208 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, August 9, 2019”

  2. Michael Moore has become convinced Green Energy is not the solution:

    “Michael Moore-backed Doc, ‘Planet of the Humans,’ Tackles ‘False Promises’ of Green Energy”
    https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2019/08/08/michael-moore-backed-doc-planet-of-the-humans-tackles-false-promises-of-green-energy/

    Let’s remember Michael Moore back in 2013:
    “Hugo Chavez declared the oil belonged 2 the ppl. He used the oil $ 2 eliminate 75% of extreme poverty, provide free health & education 4 all”
    https://twitter.com/MMFlint/status/309124649244057600

    That didn’t work out so well either.

    2. You read breitbart. It like putting your head in a shitty (nazi) toilet.
      Count me out.

    3. “creative writing by Brietbart. Such a humorous source!”

      Lazy and fallacious reply. Other sources show the same. National Wind Watch: Presenting the facts about industrial wind power.
      https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2019/08/08/planet-of-the-humans-possibly-most-bracing-environmental-documentary-ever-made-premieres-at-traverse-city-film-festival/

      “Everywhere I encountered green energy, it wasn’t what it seemed,” he says in voiceover in Planet of the Humans. “I was getting the uneasy feeling that green energy is not going to save us.”

      1. “I was getting the uneasy feeling that green energy is not going to save us.”

        And only a complete moron would think otherwise!

        Having said that this excerpt is what is known as a gishgallop of bullshit, myths and out right lies!

        https://www.wind-watch.org/about.php

        About National Wind Watch
        National Wind Watch® (NWW) is a coalition of groups and individuals working to save rural and wild places from heedless industrial wind energy development. Through its web site, NWW promotes awareness of and documents the negative impacts of industrial-scale wind turbines on the environment, economy, and quality of life. National Wind Watch is a U.S. 501(c)(3) charitable corporation.

        WIND

        Take energy from wind. Gibbs points out that manufacturing wind turbines necessitates the use of fossil fuels and huge quantities of resources mined from the earth.

        “In these wind turbines, there’s up to 800 pounds of copper, there’s 1 to 2 tons of rare earth metals,” he notes.

        Not only that, but the lifespan of a typical wind turbine is only 20 years, the film says. And making space for wind farms has meant laying waste to large tracts of land, and even, in some cases “mountaintop removal” (not unlike coal mining companies that have blown the top off of mountains in West Virginia to get at the anthracite).

        ELECTRIC CARS

        Electric car manufacturing also relies on fossil fuels and other natural resources, Gibbs and Zehner emphasize.

        “The problem is if you have a big box with wheels and you’re going to shove it down the highway at a high speed, that takes a lot of energy. And there’s no way around that. And what electric car proponents have done is they’ve created an illusion that they’ve found some way to do that in a green way, they’ve found a way around the physics, but they haven’t,” insists Zehner, author of Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism. “It’s just that the physics have gotten hidden in other parts of the process. So the emissions aren’t coming out of the tailpipe, they’re evolving in other ways. They’re through the manufacture of the car – like aluminum, for instance, which uses 8 times more energy than steel to produce; the batteries, which also have a tremendous impact [on the environment].”

        Zehner adds, “That’s really how all these illusions are created, is that pollution isn’t occurring where we’re used to looking for it. And so we assume that, or we fall for the illusion that it’s actually not polluting.”

        SOLAR POWER

        The sun is an essentially inexhaustible source of energy, right? True (so long as the sun exists), but harnessing solar power is not as “clean” as some imagine. Planet of the Humans shows how manufacturing solar panels (photovoltaic cells) starts with mining quartz, which causes environmental degradation in itself.

        “The initial refining turns quartz into metallurgical-grade silicon, a substance used mostly to harden steel and other metals,” notes IEEE Spectrum, an engineering and applied sciences publication. “That happens in giant furnaces, and keeping them hot takes a lot of energy.”

        What powers those furnaces? In some cases, natural gas and coal.

        1. “Not only that, but the lifespan of a typical wind turbine is only 20 years, the film says. And making space for wind farms has meant laying waste to large tracts of land, and even, in some cases “mountaintop removal””

          “Planet of the Humans shows how manufacturing solar panels (photovoltaic cells) starts with mining quartz, which causes environmental degradation in itself.

          “The initial refining turns quartz into metallurgical-grade silicon, a substance used mostly to harden steel and other metals,” notes IEEE Spectrum, an engineering and applied sciences publication. “That happens in giant furnaces, and keeping them hot takes a lot of energy.””

          And I suppose oil rigs, pipelines, refineries etc just grow on trees and take up no land. Canadian oil sands cover only a few square inches of land and … well, I could just go on. I first started with TOD to follow the Gulf disaster, then came Fukupshima, you don’t get that with wind or solar. Streets full of oxides of nitrogen, nano-particles or iron, stench you don’t get that with wind or solar.

          NAOM

          1. Hi NAOM,

            I often run across people who know only a little about such things, who are actually open to learning more, if you approach them the RIGHT way.

            I tell them that a hell of a lot of the total cost of a new wind or solar farm consists of the costs of obtaining permits, land, right of ways, and of course paying the electrical utility as necessary to run any additional lines, and tie the farm into the grid.

            PLUS MORE of the costs are one time costs, such as building roads, and the foundations of turbine towers. These are ONE TIME costs.

            When the time comes for a rebuild or refurbishment, in twenty to thirty years, it will cost only a MINOR fraction of what it costs to build a new wind or solar farm from scratch. The large majority of the infrastructure will either remain and be reused, or sold into the second hand market, in the case of solar panels. Turbine towers can and will often be in good enough condition to simply replace the genset up top, or a smaller genset can be substituted, in some cases.

            Entire used generators will likely be remanufactured, and put back into service, in relatively poor countries, just as these countries buy our used trucks and farm machinery NOW, so as to get the benefits of having them, without spending so much money UP FRONT.

            Virtually everything not reused can be recycled.

            AND the NEW solar panels and the new wind turbines, will be CHEAPER, and last longer, than the ones we are installing today, just as today’s automobiles are cheaper, in terms of total cost of owning and operating them, than the cars built twenty years ago. Todays cars, size held equal, get much better fuel economy, cost less to maintain, last MUCH longer, are safer, more comfortable, have more features, and still cost no more, after allowing for inflation, than cars did twenty years back.

            We must counter half truths with the whole truth, whenever the opportunity arises.

            There are ENOUGH poorly informed middle of the road voters out there that we can win them over to the environmental camp, one at a time, by taking time to talk to them, to kick the Trump camps ass, in any competitive district or state.

            Even the dumbest old country guys around here understand that as a coal mine gets deeper, you have to give it up, because it costs too much to get the coal out to make any money, and that coal doesn’t grow back like peanuts. They don’t have any problem understanding that oil and gas ALSO deplete.

            LOTS of them have been put out of work because of automation, or their jobs being shipped overseas, or because new technology has made it impossible for them to compete.

            They understand very well that you can’t make a living anymore on a farm the size of mine ( I have plenty of acres, but our orchard wasn’t big enough to remain competitive.) because the guys with bigger operations can do everything cheaper and so they SELL CHEAPER….. cheap enough to run little guys out of business. They understand that apples are cheaper these days, at the supermarket, because the guys who grow a hundred thousand bushels can sell them cheaper than the guys that grow only ten thousand.

            And if you get them saying YES, when you talk about such things, it’s an EASY step to explaining to them that EVERY ELECTRIC CAR on the road means cheaper diesel and gasoline for THEM.

            They can also easily grasp the fact that since wind and solar farms run fuel free, this means ( long term, maybe not short term) cheaper electricity, cheaper steel, made with coal, cheaper fertilizer, made with natural gas, etc, and thus cheaper trucks, cheaper food, etc.

            DO NOT pretend that the wind and sun will always be free. Grin and admit that the GOVERNOR wants his share, and WILL have his share not too long after you build yourself a wind or solar farm. Admit that the governor is entitled to his share, because we pay for the roads with fuel taxes, and so since an electric car doesn’t use any gasoline, it WILL be taxed on the basis of miles driven, or the size of it, or both.

            Folks in the oh so righteous holier than thou but for the Grace of GOD there goest THOU liberal / environmental camp are all to often prone to calling such people as most of my neighbors and half my family stupid, ignorant, sexist, etc.

            The fact is that such people can think quite as well as just about any body else, GIVEN THE DATA they have between their ears with which they do their thinking.

            I understand how good it feels to flaunt and preen my own hopefully superior knowledge sometimes. I do so occasionally on the net. BUT I try not to forget that doing so is one of the BEST ways to support the Trump camp, if I do so carelessly, and insult a man or woman who thru no fault of his or her own DOESN’T have a university education.

            People would MUCH rather be wrong, than to abandon their chosen cultural and political IN group. Insulting their culture, morality, or intelligence is a DEAD SURE way to get them to flip the bird in your direction, and remind them to vote for Trump and company.

            They can, as the preacher sez, be lead out of the darkness of ignorance and sin ( burning coal and oil ) into the light of righteousness and light of right living, burning sun and wind power. Preacher sez it takes time and patience, and that that old DEVIL ( aka the Koch brothers ) is gonna fight you tooth and claw, the whole way, but you CAN beat him, with the help of Lord Jesus ( will power and facts).

            1. “Even the dumbest old country guys around here understand that as a coal mine gets deeper, you have to give it up, because it costs too much to get the coal out to make any money, and that coal doesn’t grow back like peanuts. They don’t have any problem understanding that oil and gas ALSO deplete.”

              On the other hand, solar and wind are declining in cost. When you replace the solar field in 20 -30 years it will be a whole load cheaper than the 1st time around.

              NAOM

      2. “creative writing by Brietbart. Such a humorous source!” ~ Hightrekker

        “Lazy and fallacious reply. Other sources show the same.” ~ Carlos Diaz

        While I don’t read Breitbart and so am unaware of its style and content, I do periodically skim Zero Hedge. Zero Hedge is a news or feed aggregator, and therefore from an assortment of sites/writers and whose articles mention other sites/writers, some of whom have been quoted/mentioned hereon.

        But then, and ironically, if we’re going to shoot the Zero Hedge messenger, then how about shooting, while we’re at it, the participants on this site, based on their demo’d falsehoods/fallacies, ‘non-real names’ and/or past errors? Would there be anyone left?

        Hightrekker, for example and if recalled, seems to ‘have a problem’ with references, spelling and grammar; Fred Magyar with logical fallacies, factual errors and general ‘bullshit’, and so on. Might their transgressions be as bad as Breitbart’s or ZH’s? Mayyybeee.

        Lastly, since the internet ‘aggregates’ all or much of what we’re talking about, we might as well shoot it as well and log off permanently…

        Which might not be a bad idea.

    4. Since the original post refers to a “Michael Moore-backed Doc”, I decided to look it up. Yup! Michael Moore is behind it and it does take a very critical look at “alternative energy”. I read the following AP article:

      New Michael Moore-backed doc tackles alternative energy

      Gibbs, who produced Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine” and “Fahrenheit 9/11,” didn’t set out to take on the environmental movement. He said he wanted to know why things weren’t getting better. But when he started pulling on the thread, he and Moore said they were shocked to find how inextricably entangled alternative energy is with coal and natural gas, since they say everything from wind turbines to electric car charging stations are tethered to the grid, and even how two of the Koch brothers — Charles and David — are tied to solar panel production through their glass production business.

      “It turned out the wakeup call was about our own side,” Gibbs said in a phone interview. “It was kind of crushing to discover that the things I believed in weren’t real, first of all, and then to discover not only are the solar panels and wind turbines not going to save us … but (also) that there is this whole dark side of the corporate money … It dawned on me that these technologies were just another profit center.”

      Both know the film is going to be a “tough pill to swallow.” It was a difficult eye-opener for them as well.

      “We all want to feel good about something like the electric car, but in the back of your head somewhere you’ve thought, ’Yeah, but where is the electricity coming from? And it’s like, ‘I don’t want to think about that, I’m glad we have electric cars,’” Moore said. “I’ve passed by the windmill farms, and oh it’s so beautiful to see them going, and don’t tell me that we’ve gone too far now and it isn’t going to save us … Well, my feeling is just hit me with everything. I’m like let’s just deal with it now, all at once.”

      It’s part of the reason why they had to make it independently. Gibbs said he tried for years to get an environmental group on board to help offset the costs, only to be turned down at every door. He was further disheartened when, in the film, he approaches people like Jones, McKibben and a local Sierra Club leader, and asks them about their stance on biofuel and biomass. Biomass, like wood and garbage, can be used to produce heat and is considered a renewable source of energy. It can also be converted to gas or liquid biofuels that can be burned for energy.

      He finds every one ill-prepared to comment on their stance about the biomass process, which the documentary says requires cutting down enormous numbers of trees to produce the woodchips that are converted into energy. Neither Jones nor McKibben responded to request for comment from The Associated Press.

      “I like so many people in the film and I’m one of those people who wanted to believe all of these years that that was the right path,” Moore said. ”(But) I refuse to let us die out. I refuse to let this planet die.”

      This documentary might have considerable negative effects on the causes for which I advocate and it is going to take considerable time and effort to look into the allegations made and come up with rebuttals. In the piece quoted above however there are several things that do not add up. The first thing that jumped out at me was trying “for years to get an environmental group on board to help offset the costs, only to be turned down at every door.” Maybe that was because environmental groups are not known for having large profits or large reserves of cash with which to fund the production of films which may not help their cause. Why use limited funds on something that is of questionable value? On the other hand, there is more than enough “dark money” available if you want to throw shade on renewables, so it would appear they were just not looking in the right places.

      Then there’s the focus on “biofuel and biomass”, both of which have been scrutinized and criticized here and in other forums. I don’t find lumping ‘biofuel and biomass” with “wind and solar” to be particularly helpful since it has been well established that there is very little net energy gain from the production of biofuels, if any. We have seen examples in this forum of using a given area of land for solar PV as opposed to growing biofuel crops and IIRC POB member alambiquated and maybe others calculated that, a fraction of the land area used to grow corn for ethanol could provide enough electricity to power the entire US vehicle fleet if it were 100% electric. On the biomass front, I believe that we have agreed that the use of biomass to generate electricity is patently unsustainable at the scale of our current civilization.

      When it comes to the source of electricity for EVs, the previous non-petroleum thread was a post covering the trends in US electricity generation showing quite clearly that the use of coal is declining, being replaced by NG which when burned in CCGTs results in significantly less carbon intensity in electricity generation. In addition to that I posted several comments indicating that in some jurisdictions, particularly in Europe, wind and solar are pricing coal out of the markets and coal use is falling significantly. In light of the fact that it is just now that renewables are having a noticeable effect on emissions, now is not the time to be applying the brakes on renewables. It should be exactly the opposite. The powers that be should be looking to accelerate the adoption of wind and solar.

      Finally there is the question as to what is to be done instead of doubling down on wind and solar? What are the alternatives? Powering down? If so who is going to “power down” (reduce FF consumption) first and what will be the basis for deciding who goes first? Some of us believe that reducing population is the real answer but, in that case, will restrictions on reproduction be voluntary or mandatory? Who will enforce mandatory restrictions on family sizes and how? Surely no one is thinking of culling the population of homo sapiens? Even if the population of living humans were to somehow fall quickly, I can think of no benign mechanism for bringing that about, only things that will result in human suffering (conquest, war, famine, plague and pestilence aka the four horsemen of the apocalypse). It would be very interesting if the prophecies in the book of Revelation turned out to be true. It is looking increasingly possible!

      1. In addition to that I posted several comments indicating that in some jurisdictions, particularly in Europe, wind and solar are pricing coal out of the markets and coal use is falling significantly. In light of the fact that it is just now that renewables are having a noticeable effect on emissions, now is not the time to be applying the brakes on renewables. It should be exactly the opposite. The powers that be should be looking to accelerate the adoption of wind and solar.

        Here’s what I think!

        I have no doubt that Moore has uncovered a dark and dirty underside to the renewables industry. I have lived long enough and traveled widely enough to know that humanity has a dark side! However like a Jiu-Jitsu fighter one can sometimes strategically use ones opponent’s attack moves against them.

        If say tomorrow morning I were to wake up and read in the headlines that Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, The Koch Brothers, Rupert Murdoch and Rex Tillerson had secured funding through Deutsch Bank to start a joint venture to use their coal and oil reserves to go full speed ahead and massively build out wind and solar while driving the Chinese into economic submission, I would still think that would be better for the planet than trying to continue with an exclusively fossil fuel powered BAU!

        I would support the devil himself based solely on the premise that the end in this case would absolutely justify the means!

        Fossil fuels have to be relegated to the dustbin of history asap, even if it means that the people who have profited the most from it retain power and control for a little while longer. Because once the true promise of renewables to transform our civilization is set in motion the genie will be out of the bottle and it can’t be put back in. At that point we will also free ourselves from our indentured servitude to the powers that be and we can finally hold them accountable.

        Renewables unlike fossil fuels can potentially be peer to peer and distributed which means they can not ultimately be centrally controlled! Of course that will still mean a total system reset first! But to win the war we must carefully chose our battles and fight them one by one.

        I strongly suspect that despite what Michael Moore is telling us he hasn’t seen all the details of this story and there is a lot more to it than he and his crew might think.

        Cheers!

      2. It’s and excellent idea to look deeply and critically at all major choices, renewable energy does not get a free pass on this. We have to know the reality we are building as best as possible so we can make good choices. We also need some degree of confidence that our efforts will be successful. Pushing renewables is probably a good thing, if we can eat and have a living planet once we have the change in power production.

        “Finally there is the question as to what is to be done instead of doubling down on wind and solar? ”

        I don’t think it is an instead question as much as what else can we do that can be implemented faster, cheaper (not without a fight of course) and with greater effects across the board.
        See my comment
        http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-august-9-2019/#comment-684708

        Any major change is going to slam up against the ingrained legacy systems in place already. Choosing battles so as not to waste time and energy on a weak result is critical at this point. We need to implement the wise in homo sapiens. This is a much bigger battlefield than in any world war and many will be lost in the fight, but the alternative is losing the ecosystem and many species.

        Listen to the this, at least the last few minutes from 26 minutes onward.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8YlCOCEUsk&t=1462s

        The bad news is that we may not have much time, but at least we can slow down the changes if we really try.
        Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months
        https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48964736

        1. The video was excellent. Tks!

          18 months left… to give the children and the other animals at least a fighting chance.

          Are Homo sapiens wiser than Saccharomyces cerevisiae?!
          We are about to find out.

          Cheers!

    1. Yep and I certainly agree with this:

      Put simply, there is not enough Planet Earth left for us to grow our way to sustainability; we are already in overshoot, meaning in seven months humanity has burned through the resources it takes the Earth a full year to replenish. Continue with business as usual and Mother Nature is going to do to us what we did to the dodo and the Tassie Tiger.

      The final problem is that very few people – including many of those who protest Government inaction on the environment – are prepared to make the sacrifices required as we are all hooked on consumerism. Nor are our corporations and institutions prepared to forego their power and profits for the greater good.

      And, as Bob Brown said, human intelligence is a ‘one-and-only brilliance’, but on ‘the brink of extinction’. He might be wrong, but I would bet my last dollar that the world in 2050 will not have the projected 9.8 billion human inhabitants, draw your own conclusions on how this will occur.

      I would add one thing to that, if we don’t fundamentally change the current social, political, and infinite growth based economic system and get off burning fossil fuels, then there will be no viable living ecosystem left to support any kind of industrial civilization and we are well on our way towards extinction. ‘Green Energy’ whatever the hell that even means, will not save BAU and attacking it, is a strawman fallacy, it’s the System, Stupid!

      Cheers!

    2. My take on the points in this article are two-fold-

      One is that yes, all major forms of energy production that humans put together are industrial behemoths, at least at the factory and mining level, and yes wind turbines may kill some birds even though they are very slow moving. And EV’s are not made from compost. However the overall environmental damage from these technologies is minuscule compared to the alternative of the petrol and coal, ICE industries. The less damaging choice is an easy one to make.

      Secondly, they brought up the idea that ‘green energy’ will not be able to supply 100% of the required energy. I see those arguments over and over. I think it a irrelevant issue at this point, perhaps worthy of considering in future decades. For now, the relevant question in this deliberation is ‘what do we do to replace depleting fossil fuel, if it is not to be things like wind and solar?’
      followed by “what the fuck are we waiting for?”

      1. As long as global human population growth continues at around 83 million annually discussions about “green energy” are largely irrelevant. Incidentally, the world now has roughly 1.5 billion head of cattle. Brazil has the largest cattle inventory in the world and they are destroying their rain forest to create more pasture. Windmills won’t fix this.

        1. Doug,

          Correct, renewable energy does not solve all problems and as far as I know no one has made such a claim.

      2. For now, the relevant question in this deliberation is ‘what do we do to replace depleting fossil fuel, if it is not to be things like wind and solar?’
        followed by “what the fuck are we waiting for?”
        .

        1. “Why don’t you go live in a cave?” – when technophiles cry troglodyte

          “Ultimately, evoking the cave says much more about the worldview of the person who brings up the cave, than the worldview of the person against whom the cave is deployed. It represents a cluster of logical fallacies nicely lathered with a thick coat of technofideism and passed off as a serious intervention insofar as it is a view that is largely in line with dominant narratives around technological progress and inevitability.”

  4. Why gender reveal parties have been so widely embraced — and reviled
    By Lindsay King-Miller

    https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/31/20708816/gender-reveal-party-social-media-game-pink-blue-fire

    Over the past decade, gender reveals have spread like wildfire, spawning countless Pinterest boards, think pieces, and a 47,000-acre wildfire. Future parents can choose from endless options for surprising party attendees with a telltale glimpse of pink or blue, from piñatas to candles, and at least one bakery that only makes gender reveal cakes.

    As pregnant people go to more and more dramatic lengths to share what’s happening inside their bodies, retailers are finding ways to capitalize. “The gender-reveal trend commoditizes a major event in parenthood and feeds several capital interests that might never have been involved with this stage of parenting,” Gieseler writes.

    Gender reveals are a thriving commodity, with parents spending major cash to announce the news via skydiving, at minor league baseball games, or via customized sneakers. “Future moms and dads increasingly feel social pressure to participate and outdo their peers or risk coming across as subpar parents before their child is even born,” writes Diane Stopyra for Marie Claire.

    There’s a clear connection between the gender reveal arms race and other forms of intensive parenting. Like Pinterest-perfect birthday parties and toddler music camps, dramatic gender reveals require lots of resources — time, money, or both — making them a subtle way to impose class restrictions on who can be a good (prospective) parent.

  5. How Much Traffic Do Uber and Lyft Cause?
    Laura Bliss

    https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/08/uber-lyft-traffic-congestion-ride-hailing-cities-drivers-vmt/595393/

    After the 2008 economic crash, Americans began driving less. But it didn’t last long: In every year since 2013, U.S. drivers have packed on more miles behind the wheel. This rise in vehicle-miles traveled (VMT, in wonk-speak) can be seen and felt in the nation’s metropolises.

    Also new since the Great Recession—Uber and Lyft. These ride-hailing services stormed into cities in the 2010s with a grand utopian promise: By tapping into America’s vast reservoir of idle vehicles, on-demand, app-based rides would reduce the need for personal car ownership and ultimately remove cars from the road.

    But now, less than a decade into this experiment, the industry is ‘fessing up. Today the ride-hailing giants released a joint analysis showing that their vehicles are responsible for significant portions of VMT in six major urban centers.

    These numbers suggest that ride-hailing is hitting traffic harder in many cities than previously understood. For example, independent research by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority in 2017 showed that, as of fall 2016, TNCs generated about 6.5 percent of the county’s total VMT on weekdays, and 10 percent of weekends. And the agency found that the growth in ride-hailing was already a major contributor to noticeable slow-downs on San Francisco streets.

    Now, the Fehr and Peers memo indicates that TNCs accounted for nearly twice the VMT in San Francisco than the SFCTA had estimated, said Gregory Erhardt, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Kentucky who has researched Uber and Lyft’s effects on public transit ridership. That means the services are likely delaying commuters more, too.

    As Uber and Lyft have grown from unicorn startups to publicly traded juggernauts with millions of daily riders, they have fought to keep their trip data out of the hands of regulators and researchers trying to measure the effects of ride-hailing on transportation networks. What numbers were available have painted an increasingly unflattering picture. Studies from U.C. Davis, the University of Kentucky, DePaul University, and independent researchers in Boston, San Francisco, and New York City have offered evidence that mobility apps contribute to VMT, congestion, and the decline of public transit ridership.

    1. Along these lines- many of these urban centers also have an assortment of ride and dump electric scooters that people use at will, on the streets and sidewalks.
      Many injuries to the riders and pedestrians. Basically clogging the space between cars, bikes and pedestrians. Its a messy free for all.

      At the grocery store I saw this tiny Jetson brand EV yesterday. Where do you ride this, on the curb?

      1. Heh, saw one of those parked in the local Wallymart. I was wondering if it wanted to be a Tesla when it grew up.

        NAOM

        1. The dress code seems to be ‘metrosexual’, according to the education I received from OFM on such things.

    1. Sad indeed but not unexpected!

      This comment struck a nerve with me because growing up in Brazil I witnessed pretty much the same thing! I’m sure it is the same in every forest everywhere in the world from South through Central America, North America, Europe, Siberia, Asia, Indonesia, Africa, etc…

      Sharron Wallace
      As a child, in the early 70’s, we drove through Central Queensland several times. The first time it was all woodlands, forests. The next time hundreds of miles had been clearfelled, leaving nothing but the boabs. In the late 70’s, we used to drive down the Cann River highway on a regular basis to visit family, it was a dirt highway back then, going through spectacular forest, we could have gone an easier way but mum loved that forest! One month driving down, we met the loggers, the highway had been widened to four lanes at least, all mud, and the log trucks coming through were literally all over the road, and carrying out one section of tree at a time, the trees were that big! It was scary, mum was crying, the log trucks were everywhere, and the forest she loved was being smashed!! Thats when I became an activist, I was 12 at the time, and the lack of respect those loggers had for the forest, or for a family driving through, was frightening! I think I saw some of the last solid old growth forest being logged then, I remember it as it stood, and it breaks my heart. Most of these mountains were covered by magestic forests like this, but, with logging and clearing, we have lost all of them, and only a few remnant stands remain. We are worse than Indonesia, we are less forested, and we are supposed to know better!! So much lost in my own lifetime!!

      As I said before, it’s the ‘System, Stupid!’
      Maybe Michael Moore should get his head out of his ass and attack the ‘System’ instead of fighting windmills!
      Cheers!

      1. Hi Fred,
        I live in a mountainous rural area where most landholdings are small. Three hundred acres is a LARGE property, in local terms.

        Over the few months, I have watched the century plus old oak trees being loaded on eighteen wheelers as a logger clear cut over two hundred acres less than a mile from my home. . They’ve been hauled hundreds of miles to the EAST Coast, and put on ships, and are now being made into flooring and furniture on the far side of the world. At least the poplar and other species were used mostly here in the USA.

        No doubt you have seen huge clear cuts here in the American south yourself, if you have traveled outside of Florida. There are places where a squirrel can’t get away from a dog for miles at a stretch.

        It’s enough to make a grown man cry.

        No, the present day live it up as if there is no tomorrow party is NOT going to end well.
        We should be honest, and not pretend otherwise, we should not tell people that renewables are going to save their BAU lifestyle, because doing so confirms to LOTS of voters in the Trump/ BAU camp that we’re trying to put one over on them. Plenty of THOSE voters do understand basic economics and physics, even though they have a near zero grasp of biology in general and ecology in particular.

        Personally I try to get it across to such people that renewable electricity and electric cars, etc, are GOOD for them, because they reduce the rate of depletion of coal, oil, natural gas, etc, helping to keep the price of these commodities down for everybody, AND the price of electricity as well……. long term.

        Talk respectfully and tactfully to such people , and they are often, not always of course, willing to listen when you explain to them that wind and solar farms run fuel free, and that therefore even though they cannot ( for now and not for an unknown number of years to come) carry the load alone, they serve the same function as the car in the driveway parked beside the seven thousand pound dually pickup. They save the owner a ton of money in gasoline or diesel fuel. Both together are better than either one alone, given current day reality.

        Let us never forget that we need to peel off only a couple of voters out of each hundred in the R camp, and get them to enlist with the D camp, to win a substantial number of elections in competitive races from dog catcher to president here in the good ole USA.

        Personally I believe we can easily get that many, if those of us in the environmental camp WORK at it, as individuals, at the individual one on one level, whenever the opportunity arises.

      2. That makes me feel that the crash cannot come soon enough to wipe humans off the planet and let nature start rebuilding itself though that may take millennia.

        NAOM

      3. The piece above attributed to “Sharron Wallace” is typical poor reporting, it conflates two different issues thousands of miles apart.

        She speaks first of woodlands and forests in Central Queensland being cleared leaving “Boabs” . . . there are no Boabs in Queensland. What she saw are bottle trees and yes much of the land clearing in the Central Queensland region has been a bloody disaster of which I have first hand knowledge.

        As mentioned years ago on the “Oil Drum” I have probably knocked down more Australian trees than anyone alive. It was my job and decreed by regulation.

        In those days there was a government requirement that land must be “cleared” and “developed” in order for the selectors to keep their leases . . . this work was funded by an entity called the “Development Bank”.

        With the advent of large crawler tractors in the 1950’s it was found that a length of anchor chain between two properly equipped ‘dozers was a very inexpensive means of clearing, rates of up to fifty acres an hour were possible.

        The country was mainly low vine scrub and an acacia called “Brigalow” that grew so thickly in places, it was almost impenetrable by stock, in short, thousands of square miles of land was completely unproductive.

        It was good land though, deep black soil and when pulled and burnt became some of the most productive land in Australia . . . the Brigalow was a class of legume so (I understand) initially, the nitrogen levels were high.

        As the dozers got bigger and clearing techniques improved, the cost remained relatively constant, and the clearing moved out into more marginal open forest regions that never should have been cleared, or certainly not cleared fence to fence in five thousand acre paddocks.

        Even as a young bloke on the dozers I could see the need for more selective clearing but of course to speak up was heresy, the wisdom was that you could have either grassland or trees.

        Then of course came the rakes.

        A Cat D8 or Allis Chalmers HD21 would push a thirty or thirty five footer and they built up to 50 foot wide jobbies to hang on a D9G.

        Illogically, fourteen and fifteen inch country was raked for so called “farming” . . . having half a million dollars worth of John Deere sitting in the shed waiting for rain and getting one crop out of three, is more akin to “gambling” in my view.

        Then with all this horsepower available, they dreamt up the idea of pushing up a thirty foot wall around a five hundred or one thousand acre paddocks . . . then put a bank five hundred horse-power pump sets with their suctions hanging out in a dry watercourse waiting for the rain.

        “Water harvesting” they call it “utilising cross country flows”. Suck up the water before it gets into the river, pump it into these shallow ring dams, lose half of it to evaporation but enough will be left in a good year to grow a crop of cotton.

        Google “Cubby Station”.

        The logging on the Cann is way down in Gippsland and has nothing to do with “land clearing” per se.

        The good thing is, given time and reasonable conditions, all this country will regenerate into a slightly different landscape.

        End of rant and Cheers.

        1. Thanks for the background on that. Just a few days ago I was wondering how you were doing, glad to see you still keep in touch.

          NAOM

          1. notanoilman . . .

            No worries mate.

            I have been off line with health and vision issues but I’m back now rattling cages on various forums . . . it is nice to see familiar names still posting on this board.

            I can only comment from a life experience point of view, I have no formal knowledge or education.

            Cheers.

            2. Hi Scrub,

              I was fortunate in that I had the chance to go to school, but I have lived among people like you, from the day of my birth , right up until today, except for fifteen or twenty years spent intermittently in the city or on the road someplace, working…. for example in a nuke.

              I want you to know that I think more of you, and people LIKE you, people with backgrounds similar to yours, which is very much like my own, than I do of the people I spent my time with in the big city. More by a MILE!

              I’m GLAD to see you back!

          1. Yes islandboy.

            In Queensland it used to be a term we wore with pride . . . despite my reservations as to the ultimate result.

            Cheers.

        1. Yes, the numbers are depressing and the ideology and world view driving them even more so! Especially given the very short window of opportunity that humanity has for turning things around on a global scale.

          Deforestation in the Brazil’s rainforest surged 67 per cent in the first seven months of the year, according to Brazil’s space research agency, though the government has claimed the data is unreliable and misleading.

          Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain elected last year, has long been sceptical of environmental issues, and has repeatedly said the Amazon is a resource that belongs to Brazil, which Brazilians should choose how to administer.

          I am Brazilian by birth and hold both Brazilian and US citizenship. I lived in Brazil during the coup and military dictatorship that produced the right wing authoritarian ideology to which Mr. Bolsonaro subscribes. IMHO, the combination of Trump, Bolsonaro and their supporters, most of whom are anti science Evangelicals, will hammer down the final nails in the coffin of the last viable North and South American ecosystems. The clock is running out and the game is almost over…

          Cheers!

    2. They say that most of the forest clearing is Australia is for conversion to grazing land. To produce animal products that will be exported right?
      Australia has plenty of meat for it own consumption.
      I guess that exporting meat is more important than forests.

      1. What are they going to do once Australia is exported? Will it leave a hole in the ocean?

        NAOM

  7. With deforestation causing about 12 percent of global GHG and global transport about another 15%, what can we do if we can’t stop deforestation or buy an EV supported by at home PV?
    Agriculture is a huge producer of GHG, both directly and indirectly. The worst involves the killing of 75 billion land animals each year to fed humans. Add to that the 230 billion fish plus who knows how many molluscs and crustaceans. That is just the direct kill.

    Going vegan (whole food plant based) is great for the life on this planet and makes humans much healthier.
    If you eat locally and organic, more GHG is avoided.
    Do this and stop buying all that unnecessary stuff, you end up healthier, wealthier, (definitely wiser) and will do more to help the environment than buying that EV and putting PV on your house.

    Oh yeah, cut down on those miles traveled with your ICE car too. For some strange reason (money? idiocy?) farmland has been turned into fuel production using almost as much petroleum fuels to produce it as it replaces.

    1. “If you eat locally and organic, more GHG is avoided.”

      Unfortunately, this is bullshit. I used to believe it, too.

      “Organic” is hugely inefficient, and “local” eating actually requires more driving around. Both are more expensive. Go figure!

      It sucks to have nearly 8 billion people on the planet.

      1. Any actual data or papers to back up those claims? The kind that actually looks at the whole system?
        You are comparing my driving a few miles (often ride sharing and doing more than one errand on those trips) twice a month to get food compared to food traveling 1500 miles on average, having to be preserved and distributed.
        What moved all that food, packaged all that food, preserved all that food?
        Waste streams around the planet.
        You think that mining phosphates, limestones, potassium chloride and nitrates from mines far away then processing, transporting and distributing them is efficient? How about the natural gas used, the drilling, toxic wastes, concrete, pipelines, refining, pumping, and the leaks into the atmosphere and again has a huge distance and carbon footprint.
        Plus all natural gas is based on carbon and the Haber process turns it into carbon dioxide. Along with an additional 20 percent of the natural gas being used to heat and drive the process. Waste streams around the planet.
        So the shit has hit the fan long before the nitrates hit the field.

        1. I didn’t say any sort of farming was any better than another. In fact, as Jared Diamond has pointed out, it’s all bad.

          All those questions you ask are pertinent and may be found with google.

          My point is that organic/local as “lower carbon” or “sustainable” is a hoax.

          1. Ants, for example, appear to farm sustainably. Time we learn how to do it right, and what with our comparatively-large brains. Maybe they are too large.

            The key, and a no-brainer, would appear to be to augment/nurture nature, to help it along.

          2. Fascinating to take up your suggestion. Googled “organic/local as “lower carbon” or “sustainable” is a hoax” and came up with lots of support. But then tried “organic/local as “lower carbon” or “sustainable” is NOT a hoax” and get a different take.

            What is key, though, is almost none of that Google frass is peer-reviewed research. So I tried checking the Rodale Institute, North American Food Systems Network (NAFSN), and Sustainable Agriculture Education Association (SAEA) where “local” and “organic” do not get labeled a hoax.

            And then checked the Post Carbon Institute and it seems even the question may be irrelevant. That is, soon, ready or not, all provisioning will be local and without distant soil amendments.

            2. Hi Michael.
              I’m not a rose colored glasses kind of guy, but got to say, you sound pretty jaded when you say organic is a legal term.
              Sure maybe when lawyers talk, but at the reality level,
              it is better to not eat insecticides, soil fumigants, herbicides and such when you have the option.
              In my area, the stores often have produce at similar prices grown without ‘cides”. By any measure or analysis, that is a better for a person.
              I applaud organic produce farmers who are making a go of it, and the sector is doing pretty well here. By 2016 Calif had over 1 million acres certified organic.
              btw- Lymphoma ain’t no fun.

            3. Hickory, I worked on an organic farm for several years. Organic farmers use pesticides, full stop. I had to be trained as a pesticides applicator when I worked there. Going through that training was the first step in my disillusionment with organic ideology.

              And not all “conventional” farmers use the materials you mention, and those that do must do so according to regulations.

              If your “lymphoma” comment is a reference to the current glyphosate hoax, please see this:

              https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/?s=glyphosate&category_name=&submit=Search

              The organic lobby will stop at nothing to smear their competition. Glyphosate is a good, safe product.

            4. Michael,
              No my comment about Lymphoma was not about the link between glyphosate and cancer. Not that specific. More along the lines that all of the chemicals we expose ourselves to, whether natural or synthetic, are likely a cause of a large portion of neoplasms. Caution is wise.
              Regarding your experience, like I said jaded. Should have said heavily jaded.
              Of course not all conventional farmers use all these chemicals, just when it makes economic sense. Pretty common to use some form during the season depending on their crop.
              I don’t find my conservation with you, or your attitude on food growing to be in the least bit enlightening. In fact, it is unhealthy to carry around such a dark cloud regarding food growing/eating, I believe.
              I will refrain from further dialogue.
              Be well.

            5. Michael, thanks for the link; I’ll check it out.

              A few thoughts. Some feel that the National Organic Program (NOP) in the US has dramatically altered the concept and term (e.g., are/were efforts to have the legal term include GE crops and soil-less growing). This is a far cry from the organic notion pre-NOP and a far cry from what most people mean by saying organic ag is needed post-peak-oil. (There are alternatives being tested: wikipedia.org/wiki/Certified_Naturally_Grown is just one example). I’d hope that Dr. Novella is selecting articles to review that don’t focus on the highly-industrialized, distant-inputs version of organic ag.

              But to stick with the premise of this website. The energy descent of post peak oil will see the end of high-input, mined-amendments, long distance transport ag, whether conventional or otherwise. Under that scenario, I’d think that Novella’s skepticism and your concerns become moot. We’d then have the choice of either continuing to mine, for a very short time, whatever topsoil and its contained nutrients that are left, OR adopting something that sounds exactly like what most practitioners mean when they advocate for organic farming.

              Exploring organic farming under this website’s scenario, coupled with making suggestions for more durable alternatives, would seem appropriate. I’d imagine that such alternatives would have much in common with organic ag. So I’d start by keeping the parts that work and prove sustainable under the peak oil scenario.

            6. Nicely said, I agree whole-heartedly, except let’s not start defining “organic” any way we please.

              If people are going to make claims about organic farming, we had better agree upon what that is; and what organic is essentially is a screed against all other farmers, the so-called conventional ones.

              The organic cult regularly issues diatribes against “pesticides” as a whole class, genetic modification (which is stupendously interesting and useful), “synthetic” materials, and on it goes. It is a shameful tribe whose lies could hurt farming in the long run. (Try googling those fuckers at the Environmental Working Group for a start.)

              This is all the more infuriating when you realize (as I did working at an organic farm) that the organic farmers use mined materials too (greensand, rock phosphates, kaolin clays, calcitic lime) and their own suite of pesticides, some of them “synthetic” as well.

              I raise apples for a small market, I work alone, and I must use synthetic pesticides if I am going to get a marketable crop without working myself to death in the process. Synthetic materials are the staple of growers of tree fruits–unless you’re going to sell apples to cider makers at a steep discount.

              In a post-peak scenario, farmers are going to do whatever they need to keep the food coming, and whether or not it’s “organic” will mean fuck-all.

          3. “My point is that organic/local as “lower carbon” or “sustainable” is a hoax.”

            Oh, Ok. So organic farming did not work for 10,000 years and we were all hunter gatherers up until the 1960’s. Either that or most people starved. Glad we got that straight.

            1. “Organic” farming didn’t exist 10,000 years ago. Subsistence farming did exist then, but the population numbered in the millions, not billions.

              “Organic” is a legal term and consists of a very specific set of requirements and restrictions. It’s a commercial, marketing ploy.

              10,000 years ago, they didn’t use plastic mulch, sophisticated greenhouses, and diesel-fueled tractors–all staples in current “organic” farming.

  8. Now ain’t that ironic?

    SIBERIAN WILDFIRES TURN UP HEAT ON RUSSIAN OIL PRODUCERS

    “Raging Siberian wildfires are forcing Russian oil firms to evacuate workers and suspend drilling, industry sources said, adding to challenges facing the world’s second-largest crude exporter which is already battling an oil contamination problem.”

    But fear not: “Energy Minister Alexander Novak said in July Russian oil output would be 11.17 million to 11.19 million bpd, in line with Moscow’s commitment made in a pact on cutting supply agreed with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.”

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/siberian-wildfires-1.5235637

        1. Why think small?! How about we do the whole planet? MEGA 😉
          .

          1. I could get some quotes for the hat but I don’t know shipping costs.

            NAOM

            1. I still like MUELLER AIN’T GONE AWAY best.

              The R camp will be paying the price for Trump and company for a couple of generations, at least, assuming we last that long.

      2. It’s nearly 11 pm and still in the mid 80’s here. It was close to 100 during the day today with the heat index over 110. Felt like Satan was sitting on the sun, drawing it nearer. Now they’re saying it will be this way for another week, we’ll see.

  9. JAIR BOLSONARO: ‘POOP EVERY OTHER DAY’ TO PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT

    “Scientists say the Amazon has suffered losses at an accelerated rate since Mr Bolsonaro took office in January, with policies that favor development over conservation. Brazil’s space agency data showed an 88% increase in deforestation in June compared with the same month a year ago.

    Mr Bolsonaro’s comment came after the journalist quoted reports saying deforestation and agriculture were responsible for a quarter of the planet’s greenhouse effect. Official figures suggest that the biggest reason for felling trees there is to create new pastures for cattle.”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49304358

    1. Yeah, says the guy who has a colostomy bag due to a failed assassination attempt…

  11. 3, 2, 1, more conspiracy theories than anyone will be able to count…
    Though it may actually make the 2000 or so documents that were obtained for his trial to become public all the faster. Which means a some powerful people may be taken down.

    1. I suspect that there are many who are getting scared, I’m surprised we haven’t heard more from Chump on this. It is strange that so many high profile names keep coming up in so many places. I still can’t work out if his suspended sentence was good or bad for the truth to come out, I wonder how much effort will be put into trying to shut the investigation down now that he is out of the way.

      NAOM

  12. In the previous non-petroleum thread, the report on the EIA’s Electric Power Monthly, Alex Palti posted a comment in which he asks the following question:

    Has anyone a good explanation for the drop in new solar installations this year?

    I tried to establish how Alex had come to the conclusion by looking a the EIA’s Electric Power Monthly – February 2019 Edition with data for December 2018 and the complete year results for 2018 but, looking at the graphs for net capacity change didn’t show how he came to that conclusion. So, I also looked at EIA’s Electric Power Monthly – July 2018 Edition with data for May but we had not yet added the graphs for net capacity change at that time so, it was even less helpful.

    Before I looked up the old EPM articles I had looked for the latest news on 2019 from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) web site and found this:

    U.S. Solar Market Sees Best Q1 in History

    In the first three months of the year, the U.S. installed 2.7 gigawatts of solar photovoltaics (PV), making it the most solar ever installed in the first quarter of a year. With the strong first quarter, Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables forecasts 25% growth in 2019 compared to 2018, and it expects more than 13 GWdc of installations this year.

    In light of that last quote, I would really love to know what “drop in new solar installations this year” Alex is referring to?

    1. I don’t know, but from what I’ve seen, if its coming from Alex it with good intention.

    2. As per my reply to Alex, he may be looking at financial investment rather than GW installed. With the fall in prices that can confuse the issue.

      NAOM

    3. Islandboy,
      In the graph related to solar electric production vs. total electric production we see a feeble increase of solar energy production for 2019 vs 2018. I was too optimistic in my expectations of continued exponential increase, so the results for this year are disappointing.

      1. Okay, now I get you but, that wouldn’t be a “drop in new solar installations”. As you have stated, it does look disappointing in terms of what might have been expected, given the increased solar capacity reported in for 2018. According to the graphs for net capacity change for 2018, most of the new capacity was reported in December but, I have some doubts that more was actually installed in December. Regardless of the timing, one might have expected the increase in output between 2019 and 2018 to be similar to the increase between 2018 and 2017 when new capacity was similar.

        The reasons for this could be weather or a combination of weather and new installations in locations with lower solar resources than those installed in the last two years. I am more inclined to believe it would be weather.

    4. Beside this , it seems to me that Wood Mackenzie data don’t match EIA data. Or, otherwise there were almost no additions of natural gas electric plants in Q1 2019, so that solar proportion was over 50% in Q1. In EIA statistic for the first 5 month of this year, solar additions are about 10% of total additions.
      https://www.seia.org/solar-industry-research-data
      You may compare 2019 Q1 capacity additions to your presentation. I don’t know who is right.

      1. One difference between SEIA data is that SEIA data for capacity additions includes capacity additions that are not utility scale while EIA capacity additions are only utility scale. There is a fairly large discrepancy between what the SEIA quarterly data shows and what the EIA reports that, I don’t think can be explained by the SEIA including installations that are not utility scale.

        There are similar discrepancies between the new wind capacity reported by the AWEA each quarter and that reported by the EIA on a monthly basis. I am not curious enough to contact the EIA to ask them about these discrepancies.

        1. Islandboy, thank you for your effort. Your monthly presentations have a great informative value.

      2. You will find, buried in these threads, annual EIA solar projections combined into one graph. It illustrates how massively wrong EIA is on predicting solar growth. That does not give me confidence in the EIA numbers and I cannot help but think the two are interrelated.

        NAOM

  13. I just ran across this for the first time, and in my most HUMBLE opinion, I’m conceited enough to think most of the regulars here haven’t yet seen it, lol.

    It explains a LOT, in terms accessible to laymen, about human behavior, in the fewest words and most easily understood terms I have ever seen, to the best of my memory.

    xxxx

    Put 8 monkeys in a room. In the middle of the room is a ladder, leading to a bunch of bananas hanging from a hook on the ceiling. Each time a monkey tries to climb the ladder, all the monkeys are sprayed with ice water, which makes them miserable.

    Soon enough, whenever a monkey attempts to climb the ladder, all of the other monkeys, not wanting to be sprayed on, set upon him and beat him up. Soon, none of the eight monkeys ever attempts to climb the ladder.

    One of the original monkeys is then removed, and a new monkey is put in the room. Seeing the bananas and the ladder, he wonders why none of the other monkeys are doing the obvious. But undaunted, he immediately begins to climb the ladder.

    All the other monkeys fall upon him and beat him silly and he has no idea why. However, he no longer attempts to climb the ladder.

    A second original monkey is removed and replaced. The newcomer again attempts to climb the ladder, but all the other monkeys hammer the crap out of him. This includes the previous new monkey, who, grateful that he’s not on the receiving end this time, participates in the beating because all the other monkeys are doing it. However, he has no idea why he’s attacking the new monkey. One by one, all the original monkeys are replaced.

    Eight new monkeys are now in the room. None of them have ever been sprayed by ice water. None of them attempt to climb the ladder. All of them will enthusiastically beat up any new monkey who tries, without having any idea why.

    That is how traditions, religion and ethnic profiling get established and followed.

    Think twice before following a tradition, religion or negative ethnic profiling. It would make more sense if you get your own understanding to it!

    -Author Unknown

    xxxx

    I copied it from Quora.

    2. Often, with people, the original idea (ice water spray), was never even reality based to start with.
      For thousands of year the Eqyptians spent much of the productive capacity of the culture building monuments to “gods”. One of ten thousand examples.

      1. Legends and fables are sometimes excellent educational tools. This is one of the good ones.

  14. I was at a dinner party last night with most attendees in their 30s. Almost all discussion revolved around climate change. Their conclusion: technology would save us, that no lifestyle change was necessary. Technology did not include EVs or solar energy but somehow sucking carbon out of the air. Everyone was dead against ANY form of tax to pay for this undefined carbon sucking technology. Looking at the cars people came in, all were large virtually new SUVs. Not one person suggested there might be any urgency in the matter. Meanwhile, we have the latest UN report which concludes:

    TO REIN IN GLOBAL WARMING, HEALTHY FORESTS AND SUSTAINABLE DIETS ARE KEY

    “Researchers said that promoting sustainable agriculture and land management would probably require a combination of regulations and incentives. It’s difficult to imagine that happening in the U.S. IN THE NEAR FUTURE. The Trump administration has prioritized rolling back many of the climate policies put in place under President Obama, including rules restricting land use. Instead, Trump has embraced the oil and gas industry, proposed opening most of the country’s coastal waters to offshore drilling, and ordered more logging on public land…

    Regardless, changes in land use can’t do enough to meet the Paris climate targets on their own. If anything, the report shows that the longer we wait to reduce fossil fuel emissions, the more pressure we’ll put on the landscape, its ecosystems and our ability to produce food. “WE DON’T HAVE ANY TIME LEFT,” McELWEE SAID. “WE NEED TO DO THINGS NOW.” ”

    The CAPS ARE MINE

    https://phys.org/news/2019-08-rein-global-healthy-forests-sustainable.html

    1. Technology did not include EVs or solar energy but somehow sucking carbon out of the air. Everyone was dead against ANY form of tax to pay for this undefined carbon sucking technology.

      I posted this the other day, I think time has run out, believing in Pixie Dust or non existent BECCS technology will produce about the same results!

      German scientists have an answer to the great question of species survival: can animals adapt to climate change? The answer, based on close analysis of 10,000 studies, is a simple one. They may be able to adapt, but not fast enough.

      https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10924-4
      Adaptive responses of animals to climate change are most likely insufficient

      Methinks those 30 year old dinner party attendees are going to be in for a very rude awakening!
      They are ill prepared for what they are going to witness.

      Cheers!

      1. “Adaptive responses of animals to climate change are most likely insufficient.”

        What temperature regime would animals be adapting to? 1.5C hotter? 2C hotter?, 5C hotter?… And, what’s your time scale? It’s all a (rapidly) moving target, isn’t it? Obviously, plants will need to adapt to higher temperatures as well?

        Let’s agree that the Sahara desert is land that has adapted to a new climate and any flora and fauna eking out a living there has adapted accordingly as well and that Venus has adapted nicely to having its global magnetosphere shutting down and not get bogged down in details. 😉

        1. And, what’s your time scale?

          Aye! Thar be the rub! Adaptation can only happen on a much longer time scale than is currently happening!

          1. What Helps Animals Adapt (or Not) to Climate Change?

            If we do not reduce our carbon emissions and instead allow global temperatures to rise by 4.5˚C, up to half the animals and plants in some of the world’s most biodiverse areas could go extinct by 2100, according to a new study. In fact, even if we are able to limit global warming to the Paris climate agreement goal of 2˚ C, areas such as the Amazon and the Galapagos could still lose one quarter of their species, say the researchers, who studied the effects of climate change on 80,000 plants and animals in 35 areas. Another study found that local extinctions (when a species goes extinct in a particular area, but still exists elsewhere) are already occurring in 47 percent of the 976 species studied, in every kind of habitat and climatic zone.

            https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/03/30/helps-animals-adapt-not-climate-change/

  15. There’s too much negativism here. Think about the positive aspects of pollution – you’ll sleep better!

    CHICAGO WATER POLLUTION MAY BE KEEPING INVASIVE SILVER CARP OUT OF GREAT LAKES

    “It’s a really toxic soup coming down from the Chicago Area Waterway, but a lot of those chemicals go away near Kankakee. They might degrade or settle out, or the Kankakee River might dilute them. We don’t really know what happens, but there’s a stark change in water quality at that point. That’s right where the invading front stops.”

    https://phys.org/news/2019-08-chicago-pollution-invasive-silver-carp.html

    1. “. We don’t really know what happens…” Classic.

      ?The CAWS once served strictly as a barge highway and open sewer to carry waste away from Lake Michigan.”
      “On June 7, 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice, on behalf of EPA and the State of Illinois, filed a motion asking the federal district court in Chicago to approve a December 2011 consent decree with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD). The settlement will protect public health and improve water quality by capturing high flows of storm water and wastewater from the combined sewer system that serves Chicago and 51 surrounding communities.

      The decree requires MWRD to meet an enforceable schedule to complete a tunnel and reservoir plan (known as the Deep Tunnel or TARP). By 2017, MWRD is required to add 8.3 billion gallons of storage capacity — more than quadrupling its current capacity and significantly reducing combined sewer overflows. All remaining work on TARP required under the consent decree must be completed by 2029.

      The decree requires MWRD to distribute rain barrels in urban neighborhoods and to install permeable pavement, green roofs, rain gardens and other green infrastructure measures throughout the MWRD service area. MWRD will prioritize projects to reduce flooding and basement backups, with the highest priority given to neighborhoods where the socio-economic need is greatest. MWRD is also required to develop a comprehensive land use policy to implement green infrastructure on MWRD-owned properties.

      The consent decree also requires MWRD to pay a civil penalty of $675,000. The settlement is not final or enforceable unless and until it is approved by the Court.”

      https://www.epa.gov/il/chicago-area-waterway-system-chicago-river

      Strange brew, kill what’s inside of you.

      She’s a witch of trouble in electric blue,
      In her own mad mind she’s in love with you.
      With you.
      Now what you gonna do?
      Strange brew, kill what’s inside of you.

      She’s some kind of demon messing in the glue.
      If you don’t watch out it’ll stick to you.
      To you.
      What kind of fool are you?
      Strange brew, kill what’s inside of you.

      1. Gonefishing,

        Back in the good old days when Canada was covered by the Laurentide Ice Sheet the weight of the ice depressed the land beneath it, and some crust moved out (rock is plastic) from under the ice, heading south where it caused a bulge in the land beyond the ice limit. So: land beneath the ice sank and land south of the ice bulged upward forming what’s called the forebulge.

        As the ice sheet lowered and shrank the land beneath began to recover and the forebulge began to subside. The hinge line between the two runs pretty much through the latitude of Chicago in that part of the Midwest. Chicago is close to the south end of Lake Michigan and the lake is rising as the land recovers, the northern part (where the ice was thicker) rising the most–in other words the lake is tipping toward the south.

        I doubt the overflow will really get underway in my lifetime but it’s fun to think about. Part of the water would want to go out through the canal.

  16. Hey Fred, Sam Carana is taking a dim view of the IPCC Report Climate Change and Land.
    Specifically the crapola number for methane.
    Plus “The IPCC should have pointed the finger at the cartel of looters comprising fuel, meat, chemical and pharmaceutical industries and fuel-powered vehicle manufacturers and utilities that finances corrupt politicians and that goes hand in glove with a military-industrial complex that feeds on manufacturing conflict over resources that are the very cause of the wrath of pollution”

    http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/08/ipcc-report-climate-change-and-land.html

    Oooh, it’s getting nasty!

    1. Oooh, it’s getting nasty!

      Breathe in, breathe out, Fuck it!

      To be fair, the IPCC is The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. By their own admission The IPCC does not conduct its own research. They are for all practical purposes a heavily politically influenced organization. The content of their reports must go through a vetting process that is well known to water down actual scientific content and realistic risk assessments that may go counter to the wishes of certain Nation States and special interest groups! So it does not surprise me in the least that Sam Carana et al. may not necessarily be fully on board with many of their assessments.

        1. What exactly did you expect? A screaming expletive filled rant?!

          It is exactly the kind of language contained in the IPCC reports.
          It is designed to soothe the psyche and lull the general public into a false state of security…

          Ok, FUCK THESE MOTHER FUCKING LYING PIECES OF SHIT!! THE ENTIRE PLANET IS BURNING WHILE OUR LEADERS FIDDLE!

          😉

          1. “THE ENTIRE PLANET IS BURNING WHILE OUR LEADERS FIDDLE!”

            Oh, come on Fred, chill out. Sure, a bit of smoke makes it hard for your lungs to get oxygen into your blood. Sure, smoke can irritate your respiratory system and cause an immune response, leading to inflammation that affects other parts of your body. But think of the positives: biting insects loose interest in chasing you. Our leaders know this and are thinking of our comfort.

            1. Yeah, you are right I’ll just stick to that soft language from now on, no reason to upset anyone!

            2. This should help keep you calm Fred.
              Nobel prize winner in physics on remaining calm.

              Please remain calm: The Earth will heal itself
              You can’t discuss climate change, Prof. Laughlin says, without looking backward across geologic time. He puts ordinary rainfall into perspective to illustrate the point. The rain that now falls on the world in a normal year measures a metre – “about the height of a golden retriever.” The rain that has fallen since the beginning of the Industrial Age measures 200 metres. The rain that has fallen since the age of dinosaurs would fill Earth’s oceans 20,000 times. The rain that has fallen since oxygen formed would fill the entire world 100 times.

              Yet, the amount of water in Earth’s oceans hasn’t changed significantly in all of this time.

              https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/please-remain-calm-the-earth-will-heal-itself/article1389062/

              See, no worries, be happy. Nothing here to see, it will all get better.
              I mean a top scientist said so. It must be true.

            3. LOL! It’s not the earth I’m worried about! It’s the living organisms that live on it. Even minor perturbations can cause an extinction event…

              As long as species have been evolving, species have been going extinct. It is estimated that over 99.9% of all species that ever lived are extinct. The average lifespan of a species is 1–10 million years, although this varies widely between taxa.
              Extinction – Wikipedia

              Here’s a cool graphic:
              https://e.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/codesign/slideshow/2012/09/1670898-slide-0-evo-large.jpg

            5. BTW When I moved to Hollywood Florida I used to dive on Big Momma….

              https://floridakeys.noaa.gov/coral-disease/disease.html

              Big Momma Collapse in Hollywood Florida

              This “Big Momma” was the largest known colony of Mountainous Star coral (Orbicella faveolata) in Southeast Florida. At more than 330 years old, it was older than the United States. It survived the industrial revolution, numerous hurricanes, and the many stressors associated with the rapid urbanization. “Big Momma” died in a matter of three to four months after contracting this tissue-loss disease.

              Between 2014 and 2019 almost the entire Florida coral reef ecosystem has been affected.

              R.I.P.

              And people call me alarmist and a doomer.

        1. What a waste of resources this guy is. He will probably end up killing himself, and flat-earth spastics will claim he got killed via some conspiracy.

          1. Yeah, not to mention that he could get on a commercial airliner and cruise at 35,000 ft and look out the window for a fraction of the cost.

            1. Lmao I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I mean we are the same species as these people. Bloody hell!

            2. Well, a few of us do fall in the red zone on the extreme left hand side of this bell curve.
              .

        2. I got considerably higher than that when piloting a sailplane.

          How does a Flat Earther explain the altitude change of Polaris as one moves north or south?

          With almost a half inch drop per hundred yards the curvature of the Earth is easy to observe.

          1. “How does a Flat Earther explain the altitude change of Polaris as one moves north or south?”

            Flat Earthers think Polaris is an ice cream flavor.

          2. LOL! You know it just occurred to me that flat earthers believe that the oceans are held in place by a gigantic ring of ice along the edge of the disk. I wonder what they think might happen if global warming melts that ice?!

          3. Stupid Egyptians.

            “Eratosthenes [240 B.C.] thought to measure the angle of a shadow cast in a distant city (Alexandria, Egypt) during the Solstice – and, using basic geometry, to therefore measure the curvature of the Earth between the two locations (both are within a few degrees longitude of each other). He found the angle cast by the sun in Alexandria was about 7°14’ from true, and he estimated the distance between Syene and Alexandria at about 5000 stadia, which meant the circumference of the Earth was about 250,000 stadia (or about 50 times the distance between the two cities). This is because 7°14’ is just about 1/50th of a full circle (360°). That distance is approximately 522 miles which means it would be about 26,100 miles around – the polar (north-south) circumference of the Earth is actually 24,874 miles so that is pretty amazing since Eratosthenes would have had to have measured the distance of 522 miles the hard way (surveying is subject to measurement error, even little bitty tiny errors in measuring an angle can throw off the final result by many miles).”

            https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200606/history.cfm

      3. E FredM,

        The political pressure is on the Synthesis Report for Policymakers, the very last thing to be produced. The preceding Assessment Report, which has its own Synthesis Report, isn’t paid attention to by the governments, from what I’ve seen. That’s where the research is.

        1. E Synapsid,

          Yeah, I just downloaded and read the 43 page Climate Change and Land SMP and was wondering if Jair Bolsonaro and Trump had also read it…

          Yes, that is a purely rethorical question.

          Which leads to a second also rethorical question, would they have a clue what Sam Carana’s point is, in his critique of this report. And I am taking into consideration that neither Bolsonaro or Trump are capable of reading past a 4th grade level and are both mathematically and scientifically illiterate.

          However, they are the leaders of the two most important countries in the Americas and at least in the case of Brazil Bolsonaro is deliberately undermining long standing environmental legislation that was specifically designed to protect the land from the consequences of the very things, even this watered down report, specifically warns against!

          So to be frank I find it increasingly difficult to stick to soft language when discussing this topic.

          Cheers!

  17. I’m looking for the positive in this. Got it, without ice we can drill more oil wells in the Arctic.

    GREENLAND IS BURNING: COUNTRY HIT WITH MORE WILDFIRES THIS YEAR THAN IN PAST DECADE COMBINED

    Meanwhile,

    “Smoke from northern wildfires has been billowing across the Greenland ice sheet and other parts of the Arctic, where soot deposition darkens the ice sheet’s surface and melts it faster.”

    https://nationalpost.com/news/world/as-wildfires-scorch-greenland-its-ice-sheet-is-on-track-for-a-record-melt-season

    1. It’s interesting to think of all the goodies that may well be locked up under the Arctic ice. I can imagine future generations rejoicing in the excitement that comes from land rushes and oil booms.

      1. LOL! You think there are going to be future generations?! What an optimist!
        The only future booms I see are CH4 exposions from the melting hydrates as they bubble to surface and are ignited… http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/

        1. Fred, it’s been established the Fourth Industrial Revolution runs through the Arctic and Antarctic.

          1. Yep! In about 4.5 million years from now a race of wise cephalopods will rule the planet, they will study the the great dying caused by naked apes and will make sure that never again on this planet will there be any hominids!…
            Cheers!

            1. I agree. Orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees will be welcome but certainly not humans, not even in zoos. Too risky to keep invasive species around — even in labs.

            2. If you go backwards about 200,000 generations, you get to a common ancestor of Homo and Pan.
              That family looked more like Pan than Homo.
              Hairy, quadruped, vegetarian, deep forest dweller.

              [Pan is the genus name of Chimpanzee]

              side note- you could not successfully breed with that common ancestor (although some dudes would probably try), since of course they are a different species and genus. But each and every one of the individuals in the intervening generations could breed with their parents or parents family.

  19. HEY FRED!
    GOOD MORNING!
    Take it from Doug, our lords and masters have our best interests in mind!

    Just yesterday early , I threw out a good watermelon, but with spots on it, because we have an excess of them at the moment. There are LOTS of ants on it, but not a SINGLE yellow jacket, or other stinging bee type critter of any kind! ALL day yesterday ! Not a one so far today!

    Yellow jackets are a twenty four carat nuisance, I tell ya true. Been stung by a yellow jacket probably at least a thousand times, over the years, being in the orchard line of work. They LOVE ripe fruit! GOOD RIDDANCE! BAD YELLOW JACKET! TRUMP GOOD!

    Any pinko commie whale loving tree hugging DIMMERKRAT don’t like it, ought to be ridden down to the Mexican border and drowned in the Rio Grande and then catapulted into Mexico as a warning for them to love AMERIKA, or at least larn ta keep their commie mouths SHUT, at risk of a REAL ‘ Merican knocking their teeth out!

    Lots of my neighbors who finished the sixth grade say so! Most of ’em, actually.

    Now here’s a question for you, and anybody else interested.

    It’s always been a pet theory of mine, ever since I first heard of methane hydrates, that maybe at least a FEW of the unexplained losses of ships and aircraft might be the result of a big section of methane hydrate breaking loose, and filling the water full of bubbles, which would result in a ship sinking. The engines of a low flying aircraft might quit as well, due to methane displacing a significant percentage of the air immediately above the site of the rising BIG chunk of hydrate.

    But I have never seen any evidence that this has been DOCUMENTED, or even seriously considered as worthy of research.

    I hope somebody here knows more.

    1. I hope somebody here knows more.

      Well I certainly don’t know but having worked as a diver doing maintenance on BOPs I’m pretty sure that a large enough bubble of gas will sink a drill ship or a semi submersible oil rig. Which is why BOPs exist.

      Side note, I’ve had to deal with Yellow Jackets from places as far and wide as Central Park New York to their Hungarian and Brazilian cousins… so I know well of what you speak. However I’d rather have them around then not!

      Cheers!

  20. For the record:

    GRADUAL ANTARCTIC SEA ICE INCREASES [HAVE BEEN] FOLLOWED BY DECREASES AT RATES FAR EXCEEDING THE RATES SEEN IN THE ARCTIC

    “A newly completed 40-y record of satellite observations is used to quantify changes in Antarctic sea ice coverage since the late 1970s. Sea ice spreads over vast areas and has major impacts on the rest of the climate system, reflecting solar radiation and restricting ocean/atmosphere exchanges. The satellite record reveals that a gradual, decades-long overall increase in Antarctic sea ice extents reversed in 2014, with subsequent rates of decrease in 2014–2017 far exceeding the more widely publicized decay rates experienced in the Arctic. The rapid decreases reduced the Antarctic sea ice extents to their lowest values in the 40-y record, both on a yearly average basis (record low in 2017) and on a monthly basis (record low in February 2017).”

    https://www.pnas.org/content/116/29/14414

  21. Any of our Canuks know any background on the Sea/Sky cableway? Was there a controversy over it being built, protests etc? Was it popular or seen as a problem?

    NAOM

    2. Notanoilman –

      Seriously, Google “SEA-TO-SKY GONDOLA, Squamish, BC” and you’ll get enough information, from every conceivable viewpoint, to keep you going all day.

      1. Not very helpful, mostly just ra-ra stories, but thanks anyway. I was hoping more for anyone recalling any howls of protest when it was to be built which might point to people with a chip on the shoulder.

        NAOM

        1. Maybe it was someone who had it for Caelan and wanted to send him a message that cable cars were not going to be tolerated! ?

          1. Please refer to The Trollenberg Terror for the usefulness of cable cars and research facilities.

  22. Here’s a read good for a laugh, and not only is it funny, it’s good hard kernel of truth in it as well.

    https://www.texasobserver.org/east-texas-trump-voters-lansdale/?fbclid=IwAR2Oe-Qh7svW2UkTQ0ZcKM0hVvcCY2GiQHOUDuFr-HpkqT-15tqybGoR5e8

    It’s exaggerated, but not to the point of being ridiculous. Some leeway must be allowed for purposes of journalism shading over into entertainment.

    But even Trump may inadvertently tell the truth once in a while,( a LONG while in his case, because he evidently has a fact checker,whose job is to make sure he never puts any facts in his tweets or speeches, beyond what day of the week it is) and some of the people she makes so much fun of make a practice of donating to the Red Cross, and the fire department, and help run the little league, and even stop and change flat tires for little old ladies with Obama and HRC bumper stickers.

    Nobody has to agree with such people, but unless you believe in totalitarianism, you have to believe that they have a right to their own opinions, but not to their OWN facts. Facts have nothing to do with opinions.

    If anybody here hasn’t read at least one book about winning friends and influencing people, I strongly recommend that he should do so, and soon.

    1. So what are the chances that LA is the only US city with a leaky distribution system?

  24. What if a yogi United Nations Indian guru threw flowers from India on the packistai Kashmir’s border for peace. Total Asia nuclear event was the result. No Asia no third world. 6 billon less to feed? Oil lasts 100 years

    1. Remind me not to vote for Cameron.
      Might be good for the bizarre poem contest.
      Might get a ribbon,
      in the highly disturbing category.

    2. I personally predict American civil war as well as a general die off across the world. Global tipping point can’t be more than 10-20 years away, and American tipping point can’t be more than 20-30 years away if you ask me.

      Much slower than fast doomers predicted, but much faster than what everyone thinks (most everyone either doesn’t think about anything, or if they do, they fall back on denial and believe resources and growth are infinite).

  25. I have suspected that as climate change becomes more destructive and obvious, it won’t be the political left wing that benefits. This article spells it out in greater detail:

    https://theweek.com/articles/857811/how-climate-change-could-fuel-far-right

    News that climate change is poised to wreak havoc on the world’s food supply, leading to widespread famines and resulting mass migrations, should raise alarms throughout the Western world — and not just because the prospect of a spike in suffering and death around the globe is deeply upsetting in itself. It should also provoke unease because a world in which tens or even hundreds of millions of people are forced to migrate in search of food is also a world in which the far right is likely to flourish.

    This runs contrary to conventional wisdom on the left and in the center of the political spectrum. The left tends to assume that as the effects of climate change — rising temperatures, massive floods, intensifying storms, persistent droughts leading to desertification — are more widely felt, pressure to act will build, benefitting progressive parties and politicians. Many American centrists — including an influential faction on the center-right — agree that this logic will imperil the electoral prospects of the Republican Party. With young people overwhelmingly convinced of the reality of anthropogenic climate change and strongly supportive of policies to halt and reverse it, this faction assumes the left will benefit as the consequences worsen.”

    1. Valid point about the risk of migration from climate change. Central America will be drier.
      And I have no doubt that the republicans and the white supremacists/nazis will be more than willing to use the issue to their advantage.
      I think the democratic party has been making a longterm error, by not being much more vocal about the need for strong legal immigration and tough borders. It got tump-hole elected.

      btw- the whole ‘birther’ movement, which trump was a very vocal mouthpiece for, is a classic white supremacist tactic. His voters, all of them, knew that upfront.

    2. I personally believe that the leftish/liberalish aka Democratic wing stands to benefit politically, to the extent that lots of R type politicians are going to have to give it up, in competitive districts, for having been denialists, within the next ten years, assuming they don’t OVERPLAY their hand, too soon.

      The right wing is digging itself into a deeper hole day after day, week after week, year after year, in terms of the long term, although it’s arguably winning, short term, by backing the ff bau establishment….

      It won’t be too much longer until today’s younger voters replace most of the boomers.They are not their parents or their grandparents children, politically speaking. They’re politically literate, to an extent FAR beyond what their old folks ever dreamed of, because they have the NET in their hip pocket or purse, and they have not only staid old new work news shows at six and eleven, plus a daily paper, they have SNL!

      I don’t know anybody any more who gets his news ONLY at six and from one daily paper.

      But the left can be as naive as the right, and when the day comes that desperate, illiterate or semi literate people, with nothing in common with the citizens of countries such as the USA except their humanity, start arriving at borders not by the hundreds but by the thousands and tens of thousands, leftish leaning politicians are going to be at MUCH bigger risk of being ridden out of town on a rail than right leaning ones are of the same fate due to having denied the reality of climate change…… unless they have a record of being at least moderately tough on immigration.

      I have lived, and I mean REALLY lived, in the same house, in the same family in the same community with the kind of people HRC was stupid enough to refer to as deplorables, and I have lived in a near hippie almost communal community of young college educated liberals. I married a Jewish woman from the Big Apple. I kept a valid grad student id at VCU for ten years. I KNOW both cultures.

      I can talk coon hunting, and poon tang with the best of the rednecks. I can clean my nails and try to remember not to cuss and speak the KING’S English and be right at home at a Big Apple Jewish family get together.

      The critical truth of the matter is that the people in the liberal/ educated culture don’t feel threatened by immigration, because they have no REASON to. Desperate immigrants by and large don’t speak English, and don’t have professional qualifications for the jobs well educated people typically hold. They don’t compete for cheap housing. They won’t be living in the same neighborhoods.

      So… my well educated liberal acquaintances can just naturally think about immigrants in HUMAN terms. I can and do generally think of them the same way, because they are no threat to ME, personally. I own my home, and a business, and as far as I’m concerned, personally, short term, and short term is as long as I will be around, the more the merrier. They’re GOOD for me, economically, personally.

      I’m not at all worried about being robbed.I’m not dumb enough to get hooked on dope. Robbers generally steer clear of southern mountain bred hillbillies. We’re FAMOUS, or infamous, as you will, for our violent ways.. When I ask one of my hillbilly acquaintances ” You packing?” it’s not a question as such. It’s a checklist item, in the event we might be going someplace it’s wise to be armed. That’s not at all uncommon for people like me. We go to strange places, rough places, with a lot of cash on us sometimes, to buy a car or truck, etc. I used to go to honky tonk bars on Friday and Saturday nights. Some of them were rough enough you had better be rough yourself, or just keep on riding. I know more than a few people who have committed any sort of crime you have ever heard of, so long as committing it involved violence, and I know some of them WELL.

      My point is that I KNOW the lower class culture. I don’t need to study it in sociology class. I understand it BETTER than any professor I ever met. I know the well educated professional middle class. I married into it, and I’ve spent many an evening drinking beer with lawyers and accountants. I’ve shared a rental house with some of them in our younger days.

      Half of my family has moved up from the lower middle class of working type people, self employed as often as not, to the professional classes. This half doesn’t care much either way, personally. But they do worry about the other half, the half that lives in cheap housing, works in low paid industries, and in neighborhoods that NECESSARILY absorb immigrants, and usually, the larger portion of the WORST of the immigrants.

      Bottom line…. If the Democrats allow the Republicans to paint them into a corner on immigration, once the shit is REALLY in the fan, and they are showing up by the tens of thousands piling up at the borders……. the country will elect more Trump type politicians. Ditto the countries of Western Europe.

      UNLESS the D’s have a record of being tough on immigration.

      You can take these words to the bank.

      I don’t know how long it will be until hundreds of thousands and millions, rather than just tens of thousands, of people are FORCED to migrate, or die slow and hard in place.

      But anybody who believes in catastrophic climate change HAS to believe the day is coming. I might even live to see it myself. My nieces and nephews are just about sure to see it.

      I hope the D’s don’t paint themselves into a corner trying to out holy each other about climate and immigration over the next year. Too much of that sort of rhetoric might help the R’s more than it does the D’s.

      1. Reply to my own comment,
        I don’t mean to claim or imply that I’m a tough guy myself. I just lived among such people most of my life, and still do. I’m like any ordinary guy who lives in a tough part of a tough city. I have seldom had to deal with trouble, because I don’t start any, mostly, but also because I don’t look like an easy victim.

  26. Besides pine and spruce, vast numbers of trees in Canada are dead or dying as well. Climate change is but one of many causes, according to a local forester. He also explained that little is being done owing to lack of research and funding.

    TREES IN THE U.S. FACING DEVASTATING THREATS DUE TO INVASIVE SPECIES

    “The researchers found that approximately 40 percent of all forested land in the U.S. is under threat from invasive species. They also found that such pests are already killing so many trees that 6 million tons of carbon is released into the atmosphere each year. They note that not much can be done for trees already infected, but quarantine programs could be implemented to prevent the spread of pests.”

    https://phys.org/news/2019-08-trees-devastating-threats-due-invasive.html

    1. Yeah, I suspected that when I saw an article that showed staff still on the island. I don’t understand why it wasn’t closed immediately as a potential crime scene. I wonder if the same is true of his other properties. I am not one for conspiracy theories but this stinks of powerful, rich people being protected.

      NAOM

      1. It does seem odd that his island property was not searched when ALL his other homes/residences were searched in early to mid July.

      2. … I suppose if I was going to go down a conspiracy path I’d remark that Epstein & Maxwell appear to have been running a sexual blackmail/kompromat operation; and that anybody out there who can thank Epstein and Maxwell for getting them laid, should perhaps also be concerned that Mossad has the video.

      3. With Barr being the top banana in the investigation, we can be sure that Trumps ass will be protected. Any evidence linking the POTUS to the sex ring will likely disappear down a rat hole.

  28. Our house is on fire folks. Time to change priorities or should we just continue to party?

    SIBERIAN WILDFIRES SET TO BREAK LAND AREA RECORD

    “Nearly 5.5 million hectares are ablaze, mostly in Siberia, with smoke clouds covering more than 5 million square kilometers, more than the size of the European Union. A combined 50 megatons of carbon dioxide was released in June and 79 megatons of carbon dioxide in July — equal to the exhaust fumes from 36 million cars.”

    https://www.rferl.org/a/siberian-wildfires-set-to-break-land-area-record/30106388.html

    1. The vote is in for yet another day.
      The vote for “continue to party” is once again hovering in the mid 90’s percentile,
      unchanged for as long the records have been kept.

    2. And which way is the wind blowing? Why, straight out over the Arctic ocean. Has there been checking to see if the albedo of the ice been affected?

      NAOM

  29. As oxygen levels increased, the fires began. For geology and paleontology buffs.

    The paper:
    The rise of fire: Fossil charcoal in late Devonian
    marine shales as an indicator of expanding
    terrestrial ecosystems, fire, and atmospheric change
    https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c8a3/6a9fe77c2d5d373985189f0404955f374d27.pdf

    The article:
    Oxygen levels and the rise of fire

    New research reveals extensive wildfires occurred significantly later than previously thought as a result of changes in oxygen levels
    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151021083352.htm

    1. Maybe its time to focus on getting rid of oxygen. Let’s all sign a letter to Trump with that recommendation. It’s pretty obvious — no oxygen, no wildfires and no forest raking needed.

      2. “Net farm income in America has plunged by nearly half over the last five years from $123.4 billion in 2013 to $63 billion last year. It plummeted by 16 percent last year alone.”

        1. Yep, and they are getting old.
          “Today, the nation’s farmers are 17 years older than the average American worker, with the ranks of farmers who are 75 years and up outnumbering those in their prime working years of 35 to 44.”

          1. Never fear, folks.

            The various oligarchs have plenty of cash, and it seems they are buying up farmland wherever they can, but they aren’t much interested in nickel and dime five hundred hectare Yankee properties. YET. They like to buy five or ten thousand at a pop, and are doing so in lots of relatively poor countries.

            You don’t necessarily need an army to invade a country and take over anymore. Lawyers and bankers are cheaper than armies, and a man with a briefcase is apt to be more dangerous than a man with a gun. Guns are obvious. You know what they men.

            By the time you figure out what the lawyers and bankers are up to, if you are a citizen of such a country, they own you.

            Maybe one kid out of my entire extended family will actually live on, run, and own a farm, twenty five years from now. Computers, law , finance, medicine, civil service, anything else is easier and SURE to pay a lot better. Building houses. Running a fast food restaurant. Even driving a truck..assuming there’s still a need for truck drivers.

            The guys that are still farming, hands on, are mostly doing it because they love the lifestyle, and because they don’t know anything else. It’s easy to love the fields and trees, easy to love watching the seasons change, easy to feel great when you bring in a good crop one more time.

            The usual reply to the question, if you hit the lottery, or inherit a million, what would you do, is “Guess I’d just keep farming till it’s gone. “.

            In another generation, farms in this country will be mostly run by professional administrators, who make all or nearly all of the important decisions, delegating lesser work such as equipment maintenance to a maintenance supervisor, etc. The days of the family farm are pretty much over. The owners still like to CALL them family farms of course.

            I don’t like the idea of the PRODUCTION end of the food biz being in corporate hands……. but that’s where it’s headed, and I don’t think it can be stopped anymore than automation can be stopped.

        2. Yeah there’s climate change, droughts, floods, natural disasters, pests, weeds, etc… then on top of all that there is Trump with his trade wars and tariffs!
          Good luck!

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFPPiWs_HUc
          Trump’s Trade Wars: What an American Farmer Thinks | NYT – Opinion

  30. Fred —

    HUMAN IMPACTS ON OCEANS NEARLY DOUBLED IN RECENT DECADE, COULD DOUBLE AGAIN WITHOUT ADEQUATE ACTION

    “The combined impacts that humans are having on oceans — from nutrient pollution to overfishing — are changing and how quickly. In nearly 60% of the ocean, the cumulative impacts are increasing significantly and, in many places, at a pace that appears to be accelerating. You don’t need fancy statistics to see how rapidly ocean temperature is changing and understand the magnitude of the problem.”

    https://phys.org/news/2019-08-human-impacts-oceans-decade-adequate.html

    2. Over the recent decade, total human impacts to the world’s oceans have, on average, nearly doubled and could double again in the next decade without adequate action.

      I believe that those words, while carefully chosen and scientifically accurate, fall into the category of what Gonefishing recently accused me of being guilty of. Namely, that they are sleep inducing soft language!

      They don’t begin to get across how truly dire things are now, let alone how bad things will get, if the impacts are doubled again in the next decade.

      Cheers!

      1. It’s interesting that we continue to increase greenhouse gas emissions as though it were a High School lab experiment – Pay attention class, the object here is to see what temperature positive feedback kicks in to result in runaway warming. Write your guess on a piece of paper and the winner gets a gold star in his or her lab book.

        DIRECT EVIDENCE FOR A POSITIVE FEEDBACK IN CLIMATE CHANGE

        “A new study has confirmed the existence of a positive feedback operating in climate change whereby warming itself may amplify a rise in greenhouse gases resulting in additional warming. The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that in addition to the well understood effect of greenhouse gases on the Earth’s temperature, researchers can now confirm directly from ice-core data that the global temperature has a profound effect on atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. This means that as the Earth’s temperature rises, the positive feedback in the system results in additional warming.”

        https://phys.org/news/2015-03-evidence-positive-feedback-climate.html

  31. ARCTIC WILDFIRES CHANGE THE WORLD

    “A recent ABoVE study found that a single fire season in Canada emitted so much carbon into the atmosphere that it offset half of all the carbon removed from the atmosphere through annual tree growth across all of Canada’s vast forests. So not only are wildfires in the Arctic impacted by global warming, which is leading to warmer and drier summers that create dry, tinder-box conditions — they are also in turn contributing to more climate change.”

    https://phys.org/news/2019-08-nasa-arctic-wildfires-world.html

  32. “THIS IS BLOWING UP:” TEXAS ENERGY COSTS HIT RECORD HIGH MONDAY AS HEATWAVE STRIKES

    “Power demand in Texas hit a record high on Monday as consumers turned up their air conditioners to escape a heatwave that is boiling much of the southern Plains over the next 7-10 days. According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), who operates the electric grid and supplies energy to more than 25 million customers, representing 90% of the state’s electrical load, reported that demand surged to 74,531 megawatts (MW) at 5 p.m. CDT on Monday and could reach 75,000 MW on Tuesday. Reuters notes that the all-time high was 73,473 MW on July 19, 2018. Grid data from Bloomberg showed wind power generation in the region slid by 50% Monday, with most of the energy generation coming from fossil fuel power stations.”

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-13/blowing-texas-energy-costs-hit-record-high-monday-heatwave-strikes

      1. Personally, I think we all died back in the 1950’s because we didn’t have air conditioning to save our sorry hides.

        1. People also lived in houses that had high ceilings with porches, awnings and shade trees… And they didn’t work in tall sealed glass towers.

          1. Believe It or Not! – your choice. 😉

            “Global energy demand from air conditioners is expected to triple by 2050, requiring new electricity capacity the equivalent to the combined electricity capacity of the United States, the EU and Japan today. The global stock of air conditioners in buildings will grow to 5.6 billion by 2050, up from 1.6 billion today – which amounts to 10 new ACs sold every second for the next 30 years.”

            https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2018/may/air-conditioning-use-emerges-as-one-of-the-key-drivers-of-global-electricity-dema.html

            1. But, but, we are entering a new ice age why would anyone even need air conditioners?! In any case, even taking into consideration the extreme upper limit to human life expectancy, there is zero chance that I will be alive 2050! So I guess I will never know…

          1. I will never forget the year (1955-6) that I lived and worked as an intern in Houston’s Jefferson Davis Charity Hospital. There was no air conditioning except in the operating rooms. Pediatric patients could occasionally be subject to dehydration and death.

  33. In a comment further up, I did a partial critique of Michael Moore’s most recent production, “Planet of the Humans” based on an AP article that I had linked to and quoted. Towards the end of my comment, at the end of the penultimate paragraph I wrote the following”

    “In light of the fact that it is just now that renewables are having a noticeable effect on emissions, now is not the time to be applying the brakes on renewables. It should be exactly the opposite. The powers that be should be looking to accelerate the adoption of wind and solar.”

    Here is another article, from reneweconomy.com.au to support that sentiment:

    Rooftop solar slashes demand levels and emissions across main grid

    The growth of rooftop solar continues to have a major impact on Australia’s electricity grids, with the Australian Energy Market Operator reporting significant declines in operational demand in the latest quarter.

    The market operator also credits solar for having a major impact on the emissions intensity of the main grid.

    “The largest decrease (in emissions intensity) occurred at midday due to increased penetration of solar PV,” it said in its latest Quarterly Energy Dynamics report. (See top graph).

    AEMO noted that average operational demand reduced by 362MW in the three months to June, compared to the same period a year earlier. The biggest falls were in NSW ( minus 130 MW) and Victoria (minus 111 MW), which it said was driven by additional rooftop solar PV output and mild peak-time temperatures which reduced heating requirements.

    “Reduced demand in Queensland (minus 75 MW) and South Australia (minus 22 MW) was a function of continued growth in rooftop PV output over the middle of the day,” it noted in its latest Quarterly Energy Dynamics report.

    The following article outlines how the forces (of darkness 😉 ) that, are dead set against anything that will reduce CO2 emissions by reducing the amount of FF burned, choose to distort the facts to throw shade on renewables:


    Murdoch solar scare campaign called out by Clean Energy Regulator

    Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator has called out the Murdoch media for “inaccurate” reporting on the standard and safety of rooftop solar installations, following the release of its latest national data on solar panel inspections in 2018.

    The CER last month released the rooftop PV data as part of its Renewable Energy Target 2018 Administrative Report, revealing a small year-on-year rise in the number of “sub-standard” and “unsafe” installations.

    As we reported here, the data showed a total of 80 systems – or 2.2 per cent of all installations – deemed to be “unsafe” in a year where small-scale solar installations (1-100kW) grew by 37 per cent. This was a slight increase on the 1.9 per cent of 2017-18.

    The number of systems found to have committed the slightly lesser transgression of being “sub-standard” also increased just slightly, to 748 (of 3678 systems inspected), or 20.3 per cent, compared to 17.7 per cent at the end of July 2018.

    At the time, the CER stressed in its statement accompanying the data that a substandard rating did not mean the whole system was substandard, but rather was based on “one or two relatively minor defects” in the installation that did not affect performance.

    “There is often a spike in sub–standard inspection findings following the release of updated standards. For example, the new standard could require that a heavy duty conduit is used instead of a standard duty conduit.”

    Nonetheless, the findings were reported, first in The Australian as “One in five solar units defective,” and then two weeks later in the Daily Telegraph under the headline “Complaints rise to one a day, as report reveals a quarter of home installations are faulty.”

    The Courier-Mail in Brisbane went with the less inflammatory (but strikingly vague) headline of “Solar panels on Qld homes may be faulty, Clean Energy Regulator;” but then followed it up with an editorial calling on federal energy minister Angus Taylor to shut down rooftop “solar shonks.”

    Two days later, the CER felt the need to release a new statement, noting that some of the reporting of its solar panel inspection results was, “in our view …not an accurate interpretation of the data.”

    Australia and the US are probably the best examples of countries where wealthy FF interests (oligarchs) with the aid of the same media conglomerate, have basically bought the Federal governments of both nations and are using them to do their bidding by stymieing efforts to adopt renewable energy in favor of continued, unabated use (burning) of FF.

  34. An Ocean Plastics Field Trip for Corporate Executives
    Rowan Jacobsen

    https://www.outsideonline.com/2400590/ocean-plastic-pollution-soulbuffalo

    The subtropical island of Bermuda does not see many icebreakers, but on a warm May day, Dave Ford is standing on one, welcoming his uneasy guests aboard. Technically, the RCGS Resolute, 400 feet long and eight decks high, is an ice-strengthened expedition ship, one class below an icebreaker. But the choice still seems inspired, because as the factions of environmentalists and plastics executives arrive, the chill on the ship is palpable, and the only way Ford’s vision of some sort of Paris Accord for plastics is going to happen is if a whole lot of icebreaking goes down.

    Ford’s company, SoulBuffalo, takes corporate executives on epic excursions (Antarctica, Kamchatka, Zimbabwe), smacks a little kumbaya into them, then sends them home fired up about corporate responsibility.

    SoulBuffalo’s previous expeditions have all been for small groups from single companies, but as the scope of the plastics crisis has unfolded (spoiler alert: it’s worse than you can possibly imagine), Ford began to wonder if a big, boundary-crossing, experiential intervention could turn the tide. “I’ve always believed that travel can capture magic in a bottle,” he says. “You know how when you travel with people, your relationship can advance years in a matter of days? That’s what needs to happen out here.”

    Ford is tall and scruffy. At 41, he still dresses in the just-slept-in jeans and T-shirts that make it easy to picture him in his young, globe-trotting days. That informality helps take the starch out of the suits, which is one of his goals for this Ocean Plastics Leadership Summit: Put all the stakeholders on a ship, steam out to the plastic-studded wastes of the North Atlantic Gyre, distribute snorkels, and, in a kind of epic swirly, stick their faces in the problem. Then haul everyone back aboard and hack a solution to the fucking thing.

  35. How YouTube Radicalized Brazil
    By Max Fisher and Amanda Taub

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/world/americas/youtube-brazil.html

    When Matheus Dominguez was 16, YouTube recommended a video that changed his life.

    He was in a band in Niterói, a beach-ringed city in Brazil, and practiced guitar by watching tutorials online.

    YouTube had recently installed a powerful new artificial intelligence system that learned from user behavior and paired videos with recommendations for others. One day, it directed him to an amateur guitar teacher named Nando Moura, who had gained a wide following by posting videos about heavy metal, video games and, most of all, politics.

    In colorful and paranoid far-right rants, Mr. Moura accused feminists, teachers and mainstream politicians of waging vast conspiracies. Mr. Dominguez was hooked.

    As his time on the site grew, YouTube recommended videos from other far-right figures. One was a lawmaker named Jair Bolsonaro, then a marginal figure in national politics — but a star in YouTube’s far-right community in Brazil, where the platform has become more widely watched than all but one TV channel.

    Last year, he became President Bolsonaro.

    Members of the nation’s newly empowered far right — from grass-roots organizers to federal lawmakers — say their movement would not have risen so far, so fast, without YouTube’s recommendation engine.

    New research has found they may be correct. YouTube’s search and recommendation system appears to have systematically diverted users to far-right and conspiracy channels in Brazil.

    A New York Times investigation in Brazil found that, time and again, videos promoted by the site have upended central elements of daily life.

    Teachers describe classrooms made unruly by students who quote from YouTube conspiracy videos or who, encouraged by right-wing YouTube stars, secretly record their instructors.

    Some parents look to “Dr. YouTube” for health advice but get dangerous misinformation instead, hampering the nation’s efforts to fight diseases like Zika. Viral videos have incited death threats against public health advocates.

    And in politics, a wave of right-wing YouTube stars ran for office alongside Mr. Bolsonaro, some winning by historic margins. Most still use the platform, governing the world’s fourth-largest democracy through internet-honed trolling and provocation.

    1. In this world, the greatest skill one can have is the ability to protect your mind from junk. While ‘you tube’ is brought up in this article, let remember that parents, and often religion, are the first to have a crack in teaching falsehood (all theology falls in this realm) and hatred to children. Next comes school, both in class and out in the yard.
      Globally, we are failing in this regard. Look no further than the election of trump.

      1. Yep! Brazil is no better or worse than anywhere else in this regard!
        Cheers!

  36. https://www.wsj.com/articles/german-economy-contracts-as-trade-woes-bite-11565768142

    Germany taken all around, considering population and the wind and solar resources of the country, etc, leads the way in transitioning to renewable energy.

    It’s hard to say just how bad this trade war will get.

    It might bring on a recession SOON ENOUGH that it significantly increases the D’s chances of winning more elections in 2020.

    It might also result in the German people collectively coming to understand that they must work even harder on the transition to renewable energy, energy efficiency, recycling, and all around self sufficiency in economic terms.

    Depending on exporting manufactured goods in a world headed to hell in a handbasket isn’t a safe strategy now, because it’s just not possible to KNOW that you can stay far enough ahead, technologically, to offset the advantages posed by cheap labor and mobile capital in world markets.

    This export oriented model will grow ever more dangerous as hard times get harder, and more countries try to prop up their own economies by limiting imports so as to support domestic manufacturing.

    I’m wondering if the German people, as a result of the trade war, will turn their better than “world class ” talents to an even greater extent than at present towards making their country as independent as possible in terms of imports.. especially of imported energy.

    The less you have to import, the less you MUST export in order to live well.

    Maybe there’s at least SOME silver lining associated with Trump’s trade war.

    1. Check out the energy mix of Germany-
      https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/long-term-energy-transitions?country=DEU
      This only goes up to 2008. I wonder how it looks now. I find it hard to come up with good data that shows all of energy, rather than just electricity.
      The yellow is primary electricity- including hydropower, nuclear
      power, wind, photo­voltaics, tidal, wave and solar thermal and geothermal

      Without healthy German export sector, the financial underpinning of the EU is less than fragile. Much of the German exports go to those same EU countries (a little over 60%) that are in generally weak economic position. How negative can interest rates go, for how long?

      2. Electricity:
        https://energy-charts.de/index.htm

        All energy, English, Excel-Files:
        https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/7-1-Energy-Balance-2000-to-2017.html

        All energy, English, PDF-Files
        https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/42-1-Annual-Reports.html

        German, PDFs with different, additional information (e.g. types of heating used), mostly diagrams
        https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/20-0-Berichte.html

        See “Downloads” in the menu for more.

        Living here, I don’t see Germany leading deployment of renewables any longer. 14 years of federal governments essentially opposed to “Energiewende” have left deep marks.
        Since it’s still considered to be a worthwhile endeavor by most of the people, the government has been publicly rather quiet about killing “Energiewende”, using mostly red tape and regulations to severely curtail deployment of new wind and pv capacity.

        For example, at least one state has a “10x height rule” regarding new wind turbines. Meaning the new turbine needs to be placed at least 10x as far from the next settlement as it is high.
        For Bavaria this means that less than about 0.1 per cent (1) of the total area of the state can be used to build new turbines.

        Conservative governments in other states use this as a model for their own laws regarding new wind turbines.
        As a result the turbine manufacturers in Germany are facing hard times. About 20.000 jobs are at stake.
        Coincidentally around the same number of people are employed in lignite mining and burning. Both coal industries are set to receive billions in “compensation” for the looming shutdown of coal mining and burning (planned to be completed by 2038!).

        Most politicians from the liberal or conservative part of the spectrum don’t give a fuck about the economic opportunities provided by wind power or “Energiewende” generally. They were happy to kill the pv industry before and they will not hesitate to do the same to the wind turbine business.
        The social democrats have nostalgic memories of those times when they were the party of choice for the – then far larger number of – employees in the coal industry.
        The neo nazis’ take on economic policy is as stupid as it could get.
        The guys to the left of the social democrats are not really a force to be reckoned with.
        Which leaves the Greens as the only party willing to commit to the eradication of old industries in favor of ones more suitable for the future.
        But even the most favorable polls don’t give them enough votes to really push through. They’d either have to run a minority government (the first one in Germany since 1949), something few German politicians are willing to do.
        Or be – probably – the minority partner in a coalition with the conservatives Where they’d have to make tough choices which policies they’d be willing to sacrifice.

        And it’s still two years until the next federal elections (barring any unforseen events leading to earlier elections (2)), two years were more jobs in future industries will be lost.

        (1)
        I pulled that number out of my ass as I can’t find the correct one right now. It’s probably far too optimistic. I vaguely remember that as a result there’s a potential of one or two dozen MW of new wind power capacity left at best.

        (2)
        Merkel could step down as chancellor, requiring parliament to elect a new chancellor. Failure to do so would trigger federal elections.

  37. Disgusting, unbelievable, unforgivable.

    CLIMATE DENIERS GET MORE MEDIA PLAY THAN SCIENTISTS

    “Even today, established media continue to provide platforms for dubious or discredited assertions about global warming. Last week, for example, US business magazine Forbes published an article on its website entitled “Global Warming? An Israeli Astrophysicist Provides Alternative View That is Not Easy To Reject”. The “alternative view”—that warming is caused by the Sun and not CO2 emissions—is thoroughly discredited, and the magazine was compelled within hours to remove the piece. In testimony last month before the US Senate that took on confessional tones, long-time Republican Party strategist Frank Luntz revealed a key moment nearly 20 years ago in the campaign to blunt action against global warming. “You need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate,” he told party operatives in a memo during George W. Bush’s first term in office. The disquieting term “global warming”, he further suggested, should be replaced with “climate change”. “I’m here before you to say that I was wrong in 2001,” he told a Senate committee. In the new study, Petersen and colleagues scanned 100,000 news items published from 2000 through 2016 for bylines, citations and mentions of 386 scientists, and 386 “contrarians”. “Tallying across all media sources we find climate change contrarian media visibility to be 49 percent greater than climate change visibility,” they wrote. The imbalance was made worse by the amplifying effect of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, they added.

    https://phys.org/news/2019-08-climate-deniers-media-scientists.html

    1. So, having abrogated our (adult) responsibilities perhaps children will save the planet — or die trying!

      GRETA THUNBERG: THE WORLD’S YOUTHFUL CLIMATE CONSCIENCE

      Swedish climate activist and global star Greta Thunberg understood climate change at an early age and has rallied youths around the world and parents to her cause, sparking criticism along the way. In less than a year the now 16-year-old’s humble “climate strike” has become a global movement and set her up as a potential 2019 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. As her strict climate ethos prevents her from flying she is preparing to travel to the New York UN Climate Summit on September 23 by sailboat.

      It was in school, when Greta Thunberg was about eight or nine, that her interest in climate issues was first piqued. My teachers told me that I should save paper and turn off the lights. I asked them why and they said because there’s something called climate change and global warming, caused by humans,” Greta told AFP. The notion was strange to the young girl, who felt that if that was the case, “then we would not be talking about anything else”.

      In late May, the teenage activist announced she would take a sabbatical year to visit the Americas for a series of meetings on the theme of climate change, a journey expected to last several months. “We have to take the opportunity to act now because it may be too late in just a year,” she warned in December.

      https://phys.org/news/2019-08-greta-thunberg-world-youthful-climate.html

      1. It does seem that us older folks had a chance to set things right and came up short (one hint something was up, “Limits to Growth,” was published almost half a century ago). Given our impotence and in-fighting, the kids may be right to move on without us.

        Greta is a hero to my grandkids (my kids never asked much about climate change, but the grandkids are always asking my wife and I about it. Ask us what we’re doing about it each week).

        Greta has a great way of putting folks in their place. I love her “museum” notion: “The Swedish teenager whose lone protest against climate change spurred a global youth movement has told an Australian state education minister his words “belong in a museum” after he warned students against attending an upcoming protest. ”

        https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/21/belongs-in-a-museum-greta-thunberg-condemns-politician-against-school-strike

        1. Greta has a great way of putting folks in their place. I love her “museum” notion: “The Swedish teenager whose lone protest against climate change spurred a global youth movement has told an Australian state education minister his words “belong in a museum” after he warned students against attending an upcoming protest. ”

          Awesome! 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

          She also said this:
          https://www.cbsnews.com/news/greta-thunberg-trump-16-year-old-climate-activist-says-meeting-with-president-would-be-a-waste/

          16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg says meeting with Trump would be a “waste”

  38. Islandboy, perhaps you have a (practical) solution to this dilemma?

    HOW DO PEOPLE STAY COOL WITHOUT FURTHER CONTRIBUTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE?

    Summer temperatures are rising in many parts of the globe: across Europe, records were broken after two heat waves descended on the region in June and July. In June, dozens of people in India died after temperatures reached 50 C in some parts of the country. In Japan, 11 people died by Aug. 2 after a heat wave gripped the country with temperatures reaching 37 C earlier in the week. And that’s the problem: with hot regions predicted to get hotter with a changing climate, there’s more need to provide some cool relief. But how do you do that without going in a vicious circle and further pumping CO2 into the air?

    Meanwhile, in an IEA study done in collaboration with Canada’s National Energy Board (along with a second one that looked at China), research suggests air conditioners have barely changed in almost a century. “The technology, despite efficiency gains, has not per se evolved,” Dulac said. “The ACs we use today are still more or less the ACs we started using in the 1950s. In terms of basic technology, not much has changed.”

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/climate-change-cooling-1.5244077

  39. Another dilemma!

    FRACKING PROMPTS GLOBAL SPIKE IN ATMOSPHERIC METHANE

    “Atmospheric methane levels had previously risen during the last two decades of the 20th century but levelled in the first decade of 21st century. Then, atmospheric methane levels increased dramatically from 2008-14, from about 570 teragrams (570 billion tons) annually to about 595 teragrams, due to global human-caused methane emissions in the last 11 years. This recent increase in methane is massive. It’s globally significant. It’s contributed to some of the increase in global warming we’ve seen and shale gas is a major player.”

    https://phys.org/news/2019-08-fracking-prompts-global-spike-atmospheric.html

  40. If you subscribe (not literally) to the idea of human population overshoot, continue. If not, this note is not for you.
    What is the cure for overshoot? It is to either expand the pie, or to downsize. I’ll leave the former possibility for others to dream of.
    Downsizing the population can happen fast or slow, deliberately or against the collective will. Some will argue that it can be slow and deliberate, and I agree with the possibility. That scenario would take recognition of the issue early in the process, with a timely and effective response. For example, China embarked on the one family/one child policy for a while, and it worked. But when economic growth associated with industrialization/modernization took off, their ‘pie’ became much bigger and the restriction was lifted. The chance for a deliberate global downsizing transition passed about 30-40 yrs ago.
    In some regions, the industrialization/modernization pathway to a bigger pie and bigger population is in full tilt- places like India and Nigeria. For the time being.

    But as we know, there are limits to growth.
    And limits to the carrying capacity of the earth.

    Downsizing population will not be a deliberate/voluntary act for our species. It will take painful forcing mechanisms I suspect. I do not applaud that process by any means. Nor would any compassionate, awake human being.
    But none-the-less, it seems like we are on the verge.
    And we are without a pathway or mechanism to be proactive or successful on this ‘de-growth’ journey, as best I can tell.

    I’ve read a little on this, and what I have seen thus far falls into several categories.
    -Scholarly discussions are easy to find on ‘degrowth’. They lose me by the 4 th word on average.
    -Wishful thinking is another big category. Things like technological innovation, or ‘Conviviality’- in other words “can’t we all just get along” [Degrowth Meets Convivialism: Pathways to a Convivial Society], and such. I admit, I wander into this realm at times, dreaming of people who would be satisfied with black eyed peas and no air travel, for example.
    -Another is simply unrealistic thinking, such as a quick reversion to permaculture, or quick transition to no fossil fuel. It seems to me that population downsizing on a massive scale must come before these kind changes are possible. Emphasis on ‘before’.
    -And another response category is denial, or ignorance=bliss. This is the easiest state to for a person to enjoy. And surely counterproductive to the common good.
    -And lastly, there are those who relish destruction. They somehow think they will be spared unintended consequences and will last 3 more years than everyone else. Good luck with that. Don’t count me on that train.

    I don’t know quite how to categorize this one- “…degrowth is the very opposite of austerity. While austerity calls for scarcity in order to generate growth, degrowth calls for abundance in order to render growth unnecessary.
    Degrowth, at its core, is a demand for radical abundance.”
    Whatever.

    If anyone has coherent strategy or source to share on a ‘de-growth’ pathway, I’d be interested to check it out. Thanks for tolerating the rant.

    1. De-growth mostly refers to de-industrialization and reducing consumption.
      With about a 100 to 1 variance in the amount of energy and material used by people on this planet, population is just one of the factors. It’s mostly a lifestyle and industrial production (including industrial agriculture) problem since the environmental footprint calculation is heavily dependent upon carbon burn and manufacturing.

      Reality it that the meat eating lifestyle is about over, large scale fishing is about over and the surge toward a “western” lifestyle is about to bounce off a wall onto a hard pavement way below.
      So no real need to institute policy to reduce consumption and population.

  41. But as we know, there are limits to growth.
    And limits to the carrying capacity of the earth.

    I’m afraid the ‘WE‘ you speak of is actually a very tiny minority…
    If you were to poll the average person on the street I’m afraid you would find that they absolutely do not accept any limits to growth! Certainly not in any time frame that matters.

    In any case the graph below illustrates what happens in nature to any population that enters into an overshoot phase. I’m afraid that is what we will experience as well.
    .

    1. Fred’s right about overshoot. He’s never so far been wrong about such things. He’s also right about the fact that only a tiny minority of us really know shit from apple butter about the physical and life sciences.

      I have had numerous conversations with medical professionals, one such being my sister who is an adjunct professor of nursing, and a super well trained specialist, to the point she has been given standing orders or permission to do just about anything other than actual surgery, in treating and caring for preemie babies.

      She has taken numerous courses in biology, but never ONCE has the overshoot problem crossed her mind, except when I remind her of it. She’s focused on the present. She’s also a retired commissioned officer, and she’s quick to talk about such problems as a possible killer epidemic disease, deliberately created and released. THAT sort of thing was on her professional radar.

      Now to ponder a bit on something Hickory says, “Downsizing population will not be a deliberate/voluntary act for our species. It will take painful forcing mechanisms I suspect. I do not applaud that process by any means. Nor would any compassionate, awake human being.”

      He’s right too.

      But downsizing does not NECESSARILY have to be forced, and it does not NECESSARILY have to even be voluntary, from a theoretical pov.

      Downsizing, in terms of population, is already an established fact, due to birth rates falling below replacement level when women ( and their men) are well educated and prosperous. It’s basically just a lucky accident, a happy but unexpected consequence of prosperity.

      This leads me to think that while there’s essentially no hope for the world as whole, in terms of overshoot, some people in some places have already solved their overpopulation problem….. if they can hold onto their home turf, protecting it from immigrants who will otherwise pour in by the millions.

      A second thought is that some people in some places will come to understand the big picture well enough that they are willing to do whatever is necessary or possible, short of actually using force, to reduce population growth.

      Once people see that they can and WILL live better with fewer children, they pay damned little attention to priests of any sort. They quit having more than one or two kids.

      I believe the simply astonishing drop in the birth rate in Brazil had as much to do with the coming of cheap televisions as ANYTHING else. Once Brazilian women came to understand that they COULD have a better life for themselves, and their kids, if they had only one or two…….. they basically said the baby factory is SHUT DOWN. Soap operas and cheap entertainment paved the road to this enlightenment.

      TV got the message across, unintentionally.

      There’s a possibility that the message can be gotten across in other societies as well.

      Fred I hope you go into some detail about your own beliefs and insights into the decline in birth rates in Brazil, since you know the country well.

      Other than a very few women who are actually working biologists, whom I have communicated with via email, or when they speak publicly, I haven’t yet met a single woman, personally, who takes overshoot seriously.

      Not women’s fault, it’s just that until recently not many women went into the sciences.

      I have met only a couple of dozen men, personally, who take overshoot seriously……. and they don’t talk about it publicly, except at speaking events or in forums such as this one.

      They prefer not to be known as nut cases.
      I’m guessing, but I doubt if more than one person out of twenty who will graduate from an American university this year took a freshman year two semester biology class with labs.

      Nineteen out of twenty are therefore essentially clueless, in terms of being entitled to an opinion of their own. They are necessarily reliant on second hand opinions. They will believe whatever the people they look up to tell them to believe.

      1. “They prefer not to be known as nut cases.”
        Indicative of the norm being a high level of exclusion and delusion. Cognitive dissonance all the way to the bottom.

      2. Fred I hope you go into some detail about your own beliefs and insights into the decline in birth rates in Brazil, since you know the country well.

        There are of course many factors and while I unfortunately don’t have a link handy I read a study that conclusively linked Brazilian soap operas to a general decline in birth rates. So you are on the money with TV having played a role.

        Cheers!

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