332 thoughts to “Open Thread, Non-Petroleum Dec. 7, 2016”

  1. This reporter is the world’s worst math student.

    Earth’s spin is slowing at a rate of 1.8 milliseconds per century

    The latest findings in Earth science are brought to you by ancient astronomers who observed the heavens as much as 2,700 years ago.

    Thanks to hundreds of records of lunar and solar eclipses carved in clay tablets and written into dynastic histories, modern scientists have determined that the amount of time it takes for Earth to complete a single rotation on its axis has slowed by 1.8 milliseconds per century, according to a report published Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

    It may not sound significant, but over the course of 2½ millenniums, that time discrepancy adds up to about 7 hours.

    In other words, if humanity had been measuring time with an atomic clock that started running back in 700 BC, today that clock would read 7 p.m. when the sun is directly overhead rather than noon.

    Well, not quite. 27 centuries times 1.8 milliseconds comes out to be 48.6 milliseconds, or about one twentieth of a second.

    400 million years ago the length of a day was about 21.8 hours long, give or take.

    Tidal Slowdown, Coral Growth, and the Age of the Earth

    If we assume that the rate of slowing of the earth’s rotation has been constant, we can calculate the number of days in a year at various times in the past (Hayward, 1985, p. 95). Suppose we want to know how many days made up a year in the Devonian period, estimated to have been some 400 million years ago. Each day was 20 sec shorter per million years x 400 million years = 8,000 seconds shorter. This means each day was only 21.8 hours long then, as opposed to 24 hours per day now. Since a year is 8799 hours long (24 hours/day x 365.25 days/year, using modern-length days) and this length has not changed, we can calculate the number of ancient days in a Devonian year by dividing 8766 hours/year by 21.8 hours/day, to get about 400 days/year. A similar calculation for the Pennsylvanian period, beginning about 280 million years ago, gives 22.4 hours/day, or 390 days in the Pennsylvanian year.

    I say give or take because the earth is slowing down because of tidal drag, and that has not been constant over millions of years.

    1. Perhaps it’s worth adding that while Earth’s rotation has slowed by tidal acceleration through gravitational interactions with the Moon, at the same time angular momentum is slowly being transferred to the Moon as it spirals away from the Earth (at an rate of about 3.8 cm per year).

    2. So basically, the earth will be too hot for life from the increasing solar radiation long before the rotational slowing becomes a problem.

    4. Well, this is right up my current research alley. Slight variations in the angular momentum of the earth as it rotates impart a first law of motion into the oceans, which by theory will cause it to slosh back and forth. This leads to the phenomenon known as ENSO and gives rise to seemingly unpredictable periods of El Nino and La Nina climate conditions. At least part of the angular momentum variation is caused by the moon’s orbit. It turns out that ENSO is likely much more predictable than currently thought — more complicated than predicting tides but that’s to be expected.

      Described here, and I will present this research at next week’s AGU conference:
      http://contextEarth.com/2016/11/21/presentation-at-agu-2016-on-december-12/

      Paul

      1. WHT

        Speaking of up your alley – I’m in the middle of “Welcome to the Universe, an Astrophysical Tour” by J. Richard Gott, Michael A. Strauss, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

        What a great book! Highly recommended to anyone with some basic high school or college physics background who would like to stitch together the classical physics of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and motion you learned in your youth with the latest in both nuclear and astrophysical discoveries (as if there is really any difference:). And a whole lot of “so that’s how they figured that out!” moments.

    5. Reporters work on a deadline and so can’t be expected to get everything right, but it is interesting that she used millenniums instead of millennia, which though not grammatically wrong sounds awkward. Usually editors catch that because they have a good ear when it comes to what sounds right, as opposed to being right. All sorts of things could have gone when she was trying to estimate the number — for example, she might have thought that one millennium is a million years.

      1. for example, she might have thought that one millennium is a million years.

        Nope, that still would not even be close. 2.5 million years is 2,500 centuries. That times 1.8 milliseconds comes out to about 13 minutes. But she specifically stated, bold mine:

        In other words, if humanity had been measuring time with an atomic clock that started running back in 700 BC, today that clock would read 7 p.m. when the sun is directly overhead rather than noon.

        There can be no mistake at what she is saying. She is saying that we would have lost 7 hours in 27 centuries. At 1.8 milliseconds per century we would have lost 49 milliseconds or just short of one twentieth of a second.

    6. Ron,

      Her Math is perfectly solid, so is yours. She and you are adding up different things. You add up to see the effect today. (a todays day is one twentieth of a second shorter than a day 2700 years ago.) She adds that effect up over the entire course of these 2700 years. So she does (one twentieth sec/day) * 990,000 days/2 = 24,000 seconds = almost 7 hours.
      (rounded numbers)

      1. If it’s 1.8 milliseconds slowdown per century then the conclusion that that will result in a 7 hrs change is incorrect. Rather, 1.8 milliseconds per century, over 2700 years is 1.8 x 27 = 48.6 milliseconds. Not 7 hours! The actual slowdown is most likely somewhere between 2.3 and 1.8 milliseconds per century. Saying: “a todays day is one twentieth of a second shorter than a day 2700 years ago” is nonsense.

        1. BTW: It takes 12-ish hours for a big wave to slosh across the Pacific Ocean and back; in time for its height to be reinforced by the next high tide. So because of the size of the Pacific Basin, the Moon is especially effective at slowing the Earth’s rotation right now. Anyway, things changes, owing to continental drift, so in the past, even though the Moon was closer, tidal friction was a weaker effect. Further, we can’t determine accurately how the positions of the continents have changed to the precision necessary to work out the effect on tides (and we have just a few ways to measure the rotation of the Earth at different times in its history), so we don’t have a reliable history of how the Earth and Moon have interacted. Also, we’re not sure how far from the Earth the Moon was when it first formed or how fast the Earth was rotating at that time. IOW, there are lots of unknowns.

        2. Doug, it’s not 1.8 milliseconds per century, it’s 1.8 miliseconds per day per century! (that is time squared in the denominator! We’re talking summed series here.)
          “a todays day is one twentieth of a second shorter than a day 2700 years ago” is Ron’s conclusion; it is my conclusion and it’s the autor of the article’s subconclusion and it fits the math (using the given data). No nonsense here.

          1. Every 100 years the day gets roughly 1.7 ms, or 1.7 thousandths of a second, longer so a modern-day is longer by about 1.7 ms than one century ago. In fact, in the year 1820, a rotation took exactly 24 hours, or 86,400 standard seconds. So since 1820, the mean solar day has increased by about 2.5 milliseconds. Therefore, the average day has grown longer by between 15 millionths and 25 millionths of a second each year.

            1. So it will take about 3.3 million years to gain just one minute, and two million more centuries for us to add one extra hour to our day. Meanwhile, sea levels, plus electromagnetic forces between Earth’s core and its mantle have an affect on spin which, like climate change, is why it’s all quite unpredictable.

            2. Hasn’t this all happened before? Nothing big happened or went out of control. Did it?

            3. “Hasn’t this all happened before?” Probably. “Nothing big happened or went out of control. Did it?” Nope. Nothing I’m aware of anyway.

          2. Verwimp, in your interpretation of 1.8 milliseconds per day per century the result is 1/time not time squared because there is time in the numerator.
            Actually the scalar is just rotational period change per century, meaning that the earth’s day length increases by 1.8 ms every century. The scalar is time.

      2. Gentlemen,

        We are looking at three things:
        1) A variable (=var)
        2) The way this variable changes over time (d(var)/dt)
        3) The way this change changes over time (d²(var)/dt²)
        Let me give you two more familiar analogies, before turning back to the initial case.
        First analogy: Two cars.
        Consider two identical cars, driving at 100 mph next to oneandother in the same direction. At a given moment one car starts decelerating suddenly but smoothly and constantly by using the brakes. This deceleration equals 5 mph per second. So it will take (100mph)/(5mph/sec)=20 seconds to stop that car. The other car just keeps going. Now the question is: What is the distance between these two cars after 10 seconds into the deceleration process?
        Well: the variable is distance: the number you read on the odometer (in miles). d(var)/dt = the velocity in mph (or miles/hours). d²(var)/dt² is the deceleration in mph/sec (or miles divided by the product of hours and seconds, which is time squared in the denominator!)
        After 10 seconds the velocity will have dropped to 50mph. The average speed during the first 10 seconds of the deceleration process equals (100+50)/2=75 mph.
        So the distance between the two cars will be the difference in velocity multiplied by the considered time = (100mph -75mph)*10sec = 25mph*0.00278h=0.069miles = 364 foot.

        Second analogy: Two oil fields
        Consider two identical oil fields, producing 1,000,000 barrels per day. At a given moment one fields production starts decreasing suddenly but smoothly and constantly. This decrease equals 50,000 barrels per day per year. So it will take (1,000,000 barrels per day)/(50,000 barrels per day per year)=20 years to stop that fields production. The other field just keeps producing 1,000,000 barrels per day. Now the question is: What is the difference in the total amount of barrels produced between these two fields after 10 years into the decrease process?
        Well: the variable is the total amount of barrels: the cumulative production (in barrels). d(var)/dt = the production in barrels per day (or b/d). d²(var)/dt² is the decrease in barrels per day per year (or barrels divided by the product of days and years, which is time squared in the denominator!)
        After 10 years the production will have dropped to 500,000 b/d. The average production during the first 10 years of the decrease equals (1,000,000+500,000)/2=750,000 barrels per day.
        So the difference between the two cumulative productions will be the difference in production multiplied by the considered time = (1,000,000 bpd -750,000 bpd)*10 years = 250,000 bpd*3650 days=912,5 million barrels!

        Two planets 
        Now consider two identical planets, rotating at 24 hours/day. At a given moment (say 27 centuries ago, when we start measuring) one planet starts decelerating suddenly but very smoothly and constantly. This deceleration equals 1.8 milliseconds per day per century. So it will take (24 hours/day)/(1.8 milliseconds per day per century)=48 million centuries to stop that planet, but that is not the question.
        The variable is NOT the length of one day! The variable is the total amount of rotations the planet does from the moment you start looking at it. (var)= the number of rotations. So, if that makes you feel more comfortable, if you want to get rid of time in the numerator you just say 1.8 milliseconds = 0,0000000208 rotations. We have d(var)/dt = the number of rotations per century. And d²(var)/dt² is the deceleration in rotations per day per century. So d²(var)/dt² = -0,0000000208 rotations per (day *century), which is time squared in the denominator!)

        After 27 centuries the velocity, the number of rotations per century, will have dropped from the initial value of 36500 rotations per century to 36500-(27*0,0000000208)= 36499.97947 rotations per century. That is almost exactly the same number. The average speed during these 27 centuries is (365000+36499.97947)/2 = 36499.98973 rotations per century.
        So the difference between the total amount of rotations of these two planets over the course of 27 centuries = 27 centuries*(36500-36499.98973) rotations per century = 0.277 rotations.
        Now we introduce time again: 1 rotation = 24 hours, so 0.277 rotations equal 6.6 hours = almost seven hours.

        Done.
        At your service.
        (You didn’t have to switch from milliseconds to rotations and back, but in that case time in numerator and denominator is confusing indeed.)

          1. According to sources below, the 27 century delta T is 5.87 hours.
            Their results go back 40 centuries.
            •Stephenson F.R and Houlden M.A., Atlas of Historical Eclipse Maps: East Asia 1500 BC – AD 1900, Cambridge Univ.Press., 1986.
            •Stephenson F.R., Historical Eclipses and Earth’s Rotation , Cambridge Univ.Press, 1997.

          2. You could have just used Gauss’s solution S= n(n+1)/2 for the solution to the series.

        2. As the earth’s rotation changes so does the length of the day. Fossil shells (and banded deposits in certain sandstones) reveal the length of day in past eras. Currently a day is 23 hours 56 minutes and four seconds long. In the Upper Cretaceous (for example) 70 million years ago there were 370 days per year: a five day difference in 70 Myr. The Middle Cambrian 510 million years ago had 424 days per year. So, since there are 3,600 seconds/ hour and 10,000 centuries in one million years conversion yields 0.0067 hr/Myr x (3600 sec/hr) x (1 Myr / 10,000 centuries) = 0.0024 seconds/century or 2.4 milliseconds per century.

          1. TIDAL SLOWDOWN, CORAL GROWTH AND THE AGE OF THE EARTH

            “Tides slow down the earth’s rotation speed because of friction between the earth and the water under which it rotates. The effect is very small – a slowdown rate of about 0.0002 seconds per day per year.

            This means that as each year goes by, each day of the year lasts two hundred-thousandths of a second longer. Thus the length of the day changes by about 20 seconds every million years.”

            http://www.ibri.org/Tracts/tidaltct.htm

  2. For OFM

    Deere is apparently launching an electric, battery powered tractor.

    A commenter on Reddit did a rough look at the recharging math (forget about battery cost for a while)

    Thought you might find it interesting. I believe the article claimed 1hr at full power

    (Math by $thorneaxe
    The overall capacity is rated at 130 kWh
    Ok, we’re gonna run some numbers with that. The title says 404 HP. Now my first assumption is that 404 is engine horsepower. Obviously the electric tractor doesnt have an engine, but conventional tractors are measured by their raw engine horsepower, so i’m assuming thats equivalent.
    Ok, so a roughly equivalent tractor might be a 9410R. Deere claims 410 horsepower on this machine. Gross engine output is slightly more (450). I’m getting my numbers from tractordata, specifically the power test details on the 9410R. Tractordata gets their information from UNL’s Tractor test lab. The link to the PDF on tractordata is dead, but mine is good.
    Ok, so according to tractordata, the max drawbar power output is 240Kw. So, assuming the engines/motors are capable of the same (approximate) power output, we can divide 130Kwh/240Kw to get our battery life. Which is 32.5 minutes. Minus travel time to and from a field.
    I’m fairly confident in my numbers, however i am assuming the article got it correct, which may not be the case. I’m actually fairly certain they fucked up something BADLY, because i cant fathom the largest agricultural machinery company on the planet would release a prototype tractor with 30 minutes of runtime per day. That’s absolutely retarded.
    Extra Credit: Recharging the beast. So. a 50amp 220v welder outlet will net you ~10,000watts. Or 10kw per hour. That tractor would suck down 13 hours of that juice in order to net you 30 minutes of work.
    Lets make the wildest assumption of the century. Lets assume we develop battery technology that allows a 400hp electric tractor to actually work. 8hrs a day at max power. Not a huge work day by any stretch, but we’re figuring at max power, so it would actually work longer than that, and we’ve got to start somewhere. 240Kw x 8 = 1920Kwh. Now we’re gonna figure we can recharge this beast for 12 hours. That works to 160kw per hour charged. Thats 160,000 watts. That’s 200amp service at 800v. Thats fucking massive power output. I’m not an electrician or a linesman but I’m fairly certain that rural overhead lines couldn’t BEGIN to deliver that kind of power. Even with battery technology straight out of a science fiction movie, electric tractors STILL dont work because of power delivery limitations of the electrical grid.

    1. Per Inside EV’s, the actual specs for the Deere electric tractor:

      “In late February, John Deere intends to present at the French SIMA show in Paris, a very special tractor.

      It’s called the SESAM (Sustainable Energy Supply for Agricultural Machinery), and seems to be the first fully electric tractor.
      Two 150 kW electric motors can be used together, or as a single drive unit, while second motor to incorporate other fucntionality, like a hydraulic pump.

      John Deer SESAM spec

      two 150 kW electric motors (300 kW total)
      130 kWh lithium-ion battery
      up to four hours or 55 km of range
      three hours recharge”

      http://insideevs.com/john-deere-reveals-electric-farm-tractor-wvideo/

      It probably has something much bigger than a welder circuit for re-charging. They have 3 phase in a lot more buildings over there, so have much more power capacity for larger chargers.

      From another website:

      “The advantages of electric power in agricultural machinery are pretty obvious. For one thing, maintenance is a lot simpler, and there are fewer components that can break down. For most farmers, this last argument alone might prove sufficient. The cost of fuel is also worth considering, as is the fact that electric motors are famous for the torque they provide, and that’s what matters most in tractors.”

      http://www.autoevolution.com/news/john-deere-reveals-180-hp-battery-powered-tractor-for-2016-sima-show-in-france-113431.html#

      Note that this tractor will debut at a French show. Europe has very different agricultural, environmental, and energy scene than the US. Typically smaller farms, closer to utilities. Fuel prices are a lot higher, but electricity is cheaper (a lot of nuclear in France). Europe has largely electrified their railroads. Most members of the EU has very few petroleum resources and understand all too-well (a little thing called WWII and a thing called Russia) the strategic importance of minimizing their dependence on imported natural gas/oil. Something the US really should pay more attention to.

      1. Thanks Wake, HVAC Guy

        I don’t put any effort into keeping up with the electric mobile farm machinery scene, and this is news to me.

        Some points to consider are one, that showing such stuff at expositions is one thing, selling it something else altogether. I am willing to bet a substantial sum this baby will not be seen at a dealership for actual sale for many years to come.

        I don’t have the foggiest idea, really, what the capacity of the rural grids in Europe are, in relation to charging up batteries capable of driving hundred horsepower plus motors, but considering that when they are used, tractors are used very heavily, but not day in and day out year around…….. I will stick my neck out and assume that even the German grid, which is probably the best, would be totally inadequate, and I mean TOTALLY.

        And upgrading the grid to be able to deliver that much juice would cost a fortune………… with the extra capacity being useful only at the busy seasons, maybe only ninety days max out of the calendar year would you need it ALL.

        Trying to run such a tractor on the American rural grid would be a flat out joke. A few farmers are luckily located on or very near three phase lines, but only a few. The very large majority are limited to single phase service, and mostly to two hundred forty volts. Fifty kilowatts maxes out a typical farm service drop, but guys who need of it can sometimes not always arrange for more, if they use the capacity on a regular basis.

        In my area, where there are ten times as many homes as working farms, but still LOTS of farms, two or three farmers trying for a hundred kilowatts at the same time would trip line breakers for miles and miles, and the lights would go out in dozens, maybe hundreds of houses.

        Folks who have not spent any time on this issue fail to understand that the rural grid is able to supply the rural customer base only the maximum load put on it by the homeowners and farmers, and it’s extremely rare that more than a very few customers are using anything close to their service drop capacity at any given minute.

        At my house, with two hundred amp 24o volt service, I can max out the electric range, water heater, and air conditioning simultaneously and still draw only around a hundred amps including the lights, water pump, etc. On a zero F night, the houses with heat pumps are drawing only fifty to seventy five amps, with that cycling in and out as the electric heat pump cycles on and off. So – my utility can deliver maybe fifty to seventy five amps at the same minute to all the people on my line.

        Major line upgrades would be necessary for American farmers to go to battery powered machinery. MAJOR. In areas with large farms, the upgrades would probably amount to installing just about everything new.

        And while it is true that diesel fuel is expensive, that hardly matters at all, medium to long term, to a competitive businessman who is competing with other businessmen who must use it in very similar quantities. The cost is passed on, just like the cost of fertilizer, pesticides, hired help, property taxes, and all other expenses. Short term is different, if the price of diesel spikes, it hurts, if it crashes, you buy an extra six pack to celebrate the good luck.

        It’s going to be a LONG time yet until electric cars are truly cost competitive, from a business point of view, although they are getting there from a consumers pov. Business wise, the extra ten or fifteen grand tied up in an electric car can generally be put to better use. It’s one thing to say a VOLT costs only as much as an average car, but what’s usually left out of that statement is that you can buy a new car that will giterdone, business wise, for less than half the price of the VOLT. That’s half the tax bill, half the finance charge, half the money tied up.

        The numbers can work on paper for a consumer, but as a BUSINESS decision, they’re still a joke. That WILL change , but it will be a while yet.

        There is no way in hell a farmer working under anything like prevailing commercial conditions in the USA can even consider buying an electric tractor, except maybe a very small one used to do repetitive chores. There is probably a market for a thirty horsepower model that will be used an hour or two a day.Some farmers who use such a small tractor an hour or two at a time, once a day or a day once in a while.

        When that four hundred horse DEERE is NEEDED, it is needed twenty two hours out of the twenty four, as likely as not. It has lights like a football field, and it costs so much to purchase, and time is so precious at certain times of the year, that it will only be parked long enough to refuel it, check the fluids, maybe grease the attached implement, and back at work hammer down when its time to plow and plant. Being a day late getting your corn or beans in on a hundred acres will probably cost you well over a thousand bucks at harvest, and being a day late getting that harvest in in front of a long rainy spell could actually put you way in the hole for the year. Compared to that, the cost of the equipment operator is a trivial expense, almost for sure less than two hundred bucks for the night. A family member often assumes these extra hours.

        The farmer who can afford that four hundred horse DEERE can’t afford to park it to charge it, when he REALLY NEEDS IT.

        Well maintained modern tractors VERY SELDOM break down for the first ten or fifteen years. Nor do modern well maintained modern cars, for the first four or five years, if you purchase one of the makes and models noted for reliability. You catch the problems, as a BUSINESS MAN or farmer, that might result in a breakdown early, and fix them BEFORE the breakdown puts you behind.

        EVERY successful make of industrial and agricultural machinery has a STERLING reputation for reliability. Farmers and contractors won’t buy that make otherwise, and it disappears from the market quickly.

        Once a new tractor gets some age on it, it goes to standby or back up status, or to a smaller farm, and the small farmer typically has two or three older tractors that altogether cost a hell of a lot less than ONE new one. And at need, he can borrow one from a neighbor, most of the time.

        People who talk endlessly about torque generally are displaying their ignorance.

        It’s true that big torque will enable you to get rolling faster in an AUTOMOBILE, which normally has no more than three to five forward gears, except in the newest models, and lots of torque, as the conversation usually goes, simply means the engine has lots of HORSEPOWER at low speeds. So you can’t keep the engine up towards the top of the rpm range for lack of enough gears in a car, unless it’s a sporty model, and you dog it. Even then, you either spin the wheels, or start out at relatively low rpm from a dead start.

        Modern tractors and commercial trucks have enough forward gears that keeping the engine well up into the rpm range where horsepower is ample presents no problem. The last big truck I owned had nine, and the last one I drove on the job had thirteen. The electric motor advantage, in respect to torque, is negated by the ( for now) price of batteries, which cost at least four or five times more than transmissions.

        Furthermore cars can operate over a very wide range of speeds, whereas tractors do not, nor do trucks, compared to cars. Tractors can seldom exceed twenty mph, and that is in the one fastest gear used EXCLUSIVELY for highway travel. Working speeds are two to eight to mph as a rule. Cars won’t sell unless they will fly,even the grandmother econobuckets will do close to one hundred mph.

        But big trucks don’t usually have gears enabling them to exceed the typical seventy mph speed limit by very much, if at all. None of the ones I drove from time to time would exceed seventy five mph on a level road.

        I believe in electric cars, because they usually are parked most of the day, almost every day, and are not often used more than a couple of hours any given day. That allows plenty of time to recharge them at realistic rates in relation to the existing grid. And as the sale of them picks up, the grid can be upgraded to accommodate them piecemeal.

        Good luck to the farmer who hopes to talk his utility into upgrading ten or twenty miles of rural line to accommodate his ONE super electric tractor.

        Commercial trucks and farm and industrial machinery aren’t going electric until the price of batteries falls by a factor of three or four, and the grid is put on steroids. Might happen, might not, my money says it won’t happen anytime soon.

        1. Is 20 gallons an hour a good estimate for a big tractor working the fields?

            1. The 35KW average power used by the jd tractor (1/4th of the 140kWh, so 4 hours of life) is about the same net power as about 4.2 gallons per hour of diesel. Is 4.2 gallons per hour about right?

            3. Fuel consumption rate for many makes of Diesel Engines can be found in a range between 0.380 & 0.450 lbs/hp hour.

              diesel fuel 7.2 pounds per gallon.

              200 hp @ .4/hp hour = 11.25 gallons per hour

            4. From the German PV Forum where a few farmers post which also have larger PV arrays: They need for their 300 hp tractor around 300 liter diesel per day in autum, around 80 gallons per 18 hour day, 4 gallons pre hour.

              Without better batteries or different approach to mechnaical agriculture (like many small “robots”) the EV tractor in nthe current form is not a real improvemnet for industrial agriculture.

            5. Sure, fairly right for a 100 hp tractor, not a 300+ hp tractor.

            6. A JOHN DEERE 7610 POWERSHIFT DIESEL with maximum power of about 117 horsepower uses 6.8 gallons per hour at 115 horsepower and at 52 hp uses 4.3 gallons/hour.

        2. Actually, you’ve kind of got one aspect of this backwards: businesses are going to adopt electric cars and trucks much faster than individuals. As a business decision for a fleet, an electric car is a no-brainer. Fleet cars get used very heavily. Electric cars have higher capital costs, lower operating costs, and longer lifespan than gasoline cars, so the TCO for a fleet car leans way way further in the direction of electric cars than it does for a personal car. The situation is even more obvious for delivery trucks.

          Unfortunately, most tractors are really not used very heavily. They don’t have very high mileage and they sit idle a lot. They may be used heavily for a few days a year, and then the rest of the time, they sit doing nothing. This tilts the balance away from electric vehicles.

          That said, for a lot of farmers on the more rural parts of the grid, it is starting to make a lot more sense to buy their own solar panels and batteries than to pay for grid electricity. And at that point, the TCO for electric equipment starts to improve.

    2. The obstacle for enthusiasts is always the physics book. Your numbers are largely correct.

      Typical JD is 300 HP. 740 watts per horsepower –> 222Kw. This is less than the gizmo quoted.

      The battery is 130 KwHr. Even a downscale JD at 222 Kw would be 130 / 222 = 35 mins.

      It’s all silliness. JD is looking for someone who doesn’t care about growing crops with their electric agro tractor and just wants to own one.

      1. Watcher, That 300kW is peak power – that is only needed in short bursts. The quoted 4 hour life is likely right for typical uses. Tesla has a 100KWh battery that lasts 5 hours at 65mph, so that 130KWh battery in the tractor doesn’t sound that bad.

        1. Well I don’t know the duty cycle exactly but tractors are working machines and will run at high power loads for many hours a day. Plowing or planting is basically full power except for turns

          If you just want to drive the tractor around to show off then sure it might go 4 hrs

          And in Europe you more often have to drive between fields so there is some low power time

          Even then they go pretty fast though

          1. Wake is right, the important jobs that you use tractors for, the critical jobs, are ones that require constant high horsepower, and consequently would drain a battery very quickly indeed.

            Plowing, disking, operating a combine, driving a big irrigation pump, etc, is steady high horsepower work. Even moderate duty work such as running a hay mower takes substantial power, typically at least half what the tractor has.

            A combine needs every horsepower it has go climb the a slope, or negotiate moderately soft ground, while working, and will use eighty percent just about all the time it is actually harvesting grain on smooth firm ground.

            1. Maybe the fact that the electrics do not need to wind up to high rpm to get their torque makes a difference in the energy use. Still, it sounds like the battery would need to be changed out quite often.

            2. I am not really well acquainted with battery powered high output electric motors, but the ones I do know about are not capable of producing extraordinary amounts of torque, although they may produce an impressive amount of torque at very low RPM.

              The motor in a Tesla S produces about four hundred pounds, and which is typical for a smallish to medium truck or tractor engine, but at 1500 to 2000 rpm or more.

              Unless I’m mistaken, the Tesla S is geared at least twice as low as a Mack dump truck in first gear. It can go pretty fast though, because the electric motor turns about 7000 at interstate speeds, and 14000 before the computer shuts it down, to limit the top speed of the car to about 140 mph.

              Around and round, with no up and down, allows electric motors to run even faster, without worrying about failure.

              To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t any such thing as an industrial internal combustion piston and crankshaft engine that can be run continuously past about four thousand rpm without EXPECTING a catastrophic ” unscheduled sudden disassembly ” event, short term. Hot rod car engines, and very small engines ( motorcycles, chainsaws) can run half again faster, for short periods, but not continuously for long periods without wearing out in a hurry.

              The last newish dump truck I drove was turning 2800 or so at seventy two in top gear, which is the common and typical speed the governor on the engine shuts off the fuel.

              It’s not hard to change this adjustment to get another couple or three hundred more rpm, and go pretty close to eighty mph but get caught and the engine warranty is void.

            3. Well, I’m an engineer, not a farmer – but if you were really operating that close to max power for normal tasks then you would be getting stuck all the time. Having 10 times more power then average to break free seems about right to me. I’m sure jd has done enough testing to justify that 4 hour number at least with some common tasks.

              The battery alone is likely $100,000, so yes it’s still way too expensive.

            4. Yair . . . .

              “Well, I’m an engineer, not a farmer – but if you were really operating that close to max power for normal tasks then you would be getting stuck all the time.”

              Incorrect Preston.

              Engineers have a very poor understanding of how things happen in the real world.

              Cheers.

            5. Scrub is generally right, although in this case maybe he is a little too cynical about engineers.

              Getting stuck is not generally much of a problem for a farmer. A tractor has plenty of power to spin the wheels, under almost ANY conditions.

              When you do get stuck, you unhook from the implement, and the tractor, being free of the load, almost always has sufficient traction to pull itself clear of the bad spot- unless it’s sunk in so deep the frame and axle housings are supporting it, with the wheels barely making contact with the ground.

              In that case, you use a heavy chain or cable and another tractor, hopefully a much bigger one, to drag it out of the muck.

              You have to have a cable or chain long enough to put the rescue tractor on solid ground. I have a couple of hundred feet. Never needed it all myself, but I have loaned it out several times.

            6. Really guys? You go out there pulling a plow with the petal to the metal for 16 hours per day? So, The speed you go is only limited by the drag of the equipment.

              300kW for 16 hours is 4800 kWh, at 12 cents per kWh that’s $576 dollars per day in electricity. Diesel is at least 3 times the cost so you guys are spending $1700 in fuel every day? Or is it more like $170 per day?

            7. Hi Preston,

              It’s obvious you have had little or no contact with working farmers.

              Yes, we plow sixteen hours a day, but not every day. We do that for a few days or weeks a year, maybe six weeks. We get in hay and grain for sixteen hours too, but seasonally, not year around.

              And when we are pushed by the weather, or lack of equipment, or a breakdown, then we go to twenty to twenty two hours a day, by using two or three operators for the tractor plowing, or the combine harvesting wheat, or the baler putting up hay in front of a wet weather front.

              You can bale a thousand dollars worth of hay in an hour with a modern tractor and baler. If it rains on it, it rots.

              That’s why we work such long hours at certain times.

              The high winds associated with autumn hurricanes can put a big chunk of an apple harvest on the ground, which means every hour you can work before the winds arrive is worth hundreds of dollars in avoided losses, so you WORK.

              Else you are soon out of business.

              This is the ordinary and accepted routine on a typical commercial farm. In the autumn before we retired, we routinely worked at our harvest in the orchards from daylight until one or two am, using the lights on the trucks and tractors, and grid supplied lights around the building where we graded and boxed the apples for shipping.

              But we could take off two weeks anytime at all thru the winter, so long as we had our equipment maintenance caught up. 😉

              And even during the spring and summer, we could take off three or four days almost at will, because the work on a farm tends to come in bunches like bananas, lol. You are either swamped, or caught up, and can often take a few days off, except during certain critical time periods.

              There is almost nothing necessary to be done in an apple orchard between April and June, except apply pesticides, which ordinarily takes one day a week, maybe two days, on a typical sized operation.

              Sometime along thru the season you ordinarily trim the grass under the trees twice a year. That took us a week each time, fifty years ago, but only a couple of days five years ago, using modern equipment.

              Dairy farmers and feed lot operators are about the only sort of farmers who keep more or less steady hours, and dairy farmers have a couple of rush seasons too, most of them.

              And yes, we do run pedal to the metal. Tractors and combines are made to work just so fast, and to work BEST at that fastest speed.

              When I put the double turn plows in deep behind my itty bitty forty horse tractor, it stops within three or four inches at four mph, if I depress the clutch pedal, they pull that hard.

              That tractor is DESIGNED to pull that MATCHED set of plows. Smaller ones are a waste of time, and bigger ones are more than it can efficiently handle.

              And while I haven’t actually tried it, I am willing to bet a thousand bucks that while a four by four F250 with big knobby tires and three hundred horses will paw and snort and throw rooster tails with all four wheels, it won’t move that tractor with the plows in the ground even ONE FOOT.

              That same forty horses would probably push a Tesla S down the interstate at a steady sixty or seventy mph, maybe even faster. It’s JUST ENOUGH to get up to four mph pulling the plows. That’s the speed at which they work best.

              Industrial machinery comes equipped with engines that are powerful enough to get the big routine job done, and no more. So tractors doing heavy work routinely do run pedal to the metal, for hours on end.

              This is not to say they aren’t also used at part throttle quite often. I run mine at part throttle more often than I do hammer down, but that’s because my tractors are over sized for most of my work.

              But I had to buy them big enough to do the big work which used to take maybe three or four weeks a year.

              Now I sit in the house, and play on the internet, and work on my book, or go hunting or fishing, and farm a little to pass the time, because I enjoy it.

            8. Yair. . . .
              Couple of real world illustrations of engineers out of touch with reality.

              In the 1960’s a British cattle company had a British manufacturer custom build a couple of trucks to haul cattle road trains. . . .no expenses spared they had to be the best with Rolls Royce engines and special gearboxes and in effect every thing melted because even though they had been briefed on the application the engineers couldn’t grasp that the trucks would be overloaded and driven pedal to the metal for twenty hours at constant load in flat country. . . American Macks had been doing it for several years.

              Same thing when Honda bought out their large four stroke outboards . . . they didn’t realise folks would bolt a herd of them on the back of a workboat and run them flatchat in warm tropical waters.

              The difference was the Honda folks went out of their way to fix the problem, the Rotinoff blokes not so quick in accepting there was a problem because it worked on the drawing board.

              Cheers.

            9. You don’t seem to understand the design differences between heavy-duty working engines and auto engines. Heavy-duty engines (tractors, trucks, dozers, etc.) are designed to run at an optimum rpm range, limited by a governor. They produce roughly max hp at this speed. The transmission provides the proper ground-speed or road-speed at this engine-speed. So, yes, pedal-to-the-metal for long hours is expected and done. In the case of long-distance trucks, since the hp of engines started commonly exceeding 300 hp, this being enough to exceed 65 or so mph loaded, the option became available to gear up for faster top-speeds, or use the power for faster take-off. Faster take-off helps trucks to flow with the traffic better, but isn’t so good for overall fuel mileage.
              For about 4 or 5 years I owned and operated a car-hauler that was powered by a C-16 Cat engine at 600 hp, 2050 ft-lbs torque, backed by a double-overdrive 18-speed trans, and 3.25 ratio rears with lo-pro tires. At rated rpm (if I recall it was 1950 rpm’s.) it would run right about the century mark. I only did it a couple times, unloaded, to see what it would do. That’s plenty for me.

            10. This sort of duty cycle (run not at all for months, then flat out for days) is the duty cycle least suited to electric traction. So yeah, tractors for THAT duty cycle will take a while to convert. This may be a case for biodiesel or vegetable oil engines: you’re only using the tractor a few days a year, so it’s not going to need very much fuel total, and it would be ideal to generate the fuel on-site at the farm.

              Trucks will convert to electric well before that because they have a much more appopriate duty cytle.

            11. In my younger years I worked for farmers, thus plowed quite a few acres. When a tractor gets “stuck”, it’s nearly always from lack of traction, not lack of power. Usually caused by trying to plow through a spot that’s still a bit too wet and soft. That’s a major reason the farm equipment mfg’s started using tracked tractors rather than wheeled. The other major reason was soil compaction. The big downside to tracks in areas of smaller farms is the need to move between fields or farms on roads. Wheeled tractors just hit the road, not so for tracks.

  3. Peak Population
    With no other factors coming into play, Japan may lose 34% of it’s population this century. It has already officially lost almost a million people since the last census 5 years ago. The fertility rate is 1.41, one of the lowest in the world. 48 other countries are also due to have less population by 2050.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/26/its-official-japans-population-is-drastically-shrinking/?utm_term=.d2a8abc3e387

    1. Japan is really desperate these days to increase the birth rate because now there are just too many old people putting a strain on government functions and society. I’d personally prefer a higher fertility of 1.8-1.9 in a country to just about replace the elderly but not naturally expand the population over what is a good size and then just a touch of immigration to maintain the young working age population.

      1. Japan’s problem is an extreme hostility to immigration. Normally, lowered birthrates among the natives go along with an increased openness to immigration, but not in still-very-racist Japan.

  4. GLOBAL HABITAT LOSS STILL RAMPANT ACROSS MUCH OF EARTH

    “Habitat destruction still far outstrips habitat protection across many parts of the planet, reports an international team of researchers. The new study reveals more than half the planet could now be classified as completely converted to human-dominated land use.”

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161207092952.htm

    1. I don’t know about your neighborhood, but there are wild animals running all over the human dominated land around here. Looks more like tree dominated land with houses stuck here and there. Pennsylvania has 59% forest cover, New York 51%, Vermont 75%, etc. Even the densest populated state has 40% forest cover. Lots of places for the critters, at least the ones that don’t get run over by cars.

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

      Of course civilization is full of horrors for the other species on the planet.
      https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/12/07/montana-snow-geese-searching-for-pond-land-in-toxic-mine-pit-thousands-die/?utm_term=.24f15e5ac3d4

      There is 500,000 square miles of protected land in the USA alone and 8 million square miles of protected land and sea in the world.

      1. …and 8 million square miles of protected land and sea in the world.

        Except for the fact that they are NOT really protected! The effects of climate change are exceeding the ability of organisms to adapt in those supposedly protected areas. Do the protected ocean areas for example have some kind of magic barrier around them that prevents the pH within them from changing?

        We often have ignorant trolls come here to pontificate about how CO2 is merely a trace gas and how humans couldn’t possibly be having a significant affect on atmospheric chemistry through our emissions. If they can’t even wrap their puny little minds around the fact that relatively small changes in the concentration of CO2 from say 280 ppm to 400 plus ppm can have huge effects on the way global temperature changes entire ecosystems on land. Then I sure as hell don’t expect that people grasp the consequences of a drop of 0.1 pH units, over just the last two centuries, in the oceans! Let alone that that 0.1 represents a whopping 25% increase in ocean acidity which can have drastic negative affects on say the development of zooplankton forming the basis of the marine food webs.

        As long as we have 7.5 billion humans living on this planet most of whom do not understand logarithmic scales, then there is no such thing as protected environments.

        Cheers!

        1. How can what you describe is supposedly happening to the oceanic ecosystems be squared away with the scientific understanding that enhancements to atmospheric CO2 chemically, physically, and objectively contribute to robust increases of the very plant growth forming the basis of the food chain?

          Far better claims against the present health of the oceans would bring to light damage possibly stemming from heat induced storms. These events can force additional water into the oceans, thereby causing a disruption to the general ‘water cycle’ oscillating between land and sea. Unfortunately arguments such as this just aren’t popular enough to bury the questionable ideological ‘theories’ and research that somehow masquerades as academic discourse on the topic of climate change these days.

          1. How can what you describe is supposedly happening to the oceanic ecosystems be squared away with the scientific understanding that enhancements to atmospheric CO2 chemically, physically, and objectively contribute to robust increases of the very plant growth forming the basis of the food chain?

            Easy as pie! There is no such scientific understanding! Furthermore I was talking about zooplankton not plants and you are full of shit, plus you are either a troll or a poorly configure bot.

          2. Ah yes: a better class of troll. From “I Was a Paid Internet Shill”: The “complex debate” part of the job involved a fair amount of additional training, including memorizing more specific information about the specific posters (friendly and hostile) I’d be sparring with. Here, too, there were scripts and suggested lines of argument, but we were given more freedom.

            Yet with he same task: trying to re-frame our discussions here as ideological rather than fact-based.

            Note that he is the one who has no references for his outlandish theories. From his post:
            These events can force additional water into the oceans
            Got a citation?

            Unfortunately arguments such as this just aren’t popular enough
            No…they just aren’t valid enough, and have no research to back them.

            to bury the questionable ideological ‘theories’ and research
            I’m sorry, but what you do- make up stuff specifically to try and counter actual research and to further a specific political viewpoint- is the very definition of “ideological.” Though it is also possible that your goals are simply mercenary. Are you paid for posting here?

            For more about Media Manipulation Boiler Rooms and paid trolling, see: “I Was a Paid Internet Shill” http://consciouslifenews.com/paid-internet-shill-shadowy-groups-manipulate-internet-opinion-debate/1147073/#

            1. Hey Lloyd, the fact that I specifically talked about zooplankton and Stevie H, responded with a canned statement about CO2 and plants, makes me willing to place a bet of a rather significant sum that IT’s post is a rather primitive bot that just picks up on a few significant key words and responds accordingly… kinda like a slightly upgraded Eliza Computer Therapist. Lot cheaper than a paid internet troll.

            2. Hi Fred.
              I think that drawing out the two key aspects of your post- the ocean and CO/2, and using them in a coherent sentence- required a human (or really good AI, probably too cutting-edge and too expensive for this application.)

              So: first paragraph, human.

              Second paragraph, cut and paste boilerplate (though probably written by the same person.)

              I checked, and the Steven Haner handle has been around for a while. My money is on a keyword identification program buzzing some guy in a bathrobe who lives in his parent’s basement.

              And I think that program is aimed at Peak Oil Barrel specifically.

              Also… you posting at 2:47 AM? You’re not a bot, man! Get some sleep. 🙂

              -Lloyd

            3. Also… you posting at 2:47 AM? You’re not a bot, man! Get some sleep.

              LOL! Sometimes that’s the only time I can actually get some work done without being interrupted every five minutes or so 🙂

            4. As I wrote before that website looks kooky….and perhaps conspiracy minded. With the ads for numerology readings and articles on “scientific discoveries” that prove the existence of God. There should be a better source out there than that if there’s any truth behind what you claim.

            5. As I wrote before that website looks kooky…

              There is no comment by “Tony Cowley” with my previous posts, where I first referenced “I Was a Paid Internet Shill”.http://consciouslifenews.com/paid-internet-shill-shadowy-groups-manipulate-internet-opinion-debate/1147073/# At least, none that pre-date this comment.

              If you’re going to lie, why do it so blatantly?

              Especially when you could have made it true by actually posting in the previous thread that you thought my source looked “kooky”?

              Skeevy-looking or not, it lines up with our experience here in the wild. The Nancy Gebauer identity behaves exactly the way the “Shill” says he was trained to.

              Do you disagree that the Nancy Gebauer identity behaves like a paid provocateur and does nothing but try to re-frame fact-based discussion as ideological?

              If so, you might tell me why rather than complaining about my source.

              The only people who might be offended or concerned by that article are paid internet trolls.

              Are you paid to post here?

            6. I responded a few times in the last thread, but the comments got held up in the moderation queue (apparently still are). I assure you I did comment though, no lie. I am not paid to be here, for I work in wealth management and have clients with interests in the Bakken play.

            7. My apologies (assuming that Steven or Nancy didn’t call in a manager.)

              Here are a few other sources: they are less specific and don’t speak to the details of how the sausage is made as well as the “Shill” article. They speak to general tactics, and the specifics are typically buried- to get the same information, I would have to cite multiple articles.

              The overall effect of reading the articles, combined with our experience here, convinces me that we have a real problem.

              “Astroturf ‘Outrage Machine’ of Paid Trolls Floods Social Media to Counteract Negative News About Hillary Clinton”
              https://stream.org/astroturf-outrage-machine-of-paid-trolls-floods-social-media-to-counteract-negative-news-about-hillary-clinton/

              How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations
              https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

              It looks like Russia hired internet trolls to pose as pro-Trump Americans
              http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-internet-trolls-and-donald-trump-2016-7

              Fox News Paid Staffers to Troll the Hell Out Of the Interwebs, According to New Book
              https://mic.com/articles/69139/fox-news-paid-staffers-to-troll-the-hell-out-of-the-interwebs-according-to-new-book#.tYhaTrccR
              Unfortunately, while Folkenflik’s revelations are dispiriting, they’re nothing new. Astroturfing by conservative operatives and corporations long predates the advent of the online comments section. In fact, the practice — in which administrations, lobbies, and public relations departments create the false appearance of broad-based grassroots support or easily refuted dissent — was first perfected by President Richard Nixon’s administration.In addition to coining the term “silent majority,” Nixon speechwriter and adviser Pat Buchanan initiated “a ‘discreet’ letter-writing operation at the Republican National Committee on a permanent basis,” according to political scientist John Anthony Maltese.

              A Penny For My Thoughts: How The Right Uses Paid Commenters to Manipulate Public Opinion And Trash Free Speech
              https://jonathanturley.org/2014/10/26/a-penny-for-my-thoughts-how-the-right-uses-paid-commenters-to-manipulate-public-opinion-and-trash-free-speech/
              Freelance writer Randa Morris describes the recruitment process:

              ” I have encountered hundreds of help wanted postings for fake right-wing bloggers, paid commenters and bogus survey takers. Most of the positions pay between five and ten cents a post. The “paid commenters” ads usually appear on international freelancing sites, meaning you do not have to live in the United States to help push the tea party agenda here. “

              Keep in mind that the people who do this have a vested financial interest in not telling. Not to mention a likely legal obligation: they are undoubtedly bound by NDA’s. The fact that the Shill came forward at all is an act of bravery.

              Oh…and one more thing. You didn’t answer my question: Do you disagree that the Nancy Gebauer identity behaves like a paid provocateur and does nothing but try to re-frame fact-based discussion as ideological?

            9. Would you please stop using my name to push whatever agendas you want around here? I find that rude and I don’t have much patience for those kinds of behaviors.

            10. Hey…bite me.

              I would find requests for civility from you to to be ironic… if I didn’t know that they are a standard part of your playbook.

              You’re just trying to salvage two years of work. Nasty, dirty, unpleasant work, trying to make this site less effective.

              So:

              I don’t care how you feel.

              I don’t care about what you’re patient with.

              I don’t care about what you find rude.

              I’m happy I’m stopping you from doing what you were doing.

              And I love that it’s making you spend time doing stuff that doesn’t help your cause.

              You came here. You don’t like it, you can go away.

              I am going to continue to make your posting here counter-productive by letting everyone know what you are, and by informing them about the nature of your trade, so they can see it themselves when it shows up other places.

              And now my standard Nancy warning:

              DO NOT ENGAGE WITH THE COMMENT ABOVE. (Nancy Gebauer 12/10/2016 at 4:09 PM)
              The “Nancy Gebauer” handle is an internet troll, probably created by a Media Manipulation Boiler Room. He/she/they/it are trying to re-frame our discussions here as ideologically-based rather than fact-based. They also want to reduce the educational value of this site by diluting it with conspiracy theories and false news.
              For more about Media Manipulation Boiler Rooms and paid trolling, see: “I Was a Paid Internet Shill” http://consciouslifenews.com/paid-internet-shill-shadowy-groups-manipulate-internet-opinion-debate/1147073/#
              See if you can pick out the tactics she is using from their playbook. It’s FUN!

          3. Sometimes I wonder why we let the conversation center so exclusively about C02 so much.

            There are plenty of pollutants in the smog from combustion that cause immediate quantifiable health problems and a lower quality of life, and a shorter life.

            The air quality is so dismal in Paris today, that they’ve banned all cars for the second day in a row, and made all transit free.

            https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/07/paris-bans-cars-for-second-day-running-as-pollution-strikes

            Who wants to breath that? Steven? Does that look like your happy place?

            Why do we get to pollute for free? It socializes the costs, and it privatizes the benefits. Plain and simple, this is a market failure. What is the market solution? Why do we get to pollute for free?

            Steven?

        2. Ok, you upped the degree of protection I was talking about.
          No one, no species. is exempt from global warming and CO2 acidification. However, there have been protections in place in many areas and the area is expanding. This indicates a certain portion of the human population not only are cognizant of the need to protect and preserve species but that a portion of them have the power to get the job done.
          Bad as it is, it’s not all bad. If we can keep our heads and slowly dig our way out of the mess in which we have put the planet, maybe we can coexist with the other species.

      2. There are an estimated one million moose and three million reindeer on the North American continent. At ten deer per square mile, count some maybe 50 million deer. Plenty of cattle too. Goats, sheep, chickens running scared all of the time. When there are 430,000,000 million people running around all over the place in Mexico, the US and Canada, each and every animal is in grave danger.

        Plenty of fish in the deep blue sea, all swimming for their lives!

        If CO2 is such a problem, just sequester it all, problem solved.

        har

        1. Sounds like the deer are way outnumbered by the predators. Thank goodness we eat cows, chicken and pigs or there wouldn’t be a deer left. Broccoli helps too.

  5. The Chon Deere etractor will run for four hours, then needs a three hour recharge.

    No farmer will buy one unless it works right at the immediate vicinity of the farm. You won’t be working a field twenty miles from the electrical supply to charge the battery.

    The etractor does have plenty of power, that is for sure. It is an impressive machine.

    A diesel powered Chon Deere will work 16 hours each day and just needs some diesel fuel to keep going all day long.

    A video can be viewed at the link.

    http://jalopnik.com/get-a-load-of-the-battery-pack-on-john-deeres-electric-1789698603

    Nothing runs like a Deere.

    1. Simple solution, just buy two! – have one in use and one charging. Yes, it’s just a concept not really all that practical yet. But jd is likely learning a lot. There will soon be superchargers with 350KW of power so with something like that on site then the tractor could be recharged in 30 minutes.

      But for any billionaires out there looking for equipment for their private island then two of these tractors might be just perfect. You would want 50KW of solar power to re-charge one in 3 hours. That’s 250 sq meters of solar arrays minimum, but really needs 750 sq meters to work on less than perfect days. That should allow about 12 hours of usage each day.

      1. So how much will a 50 KW solar system cost, turnkey , and how much more will TWO of these tractors cost, on top of that?

        I could eat caviar, every day, just like beans, if caviar weren’t so expensive, lol.

        1. I’m sure you could get the whole thing for less than a million…. No, it’s not practical for most people. But for the billionaire with a private island, it’s a great start.

        2. Ground mount utility scale solar was at $1.33 for fixed mount and $1.54, for tracking.per watt, at the end of 2015. Less now no doubt.

          Residential rooftop is about $3. now. So, somewhere between those numbers.

          So, less than $150,000 for a 50,000 watt system, not including any storage, but, presumably that’s what the tractor battery is. If it’s swappable, and it makes sense for it to be, then it’s easy to imagine a system where after hooking up a battery to the charger, the grower keys in how quickly he needs it, and the charge controller determines how much it can get from the growers own production sources, considers historical trends and forecasted conditions, and determines how much power, if any, needs to come from the grid to ensure the battery is charged when needed.

          Tell me if I’m wrong, but it seems like a lot of crops are grown on the prairies where there is also a lot of wind power.

        3. Also, what kind of interest rates can you get? If it’s like a 3 or 4% mortgage and you save $100 per day in fuel cost, the payment may be less. When the banks fail and diesel fuel isn’t available – you would still be plowing….

        4. A farmer in Germany has often a huge demand for electricity (>100000 kWh/a), therefore, they have already 50 kW PV on their buildings and would simply add more (1 kW 1000 EUR).

          To buy two tractore is nonsense, ONE must come with a system to easily swap batteries.

          1. Yes, agreed about battery swapping. But the thing is, currently that battery in the jd is certainly more than 50% the total cost of the tractor so swapping batteries wouldn’t save that much vs just buying two whole tractors.

            Doing fast charging with one of those 350KW 800V chargers might be a better solution. It might be possible to charge to 80% in 30 minutes or less with that much power. But, I’m not sure how hard it is to get 350KW out to the farms.

            This jd concept tractor doesn’t support battery swapping. But if someone designed a tractor with easily swappable batteries yes, that might work well. It means you only need the 50KW and the batteries should last longer with the slower charge cycles. The cost for a 140kWh battery pack is enormous today, but in 5 years or so it should be low enough to really be practical.

          2. How many farm jobs can be done with a small tractor that getting the big one out is overkill? I suspect this machine may well be best suited to an auxiliary role rather than the do everything role. Maybe not the main plowing but hauling a trailer of hay out or spending 80% of its time parked during a fencing job. The in between jobs that getting the big one out is over the top.

            NAOM

      2. You’ll need to build a coal-fired power plant and have a source for a coal supply. Gotta charge the electric tractor.

        If you are on an island in the South Pacific, you’ll need a shipping line to deliver the coal by the shipload.

        The two tractors will cost billions, four of them will be more efficient and productive.

        The shipping line can deliver coal to other destinations, make more money to pay for the etractors. The construction company can build more coal-fired power plants, more business for the shipping line.

        While the billionaire uses the computer to drive his electric tractor to drill the barley seed for malting, the rest of the world will bask in the sunshine of prosperity.

        You’ll have to build a new brewery.

        That means stainless steel and copper mash tuns.

        That means beer. We can thank John Deere, electricity, batteries, and the electric tractor.

        An electric utility built a brand new 116,000 solar panel generating station. A tornado ripped through and destroyed most of it.

        You gotta have coal-fired power plants, they bring home the bacon, have the capacity as well as being more or less immune from serious catastrophic damage. Natural disasters can take a toll.

        You have to resort to coal, it works all of the time. Removes a lot of worry. The billionaire can have an electric tractor and it can rely on coal for power.

        That is how it is done in the real world.

        2. Can this troll “R Walter” be banned? His paid-shilll boiler room talking points about coal have been repeatedly debunked and are boring.

          1. And if it’s satire, it’s not working, because, again, it’s genuinely boring. Satire requires skill.

  6. CLIMATE PROTECTION GAP WIDENING, WARNS INSURANCE REPORT

    “Experts have warned of a $100bn (£79bn) “protection gap” in the global insurance sector as a result of the rising impact of climate risks. ClimateWise, based at the University of Cambridge, warned that the gap of uninsured or under-insured assets had quadrupled over the past three decades…

    “Interestingly, it also looks at what insurance can do, given all of its data and expertise, to help the wider financial system to better understand its risk exposure… Insurance companies have a vested interest in banks making a more strategic decisions because that would have a knock-on impact on the decisions that developers, local governments and property owner will make in terms of where they plan to locate new properties or protect existing ones.”

    http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38229108

    1. Meanwhile,

      TRUMP NOMINEE TO REKINDLE CLIMATE BATTLE?

      “The nomination of Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt to be the next head of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has two important ramifications.

      “The first is a clear signal from the incoming Trump administration that environmental regulations, especially as they apply to the production of energy, are set for fundamental reform.

      “The second implication of Mr Pruitt’s nomination is that the Trump camp is not willing to accept that many aspects of the science of climate change are now settled…..

      http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38249208

    1. Doable on the side of a major highway, where there are already high capacity three phase transmission lines, and the charging stations will be used frequently, day in and day out, year in and year out, lowering the capital cost per use to an easily manage able amount.

      Ain’t gonna happen out on the farm, where the three phase high voltage lines AIN’T, and where the charger would be used only two or maybe four or five times a day, a few days a month, and sometimes not at all for weeks on end.

      And that’s a figure specific to a car, which uses relatively little horsepower cruising down the highway.

      1. Well, 350kW would be enough to charge that jd tractor to 80% in 30 minutes but yes, I doubt you have the transmission lines to support it. But, battery swapping seems like it could work. Tesla is doing a trial of their battery swap solution, it’s really fast – just a few seconds. But they would need to charge for it, and currently their superchargers are free.

        That jd tractor is just a concept right now, the cost needs to come down and the 3 hour charge time fixed. But, it sounds like something practical might be doable in a few years.

  8. International Energy Agency Predicts Electric Vehicle Segment Will Grow From 1 Million Today To 150 Million By 2040

    The International Energy Agency has release some data showing that gasoline demand has peaked globally. According to the IEA, oil demand will continue to rise for a bit, but demand for gas has now peaked thanks to the rise of electric cars (and more fuel-efficient ICE vehicles).

    IEA says that 1 out of 4 barrels of oil consumed worldwide are for gasoline, so with the peak here and a decline predicted in coming years, the oil industry will suffer.

    IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol stated (via Bloombers):

    “Electric cars are happening,” (the director) said in an interview in London, adding that their number will rise from little more than 1 million last year to more than 150 million by 2040.

    Editor’s note: That “1 million” figures has quickly been outdated since the September 2015 study got underway, and illustrates the point that ‘EVs are happening’. By our “unoffical count”, we have the worldwide plug-in sales at some 1,891,000 deliveries (with partial data for November 2016 now in).

    While this might sound very optimistic, coming from the EIA, analysis by a commenter suggests that this is just a projection of linear growth at a fairly modest rate. Since EV adoption is likely in an exponential growth phase and the rate could turn out to be more than 40% per year, these projections might end up looking conservative.

    If EV sales double every two years starting from say, one million in 2015, they would be over 250 million by 2031,

    1. But by then we might have 1.5 billion vehicles on the road, so 150 million will be 10 percent. Look’s like we will need that exponential rise to get past peak oil problems.

    2. So there are supposed to be two billion plus cars in the world by 2035 and you’re saying that we’ll have 150 million EVs in roughly that time frame which comes to about seven (7% +/-) percent and you think this is significant?

      1. Well, it’s not me that’s saying 150 million, it’s the IEA (not EIA). Plus that’s 150 million in annual sales, at which rate in ten years you’d be looking at 1.5 billion cumulative sales or 75% of 2 billion.

        I’m actually saying that I think the figure could be closer to 250 million annual sales, which would make the cumulative amount of EVs by the time it gets to 250 million roughly half a million. Assuming no sales growth after that, the EV fleet would number 2 billion in six years, assuming no scrapping.

        The exponential function is truly amazing! Before I get flamed let me stress that this was just a “what if” thought experiment.

        1. Where does it say annual sales? Your IEA quote says: “…that their number will rise from little more than 1 million last year to more than 150 million by 2040” It was you, I think, who said: “If EV sales double every two years starting from say, one million in 2015, they would be over 250 million by 2031”

          BTW, doubling (an exponential function) is just plain silly unless your plan is to cover the planet with electric cars. For example, doubling one million ten times would result in 512 million EVs. Doubling a million 20 times and you’d get 5.12 x 10^11 EVs.

          1. See the editor’s note in the quote from the article in my original post. I guess that’s what happens when I, thinking in terms of exponential functions, read a article describing linear growth.

            The fact is, if you look at the data at http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/ , you can deduce that cumulative plug-in sales exceeded a million sometime last year with global sales for 2015 coming in at over half a million. For this year global sales are set to more than double the 320,000 sold in 2014.

            I guess I’ve watched too many Tony Seba videos because I,m thinking they couldn’t be talking about 150 million cumulative sales by 2040, not for the disruptive technology EVs represent. Remember Seba projects that in less than 15 years, by 2030 all new car sales will be electric, not even hybfid but, pure electric.

          2. “BTW, doubling (an exponential function) is just plain silly unless your plan is to cover the planet with electric cars.”

            Well, I’m sure you know that in real life exponential growth always runs into physical limits of one sort or or another at which point the growth trajectory changes from exponential to logistic and luck holds, ends up at a steady state (as opposed to collapsing) where new growth is just enough to replace deaths/scrappings. It’s just that while the growth is in the exponential phase the numbers can very impressive.

          3. Obviously the exponential phase ends eventually. After all new cars sold are electric.

  9. I am concerned with the direction the Trump administration might go with the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, and the EPA.

    My hope is that whatever they do, economic realities will limit what regulatory rollbacks they might achieve.

    I’m not worried about coal. It’s declining no matter what they do.

    As for oil and gas drilling, that’s a double edged sword for them. If they encourage more drilling, that may also keep prices low thus limiting drilling.

    I think the best way to discourage unnecessary, unprofitable, environmentally damaging drilling is to keep demand below supply. The most likely scenario to do this is a global recession. This article says that is coming.

    Chemical industry downturn warns of recession in 2017: “In its pH Report for November/December 2016, the firm, which acts as a commercial adviser to the global chemical industry and its investment community, said warnings signs from the chemical industry are pointing global recession in 2017.”

    1. With all due respect, I’m having a hard time fully comprehending why the lefties are so concerned about this. Most of the people who Trump is nominating to these agencies have a strong record of states rights advocacy. There’s no real reason to suspect these people won’t continue pushing for states rights once they are at work in Washington DC.

      In other words, under a Trump presidency, Blue States like California or Vermont will still be able to go all in on renewable energy and burdening their citizens with higher energy bills if that’s what they would like to do. The main difference will be that Red States will no longer be forced to support energy and land policies they don’t want and never asked for.

      1. “In other words, under a Trump presidency, Blue States like California or Vermont will still be able to go all in on renewable energy and burdening their citizens with higher energy bills if that’s what they would like to do.”

        I think that reality is starting to hit the blue states. They are realizing it is easier to create the environments they want within their borders than wait for the rest of the country to agree. California has the 6th largest economy in the world, so it can pretty much operate as a separate country and can do what it wants.

        But Trump makes it sound like they are going to elevate fossil fuels at the expense of clean technology. On the other hand, many clean tech folks say they can do well no matter what the EPA and DC do.

        1. Perhaps the so called blue states will end up with 21st century technologically advanced economies while the infra red ones will have people living in caves sitting around coal fires and gnawing on bones… their choice I guess!

          1. That’s kind of how the blue states are beginning to view the red states. Let them revert back to some distant past if that’s what they want.

            1. I have been wondering if this might trigger a Calexit from the union.

              NAOM

            2. That’s more difficult than it needs to be. The blue states could form a coalition, using whatever cuts there are in federal taxes to provide more services in their own states.

              For the most part, the blue states contribute more in money to the federal government than they get back in federal services and payments. So if they could just start starving the red states and let them go their own way with less federal help.

            1. Screw that, open tab on me for the two of you. Where and when are we meeting? I’m at least a day away from the east coast.

            2. Hey maybe we can find a self driving Google car with an open bar in it… 🙂
              Cheers!

        2. I think this election has pushed blue cities and states to do more for themselves.

          How Portland is Using Zoning to Fight Climate Change – CityLab: “Cities can declare things, and that’s nice and helpful, but when you put it into your zoning code, that’s the ultimate authority of local government,” Hales tells CityLab. “Frankly it’s an authority that is very difficult for the federal government, or anyone else, to trample on. …[It’s] the law of the land, and that’s local control as it should be.”

      2. Hi Paul,

        The air over the red states is not fixed, the wind blows the pollution to the blue states. The EPA was put in place so that the blue states don’t have to suffer the consequences of poor decisions by red states.

        Also when the floods come to the red states it is the richer blue states that pay for the cleanup through the federal government. Far more money flow from the Federal government to red states than to blue states. Perhaps the red states that hurt the health of their citizens should also pay a surcharge in federal taxes to cover higher medicare spending on their citizens whose health is poor due to air and water pollution.

        In the near future renewable energy will be cheaper, and fossil fuel powered electricity will be more expensive in comparison.

      3. States rights has always been a phoney. Nobody has ever cared about “states rights” when their party was in power at the federal level, and this is well documented.

        The slavers hated states’ rights and were all about federal power, stomping on and crushing states’ rights, right up until Lincoln won, you know.

        1. all about federal power, stomping on and crushing states’ rights, right up until Lincoln won,

          Sounds interesting. Could you expand on that? Got any sources?

      4. Just like the Repubs are all about state’s rights when it comes to women’s health, drug legalization, and gay rights. Where I live in North Carolina, I hear the phrase “State’s rights” all the time as more and more restrictions on our collective liberty get passed simultaneously. It’s a bad joke.

      1. I have some questions about the Trump plan. How does increasing oil supply (if it can be done) help anyone?

        How successful can the Trump administration be in increasing demand? They want to relax car efficiency standards, but are consumers really going to go back to big cars?

        And I wonder to what extent our economy even needs more/cheaper conventional energy sources. We have seen that having lots of capital around doesn’t result in increased investment or jobs. Will increased energy supplies make a difference other than lower the price of energy? Will energy consumption, particularly by businesses, change much?

        Is any of this particularly sound economics or is it solely to hamper clean energy technology?

        2. Tesla will never have to worry about selling cars – Business Insider: “The bottom line is that Tesla will never have trouble selling its cars, at least not until it cranks up production to the same levels of other major global automakers. For the time being, Tesla’s biggest challenge remains managing the demand it can almost effortlessly create.

          Musk has addressed this challenge often. When the Model 3 mass-market vehicle — scheduled to arrive in late 2017, priced at around $30,000 after tax credits — was unveiled earlier this year, Tesla swiftly racked up almost 400,0oo advance reservations at $1,000 a pop.”

  10. Combined effects of ocean acidification and enhanced irradiances on Arctic phytoplankton assemblages from different locations – why do they not care?

    The Arctic Ocean is one of the regions most prone to on-going ocean acidification (OA) and climate-driven changes, including increased sea surface temperature, sea-ice melt and altered mixing regimes. However, the influence of these changes on Arctic primary productivity, phytoplankton ecology and elemental cycles remains poorly understood. To date, the impact of various environmental stressors on phytoplankton have largely been assessed in isolation, and only limited process-understanding was gained. In order to understand how OA and enhanced irradiances (resulting from sea-ice retreat and increased mixed layer stratification) will alter the species composition, productivity and ecophysiology of Arctic phytoplankton, we conducted four incubation experiments with natural plankton assemblages from Davis Strait (63°N), Baffin Bay (71°N) and Kongsfjorden (Svalbard, 79°N). Phytoplankton assemblages were exposed to 400 and 1200 µatm pCO2 at both low and high irradiance levels over several weeks. These incubations were monitored and characterised in terms of phytoplankton growth, nutrient usage, biomass stoichiometry, net primary production (NPP), photophysiology and species composition. Preliminary results indicate that while the Subarctic Davis Strait assemblage exhibited light- and CO2-dependent growth rates and NPP, while there were no such differences between treatments in the Arctic assemblages (Baffin Bay and Svalbard). The observed similarities and differences in composition, productivity and physiology of phytoplankton assemblages grown under different climate scenarios will be discussed. Overall, our results indicate a high level of resilience of Arctic primary producers to climate-dependent environmental change.

    http://epic.awi.de/41605/

    1. why do they not care?

      Because they know humans will be gone soon and they’ll finally have a few million years of peace and quite again. 🙂

    2. Ah yes, good old plankton:

      A study by Park et al, May 12, ’15, concludes the biogeophysical effect of future phytoplankton changes amplifies Arctic warming 20%. Warming-induced melting and the corresponding increase in shortwave radiation penetrating into the ocean result in a longer phytoplankton growing season in the Arctic. In turn, an increase in Arctic phytoplankton warms the ocean surface layer through direct biological heating, triggering additional positive feedbacks in the Arctic, and consequently intensifying the Arctic warming further.

      http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2015/05/mackenzie-river-warming.html
      http://www.pnas.org/content/112/19/5921.abstract

      1. Is direct biological heating caused by mixing due to variations in plankton density in the water?

        1. That’s a really good question and I can’t imagine that it would not! I haven’t read any papers specifically addressing that question.

          On a somewhat related topic and another example of why climate models that focus mostly on future CO2 emission scenarios are woefully inadequate in telling us the truly dire predicament in which we currently find ourselves.

          https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24062016/tiny-pink-algae-snow-arctic-melting-global-warming-climate-change

          Tiny Pink Algae May Have a Big Impact on Arctic Melting

          A new study says the darkening effect of ‘watermelon ice’ has been underestimated in the feedback loop that is warming the Arctic so quickly.
          BY BOB BERWYN, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS

          The rapid warming and ice loss in the Arctic is among the indisputable facts of global warming, and the basic cause is clear: the buildup of atmospheric greenhouse gases from fossil-fuel burning. But scientists struggling to understand why the Arctic is heating up so much faster than other places have discovered what they believe is one piece of the puzzle.

          Pink algae that blooms across the surface of Arctic glaciers and snowfields each summer is absorbing heat instead of reflecting it. And according to a new study published by scientists with the Helmholtz German Research Center for Geosciences, it is a more powerful contributor to the warming feedback loop than previously understood.

          “At the moment this bio-albedo effect is not included in any albedo or climate models,” said co-author of the study Steffi Lutz, a molecular ecologist at the Helmholtz German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany.

          Edit: Yep just checked and there is plenty of literature on that as well!

          The new study has confirmed that it is the beginning of the geophysical feedback by which chlorophyll and the related pigments in phytoplankton absorb solar radiation and in turn raise the sea surface temperature even further. Using a coupled ocean-atmosphere model, the authors have revealed that the additional positive feedback in the Arctic can amplify Arctic warming by as much as 20%.

          Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-reveals-phytoplankton.html#jCp

          It might be time to start holding fossil fuel promoters accountable with Nuremberg like trials for crimes against humanity. Though nature might do it far more quickly, than international tribunals, by getting rid of all of us. … The algae won’t give a damn!

          1. Fred, it is minus 16 degrees Fahrenheit in Winnipeg, Manitoba now.

            Since there will be about eight hours of sunlight and not much wind, the only choice is to burn coal at a coal-fired power plant so the poor souls in Winnipeg can stay warm, all 616,000 of them.

            I am forced to be a shameless promoter of fossil fuels, I am guilty of using them when I can and have to, I can use them any time of day and won’t be ashamed at all when I do. Today, since it is cold, I’ll be using natural gas but not much gasoline, since it is foolish to be driving around in minus 16 degree weather, colder than hell.

            Ever since the Laurentide ice sheet melted way back 18,500 years ago, humans began to traverse far and wide. The evidence shows humans in northern latitudes for 15,000 plus years. The snow and ice went away during the spring, summer and fall and it was Katie bar the door.

            You can’t really blame humans for using fossil fuels, it’s what they do.

            If they can’t use fossil fuels, they’ll start hunting whales again. Then more trials to persecute whale hunters. What can you do? They just don’t seem to quit at anything to make things worse, not better.

            If I have to travel to Nuremburg to go on trial, I’ll be drinking beer in copious amounts, before I get there and afterwards, even more.

            No need for a trial, I’m guilty for promoting the use of fossil fuels. Although, humans seem to be using them like they’re going out of style.

            Next thing you know, all of those fossil fuels will be hard to find and maybe even gone.

            Then what are we gonna do? Drink more beer and forget about it.

            1. Fred, it is minus 16 degrees Fahrenheit in Winnipeg, Manitoba now.

              Hey RW, 10 day forcast for me is looking damp and muggy! Note: this is supposed to be the dry and cool season… Thursday it took me two and a half hours to drive my ICE 11 miles due to very heavy down pours and street flooding. This morning I was forced to drive again because of heavy rains. Hey, how else was I supposed to get my beer?!
              The damn delivery drones don’t fly in bad weather… Usually I do my errands on foot or by bicycle.
              Cheers!

            2. Can R Walter be banned? His long-debunked coal talking points are really boring.

            3. Personally I thoroughly enjoy R Walter’s comments. Ban him, no bloody way. If you really want to ostracize, how about the EV zealots with their never ending apostolic mantra that electric cars will somehow save the world?

            4. Hi Nathaniel,

              RW has an extraordinarily solid grasp of REALITY, and more than a pittance of talent as a humorist, satirist, and all around observer of the real nature of naked apes.

              You shouldn’t read him LITERALLY, most of the time. In his 12/10 nine thirty am comment he IS(humorously in my opinion) pointing out the actual reality of our means of existence today, and our likely means of existence tomorrow.

              I am personally one hundred percent on board with doing all that can be done to transition to renewable energy, and away from coal, oil, and gas.

              But let’s be honest. I don’t feel a damned bit guilty myself, for using coal fired juice at this very minute to post this comment.

              We need somebody like RW to remind us to keep at least one foot on the ground, and not get too carried away, lest we go too far too fast, in advocating change faster than change is possible, and consequently make fools of ourselves.

              You and I may be ready to pay for a faster transition to renewables, but you can take this to the bank, enough people aren’t that they helped put TRUMP in the WH.

              Now RW may actually own some coal, or some coal stocks, or he might even be a guy sort of like me, a guy who works or has worked in various fields. He may BE a coal miner. If I had lived fifty or sixty miles farther west, I would likely have mined some coal myself, at one time or another, but the commute to the nearest mines was a tad too long for me.

              RW does a superb humorous job of reminding us just how BIG the coal Goliath IS, and just how tough a job it’s going to be to go out with our Cub Scout sized wind and solar industries, and slay him.

              It just ain’t gonna happen, not until the Cub Scouts grow up. We must face up to this fact, rather than ignore it.

              RW pokes fun at just about everything and everybody, sooner or later. He ‘s an equal opportunity gorer of any and all oxen that cross his path.

              And I seldom ever fail to get a smile and a laugh out of his observations.

              Besides which, a character along his lines is great for building traffic on any web site.

          2. Here it is folks, the other wing-dinger that you never hear about. Snow and ice are great absorbers of infrared radiation. So a lot of that re-radiated infrared from GHG’s hits the snow or ice and gets absorbed.
            Is that in the models or is it just one of the long list of ignored and undervalued properties?

            Here is an article from Berkeley about the long-wave absorption and emissivity properties of the Arctic.
            http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2014/11/03/far-infrared-arctic/

            1. Gone Fishing,

              Thanks for the link.

              It’s the Arctic Ocean that’s absorbing the long-wave IR, not the snow and ice. The article points out that snow and ice are better emitters of long-wave IR than the ocean surface is so the result is a warmer ocean.

              There hasn’t been a lot of attention paid to LWIR so this was an important wakeup.

            2. Synapsid, the point was that most people think of snow as reflective, yet it isn’t as is pointed out by the article. To emit radiation it has to absorb radiation. It’s fairly black to longwave radiation, but not being a liquid, it doesn’t retain it’s heat as well.
              Still, during those dark winter times when the ocean is losing heat, the GHG’s re-emit some back downward. The ice and snow absorb it, causing early melts before much light hits the region.

            3. “Is that in the models or is it just one of the long list of ignored and undervalued properties?”

              Relax Fish, of course it’s all in the models: each and every last ray (photon) of sunshine.

            4. Relax Fish, of course it’s all in the models: each and every last ray (photon) of sunshine.

              Even the modelers creating the models are in the models… it’s model turtles all the way down 🙂

            5. LOL:

              And the modelers creating the models are in the models and all that they experience is nothing but a holographic projection of processes taking place on some distant surface that surrounds them. What could be clearer than that?

            6. Exactly, every last ray of sunshine. I was not talking about sunshine. More about snowshine.
              But the comedy act you guys do is enough to drive a person to moonshine.

            9. Hi Doug, Fred and Gone fishing,

              Models are not perfect.

              Hand waving is, of course, far more precise.

              Much is included in the models, everything is not, Everything is a pretty high bar not met by any physical model that I am aware of.

  11. What we might have to look forward to.

    US Power Will Decline Under Trump, Says Futurist Who Predicted Soviet Collapse | Motherboard: “Among the 15 structural contradictions his model identifies as driving the decline, are:

    * economic contradictions such as ‘overproduction relative to demand’, unemployment and the increasing costs of climate change;
    * military contradictions including rising tensions between the US, NATO, and its military allies, along with the increasing economic unsustainability of war;
    * political contradictions including the conflicting roles of the US, UN and EU;
    * cultural contradictions including tensions between US Judeo-Christianity, Islam, and other minorities;
    * and social contradictions encompassing the increasing gulf between the so-called ‘American Dream’, the belief that everyone can prosper in America through hard work, and the reality of American life (the fact that more and more people can’t).”

    1. Yeah, same trajectory as the Soviet collapse. Many of us have been pointing this out for a long time. It seems inevitable. The real question is how to manage the collapse to cause the least damage. We need a Gorbachev or a Yeltsin, and Trump isn’t.

      1. I’ve been mulling this over since the election. We could try to get rid of Trump, but the same dynamics are still operating in the country. While Clinton has gotten more of the popular vote, there are still enough Trump voters to make progress impossible.

        That’s one appeal of letting the red states get what they want. I don’t think they will be happy with those economics (no growth, lower benefits, declining quality of life), but they may have to feel a worse life under Trump to be willing to consider alternatives.

        I’ve also posted here that I wonder what the pro oil and gas folks coming into the administration hope to accomplish. Do they want to expand drilling and production to LOWER gas and oil prices further? Do they simply want to undermine renewables because they have a dogmatic opposition to them not based on anything? Or do they want to transition the country out of gas and oil because they know they are declining resources?

        1. Hi Boomer.
          but they may have to feel a worse life under Trump to be willing to consider alternatives.

          The problem is, there is a decoupling effect at work: the time lag between cause and effect is too great. It’s like medieval medicine:

          “Doctor, I’ve bled three pints from this patient, and he seems to be getting worse.”

          “It’s obvious what’s wrong, nurse…you haven’t bled him enough. I said four pints.”

          “Oh… that explains it, Doctor. My bad.”

          Considering that the Republicans want to dismantle government in total, I believe that “You haven’t bled them enough!” is going to be their battle cry for the next four years.

          And you’ll be in a war by the next election (I don’t know where, but wars are good political TV, and if Trump knows anything, it’s TV), so he’ll get another 4 years.

          -Lloyd

          1. “The problem is, there is a decoupling effect at work: the time lag between cause and effect is too great. It’s like medieval medicine”

            Unfortunately you are likely right. It’s like a religious belief. Some of these folks will die before they change their minds about what is the source of their problem.

            It will be Mexicans and Muslims to the end.

            As for another war, yes, you are probably right about that, too.

            1. As for another war, yes, you are probably right about that, too.

              But I don’t wanna be right!

              Maybe if the Donald gets a brain tumor like in the movie “Dave”…

              Unfortunately, that’s the only way out that I can see.

              -Lloyd

          1. I wonder if Trump can keep the right wing preppers distracted so that the blue states can move forward without the interference of the far right? Can he tell the far right everything is okay (when it isn’t) so they don’t cause trouble, and the “smart” folks like Musk move ahead with their plans?

            Can there be an underground progressive movement that doesn’t generate much attention under Trump but finds itself less in need of fighting national policy wars?

  12. I read today in Quora that Warren Buffet recommends to MBA students that if they want to be truly successful investors, they read FIVE HUNDRED pages a day, of every sort of material, not just business and technical news. The person who posted this interpreted Buffet’s comments as meaning Buffet did not expect more than a very few of the students to actually take his advice, and actually do that much reading.

    But the average working class guy, in my experience, comes home from work, and unless he is a bar hound, he spends a little time with his kids, maybe,and maybe does a few chores, and then he crashes in his favorite chair, and spends the evening watching tv more than he does anything else, and in a lot of cases, he watches tv longer than he spends doing EVERYTHING else combined, except working and sleeping.

    I believe most of us could easily read a hundred books a year in the same amount of time we spend on trivial pursuits such as watching tv. I own one , and have satellite service, but I haven’t turned it on in months, the only reason I have satellite tv being that we get a packaged deal, dsl internet, land line phone, and satellite tv.

    I have averaged reading upwards of two books a week just about all my life, until recently.

    Where did I find the time? I gave up television cold turkey sometime back in the seventies, and decided I would spend my recliner time reading. Even before that, I was an avid reader, and watched very little television.

    There’s no reason most of us can’t do the same, no reason at all, if we really want to be well informed.

    1. Or one could step into the 21st century and learn how to multitask with a Kindle.

      1. Different medium.
        Not cool enough.
        (if you don’t understand, a little research would be needed).

        1. I’ll look it up Monday night on my weekly trip to the library

            3. The library is also a collection point for applications to receive support during the holidays from the Coeur d’Alene Press Christmas for All program.

              Distribution of gift cards will be Dec. 15, 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Dec. 16, 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the Kootenai County Fire & Rescue Facility

            4. So Idaho–
              I like The Lake.
              But a lot of reactionary police have retired to the area.
              But beautiful.

        2. I’m hoping RW will use my comment as a starting point for one of his marvelous jaunts thru both real reality, and reality as it can only exist inside the head of a man gifted with the ability to see absurdities and humor where everybody else tends to be as sober as a judge, by comparison.

          Suppose TV and the internet didn’t exist. Given the material abundance we enjoy these days, even a thrifty laborer could have a personal library of a thousand volumes, no problem at all.

          And without TV and similar awesomely addictive trivial pursuits to occupy the hours after the working day are finished………..

  13. I don’t pay too much attention to the posts about EV adoption rates, but I decided to find comparisons to previous technological advancements.

    We are adopting technologies at a faster rate than in the past.

    Granted EVs cost more than some of these other advancements, but if a person is leasing a car then it could just as easily be an EV as an ICE.

    And if you look at adoption rates of EVs, it isn’t unreasonable to assume that they will follow the quick adoption path as previous technological advancements.

    1. Most of the examples had no real competition or if they did they were dramatically superior. EV’s have a direct competitor and though superior in several ways, the ICE cars have range and fueling advantages that EV cars do not yet have. EV’s are fighting an established fueling and service infrastructure that they themselves do not yet have./
      I would not be surprised at all if EV’s did rise linearly until gasoline becomes expensive, EV range increases and charging points become much more abundant. Then it might be a mad rush to purchase EV’s since they will be mainstream by then and the grid structure will have had time to evolve also.

      1. I get what you are saying, but there were ovens before microwaves, horses before cars, clothes lines before dryers, etc.

        I suppose what should be defined is what need EVs fulfill that people may not yet know they need. I think in developing countries where someone doesn’t have an ICE vehicle, going straight to an EV makes a lot of sense. It fulfills a transportation need.

        In the US, the EV fulfills a need for utilities to sell more electricity. So giving incentives to car buyers might come from them.

        In retirement villages, EVs (i.e., golf cars) fulfill a need: an easy-to-operate vehicle that works well on a system of paths. In an urban setting, electric bikes and scooters fulfill a need: a fast way to get around that doesn’t require an on-street parking spot.

        Another possible need that EVs can fulfill is less maintenance. So for people who want a relatively trouble-free car with few maintenance costs, EVs could be better.

        1. “I get what you are saying, but there were ovens before microwaves, horses before cars, clothes lines before dryers, etc.”
          Yes, and were boxes before refrigerators and trains and trolley cars before cars too. There were kerosene lamps before electric lights.
          As I said, no real competition due to much greater convenience and performance especially as the price fell. Much as with the Tesla, the richer people buy in first then someone starts looking at the rest of the market and finds ways to bring the price down without losing much performance (just not as glitzy).

          1. “As I said, no real competition due to much greater convenience and performance especially as the price fell.”

            And those factors (convenience and performance) could drive EV sales, too. The only issue right now is how long one can go on a battery charge. Others have been making the case that for the average driver and the average car trip, long distance capabilities aren’t needed.

            There could very well be an adoption curve that compares to other technological advances. There are benefits to EVs, so if the cost comes down enough, then it could be another gadget to add to one’s collection of high tech toys.

            Others follow EVs much more closely than I do, and they are the ones making predictions. My area of expertise is marketing, and I know tech adoption curves. It is possible that their projections of exponential growth in EVs are reasonable. EVs don’t have to be marketed like ICEs to find widespread adoption.

            1. People have been counting on the high price of gasoline to drive the adoption of EVs. It may turn out that other factors will drive adoption. Again, convenience, performance, low maintenance, status, etc. may be the deciding factors for early adopters. Then when price of the vehicles becomes competitive, the mass market may consider them options whether or not gasoline has gone up significantly in price.

        2. EVs definitely fill a need.

          I don’t need to go to the goddamn gas station. Ever.

      2. I expect adoption will be a lot faster then most people expect. The new generation of EVs with 200 + mile range (for $30K-$40K) are just better cars in almost every way. They have more room, better performance, and lower operating costs.

        Also, electricity is everywhere. The convenience of charging at home and always having a full “tank” is currently not widely understood. No one really enjoys going to a gas station. But also, what if there is a disruption of gas supplies, even short term? What would that do to perceptions? For long distance travel the supercharges keep getting better, in the EU they have a new 350KW standard that can add 190 miles of range in 20 minutes. So, even on the long range travel score EVs are catching up quickly.

        A lot of these cars will be self driving or have an auto pilot. Sure they can add that feature to an ICE car, but it’s a little easier with an EV.

        The cost is mainly the battery so if it continues to drop great EV’s will be in the 20K range and cheaper than a similar ICE. Electric motors are simple and a lot lower cost.

        1. I find there are very few charging stations even in nearby cities. Due to local utility charge rates it is cheaper for me to run a non-plug-in hybrid than an EV and I can actually make it back from a trip.

          1. Are you a renter?

            I’ve done the math on this. If you’re actually correct that your sky-high utility rates mean that it’s cheaper to run a non-plug-in-hybrid than an EV, then your utility rate is over 15 cents / kwh.

            In which case you should install solar panels immediately as you will save a lot of money very quickly. The cost of electricity from home solar panels will definitely be lower than that, unless you’re in Barrow Alaska or something.

            And incidentally the EV will then be cheaper to operate.

            But if you’re a renter you probably can’t do that.

            2. Do the math.
              EV that travels 1000 miles per month. 1000milesX0.3kwh/mile = 300 kwh. Voltage conversion at 9o per cent efficiency = 333 kwh/month. 333 kwh/month X 0.15/ kwh = $50/month.

              Most non-plugin hybrids get at least 50 mpg. 1000 miles/month /50 mpg = 20 gallons/month
              20 gallons/month * $2.20/gallon = $44/month

              If I cross 600 kwh/month the rate goes up to 0.19 per kwh.

            3. And in most of the World gasoline is much more expensive than $2,20/gallon. In two years this will be the case for the US as well. Is the hybrid less expensive at $3/gallon?

              Where I live the electricity rate is fixed at 16 cents per kwhr and in most places in the US it is less than this (except California and New York). The US average is about 12.6 cents per kwhr for residential service for the most recent 12 months (ending Sept 2016).

              http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_3

            4. Where I live the electricity rate is fixed at 16 cents per kwhr and in most places in the US it is less than this (except California and New York). The US average is about 12.6 cents per kwhr for residential service for the most recent 12 months (ending Sept 2016).

              In some parts of the world electricity is now already free for days on end and producers are actually happy to give it away. Imagine what some tech savvy entrepreneurs could do with those kind of incentives. If the new US administration is serious about making this a great place for business then they should be investing in alternative energies and not fossil fuels.

              https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/10/six-places-where-renewable-energy-is-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels/

              Six places where renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels
              From the US to Dubai, and some places in between.

              Free wind power in Dallas

              Everything is bigger in Texas, including the wind energy output. In Dallas, Texas, one utility company had so much wind-generated electricity running through its grid that it decided to give it away at no charge. Last November, customers of TXU Energy began taking advantage of free electricity between the hours of 9pm and 6am, thanks to the excessive production.

              Or Chile

              This year, sunny Chile experienced an oversupply of electricity produced from the country’s solar farms. Based on spot pricing, the country experienced net zero electricity prices for 113 consecutive days (through April), and passed the savings on to utility customers. Chile’s government has invested heavily in its solar industry by installing 29 solar power plants, and it’s planning to add 15 more in the future to supply electricity to its two power grids. In 2015, Chile had a grand total of 192 days of “free” electricity due to solar power production.

              My Hunch is that the global fossil fuel producers are going to be in foe massive disruption much sooner than anyone ever thought.

              Fossil fuels are going to go away because one, they need to and two because they are fast becoming uneconomic.

              Imagine if Mexico could suddenly offer free electricity on top of low labor costs to manufacturers do you think the next administration will be able to keep Ford from building its cars there? Good luck with that!

            5. It’s nice that other people have lower electricity costs, but that does not change the cost for one of the largest metropolitan complexes in the world or for me in the rural region. Averages and minimums mean nothing when the bills come in.

              Yes, gasoline is cheaper for many people and more expensive for many people. The more expensive is due to government intervention.

              Do you believe public utilities like power companies will charge less? I know they just keep raising the rates around here even though coal and nat gas got a lot cheaper.

            6. Well, yes let’s do the math

              For the Bolt it’s 238 miles with a 60kWh battery so start with 0.25kwh/mile. So the EV 1000 miles is $42.

              Also, some hybrids are rated at 50mpg but those ratings can be a bit optimistic. But okay with a Prius, maybe so except the Bolt has a lot more room, cargo space, (plus better acceleration, and handling). It’s closer to something like a Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid which only gets 30mpg costing $73/month.

            7. That Bolt has one of the best kwh/mile around. Sounds like fun. I like the Prius, was just driving one for a while in my area, lots of hills and it still got about 50 mpg in eco mode. Good acceleration too.

              What does the Bolt cost?

            8. If the Bolt is $5000 more than a Prius, it’s not economically worth purchasing. However from a driver’s perspective it would be a nice ride to have.

            9. I just looked at the weight of the Bolt. It is 250 lbs lighter than a full size work van I had back in the 90’s. Those batteries need to get lighter.

        2. Another factor in the death of the IfCE will be a lack of petrol stations (gas stations for the English challenged). How many are operating on slim margins? What is the temptation to convert to charging stations? Many are in coveted city locations and a sell out to commercial space may be more profitable than selling a dying fuel.

          NAOM

  14. Strange weather to share: (BC Coast)

    Well, we now have the Siberian high barreling out of the inlets with very cold air. Usual enough for middle-late January, but this is pretty early. We had almost 3 months of rain falling every freaking day, then boom, clear sunny and cold. We will now have 3 days of light snow and then another 2 weeks of clear and cold reaching minus 11 C on Tuesday. A month of basically clear and cold on the BC Coast is beyond weird.

    Our usual pattern, apart from these arctic outbreaks, would be a pretty good storm with a trailing cold front (sou’easter), followed by a day or two of westerlies and decent weather, and then another big low tracks in. If the low is from the south pacific it is called an Hawaiian Express and it is warm…quite warm with 10-14 C not uncommon. If it tracks down from the Aleutians it is windy and cold….maybe just above freezing. We always get a short clearing spell between systems.

    This year, we have had almost non-stop rain for 3 months, and when it wasn’t coming down, there were still low ceilings. People were very very depressed. This opposite situation is absolutely bizarre. We may have 10 cm snow on the ground in a few days, but then percip just stops for another 2 week stretch. This simply does not happen for us.

    There is a storm warning with 50 kt winds blasting out of the inlets. I have seen winds like this hit 100 kts for a few days….maybe 25 years ago. Hundreds of miles sq of forest were blown down, with trees piled like pick-up-sticks 20-30 feet high. It was unreal. Hopefully, this won’t happen this month/time.

    I believe the jet stream has lost its blocking ability with current arctic warming, and the cold arctic highs are now able to sag into a Rosby Wave much easier than what has been normal. Of course the news wankers call this a Polar Vortex as it sounds sexier. The problem is, that when these sags occur and north america drops into a deep freeze, climate change deniers use the cold snaps to laugh at the idea of global warming. Watch and see, I am sure Trump will start to make jokes about it this week. I have a neighbour who scoffs everytime a cold snap hits, “Hmmph, Global Warming”. It is easier to just walk away than to try and engage. I usually just go home and give up. It keeps me sane.

    1. With increasing energy in a system it either breaks or goes chaotic. We seem to be getting the chaotic end.

      For those that want to watch the Jetstream, here is a good site where one can set up looped animations for up to twenty days.
      http://squall.sfsu.edu/crws/jetstream.html

      1. Yes it does look like BC is being blocked with the Jetstream running just off the coast and any warm mixing components happening over the US.
        However, east coast of US will get some of that cold late next week, well below normal.

  15. DURING LAST WARMING PERIOD, ANTARCTICA HEATED UP TWO TO THREE TIMES MORE THAN PLANET AVERAGE: amplification of warming at poles consistent with today’s climate change models

    The disparity, Antarctica warmed about 11 degrees Celsius, between about 20,000 and 10,000 years ago, while the average temperature worldwide rose only about 4 degrees Celsius, highlights the fact that the poles, both the Arctic in the north and the Antarctic in the south, amplify the effects of a changing climate, whether it gets warmer or cooler.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161206111535.htm

    1. Meanwhile,

      CLIMATE CHANGE IS ALREADY CAUSING WIDESPREAD LOCAL EXTINCTION IN PLANT AND ANIMAL SPECIES

      Extinctions related to climate change have already happened in hundreds of plant and animal species around the world. New research, publishing on Dec. 8th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, shows that local extinctions have already occurred in 47% of the 976 plant and animal species studied.

      https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161208152136.htm

      1. Professor Wiens, who is editor of the Quarterly Review of Biology and a winner of the American Society of Naturalists’ Presidential Award, said the implications for the future were serious because his review showed plants and animals were struggling to deal with the relatively small amount of global warming experienced to date. So far the world has warmed by about one degree C above pre-industrial levels, but it is expected to hit between 2.6 and 4.8C by 2100 if nothing is done to reduce greenhouse gases.

    2. The 25,000 to 15,000 years ago period would coincide with maximum solar insolation to Antarctica due to orbital effects, so it is not surprising that Antarctica heated up faster than the rest of the globe. From 20,000 to 11,000 years ago the solar insolation to Antarctica and southern regions of the planet was decreasing. For the last 11,000 years Antarctic solar input has been on the increase, but has now turned around again.

  16. “If it’s Hillary Clinton, it’s war.” – Vladimir Putin

    “At a minimum, a head of state should have a head.” – Vladimir Putin

    https://www.romper.com/p/what-does-vladimir-putin-think-of-hillary-clinton-hes-not-exactly-her-biggest-fan-15212

    No wonder Russian hackers were subverting her campaign and courting Donald Trump, a war had to be avoided at all costs. The ends justify the means.

    Donald Trump was Putin’s choice to keep the peace.

    All of the news from Hillary was fake and probably still is. Thank God and Greyhound she’s gone.

    A win win for the world.

    1. Actually it appears Russia did have a war with the US and won. It was able to influence and manipulate the US election, sway US citizens, and put into place a “puppet” government.

      The Islamic terrorists have been attacking the US the wrong way. They could have taken over by now if they had hacked our system instead. Same with the Chinese.

      So we’re going to spend all this money on physical national defense, and yet our citizenry is so easily influenced and misled that all an enemy needs to go is get control of our minds.

      1. “that all an enemy needs to go is get control of our minds.”

        It’s why religion embeds it’s self in schools, hospitals and rehab programs

        1. When our constitution guarantees ‘freedom of religion’, does it not also guarantee ‘freedom from religion’?

          Also, is ignorance a form of self-indoctrination?

          In a world that is, at its base, cruel and absurd, humans find it comforting to have a big ‘make-believe’ component to their world view- things like heaven, God, ‘make america great again’, and reflexology.

          1. For most, the moment they pass through the birth canal. Their bathed in Holy Water. They don’t stand a chance.

    2. “Thank god and greyhound she’s gone” LOL Wasn’t that a Tom T. Hall song? Haven’t heard it in years.
      Thanks for your sense of humor. I’ve been told that’s the only sense I’ve got.

  17. Energy use in farming crops and livestock.

    “The U.S. agriculture industry used nearly 800 trillion British thermal units (Btu) of energy in 2012, or about as much primary energy as the entire state of Utah. Agricultural energy consumption includes energy needed to grow and harvest crops and energy needed to grow livestock. Crop operations consume much more energy than livestock operations, and energy expenditures for crops account for a higher percentage of farm operating costs.

    Agricultural energy consumption includes both direct and indirect energy consumption. Direct energy consumption includes the use of diesel, electricity, propane, natural gas, and renewable fuels for activities on the farm. Indirect energy consumption includes the use of fuel and feedstock (especially natural gas) in the manufacturing of agricultural chemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides. ”

    http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=18431

  18. Donald Trump Favors Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson For Secretary Of State

    “Tillerson and Putin had a massive deal for new oil discovery when the US Sanctions were put in place due to Russian aggression in Crimea. That is why Russia hacked the US to put Trump in the White House. All is going according to Putin’s plan. Tonight Rachel said the CIA told Congress about the hacks in September. Obama wanted a bi-partisan release while the GOP laughed and took the win. Obama put country before crime. GOP put crime before country.”

    Wikileaks was the method that stoked the Hillary Hate that shows in the election.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-exxon-rex-tillerson-secretary-state_us_584b69dae4b04c8e2bb013af

    1. Donald Trump Favors Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson For Secretary Of State

      I don’t think history will judge these people kindly!

      http://gofossilfree.org/europe/letter-from-nobel-prize-winners-to-nobel-foundation/

      Letter from Nobel Prize winners and scientists of the Nobel-winning IPCC urging the Nobel Foundation to divest from fossil fuels

      To the Nobel Foundation:

      We, scientists and Nobel laureates from around the world, are writing to request that the Nobel Foundation take further action on climate change by ending its investments in fossil fuels…

      …More than 600 institutions with total assets of more than $3.4 trillion, have committed to divest from fossil fuels, taking a clear stance against the main drivers of climate change. This includes over 100 foundations and major cities such as Stockholm, Paris, Copenhagen, Washington DC and Berlin. Eminent educational institutions and academies such as the California and Australian Academies of Science and Phipps Conservatory, and universities such as Stockholm, Stanford, and Yale – which have provided numerous laureates – have also made divestment commitments. Faith organisations numbering in the hundreds have cut their financial ties to fossil fuel companies. It is time for the Nobel Foundation to join these ranks.

    2. Yeah.

      Back when Trump and Hillary were great friends, and making the same scene at major social events such as weddings, Trump, in collusion with Putin, planted some moles and sleepers in Clinton’s inner circle, which was easy, due to Clinton being such an upright soul she couldn’t imagine anybody else not being the same, and they talked her into such foolishness as the secret email system.

      Then of course when the time was ripe, they exposed their dirty work, in order that Trump would win. It goes MUCH farther than that. The old KGB and it’s newer incarnation not only sabotaged HRC from the inside, way back when, they were so successful in subverting the more liberalish leaning portion of the Yankee MSM to the point that a substantial portion of such media routinely insinuate or flat out state that the forty six percent of the electorate that voted for Trump aren’t even Americans, according to the definitions of our enlightened self appointed elite.

      Most of us can recognize such obvious sarcasm, but nevertheless …… my sarc light is ON.

      Now it’s obvious that Trump intends to govern with the interests of the one percenters foremost, and that he FULLY INTENDS to do what he can to gut environmental laws protecting the environment and the public health, etc.

      Clinton would have won if she had had sense enough to listen to her husband, who she used to climb the ladder to power for herself, but she was arrogant enough to think she didn’t need his brains toward the end of the GREAT GAME. If she had paid a little real attention to working class people, instead of campaigning on identity politics, and globalization, etc, she would have won.

      Educated idiots and cynical partisans are willing to not only tolerate flip flops at the last minute, but to actually ENDORSE such flip flops. Working class people aren’t so fortunate in terms of higher education, but they DO HAVE LONG MEMORIES when it comes to such issues.

      Bill TRIED to tell her.

      That same arrogance cost her the election, leading her and her loyalists to ASSUME she would be president, that there would be a coronation rather than an election, after the fashion of the coronation of a princess in line to be queen when the current king or queen dies.

      That arrogance resulted in her making the incredibly stupid mistake of having the secret email system, of making the incredibly stupid mistake of taking the bankers’ millions, which she had ZERO NEED OF, for a few trivial speeches, the contents of which she also kept secret while talking the talk about open government, etc.

      Someday, a few years down the road, the pain of seeing their queen in waiting denied her rightful throne will diminish to the point that SOME of her brighter devotees will come to understand that she made enough critical mistakes, mistakes that could have been avoided, that she as a result lost to the WORST candidate in R party history, except for one major aspect of his candidacy.

      Trump CRASHED the R party , he ran as a nominee as an outsider, and as the candidate as an outsider , and a SOURCE OF HOPE FOR CHANGE.

      Clinton never really convinced anybody, except her personal devotees, that she would be an agent for change of the sort that matters to most of the country. Only a fool could possibly believe that she really intended to get tough with the big bankers. Obama didn’t, and he was far less indebted to them than she was, having accepted their millions in the form of actual checks with her name on them.

      Working class people heard her talking the working class talk, once in a while, but they saw her walking the walk with the banksters and the globalists, with the one percenters.

      She and most D pundits and the D party badmouthed super pacs and that sort of money raising system endlessly, up until the time came to walk the walk, and then she embraced them wholeheartedly.

      A substantial portion of the people who failed to show up to vote for her took notice of such things, they really did. A few of them were pissed enough that they actually voted for Trump, so as to FORCE the D party to wake up to a new reality.

      I voted Green, believing Virginia was safe for her, as proved to be the case.

      She played a very poor game, and she lost, against a fucking amateur, but one who turned out to be more talented than anybody expected, early on.

      And arguing that Trump played the game of dividing the country against her ….. well that argument cuts both ways. She did played it herself, and her campaign played it.

      There are millions of decent, hard working , self respecting people in this country, such as my old Daddy, who don’t appreciate being made the butt of jokes and treated as outcasts not worthy of inclusion as members of American society on the basis of their religion, or their personal cultural and moral values. The D party is supposed to be the party that celebrates diversity,the party that STANDS for diversity. . The problem is that you can be diversity friendly only in certain respects,and not others, in order to be a member in good standing of the HRC coalition, according to her own, and her spokes persons way of using code words.

      A few of the regulars here play that game, without going quite all the way and saying such people should be deprived of their vote, but their contempt for those they see as their intellectual and ethical inferiors is as obvious as the noonday sun.

      In the eyes of such partisans, you are damned near automatically disqualified as a human being if you come from a rural area,or a small town, or if you believe that the THING growing inside a pregnant woman six months along is a human being, or you believe you have a RIGHT to own a firearm, or to refuse to do business with somebody on the basis of your personal heart felt principles.

      ( A FETUS may or may not be a human being, this is a matter of OPINION. This is not the sort of question that can be determined by a laboratory experiment. There is no such thing as an OBJECTIVE standard by which this question can be judged. )

      I make a point of pointing these things out, not as a big R republican, or a Trump partisan, or even a big C conservative, but rather playing the role of a disinterested observer. Think of me as a football fan and coach who is visiting with you and has seen your local high school team lose a fairly close game. If you ask in a forthright and constructive manner, such a coach, who has no partisan interest in which team won, other than not offending you as his host, will tell you about the mistakes your team made, which if they had been avoided, would have very likely resulted in a victory, rather than a loss, in an otherwise close game.

      Keep these remarks in mind, and the chances of getting rid of Trump in 2020 will be substantially improved.

      Speaking as a coach, the first thing you want to do is make sure you are running a strong candidate, one without excessive baggage, one that is personally like able, one with the common touch, rather than one that wins the nomination via the old time political game known as machine politics.

      And about that baggage- even if it were true that the WHOLE OF IT TRULY IS MUD thrown by the opposition, and your candidate is as pure as wind driven Antarctic snow, it doesn’t matter.

      It’s still baggage, and it can still result in your candidate losing, especially at a time when the people right, left, or indifferent are eager for change. New faces are sometimes a NECESSITY.

      One way of looking at Trump’s VERY REAL and HUGE baggage burden is that he really only got the spotlight focused on him for the last year, with the light only being pointed his way occasionally before that.

      It takes a long time for the general public to make up its mind about such things as the relative ethical and moral qualifications of a new comer to the political scene, especially when the opposition candidate is also burdened with lots of baggage.

      The opposition had decades to muddy up Clinton’s reputation, honestly or otherwise. The D’s had only a year, really , to giterdone to Trump, and a year isn’t really long enough, when your own candidate is old bad news, baggage wise.

      For the record, I believe that Trump tried to steal more via his joke of a fake university alone than Clinton ever hoped to rake into her personal account making bogus speeches, etc.

      I always said Trump was worse. yself, not that I thought it would matter, except to help establish a GREEN political presence in American politics in coming years.

      Little kids mostly blame their troubles on others when they lose a ball game or don’t get what they want. Hillary’s true believers are acting like little kids. Hopefully enough of them will see the light over the next two or three years that she won’t have any real hope of winning the nomination in 2020. In 2020 she really will be shopworn goods.

      I recommend that those who believe in praying get busy praying to the Sky Daddy or Sky Mommy or snake or waterfall that best suits their personal beliefs.

      1. Alex Jones or Joseph Goebbels couldn’t have said it better than yourself. A conman always distracts you with his (left) hand as he steals from you with is (right).

        Thanks Mac for another great example

        1. Hi HB,

          One or the other of us is obviously a hopeless fool.

          I leave it up to those who are disinterested observers to decide which is which, lol.

          Those of us who are either Clinton fans, or Trump fans, will mostly continue to believe what we WANT to believe.

          I have heard many a preacher say the same sort of thing as you say about me,when they deny the obvious as best they can, and call scientists con men, being reduced to that level, having no better argument than name calling.

          YOUR record as a partisan is clear.

          Mine, as a non partisan, in relation to CLINTON VERSUS TRUMP, is also perfectly clear- to anybody who actually bothers to read my many comments about the two of them.

          Blaming the opposition is always a losers game. Keep on consoling yourself that way, and you are putting your self at much higher risk of losing AGAIN in 2018 and 2020.

          A favorite saying in pro sports: ” Statistics are for losers.”

          So are excuses, when you refuse to listen to obviously pertinent and relevant criticisms that if heeded, will help your team win next time.

          Incidentally, although you appear to be too bone headed to realize it, I have stated many times that I have been a single issue “environment” voter for some time now.

          We are actually on the same team.

          The difference is that I think we put the wrong player in the key position, and that we lost, as the result of that mistake.

          ONE way of looking at Clinton’s losing is that as the de facto owner of the D party machinery, she played the old nepotism game to the ultimate extreme, putting herself on the ballot, rather than a relative or friend.

          Big mistake.

          The fact that she scared off everybody BUT Sanders is proof enough, to disinterested eyes, that she had such an octopus like hold on the party appartus that the term “defacto owner” is justified.

          Personally I don’t think Sanders started out expecting to win, but rather only in the hope of forcing Clinton to pay more attention to the issues he ran on.

          1. Hello Mac,

            Little slow to respond. I figured over the weekend your USB connection on the side of your head to the Russian politburo got unplugged.

            “Mine, as a non partisan, in relation to CLINTON VERSUS TRUMP”

            Good to see you have a sense of humor. I’m not buying your BS.

            1. I’m fairly sure nobody has ever actually seen an ostrich bury it’s head in the sand to avoid seeing something scary or unpleasant, but the saying applies anyway.

              Keep on denying reality, keep on blaming the messenger, rather than giving the message some real thought, and Trump and his followers will be eternally grateful, when you run another candidate with historically high negatives and a history of flipflopping on key issues according to which way the wind is blowing at the moment.

              Be sure to run a candidate who talks about being for the common people, but is stupid enough , or arrogant enough, to take millions of dollars in speaking fees from the banksters. Be sure to run one who needs union voters, and non union working people, REALLY needs them, while promoting ( most of the time ) more globalization and thus sending jobs overseas, and who seems to believe that LOTS of new people entering the country, never mind HOW, legally or otherwise, is also a good thing.

              The union guy who works in a factory, and the non union guy who needs the job cutting grass, or hauling trash, or the non union girl or woman who needs the job cleaning houses, will be SURE to vote for your pro immigration and pro globalization candidate. FOR SURE!

              Be sure to get a candidate who says with a straight face that she’s flat broke, when she has a one percenters income in the bag from a government pension alone, lol.

              And above all, be sure to pick one who insults the very people she needs the most, looking down her nose at them, while running as an establishment candidate.

              An outsider can afford to insult the opposition, but an establishment candidate can’t afford to belittle the people her party is supposed to represent.

              There’s a fool involved in this exchange , no doubt at all.

              I don’t engage hard core fundamentalist Christians in rational arguments, and except for the fact there is an audience in this case, I wouldn’t waste my time on you. It’s impossible to win an argument with a true believer, until reality slaps him upside the head with a wake up brick of reality.

              But I enjoy this sort of thing, and I am confident that in the long run, I am adding to my own personal credibility with the audience.

              Show me JUST ONE comment I have posted that portrays Trump in a good light. I consistently said he was worse than Clinton, and that I thought Clinton would win, although I was worried Trump MIGHT win, at various times.

              It turns out that my worry was justified.

              This just past election is history now.

              Democrats and environmentalists with working brains who happen to read my comments about Clinton and Trump will hopefully be a little more likely to support a candidate with fewer flaws next time around.

            2. Mac, you might be able to sell your BS to your backwoods incest relatives, but it doesn’t fly with me. You trolled this site with all the GOP and Russian talking points against Clinton. It could have gotten you a paycheck from the Koch brothers. Bernie(your loverboy) wasn’t even a Democrat the day Hillary announced and has walked away from the party already. You act like loverboy would be president elect if he was only smart enough to know when to start a presidential campaign. Hillary was first lady, senator, Secretary of State and founder of a foundation that saves thousands of lives every year. She had nearly 100% support from her fellow party lawmakers. You rang that email & paid speech crap like 12 year old and his woody. You can go find a room and pretend your playing with your father.

              “The nomination was barely sealed up at the Democratic National Convention before Bernie Sanders, who had campaigned against Hillary Clinton for the party’s nod, went back to being an Independent. Sanders, who considers himself, officially, an Independent in Congress because his views lean further left than the Democratic party’s platform, caucuses with Democrats.”

              https://heatst.com/politics/bernie-sanders-leaves-the-democratic-party/

          2. “Incidentally, although you appear to be too bone headed to realize it, I have stated many times that I have been a single issue “environment” voter for some time now.”

            Your calling me the “bone head”. Your the one who voted for the green party and kicked the ONLY relevant environmental choice in the teeth day in & day out.

            1. I am very good at reading the Virginia chicken entrails, and there was in my very firm opinion not even a snowball’s chance on a hot stove that Trump would carry this state.

              You DO realize the meaning of ” electoral college” don’t you?

              Now as for kicking Clinton in the teeth, I doubt very very seriously that I swayed even one person in this forum to vote for Trump.

              My goal all along was to wake people up to the reality that Clinton was a BADLY flawed candidate who might lose, and hopefully thus encourage them to be a little more thoughtful about who they support NEXT TIME.

              She lost. Hopefully you will face up to this obvious reality sometime between now and the next election, and support somebody without so many flaws.

              She would have been better than Trump.

              I supported Sanders of course, and if it weren’t for her low down dirty trick operations, planned and executed in collusion with the highest ranking officials of the party, who also happened to be her closest allies, Sanders might have won the nomination, DESPITE his late start.

              Trump won as much as anything, really most likely BECAUSE the country was desperate for change. Sanders was so awesomely successful, against STACKED ODDS , precisely because he stood for change.

              Clinton was a business as usual candidate, and everybody with even a very modest measure of political street smarts knows this is or was true. That in the last analysis might have been her biggest single flaw.

            2. “Clinton was a business as usual candidate, and everybody with even a very modest measure of political street smarts knows this is or was true. That in the last analysis might have been her biggest single flaw.”

              I would agree that Clinton was not proposing any radical changes. But she was left-of-center enough for me.

              Sanders had great things to say, but he wouldn’t have been able to get most of his ideas through Congress.

              Clinton would have run into similar Congressional opposition so I knew she would have run into the same sorts of problems as Sanders.

              But with Trump as president and the GOP in control of Congress, I think we might be running into some of the same problems with saw with Bush.

              And that’s the one silver lining. When problems arise, the GOP will be forced to own them.

              I don’t know if the country can head in the right direction if things get worse (and according to that one article I posted things will get worse and the country is likely to be heading toward permanent decline), but maybe bad times will eliminate some of the BS.

              I wasn’t one who wanted Trump to cause the revolution, but maybe he will unless his administration shuts down all avenues of protest and disagreement.

              I lean more toward having the blue states go their own way (not secede) and create the society that I think will be necessary to deal with global changes happening now and in the future.

              If we have some examples of clear failure and some examples of clear success, maybe politics will become simpler. That’s also why I like to focus on the economics of energy. Coal is in decline and there is not much Trump can do about that. At some point clean energy technology will be on the upswing and there won’t be much Trump can do about that either.

  19. https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/weather/nunavut/baffin

    It minus 24 Fahrenheit in Baffin Island, will be -35 degrees F some time on Saturday.

    Probably 2/3 of Baffin Island is above the Arctic Circle, so no sun for them for a few months, probably some twilight during the day.

    It is going to be cold that far north and no light or warm rays from the sun means it is going to stay cold.

    Then summer comes along and it never gets dark at night, 2 am in the Yukon in late July has no darkness, it’s nuts. Beautiful place, nobody out there except for the bears in the woods. All in all, with the earth spinning out of control like it does, we’re lucky to be here.

    Whipping along at 18.5 miles per second, we ain’t driving the thing, that’s for sure.

    The circumference is 584,336,233.568 miles, to make a trip around the sun, the earth has to travel that many miles. Multiply by your age, that is how many miles in total you have gone so far. If you are 40 years old, you have traveled some 23 billion miles so far, a dog riding in a car with his head out the window.

    Divide by 365.25, you go 1,599,825.41702 miles each day, you complete 1/365.25th of the circle.

    66,659.392376 miles per hour.

    1110.98987293 miles per minute.

    18.5164978822 miles per second. Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, the earth is going to keep on truckin’, like the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers always do.

    If you want real good fake news, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers have it all. har

    In part 2 of “The Idiots Abroad” Fat Freddy is chased across Europe by terrorists, Freewheelin’ Frank is captured by pirates. And Phineas –has become the richest man in the world?

    https://ripoffpress.com/categories/fabulous-furry-freak-brothers

    This madness has got to stop!

    The math is easy when you use an online calculator.

    On December 3, 1984, forty ton of methyl isocyanate gas was leaked into the air in Bhopal, India. A faulty valve was found where the leak occurred.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/3/newsid_2698000/2698709.stm

    If you live on the east coast, the cold is on its way.

    1. It’s supposed to get downright frigid here in the Great lakes region in the next week or two as well. Weathermen are saying another polar vortex is due to pass through. I don’t think my creaky joints and bones will appreciate all of this, I know if they got their way the global warming predictions would’ve kicked in by now and the shores of lake Huron would be good for some wintertime sunbathing.

      Regards,
      -Ralph
      Cass Tech ’64

  20. I just got acquainted with this site, which is jammed with great stuff some of the regulars here will find very interesting indeed. I guess it would be better described as a section of the larger site, but that’s just a quibble. Check it out!

    http://stm.sciencemag.org/

    The blog about things not to work with is great.

  21. WORLD FACES TWO-THIRDS FALL IN WILDLIFE NUMBERS

    Earth lost 58 per cent of its wildlife from 1970 to 2012. That’s based on data from the Zoological Society of London’s Living Planet Index, which monitors more than 14,000 populations spread out over around 3,700 species… the declines are signs of a hypothesized ongoing “sixth extinction”, as well as the fact mankind may have entered a new “Anthropocene” period, where humanity’s effects on the Earth, such as emissions and pollution, can be detected in the geological record.

    https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/wildlife-numbers-crash-two-thirds-by-2020-wwf/73809/

    1. We’re good though: according to the UN Population Division, human population will hit 7 billion on or around Oct. 31, and, if its projections are correct, we’re en route to a population of 9 billion by 2050, (and 10 billion by 2100). But, 10 billion people may be the uppermost population limit where food is concerned and I think more of us have to become vegetarians to reach this wonderful number (1 x 10^10). Isn’t that great? God must be so gratified about now.

      1. Countless things will all have to go right for ten billion to eat.

        An unknown portion of these things are at least theoretically subject to human control, or if not control, at least influence.

        A hell of a lot of them are entirely out of our hands.

        Maybe our collective luck will continue to hold, as it has during my working lifetime, but farmers aren’t magicians. The stuff we work with, clean water, good soil, nitrate fertilizers, etc, are already in short supply.

        I recommend that those who are inclined to do so say a lot of prayers and make a lot of sacrifices.

        For everybody else, my advice is DON’T get caught in Egypt.

        The possibility of regional famines is already high, and growing.

        For now we can probably prevent any short term mass scale starvation by transporting food to affected areas, but whether this option is politically viable is an open question.

        Longer term and on the larger scale, we could TECHNICALLY cope for a while longer by going vegetarian, but I doubt if that dog will hunt, at least not in countries such as TRUMPLAND.

        Regional food supply problems will likely lead to hot resource wars well before reaching actual famine status in some cases, and hot fighting for sure once people start migrating en masse. I don’t think many will opt to starve quietly in place, as happened in times gone by. People have televisions and phones these days and are thus aware that in other places, food is available, if they can get there.

        War has a way of getting out of hand.

        I think the odds are at least in the high nineties in my favor that I won’t need to bunker up within the next twenty years, and that’s probably longer than I will be around anyway.

        But then I think about the breakneck pace of progress in numerous fields of technology, and I get to wondering if such progress is baked into the field of genetic manipulation of nasty little microbes , and if it will take only a few million bucks and a handful of dedicated competent workers to create a REAL “CAP’N TRIPP” aka “TUBENECK”, the names Stephen King chose for an escaped super flu created in a military lab in one of his books.

        If the cards fall that way, bunkering up may be the only real hope of waiting for such an epidemic disease to burn itself out. Maybe one person in a hundred will be sufficiently prepared and in possession of the skills and resources to see it coming, and succeed in going to ground and waiting out such an epidemic.

        I have the skills and resources, and would probably recognize the early signs in time to react, but in just a few more years, I will be too old to manage it alone. I have a few old friends I have talked with about this possibility, and they might show up in time to batten the hatches on my place. They might not. None of them would have a prayer living in the places they live now.

        I have already outlived a lot of childhood friends and relatives anyway.

        A person with plenty of ready cash who sees it coming a few weeks ahead of the crowd, and knows what to do, could probably make adequate preparations within that few weeks, if he is willing to go for broke.

    2. as well as the fact mankind may have entered a new “Anthropocene” “Antrumpocene” period,…

      Fixed that for ya!

      1. ” There is nothing more odious than the majority.

        It consists of a few powerful men who lead the way; of accommodating rascals & submissive weaklings; & of a mass of men who trot after them without in the least knowing their own minds.”
        -Goethe

  23. Many times we’ve had discussions here about society falling apart when the oil supply declines sufficiently.

    But it occurs to me that we are already seeing some of those effects, but it is coming because we have hit peak labor. There are more people both in the US and globally than we have jobs to give them. So either we greatly change economic concepts and how we provide support for all of these unemployed and underemployed people, or we will continue to see unrest.

    Trump’s labor solutions aren’t going to fix the labor problems, so we might be witnessing the anticipated decline now, before we have declining oil to blame.

    1. Also we may see some areas of the US hit particularly hard, with both a continuing loss of jobs and also a loss of economic safety net programs. So when we paint our doomsday scenarios, we can see some US areas already trending that way. Loss of oil may have less of an impact on those areas if they have no funds with which to buy petroleum-based products.

      1. Hi Boomer,

        “but it is coming because we have hit peak labor”

        “either we greatly change economic concepts”

        We very well may have hit peak labor and oil. Not because of our economic system, but because of our lack of political leadership. In the long run, our only option is for humanity(not Hannity)to build a sustainable lifestyle. There is plenty of work to be done. Our politicians in self interest are catering to short term economic interest to hold on to power. As long as we are heading straight for an iceberg. Does it really matter if we are at full throttle or 90% ? A reasonable number of life boats are all that is required for the haves to continue their life style.

        We need to build a sustainable transportation and food system, protect our air, land and water resources, eliminate our living and manufacturing waste products and control our reproduction to sustainable levels.

        Those in power don’t need 7 billion unskilled humans on earth for their standard of living and neither does mother earth. The poorly educated need to prepare.

        1. Yes, I agree that if we switched over to a more sustainable lifestyle, there would be new jobs created.

          But the business as usual path will not create new jobs and will likely eliminate them as soon as it can.

    2. So either we greatly change economic concepts and how we provide support for all of these unemployed and underemployed people, or we will continue to see unrest.

      Correct! And that takes high intelligence, wisdom, vision, empathy and trans-disciplinary co-operation among many people of diverse ethnicities and cultural backgrounds! Qualities and skills that Trump and the people he is surrounding himself with, seem to be woefully lacking.

    1. There’s some key/important differences in arguments about smoking vs. arguments abut climate change though:

      As for smoking, the sample size for conclusive studies on whether cigarettes are bad or not was quite high, literally in the tens of millions. It was therefore relatively easy to get enough data to show an obvious correlation between smoking and a medical condition like lung cancer.

      Now climate change is realistically quite different. There isn’t really a sample size possible in traditional terms. Thus it’s not feasible to obtain the needed statistics to show cause (e.g. effects of natural variations vs. human activities). On the other hand I can admit the science on the degree of radiative forcing resulting from doubling CO2 is well enough known to make predictions, of course if one can assume water vapor content remains constant. This is how the IPCC deals with this matter (IPCC AR5 Fig SPM.5) to suggest a 1.2 °C global average of warming owing to radiative heat balance with no feedback mechanisms. Nevertheless physicists (as opposed to pure climate scientists) will tell you feedback mechanisms could prove important, especially as they relate to water vapor and clouds.

      However, all this discussion isn’t meant to distract from the truly big problem with current climate change research, which is the lack of valid climate models. The biggest problem here is lack of sweet spot with modelling right now. You run a model that’s too simple, it will be too limited to be of any use; you run a model that’s too complex, computers will buckle under the pressure of trying to actually calculate anything. Thus the researchers must make many wide-ranging assumptions/simplifications to make any kind of climate model perform within a reasonable time frame on current computing power. One of these is grid size; many modern models use large grids which cannot directly handle “cloud and thunderstorm genesis” (Orrell et al, 2001). Additionally most models are highly sensitive to IC (initial conditions), Lupo et al, 2013 indicated minute differences in IC of various models led to vastly different evolution of output conditions on as little as a monthly timescale. Hence the reason for all the frequent historical temperature “re-calibrations” undertaken by NASA/NOAA et al; they have to keep massaging or fudging IC’s (historical data) to make the models more accurately reflect conditions observed in the present. Only then can the researchers at least hope the models will offer some semblance of reality to future conditions.

      Then there are some more questions left lingering around the role of CO2 in global climate processes. Specifically science is still left trying to answer the question; what is the ideal concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. If we wanted we could try to go down to pre-modernity concentrations of about 280 ppm, but in doing so we’d run the risk of unacceptable losses of agricultural productivity (unacceptable in the sense of being unable to provide enough food for the 7 billion people on the planet). Additionally in a worse-case scenario, lowering CO2 by that much could precipitate another multiyear planetary glaciation event (aka ice age). On the other hand there actually may be benefits beginning to be realized in leaving CO2 emissions untouched. For example intriguing new research suggests an increased global greening event underway with plants requiring less water to grow (Zaichun et al, 2016).

      Finally let’s not forget most of our media has a profit-making incentive so they will do just about all they can to hype up and glamorize “extreme weather” events as if they are completely new and unprecedented. This is rarely the case though. Think about this; hurricane/”superstorm” Sandy in 2012 killed fewer people than the infamous Long Island hurricane of 1938. Meanwhile California a thousand years ago had a century-long drought worse than the current drought. And so on.

      If warnings about probable events in the future would sell, the media would actually be better off bringing up not the effects of any presumed climate change, but rather the next big earthquake and tsunami that will inevitably occur someday in the PNW (Pacific Northwest). Or how the Democrats in DC inexplicably couldn’t be bothered to establish an early detection/missile system to intercept an asteroid with earth’s name on it.

      1. “climate change is realistically quite different. There isn’t really a sample size possible in traditional terms. Thus it’s not feasible to obtain the needed statistics to show cause (e.g. effects of natural variations vs. human activities).

        This is a really tired old bullshit argument at this point and completely untrue, for many reasons, not the least of which, is that it completely ignores a vast body of field and laboratory research by biologists, geneticists, microbiologists, ecologists, and data scientists who have been specifically studying the impacts of rapid climate change on biodiversity loss and the implications that will have on the livability of the entire planet.

        Case in point:
        http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n3/abs/nclimate2448.html

        NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE | REVIEW

        Assessing species vulnerability to climate change
        Michela Pacifici, Wendy B. Foden, Piero Visconti, James E. M. Watson, Stuart H.M. Butchart, Kit M. Kovacs, Brett R. Scheffers, David G. Hole, Tara G. Martin, H. Resit Akçakaya, Richard T. Corlett, Brian Huntley, David Bickford, Jamie A. Carr, Ary A. Hoffmann, Guy F. Midgley, Paul Pearce-Kelly, Richard G. Pearson, Stephen E. Williams, Stephen G. Willis, Bruce Young & Carlo Rondinini
        AffiliationsContributionsCorresponding author
        Nature Climate Change 5, 215–224 (2015) doi:10.1038/nclimate2448
        Received 14 April 2014 Accepted 27 October 2014 Published online 25 February 2015

        Abstract
        Abstract• References• Author information• Supplementary information
        The effects of climate change on biodiversity are increasingly well documented, and many methods have been developed to assess species’ vulnerability to climatic changes, both ongoing and projected in the coming decades. To minimize global biodiversity losses, conservationists need to identify those species that are likely to be most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. In this Review, we summarize different currencies used for assessing species’ climate change vulnerability. We describe three main approaches used to derive these currencies (correlative, mechanistic and trait-based), and their associated data requirements, spatial and temporal scales of application and modelling methods.

        Now if one wishes to expand on this one topic alone you can take the URL of this paper I just linked and plug it into an AI research database IRIS.ai and find related open source peer reviewed scientific papers.

        Which brings up:

        Assessing species vulnerability to climate change
        I’ve identified 729 related papers and grouped them by concept.

        May I suggest that anyone who argues that: “climate change is realistically quite different. There isn’t really a sample size possible in traditional terms. Thus it’s not feasible to obtain the needed statistics to show cause (e.g. effects of natural variations vs. human activities). read a few of those papers!

        One can certainly try to deny inconvenient realities but that doesn’t change the fact that the science is clearly telling us there is a major problem with just about every one of the planetary systems on which we depend for our basic survival.

        1. Hey Fred, When you wrote:

          “May I suggest that anyone who argues that: “climate change is realistically quite different. There isn’t really a sample size possible in traditional terms. Thus it’s not feasible to obtain the needed statistics to show cause (e.g. effects of natural variations vs. human activities). read a few of those papers! “

          you made one giant wrong assumption, the the identity to whom you are responding is even remotely interested in the content of those papers. I remain convinced that such identities are on a mission to make sure that any internet based discussions of global warming do not get in the way of the interests of the Koch brothers and other FF extraction, processing and use interests. Now that the fox is guarding the hen house, I expect the bullshit to be raised to the Federal government level, at least for the next couple of years until the saner part of the US population realizes what’s at stake and elects less of the FF industry whores like Mitch McConnell, assuming the FF lobby money doesn’t overwhelm the opposition to it.

          I do not want to paint the entire Republican party with the same brush since there are a smattering of Republicans who believe in global warming, renewable energy and electric vehicles, it’s just that they are vastly outnumbered by the bought and paid for type. I do not underestimate the desperation of the Koch brothers and their ilk as they try to cling to the business models they have mastered and done so well for themselves with. These guys must view the Silicon Valley crowd (Brin and Musk of Google and Tesla) as the devil’s spawn and are actively trying to disparage Tesla at every chance they get. Gotta protect the old business!

          One of the things that bothers me is that these folks don’t see themselves as being at risk from the effects of global warming as if their money will be able to somehow magically create food for them if the global food chain collapses. That is assuming that they have not entirely deluded themselves that humans have nothing to do with global warming. Global warming is likely to be vary bad news for vast areas of the planet and could inconvenience (kill?) billions while things get better for a very small minority. Having said that, it kinda sounds like the way things have always been with the exception of this recent remarkable period in human history when the burning of fossil fuels has allowed for increased standards of living for a significantly large portion of the human race.

          I worry that it’s going to take a catastrophic event like sea water flowing down Flagler Street (Miami) to shock the deniers into realizing that the risk of continuing BAU was not worth it. At that point it will be too late and our civilization will have to be figuring what to to about all the areas close to sea level, where a over millennia a huge proportion of civilization has developed settlements (cities) that will probably have to be abandoned. In that case maybe Guy McPherson’s prognosis is the most likely outcome.

          Hope this comment was cheerful enough for ya! 😉

          edit: I think Miami might have been a bad choice since, I think the denialist crowd dare not spout their bullshit when king tides are inundating sections of Miami Beach. I get the impression that there’s not that much denial in South East Florida. Most people there know just how vulnerable their area is to sea level rise.

          1. Hey Islandboy,

            you made one giant wrong assumption, the the identity to whom you are responding is even remotely interested in the content of those papers.

            Not really, see my comment to Nathaneal.

            And while the governor of Florida may be in denial, the City of Miami is putting it’s money into fighting sea level rise, simply because it has no other choice!

            Cheers!

        2. Hi Fred,

          I am with you, all the way.

          For what it’s worth, we do seem to be attracting higher quality trolls these days.;-)

          Nicholas S appears to have respectable assets in the way of vocabulary and grammar.

          I don’t know if there is a short hand term to describe the technique, but I see a lot of partisan and troll arguments made these days in which the person doing the talking uses some data accepted by the target audience, or the political opposition, as the case may be, to bolster his case.

          In this case, Nicholas uses the certainty of earthquakes and tsunamis coming, eventually, which gives him the coloration of a scientifically literate speaker.

          But he gives away his entire case, like a shoplifter on the way out of the store with presumably concealed merchandise hanging out from under his coat with that very last remark about Democrats in DC refusing to build an anti asteroid defense industry.

          Rolling on the floor, I am, because the detection system is already robust, and we know the odds of a large enough asteroid hitting a populated area to cause serious damage are minuscule to near zero, WITHIN the the relevant time frame, meaning the next few decades.

          Sure it will happen, sometime within the next few million years. The odds of it happening within the time frame we could actually build a workable asteroid deterrent approach zero.

          Building such a deterrent would be an utter and total waste of money and resources, both of which are in short supply, compared to spending the same money and resources on equally serious problems (excepting a monster asteroid, which is another three or more orders of magnitude less likely to hit than a fair sized one ) which are actually staring us in the face.

          Anybody who is more or less scientifically literate, which includes math literacy, and who is reasonably well informed about the big environmental picture ( as opposed to let us say a superbly talented engineer who knows all about jet engines, or computer chip fabrication, but hardly anything about climate or ecology ) knows I am telling it like it is.

          There is no such thing as absolute safety, either in the individual case, or the collective case.

          Our ability to react to problem situations is limited, and in order to prepare for events that are actually likely to come to pass within the easily foreseeable future, which constitutes the correct and relevant time frame, we have no choice but to take our chances on events that are possible but exceedingly unlikely to come to pass.

          Even the richest man in the world can’t possibly own everything for sale, he has to make choices. If he wants to own the rail road industry, like Warren Buffet, he will have to pass on some other industry. The richest man in the world cannot hope to insulate himself from every possible danger. Some of the things he would do to reduce the risk of one thing happening would actually INCREASE the risk of other undesirable events.

          There really are such things as known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.

          I go into such detail, using the examples I have chosen, in the hope that there are or will be some kids and some adults reading this comment who are not fortunate enough to be as well informed as our good cyber friend Fred, who doesn’t need an elementary school lecture.

          I am sure I have learned more from him than he will ever learn from me. 😉

          1. I am sure I have learned more from him than he will ever learn from me.

            I always appreciate your insights into how the good people in your neck of the woods might perceive what is happening in the world at large. I have learned to have a lot more respect for the innate intelligence of those who do not have a more formal education. Thank you for that!

        3. BTW, since I’m really tired of all the Trolls, Bots and Paid Shills, who have been showing up here recently, let’s say just for shits and giggles, I zoom in and choose just one of the 729 papers that I have identified in my original search:

          http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-008-1043-9

          Range expansion of a habitat-modifying species leads to loss of taxonomic diversity: a new and impoverished reef state

          Abstract
          Global climate change is predicted to have major negative impacts on biodiversity, particularly if important habitat-modifying species undergo range shifts. The sea urchin Centrostephanus rodgersii (Diadematidae) has recently undergone poleward range expansion to relatively cool, macroalgal dominated rocky reefs of eastern Tasmania (southeast Australia). As in its historic environment, C. rodgersii in the extended range is now found in association with a simplified ‘barrens’ habitat grazed free of macroalgae. The new and important role of this habitat-modifier on reef structure and associated biodiversity was clearly demonstrated by completely removing C. rodgersii from incipient barrens patches at an eastern Tasmanian site and monitoring the macroalgal response relative to unmanipulated barrens patches…

          …In contrast, the faunal community of the barrens habitat is overwhelmingly impoverished. Of 296 individual floral/faunal taxa recorded, only 72 were present within incipient barrens, 253 were present in the recovered patches, and 221 were present within intact macroalgal beds. Grazing activity of C. rodgersii results in an estimated minimum net loss of approximately 150 taxa typically associated with Tasmanian macroalgal beds in this region. Such a disproportionate effect by a single range-expanding species demonstrates that climate change may lead to unexpectedly large impacts on marine biodiversity as key habitat-modifying species undergo range modification.

          If I then plug that result back into IRIS.ai I get much more specific information on marine ecosystem bidiversity loss due to climate change:

          Range expansion of a habitat-modifying species leads to loss of taxonomic diversity: a new and impoverished reef state
          I’ve identified 396 related papers and grouped them by concept.

          I could do the same for any of the other 729 papers that came up in the results of my original search and now I can also explore the 396 papers I’ve identified in my secondary search. I can repeat this process as may times as I might like.

          So the climate change deniers are going to have to really up their game to refute thousands and thousands of scientific papers that very cleary show we have a major problem on our hands.

          Oh, and for those still obssesed with ‘THE CLIMATE MODELS’ this kind of fine grained high resolution knowledge has not as yet been incorporated into any of them in any meaningful way. Though just like the stick and ball models of molecules used in the early days of organic chemistry, which were quite useful at the time, we don’t have to give up on those simple models, just because we have now progressed in our knowledge and have begun to fathom the depths of the complexity of QED…

          https://xkcd.com/54/
          .

          1. Hi Fred,

            Yes, IRIS.ai is indeed super cool; I’ve only recently joined up. Most of my life I’ve followed neutron star research by sort of “knowing” all the principal researchers. That means being on the “mailing lists” and receiving reprints of all the key papers as they make their way through the review process. I started early so this works (for me). But, if I were starting today it would be IRIS.ai all the way.

            1. Re: IRIS.ai
              Just think how much you would have to pay a good full time research assistant for the sole purpose of fighting climate deniers. In a matter of minutes IRIS can find hundreds of peer reviewed papers to solidly refute any point the climate deniers might try make. Maybe they will find coming here unproductive and go bother people somewhere else.

      2. Stop spreading lies, “Nicholas Schroeder”.

        The evidence for ocean acidification is about as proven as it gets, and that’s *much worse* than global warming — it destroys the ocean food chain.

        1. Hey Nathaneal, I’m willing to bet a considerable sum that Gebauer and Schroeder are birds of a feather! They are either bots, trolls or paid shills serving the same master! The only reason to even bother to respond to them is to not allow their bullshit to go completely unchallenged!

          I most certainly don’t expect them to read 700 plus scientific papers addressing even a very tiny sliver of the immense volume of scientific research from multiple fields that support the conclusion that anthropogenic climate change is real and that it poses a significant threat to the long term survivability of the planet and most of the species on it, including our own.

          Cheers!

          1. Mr. Hungarian, I have the the $1 million question here…you and others say that climate change is a 100% fact yet the scientists actually doing the work investigating say its in fact just a theory. So let me ask you this…is your cell phone, computer, stereo, automobile, wristwatch, etc. based simply on theory? No, their not, their based completely on science that’s 100% PROVEN to work EVERY time. And don’t get to telling me I’m all wrong about science either. I do have a minor in psychology, so I’ve had plenty of science classes. Furthermore it appears that real world observation has difficulty with the theory considering oceans haven’t risen as fast as models forecasted, U.S. temps remain flat, etc. So you tell me something, you champion science, these hundreds of research papers and paid studies, but yet remember with regards to climate change, synonyms of the word theory include “guess” or “hunch”. So your basing support for the complete financial ruination of people’s very lives on nothing but a “educated best guess”? Here is the very reason why so many American’s have completely turned away from the democratic party’s way of thinking. Democrats say “Oh yea we care so much about being so inclusive”, but then they go and ruin your job & life to get all of what they want.

            2. Hi Mr. ArkTech, I did my customary search when your type of post pops up around here, that is “(insert troll name here) site:http://peakoilbarrel.com/” as the search term at google.com, in your case “ArkTech site:http://peakoilbarrel.com/“. I got three results and in each case you were responding to a global warming comment with the usual Koch brothers inspired bull shit. Since this is after all a Peak Oil site, I’m really keen to know what you think about some of the petroleum issues often discussed at this site? It would also be interesting to hear what you think about alternative energy and the thousands of jobs being created in the wind and solar industries? What do you think the long term impact of electric vehicles like those made by Tesla Motors or the Chevrolet Bolt is going to be? what about the John Deere battery powered tractor being discussed further up? How about Transit Oriented Development and walkable neighborhoods?

              I don’t expect to get a response from you since you, like the rest of your colleagues appear to be tolling the Internet, looking for discussions to insert your predictable little talking points into. “I do have a minor in psychology, so I’ve had plenty of science classes.” Oh right! I guess those science classes must have included the science of Economics and other hard physical sciences like chemistry, physics, biology and advanced mathematics needed to properly do some of the sciences. What per chance was your major? Nuclear Physics?

              I am yet to understand how climate scientists want to “ruin your job & life” if you work outside of the FF industries. Is the “work outside the FF industries” the problem? You’ll have better luck going somewhere else and finding people who are your intellectual equals (lightweights) to convince. Be well.

            3. Solar & wind as usual are conman forms of energy. Same with the electric cars. They require to be propped up by a constant stream of taxpayer subsidies. If they could stand on there own they might be alright but no info presented on the news or talk radio says that will ever happen. So they have little worth. Besides, our society is a 24/7 one only fossil fuel can power. I mean…what will you do if the wind isn’t blowing, or its cloudy/nite? How is an electric car worth it when you need a F-350?

              “Thousands of jobs in the solar and wind industries”? Only if you actually believe this administration’s employment numbers on anything. Its been obvious for years that Obama & co. make up the unemployment numbers to make themselves & liberalism look good. All you have to do is look at the labor force participation rate to see how messed up the economy really is. This is what we elected TRUMP for…the economy will improve (75% of Republicans already say it will). TRUMP knows what to do to bring jobs, PERIOD. The other thing is he will stop the creep of socialism & communism into society. That entire matter goes with the point of climate scientists being out to ruin your job & life. The endgame of using concepts like climate change, sustainability, “Transit Oriented Development and walkable neighborhoods”, Common Core, etc. is to force people into un-American lifestyles by placing a ban on things like owning your own car and driving it when you want, being able to roll coal, living in the country, owning guns, going hunting, having a bonfire in your backyard every evening, being a Christian, being able to choose your career, etc.

              Also as a small business owner let me offer some perspective about what Obama’s party has been doing to U.S. small business. They’ve been trying to absolutely destroy us though regulations — endless regulations. You try to get any business done out in the country and faster than you can blink your eyes somebody from the gov’t will show up to breath down your neck telling you how “you can’t do this” or “you can’t do that”. Then you’ve got all these bogus taxes you gotta pay so the big city welfare mothers can get there check. Let me tell you this, so many people I know are so full of pure rage because of the taxes going to support these people. You know the types I’m talking about even if its not politically correct to say it. The one’s with no job but having 5-6 kids, getting free this & free that, new iphones, etc. While hardworking people in the country work our asses off but still can’t afford stuff. TRUMP won easy in the country because he was actually willing to speak of getting the gov’t out of the way, repealing regulations, letting business expand, stop supporting the takers in society, etc. Because he’s actually got the chops to get things done Trump has given people hope that the country can be rebuilt from all the damage of the last 8 yrs.

            4. Wow! “but no info presented on the Fox news or talk radio Rush Limbaugh says that will ever happen”. There, fixed that fer ya!

              From the sounds of it, you don’t think Peak Oil is a real issue either. You sound like a real “Drill baby, drill!” kinda guy. What was Ron thinking when he set up this blog? He must be nuts to nave called the Peak for last year! It’s the commies that are causing oil production to decline in all those places that appear to have peaked! If only we could wipe all them commies of the face of the earth! Hey! I’ve got a swell idea! President Trump can just nuke em! You know? Make America Great Again!

              Enough of that! Time to face reality! You are skating on really thin ice, buddy! It’s gonna be an interesting next few years! Gotta break out the pop corn and take my seat in front of the old tell-u-vision. I’m pretty sure some shit is gonna hit the fan fairly soon! Bring it on Donald!

              P.S. By the way ArkTech, your side won! You guys can lay off the campaigning now. What’s the new mission? World domination? Good luck with that!

            5. Hi Island Boy,

              You’re one of my favorite contributors here.

              But isn’t it clear yet that somehow genuine dialog has got to start taking place between the so called Right and Left?

              We’ve got to somehow get the discussion between people to be about policy and objective, not partisan politics, and unless we all can learn to have empathy and respect for each other, even if we can’t respect the other person’s position, then nothing constructive is going to happen.

              There is a reason that Trump won. No one’s opinion is going to change by being shouted at, dismissed, disrespected, and hit over the head with ‘facts’.

              Even if a person is a troll, (I don’t think ArkTech is), that shouldn’t matter. Speak to the audience, not the troll.

              A lot of sincere people are mis-informed simply because the information sources of their tribe are designed for that specific purpose. This happens on both the left and the right. I don’t think Slate or Salon is any more objective than Breitbart or Limbaugh.

              Science and engineering are fact based pursuits. If someone is ignorant or mis-informed, troll or no, the best response in my opinion is for those who know better to simply link to the most objective and credible source of knowledge about that subject.

              This will have zero effect on a troll, but sincere lurkers may find their way to accurate sources of information that they just may not have to ability to find otherwise.

              A thoroughly propagandized mind is nearly impossible to change, but I think it’s important that we always try very hard to ensure that propagandized mind is not our own.

              We all could use a clearer path to the best possible sources of objective information. I sure could.

            6. Hi ArkTech,

              I’m serious when I say that I hope Trump works out for you and can deliver a life of more opportunity for you, and all of us. I hope he can improve economic activity.

              I hope dearly that the quality of our air, and water, and the integrity of the world’s natural ecology upon which we are all utterly dependent for our survival and well being are not further compromised by the policies of his administration.

              I’ll be honest. When I read your comments there is much in them that I believe to be just factually wrong, and I question the objectivity of your sources of information. A person’s judgement is only as good as their information.

              How do you go about determining whether your sources of information are credible, and that the information being presented to you is factually correct?

              I believe that you’re likely an intelligent person, and that no matter what it is that you do for a profession, that you’re completely competent at it, and that you have the respect of your peers.

              But you simply do not understand the meaning of the word theory as used by scientists. After all, gravity is just a theory. This lack of understanding lets everyone know that you don’t have an understanding of the terms of science, so it’s likely that you don’t know how science works.

              So why should anyone respect your opinion about the legitimacy of the findings of science?

              Do you know what is meant by the terms forcing and feedback? Do you know the meaning of the term albedo? How about proxy? Off the top of your head, do you know what the pre-industrial concentration of atmospheric C02 was and what it is it now? What percentage of increase is that? What is the current rate of increase?

              I can answer all of the above very, very, basic questions, but I am simply not competent enough to assess the work of climate scientists, or for that matter, any scientist. I simply don’t have the training. Science is hard.

              I do understand how science works though, and although scientists are human and thus subject to all of the flaws that humans have, the system works, and it is self correcting.

              A very proven way to advance your career as a scientist is to publish a paper that clearly demonstrates that everyone else is wrong.

              Show some respect. Scientists work hard and try and help push human knowledge forward. The objective is to find out how the world really is, not how we wish it was.

            7. I would be interested in some of the science courses that Arktech has taken.

              How many university semesters of physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, or engineering?

              Social science really doesn’t give someone the background needed to understand climate science.

              Even if one does not understand (or want to understand) climate science, fossil fuels are a finite resource which will become more expensive as they deplete. A basic understanding of the social science economics suggests that this will be true, though harder sciences such as geology or geophysics would give a better understanding. It is not clear psychology would be a lot of help in understanding either peak fossil fuels or climate science, though it might help people in coping with these predicaments.

            8. Psst! Islandboy, did you know that the GPS on my smartphone works because of the THEORY of Relativity?!
              Sincerely,
              Attila The Hun, aka Mr. Hungarian
              Destroyer of the Roman Empire

            9. “So let me ask you this…is your cell phone, computer, stereo, automobile, wristwatch, etc. based simply on theory? No, their not, their based completely on science that’s 100% PROVEN to work EVERY time. ”

              The Law of Cellphones and the Law of Wristwatches will guide us forward.
              Sadly my cellphone does not work much of the time, it must be the obamanators at work perverting the laws of the universe. Or maybe they belong to a union and can only work so many hours before time off.
              That democratic stuff has to go, let’s go back to the good ole days when company owners could do as they damn well pleased.

            10. ArkBark says – “I do have a minor in psychology”

              Then why can’t you realize when your being conned ?

              “ruin your job & life to get all of what they want”

              Tell us your story ArkBark

            11. Global Climate- by Hickory
              1. It will change, and has always changed.
              2. It is not unusual for it to change very fast, in spurts. Big change. Look at the paleoclimate charts.
              3. Feedback loops (positive and negative) make future prediction impossible, since we don’t have much understanding of them. Physics or Chemistry.
              4. You never know when massive volcanic activity will raise its big head.
              5. Attempts at Geo-engineering, both the scale and the effects, are impossible to predict. Coal burning, deforestation for agriculture and urbanization, and other fossil fuel burning- is just one huge rapid Geo-engineering experiment on a scale certainly large enough to change the climate. Closing in on 7.5 B burners.
              6. Gyration. Expect increase in climate gyrations. The last 10,000 yrs (coincident with ‘civilization’ and Agriculture and the human population explosion) has been an unusually stable and mild period, in the big scheme of things.
              7. We have far over extended ourselves, as if we expect a stable climate that changes only slowly so that we can gradually adapt. Can we calmly downsize our population to 5 Billion when we find that the climate of the big grain regions has shifted for the worse?
              We are partying on as if there is no sunset on this long and pleasant afternoon.

      3. A note from Coach Lloyd:

        This is great work, guys! You found a troll, and you called him out by name!

        But you engaged him!

        Furthermore, you let him change Boomer II’s topic!

        Boomer II was discussing Hill’s Criteria, and you let Shroeder get back to climate denial!

        So A+ for effort, but you let him sneak past the goal line.

        In future, try to figure out what the troll wants– in this case, to get off the topic of Hill’s Criteria and back onto highly technical argument about minutia- and deny it to him.

        Broadly speaking, talking about anything other than climate denial blunts their effectiveness. So talk about how he is trolling, or why he disregards Hill’s Criteria, or absolutely anything but climate.

        -Lloyd

  26. Trump Team Requests List Of Government Employees Who Worked On Climate Change

    This has all the makings of “an illegal modern-day political witch hunt.”

    Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and chair of the Senate Climate Clearinghouse, sent a letter to President-elect Trump on Friday cautioning that retaliatory action taken against staffers on the list would be illegal.

    “Any politically motivated inquisition against federal civil servants who, under the direction of a previous administration, carried out policies that you now oppose, would call into question your commitment to the rule of law and the peaceful transition of power,” Markey wrote.

    http://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2016-12-09-Markey-PresidentTrump-DOE.pdf

  27. On December 11, 2008, Bernie Madoff was arrested.

    “it’s all just one big lie” – Bernie Madoff

    It was a fake hedge fund. However, the news of it wasn’t fake at all. It was only 50,000,000,000 dollars, so not much harm was done.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-madoff-arrest-idUSTRE4BA7IK20081212

    Dan Horwitz, Madoff’s lawyer, told reporters outside a downtown Manhattan courtroom where he was charged, “Bernard Madoff is a longstanding leader in the financial services industry. We will fight to get through this unfortunate set of events.”

    If the news is good, it is probably fake news. If the news is bad, it is real news.

    I’ll stick with the fake news and not believe the real news, it is too depressing.

    Charles Ponzi made out like a bandit until he didn’t.

    In 1919, Charles Ponzi devised a scheme of trading international pre-paid postal reply coupons. Postage for such coupons had been set at a fixed exchange rate in 1906. World War I devastation had devalued many currencies. Ponzi converted dollars into devalued currencies, then bought postage coupons at this 1906 fixed rate. If the value of a foreign currency had dropped by 60%, then Ponzi could buy American stamps at a 60% discount and subsequently sell them somewhere else at face value.

    http://www.celebrateboston.com/crime/ponzi-scheme.htm

    P.T. Barnum at least had a real circus, not fake at all.

    And he did not say ‘there’s a sucker born every minute’. David Hannum said it.

    The fake news always is fake.

    The Cardiff Giant was the most talked about exhibit in the nation. Barnum wanted the giant to display himself while the attraction was still a hot topic of the day. Rather than upping his offer, Barnum hired a crew of workers to carve a giant of his own. Within a short time, Barnum unveiled HIS giant and proclaimed that Hannum had sold Barnum the original giant and that Hannum was now displaying a fake! Thousands of people flocked to see Barnum’s giant. Many newspapers carried the version that Barnum had given them; that is, Hannum’s giant was a fake and Barnum’s was authentic. It is at this point that Hannum — NOT BARNUM — was quoted as saying “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Hannum, still under the impression that HIS giant was authentic, was referring to the thousands of “fools” that paid money to see Barnum’s fake and not his authentic one.

    http://www.historyreference.org/library/refbarnum.html!

    Hilarious!

    Now you know the rest of the story, the real story, not the fake story that everyone believes.

    You just can’t make this stuff up. har

    1. OK, slightly better attempt at humor. The coal stuff is just getting *boring*.

      1. Here’s a link to The Ghost Story by Twain, which centers on the Cardiff Giant.

        https://archive.org/stream/ghost_stories_002_librivox/twain_ghost_story_djvu.txt

        In it is this passage, which has little to do with ghosts, except the kind that live in our hearts as we grow older.

        I can’t remember ever reading a single paragraph that so eloquently captures the emotional reality of growing old.

        xxxx

        “I was glad enough when I reached my room and locked out the mould and darkness. A cheery
        fire was burning in the grate, and I sat down before it with a comforting sense of relief. For two
        hours I sat there, thinking of bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning half-forgotten
        faces out of the mists of the past; listening, in fancy, to voices that long ago grew silent for all
        time, and to once familiar songs that nobody sings now. And as my reverie softened down to a
        sadder and sadder pathos, the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a wail, the angry beating
        of the rain against the panes diminished to a tranquil patter, and one by one the noises in the
        street subsided, until the hurrying footsteps of the last belated straggler died away in the distance
        and left no sound behind. ”

        Those of us who are fortunate indeed have the fire, and the memories, to comfort us as the wind shreiks and the rain beats upon the roof and we contemplate our aches and pains and what might have beens and dreams that will never be.

        Fire is probably the ultimate security blanket,the blanket that has protected us from the elements and predators for the last million years. That’s long enough for it to hold a prominent place in the hardwiring of our brains. Fire and shelter preserve and enhance our fading strength, giving us time to accept the inevitable, enabling us to accept our own fading away, mentally and physically, just as the wind and the rain fades away, and the ultimate peace of death approaches.

  28. For anybody who enjoys the contemplation of human nature, here’s more about petrified giants.

    http://archive.archaeology.org/0511/etc/giants.html

    Presumably the original Cardiff Giant is still in a museum someplace. If the owners ever take him on the road again, I will gladly pay five bucks to see him face to face, so long as I don’t have to go very far out of my way, or stand in too long a line.

    I can’t help but admire any fellow who fooled so many people, even if he is made out of plaster of Paris or some easily carved stone. 😉

  29. Pure Speculation.

    General Mattis (Secretary of Defense) publishes an infamous document predicting Peak Oil (google Joe 2010 peak oil .pdf).

    Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State) Exxon Mobile CEO decides to cash in his 150 million stock tax free.

    That would be good pair if the Donald plans to take the oil in the middle east.

    I wonder if the Donald just learned about peak oil in a security briefing.

  30. If I am getting paid for all of the shilling for coal and how it provides usable energy, somebody owes me a a lot of money. Wish it were true. Don’t have time to try and make a buck by flooding web sites with shill baloney.

    I just tell it like it is. If I needed money so bad, I would find a better way. The root of all evil is the lack of money said George Bernard Shaw.

    I could beg for money and have a foundation. There are better ways to make your way through this world, money is filthy, nasty stuff, dirty, to the core.

    If anything needs to go in this world, money will be before energy of all kinds, no matter how dirty, filthy, nasty and raunchy those fossil fuels are, money is worse. Sullies the soul and corrupts the mind.

    Steve Earle sings and plays ‘Mercenary Song’:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHE1dM4hYCw

      1. Money is merely a means of exchange, nothing else. If you want a quarter of beef, you pay money for the beef, you don’t take 100 bushel of wheat or ten barrels of oil in exchange, you use money.

        A troy ounce of gold should buy about 300 lbs of wrapped and frozen steaks, roasts, ground beef, and some short ribs. I’ll take the beef, not the gold. The gold is merely the means to exchange something of value, the goods, its fungibility is what gives it its worth.

        Nowadays, money is a means of control too.

        If a satellite is to be functional, you use gold as grease so the satellite can articulate on its axis. The gold is worth its weight in gold and more.

        It is its, not it’s, the genitive, possessive.

        Don’t be writing it’s as the possessive, it is its.

        1. “Money is merely a means of exchange, nothing else”

          Correct and shows the “character of it’s owner”.

          “Nowadays, money is a means of control too”

          There is no need to insert the word “Nowadays”. It only shows you have recently come to the conclusion “money is a means of control” or power.

    1. Insurrection – the board game? Bloc by Bloc brings uprising to your living room

      “The most popular games ‘really reinforce the worst elements of capitalism in our society: warfare, where you re-enact famous battles; colonization, where you conquer and dominate new territories; and industrial expansion, where you exploit for profit’, says Simons, while clutching dice. ‘When a riot escalates into a popular insurrection and begins to break down all types of social barriers – that’s what this game is about.’ “

  32. The Copenhagen Diagnosis:

    “Few studies with AR4-type climate models have been
    undertaken. One systematic study used the Community Climate
    System Model, version 3 (CCSM3) with explicit treatment of
    frozen soil processes. The simulated reduction in permafrost
    reached 40% by ~2030 irrespective of emission scenario (a
    reduction from ~10 million km2 to 6 million km2). By 2050, this
    reduces to 4 million km2 (under B1 emissions) and 3.5 million
    km2 (under A2 emissions). Permafrost declines to ~1 million km2
    by 2100 under A2. In each case, the simulations did not include
    additional feedbacks triggered by the collapse of permafrost
    including out-gassing of methane, a northward expansion of
    shrubs and forests and the activation of the soil carbon pool.
    These would each further amplify warming.”

    “The largest unknown in the projections of sea level rise over the
    next century is the potential for rapid dynamic collapse of ice
    sheets. The most significant factor in accelerated ice discharge
    in both Greenland and Antarctica over the last decade has been
    the un-grounding of glacier fronts from their bed, mostly due
    to submarine ice melting.”

    “The September Arctic sea ice extent over the last several decades
    has decreased at a rate of 11.1 ± 3.3%/decade (NSIDC 2009).
    This dramatic retreat has been much faster than that simulated
    by any of the climate models assessed in the IPCC AR4 (Figure
    13). This is likely due to a combination of several model
    deficiencies, including: 1) incomplete representation of ice albedo
    physics, including the treatment of melt ponds (e.g., Pedersen
    et al. 2009) and the deposition of black carbon (e.g. Flanner et
    al. 2007; Ramanathan and Carmichael 2008); and 2) incomplete
    representation of the physics of vertical and horizontal mixing in
    the ocean (e.g. Arzel et al. 2006).”

    http://oceanrep.geomar.de/11839/2/Copenhagen_Diagnosis_LOW.pdf

    1. “This is likely due to a combination of several model deficiencies…..” No, no, no: it cannot be. Tell me you’re joking Fish. Please………. OMG model deficiencies? Impossible!

      1. How dare they write such trash. Heretics. all of them!!! To the stake with them!

        1. Heretics. all of them!!! To the stake with them!

          Hmm, I’m sure we could come up with something better than that!
          Sincerely,
          Attila The Hun, aka Mr Hungarian
          Destroyer of The Roman Empire!

      2. OMG model deficiencies? Impossible!

        It’s obvious isn’t it?!

        The models are right and the observations are wrong…

        Sincerely,
        Attila The Hun, aka Mr Hungarian
        Destroyer of The Roman Empire!

        1. That’s the way Fred, keep up the brave face. Don’t let them tell you the models are wrong, especially those 8.5 or 6.0 models. They are all right and let people prove otherwise, little good it will do them.

    2. Meanwhile,

      METHANE SURGE NEEDS ‘URGENT ATTENTION’

      “After a period of relative stagnation in the 2000s, the concentration of the gas has surged. Researchers warn that efforts to tackle climate change will be undermined unless CH4 is also brought under tighter control. CO2 is still the dominant target for mitigation, for good reason. But we run the risk if we lose sight of methane of offsetting the gains we might make in bringing down levels of carbon dioxide. Quite why methane has suddenly spiked is not obvious. After barely moving between 2000 and 2006, the concentration in the atmosphere ticked upwards from 2007, and then jumped sharply in 2014 and 2015.”

      http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38285300

      1. Fish and chips, the Brit equivalent of burger and fries, may be on the way out, to be replaced by squid and chips.

        Squid have never been caught in English waters in significant numbers- until now. Squid like it warm.

        The cod are abandoning local waters,moving north, where it’s cooler.

        http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38265395

        1. Well, the long-term “good news” for the Brits who prefer cold-water cod is that global warming may cause a surge of melted fresh-water from Greenland to mess with and ultimately end up shutting down the Gulf Stream that has warmed the Isles and made them semi-habitable the past few thousand years. They may get to go back to weather truly typical for their latitude.

      2. Doug, what attempt to bring CO2 under tighter control?

        Memewhile back at the planet:
        “A number sensors are planned that will specifically target carbon molecules.
        “I’m optimistic that the scientific community and the policymakers will be able to have better information. I’m optimistic because there are new satellites coming along that will give us the power to see methane concentrations all over the world on a regular basis,” explained Prof Jackson.
        “Methane is more difficult to study than CO2 because it’s more diffuse, but I think we’re poised to make really good progress over the next few years.” ”

        So in a decade we can wonder why both CO2 and methane are mostly being ignored, except areas where corporations and governments can make money from pushing reductions. You can bet your bottom dollar that someone will figure out how to profit from this.
        But not to worry as Mother Nature takes care of it for us. She doesn’t need money to do what needs to be done. Different timescale and results may vary.

          1. That’s a real gas RW. I don’t think I would drink from that spring though, it’s full of earth farts.

    3. Hi Gone fishing,

      The models aren’t perfect, but the AR5 models include a lot more of the physical processes than AR4. The GISS Models do pretty well for Northern Hemisphere sea ice, but underestimate Southern Hemisphere sea ice.

      See “CMIP5 historical simulations (1850–2012) with GISS ModelE2” p 467 fig 16

      http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/mi08910y.html

      Figure 16. Model sea-ice area compared to passive microwave retrievals from the National Snow & Ice Data Center for the (a) Northern Hemisphere and (b) Southern Hemisphere. Plotted area is an annual average and hemispheric sum expressed as a percentage of the total hemispheric area.

      Paper linked below describes the model which covers snow and ice albedo (though perhaps not perfectly), it does not model permafrost, that is an area that needs more work, as does ice sheet modelling.

      A recent paper by Hansen (2016) discusses nonlinear ice sheet melting and its effects.
      http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/3761/2016/

      2. The first ensemble of models is not worth looking at, immediately saw large problems with them.
        The E2 looks more advanced, I will spend some time studying that one.

        1. Hi Gone fishing,

          Are you referring to MAGICC 6 ? You seemed to misunderstand the difference between a forcing and a feedback when looking at MAGICC 6, in any case it is based on the older CMIP3 models which are not as good as the CMIP5 models.

          I do not have the ability to utilize the newer CMIP5 models very well.

          Although the MAGICC 6 emulator is far from perfect if you read the following paper it discusses some of the details of that model, see especially Appendix A.
          The emulator, though very simple compared to Earth System Models is still fairly sophisticated and does a pretty good job emulating the CMIP3 AOGCMs (19 of them) and carbon cycle models (10 of them) used in AR4.

          http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/1417/2011/acp-11-1417-2011.html

    4. That paper is from 7 years ago (2009).

      Try link below from 3 years ago (2013) especially Chapter 9 figure 9.24 page 789, if you are interested in Arctic Sea Ice. Part of figure reproduced below.

      After 2005 the CMIP5 model simulations are extended using RCP4.5, which underestimates emissions from 2006 to 2012, the CMIP5 models are an improvement over CMIP3 (the models reviewed in the 2009 Copenhagen Diagnosis).

      http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/

      I agree that the models still need more work, but they are better than the older CMIP3 models from AR4 (2007).

      Section 9.4.4 (pp. 790-794) covering the land carbon cycle and permafrost is also of interest.

      That section concludes (ESM= Earth System Model, which is an AOGCM which includes the carbon cycle and EMIC is an Earth Model of intermediate complexity):

      In summary, there is high confidence that CMIP5 ESMs can simulate the global mean land and ocean carbon sinks within the range of observation-based estimates. Overall, EMICs reproduce the recent global ocean CO2 fluxes uptake as well as ESMs, but estimate a lower land carbon sink compared with most ESMs while remaining consistent with the observations (Eby et al., 2013). With few exceptions, the CMIP5 ESMs also reproduce the large-scale pattern of ocean–atmosphere CO2 fluxes, with uptake in the Southern Ocean and northern mid-latitudes, and outgassing in the tropics. However, the geographical pattern of simulated land-atmosphere fluxes agrees much less well with inversion estimates, which suggest a larger sink in the northern mid-latitudes, and a net source rather than a sink in the tropics. While there are also inherent uncertainties in atmospheric inversions, discrepancies like this might be expected from known deficiencies in the CMIP5 generation of ESMs—namely the failure to correctly simulate nitrogen fertilization in the mid-latitudes, and a rudimentary treatment of the net CO2 emissions arising from land use change and forest regrowth.

      1. “That paper is from 7 years ago (2009).”
        So? It’s a very thorough example of how models need to be critically examined. From what I see of the newer models they are very lacking in following and predicting several major factors.

        1. Hi Gone fishing,

          The point is simple, focus on the most recent models as the improvements you are looking for may have been done already. As is somewhat the case for sea ice extent, in fact the models underestimate sea ice extent from 1950 to 1980, so more work need to be done, but looking at the CMIP3 models and saying that the CMIP5 models over estimate sea ice extent would be incorrect. That’s all.

          Yes the models are not perfect, and they should be critically examined, we could spend a lot of time poring over FAR, SAR, TAR, and AR4.

          I prefer to look at the latest science. 🙂

          As soon as a version of MAGICC that emulates the CMIP5 models is available, I will use that rather than the CMIP3 based MAGICC 6.

  33. I have read many times in the popular press that when the sun evolves into a red giant, that will be the end of the Earth.

    But apparently this is more speculation than actual science, and the Earth might actually survive , and still be orbiting the sun ( what’s left of it) when the sun further evolves into a dwarf.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161208090444.htm

    If the planet does survive, it’s damned unlikely it will harbor any sort of life, given that it will be hotter than the hinges of hell.

      1. I hate to say it but the models kind of break down after about 10^100 years, following proton decay, and when the temperature of our Universe reaches a final temperature just slightly above absolute zero. Of course there’s no experimental evidence proton decay occurs so maybe we’ll be OK – in the end. And, as you say, with other universes out there………

        1. Meanwhile back in this universe at a blue and white planet we live upon.
          It’s what you don’t know that gets you.

          East Antarctica ice shelves looking more like Swiss cheese according to new findings. Under ice melt lakes and moulins could cause future instability, thus freeing inland glaciers to enter the ocean.
          https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/12/this-dazzling-antarctic-lake-is-buried-in-floating-ice-and-that-has-scientists-worried/?utm_term=.3f2be6ed0981

  34. Slip sliding away. Antarctic glaciers on the move and being undermined.

    “”Of all these glaciers that are retreating, Pine Island has accelerated the most and is currently the furthest out of balance, but ultimately it is Thwaites in the long term, in the hundred-year timescale, that is seen as being the big concern. Because of its geometry, because the middle of its central basin just gets deeper and deeper – once you kick off its retreat, there maybe nothing to stop it.” ”

    http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38256932

    1. It’s not only reindeer,

      EINSTEIN’S THEORY ‘IMPROVED’?

      “A Chinese astronomer from the University of St Andrews has fine-tuned Einstein’s groundbreaking theory of gravity, creating a ‘simple’ theory which could solve a dark mystery that has baffled astrophysicists for three-quarters of a century.”

      “There has always been a fair chance that astronomers might rewrite the law of gravity. We have created a new formula for gravity which we call ‘the simple formula’, and which is actually a refinement of Milgrom’s and Bekenstein’s. It is consistent with galaxy data so far, and if its predictions are further verified for solar system and cosmology, it could solve the Dark Matter mystery. We may be able to answer common questions such as whether Einstein’s theory of gravity is right and whether the so-called Dark Matter actually exists.

      “It is possible that neither the modified gravity theory, nor the Dark Matter theory, as they are formulated today, will solve all the problems of galactic dynamics or cosmology. The truth could in principle lie in between, but it is very plausible that we are missing something fundamental about gravity, and that a radically new theoretical approach will be needed to solve all these problems. Nevertheless, our formula is so attractively simple that it is tempting to see it as part of a yet unknown fundamental theory. All galaxy data seem to be explained effortlessly”.

      https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/02/060214080204.htm

    2. Santa was way ahead of those scientists since he already has eight tiny reindeer and a miniature sleigh.

      1. “All of which could spell disaster for this iconic Christmas species, Albon warns: “The implications are that there may well be more smaller reindeer in the Arctic in the coming decades but possibly at risk of catastrophic die-offs because of increased ice on the ground.””
        I have tried to bring up the point that we live on a water planet and the phase changes are important. The difference between snow and ice can be as deadly as the difference between water and no water.

          1. Guys, he is magical. No need for techno fixes, it’s not the rich guy next door in a costume pretending t be Santa and needing pontoons and reindeer with water wings.
            Although Red Green should have done that one.

  36. Anti-troll practice with Coach Lloyd

    Hey, team…. some good work in this post. However, we let an opportunity to hatchet a big troll (Shroeder) go by. (ArkBark, unless he is a highly sophisticated type of plant, was dealt with more or less correctly (if a little effusively.) )

    The reason is that we treated Shroeder like an equal. You approached his argument as something to be dismissed, and missed the larger point: the TROLL HIMSELF is the thing to be dismissed.

    They do not care about the science.

    They are trying to TELL THEIR STORY. They are trying to shape the narrative.

    The fact that we engage them strengthens their position. It allows them to cast doubt, which is all they want or need.

    DON’T DO THAT!

    Instead, release your inner English Major.

    Do not engage if you can win by pointing out a rhetorical flaw:

    “Your response is off topic.”

    “That wasn’t what we were talking about.”

    “Your response is political, when our discussion is fact based.”

    “We were discussing {whatever} not {their topic}. Do you have an opinion on {whatever}?”

    “We answered that last month. (ref.) You are badly out of date.”

    Remember:
    DO NOT allow them to CHANGE THE TOPIC or RE-FRAME THE ARGUMENT.
    Make them look stupid.
    Be Brief.
    Be funny and charming whenever possible.
    Make it obvious they are not part of the community.

    Hermes from Futurama said it best:
    “That’s Technically correct, which is the BEST KIND of correct!”

    Here’s OUR narrative:

    We’ve got Trolls because we are INTELLECTUAL BADASSES.

    What we say here MATTERS.

    We don’t engage with drive-by trollers trying to change the narrative.

    This is the place to get your ass kicked rhetorically if you are off topic, political, or stupid.

    NOW GO GET ‘EM!

    -Lloyd

    1. Hey Coach Lloyd,

      I’ve been wondering if the troll infestation is my fault. About a week or two ago, I posted 3 or 4 articles from the HuffingtonPost in a row. Nancy was first to show up and respond to one of them. It seemed to have an affect like dropping jam on the kitchen floor and waking up to ant infestation the next day.

      Sorry

      On the other hand, it sure makes for a lot of activity around here.

      1. I’ve been wondering if the troll infestation is my fault.

        Nah.

        They look for any opening, probably on a timetable. If it wasn’t your articles, it would have been something else. The Nancy identity has been here for a while.

        Remember: we have Trolls because we are effective.

        There’s no shame in having Trolls: not getting them under control, however, is slovenly (just like with ants.)

        -Lloyd

      2. On the other hand, it sure makes for a lot of activity around here.

        Sun Tzu said:

        “The #1 cause of Military PTSD is battle.”

        Better to avoid combat when one can.

        -Lloyd

  37. That’s why I tend to stick to the posts most related to gas and oil and coal prices. Those subjects are less likely to trigger the troll appearances.

    I believe in climate change science, but I think the economics of energy provides is a good way to make progress on changing the energy mix in the world. Countries will want to break the power of the fossil fuel countries if they can. Energy supplies that don’t have to be imported are a way to do that.

    There is more freedom for individuals by becoming less dependent on utilities and the industries that supply them, so having their own solar is good for that.

    There are groups of people on both the left and the right that want to become more self-sufficient. That means finding ways to generate energy that doesn’t require buying fuel from others.

    Whale oil got replaced. Coal is being replaced. Gas and oil will be replaced in time. Nuclear has the no-carbon appeal, but the projects are so expensive and there are other issues (safety, terrorism opportunities).

    Most people here also believe there is a finite limit to future prosperity. Mostly we just debate when it will happen. I think there will be noticeable economic consequences during the Trump administration because the proposed economic activities won’t result in boom times for most of the US. Others predict fatal economic crunches when gas and oil prices hit new highs.

    At any rate, I feel there’s enough to ponder with the economics of it all rather than even needing to wade into the climate change discussions. It spares me from reading the trolls.

  38. One problem with dealing with nuclear waste is that it’s often hard to tell what’s waste and what’s a valuable resource. Case in point is the work of physicists and chemists at the University of Bristol, who have found a way to convert thousands of tons of seemingly worthless nuclear waste into man-made diamond batteries that can generate a small electric current for longer than the entire history of human civilization.

    https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/scientists-turn-nuclear-waste-into-diamond-batteries-for-low-power-applicat

    Back to carbon in its purest form to provide usable energy and also solves a big problem.

    Carbon just keeps on keeping on. har

    1. I don’t know how overall energy productive it will be, but there is some poetry to using radioactive diamonds to energize part of our civilization.

  39. I think that people don’t put global warming into perspective if they can’t visualize the change to their own surrounding. A 3C rise in temperature is similar to moving over 500 miles south. It’s also similar to lowering a mountain by 1600 feet. Places like Cranesville swamp, the southernmost boreal bog are in deep trouble.
    Places like New Jersey and Pennsylvania will be in a climate zone similar to South Carolina. No or little snow in winter, maybe some at the higher altitudes. Ski slopes, forget it unless high in the mountains. Hot summers, apples may not grow well. Summer days with 16 hour days might get very hot, winter will still get cold but on average will be much shorter with more ice forming and more rain in winter, nasty. The growing season will extend, but so will the variability of weather so it won’t be dependable. Many places that had white Christmas will not see one again or if they do only once in a long while.
    The forests will have dramatic changes as well as the hydrological cycle (code word for drought, fire, flood and chaotic weather). At 3C the Amazon rain forest will turn into savannah.

    But I saw first ice yesterday on my lake, just around the edges on the downwind side. Other smaller ponds in the area froze over. Colder weather due for a few days, then warmer above freezing temps the next week. Light snow then sleet and rain last night. Eagles flying this morning looking for fish and ducks.
    The eagles won’t mind too much if the fish stay alive through the hot summer days. More open water for them.

    1. Here in Albuquerque we do way worse than 3C most years. Checking out the climate data on the Albuquerque wiki, at ABQ airport SE of downtown the hottest month of the year is usually July at 90.1F or 32.3C and our coldest month is usually December at 46.1F or 7.8C. Therefore, each and every year we experience a climate change of around 44F or 24.5C. As far as what I see with my own eyes, the plants and animals that are supposed to live in this region do just fine. The people do just fine also, except some grumble whenever we get a snowstorm. Those people obviously would welcome a slightly bigger climate change each year if it meant no snow or ice. Plants and animals have very high adaptability, so I don’t see average folks worrying much about them.

      1. So in Albuquerque you call the difference between the highest temperature (July) and the lowest temperature (December) climate change? That’s interesting.

            1. Much much more importantly:

              Albuquerque boasts a unique nighttime cityscape. Many building exteriors are illuminated in vibrant colors such as green and blue. The Wells Fargo Building is illuminated green. The DoubleTree Hotel and the Compass Bank building are illuminated blue. The rotunda of the county courthouse is illuminated yellow, while the tops of the Bank of Albuquerque and the Bank of the West are illuminated reddish-yellow. Due to the nature of the soil in the Rio Grande Valley, the skyline is lower than might be expected in a city of comparable size elsewhere.

              Seriously?! who the hell writes this shit?!

              Though, I’m sure the ultra adaptable plants and animals couldn’t do any finer than that… As for the people? They’re just fucked!

              http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/investing/wells-fargo-created-phony-accounts-bank-fees/

              Do you understand all that too, Doug?

            2. Or try this!

              Hey, if anyone here thought our anti science trolls were bad… then read this load of shit!

              http://www.investors.com/politics/columnists/the-theory-of-gravity-is-wrong-what-does-it-mean-for-the-climate-consensus-2/

              The Theory Of Gravity Is Wrong? What Does It Mean For The ‘Climate Consensus’?

              New research suggests our understanding of gravity is wrong. If the science of gravity isn’t settled, why should we assume the science of “climate change” is? (NASA)

              BTW, for the record there is NO FUCKING WAY that any scientist at NASA would would say anything that that stupid! Not even the janitor!

              KERRY JACKSON12/12/2016
              FacebookTwitterLinkedInPrintShare Reprints
              Environmentalists enjoy gloating about the 97% of scientists who say man is causing his planet to warm. It’s their way of saying: The science is settled, the consensus is in and no further debate is allowed — now let us run the world so we can satisfy our authoritarian urges.

              We don’t know for a fact, though we believe we’d be safe in saying, that 100% of scientists have long believed in the prevailing explanation of why we stick to the ground and don’t go floating off into the ether. But apparently that’s changing. Erik Verlinde, a University of Amsterdam and the Delta Institute of Theoretical Physics string theory expert, has turned things, shall we say, upside down.

              “A new theory from the University of Amsterdam further strengthens the fact that nothing is constant in this world, even gravity. According to the researchers, gravity is not a fundamental force of nature because it had not really existed at first,” says the University Herald of Verlinde’s latest work on the subject.

              It doesn’t matter if we understand in detail what Verlinde is saying. What’s important is that we recognize that real science never sleeps, and what Al Gore and others are claiming today to be the immutable truth could actually be a fairy tale.

              Merchants of doubt?!

            3. All they need to do is travel to Pisa, visit the tower that kind of leans a little too far to the left, climb the stairs and jump from the top tier to discover for themselves if they’ll float or fall.

              Gravity will probably win the argument.

              Purdy much will settle the science of gravity.

            4. Fred, flight and rocketry are acts of defiance of gravity. Yet for all our accomplishments in the area of flight and the untold number of flights since that awe inspiring 1903 day, the human race is probably on average only a foot off the ground.
              Which of course makes no sense since if we were actually suspended in the air we could not walk and we would be at the whim of the wind. But some people really like averages and think they are highly meaningful, even real. 🙂

            5. “Do you understand all that too, Doug?”

              Well, we know Thor (and Chaos) controls weather. What is less appreciated is that he (they) also controls activities we humans mistakenly think are under our control – like climate.

          2. Hi D. Graham,

            The difference between summer and winter temperatures is weather. A change in summer or winter temperatures over time is a change in climate.

  40. We are fortunate that we have some rich ( really rich ) guys even in these dog eat dog days who realize they can’t take it with them, and are spending some of it to make things better for us peons, no sarcasm intended, but it’s ok to laugh. I for one KNOW I am hardly any better than a peon in the grand scheme of things, lol.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/bill-gates-jeff-bezos-jack-091818490.html

    Fast results are not to be expected, but the odds are pretty good that this project will eventually pay off big time. Scale matters, and these guys are apparently smart enough to know where and how to spend their money to get a good bang out of every million bucks. 😉

    1. Yes, thank goodness for the rich guys and gals. They have historically provided much of the growth of civilization, at least the ones that like to help people and leave a legacy.

    2. Yes, if we divided up all that wealth amongst the middle class, it would likely just get pissed away.

      Ted Turner and a few others used their money to buy up lots of land and put it out of reach of developers.

      I think the best environmental group is The Nature Conservancy because it, too, buys up land. The problem with laws and regulations is that they can be changed. It’s much harder to take over private property.

      And, again, I like to focus on the economics of energy because I hope we get to a point where the money people realize where the wealth is, and quit trying to prop up declining industries.

      I don’t think those Silicon Valley guys are necessarily any nicer than the wealthy of past generations, but the policies they support are more likely to be better for the environment and more likely to be social liberals.

      1. “Yes, if we divided up all that wealth amongst the middle class, it would likely just get pissed away”
        Yeah, if the wealth was more evenly divided across the population they might do things like insulate their houses, put solar PV on them, buy better cars, educate their children, feed their children properly, leave the ghettos, support their communities. It would be terrible to have the proletariat have some money. Let them eat cake.

        I grew up in a working class neighborhood, back when they got a decent wage. They did not piss their money away. They took care of their families, bought inexpensive cars, had modest lifestyles and saved money as they went. Now with wages so low that a family needs to have two workers just to make ends meet, they are blamed for overindulgences like TV or a phone.
        The rich piss their money away on huge mansions, yachts, gambling, multiple costly cars, big vacations, jewelry, artwork, drugs. We hear about the few that have so much money they have to find things to do with it. The rest are completely non-conservative and if they had to live like the paupers below them would starve within a few months.
        What they spend on one meal, a person could eat for a month.

        When it hits the fan, the rich better run and hide.

        Yes, the Nature Conservancy is generally a good organization but it too has it’s problems. The NRDC is much more active in changing and using the legal and political landscape to better the environment.
        The whole view environmental non-profits have changed though. They are now very pro integrating humans into the natural environments they try to save. I guess they have given up in a way and realized that people are over-running the planet.

        1. Doth protesting too much is too much!

          Stop puttin’ down the rich like that, they’re good people too you know. The Manhattan Market Mavens are the selected elite. The brain trust of the nation.

          Their mansions, compounds, are equipped with nuclear bomb proof bunkers, stocked to the gills.

          They need polo horses and polo grounds, yachts, millions of dollars, hundreds of millions, billions, they know the money is in the right hands. Theirs.

          Where it should be. Doesn’t make them bad people.

          The afflicted, useless eaters, are a necessary evil. They’re the bread and butter for the billionaires.

          The agony and the ecstasy, the yin and yang.

          Everything is under control.

          Besides, you’re just making stuff up, stereotyping, pigeon holing.

          “… dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” – Abraham Lincoln

          All men are not created equal.

            1. Stop protecting those that learned to pick the pockets of the nation and the world. I am sure there are a few kind and good ones out there, but let’s not get too carried away with how wonderful they are. They are using or giving away what they do not need, it’s excess. It’s good that they do that, but there is no skin in the game.
              You want to praise somebody, praise the poor family who helps someone or gives them a meal. Praise the local guy or gal on the rescue squad or fire department who volunteers their time at all times of day or night, under all kinds of conditions. Praise that ghetto mother who is trying her most to raise her kids and keep them out of gangs, drugs and prisons.
              People look up to the wrong people. They elevate the rich, the actors and actresses, the sports stars. How about the researchers that made that vaccine or the engineer that just made your life safer and better because of his or her work?
              How about that biologist that just told the world what they need to do to make the planet more survivable or warned of a big problem?

            2. Yeah it’s amazing how the wealthy support universities (to see a building with their name on it) but refuse to provide bursaries for deserving students. So, my praise goes to all those nameless guy and gal donors, such as the professors I knew, who supported an unbelievable number of students — anonymously.

        2. I think eliminating income inequality is a good goal for people, but it might not be the best for the environment. If everyone has enough money to live a middle class lifestyle, they might drive more, have bigger houses, buy more stuff, etc.

          It’s a problem. Yes, I would like everyone to convert to solar, but I’m not sure if you gave everyone the money to purchase solar and give them the option to buy whatever they want with that money that they would buy solar.

          I see the issue as one potential conflict between various progressive goals. To lower carbon, we need to have the world consume less. That means changing how many people spend their money. If one rich person buys up lots of land and allows no houses on it, that land isn’t going to generate as much CO2 as thousands of houses on that land.

          The government owns lots of land to preserve it and I hope that doesn’t change with the new administration.

          1. “If one rich person buys up lots of land and allows no houses on it, that land isn’t going to generate as much CO2 as thousands of houses on that land.”
            First of all that rich person is using and wasting energy like there is no tomorrow. Secondly, those thousands of homes will go up somewhere anyway.
            To achieve more solar PV, make the people a little richer and then use subsidies for solar PV and electric cars. Next make sure that all new houses are built highly efficient and give subsidies to zero energy homes. That is how it works. Keeping people too poor means they never will make the jump to better energy use, better housing, etc. Subsidize older home energy refits. They do not have the ability to take advantage of subsidies, so they are stuck in old style wasteful housing using old cars and are more worried about paying the rent or mortgage and having some food on the table than about the state of the world. They are kept powerless and then complained about.

            When many of the new jobs are $12 and hour, we are not going to see change other than downward.

            1. Unfortunately not enough of those poor people are voting for politicians who support income redistribution.

              So if they keep politicians in office whose goal is to maintain the status quo or even give more to the top 1%, we can at least hope that those who have amassed great wealth will use it to advance humanity.

              I would rather have the rich support renewable energy than to see no one, including government, doing it.

              I’m not defending the system. I’m saying we’re stuck with it as long as voters vote they way they do, so it might be easier to get the rich to support these renewable energy projects than to get a completely new government in DC.

              And at this point, I’d rather focus my energies on what can be done soon rather than what should be done in the upcoming political cycles.

              In terms of saving the earth, a bunch of rich liberals might accomplish more than millions of Trump voters.

          2. To be more specific, I’ll address this.

            “To achieve more solar PV, make the people a little richer and then use subsidies for solar PV and electric cars. Next make sure that all new houses are built highly efficient and give subsidies to zero energy homes. That is how it works. Keeping people too poor means they never will make the jump to better energy use, better housing, etc.”

            This doesn’t happen if voters don’t vote for politicians who will do this.

            If voters vote for a system that makes them poor, and in the process they consume less, then that’s at least a plus for the environment.

            And if rich people want to put their money towards clean tech, I am all for it.

            You are outlining a system that the voters themselves aren’t supporting, so I don’t think they have yet embraced the idea of having a smaller carbon footprint.

            It’s kind of getting back to the blue state/red state divide. If some states want a system that probably isn’t going to generate better wages and isn’t going to give them a better quality of life, then maybe we let them have it. And the blue states can do what they want.

  41. IEA: China’s new coal plants make ‘no economic sense’ | Carbon Brief: “The many new coal plants it is building are unnecessary, says the IEA’s medium term coal market report, published today, because Chinese coal demand has already peaked. These new plants are frequently cited by those trying to cast doubt on climate action.

    Global coal demand growth will slow to a crawl over the next five years, the report adds, as steep falls in rich nations are offset by a rise in India and southeast Asia. …

    The IEA has now definitively accepted that Chinese coal demand peaked in 2013, a prospect it deemed almost unthinkable as recently as last November.”

  42. More about that new clean tech fund that Gates is investing in.

    At least with wealthy billionaires putting their money toward this, we don’t have to deal with politicians. I suppose we could get the Kochs trying to kill private investment in this area, but if so, they can no longer claim to support libertarian principles.

    Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma, and other investors worth $170 billion are launching a clean-energy fund to fight climate change — Quartz: “Gates had last year announced his intention to personally invest an additional $1 billion in clean energy technology. He was also among the 28 wealthy individuals and families signed on to the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a group broadly committed to investing in this area. The new fund, which includes many of them, is a next, concrete step toward actually deploying their capital.”

  43. OIL CHANGE? FOSSIL FUEL ADVOCATE TO RUN STATE DEPARTMENT

    “Good news for environmental campaigners: President-elect Trump has finally nominated someone to his cabinet who actually believes in climate change science. The bad news for those same campaigners is that this true believer happens to be CEO of Exxon Mobil, and also sees fossil fuels as critical to humanity’s survival…”

    http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38303209

    1. is that this true believer happens to be CEO of Exxon Mobil, and also sees fossil fuels as critical to humanity’s survival…”

      He is 100% correct! Fossil fuels are critical to humanity’s survival! It is critical that they be left where they are, in the ground. We should have started phasing them out back when Exxon’s own scientists raised the alarm about the consequences of CO2 emissions and climate change!

      https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/

      SUSTAINABILITY
      Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago
      A new investigation shows the oil company understood the science before it became a public issue and spent millions to promote misinformation
      By Shannon Hall on October 26, 2015

      1. “Mr Tillerson may differ from the others on the causes of climate change, but he definitely subscribes to their view that an abundant supply of fossil fuels is critical to making America great again…

        At the AGM, he was clearly not in favour of mild shareholder resolutions asking corporations such as his to support the goal of keeping global temperature rises below the 2C.”

        http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38303209

        1. Down the rabbit hole we go, to visit the Mad Hatter and watch the Red Queen run.

        2. I am hoping economics keep a lid on fossil fuel production.

          If demand goes down, increasing production won’t help.

          I am also hoping that the rest of the world doesn’t want to be tied to the US, Russia, and the Middle East for their fuels.

          If China is able to bring down the cost of solar and lends countries the money to go that route, that may be a deal too good to pass up.

          1. Also, at this point, I wonder how many countries “trust” the US, especially not knowing Trump’s planned foreign policies. Could it be that China, which lends money and doesn’t target many areas with its military, might be seen as a better energy business partner than US companies?

            Partnering with the US might be useful if a country thinks it will also get protection from the US, but that no longer looks like part of the deal, maybe there is less incentive to keep buying US fossil fuels.

  44. GLOBAL METHANE EMISSIONS ARE RISING FASTER THAN ANY TIME IN THE LAST 20 YEARS

    “The Global Methane Budget, regularly updated by an international group of scientists charts the sources and sinks of global methane from our atmosphere. Its 2016 update shows that methane emissions are rising in line with one of the worst-case scenario greenhouse gas predictions.”

    http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_13-12-2016-12-48-5

    1. SNIPPET

      “In any case, whether the source is the Arctic or the tropics, Nisbet warns that there is a real danger that climate change is starting to accelerate the processes that release methane into the atmosphere, potentially triggering a troubling positive feedback in which further warming could produce more methane and yet more warming. He calls the warmer and wetter conditions of the past decade, and their apparent impact on methane production across the tropics: a troubling harbinger of more severe climate change.”

      1. “Methane levels over the Arctic Ocean have been high for more than a month… These high levels come at a time when there’s hardly any sunlight reaching the Arctic, which pretty much rules out the possibility that algae blooms or other biological sources… Instead, these high methane levels appear to be the result of eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, caused by warming water of the oceans…”

        http://arctic-news.blogspot.ca/

        1. Doug the price of beef needs to be halved. That way we can eat all those methane producing cows a lot faster.
          I am accepting free steaks delivered to my door to help the process.

          Erupting ocean seafloor? Really? You mean those YouTube videos are real? Naaaww, no way.

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