Open Thread Non-Petroleum, December 22, 2019

Ovi Uncategorized

Comments not related to oil or natural gas production production in this thread please. Thank you

281 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, December 22, 2019”

  1. Toyota future models 2020-2030
    https://www.just-auto.com/analysis/toyota-future-models-2020-2030_id192219.aspx
    “TMC told the media in July that it had “signed an agreement for the joint development of battery electric vehicles (BEVs)” with BYD Company Ltd. The firms will “jointly develop sedans and low-floor SUVs as well as the onboard batteries for these vehicles and others with the aim to launch them in the Chinese market under the Toyota brand in the first half of the 2020s”. Further details of the specifics of the future BYD-Toyota vehicles are awaited.”

    1. I wish them luck.
      They were early to the game with the prius,
      and are late to game with newer models.
      Hopefully they will come up with something much more robust than the prius as their base model.
      Time is now.

  2. I was recently reading a guide called “How To Tell A Survivalist From A Prepper”. Made me think of this web site.

    — A survivalist has fences designed to keep people out, a prepper has fences predominantly to keep livestock in.

    — A survivalist has a 100 meter firing range in the pasture, a prepper has 100 free range chickens in the pasture.

    — A survivalist will have a few dusty bullet molds on top of the ammo supply, a prepper will have a few dusty cheese molds on top of the grain supply.

    — Survivalists have a couple of German shepards and their daughter’s great dane, preppers have a couple of great pyrenees and their daughter’s Chihuahua.

    1. Yes, brilliant; very reductive, very mutuality exclusive; very identity politics, very PR.

      https://www.theprepperjournal.com/2013/05/30/what-is-the-difference-between-a-survivalist-and-a-prepper/

      In actuality, survivalism is also known as prepping. It’s the same thing. Survivalists are preppers, preppers are survivalists. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synonym).

      Survivalists and Preppers Study
      https://censamm.org/resources/profiles/survivalists-and-preppers
      “Survivalism is the practice of preparing for the imminent apocalyptic destruction of society. Survivalists are also known as ‘preppers’ because of this focus on preparation for catastrophe.”

      Although, it’s worth noting that the American cultural milieu has produced a couple of consumer brands/cultural archetypes; one very “back to the land and homestead”, and the other very Rambo, with not a lot of middle ground.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetype

      -fence for people out vs fence for livestock in
      -shooting ranges vs chickens and pasture
      -bullets and ammo vs cheese and grain
      -German Shepard and daughter has a big dog vs Pyrenees and daughter has a little dog
      -trashy vs classy
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_opposition

      Your talents are wasted here, you should be teaching Social and Cultural Anthropology at Harvard.

      1. Survivalists and preppers are the same thing. Both live on the fantasy that they can be better off without society.

        It’s the fantasy of a slave. If you truly have the slave mentality, you can’t imagine any social interaction that doesn’t involve you being enslaved by other members of society. It is your fate. So you dream up a fantasy world where society vanishes completely and you live on, alone and free.

        Christianity (as well as Islam) is another psychological solution to the slave syndrome. Christians dream of a magic imaginary world where none of the rules of this world apply and they can live eternally in some sort of ecstasy.

        A healthier mind understands that social cooperation is the cornerstone of the quality of life we now enjoy, and that it is possible to find pleasure in interacting with ones peers to attain ones own goals and the common goals of groups.

        1. Hi Alimbiquated,

          Whoa up there boy, I say whoa up.

          Yer brush is getting overbroad.

          Or maybe I just associate with a higher class of survivalists/ preppers than the run of the mill.

          None of the ones of my acquaintance WANT to live outside society, although some of them want to live with minimal contact with the every day rat race, doing as much for themselves as they can.

          I have plans of my own along the survivalist/ prepper line, but they’re PLAN B if things go wrong with PLAN A, which is to live out my life without need of bunkering up. B involves being able to deal with serious but not catastrophic social disruption, meaning still counting on doing everyday things like buying groceries at the supermarket, diesel fuel at the local store, using the hospital, etc , but laying low, not borrowing money, playing a very conservative game in terms of my own safety and the safety of my immediate circle.

          C means literally bunkering up , keeping an eye on things from a well camouflaged position with a scoped rifle, and assuming anybody who shows up is an enemy until proven otherwise. I’m one of the one in a thousand who can actually DO THIS, being a farmer with the necessary skills, the necessary resources, and the necessary bunker mates lined up.

          I estimate the odds of PLAN A most likely holding up as long as I can hope to live, and the need for falling back to B as maybe ten percent.

          The odds of needing to go to C within the next decade or so are probably almost trivial, maybe one in fifty or so, according to my own seat of the pants thinking.

          None of the Christians of my own acquaintance are living in a fantasy land to any greater extent than the most dedicated and idealistic young liberal people I know……. meaning both kinds want peace, prosperity, man loving his fellow man, everybody having their basic needs met, etc.

          The real world doesn’t function that way for you no matter who you are, lol.

          1. Alimbiquated is just butthurt cuz I don’t worship Musk, his/her’s god. Fred Magyar once called me a Russian Fossil Fuel Troll because I expressed doubt in Musk’s ability to save humanity, and was critical of the shit coming out of his mouth. Alimbiquated also seems to assume I’m a bit of a brainwashed and uncooperative loner or something. Too many Hollywood tropes I suppose. I guess my online moniker here is all that alimbiquated needs in order to know everything about me, and to that end, alimbiquated is incorrect.

            Weak tea, as usual, from the cornucopian crowd; embarrassing really.

            Intro to Hegel (& Progressive Politics)
            This video explains the work of Hegel and Frantz Fanon, and explores how the Master & Slave Dialectic can help us understand identity politics.
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgNt1C72B_4

            Elon Musk’s funniest moments from his deposition over Tesla’s SolarCity acquisition
            https://electrek.co/2019/10/31/elon-musk-funniest-moments-deposition-tesla-solarcity-acquisition/

            Elon Musk called the lawyer who interviewed him for a Tesla shareholder lawsuit ‘a bad human being’ and other insults during a bizarre deposition
            https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-repeatedly-insults-lawyer-during-bizarre-deposition-2019-10

            Can’t wait for this to hit the courts! For those who expect the outcome of the trial to look bad for Musk, and to depress Tesla share price, it could soon be time to short sell.

            3. Since your anti-Musk/Tesla comments seem to get more negative as Tesla’s stock price goes up. Sounds like you might already be short. You never have told us why you are so negative on Musk/Tesla? Still hiding that secret?

            4. I’ve been very clear on the matter. No secrets. I think he’s a mountebank. Quite a lot of people do. Quite a lot of people have written quite a lot about it. There names are listed as the authors on several links I have posted. Perhaps they have secrets too? Care to share your conspiracy theories about the secrets? I wonder what Bethany Mclean’s secret might be, eh Songster?
              I post links to support my conclusion, that he is a mountebank, and it seems the cornucopian gang is quite intolerant. Attack my moniker and everything. Don’t want to hear about it at all.

            5. I looked up mountebank- “a person who deceives others, especially in order to trick them out of their money; a charlatan”

              Perhaps. I suppose most people who accumulate a lot of money could be considered as such.

              Atleast there is no Musk University.
              The greatest mountebank we have in this country is the president. People seem to like these characters. They can be very dangerous.
              I’ve said before, I’m glad Musk isn’t in to weapons production. I think there are far more dangerous people out there.
              I’m signing off on his discussion thread.

            6. I am not buying your spiel Survivalist. You seem to have something in particular against Tesla/Musk.

              Your emotional posts, name calling and over-weighting the bad versus the good that Musk has done in trying to get us off of fossil fuels makes it obvious you are anything but honest about why you do it. I haven’t seen anyone posting back to you that seems to believe your reasoning either. Fred Magyar is probably right.

            7. You cornucopian fanbios are laughable. So you would have it that anybody who doesn’t worship the myth of Elon Musk must surely be a Russian Fossil Fuel Troll. Your talents are wasted here, you should be CIA Director of Complicated Analysis.
              I hope you’re looking forward to the pending court case as much as I am. Here’s the list of plaintiffs (investors) and defendants, as well as published documents pertaining to the trial:
              Shareholders are accusing Tesla of FRAUD; To Wit, improperly valuing the SolarCity deal, providing flawed analysis and misleading investors, among other things.
              https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/32atfyhh5/court-of-chancery-of-delaware/in-re-tesla-motors-inc-stockholder-litigation/

              The 10 Highest-Paid Boards of Directors (Tesla is 2nd place)
              https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2017/11/16/the-10-highest-paid-boards-of-directors/

              It’s Elon Musk Vs Slavoj Žižek in the war for ironic counterculture. Whoever wins, we lose…
              https://youtu.be/5gnlhmaM-dM

            8. If that post is supposed to provide counter-evidence to the claim (which I never made) that you are an “uncooperative loner” (your words), it doesn’t do very well.

              Actually I think Tesla will be taken over by a Chinese company by 2030 and the rest of Musk’s empire will go down in flames. An American defense contractor might buy the rocket business, but that’s just a guess. Solar City is doomed, there’s no money in solar. It’s a profit killer, as I have often said on this forum.

              Any other claims about what I think about Musk are simply putting words in my mouth.

              I see an outside chance that Tesla could corner the autonomous vehicle market and turn into a transportation monster, but I don’t think the timing is right.

              Wall Street will continue to short Musk because Wall Street hates manufacturing. That is what has driven manufacturing out of the country. The Chinese love manufacturing, and need good brands.

              As for being a “cornucopian”, it doesn’t seem to mean anything.

            9. To understand why Tesla is interesting, you need to look at the larger vehicle market. All cars and trucks will be massively redesigned in the next decade to deal will automation and electrification. This will require enormous investments.

              Added to this, there are three big islands in the market, Europe, East Asia (mostly China) and America. This forces any company with enough scale to compete to develop three sets of vehicles, adding to costs. This pushes all manufacturers to the skateboard/tophat design of EVs, which is extremely flexible. One skateboard, many tophats.

              Whether they are EVs or hybrid, all vehicles will focus on better data collection and processing, and reduced mechanical complexity. Instead of multiple independent mechanical/electronic systems, cars will become computers on wheels constantly swapping data from all subsystems with the vendor, and managing subsystems based on actuators and software instead of complex mechanical devices.

              The investments needed for the redesign are so big that only a few companies will survive. OEMs know this, and that explains the wave of mergers and cooperation deals we see, including PSA/FCA, VW/Ford, Toyota/BYD and Daimler/BMW.

              What will come of smaller players like Jaguar-Landrover, Honda, Geely/Volvo or Tesla is anyone’s guess, but my bet is they will be gobbled up by Chinese conglomerates. GM looks like it will dismantle itself until it is small enough to be gobbled up.

              By 2030 there will be a small number of large mulitnational vehicle companies. Brands will survive, but there won’t be much different under the skin. There will be three strategies: Data driven, pure OEM and luxury.

              By data driven I mean companies that provide vehicles for autonomous taxis, or maintain fleets to monetize data collection in other ways. For example, Tesla is now selling cheap insurance to its customers based on detailed information about their behavior. It is also using driver data to develop autonomy. These companies may give vehicles away in exchange for data instead of selling them, like Google gives search away.

              The second will be suppliers to fleets like Uber. They will build noname vehicles and compete on price alone. This is what PSA/FCA and probably Hyundai/Kia seem to be moving towards.

              The third is luxury vehicles. This is where Daimler/BMW is headed. It is also the strategy of the American Pickup/SUV manufacturers, luxury cars by another name.

              The open question facing the industry is how much value companies can squeeze out of the data they get from the vehicles they sell.

              There is simply no money for new ICE motor development. Hundreds of thousands of jobs will disappear.

              Tesla is ahead of the curve in a lot of this thinking, and the industry is scrambling to catch up, but the company’s survival as an independent organization is far from certain.

          2. The Musk test- How to tell if you have a personality disorder revolving around a love/hate relationship with E.Musk.

            If you can not refrain from bringing him up in conservation, seeking related news stories or commentary, thinking about him
            for at least seven consecutive days,
            then I must break it to you…

            btw- I know someone (quite well) who had a series of discussions with Elon that resulted in Elons capitulation on the issue. Don’t ask me to elaborate. He is just a guy. Whatever.

          3. OFM
            The Plan B and Plan C people come up with is always based on standard thought patterns. That’s why “brainstorming” doesn’t work. If you ask someone to come up with a completely new idea without any restraints, you just get a repeat of what he always says anyway.

            Fascination with the Eschaton is also a Christian thing. The Chinese are pretty much immune to it, so they don’t need Plan B or C. Europeans are less interested in it as well, but they are less Christian than America. It’s noticeable that Christianity has gotten stronger in America as the gap between rich and poor has increased. More and more Americans are putting all their hopes in the afterlife.

            Europeans are also less interested in schemes to settle Mars, another form of escapism. Maybe that’s a frontier attitude. It seems related though.

            As for Christians being nice people, well maybe, but that doesn’t make the less delusional. “Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life”. – John 6:54

  3. Electric Bus Market is booming worldwide | BYD Company Limited., Proterra, Inc., AB Volvo (publ).
    http://newsdescription.com/2019/11/27/electric-bus-market-is-booming-worldwide-byd-company-limited-proterra-inc-ab-volvo-publ/

    Transit agency approves pilot contracts to test electric buses
    https://sfbayca.com/2019/11/06/transit-agency-approves-pilot-contracts-to-test-electric-buses/

    It would seem to me that the road to net zero is going to necessarily be paved with quite a bit of public transport. Perhaps they’ll be self driving buses; help the cornucopians feel more excited about them; drivers are boring.

    1. Drivers aren’t a problem because they’re boring, they’re a problem because they’re prohibitively expensive.

      Rail (and feeder buses) works well in very dense urban corridors. But providing short-wait, 24 x 7 coverage for medium or low density areas is just not affordable.

      90% of the cost of mass transit is labor, most of it the drivers. Fuel cost is almost a footnote.

      Both rail and buses are less efficient than EVs, but buses providing frequent service at night or weekends are both labor expensive and extremely energy inefficient, as the average number of riders is very low.

      1. “Bus Drivers earned an average salary of $43,290 in 2017. Comparable jobs earned the following average salary in 2017: Patrol Officers made $64,490, Auto Mechanics made $42,660, Delivery Truck Drivers made $35,610, and Taxi Drivers made $27,480.”

        Operating ratios of 10 to 33 percent for city buses.

        1. I’m not sure what the salary information tells us.

          Operating ratios of 10 to 33 percent for city buses.

          Also not sure what this tells us, or how operating expense/ratio is being calculated here. Could you expand on that, or give us a source for us to read?

      2. “buses are less efficient than EVs”

        Some buses are EVs

        BYD to boost electric bus production in India
        https://www.electrive.com/2019/12/09/byd-to-boost-electric-bus-production-in-india/

        Yutong Scored Largest EV Bus Order In Norway
        https://insideevs.com/news/389267/yutong-largest-ev-bus-order-norway/

        BYD Sold Over 1,000 Buses In Latin America
        https://insideevs.com/news/389227/byd-sold-1000-buses-latin-america/

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle
        Mind blown.

        1. Some buses are EVs

          Sure. In this context I was writing hastily, and using EV to refer to passsenger EVs. Of course trains are mostly EVs, and buses can and mostly should be.

          But, still, late night buses are generally going to be less efficient than passenger vehicles, whether they’re ICE or EV: they have very low passenger utilization, and use a relatively large amount of fuel/energy per passenger. And off-peak buses will have very high labor cost per passenger. If autonomous vehicles are successful, I would expect that they’d replace bus drivers, and then I’d expect small vehicles to replace buses in low density, off-peak applications.

    1. I remember a story my grandfather told me from when he was a boy. He saw an Atlantic fishing fleet in harbor and what he was told they had been doing was using a fishing dredge to scrape worms and whatnot off the bottom of the ocean in an area that didn’t have edible bottom-dwelling species . The material was destined for a fertilizer plant. I suppose Haber-Bosch solved that problem.

      1. It will be the equivalent of completely bulldozing and burning the Amazon rainforest X2 if allowed to proceed for a couple of decades. The biosphere and nature in general are mere overburden to miners and extractors.

        1. Best course of action would be to stay away, since we are severely destructive of everything we touch.
          Chance of that decision-
          nada.

    3. Yes, I posted that atlantic article, you are welcome.
      This is already beyond exploration stages in some areas. Dredging will be done over huge regions of untouched environment. The primary justification is batteries for EV’s. Of course that is just the cover story, it’s for money.

      My original post:

      The new level of insanity being unleashed upon the oceans, while the naïve try to convince the sociopaths to stop being sociopaths, is enough to even make me shudder. There is no place to be left intact, no level of degradation is too much, and no amount of talk or group action will halt the mania to destroy this world.

      Metallic hemorrhoids ripped from the ocean bottom make the plans to mine asteroids look like child’s play and most likely obsolete. The scale is immense and not the subject of futuristic novels, merely present horror stories.

      https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/20000-feet-under-the-sea/603040/

      1. Out of sight, out of mind. Doesn’t matter, we MUST have metal for those batteries, etc.

        “At full capacity, these companies expect to dredge thousands of square miles a year. Their collection vehicles will creep across the bottom in systematic rows, scraping through the top five inches of the ocean floor. Ships above will draw thousands of pounds of sediment through a hose to the surface, remove the metallic objects, known as polymetallic nodules, and then flush the rest back into the water. Some of that slurry will contain toxins such as mercury and lead, which could poison the surrounding ocean for hundreds of miles. The rest will drift in the current until it settles in nearby ecosystems. An early study by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences predicted that each mining ship will release about 2 million cubic feet of discharge every day, enough to fill a freight train that is 16 miles long. The authors called this “a conservative estimate,” since other projections had been three times as high. By any measure, they concluded, “a very large area will be blanketed by sediment to such an extent that many animals will not be able to cope with the impact and whole communities will be severely affected by the loss of individuals and species.””

        https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/20000-feet-under-the-sea/603040/

        2. Delete that, Doug!

          People shouldn’t know that and it’s not part of The Narrative!

          It’s about clean and green energy. Wake up and get with the program! (pounds desk with clenched fist)

          Hey port-guy! Get me a port!

          (smooths ruffled clothing…)

          Oh yes… Check out this great news (Warning: Link is self-referencing!) about such-‘n’-such EV/PV techology!

          They even have a chart!

          It says that they are growing and prices are falling!

          That means that they are competitive and more affordable!

          And getting more so!

          Thus! They will continue to grow even more and prices will continue to come down even lower!

          Goodbye fossil fuels!

        3. “Thousands of square miles” -? It’ll look like the Spice mining in Dune.

          1. TESLA WARNS OF COMING BATTERY MINERALS SHORTAGE

            The EVs manufacturer pioneer, said it believed that prices for key elements in the making of rechargeable batteries, including cobalt, lithium, nickel and copper, could increase exponentially as a consequence of limited supply. The comments by Sarah Maryssael, Tesla’s global supply manager of battery metals, echo those of other carmakers, such as Ford Motor, Toyota and BMW, who have said the auto industry would need to invest directly in battery metals mines in order to secure supply over the next three to five years.

            https://www.mining.com/tesla-warns-upcoming-battery-minerals-shortage/

            1. Tesla has mentioned the need for minerals, yeah. Then Reuters amplified it. Then your mining website amplified Reuters’s already amplified report. Now you are trying to make a case out of it.

              But Telsa has never made any public warning about it.

            2. “Sarah Maryssael, Tesla’s global supply manager for battery metals, told a closed-door Washington conference of miners, regulators and lawmakers that the automaker sees a shortage of key EV minerals coming”

              https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-lithium-electric-tesla-exclusive-int/exclusive-tesla-expects-global-shortage-of-electric-vehicle-battery-minerals-sources-idUSKCN1S81QI

              Sarah is alleged to have said that the automaker, Tesla, sees a shortage coming. It was said behind closed doors, so therefore not a public warning, but it does seem like a significant statement from a person who is in a leadership position within the company.

            3. Well I’m certainly glad that the added global population, pollutants and ecosystemic threats relative to the past are not mentioned, elaborated on, or amplified, because we have to stick mainly to the individual pixels comprising the images, so that we can help maintain the prevailing narratives that we are supposed to, because.

          2. When they have 10% market share let me know.
            I wouldn’t hold your breath.

            1. Battery tech is in a state of rapid technical change. I wouldn’t bet on anything being the way it is now in 10 years. The idea that we have reached anything close to the end of the road in technical development is silly.

              I think it may be hard for someone who focuses on the business of selling the same old goop that comes out of the ground year after year to imagine how fast and how completely industrial products can change.

              On the other hand, as a computer guy maybe I err too far in the other direction. I wholesaled computer hardware for a living in the 90s. In that business the latest and greatest product turns into unsellable junk in less than a year. Ten years of that can make a lasting impression.

              Merry Christmas

            3. On December 12 islandboy made the following statement:
              “There are developments that might make batteries significantly less CO2 intensive to make and somewhat less costly as a result. Look for an announcement probably within the next three months.”
              http://peakoilbarrel.com/eias-electric-power-monthly-november-2019-edition-with-data-for-september/#comment-693406

              By March 12 we should know if that prediction is realized. I’ll check back then for an update.

            4. ‘Might’? ‘Somewhat less’? ‘probably within’? LOL

            6. alimbiquated, is this neutral enough for you? ?

              THE FUTURE OF DEMAND FOR BATTERY METALS, EVS, POWER STORAGE

              “Risks in the cobalt supply chain continue to encourage development in battery technology. Nickel-manganese-cobalt, or NMC, batteries have seen a number of developments since their adoption. Reducing the cobalt content has been a long-running feature of this development, from the equal proportions of the earlier NMC111 battery to the current NMC532 — five parts nickel, three parts manganese, two parts cobalt — reducing the cobalt and manganese content in favor of nickel. Now the NMC811 battery is in the process of being commercially deployed. This evolution of battery design has led to an increase in battery capacity and consequently to a general increase in vehicle range, enabling Chinese consumers to take advantage of updated government incentives. Challenges, however, include reduced voltage and decreased stability. The nickel-cobalt-aluminum batteries used in Tesla Inc. vehicles also feature a reduced cobalt content, which Elon Musk has highlighted in response to concerns about cobalt-sourcing risks…

              Other battery technologies remain in the wings or in development. These include lithium titanate, or LTO, batteries. Battery technology is frequently discussed in terms of the nickel, cobalt or other metal content of the cathode. LTO batteries differ from other lithium-ion batteries in that lithium titanate is used to coat the anode in place of graphite. LTO batteries have displayed significantly higher cycle lives and very rapid charging in addition to being more suitable for low-temperature environments. LTO batteries, however, compare unfavorably to NMC batteries…

              Many questions have been raised about whether material supply restrictions will affect the future supply and demand of EVs. The increasing cobalt supply in coming years — with an expected 12% CAGR to 2021 — the ability and plans for capacity and production increases from both hard-rock and brine lithium sources and the relatively small effect of battery demand on the overall nickel market indicate that supply constraints will be manageable in the short term…

              Product designers will base their decisions on the cost, life, power density and charging times of the battery units. While supply risk management and technology performance will be issues that miners and end-use manufacturers will have to navigate, these need not halt further development and adoption of mobile or static energy storage solutions.”

              https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/research/the-future-of-demand-for-battery-metals-evs-power-storage

              Merry Christmas!

            7. That graph looks exponential! 🙂

              We have until New Years Day to change our ways of acting and thinking. Think of all the amazing gifts we can give to the natural world instead of exterminating it to make new cars, cities, power grids, roads, etc.
              Enjoy your Christmas goose and pudding, I will have a lovely and colorful dinner of plants.

  5. Lordstown (OH) Motors pickup truck- new details
    https://insideevs.com/news/389264/lordstown-endurance-at-least-200-miles-epa/

    And VW electric car [id.3] details on battery options have been released
    https://insideevs.com/news/389259/rumor-vw-id3-battery-motor-options/

    As you can see from the specs, the batteries power is listed as two numbers- net/total
    For example, the ProS model is said to have 342 miles of range
    and battery capacity 82 kWh total and 77 kWh net.
    This difference reflects the manufacturer decision to limit the depth of charge and discharge cycle to 94% of capacity to help preserve battery life.
    If its your car, you’d be better to aim for closer to 80%.
    I wonder if this specification is one that can be adjusted by the owner/the hacker/ the dealer?

  6. On The Internet, No One Knows You’re A Dog
    (…or who/what might be putting dog-food in your bowl or why…)

    “…it is the states and corporations responsible for causing climate change that we are relying on to reverse it…”

    “Corporations… are subject to external pressures from shareholders and lenders… the reality is that if environmentally-conscious shareholders divest; their shares will merely be bought by shareholders more concerned with profits than with the environment… any attempt to embark on change that is considered financially risky will meet enormous opposition… Moreover, since few of us are prepared to boycott the 100 corporations that are responsible for nearly three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions; there is little incentive for the corporations to change their behaviour…

    …I point out that charities’ primary concern is to keep the funds flowing in… they are only pursuing those aims that align with the aims of their funders. In the same way, corporations will make environmental changes – even coal and oil companies use wind and solar to power their operations these days – that align with their need to continue servicing debts; provide returns to shareholders; and pay the salaries of their senior managers.

    Only the elected politicians are impacted by public opinion; but even then, they have to balance such things as the long-term projected impact of climate change against the immediate economic catastrophe that would ensue if we ceased burning fossil fuels immediately. And so they will make various not insubstantial changes – like deploying wind turbines on an industrial scale – that give the appearance of addressing climate change even as global greenhouse gas emissions and global temperatures reach record highs…”

    ” ‘The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is a lobby group in the United Kingdom whose stated aims are to challenge ‘extremely damaging and harmful policies’ envisaged by governments to mitigate anthropogenic global warming…’ ” ~ GoneFishing

    “But would it/he still be correct?” ~ Caelan MacIntyre [No response, save for an apparent ad-hom, to the question/gist at time of writing from anonymous commenter.]

    1. Feathers all RUFFled again? Are your cousins from the pet shop coming to visit you this year for the holidays?

      1. Nice, Round Numbers

        It’s like those penny-anti terrorists the superset terrorists– AKA, governments– call terrorists.
        We shouldn’t expect online ‘agendaless/conflict-of-interestless/objective/rational/superawesome’ anons to drain their swamps of irony and contradiction. Quack-quack.

        But anyway, more people seem to be kind of waking up all at once and globally.

        And 2020’s a nice, round number for a revolution or 2.

        “Psychology and sociology

        Psychologically round numbers form waypoints in pricing and negotiation. So, starting salaries are usually round numbers. Prices are often pitched just below round numbers in order to avoid breaking such a psychological barrier.
        Culture
        Round-number anniversaries are often especially celebrated. For example, a fiftieth birthday, the centenary of an event, or the millionth visitor or customer to a location or business.” ~ Wikipedia

  7. France usually has the annual riot intensity awards locked up pretty tight, but this year new contenders have emerged in Chile and Hong Kong. France did seal the victory for 2019, however results may be skewed due to lack of media interest in Chile and footage of same.
    To put it mildly, I’m not in solidarity with the Orwellian nightmare that is China; buuuuuuuut Hong Kong Police get a special mention for not being total pussies and slaughtering students in droves for beating their ass in the streets and trying to grab their holsters. There’s a certain courage in choosing to rather take the short end of a brawl, for a bit, instead of getting all hot and smokey about it. Great martial ethos.
    https://youtu.be/0lYJVyJ8kGA

    Happy Festivus Everyone

    1. ‘Hong Kong Police get a special mention for not slaughtering students in droves’

      Sometimes you don’t want to hurt your relatives and neighbors.
      Sometimes you are ashamed to wear your uniform.
      Sometimes you hate to be a tool of the state.

      1. I have relatives in Hong Kong and the Mainland.
        Things are complicated.

      1. The Model 3 is good. It is nowhere close to being a car for the masses. If you have a Model 3 or are thinking of getting one, congrats, you are not part of the masses. You may not be rich, but least you’ll leave the Corollas and Civics and Prii to the hoi polloi.

        1. I’m part of the masses. I drive old cars……. nice old cars that still have some life left in them, lol.

          I don’t give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about being pc, or toeing any party line.

          Trickle down IS real, and it DOES work… sometimes, lol.

          One of the biggest failures of the liberal elite is that it collectively has its head up its ass about as far as the conservative elite when it comes to denying various aspects of REALITY.

          This means there’s an ENORMOUS opportunity for the liberal/ slash environmental camp to wise up and reach out and connect with a substantial number of people who can be talked to a nd reasoned with and CONVERTED into D voters, lol.

          The liberal/ environmental camp has this opportunity on its side because it has the facts on its side.

          But talking about the R foot soldier voters like the orangutan talks about liberal voters DOES NOT HELP.

          IF you believe in DEMOCRACY, and all that sort of perfectly silly bullshit, then you MUST believe that people are entitled to their own morality, culture, and values…. whether you agree with them or NOT.

          TRY REALLY HARD to remember that they can vote TOO, and that that sort of bad mouthing probably, maybe even LIKELY, contributed enough to the R column in those last three states that put the orangutan in office to put him IN OFFICE . It was CLOSE.

          It will be close AGAIN in lots of local and state races, and in some HOUSE races and quite possibly in some SENATE races.

          It might even be that close again in the race for the WH.

          “An injury is much sooner forgiven than an insult. ”

          Lord Chesterfield.

          I have tried hard to get some of my technically literate but socially very conservative friends to read this site, because if they once read it for a while, they will learn a hell of a lot about environmental problems , and OPPORTUNITIES, that they know little or nothing about.

          None of them have read it more than maybe half a dozen times before they run across a rant that insults their parents and grandparents …… with the result that if they vote at all, they vote the middle finger to the people who look down on them.

          I forgot to mention that one of the major scientific discoveries of recent years is that there is at least ONE orangutan that can talk as well as any parrot…. but it must be said that the parrot is apt to make more sense, lol.

      2. It’s not every company that gets sued by its own shareholders

        Tesla and Musk hid facts about SolarCity deal and SpaceX involvement, shareholders claim in unsealed court docs

        https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/23/tesla-solarcity-claims-detailed-in-newly-unsealed-court-docs.html

        SolarCity was insolvent when Tesla paid $2.6 billion to buy it, lawsuit says

        https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/solarcity-was-insolvent-when-tesla-paid-2-6-billion-to-buy-it-lawsuit-says/

        Documents Show Elon Musk Made Misleading Statements About Solar City

        https://moguldom.com/240585/documents-show-elon-musk-made-misleading-statements-about-solar-city/

        “Almost immediately after the acquisition closed, SolarCity’s auditors [Ernst & Young] confirmed that SolarCity was, in fact, insolvent,”
        https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/teslasolarcity.pdf

        And last, but not least:
        Elon Musk Deposition – SolarCity and Tesla Model 3 (if you dare read it!)
        https://www.scribd.com/document/432413046/Elon-Musk-Deposition-SolarCity-and-Tesla-Model-3#from_embed

        What a brilliant and ever so caring visionary sarc:/

      3. CouldB, CameronB

        “…The 2020s could be even better for Tesla…” ~ CameronB

        “So those fortunate enough can drive to economic collapse in a Tesla; drive to protests and social unrest in a Tesla; get your car smashed in/with a Tesla; wait out, at charging stations, the recharging of your Tesla, with a few good beers in a Tesla; drive home drunk in a Tesla; make long detours around flooded, burning, toxified and/or otherwise destroyed neighborhoods in a Tesla; flee impending quasi-natural disasters in a Tesla; drive by the former site of your previous spontaneously-combusting Tesla in a Tesla; get crashed into by a self-driving Tesla in a Tesla; break your Tesla drivetrain on increasingly-unmaintained roadways from decreasing tax-revenue in a Tesla; wonder if you can find another use for, or where you’re going to find a replacement for, your dead battery in a Tesla; wait in line at bank runs in a Tesla; wait increasing times and spend increasing amounts of money for parts and service in a Tesla; drive to increasingly-empty grocery-stores in a Tesla; pick up hitch-hiking economic/ecologic/etc. refugees in a Tesla; drive through economically-depressed neighborhoods and gutted communities in a Tesla; re-adapt your Tesla for urgent self-preservation-related gardening and farm-work in/with a Tesla; get valuable materials stolen from your Tesla with a Tesla; drive home from a personal pink-slip event in a Tesla; pretend to be going to work the next day because you can’t bring yourself to tell anyone yet in a Tesla; camp out your home eviction in a Tesla; drive to an unemployment or welfare office in a Tesla; wait out rolling blackouts in a Tesla; pass by social unrest-vandalized EV recharging stations in a Tesla; trade in your Tesla for food or hunting or gardening equipment with a Tesla; wait for hours every workday in gridlock in a Tesla; commit suicide in a Tesla (just not the tailpipe-carbon-monoxide way, but more likely, the electrocution way); learn how to ‘hunt-and-gather’ along the highway in a Tesla; and last but not least, do roadkill the electric revolution way!” ~ Caelan MacIntyre (edited)

    2. I do think E. Musk made a big mistake with Solarcity.
      What an amazing pioneering spirit however.
      Really pisses some people off (inverted erection).

      disclosures-
      no financial position whatsoever
      i know seven people with teslas, and they really like having them

      1. “Musk made a big mistake” ~ Hick

        I think that sort of objective analysis and conclusion makes you a “Hater” Hick; possibly a Russian fossil fuel troll. Check with the cornucopian gang for confirmation.

        1. Funny. I’m really not so sure there are too many Musk issue obsessed people out there, so I feel pretty safe on that issue.
          I claim to be more of a curmudgeon or a skeptic than a hater, by and large.

          Anyway, the solarcity deal was clearly a distraction to the critical mission of rolling out the tesla vehicles. I don’t think it changed the PV installation market whatsoever.
          Tesla seems to have grown beyond that problem now, as best I can tell.
          Their new Y model looks like a good one, although there will be some considerable competition in a year or two.
          I wouldn’t cry a tear if other manufacturers did so well with their EV’s that Tesla was forced to evolve into a battery and vehicle software specialist. Their vehicle software control system is far out in front of other companies, as are their battery costs (I have heard).

          full disclosure- I am not a luxury brand enthusiast for any products. My wife would attest to that.

          1. ” I’m really not so sure there are too many Musk issue obsessed people out there”

            I take it your not on Twitter. It’s kinda pathetic. See image attached.

            “Anyway, the solarcity deal was clearly a distraction to the critical mission of rolling out the tesla vehicles”

            Yeah, Tesla spending a couple billion for an insolvent company owned by Musk and his cousins is, to put it mildly, a distraction.

            1. It’s interesting how technical change in the car industry has become a political football in a way that technical change in other industries hasn’t been. It’s a big industry, so I guess that’s the reason.

              Hating Musk and accusing him of being a con man, as well as claiming that Tesla is going broke, are just proxies for the indefensible claim that the car industry is not electrifying.

              Tesla and Musk have accelerated things a few years, but in the end they won’t matter. Change is coming whether they survive or not.

            2. “Hating Musk and accusing him of being a con man, as well as claiming that Tesla is going broke, are just proxies for the indefensible claim that the car industry is not electrifying.”

              Claiming that Musk is full of shit is just that, nothing else. It’s not a proxy for anything, except within your value system where it’s blaspheme.
              The degree to which the car industry is or is not electrifying is measurable in very objective terms, with numbers and costs over time, it does not require reverence to Musk, or anyone for that matter, to be either measured or achieved.
              Perhaps read the article and point out the bit where criticism of Musk is tantamount to denial of developments in the electrification of the car industry.

              “HE’S FULL OF SHIT”: HOW ELON MUSK FOOLED INVESTORS, BILKED TAXPAYERS, AND GAMBLED TESLA TO SAVE SOLARCITY
              https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/how-elon-musk-gambled-tesla-to-save-solarcity

            3. “I take it your not on Twitter. ”

              Quality of information there is close to zero. No thanks.
              I sure as hell don’t watch Fox news either.
              And I don’t read comic books, or watch teleevangelists on TV.
              All forms of garbage.

            4. I follow a few on Twitter. Paul Beckwith, Zack Labe, and their ilk. Lots of good various industry analysts are broadcasting there too, like Art Berman for example. I quite like some of the open source arms monitoring dudes. They’ll tell you great detail about what weapons and radar components an installation is equipped with from an aerial pic of it’s shadow. I found this quite interesting when KSA got it’s facilities hit.
              Buuuuut, like most things on the internet, and popular media in general I suppose, it is vastly outweighed by a whole lot of bullshit, Elon Musk’s stream of consciousness and millennials doing dollar store makeup reviews chief amongst it. Lot’s of antivaxxers too, but hey, sometimes evolution just works that way. When I view media, Twitter included, I take the ‘alien anthropologist’ approach. It can be enlightening to various aspects of the human condition, as can energy blog comment threads.

      2. Grave-Rolling Nikola

        “…know seven people with teslas, and they really like having them…” ~ Hickory

        If one is going to dole out any kind of significant investment in something, ‘they had better like it’.
        I think there’s a psychological term for that. Anyone?
        Also, time and follow-up is important.
        For example, people can like something now, but not necessarily later, as problems become evident.

        “Problems later on? Really? I can’t imagine what they might be.” ~ Hypothetical Tesla-Owner

    1. His biggest fear. Financial crimes can result in jail time.
      I think he might resign in exchange for hiding his financial records.
      Supreme court ruling on this not expected til May or June, last I heard.

  10. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/12/22/wind-energy-is-the-secret-superpower-behind-us-steel-industry-survival/

    “Wind Energy & Fossil Free Steel

    SSAB already has a head start on the fossil-free track in Iowa, where a copious amount of wind energy is available to power the electric-arc furnace that forms the heart of the steel recycling process.

    According to the company, the Iowa facility will run on 100% renewable energy by 2022, which will come primarily from wind farms under the purview of MidAmerican Energy.”

    The article goes into some detail about what is possible and what’s actually being done on the world stage in terms of getting carbon out of the steel industry.

    I’m hoping one of the guys here with an engineering background will have something to say about the process of using liquefied air to drive turbines.

    I understand the basic physics. When the liquefied air transitions from liquid to gas it expands hundreds of times, and thus there’s POTENTIALLY high pressure gas to drive a turbine, or maybe even a highly efficient piston type engine.

    ( Aside, I know that turbines burning natural gas or jet fuel are far more powerful and at least as fuel efficient as piston engines of comparable dimensions and so forth………. but take the combustion out, and the energy end balance might flip in favor of a piston type engine or motor. )

    But the heat delta from liquid to gas is negative, and will have to be provided from some outside source. I

    I’m thinking this will be from the ambient air, but it could also be had from river or lake water, or deep wells.

    I can’t see the gaseous air driving a turbine at anything even so remotely low as typical ambient atmospheric pressures, which won’t be over fifteen pounds per square inch.

    In the trades, we work with what we call PSIG, pounds per square inch GAUGE. When your tire pressure gauge says thirty, that’s psiG. The ACTUAL pressure in the tire is going to be around thirty three up on a mountain to forty five at sea level, if it’s cool. You add the actual pressure to the gauge reading to know the TRUE pressure in the tire.

    I’m an antique , forgive me for not being able to think in metric about stuff I’ve worked in all my life using inches and pounds, lol.

    The article doesn’t mention it, but the extraction of purified O2 in large quantities from staged distillation of liquid air is an important, even critical industry.

    And CO2, argon, and some other trace gases are also sorted out and sold along with the oxygen.
    I’ve never bothered to investigate whether there’s an important market for purified N2.

    I mention this because if a cyrogenic air storage system can probably be built so that recovery of O2 Argon, and maybe some other trace gases would be a profitable sideline and help balance the books in terms of dollars and cents.

    At any rate, it might be possible to build such a plant in a place where lots of heat or “COOLTH ” that would otherwise be wasted could be put to good use, for instance in large nearby building such as a hospital or industrial plant.

  11. SURELY to SKY Daddy there must be a good nickname, some short hand term, to refer to energy stored for the purpose of cooling by REMOVING heat from water with a “chiller” which is what the HVAC guys call the big refrigeration units they install to cool or freeze large quantities of water so as to provide cooling later.

    This term “COOLTH” just ain’t COOL.

    So somebody please enlighten me, lol.

  12. As Trump opens (formerly) protected Alaskan Arctic refuge to drillers:

    CLIMATE CHANGE MELTS ALASKA’S PERMAFROST, ROADS SINK, BRIDGES TILT AND GREENHOUSE GASES RELEASE

    “Alaska’s permafrost is under assault from a warming climate, and it’s happening a lot faster than anticipated. Hillside slopes have liquefied, unleashing slides that end up as muddy deltas in salmon streams. The ground under the Nome airport runway—key to linking the community to the outside world—has thawed, requiring costly patches. And during the hottest July on record, a sinkhole 14 feet deep opened along a main roadway in the city…

    Fossil fuel combustion still is the main source of greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. But the world’s permafrost now releases 1.2 to 2.2 million metric tons each year — at the upper end, nearly equal to Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report this month by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Later this century, these emissions are expected to exceed those of the United States.”

    https://phys.org/news/2019-12-climate-alaska-permafrost-roads-bridges.html

  13. https://electrek.co/2019/12/23/egeb-first-fossil-fuel-free-steel-comes-to-north-america-as-aging-detroit-blast-furnace-mill-closes/
    Going green will pay off in 7 years, says study

    Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson published a study on Friday that says going 100% green will pay for itself in seven years. Jacobson’s research underpinned the Green New Deal, according to Bloomberg.

    Jacobson’s study, which is titled, “Impacts of Green New Deal Energy Plans on Grid Stability, Costs, Jobs, Health, and Climate in 143 Countries,” was published in the journal One Earth.

    It would cost $73 trillion to revamp power grids, transportation, manufacturing and other systems to run on wind, solar and hydro power, including enough storage capacity to keep the lights on overnight.

    But that would be offset by annual savings of almost $11 trillion, the report found.

    Jacobson claims in his paper:

    Studies among at least 11 independent research groups have found that transitioning to 100% renewable energy in one or all energy sectors, while keeping the electricity and/or heat grids stable at a reasonable cost, is possible.

    1. So what will energize this huge undertaking of tossing out the old energy system and putting in a new one, to just keep on doing what we do best?
      How long will it take?
      Or will it just be fossil fuels plus renewables since the energy demand could be doubled by 2050 or so? Where will we be if this massive re-industrialization actually comes to be?
      Global fossil fuel consumption has increased by 6 times since 1960. Thinking a doubling would not occur over the next thirty years implies collapse. So how does “renewable” energy catch up to that?

      I do wonder when “priests” offer paradise and gardens of eden. Same thing I wonder when they try to scare people with the end of the world scenarios. Now it’s windmills, EV’s and solar panels to cure the ills of the world, plus carbon sucking and more atmospheric manipulation plus glass sphericals covering the Arctic Ice.
      Has anyone noticed the giant missing pieces that rarely get a mention?

      1. Damn, GF

        This answer is INTENDED to be taken as humorous.

        You seem to know a hell of a lot more biology than I do, so you shouldn’t be wondering at all why we naked apes behave the way they do.

        Drag out a couple of your old biology texts, and review the chapters on Darwinian evolution.

        There’s zero reason to expect us to all get together and cooperate and do the right thing, in terms of evolutionary biology.Mother Nature doesn’t work that way.

        She doesn’t give a flying fuck about what lives, or what dies. She just forever and ever rolls the dice over and over again, and any resource that enables a given population to expand is used.

        SO WHAT if that population peaks and crashes?

        Another population of one creature or another will feed on the wreckage.

        Doncha remember the freshman experiment where in you graphed the population curve of the yeast cells in the beaker of sugar water, and how it peaked and crashed due to either a lack of food or a combination of food plus it’s own excrement fouling it’s environment?

        We pretty much won the competition with all our other direct competitors and pretty much wiped out our predators way on back, and now we’re the top dog, at least for the moment, and it’s between US naked apes now, we’re competing with each other rather than Neanderthals. We mount leopards on the wall over the fireplace rather than leopards taking us up in trees to keep the lions from stealing their dinner.

        We’re just doing what we’re PROGRAMMED to do, going forth an multiplying.

        I can’t remember reading any thing in that freshman book about rational behavior, lol.

        But MAYBE there is some hope, since we have evolved the ability to think and plan ahead and get what we want. MAYBE we can use that ability to think and communicate and plan ahead to PREVENT getting what we DON’T want.

        I strongly reccomend that we all pray to the ROCK, MOUNTAIN, BEAR, SNAKE, or ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN or SKY DADDY or SKY MOMMY of our personal choice for a series of Pearl Harbor Wake Up Events, lol.

        If we get enough of them, it’s possible we might actually transcend the programming which evolved to work at the small band or tribal level. It has also proven itself in that we have had governments and religions, etc, for quite some time, which enable huge numbers of people to work together cooperatively in some ways.

        Governments can cooperate just as tribal bands can cooperate to create a primitive state. We have worked together to fight major wars, with two sets of governments goin at it.

        MAYBE we can get MOST of the governments of the world to work together to save the environment………. IF the cards fall just right. It’s just one more step up in terms of organization.

        1. Well, in the spirit of Old Farmer Mac forting up for Plan C, dude I can’t believe you said that on Christmas Eve lol, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, although I’m personally more of a Festivus guy.

        2. Now, now no pulling the overshoot card on me just because I question the new trends that market “solutions” to us.
          I just think these new megatrends should be questioned thoroughly before we make the mistake of blindly following them into another dead end, one that is permanent. This is the time to pull back the curtains and see what is really going on, for the sake of all life on earth.
          Have a nice and peaceful day today OFM, the problems and predicaments will be there tomorrow to discuss and change.

  14. Quiz. He said these things today. Direct quotes. Who is he?

    “You know, I know windmills very much. I’ve studied it better than anybody I know,”

    “But they’re manufactured tremendous — if you’re into this — tremendous fumes. Gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe,”

    “Go under a windmill someday. You’ll see more birds than you’ve ever seen ever in your life.”

      3. I always thought John Bolton looked like a remarkable self-caricature, like from Saturday Night Live or something, who perpetually forgot to get out of character between after the show and just before the next.

    1. Does the second icon depict a shorter person’s coffin and is that Elon Musk with some sort of white bandage on his head and an electric self-wearing hat that’s caused his head to bleed? And what are those pizza-shaped things with crusts that look mostly-eaten? They look like some sort of berry tree pizza, I guess, like with pepperoni and spinache and in the initial stages of an anthropocene-related disease at the top, as depicted by a judiciously-placed little blob of cheese.

  16. islandboy, a Christmas message just for you. ?

    HOW IS AUSTRALIA TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE?

    “The Climate Change Performance Index ranked Australia last out of 57 countries responsible for more than 90% of greenhouse gas emissions on climate policy. It highlighted the country’s no-show at a UN climate summit in September and its withdrawal from an international fund to tackle climate change…

    Scientists round the world are looking aghast at politics of climate change in Australia. It’s one of the most vulnerable countries on the planet to rising temperatures, yet there is still denial about the impacts of rising CO2 levels on events like the current wildfires.”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50869565

    1. Islands, even large ones, are now global in consequence, but it backfires on them too.

        1. Yes, Australia has been labeled as the smallest continent. But it also fits the definitions for an island.
          Unique flora and fauna. Too bad such changes are happening there.

  17. To consider-
    Now that the days are getting longer, I looked at the daily energy output from the PV array on my roof for the year. The lowest output was a very cloudy day in early December 1.86 kwh. The highest output was on a crystal clear day in mid-June 51.24 kwh.
    That is a 27.5 fold difference in output.
    Its a good example of how difficult it would be to run on this as a sole source, or off-grid.
    A robust, heavily interconnected grid supplied by diverse sources of energy is the winning scenario.

    On a related note- the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC- oversees all of the interconnected power systems of the contiguous United States, Canada and Mexico),
    indicates that solar and wind projects currently planned over the next 10 years will add the equivalent electricity to the grid of 120 full size nuclear reactors.
    [at a cost saving totaling of well over $500 Billion, I add]

    1. I ran the numbers for solar PV a while ago from the actual daily insolation values (not just the high and low points). Yes, in the northern areas there is not enough power to run our current energy gobbling technology steadily through the winter if one thinks of storage as small batteries in residences. Local external storage would be needed unless people learned how to use less power and make more efficient buildings/things/ lifestyles.

      One fellow in the nearby region turned his suburban home into a demo system and needs no grid power or liquid fuel for his cars. He certainly has not optimized the efficiency of the house. Pretty much standard fare now as far as insulation (6300 HDD region). Runs cars on hydrogen.

      Mike Strizki and his hydrogen powered house
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr7bRSbwfIg

      https://hydrogenhouseproject.org/index.html

      If he could do this 15 years ago, why are we still wondering how to make things work 24/7/365?

      1. How is the hydrogen produced?

        On potential solution is produce using solar and wind power during high resource periods, daytime/summer and sunny days and store for low wind/sun periods.

        Just thinking out loud with zero research.

        It is obvious to me that better buildings/more passive solar and heat pumps (especially ground source in colder climates) and using energy more efficiently in general by combining trips/ride sharing etc should be the first steps. Buying quality products that last nearly forever (or let’s say 100 years to start) would also make sense.

        1. “On potential solution is produce using solar and wind power during high resource periods, daytime/summer and sunny days and store for low wind/sun periods.”

          Yep. The best concept I have seen is one which uses LOHCs, you produce hydrogen with a fuel cell during summer and load your carrier, during winter you unload the carrier and use the hydrogen in the FC to generate electricity and heat your home.

          Will be interesting to see whether this works in larger buildings where a high temperature FC system is more economic than in small buildings.

          The company Hydogenious operates in the USA too, they are a spin-off of university groups and have improved the carrier, they use a heating oil.

        2. As the video states, hydrogen is produced from water using an electrolyzer.

          1. The interesting question is in which form the hydrogen is stored when we need a long-term storage.

    2. Hickory, do have any idea how much storage you have needed this year to be off grid and not interrupt your demand usage ? and how many square feet of panels do you have ?

      1. Hi HB.
        I’ve got 20 panels which equals 350 sqft. 330v each. Produced 11K kwhr this year.
        This December only 4 days have achieved our household baseline consumption, just barely.
        No amount of storage would have gotten the job done this month.

        On the other hand, we had three intentional power outage episodes this fall due to wind/fire events. All three were during crystal clear conditions (as these offshore wind events always are). One tesla powerwall battery integrated into our home system would have been great and two would have been overkill. I could have avoided flying out of state to keep my (emergency service) work going.
        We have been trying to get contractors here to get a battery system installed. Very hard. They are all so busy, its hard to get any response. I finally have a site visit lined up for tomorrow morning (after two months of trying).

        This wind/fire issue is putting the energy storage industry here in Calif on nearly a war footing… OK, a major skirmish.
        It will change the landscape of this industry in a massive way within several years.

        1. Thanks Hickory, I’ve got 500 plus good south facing feet. Are you saying the panel system is 330 volts? Can it charge the car direct DC? Do you run AC ? Produce more than consume? Thanks

          1. Oops- 330W/panel

            And yes, on an annual basis we currently produce more than we use, even with about 6000 miles of plug-in hybrid charging thrown in.
            We accumulated a $500 credit last year.
            We plan to get a EV for my wife in 2-3 years.
            At that point we may get a some more panels. We will need them.
            She puts on a lot of local miles.
            When you say AC- I assume you mean Air Conditioning? Yes, but we don’t need it very often. Maybe 10 days. Just 13 miles straight shot out the Golden Gate bridge from here. I see it from my chair right now!

            500 sq ft you’ve got- excellent!

            2. Berkeley, up on the ridgeline

              You still thinking of going back to Kihei?

            3. I’m out of Bend.
              Hawaii or CA.
              The wife really can’t deal with it.

  18. For those here whomst are coco for EV’s I would suggest you may find the 2020 Olympics in Japan quite keen

    Japan 2020 Olympics Set to Showcase a New Era of Mobility
    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/japan-2020-olympics-set-showcase-123112979.html

    and as well, the 2022 Olympics in China

    The rise of China’s Silicon Valley
    http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-12/19/c_138643548.htm

    I imagine both venues will feature large the hosting nations products and manufacturing. Within the context of Olympics logistical and transportation planning it seems like a great opportunity to showcase EV’s.

  19. Out all afternoon in a short sleeve light weight cotton tee shirt.

    A couple of young women who live nearby who use me for their honey do guy routinely invite me over for a snack or coffee. 7 Walked instead of driving as usual and found them sunbathing nude, sending them scrambling inside squealing and laughing.

    Biggest thrill I’ve had in years.

    My porch thermometer showed seventy four at one fifteen, but we have a superb winter microclimate, and on a nice sunny day, it usually runs four to six degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the nearest weather station.

    Nobody can remember it ever being this warm on Christmas Eve.

    The microclimate used to be near perfect for peaches and apples. Now we get these extended late winter warm spells, trees break dormancy early. Frost kills twice as often in recent years compared to back when I was a kid.

    Nobody except working farmers is paying any serious attention, locally. They’re as intelligent as anybody, but brains and computers work well only when supplied with plenty of accurate data, so they put it off to just a string of bad luck.

    The weather isn’t the only thing that’s changed around here. Back when I was young the old women around here would have spit on this couple, and driven them out of the neighborhood. Now they’re just two more newcomers. The old timers who rather they were elsewhere are mostly too old to get worked up about it anymore, except among themselves over their coffee.

    Maybe it’s not too late…….. if we get enough WAKE UP events.

    I’m not holding my breath, but otoh I’m not advocating giving up.

    Nearly all of them are woefully short of formal education, and like everybody else, they believe what they WANT to believe, which is that these frost problems are just a run of bad luck and nothing more.

    1. I suppose there are some advantages to a warming climate-
      ” and found them sunbathing nude”

      It is interesting how people can misinterpret increasing frequency of spring frost damage of fruit blossoms as a problem of cold, rather than realizing it is a symptom of a generalized warming.
      When planting new deciduous fruit trees, many people are looking for varieties that require less winter chill (and thus bloom later).

  22. There ain’t no free lunch!

    ‘DIRTY SECRET’ BOOSTS WARMING

    “The gas sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) isn’t a household name but as the most powerful greenhouse gas known to science, it could play an increasingly important role in discussions about climate change. Levels are on the rise as an unintended consequence of the boom in green energy. The cheap, non-flammable gas is used to prevent short circuits and fires in electrical switches and circuit breakers known collectively as “switchgear”. As more wind turbines are built around the world, more of these electrical safety devices are being installed. The vast majority use SF6. Although overall atmospheric concentrations are small for now, the global installed base of SF6 is expected to grow by 75% by 2030. Worryingly, there’s no natural mechanism that destroys or absorbs the gas once it’s been released.”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50631059

      1. And, adding some perspective to YOUR comment (by citing actual UK experience)

        “Indeed SF6 is hugely useful to the electrical industry, especially in ensuring that no short circuits and accidents may befall. But in recent news, it was found that there have been leaks of SF6 in electrical companies in the UK. However small the number of leaks may have been, the cause can be inevitable and irreversible. THE LEAKS WERE SAID TO BE EQUIVALENT TO THROWING ABOUT 1.3 MILLION CARS ON THE ROAD, ALL OF WHICH ARE ADDING THEIR OWN SHARE OF POLLUTANTS IN THE ATMOSPHERE.”

        What’s more? The use of SF6 leaves a long-term effect on Earth. It leaves a warming (and persisting) effect on the global atmosphere for at least 1,000 years.

        https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/23835/20190917/a-leak-that-s-aggravating-climate-change.htm

        1. Whats it all add up to.
          Same deal we have acknowledged before.
          The only cure to this disease is to cease and desist.
          Very few volunteers.

          1. So SF6 is essentially an inert gas. But since it is such a big molecule (MW=146) one might imagine that it doesn’t mix well in the atmosphere and may actually act more like radon (MW=222) and accumulate at low elevations.

            1. “…one might imagine that it doesn’t mix well in the atmosphere and may actually act more like radon (MW=222) and accumulate at low elevations.”

              Sulfur hexafluoride is inert in troposphere and stratosphere and is extremely long-lived, with an estimated atmospheric lifetime of 800–3,200 years. Average global SF6 concentrations increased by about seven percent per year during 1980s and 1990s (see Mauna Loa sulfur hexafluoride timeseries), mostly as the result of its use in the magnesium production industry, and by electrical utilities and electronics manufacturers — Wiki.

            2. Some would want to discuss it terms of risk /benefit compared to the alternative.
              Others in terms of severity of retreat- disorderly vs chaotic.
              There is no planned humble retreat, sorry to have learned.

            3. SF6? I am sure we should be extremely worried about something that contributes 0.0040 watts/m2 to global warming.
              Nothing to see here.
              sarc

            4. Well, did you walk your county with the petition seeking the ban. Or, I guess you could drive it around.

            6. Even less than usual?
              Didn’t think it could get worse.
              Hopefully its just the season.

  23. islandboy, I realize you are averse (hostile) to reality but sometimes there’s not enough sand around to bury your head. ?

    GLOBAL FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES REACH $5.2 TRILLION ($29 BILLION IN AUSTRALIA).

    “New analysis commissioned by the International Monetary Fund has shown that global fossil fuel subsidies continue to grow, despite the growing urgency of the need to decarbonise the global economy. The IMF estimates that annual energy subsidies in Australia total $29 billion, representing 2.3 per cent of Australian GDP. On a per capita basis, Australian fossil fuel subsidies amount to $1,198 per person. The under-pricing of fossil fuels, particularly coal, was found to be the largest source of effective subsidy. When the wider social and environmental costs of fossil fuels were taken into account, the IMF found that price paid for coal was typically less than half of its true cost. The battle over energy subsidies has been a feature of Australian politics over recent years, with conservative politicians attacking renewable energy subsidies.”

    https://reneweconomy.com.au/global-fossil-fuel-subsidies-reach-5-2-trillion-and-29-billion-in-australia-91592/

    1. Meanwhile,

      US GAS-BUILDING SPREE CONTINUES DESPITE ELECTRICITY GLUT

      “Utilities, faced with a steady stream of coal plant retirements and the allure of historically low natural gas prices, have continued to build new gas plants despite flat electricity demand and rapidly falling prices for energy from renewable sources. That building spree has led to a glut of generation capacity in many regions. And it continues today, because natural gas is cheap and because business models and regulatory structures reward many U.S. utilities for building new infrastructure, whether it is economically viable or not. And ratepayers and investors will likely have to foot the bill. Between 2008 and Aug. 1, 2019, a period of essentially flat demand, the U.S. added 120,498 MW of natural gas-fired capacity to its generation fleet, including nearly 26,000 MW in 2018 and 2019 alone. At least 200 new gas plants are planned or in development across the U.S., totaling nearly 70,200 MW of additional capacity — nearly equal to total generation capacity in Texas.”

      https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/54188928?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Brand_News_Rem_Display-google-global-prospect-discvalue-paid-Traffic-Clicks&utm_term=&utm_content=407233679730&_bt=407233679730&_bk=&_bm=&_bn=d&_bg=84378059262&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhoKqmuXT5gIVCTpPCh1iRgzzEAEYASAAEgIOPvD_BwE

      1. That certainly explains why local electricity rates (near the Marcellus) have gone up twenty-five percent lately.

        I have long wondered if when we become more dependent upon electric power, the grid prices might rise dramatically. Thus nullifying much of the savings for EV’s and heat pumps.
        All in the name of building the expanded smart grid.
        Hooked on oil, hooked on electricity. Just plain hooked.

        1. “I have long wondered if when we become more dependent upon electric power, the grid prices might rise dramatically. Thus nullifying much of the savings for EV’s and heat pumps. All in the name of building the expanded smart grid.”

          Umm…Most have not been thinking of electrification in terms of cost savings. That would be nice.
          As I understand the attempt, its more about having energy available after peak oil, after peak coal, and eventually peak nat gas.
          And maybe even halting the rise in CO2 emissions.

          Maybe you are still thinking along the lines of the ‘Anti-Improvement Movement’ you referred to???

          1. Yooo Hooo Hickory, you missed that boat too.
            Still apprenticing as a troll, but getting poor grades?

            When did all that techno wizardry become free? I guess I missed the memo on that one. Will check now.

            Nope, still costs money to buy all those PV panels, inverters, batteries, EV’s and other gizmos to pacify the Green New Dealers.
            Meanwhile, people spend much of their time and energy promoting and working for BAU so they can spend a little on “green” technology.
            Now that is the deal.

      2. A somewhat related question-
        If you were to be charged on your electric bill for CO2 sequestration/net ton of personal emission,
        and it doubled your bill,
        would you be proud to pay?

        That price may be come knowable in this coming decade.

        Or would you prefer to spend the money on solar?
        Or on sulfur aerosol injections into the stratosphere?
        Or on sea walls and migration relief funds?

        many people would rather just pretend there is no problem, and vote orange man.

        1. Hickory asked “you were to be charged on your electric bill for CO2 sequestration/net ton of personal emission,…”

          Why would one even consider CO2 sequestration of fossil fuel burning? It’s completely unnecessary, deeply flawed, and merely a BAU extender? Part of the current psychopathy wrecking the planet.
          There are so many better ways to eliminate CO2 and GHG emissions. Sequestration is just a pacifier for the fossil fuel sellers. Why would anyone put up with such shenanigans, let alone pay for them?

          1. “Why would anyone put up with such shenanigans, let alone pay for them?”

            Its what people do.

  24. The AO is predicted to go extremely positive in the coming days, which means an unusually strong polar vortex will build in the Arctic. Consequently, ice-making conditions in Greenland will be ideal to probably restore ice amounts back to long-term averages.

    1. Where would we be without Bob for a laugh now and then?

      In the meantime, I think maybe we have set a record record here locally for the warmest Christmas week ever.

      I’m sure somebody who is handier on computers will post a map showing how it’s going to be super warm on the other side of the world, meaning the average will be moving UP as usual.

      1. The Arctic Oscillation has swung both positive and negative since the 1980’s, a period of time when Greenland ice loss has strongly accelerated. No overall effect on Greenland, although it can have an effect on Arctic Ocean ice loss and temporary weather patterns in the northern hemisphere.

      2. LOL While waiting for your image you might want to note that the highest melt extent over Antarctica in the modern area (>1979) was reached on 24-Dec-2019. And, from Nov 2019 until today, production of melt water is also a record with 230% higher than average. Best go with decade long averages though — if you want meaningful info. 😉

    2. “Consequently, ice-making conditions in Greenland will be ideal to probably restore ice amounts back to long-term averages.”

      Oh good Bob. Thanks for the update.
      So nice to see from the chart that the ‘ice-making’ conditions in January will be considerably better than in September. I was starting to get a little concerned.

      Although, I did stumble across this 40 year data summary than is not so favorable.
      Sorry for the massive contradiction with your 4 month data.
      Very inconvenient (to borrow a phrase).

    3. OMG, is this The Blue Blob Bob making a special appearance!?

      (Church and monastery monk choirs play…)

      Moscow wonders where winter has gone as temperatures hit 133-year high

      “This is not our winter. It came from somewhere else…

      ‘The plants were deceived by this (warm weather) and decided it is spring already, so they are in bloom’, said head gardener Anton Dubenyuk…

      ‘These flowers will certainly not survive when the cold comes. So there will be no spring blossom’, he said.”

  25. Does our throwaway behaviour cost the planet? No, it’s all recycled, right?

    HOW SALES SHOPPING IS KILLING THE PLANET

    “Christmas has passed and New Year is just around the corner. And the sales continue. Things started six weeks before Christmas with Singles Day, which began in China and is now the world’s biggest shopping day. This was followed by Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale, the pre-Christmas sales and now the period of post-Christmas or New Year sales. Soon it will be time for Valentine’s Day sales, Easter sales and so on. The sale events don’t seem to pause but instead persevere throughout the year and in various forms.”

    https://phys.org/news/2019-12-sales-planet.html

    2. “Christmas has passed and New Year is just around the corner. And the sales continue.”

      I do not participate. Period.

      1. Merry Consumermas.

        I’m more of a Festivus guy myself; airing of grievances and feats of strength are far more fun than mindless consumerism.

    1. From your post — islandboy will be especially excited by: “…current bushfires in Australia have already emitted 250 million tonnes of CO₂, almost half of country’s annual emissions in 2018.” 😉

      At the present the concentration of greenhouse gases of just under-500 ppm CO₂-equivalent is activating amplifying feedbacks of greenhouse gases from land, oceans and melting ice sheets, namely further warming:

      1.) An increase in evaporation due to warming of land and oceans leads to further warming due to the greenhouse effect of water vapor but also to increased cloudiness which retards warming. The water vapor factor, significant in the tropics, is somewhat less important in the dry subtropical zones and relatively minor in the Polar Regions.

      2.) The melting of ice sheets, reducing reflective (high-albedo) ice and snow surfaces, and concomitant opening of open water surfaces (heat absorbing low-albedo) is generating a powerful positive (warming) feedback. Hudson (2011) estimates the rise in warming due to total removal of Arctic summer sea ice as approximately +1.0 degrees Celsius.

      3.) The release of methane from melting permafrost and bubbling of methane hydrates from the oceans has already raised atmospheric methane levels from about 800 to 1863 parts per billion which, given the radiative forcing of methane of X25< times, renders methane highly significant.

      4.) As the oceans warm they become less capable of taking up carbon dioxide. As a result, more of our carbon pollution will stay in the atmosphere, exacerbating global warming.

      5.) As tropical and subtropical climate zones overtake temperate Mediterranean-type climate zones, desiccated and burnt vegetation release copious amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. For example the current bushfires in Australia have already emitted 250 million tonnes of CO₂, almost half of country's annual emissions in 2018.

        1. “So, are you are becoming a geo-engineering enthusiast Doug?”

          Hardly. But I expect at some point panic will have humans throwing the whole kitchen sink at Earth’s problems — out of desperation.

          1. Agree. This decade the conversation will get heated, so to speak.
            There might need to be a whole third thread here.
            G-E and B-E

            1. Yes, Dennis Meadows thinks that degrowth and the necessary societal changes are missing factors in reducing the inevitable collapse.
              I try to get people to think about doing things that make a difference now but many think that technology will “save” us.
              The reality is that massive technological changes are generally harmful and fall far short of what is needed to ease our way out of overshoot.
              The environment is so degraded now that we have to go even lower than before. That is the harsh reality we need to face.
              Otherwise it’s fast collapse and who knows what.

            2. Thanks Hightrekker for the link. This was a fantastic podcast. Dennis Meadows predicts peak oil well before 2030. He also likes the term “decline” better than “collapse”.

              Well, the difference between decline and collapse is the steepness of the decline slope. A steep decline slope is the definition of collapse.

              I think it will depend on the country. Many countries are already in a steep decline slope, or in total collapse. But some countries will see a less steep decline slope.

          4. “Hardly. But I expect at some point panic will have humans throwing the whole kitchen sink at Earth’s problems — out of desperation.”

            That panic will be the start of a rapid collapse of civilization. Australia is providing a preview. When does the panic set in there?

            1. James —

              “Australia is providing a preview.”

              I agree, this is from a report I read this morning:

              NEARLY 500 MILLION ANIMALS KILLED IN AUSTRALIAN BUSHFIRES, EXPERTS FEAR

              “The fires have burnt so hot and so fast that there has been significant mortality of animals in the trees, but there is such a big area now that is still on fire and still burning that we will probably never find the bodies… We’ve lost such a massive swathe of known koala habitat that I think we can say without any doubt there will be ongoing declines in koala populations from this point forward.”

              The scorched regions include nature reserves in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and parts of the Gondwana rainforests — which have existed since the time of the dinosaurs and are the most extensive area of subtropical rainforest in the world.

            2. If you’re desiring to be honest, it needs to be pointed out that the mega leftist Greens you sympathize with played a significant role in this catastrophe by halting (for dubious climate related reasons) planned bush burns that had the intent of keeping the fuel load low.

      2. Well in that case volcanos erupt around the world, don’t you know they are a much bigger climate change contributor than anything else? And it’s not like you can do what you want to do to the fossil fuel industries and raise taxes some more until all the world’s volcanos just shut down. So, the only conclusion is there will always be something to pollute the atmosphere, so I guess “we the people” have to completely disappear in order to keep the air pure? That includes you, you know.

        1. Zooks’ Friction and Heat

          And then there’s the concern of the ‘hot air‘ of anthropogenic climate change denialism drive-by’s– possibly partially funded by some kinds of ‘book-cooking‘ by some kinds of ‘heat engines‘ (governments and corporations)– creating fear, uncertainty and/or doubt that places serious drags and friction, and thus yet more heat, against efforts to reduce the effects of what they appear to be helping to increase.

          Irony abounds.

          See also here.

      3. Geoengineering is more an engineers fantasy land than a realistic solution. The problem is that there is no local advantage to most of the projects. Things that incur local costs for global benefit are hard to get going. It’s the tragedy of the commons.

        The best place to sequester carbon dioxide is in topsoil. The top ten or twenty centimeters of soil contain more carbon than the entire atmosphere. Increasing the carbon content of soil a few percent would dramatically reduce the greenhouse effect.

        In addition, healthy soil can build on itself with minimum human intervention.

        So the place to start is erosion prevention. Deserts and flash floods are like the chicken and the egg, it’s hard to guess which came first. Preventing flash floods has obvious local, short term advantages.

        Many regions of the world used to have lots of arable land, but the land has been wrecked for so long that pastoral culture has taken over, and the previous, richer conditions have been completely forgotten. Or the idea simply never occurred to anyone in the first place. For example, Las Vegas gets enough rainfall to cover its water needs, but wastes it all and imports water instead. Flash flooding is viewed as a big “problem” there, instead of being seen as a solution to the city’s water shortages.

        Much of the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and Southern Europe belongs to this category. The American Southwest is also a prime candidate for flash flood prevention. So we’re talking about vast areas.

        The Southern and Western edges of the Arabian peninsula are a great example. The hills there could be restored to arid forests by build hundreds of thousands of check dams. Each little project would have local benefits. But the rulers there have no cultural affinity to this kind of work. Like Americans in the Southwest, they focus on reducing flood damage be speeding up the flow of water downstream instead of slowing it down upstream.

        A good example of the right way to do this are the zai planting pits in Burkina Faso.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNQeP2P0lbA

        1. That area you display in the video [zai planting pits in Burkina Faso] has lots of precip compared to the other deserts you reference. Just look at the trees that have yet to be cut down, as an indicator.
          Areas like these should be managed well, or left alone. They will gradually improve from overgrazing and tree clearing, but this does not solve the carbon problem more than pissing in the ocean. One thousand years of being left to grow without harvest could absorb 4 months of human carbon emissions, or so.
          The efforts you describe should be implemented for other ecological reasons, such as soil and wildlife health, but we shouldn’t expect them to help with carbon balance much.

          Much of the worlds semi-arid zones soils and vegetation have been severely degraded over the last couple thousand years, primarily by tree removal and overgrazing. They won’t be a sink for much carbon.
          Sahel is a prime example- http://theconversation.com/sahel-region-africa-72569
          https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/all-the-warning-signs-are-showing-in-the-sahel-we-must-act-now/

          1. Much of the worlds semi-arid zones soils and vegetation have been severely degraded over the last couple thousand years, primarily by tree removal and overgrazing. They won’t be a sink for much carbon.

            The level of degradation tells us how much carbon is in the soil, but not at what rate the carbon can be absorbed. Trees are a good thing in arid regions. They reduce the wind and the insolation, both of which have a bad effect on bare soil. They also absorb carbon as they grow. The real potential in these areas is in the soil itself. preventing erosion can lead to massive growth in stored carbon there, as well as in the vegetation above it.

            Your links are about politics, not about the carbon content of the soil. Satellite images show that projects to reduce the surface flow of water are widespread in the region. For example, notice the striations in these google images of the area around Gorom-Gorom, in Northern Burkina Faso.

            https://www.google.com/maps/place/Burkina+Faso/@14.3988666,-0.2378047,1070m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0xe2dca26d5a6709b:0x27930aed46836dab!8m2!3d12.238333!4d-1.561593

            These were produced by running a plow on contour once. That’s all it takes to stop erosion and restart the process of soil creation.

            Here is a fresher example from the same region:

            https://www.google.com/maps/place/Burkina+Faso/@14.464751,-0.2313917,535m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0xe2dca26d5a6709b:0x27930aed46836dab!8m2!3d12.238333!4d-1.561593

            It takes a few years for anything noticeable to happen. In this nearby image you can see hand dug zai pits.

            https://www.google.com/maps/place/Burkina+Faso/@14.4708764,-0.2433496,535m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0xe2dca26d5a6709b:0x27930aed46836dab!8m2!3d12.238333!4d-1.561593

            Lots of them.

            Now look at these images from dogo-Dogo, in southern Niger, where it is drier.
            https://www.google.com/maps/place/Niger/@12.9238004,9.3542543,269m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x1199ec7ac6a1af5d:0xc933920a158e24d4!8m2!3d17.607789!4d8.081666

            Zoom in and you will see huge numbers of hand dug planting pits.

            It’s happening. All the fear mongering in the world about Islamic terrorists aren’t stopping it.

            The idea that Yemen, Oman, and Western Arabia are too dry is nonsense, as vidoes like this attest:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dCbFusjIgQ

            There is plenty of water there, but no soil to hold it.

            Flash floods are also common in the supposed deserts of Arizona.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RluoQW0t2yQ

            Notice the huge amount of carbon this flood is carrying with it. Flash floods are a symptom of poor land management. In general, land management in America is pretty bad, and flood prevention mechanisms make it worse.

            There’s no water in Las Vegas, right?

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrkO3uyRWGk

            Wrong. There is more than enough rainfall to support the population, if it were used correctly. Las Vegas get over 10 cm of rain a year, and the area is 352 square km. That’s 35 million cubic meters of water. More than enough to support the population.

            The solution is seen here in Machakos County Kenya.

            https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kenya/@-1.519114,37.480032,1104m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x182780d08350900f:0x403b0eb0a1976dd9!8m2!3d-0.023559!4d37.906193

            Look at the terraces. This is all in the last 20 years or so. If you look carefully you will find lots of “sand dams”, like this:

            https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kenya/@-1.5053833,37.4280524,138m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x182780d08350900f:0x403b0eb0a1976dd9!8m2!3d-0.023559!4d37.906193

            Here is a video about them:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjzcfPax4As

            You can find them in India too, here in Gujarat. The Machundri river has a check dam every half mile or so.

            https://www.google.com/maps/place/India/@20.8275784,71.0264755,4130m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x30635ff06b92b791:0xd78c4fa1854213a6!8m2!3d20.593684!4d78.96288

            https://www.google.com/maps/place/India/@20.8678996,71.0207248,516m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x30635ff06b92b791:0xd78c4fa1854213a6!8m2!3d20.593684!4d78.96288

            All it takes is a few rocks to stop the desert and start the natural process of carbon storage in the soil.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=529YqY2BdoY

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp1nwt_XmY0

            1. I applaud (some of) these efforts,
              but it would be a massive delusion
              to think that these measures would make even the tinniest dent in the the atmospheric levels of carbon.

              btw- I do have a univ degree in plant and soil science, and have lived in arid zones for over 2 decades. So, its a bit more than speculation or magical thinking, that forms the basis of my statements on this.

              geo-engineering our way out of this carbon problem won’t be so easy as replanting vegetation

            3. it would be a massive delusion to think that these measures would make even the tinniest dent in the the atmospheric levels of carbon.

              How big a dent it makes will depend on how much of it is done. That applies to any measure that is taken to influence the carbon content of the atmosphere. There is certainly plenty of capacity in topsoil to absorb all the carbon that is needed, so I don’t see any justification for your comment.

              The key point here is that these projects are worth investing in from the strictly local point of view. That is why the practice is spreading. Geoengineering efforts that only make sense on a global scale seem to me to be much less likely to be implemented.

              These projects also have the advantage of being self sustained. They require no maintenance, and improve by themselves. No mechanical system of geoengineering has that advantage.

              Here are some demi-lunes (half crescents) in Loga, Niger. All dug by hand in hard baked clay soil. Seems to be worth someone’s time.

              https://www.google.com/maps/place/Loga,+Niger/@13.6218961,3.2390719,1074m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x11c5860b4ead729d:0xeb90621ce27ea403!8m2!3d13.6124517!4d3.2357376

            4. To sequester carbon in a biome, the first step is capture via photosynthesis. The Net Primary Productivity (NPP) is a measure of the natural capacity to accomplish this.
              NPP for the major earth biomes-
              [Average NPP (tons per km2 per year)]
              Algal beds and reefs 2500
              Tropical rainforest 2200
              Swamp and marsh 2000
              Estuaries 1500
              Temperate deciduous forest 1200
              Boreal forest 800
              Cultivated land 650
              Temperate grassland 600
              Continental shelf 360
              Tundra and alpine 140
              Open ocean 125
              Desert and semi-desert 90

              As you can see there is not great capacity in undisturbed desert and semi-arid zones. The only way to alter this significantly is large scale irrigation projects. If you were making a list of a 100 effective ways to sequester carbon, I assert that irrigation projects for the purpose of irrigating the desert and semi-arid zones, and then essentially burying the wood permanently, would be lower than number 100 on the list.

              The second component of sequestering carbon in a biome is prevention of carbon oxidation. That means no burning of the wood or removal of vegetation. No animal grazing (giraffe or hog) or human harvest. No fungal, termite, microbial breakdown. The wood must be held intact. That is why peat zones are such good carbon stores. The wood is preserved in anaerobic conditions underwater most of the time, allowing accumulation.
              Most soils are in rough carbon balance. That which is produced/accumulated, is also broken down. The process of organic matter accumulation is very slow. You don’t want to sterilize the soil to stop decomposition. Please.

              Nigeria, for example, is projected to reach 1 Billion people in 31 years. Do you really think there will be a way to keep them from using the vegetation from these zones for cooking fuel, direct food harvest or grazing? The same applies to all these marginal subtropical and arid zones. More likely, the trend will accelerate, with humans gathering as much carbon unto themselves as they can manage (and oxidizing it for energy one way or another).

            5. The only way to alter this significantly is large scale irrigation projects.

              I doubt this. That was the point to the post. There is plenty of water around, just too much runoff. Irrigation does not stop the runoff problem.

              The second component of sequestering carbon in a biome is prevention of carbon oxidation.

              That is why I recommend sequestering it in the soil, not in trees etc. Carbon buried under a few centimeters of soil doesn’t burn very fast. Fungal and termite breakdown are an issue, but they belong to the ecosystem building built.

              The number you give for the desert is based on the assumption that the desert will continue to suffer from flash floods.

              Most soils are in rough carbon balance.
              Except agricultural land, I guess.

              Anyway an area subject to flash floods (or runoff in general) is constantly having carbon removed from the system.

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORJtxkuD62E

              This also undermines the land’s ability to slow down, catch and store water, causing further flash floods, making it a desert.

              As I said before it is a chicken and egg problem: Which came first, the flash flood or the desert? So quoting desert ability to store carbon doesn’t really make sense in the face of proper land management.

            6. Hickory wrote:
              As you can see there is not great capacity in undisturbed desert and semi-arid zones. The only way to alter this significantly is large scale irrigation projects.

              alimbiquated replied:
              I doubt this. That was the point to the post. There is plenty of water around, just too much runoff. Irrigation does not stop the runoff problem.

              A pox on both your houses. There is not plenty of water for irrigation. Water tables all over the world are dropping because of over irrigation. Entire cities in India are having to truck in drinking water because the water table has dropped so low all the wells are dry. Farmers are committing suicide because there is no water to irrigate their crops.

              The Ogalla aquifer in the USA is now, in many places, 60 meters below its original level. And everywhere it is declining fast.

              Rivers and lakes all over the world are drying up because of over-irrigation. Lake Chad, in North Africa, is now a shallow mudhole less than one-tenth its original size. Tha Aral Sea once the fourth largest lake in the world, supported an enormous fishing industry, is now a dried up salt bed because the Russians diverted its two feeder rivers to irrigate cotton.

              And I could go on and on and on telling you how over-irrigation, in a vain attempt to feed 7.7 billion people and their domestic animals, is killing the environment and dropping the ultimate carrying capacity of the world, but I will stop here.
              There is not plenty of freshwater around. It is fast becoming the world’s most scarce commodity.

              5 Reasons the World is Running Out of Freshwater

            7. alim-
              I can’t help you…
              What kind of work do you do?

              Ron- I couldn’t agree with you more on the water issue- its just one of the reasons Alim’s scheme is fanciful stuff. [pox returned to the senders address-postage paid]

        2. Grassland and Savannah can do a lot more then just trees to harvest sunlight energy, build soil carbon levels, shade the ground and prevent runoff and erosion when the rains do return in seasonally dry areas of our planet. Grasslands have co evolved with the massive herds of herbivores that graze the dry grass and stomp it down during the dry season so that when the rains come the tillers are able to reach sunlight and grow again. Another option to remove the tall dead grass shading out the tillers is to burn it off but this sends loads of carbon up into the air and scorches the homes of the insects and other lifeforms and reduces the capacity of the soil to infiltrate water. Hence all the flooding (waste of water) that happens so often in deserts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vILw12ecPM

      4. We’re Getting a Clearer Picture of the Climate Future — and It’s Not as Bad as It Once Looked
        By David Wallace-Wells

        http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/climate-change-worst-case-scenario-now-looks-unrealistic.html

        For once, the climate news might be better than you thought. It’s certainly better than I’ve thought.

        You may not have noticed it, amid the flood of bad news about the “Emissions Gap” and the collapse of the COP25 climate conference in Madrid, but over the last few weeks a new narrative about the climate future has emerged, on balance encouraging, at least to an alarmist like me. It is this: As best as we can understand and project the medium- and long-term trajectories of energy use and emissions, the window of possible climate futures is probably narrowing, with both the most optimistic scenarios and the most pessimistic ones seeming, now, less likely.

        That narrowing contains both good and bad news — what was recently the best to hope for now seems vanishingly unlikely, and what was the worst to fear much less likely, too.

  28. Looks like Tesla will deliver the first Model 3s in China in a couple of days.

    The first delivery date of the Made-in-China Model 3 marks the 357th day since Tesla and its construction partner started working on the Gigafactory 3 complex, which was then just a plot of land. The speed upon which Gigafactory 3’s Phase 1 zone was completed marks a new record for global automakers currently operating in China.

    https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-mic-model-3-release-date-confirmed/

    Now on to Gigafactory 4 in Berlin!

    1. The choice of burning 200 pounds of coal over the next 1000 miles or 170 pounds of gasoline. Can’t quite make up my mind.

      1. If the best argument you can come up with is an obvious lie, you probably don’t have any good arguments. Maybe you should think about finding a more credible position to defend.

        1. I am not defending a position, just pointing out current reality.
          Reality sucks for those who have techno-religion. Do the calculation yourself, if you are capable.

          1. You most certainly are defending a position.

            Lessee, the average US new car gets 25 MPG. Gasoline weighs about 8.4 lbs/gal. So that’s (1000/25)* 8.4 = 336 lbs / 1000 miles. You claim 170.

            The EPA rates a Tesla Model 3 at 123 MPG. Hard to guess what that means, but it doesn’t sound very promising for your claim, especially since coal plants are significantly more efficient than car engines.

            But Wikipedia says 26 kWh/100 miles of the Model 3. That’s 260 kWh / 1000 miles.

            Howstuffworks says coal produces 2,460 kWh/ton, or 2460/2000 lbs, which is 1,23 kWh/lb. 260*1.23=319.

            But that is based on the false assumption that coal is the only energy source for electricity.

            In America, for example, coal is only about a quarter of the electricity. That brings us down to about 319/4 = 80 lbs/1000 miles. California, the biggest US state market for Teslas, is about 3% coal, so we get about 10 lbs/ 1000 miles. Norway, another big market, is 90% renewable, no domestic coal at all. Germany is about 30% coal, half renewable. And so on.

            Of course, this ignores the fact that comparing the weight of coal to the weight of gasoline doesn’t make a huge amount of sense in carbon terms, because coal contains a lot of stuff that doesn’t burn.

            1. Glad you came around alim, China has a big coal footprint as well as being the largest manufacturer of EV’s and the largest market for EV’s in the world, not just Teslas. The topic was China, not Norway or natural gas burning California.
              You like to globe trot for numbers, cherry pick and make stuff up, but research papers show about 20 percent loss of electric power for charging EV’s, meaning it’s worse than I presented.
              Nothing you said changes the coal powered electric system of China or it’s other burning components.
              Maybe you should use the US gallon, its smaller than the imperial gallon you use.

              But you got me on one thing, I did not use the average US car mpg for China. Darn, haven’t found an average US car yet either. Do you know what make and model that is?
              And I did use a typical EV efficiency but did not include the other losses, which can be up to 34%.

              Missing the point, Alim? World not “green” enough for you?
              Moving from one dirty system to another is just increasing BAU. Even if it ends up being half the GHG at some future time.

              Or haven’t you noticed the continued environmental destruction, increasing loss of species populations across the world, and the increasing GHG plume.
              Maybe those are indicators of what is really going on in this world.

              Let’s look at some good ole Powder River coal, used to power the US grid. 8500 BTU per pound at 30 percent efficiency, 5 percent line loss and 20 percent loss at the EV gives a whopping 0.6 kwh/pound.
              Let’s use your value for a Model 3 of 260 kWh/1000 miles. We get 457 pounds of coal. Using China rates that’s 283 pounds of coal and US rates of 27.8% we get 127 pounds of coal. But not so fast, since we know that due to methane leakage, natural gas is about as bad or worse than coal for GHG, so we are back to China levels or worse in the US for EV’s.

      2. “The choice of burning 200 pounds of coal over the next 1000 miles or 170 pounds of gasoline. Can’t quite make up my mind.”

        You only prove that you do not have a mind which allows you a correct analysis of data…

        1. You prove you can talk but not think. You go with the latest propaganda. Maybe do something that makes a positive difference rather than sweeping the harm under the rug to buy glamorous gizmos.
          China had 65 percent coal in it’s power mix in 2016. Are you saying that EV’s in China do not use electricity from the grid? That would be ridiculous.
          To go 1000 miles takes about 300 kwh plus losses which makes it 330 kwh to be produced. That is about 330 pounds of coal equivalent.
          So pretending that the other sources are “clean” we get 204 pounds of coal in China to run an EV 1000 miles.
          Such a clean green dream.

          Then there is Germany, which is doing a fine job of adding renewable energy but needs to get those nasty coal plants and natural gas plants gone before it can say that EV’s don’t pollute. Maybe by 2040 or 2050.

          Not to worry though, much of the rest of the world is in similar condition. Or like Norway, they export their pollution.

          I don’t have more time to waste here with all the “green believers”, helping with another project that will actually reduce fossil fuel use, no pretend greenwash. Does it right now too, not in the imagined future.

          1. Coal fell from about 37% of Germany’s electricity production to about 30% between 2018 and 2019, thanks to a long overdue correction of the carbon emissions price. Gas was up from 8% to 10%, roughly.

            Total electricity production was down 6%, mostly thanks to decreased electricity exports.

      3. GF-“choice of burning 200 pounds of coal”
        Does your grid electricity contain coal?
        If so, why do you accept that?
        Its a choice that places, and people make.
        2017-
        Indiana 73% coal
        Iowa 44% coal
        Idaho 0% coal
        Calif 0%

        I do acknowledge your point- electric travel from burning coal is no environmental party.

        1. Confused again, Hickory? I know California and China both start with a C but the rest of the letters should be a dead giveaway. The topic started with a Tesla Gigafactory in China, the biggest manufacturer and market for EV’s on the planet. However, coal and natural gas are a big part of the electric power grid there so, all those EV’s end up being about as dirty as ICE’s.

          Not sure what all the flag waving is about for California, it has a dark and polluted underbelly.

            1. Best not to be a successful species since avoiding humans is about impossible now.
              The human war on nature continues:
              https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50816678

              Around here they shoot them and destroy their nests, all official and government sponsored in fact.
              Soon the tables will be turned. 🙂

      4. Gone fishing,

        170 pounds of gasoline would release about 539 pounds of CO2. 170 pounds of gasoline is about 28 gallons of gasoline. So 1000 miles/28 gallons=36 MPG, which is reasonable.
        Note however that to be equivalent to 200 pounds of coal, the car would need to burn 67 pounds of gasoline over 1000 miles or 11 gallons over 1000 miles so an MPG of 90 MPG.

        1. Happy New Year/Decade Dennis. Comparison was between typical EV in China and 35 mpg gasoline ICE in China (or elsewhere).

          200 pounds of coal is about 200 kWh electricity at the customer. Ignoring charging/discharging losses in the EV battery system and other losses, at 0.3 kWh per mile that is 667 miles (Nissan Leaf and other EV efficiency) on pure coal. Since the Chinese power system is about 62 percent coal (ignoring the GHG from the rest of the system) that would be about 1000 miles.
          So, choice of 170 pounds of gasoline or 200 pounds of coal to drive 1000 miles in China.
          BTW, 20 pounds CO2 per gallon of gasoline. US gallons that is.

          So produce 571 pounds of CO2 from a reasonably efficient ICE car or produce 570 pounds of CO2 from coal (coal with a carbon content of 78 percent and a heating value of 14,000 Btu per pound ). Of course lower grade coal will need more mass but have less carbon to burn per pound.

          Point was that the largest manufacturer and market for EV’s on the planet has an electric power system that is producing as much GHG (actually more when other sources of power are taken into account) as a decent ICE. ICE’s can be made more efficient than that.
          Takeaway is that EV’s work great directly off wind and PV power directly, minimal GHG. They don’t do much to reduce GHG using grid power in much of the world.
          So if people want to keep happy motoring for a while they need to go more efficient, drive less and put their EV’s directly on PV.

          Or we can go to steam cars and steam locomotives again, just not worry about it. 🙂

          Just as an aside, the average carbon dioxide emission factors for various coal types is very similar.
          https://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/co2_article/co2.html

  29. CLIMATE CHANGE: 12 YEARS TO SAVE THE PLANET? MAKE THAT 12 MONTHS

    Do you remember the good old days when we had “12 years to save the planet”? Now it seems, there’s a growing consensus that the next 18 [now 12] months will be critical in dealing with the global heating crisis, among other environmental challenges. Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that to keep the rise in global temperatures below 1.5C this century, emissions of carbon dioxide would have to be cut by 45% by 2030. But today, observers recognise that the decisive, political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place will have to happen before the end of next year. The idea that 2020 is a firm deadline was eloquently addressed by one of the world’s top climate scientists, speaking back in 2017. “The climate math is brutally clear: While the world can’t be healed within the next few years, it may be fatally wounded by negligence until 2020,” said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founder and now director emeritus of the Potsdam Climate Institute. THE SENSE THAT THE END OF NEXT YEAR IS THE LAST CHANCE SALOON FOR CLIMATE CHANGE IS BECOMING CLEARER ALL THE TIME.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48964736

    1. Meanwhile, on climate, our leaders have a tendency to make lofty long-term promises but take baby steps to reach them. At the UN climate summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave an explanation for why: They believe technology will pick up the slack. This represents an ideological divide with environmental advocates, who don’t put much stock in the inevitability of technological progress and would rather support fail-safe curbs on consumption now.

      https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-26/future-technology-will-solve-climate-change-don-t-believe-it

      1. Both sides of the climate change debate go much too far overboard with the messages they send out. Instead, there should be a common sense resolution for this. Just like whenever there are 2 sides to an issue that are way off to one side or the other, people dig in and nothing gets done because nothing will change anyone’s mind. Personally I don’t believe in man made climate change but I’m also not crazy enough to go out and cut every tree down on my land just because I can. I would say most people are sensible like this instead of being the irrational idiots that both sides on the climate spectrum like to portray people as.

        1. Charlie —

          “Personally I don’t believe in man made climate change.”

          Then I presume you don’t believe in science, science which has presented overwhelming evidence in favor or climate change. If you do believe in science perhaps you should educate yourself, beginning with the work of Svante Arrhenius, the chemist who became Sweden’s first Nobel prizewinner. You might then move on to the work of James Hansen, an American adjunct professor directing the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of the Earth Institute at Columbia University — for a start.

          1. I can believe in climate change, since the world has gone through ice ages and such. The weathermen on TV say we are still coming out of the last one. Just that humans are too insignificant to make a difference with the climate especially since the forces at play involve enormous bodies out in space. I also live in a place where saying your a believer in man made climate change can be very risky to your career or friendships because its one of those controversial political/religious topics you just don’t want to talk about if you believe differently to what everyone else you know believes.

            1. “I also live in a place where saying your a believer in man made climate change can be very risky to your career or friendships because its one of those controversial political/religious topics you just don’t want to talk about if you believe differently to what everyone else you know believes”

              Sorry you have to live in such a culture. It must be hard to be an independent and analytic thinker in such an environment. Good luck.

            2. It must be hard living is such a backward and oppressive society.

            3. Human activity is not insignificant.
              Just ask the cyanobacteria which caused snowball earth.

        2. Hi Charlie.
          “Personally I don’t believe in man made climate change”
          Its not supposed to be about ‘belief’.
          Preponderance of scientific evidence is enough.
          Like evolution, gravity, plate tectonics, radiation physics, etc.
          Atmospheric science is fairly well developed.
          Read some atmospheric science journals if you are not familiar with the level of science achieved. It is as impressive as any scientific field.
          ex- https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2006JD008079

          “Instead, there should be a common sense resolution for this”
          I like your sentiment. And hope we find some agreeable measures to this inconvenient set of facts.
          First step is to engage in constructive conversation and not just to ignore the issue (as we all prefer to do).

          1. When I was in school, you had to get your parents to sign a permission slip in order to learn evolution. Probably only about 10 % of the students got that; so they went to the library to get evolution lessons taught by a substitute teacher brave enough to do it. for the rest of us, we got to watch Nat’l Geographic films in class.

            1. Interesting. There are those who would like to go back to that policy (or further back).
              VP Pence. Lindsay Graham, et al.

    2. The amount of time left to “save the planet” from climate change has been in constant flux for decades. Reference the pic below. Don’t be foolish.

      1. Alex, the trend was not reversed by the year 2000, therefore this prediction will very likely be true.

        Apparently you thought he meant the flooding and crop failures would arrive by that time. That is not what the author said at all. Perhaps you need to brush up on your reading comprehension.

        However, there is no time left to save the planet from climate change and global warming. We have already passed the point of no return. In fact, we probably had passed it in 2000.

  31. ANTARCTIC ICE MELT MAY HAVE HIT AN ALL TIME HIGH

    “Antarctic is unfortunately not the only stash of ice to be dealing a with more extreme melt season. Researchers have observed the same phenomenon in Greenland as well. This summer’s melt season set a record for daily ice loss as a result of surface melting. Greenland has been the main contributor to sea level rise. With Antarctica’s ice loss accelerating, we’re starting to get into dangerous territory.”

    antarctic-ice-melt-may-have-hit-an-all-time-high-on-chr-1840679498.html

    1. INSTANTANEOUS ANTARCTIC ICE SHEET MASS LOSS DRIVEN BY THINNING ICE SHELVES

      Plain Language Summary: The Antarctic ice sheet is currently losing mass, but the causes for the mass loss remain unclear. It has been suggested that the reduction in the thickness of the floating ice shelves that surround the ice sheet, for example, due to ocean warming or changes in ocean circulation, may be responsible for some of the observed ice loss. However, this hypothesis has remained untested. Here, we use a state‐of‐the art numerical ice flow model to calculate the direct mass loss due to observed changes in ice shelves between 1994 and 2017. We find that the magnitude and spatial variability of modelled changes of inland ice are in good agreement with observations, suggesting that a substantial portion of the recent ice loss from the grounded Antarctic ice sheet has been driven by changes in its thinning ice shelves. The process we consider (ice shelf buttressing) relates to changes in forces within the ice alone and is therefore effectively instantaneous (i.e., only limited by the speed of stress transition within the ice). Besides providing a possible explanation for a large part of the ongoing mass loss, this finding also shows that we are not protected against the impact of the Antarctic ice sheet on global sea levels by a long response time.

      https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL085027

      1. If for some reason, any reason at all, there’s a significant shift in the prevailing wind patterns around Antarctica or in the near shore ocean currents which results in the movement of water only a degree or two warmer than usual against the ice, it’s game over for the shelves.

        After that…… who can say?

        But one thing is perfectly obvious, even to a layman such as myself.

        The heat energy in the ocean waters just within a couple of hundred miles of the coast line is many times more than what’s needed to melt all the floating or grounded ice without noticeably lowering the temperature of the sea water.

        That floating and grounded ice CAN exist ONLY because there’s not much circulation of warmer water in contact with it.

  32. I’ve been saying all along that our country is engaged in a culture war, that our current political split is all about US versus THEM. I don’t need a doctorate in political science to understand such stuff. It’s obvious to anybody that’s ever spent an evening or two a week reading history……. not just the history of battles and wars, but the history of what BRINGS ABOUT wars.

    This is from a current article in the New Yorker.

    https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/what-it-would-take-for-evangelicals-to-turn-on-president-trump?verso=true

    The crucial question, then, is: What is driving these attitudes? In a forthcoming book, “Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States,” the sociologists Andrew L. Whitehead, a professor at Clemson University, and Samuel L. Perry, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, propose a cultural framework for understanding support for Trumpism that goes beyond religious categories. Through extensive survey work, they discover that an amalgam of cultural beliefs—fusing Christianity with American identity and centered on the belief that America is, and should be, a Christian nation—is a better predictor of support for Trump than economic dissatisfaction, political party, ideology, religion, or a host of other possible determining factors. Whitehead and Perry call this framework “Christian nationalism” and argue that the popularity of these beliefs among white evangelicals explains their support for Trump.

    Notably, Whitehead and Perry find that about a quarter of white evangelicals hold beliefs that do not align with Christian nationalism. They also find that though greater religiosity is correlated with Christian-nationalist beliefs, once those beliefs are accounted for, Americans who engaged in more frequent religious practice—church attendance, prayer, and bible reading—were less likely than their less observant peers to subscribe to political views normally associated with Christian nationalism, such as believing that refugees from the Middle East pose a terrorist threat to the United States, or that illegal immigrants from Mexico are mostly dangerous criminals. In other words, Whitehead and Perry find that the threat to democratic pluralism is not evangelicalism itself but the culture around evangelicalism. The true motivator for Christian nationalists is not actually their religious beliefs but the preservation of a certain kind of social order, one that is threatened by racial minorities, immigrants, and Muslims. “Where Christian nationalists seek to defend particular group boundaries and privileges using Christian language, other religious Americans and fellow Christians who reject Christian nationalism tend to oppose such boundaries and privileges,” they write.

    Their findings highlight serious obstacles for anyone hoping that white evangelicals will abandon Trump, but they also suggest a path forward. Within evangelicalism, cultural influence in the secular world is highly prized as part of advancing the message of Christianity. Christians concerned about Trumpism and worried about the future of their faith, however, may need to turn their focus inward, to reshape the culture of evangelicalism and counter the corrosive influence of Fox News and other demagogic forces that sow division and breed suspicion. Cultural change is daunting—much of what ails the evangelical faithful is not entirely under the control of their leaders—but the challenge is not so different from the one Graham contemplated more than sixty years ago, in the middle of the night, as he launched his movement to unify Christian believers and transform them into a positive force for society.

    Speaking as a person who has lived in the HEART of an evangelical society, as an intergral PART of it, I understand it, in my own opinion, as well or better than anybody.

    If the people who want to live like my parents and grand parents had been left ALONE, rather than forced to give up their culture, we wouldn’t HAVE an orangutan in the WH.

    Sometimes it’s best to think really hard about what you want, because you may get it, and ANYTHING you get will come with strings attached……. strings as sticky and dangerous as the strands of the webs of the giant spiders that captured the drawfs in The Hobbit.

    It might have been better, long term, to have moved a little slower. In ten more years, most of the hard core right wing voters will either be dead or on the government safety net themselves, PERSONALLY, and the transition to a better society might have gone smoothly.

    It may yet turn out ok, but otoh, remember the story about the single horse shoe nail that resulted in the loss of the kingdom.

    What we MIGHT lose as the result of the orangutan being in the WH is the environmental culture war, or an actual WWIII.

    We will either go proactive in a big way, on the LEVIATHAN scale, or the baked in hard crash is not just going to be killing off large portions of the biosphere and humanity. It’s going to be a crash and BURN scenario, and there might not be a whole lot left that can be recognized as modern civilization.

    The world is a fucking powder keg, just as it was prior to the assassination that resulted in touching off WWI.

    With better luck , that war might have been avoided, and if it had, WWII might have been avoided as well.

    Of course it might be TOO LATE ANYWAY, and maybe the overshoot crash and burn scenario favored by Ron and some others here is not a question of IF but rather a question of WHEN.

    I strongly recommend that every body sacrifice a calf or a goat or at least a CHICKEN to the Sky Daddy or Sky Mommy or ROCK or SNAKE or whatever of his or her own personal choice, in hopes that we get a non stop series of Pearl Harbor Wake Up Events.

    I can’t see anything else resulting in getting our collective attention to a degree sufficient to prod the people of the world, and the LEVIATHANS of the world, into going proactive on the grand scale.

    1. If the people who want to live like my parents and grand parents had been left ALONE, rather than forced to give up their culture, we wouldn’t HAVE an orangutan in the WH.

      What culture were they forced to give up, and forced by whom?

      1. I really can’t think of any reason why people should get to vote again, if they voted for trump before. Regardless of religious or other excuse.

        [I’ve got my own excuses for saying this]

      2. If you have to ask, you’re(rhetorical you ) too goddamned stupid to bother trying to explain it to you.
        But I long ago came to understand that out of a hundred liberal acquaintances, not more than one or two can get his head around the possibility that maybe change has been FORCED on half the country TOO FAST by way of the courts, rather than the ballot box, which bottom line, is the reason we have an orangutan in the WH and moscow mitch running the senate.

        SURE going a decade or two slower, taking a decade or two longer, would have meant that a lot of people would have had to deal with being treated like trash that much longer.
        But suppose the orangutan manages to pack the federal courts with little orangutans to the point that all the gains made are at risk? Or that it fucks up so bad playing cowboy that it starts WWIII?

        There’s ALWAYS a bigger box, a bigger picture, a need to step back even FARTHER, and consider all the possible consequences of any given act or action.

        In another ten years, a huge chunk of the orangutan’s foot soldier base will be DEAD, where as the foot soldier base of the D Party will have grown ENORMOUSLY. Victory could have come more gradually, and more by the way of the ballot box.

        I understand that most people who read this comment will be unable to get their head around the fact that I’m not arguing EITHER side, I’m just trying to get people to understand that there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
        The liberal camp tried to skin this particular conservative cat before it was DEAD, and it has scratched the living shit out of the liberal camp……… by way of electing the orangutan.

        The D’s did all they could to help define deviancy down when they defended Clinton for lying under oath, which IS A fucking perfectly satisfactory reason for being kicked out of office, in case you happen to believe in the rule of law. If I’m caught lying under oath, PERSONALLY, not rhetorically, I AM GOING TO JAIL for that offense.

        All the people I know who are hard core conservatives who ALSO read a paper occasionally know HRC ran at least ONE scam, that she ran a bimbo squad to cover for Bill, etc.

        And now you fucking asshole hypocrites ( rhetorical not personal ) are going around with your panties in a bunch VIRTUE SIGNALING, as if you invented the very concepts of decency and morality.

        You’re all too fucking STUPID, again rhetorically speaking, this is not personal, to understand that the hard core orangutan base feels perfectly comfortable overlooking THEIR big boy scumbag, because they know VERY well that you overlooked your own scumbags when it suited you for your own purposes.

        UNDERSTANDING the political divide requires that you step back from your own convictions as to what is right and wrong, and look at the big picture, look at the forest, rather than the trees.

        I am NOT defending the orangutan’s voters. I’m trying to get people to understand that when you talk down to them, when you accuse them of being ignorant, racist, stupid, uncultured, inbred, shiftless, superstitious, etc, they take it SERIOUSLY, and they DO have the right to vote, and they DO have a right to their own values and culture.

        I take it that somebody who says something like lock THEM up , or that they shouldn’t be allowed to vote, in the case of Hickory, is simply venting and exaggerating. Otherwise, he’s advocating the same position as the people who kept black people from voting or holding office etc, all thru the Jim Crow era, saying in essence that trump voters ought to be deprived of their citizenship and civil rights.

        THAT’S as scary to me, even scarier, than the orangutan itself, when I get to thinking about it. That’s the route of forcing a literacy test on voters, and rigging the test so they fail it, because you don’t want them voting….. because they’re the opposition.

        And in case anybody thinks I’m making things up about HRC, they’re free to go to the library and read up on Cattle Gate, etc. You don’t have to read it in the FOX press. It’s all covered in the NYT and the Washington Post. Back then I read both these papers pretty much every single day.

        1. OFM, what do you think about the global topsoil loss problem? Some studies say we have about 60 years of soil left at this rate.
          Now that is lot more concerning to me than political shenanigans.

          1. The ignorance in Trumpsters post is the same stupidity that is fighting against birth control and decarbonizing the world.

            My dog lives in the moment and so do the deploriables. They don’t expect to be alive in 60 years, but in white heaven. Fish, your not seeing the forest. Political shenanigans are killing your concerns to try to save the planet.

            When the time comes, the deploriables will be sacrificing those like yourself to the volcano. You need to care because history will repeat itself.

            Your living in the 1930’s Nazi Germany. You just have not figured it out yet.

            1. Nazi Germany was the first country to have animal rights laws, environmental conservation policies and anti-smoking laws.

              So it isn’t quite the same as the”democratic” capitalistic west in the environmental context.

            2. So the Nazis treated dogs better than Jews is your justification, deplorible

            3. Justification for what ?
              All i said is that Nazi Germany had better environmental policies than the OECD countries.

              If you are offended by facts, you should grow up. You are probably twice my age and still act like a 3 year old who has tantrums.

            4. Nazi Germany killed 7 million Jews and started wars invading other countries killing millions of others. Hitler played the economic jobs and disinformation game too. Deplorible

            5. Obviously they had extremely disgusting racial policies. But see how i used the word context, in this conversation the treatment of the environment being the context, not philanthropy. You need to work on your comprehension instead of knee jerk responding.

            6. The conservative elected Trump is separating refugee families and putting them in cages(detainment camps, sound familiar). All OFM can post is his disdain for HRC’s 100k investment 40 years ago. It’s a political distract to feed the deploriables. Simular to your animal rights comment.

            7. “environmental conservation policies ”
              They didn’t give a fuck about that.
              They turned Europe in a wasteland, strewn with chemical waste, metal fragments, and little tiny pieces of carcass- human and animal.
              Environmental disasters get no worse than what they did.
              Mike.

            8. “Your living in the 1930’s Nazi Germany. You just have not figured it out yet.”
              I know, have known for a long time.
              shenanigans: secret or dishonest activity or maneuvering.

              History will not repeat itself, not this time. Human control is dissipating, though the struggle for control will go on for a little longer.

              Don’t be afraid. People are only fearful if they have not faced their fears or lived their lives.

        2. Hi OFM. In case you read this
          “the route of forcing a literacy test on voters, and rigging the test so they fail it, because you don’t want them voting….. because they’re the opposition. ”

          Thats not the path I would advocate. A test to vote would be designed just to confirm some basic awareness of history and science. Not to pick an ideology or party, in fact the goal should be the opposite. It takes some degree of intelligence, and caring enough about the collective society to learn a little, to participate in preserving a democracy.
          I would like to know if a potential voter could sort through the news and pick out what is real.
          I am confident you could make a good simple fair test.

  33. Hydropower, the clean green energy. It should be it’s water, right? Not quite. How about 273 gCO2eq if you look at specific methane molecules over 100 years. Much higher if one looks at the current timeframe. 615 gCO2e at the end of the first year.

    Global warming is accelerating and the world urgently needs a shift to clean and renewable energy. Hydropower is currently the largest renewable source of electricity, but its contribution to climate change mitigation is not yet fully understood. Hydroelectric reservoirs are a source of biogenic greenhouse gases and in individual cases can reach the same emission rates as thermal power plants. Little is known about the severity of their emissions at the global scale. Here we show that the carbon footprint of hydropower is far higher than previously assumed, with a global average of 173 kg CO2 and 2.95 kg CH4 emitted per MWh of electricity produced. This results in a combined average carbon footprint of 273 kg CO2e/MWh when using the global warming potential over a time horizon of 100 years (GWP100). Nonetheless, this is still below that of fossil energy sources without the use of carbon capture and sequestration technologies. We identified the dams most promising for capturing methane for use as alternative energy source. The spread among the ~1500 hydropower plants analysed in this study is large and highlights the importance of case-by-case examinations.

    https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0161947

    So that makes an EV running on hydropower have a CO2 footprint of 91 g/mile to 205 g/mile depending on your timeframe. Consider that a 2018 Toyota Camry had tailpipe emissions of 189 g/mile (plus a chunk of upstream emissions). The EV on hydro is slightly better than an ICE car. Hybrids do better.

    But of course the EV meets emission standards because the emissions are far away, out of sight.

    Don’t get me started on the emissions around renewable bioenergy.

    1. I don’t know anything about the efficiency of hydro but along the Columbia River here in the Pacific Northwest, more than $7 billion has been spent since the 1950s on efforts to save salmon species by stock enhancement, constructing fish-ways such as ladders or steps, screening irrigation diversions, rehabilitating habitat, and providing downstream passage. Even so, we still rely on hatchery production along the river to save species from extinction. It’s the same story for most of our local rivers which have been converted from pristine ecological gems to chains of sterile lakes. And, that’s the short version of my anti-hydro rant.

      1. The young salmon were normally carried down river by current. With all the still water backed up behind dams, they have to work hard and expend too much energy, often dying.

        The Americas were robust with life when the Europeans first started settling the continents. Apparently humans can live for thousands of years in a place and not destroy the ecosystem.

        “the king (or Chinook) and silver (coho) salmon, along with the steel- head trout were … They were sometimes so plentiful that nineteenth-century settlers complained that their horses would not cross shallows because they were scared”

        https://books.google.com/books?id=4ydD1oPaDA4C&pg=PA233&lpg=PA233&dq=salmon+so+plentiful+it+scared+the+horses&source=bl&ots=Y8bKvAH6Cb&sig=ACfU3U2a8hez3eSrUuXw18XoRXXwEZIGIw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi51r733d3mAhVNJt8KHf86BUMQ6AEwCXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=salmon%20so%20plentiful%20it%20scared%20the%20horses&f=false

  34. CAN WE (WILL WE) BEAT THIS NUMBER IN 2020?

    Perhaps the most far-reaching change to the planet in 2019 was the continued pumping of carbon into the oceans and atmosphere, which hit a record high this year. According to the Global Carbon Project, human activity — from agriculture to transportation to industry — emitted approximately 43.1 billion tons of carbon in 2019. That makes 2019 a record-setter, breaking the previous high set in 2018. Excess carbon in the atmosphere remains there for decades to centuries, so the emissions released in 2019 will reverberate far into the future.

    1. When self-initiating methane bursts start in the Arctic, we won’t have to concern ourselves with cutting back on carbon emissions. The WE will be so much smaller.

      “those tiny bubbles, make me warm all over”

  35. Here we are, slipping into a NEW DECADE, a decade where nationalism continues to threaten world order, where President Trump has officially started to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement, where Jair Bolsonaro is working hard to open up the Amazon to mega agribusiness, where other economies such as China and India seem to be hiding behind the US retreat to delay bolder climate action.

    But, the BIG question here is: will islandboy soon be treating POB with another glowing report on Australia’s solar energy progress (while that same country solidifies its status as the world’s third-largest exporter of CO2 in fossil fuels, while that country burns to a crisp)? Fiddling with numbers while Australia burns? ?

    1. The other side of that coin (globalisation) is also a threat to the world.

      Lol, the Australia part was funny. But the bushfires here are out of control. It isn’t even close to over yet. I suspects records will be broken.

      1. Iron Mike- do you live in proximity to the fires?
        Living here in California, I’ve come to hate that season, which seems to be growing longer and longer in duration.

    2. I agree Doug, if the Amazon is on fire, democracy around the world is under nuclear exchange. Will you be treating POB with a report ?

      Vote 2020

      1. “Will you be treating POB with a report?”

        LOL, No, not bloody likely. Who would read it? Frankly I’m surprised when anyone reads ANY of my brief comments here.

      2. “Is your news about the climate crisis brought to you by the companies that are causing it?”

        1. Or is your news coming from the 7 billion+ individual humans that are causing this climate crisis?

    3. Hey Doug, Australia is not unique in the struggle between varying internal forces.
      Whether its China, India, Canada, or Australia (to name but a few),
      some people are deeply invested in the fossil fuel industry, and addicted to its products,
      while others are working to get the system (and air) cleaned up.
      I know you are well aware of this,
      but we should guard against demonizing whole countries.
      Even here in the usa, not everyone voted for trump.
      In fact he wouldn’t dare walk down the street in parts of the country where most people live.

      I hope that people living in other countries know how damn embarrassed most of us are for the leader we have.

  36. Oz is burning:

    EMERGENCY WARNING – Clyde Mountain (Eurobodalla LGA)
    If you are N of Moruya River & Mogendoura, it is too late to leave. Seek shelter. Nth Batemans Bay, Surfside, Long Beach, Sth Durras, Maloneys Beach & Long Beach. Monitor for embers.http://ow.ly/6JGY50xKmal #nswfires #nswrfs

    The leader seem as clueless and greedy as Trump- if that is possible.

      1. Bloody grim mate. This just in from the BBC world news: “Thousands of people have fled into the water at a beachside town in Australia to seek shelter from a massive bushfire bearing down on the area. Residents said the blaze moved into the Victorian town of Mallacoota on Tuesday morning, throwing embers towards homes. Online, people reported the “roar” of the fire and posted pictures of a black and then deep-red sky. Several popular holiday spots along the coast between Sydney and Melbourne are currently under threat from bushfires. The most serious “emergency-level” blazes span a 500km stretch from Batemans Bay in New South Wales to Bairnsdale in Victoria.”

        BTW the BBC earlier had a map showing all the major fires in Australia. They seem to be everywhere.

          1. Paul I’ve done some data analysis regarding historical IOD + main Aus cities. I’ll contact you via email if you don’t mind to have a chat.

    1. I think this potential boondoggle is merely the start for harvesting methane hydrates. The extractional mentality will be the death of much of the life on this planet as it continues.
      Problem is we are so deep into dependence that it is difficult for most to think of ways out rather than new ways in deeper.

    1. Thanks Hickory. An excellent report, even if you only look at the pictures/charts!

      1. Thats what I thought too.

        “even if you only look at the pictures”
        We are all experts at that.

    2. Very nice, thanks.
      Got me thinking how battery dependent we have become. The long chain of one thing leading to another.

      1. Unwelcome Guests in Iran, KSA, Libya, Seria, now Iraq, WTF? What the Frack? A Photo to end the Decade. Is the US Embassy in the Green Zone?

      2. Good PV system design works fine when the Batteries are removed. Not Hard to do.

        1. Well, its get dark and cloudy here sometimes, for a week.
          We call it winter.
          And yet still the hospital tries to stay open. Batteries or the grid are paramount to a functional system, if we get real about it.

          1. Ts simple to design to minimize night consumption.
            Lighting takes 1% of watt hours.
            No getting around that chemical watt hours are many times pure PV power. Hospitals are a special case. Dont see going much past 51% pure PV power. Hospitals have stage positive pressure zones. When the batteries fail you want some basic utility. Hot water. Lighting. Etc. A single 2170 will light a hospital room. Our battery install business is up 8 fold this year. Solar 2.0 means battery agnostic. Batteries options are in flux. Most 2019 storage products will not be available in late 2020.

    1. Yep, chaotic weather, massive global rearrangements of ecosystems, fast sinking biodiversity, population reductions, all symptoms of overshoot pushed by increasing use of technology.
      Not much sense in discussing things when this deep in and going deeper, people are taking up cultish positions as they grasp at the technological straws thrown their way.

    2. As someone with a strong geography and agronomy Univ background, I find the work reported in this article to be very credible, and certainly alarming. And this is not a ‘West’ problem. Its all continents to some degree.

      ” NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration…
      The conclusions were shocking. Even under the mildest climate scenario, yields for the six main crops in the US — maize, cotton, sorghum, soybeans, spring wheat and winter wheat — are predicted to decrease 8–19 percent due to climate change between 2050 and 2100. Under the worst-case scenario, crop yield reductions range from 20 to 48 percent over this period.

      Because these impacts are principally related to heat-stress, not water scarcity, the implication is that many food-producing regions in the US could end up being drier due to summer heat even with increases in rainfall. When combined with water scarcity impacts, the potential picture looks catastrophic.”

      “The countries most affected would be China, India, Pakistan and Turkey according to the report, titled Food Security: Near future projections of the impact of drought in Asia, ”
      Thats over 3 Billion people, and many other countries will be similarly affected, such as Mexico.

      Even Australia imported wheat this year due to drought. They have been traditionally an exporter, often large volume.

      Personally, I don’t see this so much as through the lens of climate change, but more through the lens of gross overpopulation. It is overpopulation that has led to all the issues, including carbon emission explosion, after all.

    1. islandboy, glad you’re still here and that Doug Leighton’s consistent and annoying negativity towards you hasn’t driven you away. Happy New Year to you too. Keep the good news coming 🙂

      1. Doug Leighton’s consistent and annoying negativity towards you hasn’t driven you away.

        What in the… Hilarious how you correlate negativity with reality, which is part of the problem of todays world, people are too gutless to face what we humans are doing, hence any real change wouldn’t happen, just BAU in a different form.

        Anyways would you like us to provide you with a safe space so you wouldn’t be annoyed by reality?

        1. Iron Mike, I don’t need a safe space, but thanks. Yes, Doug points out the negative and we need to know how bad it is. But islandboy does us a favour by pointing out the positive and the (exponential) progress. Doug is so dismissive, if not mocking, towards him and his efforts. I’d like islandboy to know he’s appreciated 🙂

          PS Solar PV is now 2.4% of global electricity (REN21), with a CAGR of 39.9% since 2001. If that rate holds, it will be 25+% in 10 years time…

          Edit: above should be 67+% in 10 years time
          Edit 2: However, solar growth rate has slowed, so from 2011 the CAGR is 31+%. If that rate holds, solar will be 37+% of global electricity in 10 years time. Either way, these are big numbers!

          1. Yes, solar PV has made lots of people money and increased global industrialization. Some people (media) say that the future of the world depends upon PV (I disagree, whole other topic).
            Solar PV produced 706 TWh in 2019 compared to 53,218 TWh from oil. For Solar to produce even 25% of oil energy it will have to increase by 19 times current production. At around that time it will have enough energy to run the current land transport sector. It will also be equal to about one third of global electric production. However the transport sector will not be fully electrified by then, so most likely much of the electricity will be put to cooling, heating and toasters/coffeemakers.
            Assuming integration and storage grow along with it.
            Electric production is growing fast, 4 percent growth in 2018.

            Here is a neat video showing global energy production over the years.
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELYeTo2HqYY

        2. “how do you correlate negativity with reality”

          For the cornucopians it seems that perhaps reflecting on information and predicting the future is an exercise in normativity. Hence the use of words like ‘negativity’ and poorly reasoned master-slave analogies applied to those who are more self reliant. Hell, you might even get a psych diagnosis if you spit out tech daddy’s Kool-Aid.
          It’s hard for people, especially former computer salesmen it seems, to admit to themselves that they need to prepare for a future adversity that tech Daddy can’t fix.

      1. I would like to take you up on the kind offer Iron Mike. Very much so.
        Is delivery included, or do I need to provide my own transportation?

        “Anyways would you like us to provide you with a safe space so you wouldn’t be annoyed by reality?”

    3. Thanks IslandBoy. Happy New Year to you too. Thanks for doing up energy articles on POB like you do. I really appreciate the value of the information published here. Thanks so much for being a big part of that.

  43. The Compost Bomb.

    Methane – The Bigger Picture in Climate Change
    Dr. Richard Nolthenius – Chair of the Dept of Astronomy at Cabrillo College, California – gives a 17 minute talk on Nov 8, 2019 at the Erica Schilling Auditorium at Cabrillo College. This followed the showing of the new documentary “Blowout” by AK Productions on the dangers of fracking in the U.S. to ground water and greenhouse gas emissions. Dr. Nolthenius’ Presentation puts methane emissions into the larger context of future climate change. It includes the implications of how new determinations of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) will accelerate methane emissions from wetlands and thawing permafrost, triggering climate tipping points. It discusses subsea methane hydrates stability, the Compost Bomb Instability, and also how fracking will adversely affect the ability to permanently sequester CO2 underground.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYxrTNSG2E0

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