70 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, January 22, 2020”

  1. Nick wrote, yesterday, on the old non-petroleum thread:
    Ron, 2 questions:

    What the heck do you mean by human nature? What do you mean by “changing human nature”?? And,

    You seem bothered by my not agreeing with you. So, let me ask: are you open to new ideas? what evidence would you need to agree with me? Specifically?

    Second question first: Nick, no one on earth above a third-grade graduate, and Nick, believes that there may be no limits to growth. And yes, that bothers me. It makes me question your ability to reason. Yes, I am open to new ideas, ideas that have at least a tiny chance of being correct. But as sure as the earth is not flat there are limits to growth. And no, I am not open to arguments to the contrary.

    What is human nature? Human nature is basically human instinctive behavior. It is basically innate and unchanging. Behavior can be controlled to a certain extinct, bye laws and regulation. But that is the point, the laws and regulations must be there to control some people’s human nature.

    If everyone were honest then there would be no need for the police force. If some nations were not aggressive then there would be no need for armies to protect our borders. But it is human nature that some people are dishonest and some world leaders, (Hitler), are aggressive.

    Concerning the chart below: All human characteristics fall along a bell curve. Jealously, for instance, the man on the right of the chart would beat his wife to a pulp if she even glanced admiringly at another man. The man on the left would say “You can screw my wife if you let me watch”. Narcissism, for instance, the man on the right is Donald Trump. The man on the left is totally selfless to a fault. I hope you get the idea.

    Description of David Berlinski’s book “Human Nature”.

    Conventional Wisdom holds that the murder rate has plummeted since the Middle Ages; humankind is growing more peaceful and enlightened; man is shortly to be much improved—better genes, better neural circuits, better biochemistry; and we are approaching a technological singularity that well may usher in utopia. Human Nature eviscerates these and other doctrines of a contemporary nihilism masquerading as science. In this wide-ranging work polymath David Berlinski draws upon history, mathematics, logic, and literature to retain our gaze on an old truth many are eager to forget: there is and will be about the human condition beauty, nobility, and moments of sublime insight, and yes, but also ignorance and depravity. Men are not about to become like Gods.

    1. Narcissism and Trump

      “Narcissistic Personality disorder is a series of defense mechanisms, mostly created by the environment. There is some evidence pointing to a genetic component, but from my orientation, that is likely due to transgenerational trauma created from the generation before. You could also make this argument for the alcohol gene.

      People with NPD have suffered a narcissistic injury during early development when critical components of the individual are being developed (empathy, autonomy, etc.). This is typically within the first five years of their lives. When an injury takes place, the individual will develop a compensatory sense of self; therefore, annihilating and burying the true identity. They go through life keeping the true self in a coma as it is the biggest threat and vulnerability. Narcissists do not act, they react. Everything is based on this early injury.”

      https://www.quora.com/Is-narcissism-inherited-learned-or-both

      Ron, you are crossing over into learned behavior. “The Donald” learned it from his father and has taught it to his children.

      Education, education, education

      1. Woah! I am not crossing over into anything. The debate as to the causes of narcissism has raged for decades, as has just about every other type of human behavior. I have studied the nature-nurture debate for decades. Narcissistic behavior may have some nurture components but it is largely nature. Psychologists are divided on the subject. But the few actual studies on the subject clearly indicate that the disorder is genetic.

        Is Narcissism Genetic? Bold mine.

        Researchers can study the genetics of personality through two different means: identical twin studies and examination of the human genome. Twin studies typically examine identical twins that were separated at birth and raised in different households. Identical twins share identical genes, and therefore, any similarities in personality traits may be attributed to genetics. Research has suggested that identical twins raised separately share more personality traits than fraternal twins, who do not have identical genes.

        Scientists have begun to correlate the existence of certain gene variations with personality disorders. According to a study in a 2007 issue of the “International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology”, a specific gene called tryptophan hydroxylase-2 may be implicated in the development of certain personality disorders, including narcissistic personality disorder. Tryptophan hydroxylase-2 helps regulate the production of serotonin, an important brain chemical involved in mood regulation.

        Livesley et al. concluded, in agreement with other studies, that narcissism as measured by a standardized test was a common inherited trait. The study subjects were 175 volunteer twin pairs (ninety identical, eighty-five fraternal) drawn from the general population. Each twin completed a questionnaire that assessed eighteen characteristics of personality disorder. The authors estimated the heritability of each characteristic by standard methods, thus providing estimates of the relative contributions of genetic and environmental causation.

        Of the eighteen personality characteristics, narcissism was found to have the highest heritability (0.64), indicating that this trait in the identical twins was significantly influenced by genetics. Of the other seventeen characteristics, only four were found to be statistically significant: callousness, identity problems, oppositionality and social avoidance.

        Like psychologists, we all have opinions, different opinions. But the only actual tests, identical twins separated at birth and raised apart, clearly indicate that narcissism is clearly genetic.

    2. “Behavioral Patterns: Changing Them Through Education
      Fun fact: Whenever you perform the same task, or encounter the same situation a couple of times, your brain inevitably begins forming behavioral patterns specific for the situation or the task at hand. This process is both transparent and essential for a number of reasons. First, it allows you to develop an automated response to recurring stimuli, taking some cognitive load off your brain. Second, behavioral patterns help you save time and effort, as performing a brand new task takes much more time and effort than one you are familiar with. Third, a behavioral pattern gives some assurance that the learned reaction will lead to a favorable outcome – just like it did during past encounters, when the pattern was being formed. Patterns minimize the risk of error, and are generally safer than reacting in a new, unpredictable way.

      It is reasonable to conclude that behavioral patterns help us in our everyday lives, and for that reason breaking out of the familiar routine and adopting new patterns of behavior is hard. In this article we will look at the stages a person passes through when his behavior model changes. This will help the eLearning professionals to better understand the students’ psychology and plan the syllabus in such a way as to make the instruction take root and reinforce it as a behavioral pattern in the students’ minds.”

      https://elearningindustry.com/racism-learned-behavior

      “Learned racism is the outcome of how often an individual is personally exposed to how dissimilar cultures and races of people interact with one another. The development of negative intergroup attitudes allows us to identify the causal effect of role structure and self-identity of oneself to other groups. In conclusion, improved relations and withheld judgments may occur if a child observes positive interactions and attitudes among diverse groups.”

      https://sites.psu.edu/aspsy/2017/03/25/racism-is-learned-at-an-early-age/

      1. HB, let’s not confuse things. Your post is clearly aimed at me, implying that I think all or most behavioral characteristics are genetic. That is definitely not my opinion. Some behavioral patterns are clearly learned behavior. Racism is clearly a learned behavior. Homosexuality is clearly not a learned behavior. Many behavioral characteristics are a combination of both. Narcissism is most likely about 80% nature and about 20% nurture.

        Your religious belief is clearly 100% nurture. However many characteristics that cause the depth of your religiosity is nature. Such characteristics as gullibility and skepticism are likely a combination of both but I am of the opinion that both are more nature than nurture.

        Indoctrination is a serious problem. Almost anyone can be, with strong enough indoctrination, can be indoctrinated into a cult. However, some people are more easily persuaded, that is indoctrinated, than others. No one comes into this world a blank slate. If you disagree with that sentence then we have serious problems.

    3. Hi Nick,

      Nuance is everything when the topic is human nature.

      Back to that in a minute, lol.
      I’m thoroughly grounded in the physical and life sciences, and I can absolutely assure you that in many respects, and in the MOST IMPORTANT respects, definite hard limits do exist to most of what most people think of as “growth”.

      The only real debate in this particular instance is how much more “growth” we can expect, if any, and how long we can expect to maintain our current level of consumption of natural resources, without the world wide biosphere being degraded to the point of ecological (and shortly thereafter) a following economic collapse.

      Ask any randomly selected biology professor at any respectable university, and he or she will tell you we are at high risk of collapse in the very near future, and that if we continue on our current path, collapse is INEVITABLE, and likely to occur within the next hundred years, maybe within the next decade or two.

      But none of this is to say that we can’t continue to enjoy rising standards of living, if we measure living standards in new ways, such as having enough healthy food, better health care, safer communities, better schools, fewer wars, etc etc. So continued “growth” IS possible……. depending on how you define it and measure it.

      Now about human nature as such……. we are the most flexible of any species that has ever existed , no question, when it comes to how we can LEARN to react to various problems and opportunities.

      But I can’t say that I’ve ever seen any evidence whatsoever that indicates that human nature, our natural tendency to behave in predictable fashion under any given scenario, has changed at all as far back as we have any actual records, and we know a good bit about history going back roughly five or six thousand years, lol.

      Ron is dead on right, from this perspective. Any individual is apt to react about or precisely the same way his ancestors did a couple of thousand years ago under the same circumstances, and any crowd today is apt to react likewise.

      Now having said this, people can and do react differently in specific ways because we know more now than we used to, so not many of us are using rattles and demon masks to treat illness or injury.

      The real question is what sort of leadership we have. Mother Nature, aka natural selection, doesn’t give a damn, she just keeps on rolling the dice, and the only way she keeps score is via the fossil record.

      Whether we have good or bad cultural and political leaders is as much or more a matter of chance than anything else, because people and cultures seem to do what seems best in terms of their own short term interests.

      It’s a very sad truth that most of us here in the USA,and world wide, are as ignorant as fence posts. Watch somebody like Jay Leno talk to people on the street asking them to answer even the most basic questions,and you will see what I’m getting at.

      Such people, and that means most people, can be lead around like puppy dogs, and there’s nothing to stop people interested in ONLY their own welfare from getting to be our leaders.

      So a trump can incite a mob intent on establishing a new police state……

      Ron’s pretty much in the ballpark.

      You’re habitually altogether too optimistic in my own personal opinion.

      1. Good comments, OFM, Ron, and HB.

        I think many of us, all across the World, will be asking in various ways for a long long time, “Just what the hell happened”?

        Trump is a very very sick man. His niece, Mary Trump, explains it quite well. My big question is the predilection of his followers/staunch supporters to believe the bullshit and the forsaking of ‘common sense’ for lack of a better word or phrase. Trump can be studied for what he is and what he has said/done. Maybe we can even explain the craven butts in the air of Lindsey Graham, Ron Johnson, and ilk. But Q followers? 15 million hardcore MAGAs? Then again, last summer I had to order away a local who feels Covid is a hoax and that our Govt was turning evil by supporting the population with economic relief. (Canada). This is the same guy who believes the earth is 6,000 years old. That’s pretty weird, maybe even weirder than believing in pedophile politicians headquartering in Pizza restaurant basements.

  2. While we bicker…

    HUMAN SOCIETY UNDER URGENT THREAT FROM LOSS OF EARTH’S NATURAL LIFE

    Human society is in jeopardy from the accelerating decline of the Earth’s natural life-support systems, the world’s leading scientists have warned, as they announced the results of the most thorough planetary health check ever undertaken. From coral reefs flickering out beneath the oceans to rainforests desiccating into savannahs, nature is being destroyed at a rate tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10m years, according to the UN global assessment report.

    The biomass of wild mammals has fallen by 82%, natural ecosystems have lost about half their area and a million species are at risk of extinction – all largely as a result of human actions, said the study, compiled over three years by more than 450 scientists and diplomats. The report shows a planet in which the human footprint is so large it leaves little space for anything else. Three-quarters of all land has been turned into farm fields, covered by concrete, swallowed up by dam reservoirs or otherwise significantly altered. Two-thirds of the marine environment has also been changed by fish farms, shipping routes, subsea mines and other projects. Three-quarters of rivers and lakes are used for crop or livestock cultivation. As a result, more than 500,000 species have insufficient habitats for long-term survival. Many are on course to disappear within decades.

    1. Yeah, but tell us the good news. Humans are doing just fine. Screw the environment, screw all the other animals, we humans are the only thing that count.
      /sarc

        1. Damned right Ron.

          Double plus good.
          You undoubtedly know the book, lol.

    2. You want economic prosperity or cute animals to look at? I know which one I want.

      1. “ This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called ‘all or nothing (AON)’. AON presents a false dilemma by suggesting that there are only two options – either all or nothing – when in fact there are many more options in the middle ground between those two extremes.”

        https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781119165811.ch68

        My fav one is when I’m an asshole and people say that that’s a logical fallacy.

        1. Watch the news and you see false choices offered up all the time. True believers open door #1. Like you said, it’s either all or nothing. But here’s the rub. That grey area in between, the land of other possibilities requires critical thinking. Sadly, I think most people follow their brain stem when they’re not on their phones. Wait a minute……. 🙂

      2. If there are few wild animals, cute or otherwise there will be no prosperity, economic or otherwise . . . the human race cannot survive indefinitely with out a locally functioning ecological system.

        I have no doubt we will try and perhaps get by for a while with “technology” but unless we get our arses into gear and start making do with less it will all come crashing down.

        1. The underlying assumption in a lot of these discussions is that economics and ecology are always diametrically opposed. It’s probably not true. For example, I remember the Republicans claiming that unleaded gasoline, and unleaded white paint, would destroy the American economy. I can also remember them claiming that requiring seat belts or (god help us) airbags would bankrupt the car industry.

          A lot of the destruction we see around us is not at all the result of human nature, just poor decision making with limited historical scope.

          For example, there is no good economic argument for the vast subsidies of American agriculture. It costs the country money and destroys the environment at the same time. Economic and ecological thinking are on the same side in this argument.

          The same is true of fossil fuel industry, although this is clearly an unpopular view on a fossil fuel oriented website. The rampant consumption of fossil fuels we observe around us are a stupendous waste of money as well as being an ecological disaster.

          Even meat eating, which is an ecological disaster, may be on its way out. People around the world are turning away from food that is close to its natural state, and eating more and more processed food. A big Mac doesn’t look much like a cow. Using animals to produced processed food is extremely inefficient, because fake meat tastes more or less the same.

          For example, human nature is encouraging McDonald’s to replace beef with a cheap soy substitute. They will also come up with some arguments to prove fake meat is better, just like the fake butter people came up with claims that margarine is somehow better than butter.

          https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/butter-vs-margarine

          The truth is, there never was any good evidence that using margarine instead of butter cut the chances of having a heart attack or developing heart disease.

          Margarine is a great example of how ecology and economy do not have to be diametrically opposed. companies have been selling the gunk to consumers for decades on dubious health claims because cows are an insanely inefficient way of producing cooking oil. Processed meat and internal combustion engines are now getting the same kind of competition butter has had for a while.

          Electricity generation already has that competition. One of the key enablers of fossil fuel electricity generation is the industry that builds power plants. This industry is in serious trouble right now, as almost all investment in new electricity is going in to renewables and batteries.

          https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46416

          This won’t have a huge short term effect on the fossil fuel industry, but it is killing the fossil power plant industry which provides the foundation for fossil fuels.

          We see the same thing happening to the automobile industry. Liquid fuel consumption is not set to fall in the next few years, but internal combustion engine production is getting hammered. You don’t need a crystal ball to see the longer term effects of that trend.

          Again, these changes are not being driven by idealism, but by filthy lucre. Human nature isn’t changing. Technology is.

          The same applies to population growth. Most women would prefer not to be baby machine pumping out large families. One or two kids is enough. They now have a choice, thanks to contraception. So human nature is pushing down birth rates. The only thing sustaining population growth today is longer life. The population pyramid is flipping upside down, with fewer and fewer babies and more and more old folks.

          1. I like your example of butter and meat as situations where humans can be convinced cheaper alternatives are better for us. I think this is also true for family size. I am 55, have no kids. I have three siblings. I am sure my mother does not considers herself a baby making machine. I think our family with 4 kids always seemed a lot more fun than my friends that were only childs or 2 kid families (even tho they were better off economically). Zero, one or two kids is definitely a lot cheaper, and definitely a lot better for the planet, but I’m not sure its better for the kid 🙂

            1. Phil S,

              The kids need a functioning eco system, so while 4 children families might be “fun”, starving in a World that has been destroyed environmentally may be less so.

              We cannot have our cake and eat it as well.

            2. Phil….remember those summer road trips when you talk about fun. I remember the fighting, the farts, the arguing about who got the mattress in the back of the station wagon, my oldest brother tormenting everyone else. My parents would go out for an evening and the fight was on between my two older brothers.

              My daughter has one child. Her name is Katie. She has a pretty fun life by any metric and lucky to have two parents who love her to pieces.

              My son has no children. He doesn’t want to have any kids beyond his two dogs. I wish he would but he has made the choice.

              I don’t think either example is any more dysfunctional than others. I have a couple friend who had 6 kids. Great people, but I always ask myself, “Really”? Nice family pictures on the wall, but that’s as far as I would take it.

            3. Phil S
              Yes, people are sort of excited about fake meat now, but in a decade or so they will calm down and forget about it. Of course there will still be real meat at the high end, but there isn’t any real reason for it in frozen lasagna or fast food burgers.

              Take bologna. I’m not even sure what animal it is supposed to come from. I doubt a soy based version would taste much different, if done right. And yet Americans eat 800 million pounds of bologna every year. Fake bologna is an incredible business opportunity and would be a boon to the environment as well.

              Family sizes in America are definitely shrinking, but are still bigger than in Europe. Pets are bigger too, I notice. I have the feeling Americans are getting big dogs these days as replacements for big families.

              Here’s an anecdote on the topic — I was recently talking to some guy on the internet about housing density and he said he wouldn’t want to move into an apartment because he has two big dogs, so he sticks to the suburbs. I think the suburbs were invented for kids, not dogs. As households continue to shrink, there will be less and less reason for suburbs. It’s hard (for me at least) to imagine a lot of people commuting two hours a day so they can own a big dog.

  3. “One of the most striking and memorable global climate stories of 2020 was the remarkable and persistent extreme warmth that occurred in Arctic Russia. The sheer magnitude of the anomaly for the annual mean temperature in north-central Siberia was simply amazing: over 5 standard deviations above the 1981-2010 normal. Here are maps from the ERA5 reanalysis and from surface station measurements”

    http://ak-wx.blogspot.com/2021/01/siberian-warmth-in-2020.html?m=1

    1. Reminder to everybody that of the 4.2 billion yrs existence, they are making comparisons to a particular 30 yr period of recorded climate history out of a total 150 yrs of records, at best.

      1. Zooks,

        A 5 standard deviation anomoly over 150 years is pretty large. For humans mostly the past 150,000 years is relevant. Humans weren’t around for most of the 4.2 billion years that Earth has been a planet in the Solar System.

        1. Dennis,

          Humans didn’t have much impact on Earth until domestication of plants and animals and the development and dissemination of techniques for raising them productively, roughly 10,000 years ago.

          Though some would argue things really fell apart when Adam (and Eve) was (were) created on October 23 at 9 a.m., 45th meridian time, in 4004 BC. 😉

          1. Doug,

            I agree. In fact one could probably argue that the human impact on climate was relatively small up to about 1750 CE or so, we have fairly good estimates of global and hemispheric (N/S) average temperatures on Earth over the past 270 years and when we consider the past 10k years BP we also have fairly good estimates of Global temperature averages. Temperatures in 1750 were close to the low point in global average temperature over the past 10k years.

    2. The shit is spread pretty broad. It doesn’t rain in the spring in Maine anymore. Several years of drought, punctuated by three-foot snowfalls.

  4. Interesting article about declining population in various countries.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/24/as-birth-rates-fall-animals-prowl-in-our-abandoned-ghost-villages

    My (Japanese) mother in law lives in one of these dying villages in Japan. She complained this week that they are stopping bus service because there is nobody left to take the bus. At least half the houses in her street are empty. The rice paddies are being converted to orchards, or simply abandoned because there is nobody left to tend them

    1. It’s very hard to impossible to get it across to people that declining populations are a VERY good thing, long term, for the world as a whole.
      The Japanese people are going to have some serious troubles maintaining their existing welfare state social structure until the current older generations are gone…. but in the longer term…….

      The Japanese people can be self sufficient in food again, and they can avoid buying most of their energy from other countries that aren’t necessarily their best friends.

      They can abandon the worst of their old housing stock, and they won’t need much at all in the way of new highways, power lines, water and sewer lines and plants, schools, etc. Old infrastructure of this sort can be refurbished and modernized for a small fraction of the cost of new from scratch.

      Mass transit will work better than ever as the outlying villages die off, and the remaining people congregate in cities and larger villages.

      A relatively low stable population is the only real road to long term sustainability.

      And contrary to the usual growth forever mantra, we can still have new technologies, better health care, etc, from one generation to the next, without constant growth.

      1. Well, there is a reason Japan is rolling out some of the world’s most advanced robots in nursing homes, offices and schools as its population ages and workforce shrinks.

        1. Dead on Doug,

          Between the robots, and people working longer and living unassisted longer, and workers being freed up from growth industries that can be retrained to look after old folks, the Japanese ought to get thru the old age bottleneck ok.

  5. Because, Future?

    Dream Theater – Pull Me Under (Cover)

    “A talented group of teens and tweens perform Dream Theater’s ‘Pull Me Under’ as heard from the album ‘Images and Words’…”

    Kids Cover ‘No More Tears’ by Ozzy

    “Every now and then we get to tackle a song as epic as ‘No More Tears’. This performance involves 21 students who range in ages from 5 to 16.”

    Cosmic Love by Florence The Machine

    “A big thanks goes out to the students for their incredible rendition of Cosmic Love. This video marks the beginning of how we will cover songs from now on. Instead of note for note covers the students will strive to reinterpret the songs, changing instrumentation, arrangement, melody, etc..”

    The Pot by Tool Version 2

    1. Craneguy76
      3 years ago
      Thank YOUUUUU to everyone involved with this school and program. I have zero musical talent and I sincerely appreciate those that do. Just know there’s a 40 year old crane operator in the south Texas oilfields that admires and appreciates y’all hard work and dedication. Music is my lifeline and I’m thankful it’s in good hands. [comment under ‘The Pot by Tool Version 2’]

  6. https://coloradosun.com/2021/01/25/reclamation-lake-powell-forecast-water-cuts-drought-planning/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Record lows at Lake Powell spell trouble / Cheap solar embraced by Colorado / Budget terms explained&utm_campaign=The Sunriser – 1/25/2021&vgo_ee=+09GRVoR7Cw1aQZWxBSI62QOP8ZXmRzMvz3Yw+cA7gI=

    In the meantime, we typically get at least ten days every winter here where I live that drop down to ten degrees and a day or two at zero Fahrenheit, or even below.

    So far this winter we haven’t been below eighteen degrees.

    1. Glen Canyon Dam is the example of capitalism’s worse destruction of a pristine environment.
      What were these greed heads thinking?
      Grow or die?

      1. Hightrekker,
        The part about the building of Glen Canyon Dam that’s always interested me (along with the outrage) is that the dam rests against Navajo Sandstone which is a quartz sandstone with a carbonate (that is: soluble) cement. About a third of the water reaching Lake Powell behind the dam soaks into the Navajo. It doesn’t come out again. This has also weakened the abutments.

        The Colorado River (“Too thick to drink and too thin to plow”) has delivered so much sediment to Lake Powell that at low water there’s about as much sediment at the surface as there is water.

        The Aswan High Dam in Egypt has the very same problems plus bilharzia from a parasite with part of its life cycle in water snails.

        1. Interesting comment, thanks. It seems to me that in most cases “hydro power” is green in name only. How many once beautiful rivers have been (are being) decimated in the name of progress or so-called cheap energy?

          1. We’re throwing everything under the bus– our children, our future, our families, our self-empowerment, our communities, friends and neighbors, our ecosystem and ourselves.
            For what?

            1. A dam protects 2/3 of your 1967 home city of Huntington Beach from floods. Dams store the water that grows the food you eat everyday and also power your lights and computer you use.

              Who would have guessed back in the 1950’s climate change would dry up the Colorado river? This is not a time to reduce storage. Using Mead first would be more efficient than both at times of low water storage.

            2. Hint:
              Let’s have 100,000 people in Socal, which is what the environment can support on local water.

              25 million?

              I was born in LA– if you don’t have a direct relative that was born in CA before 1925, you need a visa to visit.
              (sarc)

            3. Los Angeles get about 38 cm of rainfall a year, and has an area of 1300 square kilometers. A square kilometer is a million square meters, so that’s 13 bn square meters. 13 bn square meters four tenth of a meter deep is roughly 5 bn cubic meters, or five trillion liters of water falling on the city each year.

              There are about four million people in the city. Each gets 1.25 million liters of rainwater a year. There is no shortage of water in Southern California.

              https://palisadesnews.com/court-tells-state-to-examine-practice-of-dumping-billions-of-gallons-of-wastewater-into-ocean/

              In the abundance of water, the fool is thirsty. — Bob Marley

              The stupidity of all these “Oh the sky will fall if we can’t waste resources like idiots” posts beggars belief.

              Here’s a modest proposal for solving the water problems in Los Angeles: There are about 19 million parking places in the city, that to the borderline insane demands to knock down the city and build more parking. They are almost all paved, and their runoff flows into the storm drains and is dumped into the Pacific during the rainy season. We are talking about nearly two thousand square kilometers.

              My suggestion is to remove the impermeable surface from all surface parking lots. That would reduce runoff, allowing rainwater to flow into the ground and raise the water table so the city could use the water the falls out of the sky instead of bringing it in from somewhere else at great expense.

            4. Hint:
              It is a bit more complicated than that.
              The Owens, etc needs to b examined.
              I live in Oregon now, and am no longer on a well on property, after many decades.

          3. DougL,

            Glen Canyon Dam wasn’t built for hydropower as I recall; it was built to control flow of the Colorado to the states in the lower part of the River Compact area. I don’t know why, because Lake Mead at Hoover Dam does that.

            It does produce electricity of course but I don’t think that was the stated purpose for the dam.

            Time for Port.

            1. Synapsid, always time for port but thanks for the reminder!

              PS If you (or George Kaplan) have Lidl stores where you are, check out their Armilar ruby. Amazing for the price 🙂

            2. I believe that Lake Powell was also used as a source for water for the nearby Navajo Generating Station which is now decommissioned. I recall seeing figures that suggested that the NGS used large quantities of water. Here’s a story about the water that is no longer consumed by the NGS:

              Navajo Generating Station closure leaves questions of water ownership

              The water in question is the lion’s share of Arizona’s allotment from the Upper Colorado River Basin: 34,000 acre-feet per year, currently being drawn from the river via Lake Powell. That’s enough to satisfy all of the municipal and industrial uses for all of Pinal County, according to Sarah Porter, director of Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy.

              “That’s a tremendous amount of water. … It’s potentially a settlement that would enable whoever gets the water, whether it’s one of the tribes or both (the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe), to realize revenue from that water” by leasing it to another entity, Porter told the Mirror. She pointed to the City of Page, which already gets its municipal water from Lake Powell as well.

              An acre-foot of water is enough to serve the needs of a family of five for five years, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

    2. And what happens to the integrity of these dams when they lack the resource (water) for which they were designed. Wonder what concerns the engineers have.

  7. Coming from someone in Europe . The US public has been fed a lot of BS from Hollywood . Rambo , Dirty Harry , John Wayne etc . Sorry time to wake up . The rubber is hitting the road and it does not smell good .

    1. Ha! Ha! I wasn’t familiar with NaturalNews.

      One of it’s sources is John Nolte from Breitbart News.

      “In addition to not actually being “green,” so-called green energy is a farce in that it ends up leaving society vulnerable to every shift in weather or unexpected event that comes along, much like what third-world countries have to deal with due to lack of proper infrastructure.

      “No one has to live like this in the 21st century,” Nolte, a former Californian, writes. “All you need to do is build more power and nuclear plants and the problem is solved. Yes, it really is that easy.”

      I’m glad it’s so easy!!

      1. Ha! Ha! According to one commenter on NaturalNews, the problem is…

        “It’s because the state isn’t mass producing hemp for oil, fuel, building materials, food, and medicine. Hemp mass production rejuvenates soil and produces healthy, wet weather!

        Hemp is the tree of life. See Revelation 22:2. Only hemp can fulfill Revelation 22:2. And, the synagogue of satan is seeking to oppress and genocide humanity by secreting the true knowledge about hemp, and banning it, another war crime against humanity.”

        This is great stuff!

  9. Is this the fate of many yet to be completed and newly built coal plants in Asia and the rest of the world?

    Germany’s youngest coal plant shuttered, considered for hydrogen transformation

    Only five years after it was commissioned, Swedish state-owned utility Vattenfall has announced plans to convert its recently shuttered Moorburg coal-fired power plant into a green hydrogen hub powered by wind and solar.

    Despite only commissioning the 1.6GW Moorburg coal-fired power plant in 2015, Vattenfall announced last year plans to shutter the plant and won the right to do so in a German auction for the decommissioning of hard coal plants.

    From the very outset, after taking 10 years to finish construction and commissioning, the nails were already in the coffin for the Moorburg coal-fired power plant.

    Vattenfall had already tried to back away from development of the project, despite expectations that it would be both necessary but also highly efficient.

    By the middle of 2020, the project was losing the company money, and the decision was made to participate in Germany’s upcoming auction for the decommissioning of coal plants.

  10. Maybe we will have affordable electrical energy storage in another decade or two, at a scale that matters.

    https://cleantechnica.com/2021/01/25/researchers-claim-redox-flow-battery-breakthrough-will-cost-25-per-kwh-or-less/

    But maybe one out of every thousand optimistically written pieces of this sort actually pans out in the form of something serious happening in the near future.

    If the materials needed are readily available it should be a pretty straight up job to build a few experimental batteries using this technology and have a pretty good idea if it’s going to be practical within a year or so with a little luck.

    1. Hydrogen will do the heavy lifting for storage, trucking, trains and ships

    3. OFM, $25 per kWh (as per the press release) would be great! I left a comment at CleanTechnica pointing out that the academic paper cited shows not $25 but $200 per kWh (not so great). No-one replied.

  12. I have not been posting links to “good news” from the news sites I frequent daily but that bu no means suggests that there is not a ton of “good news” out there. Here’s just one example:

    “World first”: South Australia achieves 100pct solar, and lowest prices in Australia

    South Australia – maligned by conservatives over the world-leading share of wind and solar in its grid – now boasts the cheapest wholesale electricity prices in the country, even as it reaches “world first” levels of 100 per cent solar power.

    The Australian Energy Market Operator, in its latest Quarterly Energy Dynamics report, confirms that South Autralia – as first reported exclusively by Renewconomy three months ago – served all of its electricity demand for more than an hour shortly after mid-day on October 11 through rooftop and utility scale solar.

    AEMO says this is a world-first in a grid of this size, and occurred in a December quarter when South Australia posted the lowest wholesale electricity prices in the country – thanks to the growing share of wind and solar and the increase in rooftop solar PV which is reducing grid demand.

    I am intrigued by the situation in Australia. Despite opposition from the federal government, adoption of renewable energy is progressing at a very decent clip, with rooftop solar breaking records for monthly capacity increases on a regular basis. This would suggest that the “man in the street” has a positive view of solar as do various state governments. The Australian federal government seems increasingly isolated in it’s support of fossil fuels and it’s opposition to renewable energy. The question is , how come they keep getting re-elected? Is the influence of Rupert Murdoch owned media that instrumental or is it FF industry money? I would love to hear the perspective from some one in Australia who follows such matters, Matt Mushalik?

    1. Simple old man, the more renewable energy you use at home, the more fossil fuel you can export (sell!). Norway, for example, with lots of hydro, sells almost all of its considerable natural gas production, mostly to EU countries — as well as most of its oil. Saudi Arabia is expanding its solar infrastructure for the express purpose of selling more oil abroad. Crude amounts to roughly 35% of total U.S. gross petroleum exports (sales).

      BTW Hydropower accounts for more than 95 per cent of total Norwegian power production. It is also known for being the place with the highest living standards, fueled by oil and gas exports.

      Australia is a major supplier of energy to world markets (three-quarters of its fossil fuel output), worth nearly A$80 billion. Why would Australia act differently? Why would you even ask that question?

  13. REVISED HOLOCENE TEMPERATURE RECORD AFFIRMS ROLE OF GREENHOUSE GASES IN RECENT MILLENNIA

    “Our reconstruction shows that the first half of the Holocene was colder than in industrial times due to the cooling effects of remnant ice sheets from the previous glacial period — contrary to previous reconstructions of global temperatures. The late Holocene warming was indeed caused by the increase in greenhouse gases, as predicted by climate models, and that eliminates any doubts about the key role of carbon dioxide in global warming.”

    https://phys.org/news/2021-01-holocene-temperature-affirms-role-greenhouse.html

  14. Islandboy —

    For some reason you seem to be strangely fixated on Australian energy projects; well, here’s one for you: Chevron’s Gorgon JV, located on the Barrow Island, approximately 60km offshore in Western Australia, is one of the world’s largest natural gas projects. With total daily production averaging 2.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas and 6,000 barrels of condensate (in 2019), the Gorgon Project will continue to be an important pillar of the Australian economy for decades to come. Economic benefits include: an increase in national GDP of A$64.3 billion (in net present value terms), A$33 billion of expenditure on locally purchased goods and services, plus government revenue of about A$40 billion (in 2009 dollars).

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