a different idea: they want more, not less:
“The creation of a hydrogen society aims at achieving four major objectives. First is the reduction of the burden on the environment. Unlike fossil fuels, hydrogen emits only water when burned. So it promises to greatly cut emissions of carbon dioxide. Second is the diversification of energy sources. Hydrogen can be produced with renewable energy sources, and its use will also promote stability in the supply of energy. Third, it will generate beneficial economic ripple effects. The shift to a new energy source will naturally mean new demand and new jobs. And fourth, it can help in coping with natural disasters. Fuel cell cars generate electricity to power their motors using hydrogen from their tanks, and when disasters cause power outages, these vehicles can serve as large-scale movable generators. This adds to the appeal of hydrogen for Tokyo, which is highly conscious of the importance of disaster readiness.”
It’s interesting to read derogatory comments (see above) by people who’ve no idea what they are talking about. As someone who reads, writes and speaks Japanese and who has worked with a wide variety of Japanese both in and out of Japan and who has maintained contact with many Japanese people for decades, let me assure you Japan is in most ways one of the most advanced countries in the world – and in almost all respects. Here is but one example: Japan’s health care system is characterized by universal coverage, free choice of health care providers by patients, a multi-payer, employment-based system of financing, and a predominant role for private hospitals and fee-for-service practice. Virtually all residents of Japan are covered without regard to any medical problems they may have (so-called predisposing conditions) or to their actuarial risk of succumbing to illness. Premiums are based on income and ability to pay. Although there is strong government regulation of health care financing and the operation of health insurance, control of the delivery of care is left largely to medical professionals and there appears to be no public concern about health care rationing.
Japan also leads the world in robotics (among other things), by a long shot, and exports advanced robots to almost all countries. I could go on for weeks on this topic but will finish on this note; the last time I asked a Japanese woman if she felt oppressed (in about 1980) she laughed and said all (Japanese) men were workaholics and she and her friends probably had more free time than any women in the world because their husbands were always working so they could do almost anything they liked whenever they liked.
And, speaking of Japanese xenophobia (said the pot to the kettle):
Current anti-immigrant sentiment, largely focused on the influx of Mexican and Latino newcomers—and the fact that Latinos, along with African Americans and Asian peoples, are projected to represent a majority of the U.S. population by 2042—decries the fact that, in the words of former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan “they are taking our country away from us.” The fear, bluntly stated, is that “they”—Mexicans and Latinos—will erode “our”—white European—power over U.S. identity. Buchanan articulates only the most recent U.S. American antiimmigrant animosity that finds deep roots in the nation’s history. U.S. American xenophobia, based on the assumption that “our country” is defined by, and should maintain, its dominant white European heritage is rooted in the myth of the U.S. as a nation of European immigrants.
Someone with a name that originates from Scotland is worried about immigration. !Hypocrisy, shirley?
NAOM
Presumably you mean surely because Shirley is a girls’ name of Old English origin. And what makes you think I’m (personally) concerned by immigration? Quite the opposite.
I am certainly not going to defend the current administration and it’s political party methods of dealing with illegal immigration. However before one starts bashing the US you need to get your facts straight.
The US took 1/5 of all the world immigrants in since 1960. 2016 there were an additional 1.49 million taken into the US, and increase over 2015. More than 43.7 million legal immigrants live in the US now and if you count their children that comes to 27 percent of the population.
So for a ” anti-immigrant ” “xenophobic” country it is very well mixed and still has it’s doors open to the world.
Illegal entry has always been stifled, people have always been deported during all administrations. This latest over the top showman style is not representative as you well know. You probably also know the reasons behind this latest spate of “wars”, “arab bashing”, “terrorist paranoia” and “anti-Mexican” crap.
Personally I think the US is a much better place for having such a wide range of world origins, I just wish some of them would not be so biased and bigoted against the people and country that took them. But intolerance seems to go in all directions and through all times where people are concerned, not just national or racial.
Personally, I’m not especially for or against immigration of different racial groups BUT think that once you let them in they should be treated fairly. I witnessed extreme prejudice against Hispanics in Texas a few times (by well educated Southern Baptist whites) and extreme prejudice against Blacks in Colorado a few times (by the police) which, as a Canadian, left a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve never seen anything like that before or since — anywhere. Maybe the Hispanics were in the US illegally but doubt that was the case with Blacks (or am I supposed to say Afro-Americans?).
I have seen just the opposite in the US, where people of different racial groups and of different sex were given college opportunities and job opportunities and job security just because of their race or sex.
Maybe that is causing a certain portion of the population to get upset, at least that is what I hear. Some conservatives around here call them protected species where they do not have to work at the same level expected of non-protected workers and get advantages in competing for jobs.
Quotas must be filled and legal snafus avoided.
There are multiple standards in the US at the social and legal level.
No group is treated equally here and many politicians are for sale. The poor get one set of laws, the rich another. Different races get different benefits. Big corporations get a whole different set and along with politicians plus bankers are often outside the law.
The police and the legal/prison system is a problem here.
Any and all opinions about the possibility of fuel cells really being affordable and practical, for use in cars and light trucks, within the next five to ten years are greatly appreciated, and thanks in advance.
So far I haven’t even seen a fuel cell car, but I do live in the boonies, lol.
Now maybe the Japanese can start building fuel cell cars and trucks in significant numbers within the next few years.They don’t have any ready source of hydrogen, other than stripping it out of imported natural gas, which isn’t really going to be all that practical, considering they will also have to build a hydrogen transportation, storage and dispensing system on the grand scale to actually DRIVE hydrogen powered cars and trucks in large numbers. Sure they can build wind and solar farms on the grand scale, and get their hydrogen from water, but how long is THAT going to take?
Maybe Tony Seba is right about electric cars taking over the new car market soon, at least ones powered by batteries. We already know how to build satisfactory batteries, and at less than PROHIBITIVE cost, and there is already a substantial battery manufacturing base in place, which can be expanded rather quickly, if the demand is there.
But there aren’t any fuel cell factories, to the best of my knowledge, capable of turning out thousands of them day after day. And there aren’t any assembly lines ready to run to turn out hydrogen fueling stations. There aren’t, so far as I know, any pipelines in place anywhere, to deliver hydrogen to end use points such as service stations.
And so far as I know, it’s still not possible to build hydrogen storage tanks suitable for use in automobiles that will hold enough to go a few hundred miles at a reasonable cost.
I’m not saying it won’t happen,eventually, but I don’t see any large number of hydrogen powered cars being on the road in less than a decade at the very least, and probably considerably longer than that.
FUTURISTIC TECH IS NOT JUST FOR CARS: TOYOTA WILL LAUNCH A FUEL-CELL BUS IN JAPAN NEXT YEAR
“Toyota isn’t just developing hydrogen fuel-cell passenger cars. Alongside its Mirai sedan, Toyota will begin selling fuel-cell buses in Japan next year. It already has an agreement with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to supply two buses for transit service and hopes to have a fleet of 100 buses in operation in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Deliveries will ramp up in 2018 to meet that goal.”
While it’s obviously possible to separate hydrogen from just about any sort of biologically derived material, such as wood, crop waste, or even sewage, to the best of my knowledge there are only about three really practical and economically satisfactory ways of obtaining large quantities of hydrogen.
One is getting it by separating it from natural gas , and another is via electrolysis of water.
A third method, which involves generating free hydrogen using coke and steam, is apparently not much used, if it’s still used at all. This obsolete technology was once extensively used to generate gas from coal or coke for local use in the days before gas pipelines were laid from oil and gas fields to cities, up until electricity became widely available.
The electrolysis of water requires a lot of electrical energy, and I’m thinking it’s more practical and economic to use that energy directly to charge battery driven cars than it is to produce and transport hydrogen, store it, and finally dispense it into automobiles.
And while natural gas is still fairly cheap, I don’t personally expect it to stay cheap much longer, considering depletion and growing population.
But the real bottom line question is probably this one.
Will they succeed in bringing down the cost of fuel cells to the point fuel cell cars can compete with battery powered cars, considering the electrical grid is already in place, whereas the hydrogen distribution grid is still vapor ware ?
If they’re going to get their hydrogen by way of using wind and solar electricity to power the hydrogen production infrastructure, is it likely that they can build this hydrogen infrastructure, plus the necessary distribution infrastructure, and do it at low enough cost to compete with battery powered cars?
Now having said all this, producing and storing hydrogen and using it in large stationary fuel cells feeding into the grid may turn out to be a good way to deal with the problems associated with fluctuating wind and solar generation.
And hey……. Maybe fuel cells are going to be a LOT cheaper than batteries five or ten years down the road……..
Maybe the price of batteries will be going UP instead of down, five years from now, depending on the market prices of the raw materials needed to build car sized batteries by the millions.
The Japanese are as talented and hard working as anybody, period, and if anybody can build cheap reliable fuel cells, they can.
And if they succeed in this endeavor, and get a big head start on every body else, they’ll be in tall industrial cotton for at least ten years or more, while everybody else struggles to catch up.
This is complex, with many possible comments. One facet is that sexism isn’t about men oppressing women. It’s about a society that oppresses both men and women in different ways. In this case, men overwork and drop dead at their desk, and are alienated from their wives.
So, ask yourself: would that Japanese woman trust that husband to help raise a child? Japanese women overall have answered that question: no.
Women (every place I have heard of ) who get to the point of being well educated and well off economically virtually always collectively decide that about one point five kids is ENOUGH. Even in countries dominated by various priesthoods, the birth rate seems to be falling where ever economic conditions improve noticeably.
So it’s not too likely, imo, that Japanese women are having so few children because they aren’t happy with their men.
I don’t know any Japanese women, but I know a bunch from other places, and some of them have told me they and their friends deliberately have kids BECAUSE they have an empty place in their lives and see the kid as a way to find fulfillment.
As the man hating nurse who hated men put it in some rather famous novel, it takes only a few “peter treatments” to get pregnant, if you time them right. This novel was of course written back before artificial insemination got to be a practical solution for women stuck with non performing men, or without a man at all.
Some woman or another in Brazil is famous for having asked men in general, rhetorically “What is it about CLOSED that you don’t understand? The baby factory is CLOSED”.
This was in reference to men bitching about their wives only being willing to bear one or at the most two children.
The birth rate in Brazil crashed so hard and fast that it caught virtually everybody by surprise.
Various pundits have attributed this sudden crash to the coming of television allowing Brazilian women to see that they can live far better lives with one or two kids at the most. I think they have a large piece of the truth. The idiot box may actually solve some problems, but I doubt it will ever solve as many as it has created.
One kid means a more than one dress and one pair of shoes, or maybe no shoes at all.
Another way to look at Japans falling birthrates is through the lens of ‘overshoot’. 127 million people is unsustainable when it comes to food and energy on those islands. For example they have net import of energy consumption at 93% as of 2015.
The pressures of overshoot manifest in various ways, but women choosing not to have children, and choosing instead to have miniature dogs, robots, and virtual friends, is one such symptom.
net import of energy consumption at 93% as of 2015.
That’s because they’re acting dumb – they have plenty of domestic wind and solar power (and wave, nuclear, etc). As Doug points out, they’re not dumb. He seems to feel that “conservatism” is an inadequate explanation for their poor energy strategy.
I know that the Japanese archipelago makes a unified grid harder, and that makes renewables a bit more difficult than otherwise, but a bit of googling hasn’t come up with a good explanation for this planning failure.
Anybody seen anything?
Hi Nick,
I consistently support pedal the the metal ( trucker’s slang for full throttle) development of renewable energy, electric vehicles, etc.
But I do this fully understanding that as a PRACTICAL matter, in day to day terms, wind and solar power are generally piss poor investments, when the results are measured in DOLLARS and CENTS, or some other currency.
Business men, and politicians, for the most part, don’t have the luxury of taking externalized costs associated with using fossil fuels into account when they have to answer to the people who provide them with money in the one case, or votes in the other.
I don’t think there’s a government on the face of the earth that isn’t constantly looking at spending more money, for good purposes or bad, than is available.
Money has ENORMOUS time value. You can pay an extra five or ten bucks along with the first payment on a thirty year mortgage with a thousand dollar payment, and wipe out the last couple of payments. TEN DOLLARS today is worth a THOUSAND thirty years from now, you see.
So….. while I support wind and solar power, I don’t yet actually own any solar panels…… because it’s still a HELL of a lot cheaper for me, in terms of my MONEY, to buy electricity from my utility.
Even with such subsidies as I might be able to collect, I can earn at least two or three times greater returns putting my money into other things, rather than in a solar power system of my own, or an electric car of my own.
Yes, I understand that COLLECTIVELY, we should be doing everything possible to cut back on fossil fuels.
But even if I were to cut my personal and business use of fossil fuel by ninety percent……… It wouldn’t mean a damned thing, in terms of improving my PERSONAL situation. I would still be looking at the same climate change problem, the same national security problem, the same personal health problem associated with breathing polluted air………
It’s naive to expect the Japanese people to spend incomprehensible amounts of their limited capital on building out a comprehensive renewable energy industry FOR NOW.
The only real reason they have for doing so, short term, is to lower their security risks associated with being dependent on imported fossil fuel.
This does not mean of course that they can’t EARN large amounts of money, by investing in renewable industries, producing wind turbines, batteries, solar panels, fuel cells, and so forth.
But the bottom line is that as a practical matter, they can’t AFFORD to build enough renewable energy infrastructure at this time to really matter. They’re in about the same shape, financially, as everybody else……. dangerously close to BROKE, when the REAL debts and assets are totaled up.
I often mention what I refer to as Pearl Harbor Wake Up Events, which I believe are NECESSARY to get the attention of the American people, if we are to get to work in a truly serious fashion on the fossil fuel problem.
It’s not that we Yankees can’t build out our wind and solar industries and grid to take advantage, it’s just that we have to reorganize our priorities for it to happen on the grand scale.
We NEED and MUST HAVE figurative mugger’s bricks in the form of floods, droughts, super hurricanes, and hot wars involving oil and gas, etc, upside our collective head to get our attention.
Otherwise…….. one day we will find ourselves in one hell of a fix in terms of lack of oil and gas, wars about access to whatever remains, climate shot to hell, all that sort of thing.
I know at least twenty older nurses on a first name basis, due to having some nurses in the family, and knowing their friends and visiting old people who are sick. All twenty of them are well trained in terms of knowing the consequences of smoking, over eating, failure to get adequate exercise, etc etc.
At least fifteen or more of that twenty are seriously overweight and can’t climb two flights of stairs without getting out of breath. They’re health care PROFESSIONALS, and they have their very NOSES rubbed in their failure to do better EVERY day they go to work.
Now if they don’t act, why the hell should we expect an entire nation, wherein the large majority of voters don’t really know shit from apple butter about fossil fuel depletion, climate change, etc, to act?
Nick likes to see the challenge of transition/depletion as simplistic. Likely because it is too painful to consider the consequences of a failure to smoothly make it through this transition time. If that is truly his stance, than perhaps he is right to take his approach, but it does come across as very naive.
Japan must be naïve too since renewable energy went from 9 to 15 percent of the national power supply between 2009 and 2016.
No, I don’t think it’s simple. Two things:
I like to point out where the problems are, and where they aren’t. The problem isn’t technical, or geological, or due to cost problems. The problem is political. That’s very complex in one sense, and very simple in another.
2nd, I’d say it’s unproductive to speculate about the emotional reasons for other people’s arguments. I’m happy to address specific arguments – so, argue away.
I didn’t fully address you thought about Japan’s population. My take: population overshoot typically takes the form of rising death rates, usually due to lack of food. Japan has no problem with nutrition – in fact rising caloric intake has caused “diseases of affluence” to start to appear where they didn’t exist before: obesity, diabetes, etc. Still, Japan’s age-adjusted death rates continue to decline.
A few thoughts:
Japan has to invest in *something*, whether it’s coal or renewables. And, it looks like they’re going to. So affordability isn’t the problem.
Wind and solar are now cheaper than coal – we don’t need to include security or pollution to argue that they would be the sensible choice for Japan.
Japan, like China, has a well developed technical bureaucracy – I don’t think that’s the problem.
I’d say it comes down to the classic problem: the power of entrenched industries to resist change, regardless of what’s best for their country.
A lot of of these kinds of things are small-scale experiments and pilot projects, and are simply part of a general effort to cover all the bases that never go anywhere. That would be the best result for this.
Well, I phrased my first comment badly – it’s not that Japanese men are sexist, it’s the whole society. And, of course, Japan is not alone:
“While there is no one-size-fits-all recipe for boosting fertility, current trends in European countries suggest that gender equity might be a key to higher birth rates. As opposed to gender equality, which is based on identical treatment of men and women, gender equity requires fair and just treatment of genders depending on their needs. According to Thomas Anderson and Hans-Peter Kohler, researchers from the Population Studies Center, the latter is especially important within families.
Economic development leads to better access to education and employment for women, but household norms and expectations change at a much slower pace. As a result, the family-work conflict intensifies and women delay marriage and childbirth or remain childless. This is what Japan is experiencing now.”
An article from 2010, wonder how wave heights have changed since then.
Maximum height of extreme waves up dramatically in Pacific Northwest
“Using more sophisticated techniques that account for the “non-stationarity” in the wave height record, researchers say the 100-year wave height could actually exceed 55 feet, with impacts that would dwarf those expected from sea level rise in coming decades. Increased coastal erosion, flooding, damage to ocean or coastal structures and changing shorelines are all possible, scientists say.
“The rates of erosion and frequency of coastal flooding have increased over the last couple of decades and will almost certainly increase in the future,” said Peter Ruggiero”
Very nice. Now add on about 200 ppm for the current effect of methane in the atmosphere plus about 92 ppm for the other gases and we have 702 ppm.
Best forget about methane (and other gasses) else you may become discouraged — if not downright depressed. 🙂
Nope, I have an incessant curiosity and penchant for trying to add up all the factors, just my nature. I won’t bore you with the many other factors, as you know there are many more.
My tendency to get annoyed at the simplistic view and reporting that goes on in many places and by many people is understandable. My ancestors had to face and kill everything from Nazi’s to lions, tigers and cave bears. I will not back down from staring Nature in the face, no matter what we have done to it or what it will do to us. Just part of living. We all need to look it square in the face once in a while, to get the juices flowing if nothing else.
We also need to understand our actual position in the natural order.
CO2 is needed for plants because once they consume it, they turn it into oxygen for use by us and the animals we enjoy eating. Therefore the simplest conclusion is, with more CO2 comes more oxygen, which means more plants, which means more animals to eat the plants, and more food to feed the increasing human population.
Wow! We have an intellectual on the list. And I know he must have graduated fourth grade.
” the simplest conclusion is,”
Well Julian, if you want simple you can have simple.
But that doesn’t make the analysis accurate.
Sometimes things are slightly more complex.
More than one variable.
Multiple limiting factors.
Positive and negative feedback loops.
These are things that you can learn by reading more than one sentence on a subject.
Sorry if this was too long.
take home message- in the real world CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is not the limiting factor to plant growth
Although the plants sequester oxygen as they grow to build cellulose and lignin, the increased amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been warming regions, causing droughts and producing a lot of forest and scrub fires. That puts a lot more CO2 into the atmosphere, which causes more fires, floods and chaotic weather. None of that is good for plant growth.
You omit that the Oxygen in CO2 is taken from the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burnt so there is no net return of Oxygen by the plants. Please pay more attention in chemistry class especially in lessons devoted to combustion.
NAOM
While Julian Radoni is most certainly either a troll or a moron, probably both, photosynthesis does release O2. And yes, he could do with a few chemistry and biochemistry lessons. Maybe a little plant physiology wouldn’t hurt either. A good primer of the basics of the chemistry of photosynthesis at the following link should someone be so inclined as to read it.
Photosynthesis is the process by which plants, some bacteria and some protistans use the energy from sunlight to produce glucose from carbon dioxide and water. This glucose can be converted into pyruvate which releases adenosine triphosphate (ATP) by cellular respiration. Oxygen is also formed.
Photosynthesis may be summarised by the word equation:
The important thing that most trolls and scientifically illiterate morons never seem to mention when they wax and wane poetic about the nutritional value of CO2 to plants, is that like most natural processes, it is not simply dependent on a single variable.
There are, surprise, surprise, other limiting factors to consider…
An increase in the carbon dioxide concentration increases the rate at which carbon is incorporated into carbohydrate in the light-independent reaction and so the rate of photosynthesis generally increases until limited by another factor.
Photosynthesis is dependent on temperature. It is a reaction catalysed by enzymes. As the enzymes approach their optimum temperatures the overall rate increases. Above the optimum temperature the rate begins to decrease until it stops.
Bonus points for Julian if he can tell us what might happen in a world where average global temperatures are increasing and perhaps causing long term droughts punctuated by occasional severe floods…
Now might be a good time to read up on that plant physiology, I had mentioned earlier to better understand some of the other limiting factors that might affect plants in general.
Nature is not simplistic!
And some people talk a lot of shit about scientists in general but I dare anyone to read the following story and not be duly impressed!
What You Learn When You Put Smelly Socks In Front Of Mosquitoes
They made children wear socks until they got good and smelly.
Later on, they decapitated mosquitoes.
Those were two steps in an … unusual … study to learn why female mosquitoes (males don’t bite) are more likely to feed on people with malaria than non-infected people.
…And how did they measure the mosquito reaction to the smell from the bags?
This is where the decapitated mosquitoes come in.
The researchers hooked up the cut-off mosquito heads and antennae to circuitry. The mosquito heads would stay alive for 20-30 minutes – enough time for the researchers to blow puffs of air samples from the Kenyan children’s feet and also of carefully balanced compositions of aldehyde chemicals. The goal was to see which air puffs caused electrical signals to pass through the antenna nerve cells – a sign that the chemicals in the air puff cause a physical reaction in the mosquitoes, which the researchers suspect might be to go in for the feed.
How can you not love people who decapitate mosquitoes and hook their still living heads up to circuitry for research purposes?! 😉
American math, science and engineering ignorance, illiteracy, limitations and errors. This rant by an astrophysicist has a humorous side, if you don’t live in America.
He asks “What country is this?” quite often.
April 16 (UPI) — Scientists have published the first global CO2 maps compiled using data collected by China’s TanSat.
The maps, published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, are powered by TanSat observations made between April and July 2017. Researchers expect the maps and related data to help scientists build more accurate climate models.
Forced migrations due to sea level rise, floods, conflicts (GW aggravated). food problems and population will be a strong player in the near future global changes. Where can the people go, will they be welcome, will there be a place for them and will conflicts arise? The new ongoing WWIII is already happening with plenty of violence and death. In this lecture Africa is the centerpiece within the global structure.
Sea Level Rise, Migration, Security and War
Cornell University – 2017 Climate Change Seminar by Prof. Charles Geisler (Development Sociology). Recorded at Cornell University – February 12, 2018, part of Perspectives on the Climate Change Challenge seminar series.
European Geological Society Press Conference of last week. Deglaciation causing volcanic eruptions, drought effects on power and economics, increased wind and storms in the North Atlantic, and increasing avalanches in Europe causing problems are all tied to our ever present global warming/climate change in this conference.
“Six cable car lines are currently operational or under construction in the city of Medellin, Colombia. The safe, environmentally friendly and convenient new public transport system reduces CO2 and other greenhouse gases and improves the air quality of the city…
The cable car lines… are an integral part of the metro system of Medellin and provide for seamless transit. They conveniently connect the hilly areas of Medellin with the city center. The new public transportation system is not only faster, more reliable, and safer but also cheaper…
The operation of cable cars as a mass transit mean is unique and innovative. Worldwide only very few cities operate comparable schemes and with much lower ridership than that experienced in Medellin.
The project not only reduces CO2 emissions but also contributes significantly to an improved air quality as well as having numerous social benefits for system users as well as for inhabitants of the zone where the cable car has been installed including a dramatic decline of the crime rate due to accompanying measures of ETMVA.”
“The social climate around pollution is allowing for a shift from cars back to the utilization of cable transport due to their advantages. However, for many years they were a niche form of transportation used primarily in difficult-to-operate conditions for cars (such as on ski slopes as lifts). Now that Cable Transport Projects (CTP) are on the incline the social effects are beginning to become more significant…
There are a few notable advantages to using cable transport including:
• Electric drive in a main drive station – The vehicles themselves operate without an engine. This significantly reduces construction and maintenance costs.
• Lightweight carriers.
• High safety – Accidents relating to cable transport are extremely rare. Over 10,000 CTPs transport billions of people each year yet cable transports have some the best safety records of any mode of transport.
• Reduced operator number – Cable cars require no drivers which reduce costs and increases safety.
• Reliability and efficiency – Modern cable transport has, on average, less than one minute wait times between vehicles.
• Energy Efficient – Due to cable transport’s use of gravity and counterbalancing, many systems generate are self-sufficient in terms of power during off-peak times.
• High speed – CTPs can travel up to 45 km/hr. In addition to this, by their very nature, they take the most direct route to their destinations and aren’t subject to delays such as traffic jams.
• Large capacity – An aerial CTP can transport up to 4,000 people in one direction per hour. Ground-based increases this to 10,000 people.
• Flexible – CTPs aren’t just limited to transporting people but have a variety of applications. For example, a system in Slovakia transports newly manufactured cars to and from a testing facility.
• No influence of the carrier – runway friction coefficient.
• Intrinsic safety against carrier collision along the line.
La Paz is… home to both the longest and highest urban cable car network in the world.”
Hooray! The world is saved!
Important Disclaimer: No fossil fuels or other natural resources were mined or used in the manufacture of the cable cars or the construction and installation of the cable car network in the mountains. Furthermore the money for these projects did not come from any crony capitalists, it probably came from some slightly obscure independent sources in Colombia…
Not that there is anything wrong with using cable car networks for transport in mountainous regions of the world. On the other hand in Venice Italy, it might be better to use electric gondolas…
And they were all built by little mom and pop operations using locally sourced raw materials! No siree, no contributions to the psuedo whatever it is that Caelan is always babbling on about!
Cableways ostensibly work fine over different landforms, from mountainous to flat.
“Furthermore the money for these projects did not come from any crony capitalists, it probably came from some slightly obscure independent sources in Colombia…” ~ Fred Magyar
This sort of tech, like many other sorts, can and, to honor it, should be produced in superior contexts to the ‘crony-capitalistic’, and discussions along these lines seem to be on the rise. It’s pretty simple.
Put it this way: If you can’t do the job, or a proper one, it’s best to give the job to someone else who can. This seems to be equally true for a system. Crony capitalism looks like a failure.
If you can’t do the job, or a proper one, it’s best to give the job to someone else who can.
No worries! It’s just business as usual in Medellin… nothing personal!
Rodrigo CanalesatTEDSalon NY2013
The deadly genius of drug cartels
Could you simply give us a synopsis of the vid, Fred, and how it connects to what we’ve been talking about? Make it juicy.
Hi Caelan,
Agree that public transportation using electricity, preferably powered by non-fossil fuels, is a great idea.
In rural areas where population density is low, it is expensive. How do you travel to the grocery store in Nova Scotia in the winter? How do most people do this who live in less densely populated parts of Nova Scotia? I imagine they don’t travel by cable car. 🙂
Hi Dennis,
Transportation in general, whatever it is, can be problematic and expensive, perhaps especially with those involved in roadway infrastructure, and there doesn’t appear to be any one magic-bullet form, although some may be superior, depending on contexts.
Rural/Fringe roadway infrastructure– and rural/fringe grocery stores, etc.– might be especially vulnerable to increasingly-desperate cost-cutting measures by governments along the course of economic decline, at some points which some of your questions become moot.
When or as that happens, it’s possible that, if, when and where cableways make sense, with some forward-/creative-thinking, we could see cableway corridors and/or hubs/nodes open up and attract development and redevelopment along and/or at them.
Unsure why you mention the winter, incidentally. Cableways can operate all year-round and are probably comparatively cheap to do so.
From engineering and economics standpoints, cableways seem to have a strong sense of appeal, including KISS.
Caelan,
Where I live transport by cable car would not be very effective, typically these types of systems make sense in the mountains only.
Are there a lot of cable cars used in Nova Scotia? I ask about winter because travel by bicycle in the winter can be difficult, though one could always use snow shoes.
I noticed you didn’t answer the question. I live in a rural area and get my groceries in a car winter, spring, summer, and fall.
In an economic decline situation road repair might suffer, but there have been roads for a long time and my guess is that there will be roads long into the future, until wheels are outlawed. 🙂
Hi Dennis, I will try to get back to you shortly.
Dennis,
How much do you want to be coddled and can we afford it?
While I’m not exactly familiar with your setup over there… (For example, are you in a house, among a scant number of houses, strung along a country road some miles from the nearest small town?)… as far as I’m aware, our ancestors didn’t drag, with relative abandon and resource-squander, along, within and alone, an overkill/oversized motorized/valuable-energy-energized over-mineralized/valuable-materialized ‘chariot’ along a ribbon of asphalt to any grocery store for items of questionable value compared with the value expended in getting there, including paved-over farmland.
This bizarre lifestyle that many take for granted and as an expression of sanity/normalcy looks like it will be a fleeting experience for our species.
I bike all year ’round and can otherwise walk to the grocery store.
You, yourself, might be able to do the same and/or share, along with a few others of your community, a car that makes the rounds of necessity.
We both can also grow our own food and/or recognize it in the wild like our ancestors did.
Hi Caelan,
There were not 7.5 billion people on the planet 10,000 years ago.
So you never use a car, is that true in general for most people in Nova Scotia?
No cars there? Last time I visited it was not all that different from the US side of the border.
In some rural areas, it’s a long ride to the nearest grocery store.
There are also older and disabled people that prefer “coddling” and independence. Are you suggesting we should take that away from those people and require that they walk or ride a bike?
Seems a bad plan from my perspective.
What other great plans do you have?
You grow all your own food and forage? How many hours do you spend per day doing this?
“There were not 7.5 billion people on the planet 10,000 years ago.” ~ Dennis Coyne
We both know that, Dennis, which is why we need to stop messing about with such ‘bad-plan’ resource and energy-squandering things as ‘electric fantasy chariots for one’ and start playing fair with the planet and the people and animals on it. Our older/disabled people and disabled planet will thank us for it.
“In some rural areas, it’s a long ride to the nearest grocery store.” ~ Dennis Coyne
It sure is, and an increasing stretch for the Earth and the taxpayer to pay into for your car, convenience and coddling.
In the end, demographics are probably THE key factor in understanding American politics.
As the younger people who have more or less instant and continuous access to the news, and not just from a newspaper or network tv, take over at the polls, things change.
My generation is departing fast. There’s scarcely a month that goes by that I don’t hear about an old acquaintance leaving this old vale of tears.
My guess is that even here in Virginia, which is still a relatively conservative state in many respects, the writing is on the wall in terms of state level political support for pot prohibition, although it will be quite some time before pot is legally available here for recreational use.
Demographics mean the end of business as usual Republican Party control of government in this country as well, it’s just a matter of time now.
Any given younger person is about as apt to read the Rolling Stone as the Washington Post or any other particular newspaper.
I don’t know anybody anymore who is still ignorant enough to believe that pot is dangerous, compared to beer or cigarettes. So many of their younger acquaintances and relatives use it that they have had to acknowledge that if beer should be legal, so should pot.
The preachers are mostly steering clear of the issue, and so are most local level politicians, because they now recognize that pot prohibition is now or will soon be a losing position, even here. The safe thing for them NOW is to ignore the issue, while gradually starting to say something in favor, such as that it should be a states right issue.
The whole West Coast is now legal, and not just medical.
Some of the more primitive States (Idaho, Utah) still have issues, but it is gone——
Here in Bend Oregon, pot stores far outnumber 711 or any convenience store.
Not my thing, but it is a non issue.
‘EXTREME’ FOSSIL FUEL INVESTMENTS SOAR TO $115BN UNDER DONALD TRUMP PRESIDENCY, REPORT REVEALS
“While several European banks, including ING and BNP Paribas, pledged last year to cut financing for unconventional fossil fuels, North American banks ramped up their funding, particularly in Canada, the research found. This reversed much of the progress made on reducing investment in the most carbon-intensive fossil fuels after the signing of the landmark Paris Agreement in 2016…. Tar sands are worse for the climate than conventional sources of oil, sometimes producing three or four times the amount of greenhouse gases thanks to energy-intensive methods of extraction.”
I guess that touted rise in oil price won’t last long now with all the new investments producing more oil. It’s will slow down the EV surge a bit but not for long.
When the oil companies go bust and the banks take a loss, who ends up paying the bill?
Wait and see what happens when there is a real need for energy because proper planning was not implemented in this decade. Then all the rules and agreements will fall by the wayside.
Or maybe this is just a plan to warm up Canada and the northern countries! 🙂
“A short video describing the basics of Urban Cable. Create by argodesign for use in describing the Wire One Urban Cable vision for Austin, TX. But could be useful for anyone explaining Urban Cable.”
Mexico recently inaugurated the first commuter cable car in North America. Located in a hilly, urban area north of Mexico City, the “Teleferico Mexicable” is helping to cut congestion, pollution and travel times.
“Punjab is looking to introduce ropeways transport in the city…
…featuring cable cars at three different points in Lahore; from Imamia Colony to Railway Station, Jehangir Tomb to Greater Iqbal Park, from Jalo Mor to Thokar Niaz Baig and also another one from Islamabad to Murree…
The new project is aimed at reducing the burden of traffic on the roads whilst providing an innovative way to travel within the city.”
“The Yoshino Ropeway [see left image]… in Yoshino, Japan was built in 1929, and is considered the oldest operating and surviving cable system in the country…
According to Wikipedia, it not only provides transportation for tourists wishing to access Mount Yoshino, but it is a form of public transport for residents living in the vicinity.
…the cable system is highly interconnected with the transit network… This system is 82 years old and aside from cabin and cable updates, it still operates with the same infrastructure and span. Surely, this system is a testament to the reliability and durability of cable transport.”
“These days, we use them almost exclusively to transport skiers and snowboarders up snow slopes, but before the 1940s, aerial ropeways were a common means of cargo transport, not only in mountainous regions but also on flat terrain, with large-scale systems already built during the Middle Ages.”
TO THINK, HUMANS (USED TO) HUNT THESE GUYS FOR FUN — VIDEO CLIP
GORILLA CALAYA GIVES BIRTH AT SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL ZOO
NASA’S WORLD TOUR OF THE ATMOSPHERE REVEALS SURPRISES ALONG THE WAY
Since 2016, a team of scientists with 25 advanced instruments aboard NASA’s DC-8 research aircraft has sampled over 400 different gases and a broad range of airborne particles on month-long excursions from Alaska down the Pacific to New Zealand, then over to South America and up the Atlantic to Greenland, and across the Arctic Ocean. Far from land, the atmosphere above the ocean is where to find the cleanest air on the planet — at least in theory. Over the course of three deployments, and with their fourth and final trek beginning in late April, the team has found surprising levels of pollutants above the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans.
“As we descended the first time, we were stunned to find ourselves in a thick haze of smoke and dust that originated in Africa, thousands of kilometers to the east. The haze had an unappealing yellow-brown hue and was so thick we couldn’t see the ocean. All of the hundreds of pollutant chemicals we measure had very high amounts. On each revisit since that first one, we have found a similar pall extending for thousands of kilometers, spanning the entire tropical Atlantic Ocean.”
Excellent work. One can see the plumes of dust and some of the pollutants using Earth Nullschool.
David Begnaud
Verified account
@DavidBegnaud
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CONFIRMED:
Black out in Puerto Rico.
The entire island is without power. There is “ZERO power generation at this point”, according to a 2nd @AEEONLINE spokesman
A fault was detected on the line 50700 which starts in Aguirre Central
It may take 24 to 36 hours to restore
It didn’t impact the Indians – Twins game in San Juan. The game went for 16 innings too, over 5 hours. All in all, a great showing for the backup power generators at the stadium which were able to keep the field’s lights on and broadcasting equipment running in the middle of a darkened city.
Very interesting, to me anyway:
MUSHROOM CLOUDS BURST THROUGH NEUTRON STARS, AND NASA CAN WATCH IT HAPPEN
This is an early result from a project that could soon probe much deeper into neutron stars, which Arzoumanian called “the most outrageous objects that most people have never heard of.”
“When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: that thine alms may be in secret…”
REPUBLICANS BEFUDDLED BY TRUMP’S ABRUPT REVERSAL ON NEW RUSSIA SANCTIONS
President Donald Trump’s sudden decision not to impose tough new sanctions on Russia left many lawmakers dumbfounded this week and led some to question whether Trump had seriously undermined Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who had announced the sanctions just a day prior. Haley made headlines during an interview on Sunday when she announced that the Trump administration would be rolling out new sanctions against Russia as punishment for its continued support of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
Open Question(s): Has Donald Trump ever played in a team sport (or, is he just plane crazy)?
The only thing swirling around the media since Donald Trump was elected has been the allegations surrounding the Steele Dossier. One of the most controversial, taboo, and unproven allegations in the Steel Dossier is the accusation of a “pee tape.” Apparently, the Russian government has a video of Donald Trump partaking in a “Golden Shower.”
Ola senior Ron
Felix Sater is cooperating with a money laundering investigation. That’s bad news for Trump.
The Financial Times reported Thursday morning that Felix Sater, former business partner of President Donald Trump with deep ties to the Mafia and Russian government, is cooperating in an international investigation into an alleged money-laundering network. Sater has a history of channeling money from prominent families in the Eastern bloc into Trump properties. This could pose problems for Trump, given Sater’s history of outing former close associates in exchange for immunity.
I think it’s money laundering. He’s in the perfect business for it. Cohen is in on it too.
TESS to be launched by SpaceX this evening at 6:51 PM EDT.
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky. In a two-year survey of the solar neighborhood, TESS will monitor more than 200,000 stars for temporary drops in brightness caused by planetary transits. This first-ever spaceborne all-sky transit survey will identify planets ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants, around a wide range of stellar types and orbital distances. No ground-based survey can achieve this feat.
STUDY REVEALS NEW ANTARCTIC PROCESS CONTRIBUTING TO SEA LEVEL RISE AND CLIMATE CHANGE
“Our results suggest that a further increase in the supply of glacial meltwater to the waters around the Antarctic shelf may trigger a transition from a cold regime to a warm regime, characterized by high rates of melting from the base of ice shelves and reduced formation of cold bottom waters that support ocean uptake of atmospheric heat and carbon dioxide.”
This appears now they are saying added warming in Antarctica is going to be a natural process. So far there doesn’t seem much difference from all the past warming.
Interesting to google that name and see what images come up 🙂
NAOM
Yep, when you raise the temperature of ice above freezing, it melts… That’s a well known, ‘natural process‘.
And, a dash (splash) of salt helps the process. 🙂
Well, some “progress” is at work:
“In 2010, it took 388 billionaires to equal the wealth of the bottom half of the world‟s population;
by 2014, the figure had fallen to just 80 billionaires…”
“…what are those renewable energy system made from? Finite resources…
Just because renewable energy is ‘renewable’, it doesn’t mean the machines we require to harvest that energy are freed from the finite limits of the Earth’s resources.
There are grand schemes to power the world using renewable energy. The difficulty is that no one has bothered to check to see if the resources are available to produce that energy. Recent research suggests that the resources required to produce that level of capacity cannot currently be supplied.
…there is not enough to give everyone on the planet that same level of energy consumption…
What really matters here is not so much the material used in production, but the energy density of production. Energy density isn’t just a matter of how much energy it takes to produce an article, but how long that article lasts. That in turn affects the ‘return’ on the energy invested in its production – or EROEI…
While the ‘circular economy’ concept admittedly has the right ideas, it detracts from the most important aspects of our ecological crisis today – it is consumption that is the issue, not the simply the use of resources. Though the principle could be made to work for a relatively small proportion of the human population, it could never be a mainstream solution for the whole world because of its reliance on renewable energy technologies to make it function – and the over-riding resource limitations on harvesting renewable energy.
In order to reconcile the circular economy with the Second Law we have to apply not only changes to the way we use materials, but how we consume them. Moreover, that implies such a large reduction in resource use by the most affluent, developed consumers, that in no way does the image of the circular economy, portrayed by its proponents, match up to the reality of making it work for the majority of the world’s population.
…Practically then, it is nothing more than a salve for the conscience of affluent consumers who, deep down, are conscious enough to realize that their life of luxury will soon be over as the related ecological and economic crises bite further up the income scale.“
You do realize that the concept of a truly ‘Circular Economy’ is actually modeled on how ecosystems function, i.e.nothing is wasted.
Ecosystem Thermodynamics
Presentation given in the course of the
Master’s Programme
Environmental Management
– Module 2.1.1 “Ecosystem Analysis” –
Aiko Huckauf
Let us know when you come up with something better than the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s vision. And do drop us a line when you actually understand how ecosystems function, especially with regards thermodynamics.
As energy is from a practical point of view is not limited – we only use a very small percentage of the incoming sun light – the simple arguement of CMI is of course nonsense.
The EROEI is > 10 for PV, between 30-95 for wind turbines. There is even according to Hall no issue with a society which is powered with such generators.
When one $200, 60 pound, solar panel can produce almost $2000 of electricity (current US rates) in a half cloudy region nowhere near the equator, I question any EROEI below 20 to 1. Probably more like 30:1 to 40:1 since the energy to build it would have to be less than half the cost.
So magic, Ulen…
Solar is ✨like this✨, and wind is ✨like that✨ and all will appear, because it is so.
Bear in mind that you are telling us that we are to use this incoming sunlight through the lense of industry and government…
Have you been reading the news and/or know anything about history in those regards?
” Just like shareholders of a dying company, the leadership decide how best to screw over the people, the very ones to whom they originally sold their paper stock certificates in exchange for a promise of some return…
Government begins to eat its own people. It does this through dilution or inflation – issuing more debt on top of older debt, then digitally printing up money as a bookkeeping gimmick that would get private companies investigated not just by the SEC, but by the attorney general for prosecution. It is called embezzlement…
When government embezzles, it does so on the backs of its own people while lying to them at the same time that it is their savior…” ~ Andrew Solomon
“The fourth dynamic of Central State expansion is the State’s ontological imperative to expand. The State has only one mode of being, expansion. It has no concept of, or mechanisms for, contraction.
…once the State controls the entire economy and society, it can transfer systemic risk to others: to other nations, to taxpayers, etc.
In effect, the State’s prime directive is to cut the causal connection between risk and gain so that the State can retain the gain and transfer the risk to others. The separation of risk from gain is called moral hazard, and the key characteristic of moral hazard can be stated very simply: People who are exposed to risk and consequence act very differently than those who are not exposed to risk and consequence.” ~ Charles Hugh-Smith
“There appears nothing on that page that talks about equability and/or pure/direct democracy, anarchy, permaculture’s fundamental principles of Care of Earth and Care of People, and/or stuff like that, is there?
Show me where and we may have something, otherwise it’s just more force-/status-/elitist-driven hand-wavey pixie-dust unicorn stuff, wrapped in sparkley white-and-green paint-jobs that dupe the likes of you.”
“Previous civilizations did not decline and/or collapse because of fossil fuels, so fossil fuels are not ‘public enemy number one’, despite their seriousness.
And a circular, beige, hexagonal, blue, trapezoidal or whatever shape or color so-called economy is not going to help in that regard if it is still fetishizing a particular form/model of profit, elitism, or growth (over people and equable/democratic control) for example, despite grandiose words interspersed with false dichotomy fallacies and status-quo plugs, such as in comments on fora like these.” ~ Caelan MacIntyre
“Permaculture is very explicit with its ‘Care of Earth’ and ‘Care of People’ first and foremost. Without those too tenets at the very least, any so-called (status-quo-contrived/spokespersoned) economy, will likely be going nowhere (and worse).” ~ Caelan MacIntyre
“…the circular economy framework lacks an elaborated description of the social dimension of sustainability… Social benefits are often lacking… Moreover, people’s basic needs at a global level may still be further undermined by abuses of power, unhealthy or unfair labour and living conditions or a disrespect of human rights. As such, the circular economy framework does not necessarily fulfill all the dimensions of sustainability.”
“Permaculture is very explicit with its ‘Care of Earth’ and ‘Care of People’ first and foremost. Without those too tenets at the very least, any so-called (status-quo-contrived/spokespersoned) economy, will likely be going nowhere (and worse).” ~ Caelan MacIntyre
You do realize that we already have almost 8 billion humans on the planet, right? Despite your pretense of caring for the Earth and the People on it, you do not have any practical plan for the caring of either, at the scales that are necessary!
Your talk is cheap and is not based on any sense of reality. Even if Permaculture were the answer to all the world’s problems, and it most certainly isn’t, you still can’t go cold turkey from our current admittedly unsustainable industrial civilization, with all it’s deeply flawed economic systems and varied forms of governments, with all the isms, ideologies, religions and political views held by all 8 billion of us without killing most of the planet in the process.
And you, with your arrogant, holier than thou, know it all, simplistic, preachy attitude, sure as hell are the last person in the world to be in line to tell everyone else, how to find resolutions to the very complex existential dilemmas that face all of humanity at this particular junction in our history.
Let us know when you personally are capable of feeding, say a thousand people. Surely you can do that at least that much, right?! Then give us a plan on how you are going to scale that up while creating some semblance of civilization that provides things like housing, electricity, education, healthcare, arts, science technology etc… Give us some hint as to how you will tackle the gross inequalities around the world, how will you resolve conflicts, civil wars, famine, pandemics, climate change, ocean acidification, ecological devastation species loss?
If you think that shouting at people from your comfortable high horse, telling them to repent and see that the holy light of Permaculture is the only way, then I suggest you really need to re-examine how you interact with people.
Good Luck!
“Caelan, I tend to agree with a lot of your positions…” ~ Fred Magyar
Oh ya? Awesome! ^u^
“…and I think I understand where you are coming from and also how frustrating it can be to be surrounded by people who are oblivious to what you perceive as self evident truths…” ~ Fred Magyar
?
“…I do however have quite a bit of experience in dealing with people from all walks of life and multiple cultural, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds… In any case lashing out in anger at those who aren’t there yet, IMHO is counter productive.” ~ Fred Magyar
“I will admit that I have not rigorously followed my own rules for polite and civil discourse on this site recently… I have decided to make a conscious decision to stop the futile infantile ad hominems that many of us here are now engaging in with ever increasing frequency…” ~ Fred Magyar
“Its only 300 years old. Obvious the climate was different 300 year ago. Nothing about nature is static, but humans like to think it is static or can be made static.” ~ TechGuy
“No asshole, you missed my point completely…
Fuck you and everybody who thinks like you!” ~ Fred Magyar
“Arguing with Nick is akin to playing Whack a Mole! It’s entertaining for a while but it soon loses it’s allure.” ~ FMagyar
“…gave up my moral compass eons ago!
…I Have long since upgraded my moral compass to a hedonistic immoral relativistic GPS, …sooo much more satisfying to get around with, baby!…” ~ Fred Magyar
There are research teams around the world dedicated to finding a remedy for the growing plastic pollution crisis, but now it seems that one group of scientists have found a feasible answer — and they stumbled upon it by accident. Researchers studying a newly-discovered bacterium found that with a few tweaks, the bug can be turned into a mutant enzyme that starts eating plastic in a matter of days, compared to the centuries it takes for plastic to break down in the ocean.
The surprise discovery was made when scientists began investigating the structure of a bacterium found in a waste dump in Japan. The bug produced an enzyme, which the team studied using the Diamond Light Source, an intense beam of X-rays 10 billion times brighter than the sun. At first, the enzyme looked similar to one evolved by many kinds of bacteria to break down cutin, a natural polymer used by plants as a protective layer. But after some gentle manipulation, the team actually improved its ability to eat PET (polyethylene terephthalate), the type of plastic used in drinks bottles.
Since carpets are the final product in the recycle system, they invented a carpet bomb! 🙂
Heck, what could go wrong??
There are a variety of things that are designed for safe operation under the assumption of non-degradation of plastic.
Unfortunately my spleen is not doing so well today…
Why you might ask? Because:
Today, the spineless immoral imbeciles of the GOP in the Senate, confirmed Trump’s next NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine, a Republican congressman with no background in science and a climate change denialist to boot!
If rational thinking people are not outraged at this travesty they sure as hell should be!
A bleak new study describes the profound damage that climate change has wreaked on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Rising temperatures in 2016 “cooked” swathes of corals, the scientists found, causing the catastrophic die-off of almost 30 percent of the world’s largest coral reef system.
Global warming has already radically — and possibly permanently — transformed the reef’s ecology, according to the study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature. If action is not taken promptly and comprehensively to curb warming, it could be “game over” for the reef, scientists warned.
Abstract Global warming is rapidly emerging as a universal threat to ecological integrity and function, highlighting the urgent need for a better understanding of the impact of heat exposure on the resilience of ecosystems and the people who depend on them1. Here we show that in the aftermath of the record-breaking marine heatwave on the Great Barrier Reef in 20162, corals began to die immediately on reefs where the accumulated heat exposure exceeded a critical threshold of degree heating weeks, which was 3–4 °C-weeks. After eight months, an exposure of 6 °C-weeks or more drove an unprecedented, regional-scale shift in the composition of coral assemblages, reflecting markedly divergent responses to heat stress by different taxa. Fast-growing staghorn and tabular corals suffered a catastrophic die-off, transforming the three-dimensionality and ecological functioning of 29% of the 3,863 reefs comprising the world’s largest coral reef system. Our study bridges the gap between the theory and practice of assessing the risk of ecosystem collapse, under the emerging framework for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Ecosystems3, by rigorously defining both the initial and collapsed states, identifying the major driver of change, and establishing quantitative collapse thresholds. The increasing prevalence of post-bleaching mass mortality of corals represents a radical shift in the disturbance regimes of tropical reefs, both adding to and far exceeding the influence of recurrent cyclones and other local pulse events, presenting a fundamental challenge to the long-term future of these iconic ecosystems.
While the full paper in Nature is behind a paywall they seem to have provided a link from the Huffington Post site for us poorer citizen scientists to be able to read it as well. Warning, it is quite depressing reading.
The human yearning to connect with other intelligent life-forms runs deep, and it has become the driving force behind a dazzling range of scientific pursuits. From the SETI Institute’s radio sweeps of the sky, to the discovery of liquid water on neighboring worlds, to the thousands of exoplanets detected over the past two decades, there have been major gains in chasing one of the ultimate cosmic mysteries—whether or not we are alone in the universe.
But in our rush to search for life by peering into deep space, have we overlooked the merits of looking for it in deep time? Earth is the only planet that we’re absolutely certain can support a technologically advanced species, yet little thought has been lent to the possibility that during its 4.5 billion year lifespan, our own world might have produced more than one industrialized civilization.
“It actually hasn’t been explored that much,” climatologist Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, told me over the phone. “It never gets brought up as a potential thing that you want to look for.”
So, Schmidt paired up with University of Rochester physicist Adam Frank to co-author a paper entitled “The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record?” The hypothesis borrows its “Silurian” title from the fictional reptilian species depicted in the science fiction franchise Doctor Who—these scaly Silurians flourished on Earth many millions of years before the dawn of our own society.
“There’s lots of things that are going well for [human civilization], but there’s a big price that’s being paid in the ecology and biology,” Schmidt told me. He emphasized that many of these consequences can seem to be “out of sight, out of mind” due to conveniences like sewage infrastructure and garbage relocation. But when considered in totality, anthropogenic activities really add up, and impact the geological record. “All of the waste and footprint is being hidden from us, but it isn’t hidden from the planet,” he said.
.
The word intelligence is missing half of it’s definition.
In keeping with the upcoming Earth Day, here is a website that will remind you of what was and maybe what can be. https://welikia.org/
Maybe someday every day will be Earth Day.
Maybe someday every day will be Earth Day.
Not with 9+ billion people on the planet.
From the link:
What we know so far: Through the Mannahatta Project, we learned that the center of one of the world’s largest and most built-up cities was once a remarkably diverse, natural landscape of hills, valleys, forests, fields, freshwater wetlands, salt marshes, beaches, springs, ponds and streams, supporting a rich and abundant community of wildlife and sustaining people for thousands of years before Europeans arrived on the scene in 1609. It turns out that place celebrated for its cultural diversity, was acclaimed by early settlers for its biological diversity and fertility: home to bears, wolves, songbirds, and salamanders, with clear, clean waters jumping with fish, and porpoises and whales in the harbor. In fact, with over 55 different ecological communities, Mannahatta’s biodiversity per acre rivaled that of national parks like Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Great Smoky Mountains!
Fred, New Jersey was even more diverse and full of natural wonders before the area got overrun by people and their Ant(hropo) Hills. Worse than termites and noisy too.
My calculations show a maximum of 10 billion then ????.
But by or before then, much like warm ice cream, the place will be a sticky melted mess with flies.
Jellyfish pie anyone?
That site shows a world already far depleted in large (and some medium and small ones) animals with much of the diversity of just a few thousand years before already gone.
The best of our wilderness areas was well diminished long before European colonization occurred. Our skewed view gives us no real appreciation of how fantastic the natural world was.
Now people go out in the fourth or fifth growth woods, a forest fairly empty of animal life and nothing very large at all, thinking this is a natural scene. It’s a desert of diminished trees and shrubbery. Life is now struggling in defective pockets, it just needs to hang on long enough.
Happy Diminished Earth Day!
This guy is hilarious.
TRUMP TARGETS OPEC OVER HIGH OIL PRICES
Donald Trump has criticized the Opec oil producers’ group, saying crude prices are “artificially very high”. In a tweet, the US President said this was “no good” and “would not be accepted”.
In a tweet, the US President said this was “no good” and “would not be accepted”.
JEEZ! What an absolute fucking moron!
Well, as USA is now a net exporter it can refuse to buy that overpriced gunk and just rely on its own resource, can’t it? 😉
NAOM
Uncovering the other big problem as one problem is partially solved. A study of Los Angeles air VOC content showed that now, since cars give off a lot less than they did, personal products and common products are a big contributor to air pollution. Natural gas production is also a problem.
Well, this could be of interest:
https://imgur.com/bhpa2nR
Winter’s cold just isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Will unusually cold springs such as this year’s become increasingly common in the future?
A significant area has been more than 15 °F below normal so far in April.
Yep another irrelevant Blue Blob post brought to you by Frisky Bob and meanwhile this past February, in the dead of the Arctic winter, temperatures were 45° above average. Ever hear of the Jet Stream? Well it is being disrupted by climate change.
BTW, GF, posted this in the last thread, what part of her talk do you not understand?!
Doctor Jennifer Francis does some good talks on this.
Jetstream discussion at around 31 minutes in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtmuBoolHQg
Hey, and in Germany we get more than 80 degree Fahrenheit next week – “great” for spring. Should be just another historical record.
And when it’s too cold in South Dakota – just make a vacation in Alaska for warming up. It’s a “little” bit of mixed up at the moment.
“Will unusually cold springs such as this year’s become increasingly common in the future?”
There’s more research showing its a possibility. GLOBAL COOLING: 2017 to 2053
Agriculture Must Prepare.
There’s much much more research to read at the link provided.
There’s much much more research to read at the link provided.
ROFL!! Are you fucking kidding us?! Theodore White is an astrologer!
GLOBAL ASTROLOGY
globalastrologyblog.blogspot.com/
‘More Clouds, Less Sunlight, Torrential Rains, Great Floods, Heavy Snowfall & Colder Temperatures Europe, Russia, Asia, North & South America Greatly Impacted. Global Forecast by. Theodore White, astromet.Sci. If you are reading this then you will come to understand that the world is on the cusp of an historic change.
The only thing I’ve come to understand is that inmates are now running the asylum!
Phrenology was ahead of it’s time. 🙂
A head of its time.
Ha!
Anyone who believes in phrenology should have their head examined.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnG8nOK7nqM
Away in a madhouse
H.P. Lovecraft
Away in a madhouse, confined to my bed,
From visions and nightmares that filled me with dread.
The doctor has sweetly inserted a probe
To sever completely my prefrontal lobe.
Electroshock therapy, mind-numbing pills:
They change my behavior to cure all my ills.
I love the asylum, my own padded cell.
I’ll stay here forever, for outside it’s hell.
Good Evening Mr. Magyar,
I shall admit, I am somewhat surprised to see Theodore White’s name appear on this discussion board. At the same time, I am quite familiar with his work, having taking a keen interest to his intensive climatology research a number of YEARS ago.
You may say whatever you wish in regard to the astrological underpinnings of said research, but I have found that many of Mr. White’s long-term forecasts (those which cover no more than perhaps one or two single seasons) have FREQUENTLY displayed a much higher degree of accuracy than any of the long-term forecasts shaped by those educated in what you likely consider the mainstream or contemporary sciences.
With the preceding in mind, the primary issue arises of how many said students of modern atmospheric sciences have been educated in the ways in which celestial bodies other than earth never-the-less interact with one another to produce the weather we experience on earth? The answer is likely few-to-none, yet earth simply does NOT exist in a vacuum. What happens elsewhere in space can AND does impact the lower atmosphere of our own planet, which (naturally) impacts both our short- and long-term weather observations.
Be well,
Walt
With the preceding in mind, the primary issue arises of how many said students of modern atmospheric sciences have been educated in the ways in which celestial bodies other than earth never-the-less interact with one another to produce the weather we experience on earth? The answer is likely few-to-none, yet earth simply does NOT exist in a vacuum.
Yes, to be fair, I can think of two celestial bodies that do have some impact on the earth’s weather, namely the sun and the moon. The moon’s gravitational pull does have some effect on both the atmosphere and the tides. The planets, not so much.
“The planets, not so much.”
True, not on a weekly or even generational basis, but on a century or longer basis, yes the planets have dramatic effects on the weather. A mile of ice or not on the ancestral villages and 5C cooler/hotter over the whole planet is probably noticeable even to climate deniers and Republicans. Well, on second thought, maybe not. But it’s all natural, so no problem.
BTW, I have ducks in my trees again. Is that some kind of portent? 🙂
Yesterday I actually saw a duck sitting on a picket fence. It looked a tad uncomfortable to say the least.
I’m glad you have worked out the cycles of volcanic eruption and continental drift.
Nuttin’ ta do wit dat Hickory.
“earth simply does NOT exist in a vacuum.”
Wait, what?
Things are looking worse every day in Venezuela.
It may not be much longer until an outright civil war erupts. I have a hard time understanding why it hasn’t happened already, but it’s definitely smoldering along, and is apt to erupt into roaring flames anytime.
Go to Google News and just type in Venezuela and hit enter.
That was going to happen two years ago!
But we shall see——-
In the meantime, Comey’s book is out.
Unfortunately for me, the nearest local book store hasn’t got it, and won’t get it, for at least a week or two. Guess I’ll have to buy it online, lol.
A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership
Not until Tuesday April 17, 2018
Comey interview transcript.
http://abcnews.go.com/Site/transcript-james-comeys-interview-abc-news-chief-anchor/story?id=54488723
Time to get out and take care of business, but here’s one more.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/3/8/17084158/wind-turbine-power-energy-blades
“A capacity factor of 60+ percent isn’t quite “baseload,” but it sure looks a lot less variable. So turbines like the Haliade-X would be more valuable even if the price of wind electricity stayed the same.
But of course it won’t stay the same; it has dropped 65 percent since 2009. A recent NREL report projected that innovations in wind power technology (of which bigger turbines is one of many) could drive it down another 50 percent by 2030. (Researchers at the University of Virginia are working on a design for an offshore turbine that will tower, no lie, 1,640 feet, higher than the empire state building.)
Say new US wind turbines reach an average hub height of 460 feet by 2025, roughly in line with current projections. According to NREL data, such turbines could hit capacity factors of 60+ percent across more than 750,000 square miles of US territory, and 50+ percent across 1.16 million square miles. ”
If we are willing to pay the price of building the necessary long distance transmission lines, we have the necessary wind and solar resources to actually do it… to go to one hundred percent renewable electricity…… given time enough.
But we’re going to need a hell of a lot of storage which hopefully will be dropping in cost, just as the costs of wind and solar power are dropping.
Hi OFM,
As long as there is sufficient interconnection of the US grid and widely dispersed wind and solar resources, overbuilding total wind and solar capacity so that electricity generated over an average year is 3 times average load would provide about 97% of average load hours from wind and solar, the balance could be provided by hydro, batteries, fuel cells, wind gas, and vehicle to grid along with demand power pricing that shows current power prices on a monitor at home or business and allows consumers and businesses to adjust their consumption based on current prices in real time.
See table 3 at link below
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378775312014759
Note that storage is relatively expensive so this would be the least cost option, overbuilding capacity is cheapest based on this 2013 study.
Hi Dennis,
Overbuilding three times is going to be expensive in and of itself.
My personal opinion is that we are collectively apt to be a lot better off maintaining enough fossil fueled and maybe nuclear capacity to get by with less overbuilding, and not getting all religious about doing away with the last ten or twenty percent of fossil fuel emissions due to generating electricity.
It seems very likely to me this would be far less expensive,in the short to medium term, meaning we could put the savings from doing less overbuilding of wind and solar capacity into conservation and efficiency programs, or any environmentally sound other program that makes a big bang per dollar spent.
I’m all for keeping the pedal to the metal on both wind and solar power, but we shouldn’t forget that if we take say thirty years to build out enough renewable capacity to give up fossil fuel electricity, as opposed to say twenty years………….
That extra ten years means ten more years to adapt to doing more with less, in every respect, from running factories to running household appliances. Ten more years to develop really cheap and durable batteries, ten more years to build more efficient electric cars, etc.
Of course in the very long run, we will be more or less compelled to give up fossil fuels due to depletion if for no other reason.
But lets not forget the time value of money!
For now, and for some time to come, maybe for another decade or two, we can do about as well, or better, spending our money on improving energy efficiency and conservation as we can by generating more renewable electricity.
We’re going to overbuild. At least in the US.
This is because this is not a centrally planned economy. A centrally planned economy might try to build an optimal plan. We have nothing even approximating central planning. We have the “wild west” of the free market, with booms and busts.
Solar and wind are in booms. Therefore they will overbuild, before a bust.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
We could replace all fossil fuels from 2040 to 2050, if non fossil fuel energy continues to grow at the rates of the past 10 years. It won’t happen overnight, but fossil fuels will become expensive as they peak and the cost of alternatives will fall. I am fine with using nuclear for backup, but it will be cheaper in the future to over build wind and solar and use times of excess power output to produce synthetic fuel which can be used in thermal power plants for backup.
Climate change is a concern and we should move away from fossil fuel as quickly as is reasonable.
Hi Dennis,
This study doesn’t say that 3x overbuilding is necessary, or the optimal least-cost solution possible. It says that 3x overbuilding can do the job, that’s all. Sufficient but not necessary.
The study had limited computing resources, so they didn’t try all the possible combinations – in particular, they tested batteries for all storage needs, and they tested wind-gas for all storage needs, but they didn’t test a combination of batteries for daily storage, and wind-gas for seasonal storage: that’s a much cheaper option, and it would allow much less overbuilding.
Does that make sense?
Nick,
It showed the least cost solution for the options they considered. To cover 99% of load hours without fossil fuels 3X was the best solution, but you are correct that wind gas was not considered, possibly that would be cheaper than overbuilding, one would have to run the study to find out. It’s possible that production of wind gas and running peaker plants might not be the least cost solution as the cost of new wind and solar power plants falls over time. A scenario with 90% coverage of load hours requires about 2 times average load hours output from wind, solar and backup (no wind gas included as backup).
Another possibility not considered in the study is hydro and pumped hydro as backup. Demand power pricing was also not considered.
So I agree, 3 times overbuild is likely a worst case scenario, probably 2 to 2.5 times (wind and solar output) average load would be adequate.
Greening of Antarctica—Professor Jane Francis
Professor Jane Francis describes how fossil plants in the Arctic and Antarctic provide clues to the planet’s climate over geological time. Over 50 million years ago both poles were covered by luxuriant vegetation, which gradually declined and disappeared as ice sheets advanced. Today, both regions are again showing dramatic warming, and if this continues unchecked in the coming centuries, parts of Antarctica may become green again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwwxkZRHVwI
“Per recent research, that would be 16-33% of the energy storage needed to allow for 80% solar+wind running the whole of the United States. This assumes you have a working semi-decentralized grid that does not exist. Power companies may NEVER allow such bidirectional power and revenue flow. Not going to happen in the SouthEast USA Anytime soon. Do not bet your life on the Grid!
http://www.thestate.com/latest-news/article208435464.html
Informative graphs of Module and Inverter Marker Share. Market Leader Solar Edge gear has ZERO resiliency. There is no simple constant voltage output mode. Worthless without Strong central Grid or a fragile/propriety Korean battery that is not really a battery. How many missiles are aimed at S Korea?
Energy systems must be load and Battery Agnostic! It’s up to Solar City if Tesla Powerwalls function without internet. Failure to plan is planning to FAIL.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/04/11/the-customer-has-spoken-74-want-energy-storage/
We need more of this! 3 minutes of Science denying session in Congress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh-cLKPRJgo
On a side note– Scooter gets to walk!
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/13/scooter-libby-trump-pardons-cheney-aide-convicted-of-lying-to-fbi
(Probably would of been a bad name for incarceration? )
I just could not resist this title. However, it turned out to be quite an exceptional seminar exposing some of the details of how evolutionary paleontology works and doesn’t work.
The Giant Horned Crocodiles That Ate Our Ancestors
The Department of Geoscience is a unit of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Brochu specializes in vertebrate paleontology and phylogenetics, which are evolutionary relationships between organisms. His research combines the study of modern animals and the fossil record to demonstrate how evolutionary relationships can be determined through time. He is an expert in crocodiles and travels the world to research specimens in museum collections.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTqOef6H5MM
Just be careful next time you go near the water in a warm region.
Just be careful next time you go near the water in a warm region.
I’d be more worried about driving on any highway… 😉
But I’ll bite and watch presentation!
It’s not as snappy as Jack Horner’s presentation but something one can get his teeth into.
On the more humorous side, here is how to make dinosaur names go extinct and cause a major problem at museums. Hiding in plain sight.
Jack Horner: Shape-shifting dinosaurs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQa11RMCeSI
Anthropology Of The Internet: A Cursory Glance
Random two-day sample from the last thread for GoneFishing:
Yikes!
Maybe it’s nothing, and/or does not reflect other threads/days/people, but this sample appears as essentially entire days spent at one site, never mind online on a computer.
So why or how is this relevant, and on a site like this? Well we’ll just let you think about it.
New Jerusalem
Maybe POB should have a chat room or chat box. There seems to be enough people around during the day looking for conversation.
The Gish Galloping Self-Parroting Gonefishing Club
And/Or maybe change the title of this blog?
What with the galloping number of their posts spread throughout a day, their apparent difficulty with ‘the outside/other‘ (what might contrast with or threaten their own notions), they seem to function quite well as their own parrot, gish gallop and club, their ‘projections‘, which, unsurprisingly, don’t appear to definitionally pass muster, and in any case are left unqualified, unsurprisingly again.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04086-4
A couple recent studies are “circulating” through the science world. Saw a post in weather underground and many major publications are going with similar headlines “slowest in 1,500 years” etc.
this idea is of course not new, but until recently there haven’t been direct measurements of current flow rates (they’ve got a decade of data) and sea surface temps have gotten very precise in recent decades so they could fold that in as well to extrapolate out farther.
the other study is using grain size on the bottom of the ocean? rock polishers around the world raise their voice in a collective “hooray”.
Someone posted this really fantastic talk over at realclimate.org
https://client.cntv.at/egu2018/ml1
European Geosciences Union
General Assembly 2018
Vienna | Austria | 8–13 April 2018 | Webstreams
EGU.eu
Alexander von Humbold Medal Lecture by Filippo Giorgi
Granted it is just one more presentation in an ever growwing torrent of scientific findings and empirical data from multiple fields of inquiriy. However if one is willing to invest even a modest amount of effort in looking at the available science, the elephant examined by all those individually blind wise men, becomes ever clearer and harder to deny.
Even if we should choose to read only a thousand, scientific papers from say a 100 different fields and their subfields following the guidelines set forth in Nature: https://www.nature.com/nclimate/about/content
So about 3000 words per paper. If one compares that to reading a book at 250-300 words per page. A 55,000 word book should be about 200 manuscript pages. That comes out to roughly one book’s worth of relevant science per week. Not that much really. One can randomly pick a paper from just about any scientific field that is somehow related to climate change.
As an example I’ll take this paper:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10658-011-9934-8
Are plant diseases too much ignored in the climate change debate?
If one should take that url and enter it into an AI science reaserch site such as IRIS.ai
It alone will generate 381 related papers and group them by concept.
Sure, not all of them will be useful. However no one can legitimately deny the implications and consequences of climate change without making at least an effort to cast a wide net in the very vast available scientific literature.
Now if there are people out there who seriously believe that there can be some kind of global conspiracy among scientists across multiple fields of science, there is not much point in having a conversation with them.
Cheers!
Dennis: How close are you to receiving your Tesla Model 3?
Musk sure is something else, isn’t he?
My daughter picked one up at the headquarters about 3 weeks ago.
Wow. How does she like it so far?
Here’s JACK RICKARD’s report on taking delivery of his first of two Tesla Model 3s.
http://evtv.me/2018/03/vin-5yj3e1ea0jf005868/
There are two embedded videos. In the first 30 or so minutes of the first video he tells the good, the bad and the ugly. Then in the second video he performs what he calls a rectal exam of the model 3. He has since received a wrecked model 3 which he will be dismantling for deeper insights.
One line seemed to stand out:
” The moment of the electric car is finally here. It’s been a ten year ride here at EVTV…It is my belief that we are quickly blazing through a firm early adopter advance, and the curve is about to turn vertical drawing in the super consumer and prosumer elements.”
And that, from a Trump supporting, climate change denialist. 😉
As far as EVs and renewables are concerned, he is right on the money, along with the likes of Tony Seba.
IMHO, whatever his politics, he embodies the true independent American entrepreneurial spirit of the backyard inventor.
From almost nothing fresh about the Model 3 a couple of weeks ago, now you get a long string of new hits when you google it.
It seems that production is now well over two thousand cars per week, indicating that a lot of problems involving suppliers and the assembly plant must have been solved, and leaving more men and talent available to work on the remaining problems.
My guess is that Tesla WILL hit five thousand cars per week within the near future, maybe even within the next six to eight months.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes a year. Nobody else in the car biz has ever expanded production from SCRATCH any faster, to my recollection.
Bringing out a new model when you’re already a big manufacturer is one thing. Adding a hundred thousand units to a million is only a ten percent ramp. You have the people, equipment, and parts suppliers in place, for the most part.
Tesla is in a different game altogether, a little company going for production increases in whole number increments.
Maybe I will live long enough, and still be driving, when today’s new electric cars are ratted out and cheap. I have never spent any significant amount of money on things that depreciate as fast as a new car, and never will.
I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night for feeling guilty about such foolishness, considering I could get three times the satisfaction out of the money by building a lake, or buying another little piece of land to maintain as a miniature wildlife preserve, or donate it to a charity or environmental organization.
Considering the large amount of new EV’s coming out worldwide from many companies, I would not be surprised to see BEV production hit 10 million per year globally in five years to 7 years.
The world’s largest car market just announced an imminent end to gas and diesel cars
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/9/13/16293258/ev-revolution
But not to cars…
I’ve also read that this kind of imminence is not necessarily imminent, what with deadline extensions and so forth.
And it’s not like where the remaining FF dregs are are necessarily peaceful either.
It might help to take a look at, or at least reflect on, the effects of car culture in general on the planet before espousing any of it, whether explicitly or implicitly.
Sometimes an authoritarian government with lots of technically literate people at or near the top anticipates and deals with problems more effectively than democratic or other authoritarian governments.
France is a democratic country, but French technocrats have enormous power, and are responsible for the fact that France has an electrically driven rail system, and more nuclear power , proportionately, than any other country…… the decision to go with these programs being based in very large part on French national security.
The Chinese so far as I know have a LOT of engineers and scientists in positions where they are capable of either setting policy, or at least exerting great influence on policy…… and they know that China will never have enough oil, or gas, or even coal, to support the expectations of the Chinese people for a better future……..
And they’re doing things proactively in a way that we Yankees aren’t, in terms of securing their economic future.
The only other country, in my opinion, that has such a realistic picture of what the future will be like, in respect to depleting and extremely expensive fossil fuels, over the coming generations, is Germany……….. as the result of the German people being well educated, and well aware of their own national history, and the lack of fossil fuel reserves of their own.
No matter how much they spend on renewable energy, electrified transportation, insulation, mass transit, etc, etc….. they see that spending it now is going to be infinitely more economical than paying the price, in money and security, later on, of still being dependent on imported fossil fuels.
We Yankees are of course burning thru our own remaining endowment of one time gifts of nature as if we don’t believe in tomorrow.
Maybe we’ll luck out and renewable energy will get to be so cheap and plentiful we really won’t need coal, oil, and gas, except maybe as industrial feedstocks.
But the proper conservative course of action would be to do all we can to conserve our ff endowment, stretching it out and making it last as long as possible………. because there are no GUARANTEES that renewable energy will ever be that cheap and plentiful.
OK, so BEV production — passenger cars only, not counting buses and trucks — was 1.2 million (globally) in 2017, up 57% from 2016, according to InsideEVs, who are usually fairly reliable.
The 50% annual growth is consistent (ranges from 40% to 60%). So 10 million per year will probably happen in 5 to 7 years, yes. Actually I’d expect 20 million per year in 7 years.
This might be an underestimate if the growth rate is accelerating (it seems to be).
For financial reasons, Tesla really really wants to hit 5000/week (or at least 4000/week) by October 1. I think this is actually pretty likely. Musk claims he sees “the path out of hell” clearly at this point; if the bottlenecks are late in the production line, they can always throw duplication at it (much harder if they’re earlier in the line).
The thing is that electric cars are fundamentally a better technology than combustion engine cars, IF you have a good battery.
The whole concept stands and falls with the battery. And now that batteries are getting really good, it looks like EVs are inevitable.
They are loving it. No long trips yet. They believe that it will be big enough for them with 1-2 kids. but I doubt that. Time will tell.
Shallow sand,
As far as I can tell, not close. Currently the non-owners (owners get to jump the line) with reservations on April 1, 2016 are getting invitations to configure their Model 3, with delivery about a month later (3 to 6 weeks). My “reservation” was more than a year later and last check the Tesla website says late 2018 for my expected delivery, typically things run behind schedule at Tesla so early 2019 (Jan or Feb) is probably more realistic.
Short answer, 9 to 12 months.
LOL! Could someone please remind me as to which planet we have actually been living on these past few days?!
https://southfront.org/f-k-trump-infowars-alex-jones-fiercely-reacts-to-trumps-strikes-on-syria-video/
“F–K TRUMP”: INFOWARS’ ALEX JONES FIERCELY REACTS TO TRUMP’S STRIKES ON SYRIA (VIDEO)
This is all a distraction from the Mueller investigation for the Trump base. Including the Syria chemical attack.
Wag the Dog
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/greenlands-biggest-fire-is-a-warning-for-its-future/
What percentage of Greenland is green already during high summer, anybody know?
20.8346268%. Actually, I’ve no idea, that’s just a guess. You may recognize the 0.83…. as Gauss’s constant. Perhaps, like me, you were expected to know such numbers to nine, or so, decimal places. Well, it comes in handy when creating passwords. 🙂
Hi gang,
I am now living in Mexico, in a little town called Ajijic, pronounced Ah-hie-hic, just south of Guadalajara. Remember J is pronounced as H in Spanish. I am down here for at least one year. Well, it could be less or it could be more. But I am here to write a book. The book is not about Peak Oil or even world energy in general. It is about the world as it is. It is also about the debate between science and religion. And in the last few decades, a new entry has entered upon the scene. There is science, there is religion, and then there is the new atheism. Believe it or not, all three are in conflict with each other. That is true even though the new atheism seems to be totally unaware that most scientists are in disagreement with them.
And I am in disagreement with all three of them.
And that is what my book, my short book, will be all about.
Anyway, I will be posting an email to friends and family, about once a month, perhaps a little more often.
I will also be reporting on life in Ajijic, just in the off chance that anyone is interested. The email will be sent BCC, blind carbon copy. Your address will be the only one appearing in the address bar. And if you send a “reply all” I will be the only one receiving your reply… sorry about that.
So, if you are interested in reading my once a month or so email from Ajijic, then post me at: DarwinianOne@gmail.com
Thank you,
Ron Patterson
Bienvenido a Mexico y Jalisco.
NAOM
I have no idea what the fuck you just posted. I do not speak a word of Spanish. Well, I do know Si. Other than that I am lost.
Bienvenido = welcome
You going to need to learn, even in that area. I hope it goes well for you.
NAOM
Hot tip: No means no. Now I’ve doubled your vocabulary.
But careful, sometimes it means not.
Have fun down there.
Good luck Ron—
I spent most of last year in Puerto Vallarta.
Thanks for the update, Ron and best with your new location and book.
The Tesla Model 3 is not an electric car for the masses. I’m not saying it’s a bad car, just that it’s not really an affordable electric car.
The Model S is like super luxury electric, the Model 3 is luxury electric. There are a handful of electric cars for ordinary people (Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt, etc.) but even they require some subsidy to really believe they are affordable.
To this very day, there are no electric cars to compare with the Corolla, Camry, much less standard issue SUVs, pickup trucks, etc.
Would I personally buy and drive an electric car? Only as a secondary vehicle. There is nothing…NOTHING to compare with having your gasoline car. It is truly the one invention which has led to mobile freedom for the average person.
“Would I personally buy and drive an
electric carautomobile? Only as a secondary vehicle. There is nothing…NOTHING to compare with having yourgasoline carhorse and buggy. It is truly the one invention which has led to mobile freedom for the average person.”See what I did there?
Give it another five years or so and there will probably be EVs with ranges of over 200 miles selling brand new for less than the price of a Toyota Yaris/Honda Fit/ Nissan Sentra. Tesla has already conquered the “super luxury” segment, is beginning to cause disarray in the “luxury” segment, is set to ruffle quite a few feathers in the class 8 freight truck market come late 2019 and is set to decimate the “exotic performance” segment when they start delivering the 2020 Roadster. There is one domino left to fall. The Ford F-150/Chevy Silverado/SUV segment. I am looking forward to what Tesla has up their sleeves in that department. We should see some sort of fancy reveal before the end of this year.
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
― Henry Ford
And yes, I do know that there is some doubt as to whether or not Henry Ford actually said those exact words but the point still stands! 😉
I wonder how much a company such as GM or Ford could knock off the price of a basic electric car if they were willing to build one that’s bare bones, JUST a car, or pickup truck, without any unnecessary money being spent on such features as air conditioning, clear coat paint, etc.
Maybe in a few more years, back yard gearheads will be able to buy a complete kit, competitively priced, that will convert a typical car or pickup truck to an electric vehicle.
All that’s really needed in the case of an ordinary compact pickup truck is a new rear axles assembly with the motor built into it, and a modular battery that can be arranged to fit under the hood and floor board where the engine, fuel tank, transmission are normally located, plus a wiring harness.
An older pickup truck converted this way can be expected to last more or less indefinitely so long as it doesn’t RUST away. Everything else is easily repairable.
The battery is the big deal. The motor / axle assembly can be completely standardized. You can swap the rear axle assembly from one make to another easily, it’s done every day.
There are tens of millions of older pickup trucks around that would be ideally suited to such projects. You can buy one with a worn out engine and transmission, but otherwise in good condition for as little as a thousand dollars, sometimes even less.
Because batteries have less energy per kilogram than gasoline, electric car makers are investing a lot in aluminum bodies.
Aa a side benefit, aluminum doesn’t really rust the way steel does. So electric cars will have longer lives than combustion engine cars, even ignoring the fact that they are much simpler.
It will take another 5-10 years until the numbers really grow, in my opinion.
The reason? Batteries.
The current Lithium-Ion design with lots of cobalt needed doesn’t scale to real mass production. First anything not-abundant has to be eliminated from battery design before they can get really cheap.
The first big generation of solid state batteries is expected to hit the street in 2025 – then a block for a cheap 200 mile car can created with about 150 KG weight.
The next generation, perhapt 2030 can then work with aluminiun / natrium / magnesium.
That’s the moment things can get really cheap, together with big stationary batteries. Before this, I don’t expect much impact on oil usage ( and CO2 production ).
But in the moment we’ll run against the wall of cobalt supply.
Work is ongoing, but at the very early stages, to make solid state Lithium batteries that do not have the wet electrolyte. I don’t know if that eliminates or reduces Cobalt (anyone?) plus the initial work has been done on existing battery production equipment which means an easier path to production. Should yield a doubling in capacity with higher safety bringing down costs.
NAOM
EDIT PS MIT is doing a lot of work on high temperature batteries that would work for stationary storage. I can see these taking over the role of grid reserve since they can be scaled up.
MIT? Probably Donald Sadoway and Ambri. Years ago he gave a great TED talk. Unlike Musk, he has failed to deliver the goods.
http://news.mit.edu/topic/batteries
http://news.mit.edu/2018/metal-mesh-membrane-rechargeable-batteries-renewable-energy-0122
http://news.mit.edu/2016/lithium-metal-batteries-double-power-consumer-electronics-0817
2nd link is Sadoway the 3rd Qichao Hu. Not really enough time to deliver goods on either but Hu’s start seems promising. It needs a Musk to pick this up and run with it. I am expecting the battery field to change a great deal in 5-10 years time, there is a lot of new work coming through.
NAOM
“To this very day, there are no electric cars to compare with the Corolla, Camry, much less standard issue SUVs, pickup trucks, etc”
Actually when one takes fuel cost and maintenance over the life of the car, the electrics are comparable to the Camry right now and costs are falling while range is getting greater.
Looks like five years from now the ICE will be more expensive all around, so use up the one you have.
dolph- cars like the tesla 3, chevy bolt and nissan leaf will like have a 10 yr ‘cost to own/operate’ much lower than comparable ICE versions. You can take that to the bank.
Is rarity of previously abundant species more important than extinction?
Rarity in mass extinctions and the future of ecosystems
The fossil record provides striking case studies of biodiversity loss and global ecosystem upheaval. Because of this, many studies have sought to assess the magnitude of the current biodiversity crisis relative to past crises—a task greatly complicated by the need to extrapolate extinction rates. Here we challenge this approach by showing that the rarity of previously abundant taxa may be more important than extinction in the cascade of events leading to global changes in the biosphere. Mass rarity may provide the most robust measure of our current biodiversity crisis relative to those past, and new insights into the dynamics of mass extinction.
It has become commonplace to refer to the modern biodiversity crisis
as the ‘sixth mass extinction’1,2. With three short words, we place the
biotic and environmental disturbance created by mankind on par
with the greatest biodiversity crises of the past half billion years. This is a
comparison that demands close attention as the ‘Big Five’ mass extinctions
include truly catastrophic events3,4, the biggest of which resulted in the
inferred extinction of > 75% of species alive at the time1,4. In addition,
mass extinctions have shaped the evolutionary history of the planet5–7.
Organisms that were ecologically dominant before a mass extinction frequently
do not survive, and rarely enjoy the same levels of dominance in
the aftermath6,8. However, there are fundamental differences between the
types of data upon which past mass extinctions have been identified, and
those upon which the current biodiversity crisis is being assessed. That
is, abundant marine fossil genera on multi-million year timescales for the
former9,10, and (often rare) terrestrial species on decadal to centennial
timescales for the latter1. So the question is critical: are we currently in
the midst of the ‘sixth’ mass extinction, and can we develop an appropriate
metric for the comparison of ancient and modern biotic crises?
The Big Five mass extinctions were profoundly disruptive events with
effects extending far beyond the loss of taxonomic diversity11–15. In addition
to extinction, all major mass extinctions are also characterized by
prolonged intervals of ecological change12,1
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9e14/b6d11d58da3f407f1bcd5bab646215900031.pdf
And for those who have not met Professor Hull
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdnXmnorJkU&t=3501s
…the ‘Big Five’ mass extinctions include truly catastrophic events 3,4, the biggest of which resulted in the inferred extinction of > 75% of species alive at the time…
Minor quibble:
https://academic.oup.com/nsr/article/1/4/492/1508213
The end-Permian mass extinction is widely regarded as the largest mass extinction in the past 542 million years with loss of about 95% of marine species and 75% of terrestrial species.
Granted I may have a bit of a personal bias with regards marine ecosystems but I think that statistic is rather significant. Just MHO!
You need to brush up on your math again Fred. The symbol > means greater than, which if you think about it, 95% is included within range set of >75%.
Thanks for the remedial math symbol lesson and I’m sure I probably need to brush up on a lot more than just that. However, while >75% most certainly includes the 95% metric, I just wanted to underscore the fact that the marine environment seems to have suffered greater impacts than land based ecosystems.
In any case, I did preface my comment with it being but a minor quibble.
Even a 75% +, loss of all living species is rather consequential. Especially given the fact that we humans are included in the subset of the set of all living terrestrial species. So if our actions happen to initiate a similar event, our odds of surviving don’t look so great, eh? Then again, I may also have to brush up on my statistics and knowledge of set theory…
Population reductions are eco changing. The coy-wolf is a great example. I just saw one the other day and hear them singing at night at times.
They have moved into the open predator niche in the east and are thriving despite hunting pressure.
The other example is the crow, a highly intelligent and adaptive bird that even with large hunting pressure adapted well to “civilization” and are thriving.
As other species reduce and die off, some species increase their range and numbers or change and adapt quickly to the new conditions.
Either way, it’s a different world with different species numbers, types and distributions.
Meanwhile, the thrust and balance of nature and human nature continues even in the most laid back of places.
“why are we making towers where the leopards are? The leopards will visit Mumbai again and again because this is where they live,” he says. “It is really their home.”
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/nov/26/leopards-mumbai-life-death-living-ghosts-sgnp
Cognitive Distortions In Human Extinction Beliefs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaEe2tTmXXo
Gang;
I’m a long time lurker on this great site, would love to hear your thoughts re Tony Seba’s commentary contained in this link, the gist of which I’ve copied and pasted below from a blurb about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b3ttqYDwF0
Exponentially improving technologies such as solar, electric vehicles, and autonomous (self-driving) cars will disrupt and sweep away the energy and transportation industries as we know it. The same Silicon Valley ecosystem that created bit-based technologies that have disrupted atom-based industries is now creating bit- and electron-based technologies that will disrupt atom-based energy industries.
Clean Disruption projections (based on technology cost curves, business model innovation as well as product innovation) show that by 2030:
– All new energy will be provided by solar or wind.
– All new mass-market vehicles will be electric.
– All of these vehicles will be autonomous (self-driving) or semi-autonomous.
– The car market will shrink by 80%.
– Gasoline will be obsolete. Nuclear is already obsolete. Natural Gas and Coal will be obsolete.
– Up to 80% of highways will not be needed.
– Up to 80% of parking spaces will not be needed.
– The concept of individual car ownership will be obsolete.
– The Car Insurance industry will be disrupted. The taxi industry will be obsolete.
Well, they might need the left over energy to power air conditioners:
NEW CLIMATE CHANGE WARNING PREDICTS DEADLY HEAT BY 2030
“As the climate continues to change, the risks to human health will grow, exacerbating existing health threats and creating new public health challenges, and impacting more people in more places,” a White House overview of the report reads. “From children to the elderly, every American is vulnerable to the health impacts associated with climate change, now and in the future.”
Meanwhile,
100TH MERIDIAN: EAST-WEST DIVIDE BETWEEN MOIST AND ARID PARTS OF U.S. MAY BE SHIFTING
“Nearly a century and a half after explorer John Wesley Powell zeroed in on the 100th meridian west as the dividing line between the humid east and arid west of the United States, researchers say he was right — but that climate change is now moving the line eastward, into the traditionally fertile Midwest. The effects on U.S. farming and other pursuits could be huge.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180411110957.htm
Yes, it will be tough on farming near the boundary as the rains decrease and the aquifers dry up. However, think how bad it will be as the West dries out even further.
Yeah, it’s time to give golf courses first dibs on water, maybe add an amendment to your constitution?
“Losing an average of three feet per year, the groundwater level around Willcox has dropped as much as 143 feet over the past 20 years. State hydrologists say farmers may eventually face tough decisions: spend the money to drill deeper or scale back production?”
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/investigations/2015/03/24/parched-water-arizona-table-declines/25100651/
No problem, we are already drilling tunnels under Canada and tapping your water for fracking and will soon be draining the Great Lakes to continue farming in the deserts. While everyone was busy trying to stop the oil pipelines, no one bothered with the new water pipelines. 🙂
We were going to invade but our current guy in charge doesn’t like foreigners plus you go back home usually. 🙂
Where are these tunnels tapping Canadian water for fracing?
Great Lakes Compact prohibits this 🙂
Way ahead of you here in NY 🙂
That is funny, you really think a Compact will stop anyone when our major cities and croplands are drying up? Not for long is my thought. Let’s hope they use pipes because canals and rivers lose a tremendous amount to evaporation and leakage.
But as need for fresh water potentially expands into even more of a crisis in the Western U.S. later this century, laws and policies protecting the Great Lakes could be attacked, overturned in a “national intervention,” Famiglietti said.
“And I think that for these reasons, that we do have water in some places — the northern half of the country has a lot more water than the southern half — and so as the population grows, and as climate continues to change, we probably will have to move water from where it is to where it is not, and that will require some rethinking of some of these policies and laws,” he said.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/04/10/great-lakes-water-piped-southwest-our-future-says-nasa-scientist/100301326/
Keep your stick on the ice, we’re all in this together.
Most irrigation water in the West is wasted. A large part of the reason is an arcane assortment of legal land rights, that are no more sacred than the Great Lakes Compact.
If I were a Michigan or Illinois politician, my first argument would be that the west should clean up it’s act, both legal and practical, before it tries to take someone else’s water.
Hi Alimbiquated,
Yes, aluminum , and sooner than you might think, carbon fiber and other exotic materials are going to be used in ever increasing quantity in new cars and trucks, because light weight means greater fuel economy with a conventional engine, and longer range, using a battery, everything else equal.
But if you don’t live in the automotive rust belt, you can expect an old Ford Ranger to last at least twenty years, and possibly as much as your entire life, so far as rust is concerned, assuming it’s not rusty when you acquire it. ( Being a Chevy fan, and Chevy owner, I must admit that the people who have bumper stickers like this one DO have a point.
“THIS IS FORD COUNTRY. ON A QUIET NIGHT, YOU CAN HEAR THE CHEVY’S RUST. ”
And while I have a lot of respect for Japanese imports, in terms of their reliability and durability, I must say that they all to often rust out past further use, once past about fifteen to twenty years old, even here in western Virginia, which is only on the FRINGE of ” Rust Country”. Local roads are salted here on average maybe three or four times at the most, any one year, and we get a lot of rain too, which washes away the salt pretty quick.
Now if you live farther south, or in the dry parts of the country away from salt air and away from highway salt, you can reasonably expect just about any pickup truck body and chassis to last more or less indefinitely as far as rust is concerned.
And there aren’t any essential parts that can’t be replaced for peanuts as they wear out, compared to the price and payment on a new truck.
If I could buy a battery and electric motor/ axle assembly equivalent to the one in a new Model 3 I could do the conversion myself, with maybe a little help debugging the installation, which would mean paying a computer tech to look at it. I’m not good on computers. Now the battery would have to be modular, so I could fit it under the hood and floor boards without taking up needed space in the cargo box.
Such a conversion would likely go at least a hundred fifty miles in an old Ranger two wheel drive, and it would likely haul a thousand pound load at least a hundred plus miles.
That would be good enough to eliminate ninety five plus percent of my need for gasoline for a car or pickup truck. I wouldn’t even keep a conventional car or pickup truck if I owned such a conversion. I would just borrow or rent one for the three or four longer trips I average per year.
I’m thinking I might live long enough to buy such a conversion kit for say twelve thousand bucks, maybe even less.
Of course I would still need my big truck occasionally, but I drive it so seldom gasoline for it isn’t a serious problem…… considering it costs me fifteen to twenty bucks per hour for gasoline, but that hiring such a truck costs me about seventy to eighty bucks per hour, and I have to SCHEDULE hiring it. So I would keep the big one, which is pretty old, a seventy two, just to use it once every couple of months or so to haul gravel, logs, lumber and other bulky heavy materials.
The great thing about a REAL truck, one built for hauling real loads, is that such a truck will last just about forever, with good routine maintenance and an occasional repair. I can get any mechanical part for it within twenty four hours, even as old as it is.
I think a converted pickup would last at least two hundred thousand miles, , assuming good quality motor and battery. Say you pay two grand for the truck you convert……… this could be a very practical option for millions of light truck owners.
“NEW CLIMATE CHANGE WARNING PREDICTS DEADLY HEAT BY 2030”
That’s what the ground is for. Dig down a few feet and it’s a nice 55F, so one can live down there or run a bunch of piping to chill the partially above ground structure. Going out in the evening and at night might be an option.
Headlamps anyone?
BTW is there a website for that headline?
BTW is there a website for that headline?
Dunno but you can try and ask this guy…
.
Hell, we’ll need the spare energy to extract CO2 from the air and power carbon fixation projects, as well as to relocate all the people in flooded cities and replant all the crops which no longer grow in their old climate zones and so on.
“It is very hard to predict, especially the future.”
Niels Bohr
In any case I have a hunch that at least in my neck of the woods, The Greater Miami Florida area, the future need for roads, highways and parking spaces will very probably be out stripped by the need for anchorage, dock space and berths for various kinds of boats. Who knows, maybe they will be EBs, electric boats 😉
Meanwhile,
ANTARCTICA’S ICE RETREATING 5 TIMES FASTER THAN NORMAL, STUDY REVEALS
“According to the study, which was published this month in the academic journal Nature Geoscience, Antarctica’s frozen underbelly is melting and receding at a rate around five times faster than normal. In the centuries following an ice age, glacier grounding lines should retreat about 82 feet per year. But the ice under Antarctica is retreating at speeds peaking around 600 feet annually.”
https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending-now/antarcticas-ice-retreating-5-times-faster-than-normal-study-reveals-1/732352353
And for the moment global sea ice has pretty much stopped growing – likely to hit new daily low records this week. Both poles are warm at the moment, the Antarctic is due to cool off but the Arctic is due for a new heat wave.
Yeah, Miami is pretty much going to be uninhabitable…. the sewer lines will all be below sea level and infiltrated by seawater. It’ll stink. I’d suggest moving somewhere with a *chance*.
In the US, we seem to have leaders that want to go back to the past. There are a lot of people that want to recede to early methods of food production and industrial production.
Here is the reality.
To even have 1 horse per 4 people in the US it would take up much more than all the farmland and rangeland in the US just to feed the horses. Meaning no food for the people or cows, sheep, chickens, etc. that we depend on. So no going back to horses. And I am not even talking freight movement, trains, airplanes, construction and farm machinery, just “replacing” people movement by cars using horses (an not as fast or as far). No “Back to the Past” is ever going to work.
If all cars in the US were EV’s, to power EV’s by PV alone would only take 0.02 percent of the land area of the US with no improvements in the EV’s or in the PV. Also, no food producing or wild land need be used in the process.
So those backward thinking dimwits that want to go back to earlier ways they seem to love so much, well it just could never work. There could never be enough horses or human labor to get the work done, move the stuff, move the people. Never. It didn’t even work very well back then, since at peak horse there were lots of trains and lots of fossil fueled machinery to do most of the work and most of the hauling.
People forget how much food is freed up by machinery and non-bio sources of energy. We would have a hard time feeding the people if they all worked hard every day (though it might reduce some of the overweight problem). And of course if things were done by hand and animal, or even simple machines, there would not even be enough food to feed the horses.
As far as Tony Seba is concerned, I think he is mostly right though he may be a few years ahead of in his timing and in the total takeover of cars as a service. I think he is warning us to embrace the change because it will happen fast and happen at large scale. I also think he is also not looking at the upcoming disruptions in aviation, which will change the need for cars, roads and avoid much of the passenger train demand.
If we keep cars we will need roads to get places, so I am not too sure about the reduction of roads in that case. If we use aircraft to their full extent, many roads can disappear.
Yes, it looks like city and dense population areas will be patrolled by robotic cars in the future, for a while. The more rural areas (the areas that provide the food, water and materials for those large populations) will handle things differently.
So to all the dimwits that think we can just go back to primitive ways or even to the “good ole days” I say shut up and stop promoting ways that can never work in the current global realities.
Plus who wants to do that except misanthropes?
I can see trying to save San Francisco or New York–
Miami? Please, give me a break———–
Houston? Now we are getting closer to reality.
Houston, we have a problem:
CITY IN A SWAMP: HOUSTON’S FLOOD PROBLEMS ARE ONLY GETTING WORSE
Houston-Harris County has experienced a run of 100-year floods—last year’s Tax Day flood was a 10,000-year event in some places, and Harvey was the largest rainstorm event on record in the continental U.S. “In terms of heavy rainfall, you take any threshold you want—6 inches in a day, 8 inches in a day, whatever—the likelihood of surpassing that threshold sometime in a given year has increased by about 30 percent over the past century,” said Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon.
Yep—–
We have a problem, in a city that promotes problems.
Gigantic water tunnels won’t save Houston from the next Harvey
https://grist.org/article/gigantic-water-tunnels-wont-save-houston-from-the-next-harvey/
The panic and insanity begin.
A link from that article
https://www.wsj.com/articles/one-house-22-floods-repeated-claims-drain-federal-insurance-program-1505467830
Duh!
NAOM
San Francisco and New York are steep. It’s possible to save them largely by moving back a block or two.
Miami — impossible. Porous ground. It’ll be like Venice (i.e…. floating in sewage) and then it’ll be uninhabitable.
Parts of SF and NY are steep—– (NY would lose a major part of the city).
But at this point, both worth some effort.
Miami- why make a effort?
It’s not just sea level rise. Anything less than 100 feet above sea level is in jeopardy. Coastal cities that have large rivers feeding into or around them are in double jeopardy. Inundations only have to occur at least once a decade to make an area uninhabitable. Great case for rewilding the coastlines.
•Category 1 hurricanes inundate just about all of the immediate south shore of the Island, including the north side of Great South Bay locations and both sides of the north and south forks.
•Montauk Highway (RT. 27A) is completely covered by flood waters during a Category 3 hurricane. Therefore, this road would be considered impassable during the storm.
•The highest storm surges (Category 4) would occur in the following regions: ◦Amityville Harbor – 29 feet
◦Atlantic Beach & Long Beach areas – 24 to 28 feet
◦South Oyster Bay, Middle Bay, & East Bay areas – 24 to 28 feet
◦Montauk Point is completely cut off from rest of south fork during a category 1 storm.
◦Much of the north and south forks are entirely under water during a category 3 hurricane.
◦A category 4 hurricane inundates the entire towns of: Amityville, Lindenhurst, Babylon, West Islip, East Islip, Bayshore, Gilgo Beach, Cedar Beach, Great South Beach, Fair Harbor, Cherry Grove, Cupsogue, Westhampton Beach, Watermill Beach, Wainscott Beach, Plum Island, Gardiner’s Island, Orient, Shelter Island (except for a few high points), Greenport, North Haven, Amagansett Beach, Napeague Beach, Montauk, Woodmere, Valley Stream, Linbrook, Long Beach, Atlantic Beach, Freeport, Merrick, Wantagh, Lido Beach, Jones Beach, and Tobay Beach.
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/38hurricane/storm_surge_maps.html
Shiva Dancing
Escape the echo chamber
First you don’t hear other views. Then you can’t trust them. Your personal information network entraps you just like a cult
First you don’t hear other views. Then you can’t trust them. Your personal information network entraps you just like a cult
Uhuh! Now go to the white board, grab a marker and write those words 1,000 times, Johnny!
Once you are done, march on down to your local community college and sign up for a course or two on critical thinking skills.
Thanks for commenting on what I just posted.
Now go and follow your own advice.
Next!
You need to read what you wrote, cult member Caelan. You seem quite impervious to information. Your primitivist doctrine is blinding you to reality.
Ah, more typically empty filler from Nathanael.
Energy Return on Energy Invested – Prof. Charles Hall’s Comments
“ …..They are often willing to distort information to support this preordained conclusion.”
No, no, no. EVs will save the world. It must be in the Bible somewhere, perhaps under Second Coming. Yes, 1 Corinthians 4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the EVs come. They will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God. — I think I’ve got that right.
No they aren’t in the Bible. They’re in the sacred Hindu Veda texts!
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/15/ola-will-add-10000-electric-rickshaws-to-its-india-fleet-over-the-next-year/
Ola will add 10,000 electric rickshaws to its India fleet over the next year
Ola announced today that it will add 10,000 electric auto-rickshaws to its fleet in India over the next 12 months. The program, called “Mission: Electric,” is part of its ambitious plan to put one …
BTW only a complete idiot thinks High End Luxury EVs such as TESLA are the future of transportation for 8 to 9 billion humans in much of the world. It is much more likely to be some form of ride sharing with vehicles such as Ola’s electric rickshaws.
Looks like I’m going to burn in hell then. ;D
(Maybe they have HV’s [hellectric vehicles] in hell.)
Doug,
Nobody claims they will save the world, just a small step in the right direction in my opinion. Better than burning fossil fuels, so with a combination of wind, solar, hydro, and EVs (maybe some batteries, wind gas, and /or fuel cells and demand pricing for electric power) a step in the right direction.
Do you have an alternative proposal?
Please stop reprinting this garbage; it’s been debunked more times than I can remember.
Nathanael; piece of advice:
Ease off on the filler.
It’s silly, useless and just augments, along with your anonymous moniker, the limits of your credibility, compared with, say, Charles Hall’s.
Just to repeat a passage for you from the above:
OMG, Charles Hall’s conclusions are (1) partially stupid, (2) not longer relevant and (3) based to a certain extend on crapppy papers like Weisbach et al (2012).
You should try to understand what you cite.
A typical response, if you don’t like the message then attack the messenger. Charles Hall’s opinions and comments, if they can be attacked, should be attacked on their merits, not on trying to slay the messenger that brings bad news.
I am all for renewable energy, and I hope carbon-based fossil fuels can one day be phased completely out. But I am extremely pessimistic that this can be painlessly done.
It will be done, one day, of course. But it will be done not because renewables will be found to be more economical. It will be done because we will just run out of the damned stuff.
I find the continued, very extreme optimism, of those who think it will all be very painless and very economical, just a little too hard to swallow. You guys continually blame someone else for the resistance to switching renewable energy. The world will switch to renewables when it becomes more economical to do so rather than continue to burn our precious oil and gas. And I say precious because we need it for hundreds of other things rather than transportation.
It is a tragedy what is happening. We are just burning the stuff. I know that is stupid. But that is just what humans do. They always choose the path of least resistance as well as the most economical path. It is just human nature.
I have to agree with you Ron, without a big economic advantage renewable energy would be an oddity and for remote areas until FF started to really run out fast.
Although it looks now like we will burn as much FF as possible for as long as possible, I still have some hopium for a renewable energy transistion in the next two decades.
Here is someone with extreme optimism and with the numbers showing extreme economic advantage speaking at a maritime trade fair held in Norway telling the big shippers to be ready for a world of hurt in the future as business models change rapidly and disruptions occur.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhRrd1PM8jA
I still have some hopium for a renewable energy transition in the next two decades.
So do I fish, so do I. And there definitely will be a transition, just not likely in the next two decades. And it will be because fossil fuels will be running out. Their prices will skyrocket and renewables will then be cheaper in comparison. But it will be a very painful transition.
Ron, ten years ago renewables were not cheaper in the narrow economic sense. They are cheaper now, right now and going down. If one considers just a few of the impacts from FF burning such as health and environment the renewable energy (wind and solar) are a less than 1/100 the cost of FF.
We have a very poor and narrow way of accounting, which skews the view of and spreads the payment across the population. Right now we are paying many times the market cost of FF but it is distributed across disease, toxic environment and general long term environmental damage that is paid for by the public and by the world (all species including us).
So when someone says to me that FF are cheaper, I usually just shrug anymore and walk away. The false story is so deeply embedded it is not worth talking about.
Luckily, renewables are now cheaper in the simple market economic sense, so the penetration into the energy system grows at a high rate. Also, a growing awareness of the problems caused by burning FF and it’s eventual demise is somewhat aiding the growth of renewable energy.
Reality (as in greed, wars, politics, poor choices and major weather effects) will probably slow down the growth, so we might expect a 50% renewable energy takeover by 2040. That will be too late in many respects but much better than nothing.
Right now a PV panel costing $200 puts out over $50 worth of electric power per year. That is a payback time of 4 years. Panels may last as long as 30 to 50 years. That is over $2000 of grid power for only $200. That is a 10X advantage right now. All from 60 pounds of material.
Even when one considers the costs of installation and mounting plus inverters it’s still a 5X advantage now and in some places even better.
We all need to brighten up and use the sun. 🙂
Good luck in Mexico.
We have a very poor and narrow way of accounting, which skews the view of and spreads the payment across the population.
So when someone says to me that FF are cheaper, I usually just shrug anymore and walk away.
Yes, yes, yes, I agree completely. Fossil fuels are so much more expensive when you consider the environmental costs, and the costs of just burning the shit that we will need further down the road. Fossil fuels are just so much more expensive when you consider the big picture.
But the world of economics does not work from the big picture. It works from the economics of the moment. What does it cost right now.
If we could force the world to look at the big picture, at the true cost of burning fossil fuel then the world would work a lot different than it does right now. But that is not the case.
Capitalism works on the economics of the moment.
Fish, I do not deal with the world as it ought to be. I deal with the world as it is. Reality deals with the world as it is. You should do likewise.
Ron, I agree the human “reality” is a destructive dysfunctional narrow self-serving belief construct that many people actually believe works.
I shrug and walk away.
if you don’t like the message then attack the messenger.
Ron, you gotta read more carefully. He said “Hall’s conclusions are (1) partially stupid, (2) not longer relevant and (3) based to a certain extend on crapppy papers . ” He didn’t attack Hall personally.
And, he’s right. Mostly Hall’s conclusions are badly out of date – as in 20 years out of date. And occasionally stupid, like when he tries to include things that are clearly outside the realm of EROEI (e.g., the risk of nuclear meltdown; handling intermittency; non-energy social overhead, etc).
No, nick, you are wrong here. He did attack Hall’s conclusions, he attacked Hall himself. He said “Hall’s conclusions are (1) partially stupid, (2) not longer relevant and (3) based to a certain extend on crapppy papers like Weisbach et al (2012).”
To say Hall’s conclusions are stupid without quoting a single conclusion, or where or why a single one of them is stupid, is nothing more than saying that Hall is stupid.
Nick, get real! If I say “Nick’s conclusions are stupid” That is an attack on you, not the content of your conclusions. I am saying that what comes out of your head is stupid. That would be a direct attack on you. That is, I would be saying that you are too stupid to come up with good conclusions.
Of course, I would never say such a thing about you. Never because I think you are a very smart person and I would deeply respect your conclusions. I might not agree with them but I would respect them because they came from a very smart person.
But Nick, you need to learn when someone is attacking the man and when they are attacking his arguments. You could dissect his arguments and explain why they are wrong. Or, you could just say they are stupid, which would be a direct attack upon the man himself. An ad-hominem argument.
Okay, not that all ad-hominem arguments wrong, in fact some are spot on. For instance:
Alex Jones, who suggested the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, is being sued by parents whose children were killed in the 2012 massacre.
I don’t need to dissect Alex Jones’ argument. It is just stupid, stupid, stupid and comes from a very stupid man. That’s an ad-hominem attack by me and I am goddamn well proud of it.
And, I might add, I have likely have launched an ad-hominem or two on Trump in the past. And I just fucking loved it. 😉
Well, thank you for the compliment!
So….Hall. Well, the comment above didn’t say *all* of Hall’s conclusions are stupid – I thought he was addressing a specific set of arguments that had been presented above.
Why is that important? Because Hall’s early work was perfectly good. It was important work – 30 years ago there were real questions about the net energy of wind and solar. But now, it’s become obsolete. The field of net energy analysis is pretty sleepy right now because it’s perfectly obvious that wind and solar’s E-ROI are just fine.
But. Hall hasn’t updated his work. Instead, he seems to have started reaching for flaky arguments that are very poor, perhaps to stay “in the game”. He’s been trying to stretch EROEI to include obviously non-energy components. He allowed Pedro Prieto to add him as a 2nd author to a really sub-standard book on EROEI.
So, his recent conclusions are pretty unrealistic. A shame.
I agree that a transition away from fossil fuel may be very difficult and likely painful and disruptive.
My main argument is that it is possible. Higher fossil fuel prices and lower renewable and EV prices might make this transition happen more quickly than most of us believe possible.
When I look at changes in technology over the past 25 years (personal computers, broadband internet, smart phones, etc), I would have been highly skeptical of a future scenario that painted a picture of the changes that have occurred from 1993 to 2018, note that my predictions would have been far more conservative than what has happened.
My guess is that my predictions for the next 25 years will also be wrong, despite claims by most that my predictions are far too optimistic, despite that most predictions have about a zero percent probability of being correct as 1 divided by infinity (approximately the number of possible future scenarios) is roughly nil.
Here a scientific reply to a paper that is very Hall-like
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516307066#s0045
The same arguments can be made against Hall. Therefore, do not confuse any longer the funny things in your head with reality. 🙂
Further considerations to: Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI) for photovoltaic solar systems in regions of moderate insolation
Nobody who really knows doo doo from apple butter about energy pays any attention to Tverberg.
She has a brand, and a packaged show she does, and she apparently makes a living out of having it and doing it.
Ask her any sort of real question, and she freezes like a deer in car headlights, and makes some sort of response that’s not an answer at all. I know, I saw her once at a conference and asked her a a couple of questions. She was simply incapable of providing serious answers.
Energy returned on energy invested matters only under certain circumstances, such as when the initial energy supply is limited in absolute terms, such as by geology. You can’t go but so deep to dig coal for instance before the coal you extract is worth less than the energy you put into mining it.
And sometimes the energy might be readily available, but too expensive to waste it on an energy intensive industrial process. The natural gas that’s being burnt to extract tar sands synthetic oil is affordable for now……. but ten years from now, there may be such a good market for it that it will be sold to other customers rather than tar sands oil operators.
Now when we start talking about RENEWABLE energy in the form of wind and solar power, well now…….. THE POTENTIAL SUPPLY is for all practical purpose infinite, for now, and for decades to come at least.
So the question then becomes whether it is possible to capture and use this incredibly abundant energy in an economically effective way.
There is NO QUESTION any more that this is possible, because wind farms and solar farms are now productive enough and efficient enough that they generate enough electricity to offset the energy put into manufacturing the turbines and panels and erecting them within a short time frame, as little as four years or less.
Both wind and solar farms are in actual reality going to last more or less indefinitely, because replacing worn out turbines and generators , or failing solar panels, etc, is going to cost as little as a quarter of the cost of starting a new wind or solar farm FROM SCRATCH.
The permits will be grandfathered, the roads will be in place, the grid connections will be in place, the maintenance crews will be in place, no grading of the land will be necessary, there won’t be any political problems associated with refurbishing wind and solar farms as necessary.
The REAL costs, in terms of constant value money, of new turbine blades and new generators and new panels will fall by at least half and probably more by the time more than a very few of either turbines or panels will need replacing.
Likewise it’s very likely that the REAL constant money costs of super duper batteries suitable for storage on the grand scale will also fall at least by half and maybe as much as eighty or ninety percent.
And as the output of wind and solar farms grows and grows, we will actually need less and less storage for a reason not often mentioned in discussions such as this one…….. load shifting.
I expect to be able to buy a super duper refrigerator, with REALLY good insulation, for only a little more than an ordinary refrigerator ten years from now. Today such a refrigerator costs two or three or even more times as much as an otherwise comparably sized one.
With a smart meter, such a refrigerator will run almost exclusively on either wind or solar power, making it in effect IT’S OWN BATTERY.
Likewise anybody with space enough, and most houses have enough space, can install a super insulated extra large capacity water heater, and such a water heater, attached to a smart meter, will also serve AS IT’S OWN BATTERY.
Throw in a few million battery powered cars that can be charged up using no more than a 120 volt weather proof outlet in the parking lot while the owner slaves away from eight to five…… that’s going to put enough juice in the car to get it to and from work, even WITHOUT a real charging station.
If I were a young guy, and building a new house today, I would put a hundred tons of gravel in below my crawl space or slab, with resistance heater wires in it, and vents or water lines to circulate warm or hot water to radiators in the house…….. expecting to be able to buy wind and solar power dirt cheap at times production peaks ….. using the heat any time over the next few days or even weeks.
Where’s the “Eco” in Ecomodernism?
Caelan, for deity’s sake, please get with the program! Japan just found a A “semi-infinite” supply of rare earth metals used in batteries, electric vehicles, and other green energy technologies…
Bro, think about that for a moment! A “semi-infinite” supply!!! That solves the entire problem right there! Semi = halved, therefore (∞/2) = ∞
The world is truly saved! We now have infinite resources from the bottom of the Japan sea.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/global-trove-rare-earth-metals-found-japans-deep-sea-mud
A “semi-infinite” supply of rare earth metals used in batteries, electric vehicles, and other green energy technologies has been found in deep-sea mud about 1850 kilometers southeast of Tokyo, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Japanese researchers estimate the roughly 2499-square-kilometer region of seabed holds more than 16 million tons of rare earth oxides, including 780 years’ worth of the global supply of yttrium, 620 years’ worth of europium, 420 years’ worth of terbium, and 730 years’ worth of dysprosium, they write this week in Scientific Reports.
You also gotta love the roughly 2,499-square-kilometer estimate. If they had had a more precise measurement say 2,498.86597732 square-kilometer as opposed to 2,500 square-kilometers that might have put the entire (∞/2) = ∞ premise into question and the Japanese economy would still be doomed and the rest of world might not be able to build out renewables such as solar or wind or build EVs. That would be truly tragic.
Fred — As I recall, semi-infinite is a legit expression as in: a semi-infinite set being one bounded in one direction and unbounded in another (half-spaces are sometimes described as semi-infinite regions). OTOH, ‘roughly 2,499’ is sacrilege and even my nine-year-old Grandson knows better. God knows how any of this would apply to a reserve (resource) estimate for REEs in offshore Japan. 🙂
As I recall, semi-infinite is a legit expression as in: a semi-infinite set being one bounded in one direction and unbounded in another (half-spaces are sometimes described as semi-infinite regions
Fair enough! However just trying to grasp, let alone working with ‘Infinities’, can be a mind bending experience for a non-mathematician like myself. As I’m sure you know, The number of positive whole numbers is infinite and the number of positive even numbers while half of that, is still infinite. So why shouldn’t that apply to the amount of rare earths off the coast of Japan… 😉
The downside is they will soon discover how to economically mine methane clathrate and give us one more big FF power source while they sell the rare earths to enable the reduction of CO2 and methane.
Never underestimate the power of technology or the motivation of an overpopulated energy starved nation.
Japan has plenty of wind and solar resources. But, it’s utilities are very, very…uhmmm…shall we say, conservative.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/02/19/national/japan-falling-behind-global-leaders-renewable-energy-use-panel-warns-report/#.WtPRG4jwaM8
Good point, sadly they are not in much of a hurry for renewable energy and they are trying to find out how to mine methane hydrate.
Hey what can you really expect from an Island nation that in the mid 21st century still doesn’t seems to have a problem with killing off whales and over fishing large pelagic fish such as Tuna. Despite all their advanced technology I find that general outlook to be quite backward and out of sync with current global realities.
Yeah, Japan is quite surprising in their conservatism.
They won’t allow any immigration due to xenophobia, and Japanese men are so sexist that Japanese women refuse to have children with them. So…their population is shrinking, and 28% of the population is over age 65.
They just left a medieval system not long ago, so not surprising there is a residue of that.
Good point.
Similarly, Russia had serfs until the 19th century, and was ruled by a Tsar up to WWI, and then they had a “dictatorship of the proletariat” up to only about 25 years ago. We shouldn’t be surprised that their culture isn’t very democratic.
Yea, but Russia went from serfs, to putting a satellite in space in 50 years.
Japan went from non-industrial to major modern industrial nation in about 50 to 60 years.
@Fish
That may apply to the economics but does it apply to society and the mental state of the people. I suspect that is a much slower, multi generation effect.
NAOM
Both Russia and Japan went through very long periods of stagnation and resistance to change. Then they had revolutions and invasions, and were shocked into massive economic change.
But…economic change, contrary to Soviet ideology, didn’t create cultural and psychological change: both Russians and Japanese continue to think in terms of tradition and obedience to authority, and perceive the outside world as threatening. Which is the same kind of culture that the Kochs, Trumps and Murdochs of the world are peddling.
Read my comment at 6:34 PM just above to get the answer.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/44163-as-the-republican-roof-caves-in-paul-ryan-hits-the-road
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/44129-when-your-lawyer-needs-a-lawyer-trump-cohen-and-the-fbi-raid
To Mueller Ain’t Going Away we can now add My Attorney Got Arrested.
About Japanese zenophobia………
It’s worth noting that the Japanese are probably farther along in terms of solving their population problem than any other industrialized country in the world.
I point this out without passing judgement other than to say that anybody who TRULY believes in multiculturalism is short of critical thinking skills.
Some cultures cannot coexist, period, in time and place. Separation is necessary.
As someone who has been to Japan 20+ times, you are part of the few who grasp the situation.
Japanese…population problem
How would you define that? I think these writers, along with everyone else who writes about Japan’s population (Japanese or not), have a different idea: they want more, not less:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/11/19/commentary/japan-commentary/japans-population-problem/#.WtUM5YpOmfA
TOKYO AIMS TO REALIZE “HYDROGEN SOCIETY”BY 2020
“The creation of a hydrogen society aims at achieving four major objectives. First is the reduction of the burden on the environment. Unlike fossil fuels, hydrogen emits only water when burned. So it promises to greatly cut emissions of carbon dioxide. Second is the diversification of energy sources. Hydrogen can be produced with renewable energy sources, and its use will also promote stability in the supply of energy. Third, it will generate beneficial economic ripple effects. The shift to a new energy source will naturally mean new demand and new jobs. And fourth, it can help in coping with natural disasters. Fuel cell cars generate electricity to power their motors using hydrogen from their tanks, and when disasters cause power outages, these vehicles can serve as large-scale movable generators. This adds to the appeal of hydrogen for Tokyo, which is highly conscious of the importance of disaster readiness.”
https://www.japan.go.jp/tomodachi/2016/spring2016/tokyo_realize_hydrogen_by_2020.html
It’s interesting to read derogatory comments (see above) by people who’ve no idea what they are talking about. As someone who reads, writes and speaks Japanese and who has worked with a wide variety of Japanese both in and out of Japan and who has maintained contact with many Japanese people for decades, let me assure you Japan is in most ways one of the most advanced countries in the world – and in almost all respects. Here is but one example: Japan’s health care system is characterized by universal coverage, free choice of health care providers by patients, a multi-payer, employment-based system of financing, and a predominant role for private hospitals and fee-for-service practice. Virtually all residents of Japan are covered without regard to any medical problems they may have (so-called predisposing conditions) or to their actuarial risk of succumbing to illness. Premiums are based on income and ability to pay. Although there is strong government regulation of health care financing and the operation of health insurance, control of the delivery of care is left largely to medical professionals and there appears to be no public concern about health care rationing.
Japan also leads the world in robotics (among other things), by a long shot, and exports advanced robots to almost all countries. I could go on for weeks on this topic but will finish on this note; the last time I asked a Japanese woman if she felt oppressed (in about 1980) she laughed and said all (Japanese) men were workaholics and she and her friends probably had more free time than any women in the world because their husbands were always working so they could do almost anything they liked whenever they liked.
And, speaking of Japanese xenophobia (said the pot to the kettle):
Current anti-immigrant sentiment, largely focused on the influx of Mexican and Latino newcomers—and the fact that Latinos, along with African Americans and Asian peoples, are projected to represent a majority of the U.S. population by 2042—decries the fact that, in the words of former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan “they are taking our country away from us.” The fear, bluntly stated, is that “they”—Mexicans and Latinos—will erode “our”—white European—power over U.S. identity. Buchanan articulates only the most recent U.S. American antiimmigrant animosity that finds deep roots in the nation’s history. U.S. American xenophobia, based on the assumption that “our country” is defined by, and should maintain, its dominant white European heritage is rooted in the myth of the U.S. as a nation of European immigrants.
http://www.loyno.edu/jsri/us-xenophobia-and-racism-presence-past-0
Someone with a name that originates from Scotland is worried about immigration. !Hypocrisy, shirley?
NAOM
Presumably you mean surely because Shirley is a girls’ name of Old English origin. And what makes you think I’m (personally) concerned by immigration? Quite the opposite.
I was in jest mode, sorry if it offended.
http://www.vulture.com/2016/01/airplane-dont-call-me-shirley.html
NAOM
I am certainly not going to defend the current administration and it’s political party methods of dealing with illegal immigration. However before one starts bashing the US you need to get your facts straight.
The US took 1/5 of all the world immigrants in since 1960. 2016 there were an additional 1.49 million taken into the US, and increase over 2015. More than 43.7 million legal immigrants live in the US now and if you count their children that comes to 27 percent of the population.
So for a ” anti-immigrant ” “xenophobic” country it is very well mixed and still has it’s doors open to the world.
Illegal entry has always been stifled, people have always been deported during all administrations. This latest over the top showman style is not representative as you well know. You probably also know the reasons behind this latest spate of “wars”, “arab bashing”, “terrorist paranoia” and “anti-Mexican” crap.
Personally I think the US is a much better place for having such a wide range of world origins, I just wish some of them would not be so biased and bigoted against the people and country that took them. But intolerance seems to go in all directions and through all times where people are concerned, not just national or racial.
Personally, I’m not especially for or against immigration of different racial groups BUT think that once you let them in they should be treated fairly. I witnessed extreme prejudice against Hispanics in Texas a few times (by well educated Southern Baptist whites) and extreme prejudice against Blacks in Colorado a few times (by the police) which, as a Canadian, left a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve never seen anything like that before or since — anywhere. Maybe the Hispanics were in the US illegally but doubt that was the case with Blacks (or am I supposed to say Afro-Americans?).
I have seen just the opposite in the US, where people of different racial groups and of different sex were given college opportunities and job opportunities and job security just because of their race or sex.
Maybe that is causing a certain portion of the population to get upset, at least that is what I hear. Some conservatives around here call them protected species where they do not have to work at the same level expected of non-protected workers and get advantages in competing for jobs.
Quotas must be filled and legal snafus avoided.
There are multiple standards in the US at the social and legal level.
No group is treated equally here and many politicians are for sale. The poor get one set of laws, the rich another. Different races get different benefits. Big corporations get a whole different set and along with politicians plus bankers are often outside the law.
The police and the legal/prison system is a problem here.
Any and all opinions about the possibility of fuel cells really being affordable and practical, for use in cars and light trucks, within the next five to ten years are greatly appreciated, and thanks in advance.
So far I haven’t even seen a fuel cell car, but I do live in the boonies, lol.
Now maybe the Japanese can start building fuel cell cars and trucks in significant numbers within the next few years.They don’t have any ready source of hydrogen, other than stripping it out of imported natural gas, which isn’t really going to be all that practical, considering they will also have to build a hydrogen transportation, storage and dispensing system on the grand scale to actually DRIVE hydrogen powered cars and trucks in large numbers. Sure they can build wind and solar farms on the grand scale, and get their hydrogen from water, but how long is THAT going to take?
Maybe Tony Seba is right about electric cars taking over the new car market soon, at least ones powered by batteries. We already know how to build satisfactory batteries, and at less than PROHIBITIVE cost, and there is already a substantial battery manufacturing base in place, which can be expanded rather quickly, if the demand is there.
But there aren’t any fuel cell factories, to the best of my knowledge, capable of turning out thousands of them day after day. And there aren’t any assembly lines ready to run to turn out hydrogen fueling stations. There aren’t, so far as I know, any pipelines in place anywhere, to deliver hydrogen to end use points such as service stations.
And so far as I know, it’s still not possible to build hydrogen storage tanks suitable for use in automobiles that will hold enough to go a few hundred miles at a reasonable cost.
I’m not saying it won’t happen,eventually, but I don’t see any large number of hydrogen powered cars being on the road in less than a decade at the very least, and probably considerably longer than that.
FUTURISTIC TECH IS NOT JUST FOR CARS: TOYOTA WILL LAUNCH A FUEL-CELL BUS IN JAPAN NEXT YEAR
“Toyota isn’t just developing hydrogen fuel-cell passenger cars. Alongside its Mirai sedan, Toyota will begin selling fuel-cell buses in Japan next year. It already has an agreement with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to supply two buses for transit service and hopes to have a fleet of 100 buses in operation in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Deliveries will ramp up in 2018 to meet that goal.”
NB: FCVs run on hydrogen gas and (surely you know) there are innumerable was to generate hydrogen. If not check out Hydrogen Production and Delivery: https://www.nrel.gov/hydrogen/hydrogen-production-delivery.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/futuristic-tech-not-just-cars-172427118.html
Hi Doug,
While it’s obviously possible to separate hydrogen from just about any sort of biologically derived material, such as wood, crop waste, or even sewage, to the best of my knowledge there are only about three really practical and economically satisfactory ways of obtaining large quantities of hydrogen.
One is getting it by separating it from natural gas , and another is via electrolysis of water.
A third method, which involves generating free hydrogen using coke and steam, is apparently not much used, if it’s still used at all. This obsolete technology was once extensively used to generate gas from coal or coke for local use in the days before gas pipelines were laid from oil and gas fields to cities, up until electricity became widely available.
The electrolysis of water requires a lot of electrical energy, and I’m thinking it’s more practical and economic to use that energy directly to charge battery driven cars than it is to produce and transport hydrogen, store it, and finally dispense it into automobiles.
And while natural gas is still fairly cheap, I don’t personally expect it to stay cheap much longer, considering depletion and growing population.
But the real bottom line question is probably this one.
Will they succeed in bringing down the cost of fuel cells to the point fuel cell cars can compete with battery powered cars, considering the electrical grid is already in place, whereas the hydrogen distribution grid is still vapor ware ?
If they’re going to get their hydrogen by way of using wind and solar electricity to power the hydrogen production infrastructure, is it likely that they can build this hydrogen infrastructure, plus the necessary distribution infrastructure, and do it at low enough cost to compete with battery powered cars?
Now having said all this, producing and storing hydrogen and using it in large stationary fuel cells feeding into the grid may turn out to be a good way to deal with the problems associated with fluctuating wind and solar generation.
And hey……. Maybe fuel cells are going to be a LOT cheaper than batteries five or ten years down the road……..
Maybe the price of batteries will be going UP instead of down, five years from now, depending on the market prices of the raw materials needed to build car sized batteries by the millions.
The Japanese are as talented and hard working as anybody, period, and if anybody can build cheap reliable fuel cells, they can.
And if they succeed in this endeavor, and get a big head start on every body else, they’ll be in tall industrial cotton for at least ten years or more, while everybody else struggles to catch up.
This is complex, with many possible comments. One facet is that sexism isn’t about men oppressing women. It’s about a society that oppresses both men and women in different ways. In this case, men overwork and drop dead at their desk, and are alienated from their wives.
So, ask yourself: would that Japanese woman trust that husband to help raise a child? Japanese women overall have answered that question: no.
Women (every place I have heard of ) who get to the point of being well educated and well off economically virtually always collectively decide that about one point five kids is ENOUGH. Even in countries dominated by various priesthoods, the birth rate seems to be falling where ever economic conditions improve noticeably.
So it’s not too likely, imo, that Japanese women are having so few children because they aren’t happy with their men.
I don’t know any Japanese women, but I know a bunch from other places, and some of them have told me they and their friends deliberately have kids BECAUSE they have an empty place in their lives and see the kid as a way to find fulfillment.
As the man hating nurse who hated men put it in some rather famous novel, it takes only a few “peter treatments” to get pregnant, if you time them right. This novel was of course written back before artificial insemination got to be a practical solution for women stuck with non performing men, or without a man at all.
Some woman or another in Brazil is famous for having asked men in general, rhetorically “What is it about CLOSED that you don’t understand? The baby factory is CLOSED”.
This was in reference to men bitching about their wives only being willing to bear one or at the most two children.
The birth rate in Brazil crashed so hard and fast that it caught virtually everybody by surprise.
Various pundits have attributed this sudden crash to the coming of television allowing Brazilian women to see that they can live far better lives with one or two kids at the most. I think they have a large piece of the truth. The idiot box may actually solve some problems, but I doubt it will ever solve as many as it has created.
One kid means a more than one dress and one pair of shoes, or maybe no shoes at all.
Another way to look at Japans falling birthrates is through the lens of ‘overshoot’. 127 million people is unsustainable when it comes to food and energy on those islands. For example they have net import of energy consumption at 93% as of 2015.
The pressures of overshoot manifest in various ways, but women choosing not to have children, and choosing instead to have miniature dogs, robots, and virtual friends, is one such symptom.
net import of energy consumption at 93% as of 2015.
That’s because they’re acting dumb – they have plenty of domestic wind and solar power (and wave, nuclear, etc). As Doug points out, they’re not dumb. He seems to feel that “conservatism” is an inadequate explanation for their poor energy strategy.
I know that the Japanese archipelago makes a unified grid harder, and that makes renewables a bit more difficult than otherwise, but a bit of googling hasn’t come up with a good explanation for this planning failure.
Anybody seen anything?
Hi Nick,
I consistently support pedal the the metal ( trucker’s slang for full throttle) development of renewable energy, electric vehicles, etc.
But I do this fully understanding that as a PRACTICAL matter, in day to day terms, wind and solar power are generally piss poor investments, when the results are measured in DOLLARS and CENTS, or some other currency.
Business men, and politicians, for the most part, don’t have the luxury of taking externalized costs associated with using fossil fuels into account when they have to answer to the people who provide them with money in the one case, or votes in the other.
I don’t think there’s a government on the face of the earth that isn’t constantly looking at spending more money, for good purposes or bad, than is available.
Money has ENORMOUS time value. You can pay an extra five or ten bucks along with the first payment on a thirty year mortgage with a thousand dollar payment, and wipe out the last couple of payments. TEN DOLLARS today is worth a THOUSAND thirty years from now, you see.
So….. while I support wind and solar power, I don’t yet actually own any solar panels…… because it’s still a HELL of a lot cheaper for me, in terms of my MONEY, to buy electricity from my utility.
Even with such subsidies as I might be able to collect, I can earn at least two or three times greater returns putting my money into other things, rather than in a solar power system of my own, or an electric car of my own.
Yes, I understand that COLLECTIVELY, we should be doing everything possible to cut back on fossil fuels.
But even if I were to cut my personal and business use of fossil fuel by ninety percent……… It wouldn’t mean a damned thing, in terms of improving my PERSONAL situation. I would still be looking at the same climate change problem, the same national security problem, the same personal health problem associated with breathing polluted air………
It’s naive to expect the Japanese people to spend incomprehensible amounts of their limited capital on building out a comprehensive renewable energy industry FOR NOW.
The only real reason they have for doing so, short term, is to lower their security risks associated with being dependent on imported fossil fuel.
This does not mean of course that they can’t EARN large amounts of money, by investing in renewable industries, producing wind turbines, batteries, solar panels, fuel cells, and so forth.
But the bottom line is that as a practical matter, they can’t AFFORD to build enough renewable energy infrastructure at this time to really matter. They’re in about the same shape, financially, as everybody else……. dangerously close to BROKE, when the REAL debts and assets are totaled up.
I often mention what I refer to as Pearl Harbor Wake Up Events, which I believe are NECESSARY to get the attention of the American people, if we are to get to work in a truly serious fashion on the fossil fuel problem.
It’s not that we Yankees can’t build out our wind and solar industries and grid to take advantage, it’s just that we have to reorganize our priorities for it to happen on the grand scale.
We NEED and MUST HAVE figurative mugger’s bricks in the form of floods, droughts, super hurricanes, and hot wars involving oil and gas, etc, upside our collective head to get our attention.
Otherwise…….. one day we will find ourselves in one hell of a fix in terms of lack of oil and gas, wars about access to whatever remains, climate shot to hell, all that sort of thing.
I know at least twenty older nurses on a first name basis, due to having some nurses in the family, and knowing their friends and visiting old people who are sick. All twenty of them are well trained in terms of knowing the consequences of smoking, over eating, failure to get adequate exercise, etc etc.
At least fifteen or more of that twenty are seriously overweight and can’t climb two flights of stairs without getting out of breath. They’re health care PROFESSIONALS, and they have their very NOSES rubbed in their failure to do better EVERY day they go to work.
Now if they don’t act, why the hell should we expect an entire nation, wherein the large majority of voters don’t really know shit from apple butter about fossil fuel depletion, climate change, etc, to act?
Nick likes to see the challenge of transition/depletion as simplistic. Likely because it is too painful to consider the consequences of a failure to smoothly make it through this transition time. If that is truly his stance, than perhaps he is right to take his approach, but it does come across as very naive.
Japan must be naïve too since renewable energy went from 9 to 15 percent of the national power supply between 2009 and 2016.
No, I don’t think it’s simple. Two things:
I like to point out where the problems are, and where they aren’t. The problem isn’t technical, or geological, or due to cost problems. The problem is political. That’s very complex in one sense, and very simple in another.
2nd, I’d say it’s unproductive to speculate about the emotional reasons for other people’s arguments. I’m happy to address specific arguments – so, argue away.
I didn’t fully address you thought about Japan’s population. My take: population overshoot typically takes the form of rising death rates, usually due to lack of food. Japan has no problem with nutrition – in fact rising caloric intake has caused “diseases of affluence” to start to appear where they didn’t exist before: obesity, diabetes, etc. Still, Japan’s age-adjusted death rates continue to decline.
A few thoughts:
Japan has to invest in *something*, whether it’s coal or renewables. And, it looks like they’re going to. So affordability isn’t the problem.
Wind and solar are now cheaper than coal – we don’t need to include security or pollution to argue that they would be the sensible choice for Japan.
Japan, like China, has a well developed technical bureaucracy – I don’t think that’s the problem.
I’d say it comes down to the classic problem: the power of entrenched industries to resist change, regardless of what’s best for their country.
Japan has been spending money on a series of projects aimed at getting hydrogen from in-situ (underground) coal, perhaps w carbon dioxide sequestration. We shall see if they can pull it off in any kind of economically viable way. I am skeptical of the thermodynamic balance being favorable.
http://syngaspower.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/SPPLInformationDocumentSYNGASVer1.09_140725.pdf
I’m also skeptical.
A lot of of these kinds of things are small-scale experiments and pilot projects, and are simply part of a general effort to cover all the bases that never go anywhere. That would be the best result for this.
Well, I phrased my first comment badly – it’s not that Japanese men are sexist, it’s the whole society. And, of course, Japan is not alone:
“While there is no one-size-fits-all recipe for boosting fertility, current trends in European countries suggest that gender equity might be a key to higher birth rates. As opposed to gender equality, which is based on identical treatment of men and women, gender equity requires fair and just treatment of genders depending on their needs. According to Thomas Anderson and Hans-Peter Kohler, researchers from the Population Studies Center, the latter is especially important within families.
Economic development leads to better access to education and employment for women, but household norms and expectations change at a much slower pace. As a result, the family-work conflict intensifies and women delay marriage and childbirth or remain childless. This is what Japan is experiencing now.”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/tag/population/
An article from 2010, wonder how wave heights have changed since then.
Maximum height of extreme waves up dramatically in Pacific Northwest
“Using more sophisticated techniques that account for the “non-stationarity” in the wave height record, researchers say the 100-year wave height could actually exceed 55 feet, with impacts that would dwarf those expected from sea level rise in coming decades. Increased coastal erosion, flooding, damage to ocean or coastal structures and changing shorelines are all possible, scientists say.
“The rates of erosion and frequency of coastal flooding have increased over the last couple of decades and will almost certainly increase in the future,” said Peter Ruggiero”
http://today.oregonstate.edu/archives/2010/jan/maximum-height-extreme-waves-dramatically-pacific-northwest
THIS COMPELLING VISUALIZATION SHOWS THE INEXORABLE BUILDUP OF CLIMATE-ALTERING CO2 IN THE ATMOSPHERE, WEEK BY WEEK
“CO₂ averaged about 410 parts per million in the atmosphere during the last week of March. Ten years ago, it averaged ~387 ppm in that week.”
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo/2018/04/05/17752/
Very nice. Now add on about 200 ppm for the current effect of methane in the atmosphere plus about 92 ppm for the other gases and we have 702 ppm.
Best forget about methane (and other gasses) else you may become discouraged — if not downright depressed. 🙂
Nope, I have an incessant curiosity and penchant for trying to add up all the factors, just my nature. I won’t bore you with the many other factors, as you know there are many more.
My tendency to get annoyed at the simplistic view and reporting that goes on in many places and by many people is understandable. My ancestors had to face and kill everything from Nazi’s to lions, tigers and cave bears. I will not back down from staring Nature in the face, no matter what we have done to it or what it will do to us. Just part of living. We all need to look it square in the face once in a while, to get the juices flowing if nothing else.
We also need to understand our actual position in the natural order.
CO2 is needed for plants because once they consume it, they turn it into oxygen for use by us and the animals we enjoy eating. Therefore the simplest conclusion is, with more CO2 comes more oxygen, which means more plants, which means more animals to eat the plants, and more food to feed the increasing human population.
Wow! We have an intellectual on the list. And I know he must have graduated fourth grade.
” the simplest conclusion is,”
Well Julian, if you want simple you can have simple.
But that doesn’t make the analysis accurate.
Sometimes things are slightly more complex.
More than one variable.
Multiple limiting factors.
Positive and negative feedback loops.
These are things that you can learn by reading more than one sentence on a subject.
Sorry if this was too long.
take home message- in the real world CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is not the limiting factor to plant growth
Although the plants sequester oxygen as they grow to build cellulose and lignin, the increased amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been warming regions, causing droughts and producing a lot of forest and scrub fires. That puts a lot more CO2 into the atmosphere, which causes more fires, floods and chaotic weather. None of that is good for plant growth.
You omit that the Oxygen in CO2 is taken from the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burnt so there is no net return of Oxygen by the plants. Please pay more attention in chemistry class especially in lessons devoted to combustion.
NAOM
While Julian Radoni is most certainly either a troll or a moron, probably both, photosynthesis does release O2. And yes, he could do with a few chemistry and biochemistry lessons. Maybe a little plant physiology wouldn’t hurt either. A good primer of the basics of the chemistry of photosynthesis at the following link should someone be so inclined as to read it.
http://www.rsc.org/Education/Teachers/Resources/cfb/Photosynthesis.htm
Photosynthesis is the process by which plants, some bacteria and some protistans use the energy from sunlight to produce glucose from carbon dioxide and water. This glucose can be converted into pyruvate which releases adenosine triphosphate (ATP) by cellular respiration. Oxygen is also formed.
Photosynthesis may be summarised by the word equation:
carbon dioxide + water (sunlight / chlorophyll) = glucose + oxygen
The important thing that most trolls and scientifically illiterate morons never seem to mention when they wax and wane poetic about the nutritional value of CO2 to plants, is that like most natural processes, it is not simply dependent on a single variable.
There are, surprise, surprise, other limiting factors to consider…
An increase in the carbon dioxide concentration increases the rate at which carbon is incorporated into carbohydrate in the light-independent reaction and so the rate of photosynthesis generally increases until limited by another factor.
Photosynthesis is dependent on temperature. It is a reaction catalysed by enzymes. As the enzymes approach their optimum temperatures the overall rate increases. Above the optimum temperature the rate begins to decrease until it stops.
Bonus points for Julian if he can tell us what might happen in a world where average global temperatures are increasing and perhaps causing long term droughts punctuated by occasional severe floods…
Now might be a good time to read up on that plant physiology, I had mentioned earlier to better understand some of the other limiting factors that might affect plants in general.
Nature is not simplistic!
And some people talk a lot of shit about scientists in general but I dare anyone to read the following story and not be duly impressed!
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/04/17/601896991/what-you-learn-when-you-put-smelly-socks-in-front-of-mosquitoes
What You Learn When You Put Smelly Socks In Front Of Mosquitoes
They made children wear socks until they got good and smelly.
Later on, they decapitated mosquitoes.
Those were two steps in an … unusual … study to learn why female mosquitoes (males don’t bite) are more likely to feed on people with malaria than non-infected people.
…And how did they measure the mosquito reaction to the smell from the bags?
This is where the decapitated mosquitoes come in.
The researchers hooked up the cut-off mosquito heads and antennae to circuitry. The mosquito heads would stay alive for 20-30 minutes – enough time for the researchers to blow puffs of air samples from the Kenyan children’s feet and also of carefully balanced compositions of aldehyde chemicals. The goal was to see which air puffs caused electrical signals to pass through the antenna nerve cells – a sign that the chemicals in the air puff cause a physical reaction in the mosquitoes, which the researchers suspect might be to go in for the feed.
How can you not love people who decapitate mosquitoes and hook their still living heads up to circuitry for research purposes?! 😉
American math, science and engineering ignorance, illiteracy, limitations and errors. This rant by an astrophysicist has a humorous side, if you don’t live in America.
He asks “What country is this?” quite often.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htofffMQzls
Appropriate music for what is happening here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUODdPpnxcA
I’ll just go with decapitating the mosquitoes. RUD works too.
NAOM
The Greenland melt season has definitely started.
First global CO2 maps published using China’s TanSat data
https://www.upi.com/https:/www.upi.com/Science_News/2018/04/16/First-global-CO2-maps-published-using-Chinas-TanSat-data/2451523887659/
April 16 (UPI) — Scientists have published the first global CO2 maps compiled using data collected by China’s TanSat.
The maps, published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, are powered by TanSat observations made between April and July 2017. Researchers expect the maps and related data to help scientists build more accurate climate models.
Link to PDF:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs00376-018-7312-6.pdf
Forced migrations due to sea level rise, floods, conflicts (GW aggravated). food problems and population will be a strong player in the near future global changes. Where can the people go, will they be welcome, will there be a place for them and will conflicts arise? The new ongoing WWIII is already happening with plenty of violence and death. In this lecture Africa is the centerpiece within the global structure.
Sea Level Rise, Migration, Security and War
Cornell University – 2017 Climate Change Seminar by Prof. Charles Geisler (Development Sociology). Recorded at Cornell University – February 12, 2018, part of Perspectives on the Climate Change Challenge seminar series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp-Nwuq4hdA
European Geological Society Press Conference of last week. Deglaciation causing volcanic eruptions, drought effects on power and economics, increased wind and storms in the North Atlantic, and increasing avalanches in Europe causing problems are all tied to our ever present global warming/climate change in this conference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ux_M978y34&t=302s
Cableway Replaces Diesel Buses
Cable Transport
Hooray! The world is saved!
Important Disclaimer: No fossil fuels or other natural resources were mined or used in the manufacture of the cable cars or the construction and installation of the cable car network in the mountains. Furthermore the money for these projects did not come from any crony capitalists, it probably came from some slightly obscure independent sources in Colombia…
Not that there is anything wrong with using cable car networks for transport in mountainous regions of the world. On the other hand in Venice Italy, it might be better to use electric gondolas…
And they were all built by little mom and pop operations using locally sourced raw materials! No siree, no contributions to the psuedo whatever it is that Caelan is always babbling on about!
See here.
Cableways ostensibly work fine over different landforms, from mountainous to flat.
This sort of tech, like many other sorts, can and, to honor it, should be produced in superior contexts to the ‘crony-capitalistic’, and discussions along these lines seem to be on the rise. It’s pretty simple.
Put it this way: If you can’t do the job, or a proper one, it’s best to give the job to someone else who can. This seems to be equally true for a system. Crony capitalism looks like a failure.
If you can’t do the job, or a proper one, it’s best to give the job to someone else who can.
No worries! It’s just business as usual in Medellin… nothing personal!
https://www.ted.com/talks/rodrigo_canales_the_deadly_genius_of_drug_cartels/transcript?utm_campaign=BeepBeepBites%20-%20Nieuwsbrief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8dndWbhpDZZ8oPxLky0k_Pi0aSxSlXYUhD7PhSbc7EpqZHVqmAiWRWmKU70IQwXctxDs7f
Rodrigo CanalesatTEDSalon NY2013
The deadly genius of drug cartels
Could you simply give us a synopsis of the vid, Fred, and how it connects to what we’ve been talking about? Make it juicy.
Hi Caelan,
Agree that public transportation using electricity, preferably powered by non-fossil fuels, is a great idea.
In rural areas where population density is low, it is expensive. How do you travel to the grocery store in Nova Scotia in the winter? How do most people do this who live in less densely populated parts of Nova Scotia? I imagine they don’t travel by cable car. 🙂
Hi Dennis,
Transportation in general, whatever it is, can be problematic and expensive, perhaps especially with those involved in roadway infrastructure, and there doesn’t appear to be any one magic-bullet form, although some may be superior, depending on contexts.
Rural/Fringe roadway infrastructure– and rural/fringe grocery stores, etc.– might be especially vulnerable to increasingly-desperate cost-cutting measures by governments along the course of economic decline, at some points which some of your questions become moot.
When or as that happens, it’s possible that, if, when and where cableways make sense, with some forward-/creative-thinking, we could see cableway corridors and/or hubs/nodes open up and attract development and redevelopment along and/or at them.
Unsure why you mention the winter, incidentally. Cableways can operate all year-round and are probably comparatively cheap to do so.
From engineering and economics standpoints, cableways seem to have a strong sense of appeal, including KISS.
Caelan,
Where I live transport by cable car would not be very effective, typically these types of systems make sense in the mountains only.
Are there a lot of cable cars used in Nova Scotia? I ask about winter because travel by bicycle in the winter can be difficult, though one could always use snow shoes.
I noticed you didn’t answer the question. I live in a rural area and get my groceries in a car winter, spring, summer, and fall.
In an economic decline situation road repair might suffer, but there have been roads for a long time and my guess is that there will be roads long into the future, until wheels are outlawed. 🙂
Hi Dennis, I will try to get back to you shortly.
Dennis,
How much do you want to be coddled and can we afford it?
While I’m not exactly familiar with your setup over there… (For example, are you in a house, among a scant number of houses, strung along a country road some miles from the nearest small town?)… as far as I’m aware, our ancestors didn’t drag, with relative abandon and resource-squander, along, within and alone, an overkill/oversized motorized/valuable-energy-energized over-mineralized/valuable-materialized ‘chariot’ along a ribbon of asphalt to any grocery store for items of questionable value compared with the value expended in getting there, including paved-over farmland.
This bizarre lifestyle that many take for granted and as an expression of sanity/normalcy looks like it will be a fleeting experience for our species.
I bike all year ’round and can otherwise walk to the grocery store.
You, yourself, might be able to do the same and/or share, along with a few others of your community, a car that makes the rounds of necessity.
We both can also grow our own food and/or recognize it in the wild like our ancestors did.
Hi Caelan,
There were not 7.5 billion people on the planet 10,000 years ago.
So you never use a car, is that true in general for most people in Nova Scotia?
No cars there? Last time I visited it was not all that different from the US side of the border.
In some rural areas, it’s a long ride to the nearest grocery store.
There are also older and disabled people that prefer “coddling” and independence. Are you suggesting we should take that away from those people and require that they walk or ride a bike?
Seems a bad plan from my perspective.
What other great plans do you have?
You grow all your own food and forage? How many hours do you spend per day doing this?
We both know that, Dennis, which is why we need to stop messing about with such ‘bad-plan’ resource and energy-squandering things as ‘electric fantasy chariots for one’ and start playing fair with the planet and the people and animals on it. Our older/disabled people and disabled planet will thank us for it.
It sure is, and an increasing stretch for the Earth and the taxpayer to pay into for your car, convenience and coddling.
In the end, demographics are probably THE key factor in understanding American politics.
As the younger people who have more or less instant and continuous access to the news, and not just from a newspaper or network tv, take over at the polls, things change.
My generation is departing fast. There’s scarcely a month that goes by that I don’t hear about an old acquaintance leaving this old vale of tears.
My guess is that even here in Virginia, which is still a relatively conservative state in many respects, the writing is on the wall in terms of state level political support for pot prohibition, although it will be quite some time before pot is legally available here for recreational use.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-republicans-legal-marijuana-20180417-story.html
Demographics mean the end of business as usual Republican Party control of government in this country as well, it’s just a matter of time now.
Any given younger person is about as apt to read the Rolling Stone as the Washington Post or any other particular newspaper.
I don’t know anybody anymore who is still ignorant enough to believe that pot is dangerous, compared to beer or cigarettes. So many of their younger acquaintances and relatives use it that they have had to acknowledge that if beer should be legal, so should pot.
The preachers are mostly steering clear of the issue, and so are most local level politicians, because they now recognize that pot prohibition is now or will soon be a losing position, even here. The safe thing for them NOW is to ignore the issue, while gradually starting to say something in favor, such as that it should be a states right issue.
The whole West Coast is now legal, and not just medical.
Some of the more primitive States (Idaho, Utah) still have issues, but it is gone——
Here in Bend Oregon, pot stores far outnumber 711 or any convenience store.
Not my thing, but it is a non issue.
‘EXTREME’ FOSSIL FUEL INVESTMENTS SOAR TO $115BN UNDER DONALD TRUMP PRESIDENCY, REPORT REVEALS
“While several European banks, including ING and BNP Paribas, pledged last year to cut financing for unconventional fossil fuels, North American banks ramped up their funding, particularly in Canada, the research found. This reversed much of the progress made on reducing investment in the most carbon-intensive fossil fuels after the signing of the landmark Paris Agreement in 2016…. Tar sands are worse for the climate than conventional sources of oil, sometimes producing three or four times the amount of greenhouse gases thanks to energy-intensive methods of extraction.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/fossil-fuels-extreme-investment-trump-presidency-rise-climate-change-arctic-drilling-tar-sands-a8277691.html
I guess that touted rise in oil price won’t last long now with all the new investments producing more oil. It’s will slow down the EV surge a bit but not for long.
When the oil companies go bust and the banks take a loss, who ends up paying the bill?
Wait and see what happens when there is a real need for energy because proper planning was not implemented in this decade. Then all the rules and agreements will fall by the wayside.
Or maybe this is just a plan to warm up Canada and the northern countries! 🙂
This Is Urban Cable
(video)
Mexico’s new cable cars provide solutions for commuters
(video)
First look at La Paz’s cable car to the skies
(video)
No more Metro’s, Cable cars coming soon to travel in lahore
Yoshino Ropeway – World’s First CPT?
Aerial ropeways: automatic cargo transport for a bargain
TO THINK, HUMANS (USED TO) HUNT THESE GUYS FOR FUN — VIDEO CLIP
GORILLA CALAYA GIVES BIRTH AT SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL ZOO
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-43789348/gorilla-calaya-gives-birth-at-smithsonian-national-zoo
Meanwhile,
NASA’S WORLD TOUR OF THE ATMOSPHERE REVEALS SURPRISES ALONG THE WAY
Since 2016, a team of scientists with 25 advanced instruments aboard NASA’s DC-8 research aircraft has sampled over 400 different gases and a broad range of airborne particles on month-long excursions from Alaska down the Pacific to New Zealand, then over to South America and up the Atlantic to Greenland, and across the Arctic Ocean. Far from land, the atmosphere above the ocean is where to find the cleanest air on the planet — at least in theory. Over the course of three deployments, and with their fourth and final trek beginning in late April, the team has found surprising levels of pollutants above the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans.
“As we descended the first time, we were stunned to find ourselves in a thick haze of smoke and dust that originated in Africa, thousands of kilometers to the east. The haze had an unappealing yellow-brown hue and was so thick we couldn’t see the ocean. All of the hundreds of pollutant chemicals we measure had very high amounts. On each revisit since that first one, we have found a similar pall extending for thousands of kilometers, spanning the entire tropical Atlantic Ocean.”
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2712/nasas-world-tour-of-the-atmosphere-reveals-surprises-along-the-way/
Excellent work. One can see the plumes of dust and some of the pollutants using Earth Nullschool.
David Begnaud
Verified account
@DavidBegnaud
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CONFIRMED:
Black out in Puerto Rico.
The entire island is without power. There is “ZERO power generation at this point”, according to a 2nd @AEEONLINE spokesman
A fault was detected on the line 50700 which starts in Aguirre Central
It may take 24 to 36 hours to restore
It didn’t impact the Indians – Twins game in San Juan. The game went for 16 innings too, over 5 hours. All in all, a great showing for the backup power generators at the stadium which were able to keep the field’s lights on and broadcasting equipment running in the middle of a darkened city.
Very interesting, to me anyway:
MUSHROOM CLOUDS BURST THROUGH NEUTRON STARS, AND NASA CAN WATCH IT HAPPEN
This is an early result from a project that could soon probe much deeper into neutron stars, which Arzoumanian called “the most outrageous objects that most people have never heard of.”
https://www.livescience.com/62335-mushroom-cloud-neutron-stars.html
“When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: that thine alms may be in secret…”
REPUBLICANS BEFUDDLED BY TRUMP’S ABRUPT REVERSAL ON NEW RUSSIA SANCTIONS
President Donald Trump’s sudden decision not to impose tough new sanctions on Russia left many lawmakers dumbfounded this week and led some to question whether Trump had seriously undermined Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who had announced the sanctions just a day prior. Haley made headlines during an interview on Sunday when she announced that the Trump administration would be rolling out new sanctions against Russia as punishment for its continued support of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
Open Question(s): Has Donald Trump ever played in a team sport (or, is he just plane crazy)?
https://ca.yahoo.com/news/republicans-befuddled-trump-abrupt-reversal-231414783.html
Trump is being blackmailed by Putin. He has something on him. I think it’s “The Pee Tape”.
The 3 Reasons Donald Trump Claims the ‘Pee Tape’ Isn’t Real (Plus, His Biggest Concern as Rumors Spread)
The only thing swirling around the media since Donald Trump was elected has been the allegations surrounding the Steele Dossier. One of the most controversial, taboo, and unproven allegations in the Steel Dossier is the accusation of a “pee tape.” Apparently, the Russian government has a video of Donald Trump partaking in a “Golden Shower.”
Ola senior Ron
Felix Sater is cooperating with a money laundering investigation. That’s bad news for Trump.
The Financial Times reported Thursday morning that Felix Sater, former business partner of President Donald Trump with deep ties to the Mafia and Russian government, is cooperating in an international investigation into an alleged money-laundering network. Sater has a history of channeling money from prominent families in the Eastern bloc into Trump properties. This could pose problems for Trump, given Sater’s history of outing former close associates in exchange for immunity.
https://thinkprogress.org/https-thinkprogress-org-felix-sater-news-bad-for-trump-99e4ebe9a1ad/
I think it’s money laundering. He’s in the perfect business for it. Cohen is in on it too.
TESS to be launched by SpaceX this evening at 6:51 PM EDT.
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky. In a two-year survey of the solar neighborhood, TESS will monitor more than 200,000 stars for temporary drops in brightness caused by planetary transits. This first-ever spaceborne all-sky transit survey will identify planets ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants, around a wide range of stellar types and orbital distances. No ground-based survey can achieve this feat.
https://tess.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Its launched:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/brinkmann-on-business/os-bz-spacex-tess-second-attempt-20180418-story.html
Why are BOTH Russia and US in Syria? Which Pipeline will win out?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O2TRzA2ezk
STUDY REVEALS NEW ANTARCTIC PROCESS CONTRIBUTING TO SEA LEVEL RISE AND CLIMATE CHANGE
“Our results suggest that a further increase in the supply of glacial meltwater to the waters around the Antarctic shelf may trigger a transition from a cold regime to a warm regime, characterized by high rates of melting from the base of ice shelves and reduced formation of cold bottom waters that support ocean uptake of atmospheric heat and carbon dioxide.”
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-04/uot-srn041518.php
This appears now they are saying added warming in Antarctica is going to be a natural process. So far there doesn’t seem much difference from all the past warming.
Interesting to google that name and see what images come up 🙂
NAOM
Yep, when you raise the temperature of ice above freezing, it melts… That’s a well known, ‘natural process‘.
And, a dash (splash) of salt helps the process. 🙂
Well, some “progress” is at work:
“In 2010, it took 388 billionaires to equal the wealth of the bottom half of the world‟s population;
by 2014, the figure had fallen to just 80 billionaires…”
https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.o … 117-en.pdf
In 2017, that number has fallen to eight.
Dumbfounded that this doesn’t bother the hell out of more people.
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics – The Gaping Hole in the Middle of the Circular Economy
You do realize that the concept of a truly ‘Circular Economy’ is actually modeled on how ecosystems function, i.e.nothing is wasted.
http://www.uni-kiel.de/ecology/users/fmueller/salzau2006/ea_presentations/Data/2006-07-05_-_Thermodynamics_II.pdf
Ecosystem Thermodynamics
Presentation given in the course of the
Master’s Programme
Environmental Management
– Module 2.1.1 “Ecosystem Analysis” –
Aiko Huckauf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Jt8Xc7jjY
Accelerating to a Circular Economy – Ellen MacArthur Foundation
Let us know when you come up with something better than the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s vision. And do drop us a line when you actually understand how ecosystems function, especially with regards thermodynamics.
As energy is from a practical point of view is not limited – we only use a very small percentage of the incoming sun light – the simple arguement of CMI is of course nonsense.
The EROEI is > 10 for PV, between 30-95 for wind turbines. There is even according to Hall no issue with a society which is powered with such generators.
When one $200, 60 pound, solar panel can produce almost $2000 of electricity (current US rates) in a half cloudy region nowhere near the equator, I question any EROEI below 20 to 1. Probably more like 30:1 to 40:1 since the energy to build it would have to be less than half the cost.
So magic, Ulen…
Solar is ✨like this✨, and wind is ✨like that✨ and all will appear, because it is so.
Bear in mind that you are telling us that we are to use this incoming sunlight through the lense of industry and government…
Have you been reading the news and/or know anything about history in those regards?
See also here.
The circular economy is a generic term for an industrial economy…
~ Wikipedia
See also this thread.
Highlight:
“Permaculture is very explicit with its ‘Care of Earth’ and ‘Care of People’ first and foremost. Without those too tenets at the very least, any so-called (status-quo-contrived/spokespersoned) economy, will likely be going nowhere (and worse).” ~ Caelan MacIntyre
You do realize that we already have almost 8 billion humans on the planet, right? Despite your pretense of caring for the Earth and the People on it, you do not have any practical plan for the caring of either, at the scales that are necessary!
Your talk is cheap and is not based on any sense of reality. Even if Permaculture were the answer to all the world’s problems, and it most certainly isn’t, you still can’t go cold turkey from our current admittedly unsustainable industrial civilization, with all it’s deeply flawed economic systems and varied forms of governments, with all the isms, ideologies, religions and political views held by all 8 billion of us without killing most of the planet in the process.
And you, with your arrogant, holier than thou, know it all, simplistic, preachy attitude, sure as hell are the last person in the world to be in line to tell everyone else, how to find resolutions to the very complex existential dilemmas that face all of humanity at this particular junction in our history.
Let us know when you personally are capable of feeding, say a thousand people. Surely you can do that at least that much, right?! Then give us a plan on how you are going to scale that up while creating some semblance of civilization that provides things like housing, electricity, education, healthcare, arts, science technology etc… Give us some hint as to how you will tackle the gross inequalities around the world, how will you resolve conflicts, civil wars, famine, pandemics, climate change, ocean acidification, ecological devastation species loss?
If you think that shouting at people from your comfortable high horse, telling them to repent and see that the holy light of Permaculture is the only way, then I suggest you really need to re-examine how you interact with people.
Good Luck!
Oh ya? Awesome! ^u^
?
See also here.
Scientists accidentally produce an enzyme that devours plastic
Rachel England, @rachel_england
https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/17/scientists-accidental-mutant-enzyme-eats-removes-plastic/
There are research teams around the world dedicated to finding a remedy for the growing plastic pollution crisis, but now it seems that one group of scientists have found a feasible answer — and they stumbled upon it by accident. Researchers studying a newly-discovered bacterium found that with a few tweaks, the bug can be turned into a mutant enzyme that starts eating plastic in a matter of days, compared to the centuries it takes for plastic to break down in the ocean.
The surprise discovery was made when scientists began investigating the structure of a bacterium found in a waste dump in Japan. The bug produced an enzyme, which the team studied using the Diamond Light Source, an intense beam of X-rays 10 billion times brighter than the sun. At first, the enzyme looked similar to one evolved by many kinds of bacteria to break down cutin, a natural polymer used by plants as a protective layer. But after some gentle manipulation, the team actually improved its ability to eat PET (polyethylene terephthalate), the type of plastic used in drinks bottles.
Since carpets are the final product in the recycle system, they invented a carpet bomb! 🙂
Heck, what could go wrong??
There are a variety of things that are designed for safe operation under the assumption of non-degradation of plastic.
Ice-9, here we come.
How’s your spleen Fred? 🙂
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43823885
NAOM
Unfortunately my spleen is not doing so well today…
Why you might ask? Because:
Today, the spineless immoral imbeciles of the GOP in the Senate, confirmed Trump’s next NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine, a Republican congressman with no background in science and a climate change denialist to boot!
If rational thinking people are not outraged at this travesty they sure as hell should be!
Richard Feynman must be rolling over in his grave. A somewhat obscure reference, I know.
https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txt
Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot!
This, at the same time as a new study published Wednesday in the Journal Nature confirms what many of us have feared for some time.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/great-barrier-reef-climate-change_us_5ad7c741e4b0e4d0715cfede?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000313
A bleak new study describes the profound damage that climate change has wreaked on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Rising temperatures in 2016 “cooked” swathes of corals, the scientists found, causing the catastrophic die-off of almost 30 percent of the world’s largest coral reef system.
Global warming has already radically — and possibly permanently — transformed the reef’s ecology, according to the study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature. If action is not taken promptly and comprehensively to curb warming, it could be “game over” for the reef, scientists warned.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0041-2
Abstract
Global warming is rapidly emerging as a universal threat to ecological integrity and function, highlighting the urgent need for a better understanding of the impact of heat exposure on the resilience of ecosystems and the people who depend on them1. Here we show that in the aftermath of the record-breaking marine heatwave on the Great Barrier Reef in 20162, corals began to die immediately on reefs where the accumulated heat exposure exceeded a critical threshold of degree heating weeks, which was 3–4 °C-weeks. After eight months, an exposure of 6 °C-weeks or more drove an unprecedented, regional-scale shift in the composition of coral assemblages, reflecting markedly divergent responses to heat stress by different taxa. Fast-growing staghorn and tabular corals suffered a catastrophic die-off, transforming the three-dimensionality and ecological functioning of 29% of the 3,863 reefs comprising the world’s largest coral reef system. Our study bridges the gap between the theory and practice of assessing the risk of ecosystem collapse, under the emerging framework for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Ecosystems3, by rigorously defining both the initial and collapsed states, identifying the major driver of change, and establishing quantitative collapse thresholds. The increasing prevalence of post-bleaching mass mortality of corals represents a radical shift in the disturbance regimes of tropical reefs, both adding to and far exceeding the influence of recurrent cyclones and other local pulse events, presenting a fundamental challenge to the long-term future of these iconic ecosystems.
While the full paper in Nature is behind a paywall they seem to have provided a link from the Huffington Post site for us poorer citizen scientists to be able to read it as well. Warning, it is quite depressing reading.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0041-2.epdf?referrer_access_token=iv-EDIwwWdwSenYri554JdRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0N_6InAAh2XX_KaJlo65Vo4OKmkKiySdLsVpHZhlPIkvplb6EUR3CLJhHqB9M7QKZpMW27y_AfiU2JFUS-bcv7ECQKlYm-cbjL5HnG8sVvpNKY0ETWy9vTQDVKt84rkGHI7p9rK_wPNRuPIfmxKXpNq6K8aRUrggbP4izwlX0g8XVtPz6tWPtXTg-kUJ0PQxGw_2WzjZyVrM0WxylmUbOQb-csNAO9__3N5duKP4fQWqYfFPnT1lJt1K9j1qu8JhavV50vEYBAxTP6Z8ROyN54g&tracking_referrer=www.huffingtonpost.com
🙁
NAOM
RE:- The recent discussion on cellphones v POTS in emergencies.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/19/bt_pushes_ahead_with_plans_to_switch_of_traditional_telephone_network/
NAOM
La Nina has gone, El Nino may be back for next year by Columbia ENSO ensemble.
A New Study Suggests There Could Have Been Intelligent Life on Earth Before Humans
Becky Ferreira
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mbxk4y/a-new-study-suggests-there-could-have-been-intelligent-life-on-earth-before-humans
The human yearning to connect with other intelligent life-forms runs deep, and it has become the driving force behind a dazzling range of scientific pursuits. From the SETI Institute’s radio sweeps of the sky, to the discovery of liquid water on neighboring worlds, to the thousands of exoplanets detected over the past two decades, there have been major gains in chasing one of the ultimate cosmic mysteries—whether or not we are alone in the universe.
But in our rush to search for life by peering into deep space, have we overlooked the merits of looking for it in deep time? Earth is the only planet that we’re absolutely certain can support a technologically advanced species, yet little thought has been lent to the possibility that during its 4.5 billion year lifespan, our own world might have produced more than one industrialized civilization.
“It actually hasn’t been explored that much,” climatologist Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, told me over the phone. “It never gets brought up as a potential thing that you want to look for.”
So, Schmidt paired up with University of Rochester physicist Adam Frank to co-author a paper entitled “The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record?” The hypothesis borrows its “Silurian” title from the fictional reptilian species depicted in the science fiction franchise Doctor Who—these scaly Silurians flourished on Earth many millions of years before the dawn of our own society.
“There’s lots of things that are going well for [human civilization], but there’s a big price that’s being paid in the ecology and biology,” Schmidt told me. He emphasized that many of these consequences can seem to be “out of sight, out of mind” due to conveniences like sewage infrastructure and garbage relocation. But when considered in totality, anthropogenic activities really add up, and impact the geological record. “All of the waste and footprint is being hidden from us, but it isn’t hidden from the planet,” he said.
.
The word intelligence is missing half of it’s definition.
In keeping with the upcoming Earth Day, here is a website that will remind you of what was and maybe what can be.
https://welikia.org/
Maybe someday every day will be Earth Day.
Maybe someday every day will be Earth Day.
Not with 9+ billion people on the planet.
From the link:
What we know so far: Through the Mannahatta Project, we learned that the center of one of the world’s largest and most built-up cities was once a remarkably diverse, natural landscape of hills, valleys, forests, fields, freshwater wetlands, salt marshes, beaches, springs, ponds and streams, supporting a rich and abundant community of wildlife and sustaining people for thousands of years before Europeans arrived on the scene in 1609. It turns out that place celebrated for its cultural diversity, was acclaimed by early settlers for its biological diversity and fertility: home to bears, wolves, songbirds, and salamanders, with clear, clean waters jumping with fish, and porpoises and whales in the harbor. In fact, with over 55 different ecological communities, Mannahatta’s biodiversity per acre rivaled that of national parks like Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Great Smoky Mountains!
Fred, New Jersey was even more diverse and full of natural wonders before the area got overrun by people and their Ant(hropo) Hills. Worse than termites and noisy too.
My calculations show a maximum of 10 billion then ????.
But by or before then, much like warm ice cream, the place will be a sticky melted mess with flies.
Jellyfish pie anyone?
That site shows a world already far depleted in large (and some medium and small ones) animals with much of the diversity of just a few thousand years before already gone.
The best of our wilderness areas was well diminished long before European colonization occurred. Our skewed view gives us no real appreciation of how fantastic the natural world was.
Now people go out in the fourth or fifth growth woods, a forest fairly empty of animal life and nothing very large at all, thinking this is a natural scene. It’s a desert of diminished trees and shrubbery. Life is now struggling in defective pockets, it just needs to hang on long enough.
Happy Diminished Earth Day!
This guy is hilarious.
TRUMP TARGETS OPEC OVER HIGH OIL PRICES
Donald Trump has criticized the Opec oil producers’ group, saying crude prices are “artificially very high”. In a tweet, the US President said this was “no good” and “would not be accepted”.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-43840105
In a tweet, the US President said this was “no good” and “would not be accepted”.
JEEZ! What an absolute fucking moron!
Well, as USA is now a net exporter it can refuse to buy that overpriced gunk and just rely on its own resource, can’t it? 😉
NAOM
Uncovering the other big problem as one problem is partially solved. A study of Los Angeles air VOC content showed that now, since cars give off a lot less than they did, personal products and common products are a big contributor to air pollution. Natural gas production is also a problem.
The work revealed that many common products — including pesticides, paints, printing inks, adhesives, cleaning agents and personal care items such as body spray and hairspray — were full of volatile organic compounds that could be released into the air.
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-la-smog-petroleum-20180215-story.html
As EV’s take over in the cities, these common products will stick out even more as the major VOC pollutants.