72 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, January 1, 2021”

  1. My biggest worry right now is what to do about the tsunami of the unemployed plus the rising food prices (h/t Mr Norris ) . How long can the West continue keep on providing FOC (Free Of Cost) wages to the public so they watch Netflix ? Reporting about India . All the budgetary expenditure for FY 2021 has already been exhausted in 2020 . Unemployed are anything from 400 -600 million . If you fine tune , all low CAPEX small businesses ( Pita kebabs , book stalls , barbers ,beauty salons etc ) are wiped out which served as an entry to the ” self employed ” . It is a recipe for a social churning .

    1. Yes to your comment and would like to add how the pandemic drop in employment just hastened the inevitable of so much work off shored, A1, robotics, online, and rapid technological change.

      I have always believed that most people like to work, find identity in what they accomplish, and strive to do a good job if given the chance. There is enough wealth out there if we measure it it in goods produced, but the idea of sharing doesn’t fit our culture or politics. I’m looking forward to seeing the movie Nomadland when it comes out this February. It seems appropriate to the times.

      regards

    2. This situation will not be resolved in any meaningful way without far reaching reforms in medicine and health care. The profit driven model of health care as practiced in the USA is not producing helpful outcomes. There is something extremely strange going on. Why was the following headline from Australia not the leading news around the world when it came out a month ago?

      COVID patient with sepsis makes ‘remarkable’ recovery following megadose of vitamin C | ABC News

      I suspect that this same treatment strategy could produce favorable outcomes for any individual requiring hospitalization as a result of COVID-19. This would completely change the course of the pandemic and health care in general. With the pandemic behind us, the small businesses that have been savaged by the pandemic have some hope of returning without fear of similar scenarios in the future.

      1. “I suspect that this same treatment strategy could produce favorable outcomes for any individual requiring hospitalization as a result of COVID-19.”

        Please summarize your credentials respecting medical research and treatment options when offering an opinion on appropriate ways of dealing with COVID-19. Surely this isn’t asking too much especially when there are many thousands of highly qualified professionals around the world who’ve devoted themselves to finding a cure for this disease. If you do have a case, perhaps you can talk your closest local research hospital into doing a controlled test — under appropriate oversight.

        1. Suit yourself if you think that the general medical consensus, that you should just isolate, quarantine, get lots of rest, stay hydrated and hope for the best, in the event that one contracts COVID-19 is sound advice!

          My mental state is not particularly good at the moment with a general state of depression setting in. I have zero medical credentials but a great deal of incredulity in the idea that decades of research into natural cures have failed to produce much in the way of effective treatments is a mere coincidence. I am fairly confident that my measures to bolster my immune system will continue to protect me.

          Below is a list of doctors who’s work advises my opinions:
          Dr. Fredeick R. Klenner (deceased)
          Dr. Robert F. Cathcart (deceased)
          Dr. Thomas E. Levy
          Dr. Ronald E. Hunninghake
          Dr. Michael F. Holick
          Dr. Ian E. Brighthope (Australia)

          Information on all of the above doctors can be found at the following link:
          Orthomolecular Medicine Directory

          Doctors who’s work I find of interest that are not members of the group above:
          Dr. Alpha Fowler
          Dr. Anitra Carr (New Zealand)
          Dr. Paul Marik
          Dr. Josepeh Varon
          Dr. Pierre Kory
          Dr. Rinaldo Bellomo (Australia)

          The last four in the list can be credited with saving hundreds of lives between them since the beginning of the pandemic. By the way Doug, did you even bother to view the video in the link I provide in my original post? Have you got your vaccine yet?

          1. Keep your spirits up old boy, can’t fight effectively for your beliefs if you’re down in the dumps. The primary motivation for my comments is that your claims sometimes seem disrespectful to the thousands of scientists, researchers and healthcare workers working their hearts out to deal with and find a cure for COVID 19. Claiming ignored-cures doesn’t work for me when there are so many fighting and dying in the trenches. Enough said, let’s move on.

            1. Well whadaya know? My spirits got lifted today! There’s a doctor who writes a column for the older of the two local daily newspapers who I had sent an email in response to a column he wrote a couple weeks ago. To my surprise I see a column in today’s edition of the paper under the headline “Garth Rattray | Consider Ivermectin for COVID-19 treatment” ! The column concludes

              The data shows that Ivermectin appears to be a huge game changer in the war against COVID-19. It avoids progression to the hyper-inflammatory phase and facilitates recovery in critically ill patients. It represents a viable bridge to vaccination. Currently, we can only offer supportive treatment at home and variably effective treatment in hospitals. There is nothing to lose and a lot to gain by significantly increasing the availability of Ivermectin for the [current] off-label use in the treatment of COVID-19.

              Garth A. Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice.

              There’s a whole bunch of information in that column that goes way beyond what I sent in my email. He obviously researched and thought it had merit! Here’s hoping that lower cost alternatives that are easier to deploy will prevail!

          2. Fear Factory

            “My mental state is not particularly good at the moment with a general state of depression setting in.” ~ Islandboy

            Crushing isn’t it? Hang in there, Alan.

            I’m having some little ‘epiphanies’ this week, one which I’ll share with you is the idea of the disease-ification or medicalization of fear as a form of population control.

            Fear is, of course, greatly used for control, and this medical/disease angle is a pretty effective form.

            It is not so much conspiracy as more of an interplay dynamic between that and many simply going with the flow, irrespective of which end (giving/receiving/both) of fear they may be on.

    3. I am thinking, perhaps hoping, that the oil depletion, economic and related issues are going to slowly but surely turn many more of us into farmers (again). If so, maybe we can do it much better (ethically, etc.) this time around.

      See also here.

      “To turn the world into a dependency on staples has nothing to do with feeding the world, it has a lot to do with controlling the food supply. The United States evolved a phrase during the Vietnam war, and the phrase was; ‘Food as a weapon’; the use of food as the ultimate weapon of control. And the tragedy is, the growth of agribusiness in the US has gone hand-in-hand with the US foreign policy to deliberately create hunger locally in order to make the world dependent on food supplies, through which you can then control countries and their decision-making ability. So hunger has become an instrument of war.” ~ Vandana Shiva

  2. Paulo, we are on the same page . It is work that gives us identity . When we meet a stranger the conversation starts at : What is your name ? From where do you come ? What do you do ? . If you cannot have an answer to number 3 then the conversation stops . The rise of Hitler was a combination of high inflation plus high youth unemployment in Germany during those years . Such a social environment allows authorisms and erosion of civil liberties . Terrible era for the youth .

    1. “I have always believed that most people like to work, find identity in what they accomplish, and strive to do a good job if given the chance.”

      “Paulo, we are on the same page . It is work that gives us identity .”

      I have frequently remarked that maybe the biggest single discrete intellectual failing of liberals and well educated people is that they don’t have a clue when it comes to understanding ignorant people and the underclass.

      Fate dealt me a hand such that I have lived for many years in intimate contact with both classes and the variants thereof.

      I assure you guys that when formerly self supporting middle class people have to go on relief they do want to go back to work.

      But when rednecks and underclass people get a relief check of any sort, they do damned near ANYTHING possible to keep getting it. If they do go back to work, it’s generally in the black or gray market.

      1. Well, why do you think that is? Is it that the work is different (more physical, less secure, etc) or is it that the people’s attitudes are different (kind’ve like the things conservatives like to say about people being lazy)?

        1. Hi Nick,
          Have a computer issue.
          Will get back to you when it’s fixed.

        2. It’s a combination of necessity, opportunity, greed, laziness, resentment aka class warfare, plain old common sense, clear thinking, moral or if you prefer lack of moral reasoning, I could go on all day.

          These examples, with no names given,are real life acquaintances who happen to live in my immediate neighborhood, all people who are well known to me, long term, with one exception, the first one.

          Woman known personally to my sister who got permanent disability due to working and threatened at post office.

          Was well paid in relation to responsibilities, etc. Would be perfectly capable of holding any similar no public contact job. Perfectly happy to stay home, socialize with her friends, not bothering to work again. DOES NOT FEEL ANY GUILT. ZIP. NADA.

          Now this may be hard for a libtard ( sarcasm as well as criticism fully intended) to get his or her head around it, but such a person looks at this as a MATTER OF GOOD LUCK…. such as being born to parents with money, or being beautiful or handsome, etc. Make what you will of it, but I know more people like this than you would ever believe…….. because I live in the heart of the country where countless people vote for trump and live on one sort or another of welfare.Hardly any of them know that I’m a libtard myself, lol.

          More later.

          1. got permanent disability due to working and threatened at post office.

            That’s not clear to me. How did she get disability based on being threatened?

      2. I just like working, to be honest. I’ve been retired now for 8 years. I still measure every day by what I got done, and did I enjoy it? The only difference is the freedom to choose what and when. This also dovetails into the above comments about healthcare. I’m 65, but my neighbour is 94 and my tenant/friend is 80. The 94 fellow gets out and limps around several times a day. I till his garden up for him every spring and every year he puts in about 1/4 acre of veggies plus runs a big greenhouse. He makes wine and cuts his own firewood. My 80 year old buddy has spent the last 15 years mostly watching tv from a recliner. I give him another year until he needs a walker or simply packs it in. I made his house as friendly and safe as I can, but have given up on urging him to ‘get up and move’. He has been driving to the mailbox forever.

        I think 1/2 the battle is to stay active, and work the grey matter between our ears. Now, back to the shop!! I’m building a butcher block table for my son out of eastern hard maple. It’s looking pretty good. 3″ thick top, edge grain. Mortise and tenon.

        One thing I’ve noticed with Covid is how many older folks are out walking around for exercise. It has been one positive result of this nightmare year. We just got back from our walk.

        Take care you guys.

    2. Meaningful Work Requires A Meaningful Society: We Have Neither

      “It is work that gives us identity.” ~ Hole In Head

      Then we’ve lost our identities.

      Kid: ‘Daddy? Why are there rich people?’
      Dad: ‘What do you mean by rich? You mean like in spirit?’
      Kid: ‘No-o-o-o-o… Like they have lots of big houses and cars and money!’
      Dad: ‘Ohhh, you mean those kinds. Well, you see, sweetie, our society allows some people to make more money than other people, working no harder that anyone else. Society then allows those with more money to acquire more land [etc.] than others. Over time, this creates the dynamic for most, if not all, problems we have in society today, from landlessness, homelessness and poverty, to social unrest, war and civilizational collapse.’
      Kid: ‘Why does society allow that?!’
      Dad: ‘Corruption. Society uses force to uphold the laws that say that one person with more money can have more land than another with less money.’
      Kid: ‘Why can’t we stop that!?’
      Dad: ‘Corruption again: This setup is upheld by people with guns and weapons, or access to them, like cops, security guards and military people– people who often don’t understand this basic and very simple immoral core of our society.’
      Kid: ‘ 🙁 ‘
      Dad: ‘Ya; 🙁 ‘

      “You often need money to change things. But most ways of acquiring it require you to compromise on your ideals. We can do better than that.” ~ Peter Sunde

      “If you still have a job, get everything in order, and quit. Do it as soon as you can, because we’ve never had a more important work to do.” ~ Kyle Chamberlin

      “Derrick Jensen: ‘What is capitalism? And what’s wrong with capitalism?’
      Stephanie McMillan: ‘Capitalism is a form of class society which has come to dominate the entire world in one global system, where the whole of social production is done for the benefit of only a few… what makes capitalism different from previous forms is the way that wealth is accumulated, which is through the exploitation of labour and the process of the production of commodities: Workers are not payed the full value of their labour; they produce more value than they receive as wages, and that extra labour power, which is stolen by the capitalist and is called ‘surplus value’, is embodied in the commodities, and realized as profit when those are sold and reinvested as new capital…’
      Jensen: ‘…Give an example?’
      McMillan: ‘You’re working for $10 an hour and you’re making boxes of frozen waffles. You’re working at a factory. The amount that you’re payed is a wage that corresponds to the working day. So you’re paid… $80 a day, and you produce $80 worth of waffles in an hour, let’s say. So the whole rest of the day, you’re producing waffles for free. The value of those waffles belongs to the capitalist,it doesn’t belong to you who made them… You’ve produced that much surplus value for the capitalist.‘ ”

      “People who dismiss the unemployed and dependent as ‘parasites’ fail to understand economics and parasitism. A successful parasite is one that is not recognized by its host, one that can make its host work for it without appearing as a burden. Such is the ruling class in a capitalistic society.” ~ Jason Read

      “The pupil is thereby ‘schooled’ to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is ‘schooled’ to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question.” ~ Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

      “Did you know that before the Industrial Revolution, the average person worked for about two or three hours a day? Studies from a wide range of pre-industrial civilisations show similar data– it takes only about fifteen hours a week to provide for all of our basic human needs</strong?. And that's using hand tools." ~ Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton

      "Using the data provided by the United State Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erik Rauch has estimated productivity to have increased by nearly 400%. Says, Rauch:
      '… if productivity means anything at all,       a worker should be able to earn the same standard of living as a 1950 worker in only 11 hours per week.’
      …Since the 1960s, the consensus among researchers (anthropologists, historians, sociologists), has been that early hunter-gatherer societies enjoyed much more leisure time than is permitted by capitalist and agricultural societies…” ~ Wikipedia

      “The important thing to understand about collapse is that it’s brought on by overreach and overstretch, and people being zealots and trying too hard. It’s not brought on by people being laid back and doing the absolute minimum. Americans could very easily feed themselves and clothe themselves and have a place to live, working maybe 100 days a year. You know, it’s a rich country in terms of resources. There’s really no reason to work more than maybe a third of your time. And that’s sort of a standard pattern in the world. But if you want to build a huge empire and have endless economic growth, and have the largest number of billionaires on the planet, then you have to work over 40 hours a week all the time, and if you don’t, then you’re in danger of going bankrupt. So that’s the predicament that people have ended up in. Now, the cure of course is not to do the same thing even harder… what people have to get used to is the idea that most things aren’t worth doing anyway…” ~ Dmitry Orlov

      “We live in an economy which takes 80% of our each new generation and educates that 80% to obey orders and to endure boredom, and stifles their creativity, and stifles their capacities, and curtails them. They’re systematically crushed by a system which does what? Which fills slots, and 80% of the slots need people who just do rote tedious repetitive labour at least at work, and therefore are acclimated to doing that…
      If you’re callous to the effects on others, you have a potential to rise. The odds are that you can ‘compete’ your way up. If you care and are socially concerned about others, you’re at a tremendous disadvantage. So I think the competitive dynamic that we have does sort of weed out a set of people for success. But I would say that what it weeds out for success is not competence, not creativity, not intelligence, but callousness far more often.” ~ Michael Albert

      “… So money goes toward those who will create even more of it. But, basically economic growth means that you have to find something that was once nature and make it into a good, or was once a gift-relationship and make it into a service. You have to find something that people once got for free or did for themselves or for each other, and then take it away and sell it back to them, somehow. By turning things into commodities, we get cut off from nature in the same ways we are cut off from community.” ~ Charles Eisenstein

      “These movements, which are engaging in massive forms of collective resistance, are aiming to destroy the structures and ideological plague of neoliberal global capitalism, with its relentless attacks on public goods, unions, social provisions and the ecosystem, as well as its relentless drive to privatize everything and turn all social relations into commercial transactions.” ~ Henry A. Giroux

      “Here’s good advice for practice: go into partnership with nature; she does more than half the work and asks none of the fee.” ~ Martin H. Fischer

    1. Fake meat?

      We are on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most consequential disruption of agriculture in history.
      By 2030, the number of cows in the U.S. will have fallen by 50% and the cattle farming industry will be all but bankrupt. …

      Rethinking Food and Agriculture shows how the modern food disruption, made possible by rapid advances in precision biology and an entirely new model of production we call Food-as-Software…

      RethinkX:
      https://www.rethinkx.com/food-and-agriculture

      1. Mr Norris , fake meat is just that ” fake meat ” . Period . How long will this fraud last just like Tesla , WeWork ,etc .? I have no answer beyond that shale was called by Art Berman a Ponzi in 2010 and it is still running in 2021 although now in the end phase .

        1. Practically the entire society is a ‘fraud’.

          The Golden Rule of Technological Progress: Innovation Doesn’t Solve Problems, It Creates Them

          “There is something badly wrong with the way we approach what we call ‘problems’ and our naive faith in technology becomes more and more pathetic. And now we are deploying security robots all over the world. Surely a ‘solution’ but it is not so clear what the problem is.

          The story of this silly robot made me think of a post that I published a few months ago where I stated what I called ‘the golden rule of technological innovation’: ‘innovation doesn’t solve problems, it creates them’. And the more I think about that, the more I think it is true.”

  5. Good news entering 2021. Now, will (we make) it materialize, or not?

    GLOBAL WARMING COULD STOP RELATIVELY QUICKLY AFTER EMISSIONS GO TO ZERO

    “The idea that global warming could stop relatively quickly after emissions go to zero was described as a “game-changing new scientific understanding” by Covering Climate Now, a collaboration of news organizations covering climate…

    “This really is true. It is a dramatic change in the paradigm that has been lost on many who cover this issue, perhaps because it hasn’t been well explained by the scientific community. It’s an important development that is still under appreciated. It’s definitely the scientific consensus now that warming stabilizes quickly, within 10 years, of emissions going to zero.”

    https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03012021/five-aspects-climate-change-2020/

      1. Well, our planet is currently committed to warming in excess of 2 degrees C from greenhouse gases that have already been added to the atmosphere. This is the conclusion of new research by scientists from Nanjing University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Texas A&M University which appears in the latest edition of Nature Climate Change. That’s bad enough.

        Regarding your question, my understanding is that future positive feedbacks from decreased cloud cover in the southern hemisphere is the biggest unknown at present. Feedbacks are indeed a tricky issue — in any system

      2. Positive feedbacks is laughable because sum it all up, and trace gases + trace gases = trace gases. No reason to worry about what isn’t a consequence to your life.

        1. Stupid comment, please go elsewhere, maybe the nearest Jehovah’s Witnesses Hall would would welcome you. Better yet, replace the salt in your shaker with ricin, obviously harmless because it comes from castor beans and a few grains can’t hurt, right Shiloh?.

          DISCLAIMER for the intelligent: A dose ricin the size of a single grain of sand is enough to kill. The toxin works by inactivating ribosomes and halting protein production, which is ultimately a lethal problem. There is no antidote.

          1. I personally prefer the greenhouse analogy, a.k.a. the thickness of glass of the greenhouse is negligible compared to the thickness of the atmosphere, thus the greenhouse must be useless.

            1. Yes, better analogy. Thanks. However, the way the Earth and its atmosphere work to stay warm is different from the way a greenhouse functions, so the term “greenhouse effect” is a bit misleading.

              You can think of extra emissions as significantly adding to the existing blanket of greenhouse gases around Earth. Since 1870, we have effectively created an extra blanket of CO2 that if wrapped around Earth’s surface, it would be over 2.5 m tall and weigh roughly 2.5 trillion tonnes. For every bit of heat created when we burn fossil fuels, 100,000 times more heat will be captured in the atmosphere due to the CO2 released.

          2. One could run the same experiment using LSD and get a vivid, but less grave lesson.
            For a ~160lb person, a 60μg dose is about 0.8 parts per billion, so a bit more trace than 400ppm of atmospheric CO2.

            Also, where does oxygen come from? Hard to argue against its value to our species, but how is it produced Shiloh?

            1. The Kiss of Treachery: The Science & Trappings of Civilization, Filtered Through ‘The Mob‘ (As Large-Scale Centralized Coercive Governance-Business)

              And yet you and/or others talk about tech-stocks in the ‘casinos’, cars, batteries, photovoltaic panels and other assorted crony-capitalist techno-detritus, and then ‘laugh’ at the news of some of it killing wildlife?

              Maybe the notions/attitudes of some people have more in common with, or are far worse than, Shiloh Pacheco’s than they realize?

              Again…

              The cure is indeed worse than the disease (or maybe they are similar, effectively canceling any supposed cure out?) if the former’s systemic foundation is essentially ultimately predicated on– ‘filtered through’– the destruction of the living planet, the destruction of the real and of human community.

              Mandatory vaccinations? From what to whom?
              Scientists working for Monsanto? Haliburton?

              Invisible aliens?

              Electric cars, electric panels, batteries, electric this and that, and other assorted ‘The Mob-Rule’ civilizational technological detritus, create varied forms of pollution that have varied effects on varied species in various ways and places over varied lengths of time and space.

              Some of us cannot see this because our minds are trapped in civilization’s tight wrappings.

              Scientists say ‘invisible aliens’ live among us. Revolutionary discovery or proof that too many useless academics live among us?

              “As unlikely as this may sound to firm believers in the infallible rationality of our highest learning and research institutions, numerous scientists do believe there’s a chance we may be walking among aliens. In fact, things are even weirder than this, because these same scientists believe that these aliens are ‘invisible,’ undetectable to our five senses and to conventional methods of detection.”

              The Cure: Disintegration

  8. Now, after all this time, I believe in miracles! ?

    IN ‘REMARKABLE SHIFT,’ FOUR OUT OF FIVE TEXANS SAY CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL.

    In a “remarkable shift from the past,” a University of Houston study published in December found that 81% of Texans agree that climate change is happening. That result, from a survey of 500 Texans conducted in October, now matches the views expressed by the majority of 1,000 Americans, 80% of whom said that climate change is real.

    https://phys.org/news/2021-01-remarkable-shift-texans-climate-real.html

    1. Must have something to do with Houston flooding out every couple of years. I would imagine seeing people rescued from rooftops and evacuating by tin boat might even wake the sleepiest of opinions. Hard to call it fake news or a conspiracy.

      We have a big storm today. Hurricane force on the west coast, only storm force where I live by Johnstone Strait. I have a DHC-2 (Beaver) floatplane weather vane that is trying to takeoff. 4′ wingspan. The prop is a blur. Normal weather for us, although normal for fall and spring, winter not so much. Although, 2 years ago on Dec 22nd we had a freak storm with 100kt gusts. Westerly. Must have dropped a thousand trees where I live. I see the wife just brought out the LED lanterns getting us ready for the power outage that should hit any minute. It might be out for a day or two depending on how many trees come down. We just put soup on the woodstove, hook up all our LED lighting, turn on the satt radio, and snuggle in with books and music. Pandemic living 102.

      1. Oops, now she’s sorting her seeds and making the garden plan for this year.

    2. Doug , no, not a remarkable shift at all . Learnt this several years ago . ” Nothing bad happens until it happens to you . ” The Texans are learning the hard way . So will the rest of the world . Tks for your inputs .

      1. IN ‘REMARKABLE SHIFT,’ FOUR OUT OF FIVE TEXANS SAY CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL.

        Houston will be a great snorkeling destination when all the toxins wash away.

        I’m keeping it positive.

      1. If the best thing you can think of writing is a schoolyard taunt like “fanboi”, you aren’t producing any content worth reading. Oh well, at least you aren’t spamming copied content with an oversized font.

        The fact that Tesla stock is so high is an interesting and amazing piece of news. My reporting it doesn’t say anything about my attitude towards the company. It is part of a wider trend that tech stocks completely dominate the American financial markets, and Tesla is seen as a tech stock. It is also relevant to this site because energy stocks, which dominated the exchanges forty years ago, have steadily dwindled in relative importance.

        In the short term it’s even more significant that manufacturing isn’t valued very high by the stock markets. As the reactions to my post show, people on this site feel threatened by Tesla because they see EVs as a threat to the oil industry, but in the short term electrification is a much bigger threat to manufacturing.

        1. I’ve heard that the stock market’s a glorified casino, while the crony capitalist plutarchy system is just that. A glorified pyramid or ponzi scheme.

          At any rate, Tesla’s an immense beneficiary to corporate welfare. People who don’t want it shouldn’t be forced to pay for it.

          “ALIMBIQUATED, CAELAN makes a valid and interesting comment and you respond with a brainless reply — once again. BTW fossil fuels were, for awhile, a ‘high tech’ solution to most of humanity’s problems and where has that got us?” ~ Doug Leighton

          “Doug, you are just now noticing that Alimbiquate does that? He often posts something interesting but his replies to other people’s posts are usually just ignorant put-downs. I have no idea why he does that as I am not a psychologist.” ~ Ron Patterson

          “L.O.L Maybe phycologists would say it’s a case of low self-esteem? Or bullying? Certainly not conducive to adult conversation!” ~ Doug Leighton

          “From what I can gather civilization is collapsing and Alim doesn’t much care for those who point out that the TechDaddy Cornicopian ‘power of hope’ platitudes aren’t gonna cut it.” ~ Survivalist

          “If the best thing you can think of writing is a schoolyard taunt like ‘fanboi’, you aren’t producing any content worth reading.” ~ Alimbiquated

        2. Yes, Alimbiquated, that is about all the Survivalist can do when it comes to Tesla. You say the word “Tesla” on this site and it dog whistles him in most every time. Same with Caelan I see.

    2. ‘Greater fool’ theory powers Tesla shares’ ascent

      “But expectations of high growth cannot fully account for Tesla’s exponential rise. It appears that some investors have bought into the stock with the belief that someone else would buy it from them at an even higher price.

      Who this “someone else” is seems clear: passive investment vehicles such as index-linked exchange-traded funds.

      When Tesla announces April-June earnings on Wednesday, it is widely expected to report a fourth straight quarter of net profits, meeting the last remaining requirement for inclusion in the S&P 500. Roughly $4.4 trillion is invested in funds linked to the benchmark index, and Tesla’s inclusion would spur the purchase of an estimated 25 million shares in the automaker- regardless of price.

      Investors are bidding up the stock in anticipation of this wave of automatic buying.

      The ‘greater fool’ theory posits that one can purchase overvalued securities if there is someone else waiting in the wings willing to pay an even higher price.

      When passive investing was first developed in the 1970s, it was meant to be a smart approach to asset management characterized by low costs and efficiency. Now it appears that passive indexes, with their outsize scale, have adopted the role of the bigger fool, introducing market distortions in their wake.”

      Another Tesla Roof Flies Off But This Time It’s Not Tesla’s Fault, Tesla Says

      “People can get really fixated about certain details on their cars, can’t they? Details like roof retention. Some people just absolutely lose their pickles if one roof happens to unexpectedly fly off their car, like what happened to a Tesla Model Y last month. If you’re a real stickler for your roof staying on the whole time you drive your car, then you probably wouldn’t be happy to own this other Tesla, this time a Model S, that lost its roof in China.”

      Tire dust killing coho salmon returning to Puget Sound, new research shows – “I find it incredibly sad to watch the adults when they are sick”

      “It is a killer hidden in plain sight.

      Tires.

      More specifically, a single chemical, 6PPD-quinone, derived from a preservative that helps tires last longer.

      Through painstaking analysis and building on years of prior research, the team, including researchers from the Center for Urban Waters in Tacoma, the University of Washington and Washington State University, isolated the killer from a witch’s brew of some 2,000 chemicals in roadway runoff. [cf. Pollution from tire wear 1,000 times worse than exhaust emissions and Electric cars are not the answer to air pollution, says top UK adviser. -Des]”

      “LOL this reminds me of anti-vaxxers, who think vaccination is worse than deadly disease.” ~ Alimbiquated

      The cure is indeed worse than the disease if the former’s systemic foundation is essentially ultimately predicated on the destruction of the living planet.

      Cars and assorted ‘tech detritus’, incidentally, create varied forms of pollution that have varied effects on varied species, including salmon, in various ways and places over varied lengths of time and space.
      I wouldn’t get too gung-ho on anthro climate change to the exclusion of anything else.

      1. …Likewise, BTW, with ‘anti-vaxxers’ as a term that appears to imply a kind of dicotomous notion, painted with broad brush.

  10. From opinion piece by Susan Eisenhower in this morning’s New York Times. Being familiar with the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, I couldn’t agree more.

    BIDEN MUST STOP TRUMP’S RECKLESS PLUNDER IN ALASKA

    “Today, even without whatever oil and gas lie beneath the refuge’s coastal plain, the United States is the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas. Many major banks have adopted policies against financing oil development in the refuge because of the risks involved, and there is no guarantee that Arctic refuge oil would not be shipped overseas. What is necessary is a focused and swift transition to clean energy. There are plenty of other places to acquire fossil fuels as that transition takes place.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/opinion/biden-alaska-national-wildlife-refuge.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

    1. Quite extraordinary. But Trump, and his coup attempt, are just a symptom of a long term problem.

      I think that there’s a very good explanation for what’s going on in “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America” by Nancy McClean. Have you had a chance to read it?

      1. The Tangerine Tyrant is really a piece of work.
        Even the most conservative republicans have woken up, and are abandoning ship.
        Paying attention was not one of their strong points.
        But agree Nick, this is not a surprise.

        1. On of the aggravating techniques the Trumpsters use is to intentionally plant dissent and conspiracies in the gullible citizenry and then claim later that “millions and millions of people are showing concern”.

          Of course this also happens with science and then becomes a false consensus. It’s very difficult to reverse the understanding of some physical phenomena once a mechanism becomes implanted in their minds. See this blog post I wrote yesterday : https://geoenergymath.com/2021/01/07/chandler-wobble-forcing

          “What’s also predictable is that the JPL team probably have a better handle of what causes the wobble on Mars than we have on what causes the Chandler wobble (CW) here on Earth. Such is the case when comparing a fresh model against a stale model based on an early consensus that becomes hard to shake with the passage of time.”

          1. Yes, propaganda is an essential tool in the short and long term effort by the very wealthy owners of extractive industries (mining, FF, farming/lumber, etc) to retain power and cripple democracy.

            1. Mandatory Democracy

              I wonder, if we went over your comments over time, we would find that they generally or always skirt around direct critiques of centralized coercive governance, whose rule-structures (so-called ‘laws’, as if they are somehow natural and immutable) ‘very wealthy owners’ (et al.– often one-and-the-same with government, through the proverbial revolving doors) still operate under, including via legal (tax, etc.) loopholes, financial gimmickry, influence peddles, money laundromats, shell companies, wage slavery, media-and-institution-driven ideological indoctrination, offshoring and so forth.

              All padded/shored up of course, with CCTV cameras and general/internet/AI-augmented surveillance; ‘I-am-just-doing-my-job/rat-on-my-neighbor’ rationalization and treachery; police; (psuedo)security and military personnel.

              As a related aside, that makes me recall wondering, too, about that with regard to Russia Today’s approach for example. Their criticisms never seem to really enter into direct/hard critiques involving the State. Of course, Russia Today (RT.com) is State-funded, at least for the most part, like, if recalled, Nick G.

              Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens

              “What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of ‘populistic’ democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

              A possible objection to populistic democracy is that average citizens are inattentive to politics and ignorant about public policy; why should we worry if their poorly-informed preferences do not influence policy making? Perhaps economic elites and interest-group leaders enjoy greater policy expertise than the average citizen does. Perhaps they know better which policies will benefit everyone, and perhaps they seek the common good, rather than selfish ends, when deciding which policies to support.

              But we tend to doubt it. We believe instead that—collectively—ordinary citizens generally know their own values and interests pretty well, and that their expressed policy preferences are worthy of respect.”

              Nevertheless, and once again…

              “The ‘iron law of oligarchy’ states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies, thus making true democracy practically and theoretically impossible, especially in large groups and complex organizations. The relative structural fluidity in a small-scale democracy succumbs to ‘social viscosity’ in a large-scale organization. According to the ‘iron law’, democracy and large-scale organization are incompatible.” ~ Wikipedia

            2. At the risk of hijacking this discussion, I would like to add interests in the pharmaceutical industries to Nick’s list. How so you might ask?

              For years the vast majority of medical doctors have held that vitamin C is micro-nutrient, only necessary in trace quantities to prevent scurvy. There have been numerous studies that question the efficacy of vitamin C as a therapeutic agent in any course of illness. Specifically there are lots of studies questioning the assertions of Linus Pauling in his book “Vitamin C, The Common Cold & The Flu” originally published in 1970. Here’s a case in point from PubMed:

              Vitamin C for preventing and treating the common cold

              Main results: Thirty trials were included. The quality of the included trials was variable. Vitamin C in doses as high as one gram daily for several winter months, had no consistent beneficial effect on incidence of the common cold. For both preventive and therapeutic trials, there was a consistently beneficial but generally modest therapeutic effect on duration of cold symptoms.[snip]

              Reviewer’s conclusions: Long term daily supplementation with vitamin C in large doses daily does not appear to prevent colds. There appears to be a modest benefit in reducing duration of cold symptoms from ingestion of relatively high doses of vitamin C. The relation of dose to therapeutic benefit needs further exploration.

              There is a video featuring one medical doctor who was influenced by Linus Pauling detailing his early experience with vitamin c at the following link here:

              Dr Robert Cathcart MD – Determining Vitamin C dosage. Summary of first experiences.

              50 seconds: Well I didn’t catch a cold for about nine months but I did catch a cold then which was a disappointment but I noticed that after about twenty minutes to a half an hour that the symptoms of the coal went away but then they came back in about an hour so I took it repeatedly took more doses and by the end of the day I’d taken about 60 grams blocking the symptoms of the cold and the next day I was all well.

              The problem here is with the definition of what is a “high dose”. In the case of the negative study, one gram (1,000 mg) is considered “a relatively high dose” and it certainly is compared to the RDA of 90mg. Cathcart however, is talking about 60 grams in one day or four grams in a single dose, repeated 15 times throughout the day. One has to ask why the negative studies conflate the taking of doses in the region of one to two grams a day with sixty grams a day? I am also not aware of any large scale trials to explore the differences between the amount of vitamin C that can be tolerated when ill with the amounts that cause loose bowel in a healthy individual.

              A similar situation is playing out with vitamin D as we speak. The UK government issued a press release in late November that their health system is going to issue ” free winter supply of vitamin d” to at-risk groups. On closer examination this winter supply amounts to the RDA of 400 IU per day. Those who have studied vitamin D propose that, to raise blood levels of vitamin D in adults with levels that are considered deficient would require at least 2,000 IU daily and that, achieving optimum levels would require at least 4,000 IU daily. In the following video an exasperated doctor ( Dr Alex Vasquez) does a analysis of the press release:

              Vitamin D inertia and progress in 2020 (spontaneous and unedited)

              At 28 and a half minutes in he concludes:

              10 000 totally reasonable for most people, 4 000 totally reasonable maybe even a little bit too low. 400 is completely stupid! Uh, that that dose is too low. Will it help people? Yeah it will. it will help people. You’re giving them 10 percent of what they need. You’re not a hero. You’re keeping them deficient. Anybody who endorses 400 international units for adults, is keeping them deficient.

              So you can look at a program like this and say, “Oh man they’re just so generous! That’s a cutting edge! You see that! They’re way ahead of it, in fact they need more research”. You could say that. If you’re clueless or you could say this is a program designed to fail because, it’s not going to help people sufficiently. It will help people but, the other thing that could happen here. Either they will help people a little or they won’t help people and then they’ll say look vitamin d doesn’t work. That’s called designing a system to fail and it happens quite commonly in politics and in medical research studies.

              Bold mine

              Going back to vitamin C, here’s a link to a story from the Australian Broadcasting Crporation from Dec 2, 2020:

              COVID patient with sepsis makes ‘remarkable’ recovery following megadose of vitamin C
              Video version: COVID patient with sepsis makes ‘remarkable’ recovery following megadose of vitamin C | ABC News

              Juxtapose that with the official NIH position on vitamin C:


              Vitamin C, Fact Sheet for Health Professionals

              I cannot reconcile the theories of those advocating for doses of vitamin C and vitamin D that are significantly higher than the RDA with the “official medical consensus” that led to the RDA being what it is.

              So that’s how I see this relates to “intentionally plant dissent and conspiracies in the gullible citizenry and then claim later that “millions and millions of people are showing concern”. My apologies to those of you who are sick and tired of my posts related to health issues but, I think this is very important.

            3. I suspect that you’re point of view on this is realistic. The medical establishment discredits competitors: things that can’t be patented by pharma and prescribed by doctors.

              Many doctors and researchers are hard working and sincere, but their entire industry and profession is distorted by the pressures of making a living. I suspect that it’s a problem for almost all professions and industries.

            4. The vitamin stuff is all well and good but there is not much besides anecdotal information that you can apply to try to debunk it one way or another.

              What I am confident about is tracking down understanding of phenomena that is governed by physical laws and can be easily checked with the information available.

              So stuff is either patently obvious to debunk (like Trumpster falling for conspiracy theories) or is mathematically/physically obvious to verify. Yet there is still lots of stuff that falls somewhere in-between — such as educated guesses as to a medical treatment’s efficacy.

            5. The vitamin stuff is all well and good but there is not much besides anecdotal information that you can apply

              Yes. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve read the comment that “there’s no evidence for this substance” I’d be rich. There’s no evidence because there’s no research*.

              The problem is that private research money flows to developing drugs & devices that can be patented (natural substances like vitamins can’t be patented). We need a dramatic increase in public R&D.

              ———————————–

              * This is, of course, a bit of hyperbole. There is a fair amount of research into things like vitamins C and D. But…most of it is low quality epidemiological studies based on correlations, and very little is really high quality stuff with large sample sizes, true double blind placebo controlled prospective designs, etc. Among other problems, as Islandboy notes many studies aren’t serious, because they don’t test the dose sizes that are actually being used by clinicians.

      2. Got my hands full to overflowing domestically.

        Probably won’t be doing much reading anytime soon other than maybe the news.

        Has anybody heard from Ron lately?

        1. Ron has pretty much retired from the site, Glen, and made it officially known a couple of months or so ago. He may pop in periodically, but made no guarantees that I’m aware of.

  13. Oxford TB vaccine study calls into question selective use of animal data
    Researchers were disappointed when a clinical trial of a new tuberculosis vaccine failed to show benefit, but should it have gone ahead when animal studies had already raised doubts and what does it mean for future research?

    Were trial participants misled?

    “But perhaps of greatest concern is whether parents of babies enrolled in the MVA85A trials were misled.

    Parents of participants were told that: ‘MVA85A has been testedin animals and was shown to be safe and effective.’
    Volmink is critical of the information provided. ‘I don’t think it’s a fair reflection of the evidence that I have seen, and I have grave concerns about communicating the evidence in this particular way, especially given the context in which we work in South Africa’, he says.
    The communities in which the trials were done are poor, and Volmink says people are eager to participate in studies, hopingto receive beneficial treatments that would otherwise not be available.

    ‘If these claims are misleading about possible protective effectsof a vaccine, or if investigators play down the possibility ofharm from exposure to the vaccine, I think that would beparticularly egregious in this context and one might considerthis a form of exploitation of a vulnerable population’, he says…

    The questions about the study’s purpose- to test vaccine efficacy or a new aerosol challenge model of TB- could be resolved if either Porton Down or Oxford University would share the study protocol. But Porton Down has refused twice, citing concerns about staff safety and saying that the protocol is ‘fully described in the paper’. McShane told The BMJ she doesn’t have a copy of the protocol. They also turned down our request to see the application for ethical approval to conduct the study.

    The difficulty in obtaining such basic information is concerning, says Macleod. ‘While we have a clear roadmap for what a scientifically and ethically robust clinical trial programme looks like, we do not have the same thing for (non-human) animal studies. Since those animal studies often feed into clinical trials- as is the case here- this has ethical implications for both animal and human studies’, he says.”

    Developers of Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine Tied to UK Eugenics Movement

    “An investigation conducted by the British Medical Journal (see above) found that the Hill-led Jenner Institute had, in the South African instance, knowingly misled parents about the negative results of and questionable methods used in animal studies as well the vaccine being known to be ineffective…

    Hill, at the time the study was conducted, had a personal financial stake in the vaccine.

    Similar instances of dodgy practices in efficacy trials and the effects of increased dosages have led vaccine experts to criticize the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Hill and Gilbert… While the vaccine reportedly has an efficacy of over 90 percent, those figures- often cited in mainstream reports- are self-reported by the vaccine’s developers and manufacturers (i.e., the Oxford team and AstraZeneca), which is significant given that Hill and other Jenner Institute scientists have previously been caught manipulating trial results to benefit a vaccine product in which they were personally invested…

    Hill and Gilbert have been working to commercialize many of the institute’s vaccines through their own private company, Vaccitech.… A deeper look into Vaccitech offers a clue as to why the company’s name has been absent from nearly all media reports on the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, as it demolishes the much-touted claim that the vaccine is ‘nonprofit’ and offered at low cost for charitable reasons.“

  15. FAO Food Price Index hits a three-year high:

    >> The FAO Food Price Index (FFPI) averaged 107.5 points in December 2020, up 2.3 points (2.2 percent) from November, marking the seventh month of consecutive increase.
    …
    For 2020 as a whole, the FFPI averaged a three-year high of 97.9
    points, 2.9 points (3.1 percent) higher than in 2019, but still well
    below its peak of 131.9 points registered in 2011. <<

    http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex

  16. The B | Nick | Ob | Son Experiment

    “Caelan unwittingly presents the strongest argument thus far for the elimination of the non-oil thread.

    I say keep it though, just to keep the oil side from being polluted, as ironic as that is.” ~ Bob Nickson

    Maybe a hypothetical or proverbial– even actual– (mad?) scientist could dissect (bisect?) you from the top of your head, through the middle of both halves of your brain, eyes, nose and down through your perineum (and whatever’s left hanging) and then see how long you survive or are ‘viable’. Hm? All in the name of science?

      1. Holistic Divorce

        Anything for science…

        (The open halves of you would, naturally, be neatly vacuum-sealed in cellophane wrap.)

        We have the notion of things that are more than the sum of their parts, but then there’s the reverse, or inverse; less than the sum of broken parts– but precisely because they were taken and broken up from the more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts whole…

        You work much of your life, say, in a lab for science…
        What do you know about the holism of life from a lab, where, due to time constraints, competition, finances, general work pressures, a worsening economy, inflation, etc., the raising of your children, to boot, is essentially outsourced to daycares, baby sitters, primary schools and high schools, and then they ‘go to college’ (for another detached career)?

        Hey, great way to reduce the population they say: ‘Educate women’.
        But maybe it’s more like, ‘Splinter the holism of life and make it so fragmented, detached, stressful and meaningless that many women (and men, etc.) see little reason to ‘raise’ a child in such an environment.

        So, ‘educate women’ (as population control as some suggest) seems more of a sugar-coated term for ‘make life too difficult/distracting for women (alone, because where’s dad and everyone else, right?) to raise children’.

  17. Word is that the Mexicans are now willing to pay for the wall.

    And the Canadians might be giving some thought to a wall themselves.

  18. Of course, it doesn’t matter, CO2 being only a “trace component” of the atmosphere. Still………

    CO2 LEVELS THIS YEAR ’50 PERCENT HIGHER THAN 18TH CENTURY’

    “Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will this year reach levels 50 percent higher than before the industrial revolution because of manmade emissions, Britain’s Met Office predicted on Friday. It forecasted the annual average CO2 concentration measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii in 2021 will be around 2.29 parts per million (ppm) higher than in 2020. It said CO2 concentrations will exceed 417 ppm at some point between April and June—50 percent higher than the 278 ppm present in the late 18th century when the industrial era kicked off.”

    https://phys.org/news/2021-01-co2-year-percent-higher-18th.html

    1. Meanwhile,

      2020 TIES 2016 AS HOTTEST YEAR ON RECORD

      “2020 has tied 2016 as the hottest year on record, the European Union’s climate monitoring service said Friday, keeping Earth on a global warming fast track that could devastate large swathes of humanity. The six years since 2015 are the six warmest ever registered, as are 20 of the last 21, evidence of a persistent and deepening trend, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported…

      Last year’s record high — a soaring 1.25 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — was all the more alarming because it came without the help of a periodic natural weather event known as an El Nino, which added up to two-tenths of a degree to the 2016 average.”

      https://phys.org/news/2021-01-ties-hottest-year.html

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