228 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, January 29, 2019”

  1. We think it’s worth it.

    – Madeleine Albright

    They’ve known that sanctions kill for a long time now.
    We shall see——

  2. Heat being trapped in the Southern Ocean around the Antarctic. Wonder how that will affect melt projections?

    CLIMATE CHANGE RESHAPING HOW HEAT MOVES AROUND GLOBE

    “This is the first study to examine current changes in heat transfer and to conclude that warming temperatures are driving increased heat transfer in the atmosphere, which is compensated by a reduced heat transfer in the ocean. Additionally, the researchers concluded that the excess oceanic heat is trapped in the Southern Ocean around the Antarctic.”

    Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-climate-reshaping-globe.html#jCp

    1. Climate Change in the American Mind
      By Anthony Leiserowitz, Edward Maibach, Seth Rosenthal, John Kotcher, Matthew Ballew, Matthew Goldberg and Abel Gustafson

      http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Climate-Change-American-Mind-December-2018.pdf

      Our latest national survey finds that a large majority of Americans think global warming is happening, outnumbering those who don’t by more than 5 to 1. Americans are also growing more certain that global warming is happening and more aware that it is caused by human activities. Certainty has increased 14 percentage points since March 2015, with 51% of the public now “extremely” or “very sure” that global warming is happening. Sixty-two percent of the public now understands that global warming is caused mostly by human activities, an increase of 10 points over that same time period.

  3. Sounds like BAU to me!

    GAS FIND IN NORTH SEA HAILED AS BIGGEST IN A DECADE

    “The Chinese state-owned company CNOOC said it had discovered 250 million barrels of recoverable gas in its Glengorm project, east of Aberdeen. Further appraisal work is planned, but the company said it could be extracted using existing infrastructure. Friends of the Earth Scotland said the find was terrible news for the climate and that it should stay in the ground.”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-47041270

    1. There seems to some clamor of late about introducing more carbon into the surface system. However, we must think about the future generations of gollywogs, eat-em-quicks and atorcoppes that will not be born if we reverse course now. How will the long dead carbon come back to life without us, the grand grave robbers of history? What worlds we make.
      Pay no attention to the screams and moaning of the dying, they will feed the great new future.
      Make the Earth Great Again.

  4. Synapsid — Did you know?

    The UN has designated 2019 as the Year of the Periodic Table to celebrate “one of the most significant achievements in science”. Like you, presumably, in High School we were forced to memorize the damn thing. Some guys did so by inventing various “naughty” jingles – mostly to entertain girls.

    I still remember trying to “punish” my teacher for this “insult” by continually tapping out the elements, in Morse code, on my desk with my fingernail — hoping to drive him insane. No sure if I was successful or not; he retired early, so maybe. I’ve tried to become a better person since then.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47008289

    2. DougL,

      I’d heard about the Year, and Science News, a biweekly, has a nice article on the history of work that led to Mendeleev’s version, with a useful annotated periodic table in pleasing decorator colors.

      We didn’t have to memorize anything, no, except the multiplication table back in grade school. I taught college chemistry as a sort of sideline for thirty years and forbade memorizing (“Don’t use your head for a filing cabinet. That’s what notes are for”) and always gave open-note exams to emphasize the note-taking. I used the periodic table in class while working out examples requiring changing mass to moles and back, so the students got fairly used to it. I required the table along with the text book.

      Nostalgic note: We used slide rules when I was in college. A chain calculation in chemistry or physics was easier and faster on a slide rule than on a calculator, and didn’t supply what was called specious accuracy in the process.

      I liked to tell the young about how we did our homework by pressing symbols into clay tablets. One fellow didn’t catch on until I began describing my Summer job helping to lay out Stonehenge.

      1. I’ll have to get some insight from you on Stonehenge—-
        My clay tablets are not that organized.

        1. You need to put them in stone folders with names chiseled along the bottom
          .

      2. Good for you — Old Man! 😉

        Something that used to really piss me off was my wife’s photographic (eidetic) memory. My oldest Daughter has the same infuriating mental disorder but uses it to recall things like Shakespearean works and classical music scores rather than scientific constants to nauseating streams of decimal points. Sigh! Yeah, I still have my old slide rule, somewhere.

        1. “I am a redneck myself, born & bred on a submarginal farm in Appalachia, descended from an endless line of dark-complected, lug-eared, beetle-browed, insolent barbarian peasants, a line reaching back to the dark forests of central Europe & the alpine caves of my Neanderthal primogenitors.”

          — from “In defense of the Redneck”, Abbey’s Road

          1. Sounds VERY much like me, and my home turf, except hardly any of my relatives and neighbors are dark complected, and not all that many are beetle browed or lug eared, except a few that have lost ears by having them bitten or shot off.

            We’re almost all fair skinned, except when tanned, and quite a lot of us are actually good looking, lol. A freckled red headed Irish maiden with milky white skin is eye candy by anybody’s standards, lol.

            Believe it or not, quite a few of us these days are doctors, lawyers, professors, and engineers.

            1. “A freckled red headed Irish maiden with milky white skin is eye candy by anybody’s standards”
              Roger that. Now I can’t concentrate.

      3. I still find a slide rule a useful tool when working out percentages in breadmaking.

        NAOM

  5. I wonder if the Chinese car company doing this can make a go of it.

    https://qz.com/
    If the link doesn’t go directly to the battery swapping video, you can click on it on the opening page of Quartz.

    1. While I’m not all that impressed by the battery swapping idea I was much more interested by this:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTAg936uoic
      Shrimp made from algae that looks and tastes like the real thing

      Interestingly I noticed shots of the kelp were from GreenWave’s 3D Ocean Farming which I’ve been following for a while. https://www.greenwave.org/

      While we certainly need to stop all use of fossil fuels asap and we also need to stop raising animals such as cattle for beef and do a lot more to end over fishing and shrimp trawling!

      We need more people to eat vegetarian ‘impossible burgers’ and I’d like to see ‘impossible sushi’ as well.

      3 million dollar tuna just doesn’t make sense…

    2. OFM — Does this mean we can’t win?

      FARM MANURE BOOSTS GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS — EVEN IN WINTER

      “Researchers have shown, for the first time, that manure used to fertilize croplands in spring and summer can dramatically increase greenhouse gas emissions in winter. While it’s known that farmers’ decisions to add nutrients to their fields affects greenhouse gas emissions during the growing season, the study is the first to show that these choices have long-lasting effects, especially as winters warm and soils thaw more frequently.”

      https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190122142847.htm

      1. Hi Doug,

        I can’t provide a really good answer, being retired, and out of touch with what’s happening in research these days, except what I can read on free science oriented web sites and in a couple of magazines such as Scientific American.

        I’ll do the best I can.

        Manure from feedlots, which is the bulk of the manure available in most cases, like any other manure, is composed almost entirely of water and organic matter, plus of course a very minor ( but nevertheless very important ) quantity of minerals, such as calcium, etc, these minerals being components of the organic matter.

        You and all the regulars here know that organic matter decomposes into CO2 and water, for the most part. So of course manure is going to release quite a bit of CO2, and it does compose thru the winter, the speed of decomposition depending mostly on how much is applied, if it is incorporated into the soil, or spread on the surface, moisture level, and temperature.

        It is necessary that it be applied and time allowed for the decomposition and incorporation into the soil allowed before planting, as a rule, otherwise the manure will be mostly wasted, and severe problems are to be expected due to excessively high levels of nitrogen, etc, short term, if fresh manure is applied in the usual quantities to growing crops.

        You have to apply it very sparingly, if the crop is up, and it’s fresh, and that is difficult to impossible, in economic terms on a commercial farm. Too much labor, too much equipment time, too much fuel, etc. You can apply fresh manure SPARINGLY in a garden by hand.

        So you apply it as soon as you can get into the field, sometimes within a few days of harvesting the last crop. The longer it has to become part of the soil, the better, as a rule, as a practical matter.

        You can stockpile it, if it’s not so wet you can’t contain it, until it decomposes to a substantial extent…. but this generally means you may lose MORE of the nutrients, especially the nitrogen…. and those nutrients are VALUABLE.

        Beyond injuring or killing the planted crop, with fresh manure there’s a potential public health problem, again depending on what kind of manure, which crop, the location, whether it’s grown for human consumption or for livestock feed, etc.

        Manure applied in moderate quantities per area unit of land in the autumn is usually fairly well decomposed by spring in places with mild to moderate winter weather. Some of the carbon is incorporated into the soil of course. I could have told you about what percentage is retained, depending on a dozen variables, some decades back, but I wouldn’t want to provide any numbers after so many years. It wouldn’t be hard to look them up, if anybody is interested in specific quantities.

        Manure was never available in sufficient quantities where I live to matter to anybody except the owner of the animals producing it. They generally either used it themselves, or sold it for a pretty good price to a nearby neighbor, and there were no feed lots or broiler/ egg operations close by. Hauling adds up fast when the freight is so bulky and heavy. Twenty miles is a long way, hauling manure.

        Hauling is in fact so expensive that feedlot operators often apply TOO MUCH to nearby farmland because even though they know this wastes nutrients, it’s their cheapest option, all things considered. Major smell and water pollution problems often occur in such cases.

        The key facts, on the one hand, other than CO2 release and possibly water pollution due to runoff, are that a fair to substantial amount of carbon IS retained in the soil, and most to nearly all of the key nutrients, namely nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, are retained in the soil, if the application of manure is properly managed, and the soil is properly managed. In this context, properly managed mostly means the soil is protected from erosion and run off. ( You control runoff and erosion by various means I won’t go into. This answer is already a TLDR for most people anyway, lol. )

        IF the application is mismanaged, the nutrients may escape into the atmosphere in the case of nitrates, and or into run off water or into the ground water in the case of all three, N, P and K.

        The FLIP side, the other hand, is that manure does contribute substantially to soil carbon content, if properly applied and proper soil management is practiced, as well as contributing very valuable and very expensive N, P and K in highly significant amounts.

        I can’t even imagine a way of getting rid of manure in huge quantities, as a practical matter, other than spreading it on the land. Any other option would be outrageously expensive, other than maybe putting it into lagoons…. and lagoons are quite a problem in and of themselves.

        So…….. we’re sort of stuck, between a rock and a hard place, all of us. Farmers often have real problems , people needing clean water downstream have problems, every body that eats has a problem, and we all eat, and we all depend on the environment functioning at least well enough to keep us alive and eating, lol.

        Everybody who understands the farm economy understands that we have cheap meat because we grow awesome quantities of grain for use as livestock feed. Everybody who understands the basic biology involved, and the scale of the grain fed livestock industry, understands that this industry cannot last, that it’s unsustainable over the long term. I don’t know how long it can last as it exists today, but I will hazard a guess that it will be in major decline well before the end of this century.

        Bottom line, this is one of those third rail type issues, one that politicians dare net touch.

        I know I’m going to get flamed by saying anything that could be interpreted as approval of Trump’s habits, but it’s not just ignorant, stupid, superstitious , xenophobic, religious southern white people that love meat.

        Just about every the high minded, morally upright, well educated, tolerant Democrat I know likes meat too. Loves it and eats it daily, three or even four times daily in most cases, including snacks.

        Not to mention the seven billion plus people I don’t know. Nearly all of them, maybe a few hundred million excepted for cultural and or religious reasons, really like meat.

        How many vegetarians do you know personally?

        2. My experience, in short, as a former employee on a (very) small organic farm and co-owner of my own (very) small non-organic farm and orchard: One never is able to make optimal use of manure. It either sits too long in a pile, and gets rained on, or the weather sucks after you spread it, or you spread it too early, or too late….Here in the Northeast, ya do what ya can when ya can.

          Way up above is the question: Does this mean we can’t win? Win what? A Crackerjack prize? We release CO2 sitting on our ass, breathing.

          I do know it means ‘organic’ farming, with its manuring-over-fertilizing policy, is a crock of shit…. wait a minute….

        3. Just about every the high minded, morally upright, well educated, tolerant Democrat I know likes meat too. Loves it and eats it daily, three or even four times daily in most cases, including snacks.

          That is definitely not my personal experience amongst my own circle of friends and family even in the US. Even less so in other countries.

          Not to mention the seven billion plus people I don’t know. Nearly all of them, maybe a few hundred million excepted for cultural and or religious reasons, really like meat.

          Whether they may or may not like meat, here are some actual numbers.

          A study from 2010, estimated that there are 1,45 billion vegetarians of necessity and another 75 million of choice. They make approximately 21.8% of the world’s population.
          Source Wikipedia

          There are probably vast numbers of people like myself who are not strictly vegetarian but consume little to no meat for long stretches at a time. Plus my hunch is that the numbers of vegetarians of necessity will probably tend to increase in the future due to many of the factors related to economic and ecosystem collapse, that we often discuss here.

          Maybe try an impossible burger, some artificial shrimp made from algae or some yummy insects! 😉

          https://impossiblefoods.com/

          Cheers!

          1. Hi Fred,
            Thanks for pointing out the billion plus of vegetarians by necessity. I forgot to mention them, composing my answer on the fly.

            You’re dead on in predicting that there will be a LOT more vegetarians in times to come. Most of these new vegetarians in my opinion won’t have much if any choice in the matter.

            And you’re right about quite a few well off well educated people consuming a primarily vegetarian diet.

            I should be more careful about hyperbole, when posting comments, lol.

            There’s a real possibility that many tens of millions of people will cut way back on red meat, and even poultry and dairy consumption, in coming years, in the expectation of thereby living longer healthier lives.

            I’ve done so already myself. So have a number of acquaintances including some of just about every political stripe. I even know at least two rabid Trump types who eat almost no sugar, or bread make from refined white flour, or red meat….. having been convinced by their doctors that such foods consumed regularly will put them in their graves well ahead of schedule.

            The potential is there for veggie burgers and such to sell like ice water in hell, but so far I haven’t yet tried any as good as the real thing. The ones to be found in run of the mill supermarkets don’t cut it.

            I don’t shop in high end stores. None nearby, and not much into status anyway. I can get top quality stuff directly from local people, anything from raw milk to freshly butchered beef or pork, and any fruit or veggie that’s in season here as well. Most people can’t get milk or meat this way, since it’s basically only semilegal to even give these things away.

            But we’re a gifting society, and I get mine free, or in exchange for other gifts, such as the loan of a machine or help with fixing leaky water pipes or something.

            And there are black markets everywhere you go. You can buy just about anything anywhere, if enough people want it and the price offered is high enough. Supply side, I think they call it, lol.

            I know a man who sells dozens of sheep every year for cash on the spot to a bunch of people who ritually slaughter them, personally , right on his farm. The USDA and state regulators have hissy fits about such activities, but I could care less myself. It’s hearsay, I can’t swear it in court, lol.

            1. Vegetarians? Heard of the insect apocalypse?
              Without insects most of the plants on the earth disappear.

              For starters, approximately 80 percent of all of the world’s plant life are angiosperms, or flowering plants. In order to reproduce, these plants must have pollen physically transferred from a male anther to the female stigma within a flower.

              In rare instances, wind, water or animals such as birds and bats do the trick. But the vast majority of the pollinating work is done by insects, including bees, beetles, flies and butterflies. “Without pollinators,” Davidowitz said, “most plants on the planet will disappear.”

              The world would not just be a less leafy place in this insect-apocalypse scenario. Between 50 and 90 percent of the human diet by both volume and calories, depending on the country, comes directly from flowering plants.

              https://www.livescience.com/52752-what-if-all-insects-died.html

              I think we need to be much more concerned about insects than about our diet. Otherwise we lose the last letter in that word.

            2. I think we need to be much more concerned about insects than about our diet. Otherwise we lose the last letter in that word.

              Well you are apparently preaching to a choir of one when it comes to me! Being that I live in Florida, a place with a reputation for lots of insects, and even knowing what I know about global decline in their numbers, I was still shocked these past few days when I walked around and did an inspection of outdoor lights around my apartment complex!

              In the past they would have been covered with all kinds of insects, especially moths. Unfortunately I found only a few dozen stragglers spread out over all the outdoor lights of the complex and strikingly, not a single moth!

              A very silent spring is sure to follow! I’m expecting a drastic decline in geckos, tree frogs, lizards and birds!

            3. When I was a youngster all lights at night in the summer had lots of insects flying about them, with bats grabbing what they could.

              Now when I see a moth, it gives the same thrill as seeing a rare bird. Haven’t seen Luna moths in years now. Spiders are falling off in population, of course.

              Another tipping point crossed that took us by surprise. Soon we will notice we are on the other side of more tipping points.

            4. Another tipping point crossed that took us by surprise.

              I admit that the magnitude and the suddeness of this occurrence has taken me almost totally by surprise! Especially given that I had deluded myself into thinking I was both observant and environmentally aware.

              Though I highly doubt that the magnitude of this ecological disaster is even on the radar of a fraction of a percent of the population at large. Now I really need to go off in some dark corner and have a good cry, though I’m not sure I have any tears left…

            5. When I was a kid, and there were hundreds of acres of orchards, as well as other crops close by, and all of them doused with the worst sort of pesticides ever legally used here in the USA, on a regular basis, a light left on at night outside would invariably be surrounded by a cloud of flying insects.

              Now that we are farming far less, locally, meaning collectively, and using far fewer chemicals, and far less lethal chemicals, I seldom see more than just half a dozen or so insects around an outside light myself, forty or fifty years later.

              It’s scary as hell….. assuming you understand enough biology to see the implications.

              I used to see dozens of bats any late summer evening. Now I seldom ever see even one or two.

              But nature is resilient, lol. Half an hour ago, a coyote caught one of our two pet roosters right out in the open, broad daylight. Saw it happen.

              I never saw a coyote, personally, until about five or six years ago. I must say this for them, they have done an extraordinary job of cleaning up the groundhogs which used to wreck vegetable gardens on a regular basis. Still plenty of deer though, way too many actually.

              Most local people with cows now have guard animals with them.

            6. Where I live the demise of insects and associated song birds is a tragedy beyond belief. One big problem is, younger people think the current situation is normal.

            8. The staggering collapse of insect biomass needs to be front page news.

            9. The potential is there for veggie burgers and such to sell like ice water in hell, but so far I haven’t yet tried any as good as the real thing. The ones to be found in run of the mill supermarkets don’t cut it.

              Forget supermarkets, this needs to be available at fast food restaurants. You are right that for now it’s a bit of a niche luxury market but if say McDonalds or Burger King got behind something like this, prices would plummet! In my case, I currently need to travel 3 miles to the nearest Burger/Grill place that already has them on the menu…

            10. Hi Fred,
              So how much does a good veggie burger cost, compared to an ordinary burger, in a more or less comparable restaurant, where you live?

              McDonald’s and such around here cost around six to seven bucks for a typical combo, a few may be cheaper, a few more expensive.

              Move up a step or two, to places you sit down with menus, places with waiters / waitresses, etc, and a very good burger combo, potato of choice and soft drink, free refills,etc, runs ten to twelve bucks plus tip, this in a Ruby Tuesday or Chili’s sort of restaurant.

              As usual, you are dead on about prices falling sharply, if veggie burgers take off.

              If organic foods get to be really popular, so that organic farmers can take advantage of economies of scale the way conventional farmers do, at least to the extent possible, organic foods can be produced for anywhere to about the same to half again to double conventional production costs, going on my own personal knowledge. Others may believe my seat of the pants estimate is way off. One crop at one location at one time of the year may come in at about the same cost, the same crop someplace else might cost twice as much to grow to harvest earlier or later in the season.

              The key reason I mention this is that most foods, at the farm gate level, sell for anywhere from maybe five percent of the typical retail price per pound to maybe thirty percent of the retail price. Once in a long while a grower might get fifty percent if the crop comes up short, and buyers are desperate. Supermarkets don’t like to run out of anything, if at all possible, even if they lose a little money on a certain item occasionally. Local apple growers on average are lucky to get twenty to thirty cents per pound, by the truck load, on average over the last ten years. I have seldom seen apples for sale for less than a dollar, and often up to three bucks, even more for high status fashionable new varieties.

              So let’s say I can grow organic apples for forty cents, and conventional apples for thirty cents. Most of the total costs are more or less the same, such as containers, property taxes, machinery, etc. So if costs were really and truly simply passed on, and the market were really and truly competitive, then an organic golden delicious should cost maybe fifteen or twenty cents more, per pound. In actuality, the cost of organics is more like double a lot of the time, and hardly ever less than fifty percent more, at least in local markets.

              Organic bananas on special here today are sixty cents, conventional bananas thirty nine cents.

              Most people even around here where wages are notoriously low could afford organic foods if they were willing to shop more carefully, cook and eat more at home, cut back on the more expensive cuts of meat, etc.

              And they would live longer and healthier lives.

            11. It seems like even our wild imaginations just can’t keep up with the speed of change anymore! Ok it’s not McDonalds but White Castle.

              https://www.eater.com/2018/4/12/17228738/white-castle-impossible-burger-sliders-vegetarian-meatless

              White Castle’s Impossible Sliders are made with Impossible Burger patties, smoked cheddar, pickles, and onions and cost $1.99 each. While that’s significantly more expensive than regular White Castle sliders, which are under a buck apiece, they’re also about twice the size, with two-ounce patties instead of the regular beef patties that are just shy of an ounce, per USA Today.

              The patties are made primarily of wheat protein and potato, and like their competitors, differ from the veggie burgers of yesteryear in that they more closely resemble actual meat and even appear to “bleed” when cut open. (The Impossible Burger’s “blood” is actually a plant-derived compound called heme that’s also found in beef.)

              The price of an impossible burger with a side of fries and a beer will probably set you back around 15 bucks or so at a typical bar and grill. That doesn’t include tip. 😉

      2. The trick is to put it in a digester and remove a lot of the energy content before spreading it. This is widespread in Europe. You can use the energy to offset production elsewhere.

    1. To meet the IPCC descent rate would mean reducing oil consumption by 4.5 million barrels/day/year. Similar drops for coal and natural gas. Just to get to 50 percent by 2030. Every year we waste makes the descent steeper. Sounds improbable even if EV’s and renewable energy rise quickly.

      I will listen while I do the dishes.

      1. Yep, in the case of the French power company, there are always crooks. The carbon credit system is well known for it’s ineffectiveness and inability to prevent it’s use to do major damage to the environment.

      2. The US could reduce oil consumption by 5% per year pretty easily – the US has an enormous amount of oil consumption of really marginal value – 50% of oil consumption by a passenger vehicle fleet at 23MPG and average occupancy of 1.2 people! The rest of the world would take a little more planning to get there, I think.

  9. How Plastic Cleanup Threatens the Ocean’s Living Islands
    Rebecca Helm

    https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/ocean-cleanup-project-could-destroy-neuston/580693/

    Imagine you’re on a small boat in the middle of the open ocean, surrounded by what looks like a raft of plastic. Now flip the whole world upside down. You remain comfortably attached to your seat—the abyss towers above you, and all around, stretching up from the water’s surface, is an electric-blue meadow of life. What you thought was plastic is actually a living island. This meadow is made up of a diverse collection of animals. The most abundant are blue buttons and by-the-wind sailors, with bright-blue bodies that dot the sky like suns, and deep-purple snails found in patches so dense one scientist described collecting more than 1,000 in 20 minutes.

    This is the neuston, a whole ecosystem living at the ocean’s surface. I once stumbled upon a raft of neuston when a storm blew it ashore in California. Many neustonic animals are vibrant highlighter colors, and the sand was saturated in bright blues and pale pinks. Together, these small creatures may function like upside-down coral reefs: an oasis of shelter and life far out to sea. As far back as the Cold War era, scientists were describing these colorful and important ecosystems, yet they still remain all but unknown. But now, as efforts to clean the ocean of plastic start up, our ignorance is putting this ecosystem at risk.

    Just like reefs on the seafloor, this ecosystem does not stand apart from the open ocean around it. The neuston is a nursery for multiple species of larval fish and a hunting ground for paper nautilus octopuses. It supports sunfish, leatherback turtles, and diverse ocean grazers, which frequent these islands, relying on them as a food source. At night, soft-bodied jellies rise up to join the neuston, sparkling like fireflies. But all of this, from the blue sea dragons to the by-the-wind sailors, is in peril.

    When I learned about the Ocean Cleanup project’s 600-meter-long barrier with a three-meter-deep net, a wall being placed in the open ocean, ostensibly to collect plastic passively as the currents push water through the net, I thought immediately of the neuston. How will it be impacted? But in the 146 pages of the Ocean Cleanup’s environmental-impact assessment, this ecosystem isn’t mentioned once.

  10. Good stuff in Inside Climate News at the moment:

    INVESTORS JOIN CALLS FOR A FOOD REVOLUTION TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE

    https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29012019/global-food-system-shocks-climate-change-mcdonalds-obesity-malnutrition-investors-lancet-scientists

    A scientific study published Monday also shows how “food production shocks” linked to climate change have been rising globally, putting food security at risk. The researchers identified nearly 230 food production shocks, in 134 countries, from 1961 to 2013, and said the frequency of crop production shocks driven by extreme weather had been increasing steadily. Food shocks threaten to destabilize the global food supply and drive up global hunger rates, which have started to tick up in recent years.
    “Land-based crop and livestock production are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events such as drought, which are expected to become more frequent and intense with climate change,” said … the report’s lead author.
    …
    Food production, globally, is responsible for about a third of greenhouse gas emissions, largely from meat and dairy production. Nearly 85 million Americans—or nearly a third of the population—eat at a fast food restaurants on any given day. But, as the Lancet report on obesity notes, demand for convenience and protein are rising in the developing world, too.

    INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE, AN EXTRACTION INDUSTRY LIKE FOSSIL FUELS, A GROWING DRIVER OF CLIMATE CHANGE

    https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25012019/climate-change-agriculture-farming-consolidation-corn-soybeans-meat-crop-subsidies

    … for several decades, ever-bigger and less-varied farms have overtaken diversified operations like his, replacing them with industrialized row crops or gigantic impoundments of cattle, hogs and chickens. This trend is a central reason why American agriculture has failed to deal with climate change, a crisis that has been made worse by large-scale farming practices even as it afflicts farmers themselves.
    …
    This has profound climate and environmental implications. Mega-sized farming encourages practices that degrade the soil, waste fertilizer and mishandle manure, all of which directly increase emissions of greenhouse gases. At the same time, it discourages practices like “no-till” farming and crop rotation that grab carbon dioxide from the air, store it in the soil and improve soil health.

    COAL MINES LIKELY DROVE CHINA’S RECENT METHANE EMISSIONS RISE, STUDY SAYS

    https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30012019/china-coal-mine-methane-emissions-spike-tampered-testing-study

    Satellite data collected from 2010 to 2015 show that China’s methane emissions increased unabated during that period and that the increase was most likely driven by coal mining, according to a worrisome new report.
    The increase in one of the most potent of greenhouse gases happened despite attempts by the Chinese government to rein in emissions, according to a study published Tuesday in the scientific journal Nature Communications. The regulations proved to be ineffective, perhaps because of loopholes or evasion.

    1. Archibald, Why don’t you stop with your own stupidity?
      We can model ENSO very accurately and thus the contribution of that to the climate signal. It’s then obvious that there is a strong AGW component.

      1. One need not read further than your opening paragraph to realize that you are dumber than a lump of coal!

        When I got involved in global warming over a decade ago, the promoters of that cult wanted Australia to reduce its coal consumption by 20%. It was easy enough to predict that doing that would damage our economy and reduce our standard of living.

        Here we are today. The damage has been done, and is getting worse. State governments have gleefully blown up coal-fired power stations in fits of religious ecstasy. As a consequence we have just had the summer blackouts that were also so easily predicted. One sign of an advanced civilization is a stable, cheap, and reliable electrical power. We used to have one of those. We now rely upon diesel generators in part, like most third world countries.

        Well, you are basically full of it! Here’s the new reality!

        https://cleantechnica.com/2019/01/29/renewables-shine-fossil-fuels-suffer-as-australia-swelters-in-record-heat/

        Renewables Shine, Fossil Fuels Suffer As Australia Swelters In Record Heat

        The sun doesn’t always shine! The wind doesn’t always blow! There’s never enough renewable energy when you need it most! Only fossil fuels can make the grid reliable! We hear this sort of blather from fossil fuel apologists all the time. But when the mercury soared in Australia recently, it was the fossil fuel powered generating plants that failed to deliver.

        And the rest of the crap you posted is even dumber than your opener! As they say, ignorance can be cured, stupidity, not so much!

        1. On a more interesting note:

          One of my favorite jet stream pages has a new set of maps, which makes following weather patterns very enlightening. You can see the weirding of the jet stream happening. Record cold is followed by near-record warmth, then back again:

          http://www.weatherstreet.com/states/gfsx-300-forecast.htm

          Click on “Air Mass Temp” on the right, then run your mouse over the days at the bottom of the page, from day one to day ten, and you can see a beautiful example of the recurrent wave pattern that Jennifer Francis talks about here:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it_B5bnjmm4

          1. The jet stream along the equator is known as the QBO. The direction of this is related to the rotation of the polar vortex. We reported findings on this behavior at last month’s AGU. It is very predictable, apart from whatever the AGW signal will do in the future.

    4. Just a reminder. Archibald writes for the Heartland Institute. He lists his expertise as :

      “David Archibald is a scientist operating in the fields of cancer research, climate science, and oil exploration.”

      So I assume his cancer research expertise involves tobacco not being harmful. He is apparently owns some oil leases in Australia. That certainly makes him objective on both climate and oil exploration.

  12. I’ve become convinced that, on average, wildfires are now firmly in the CO2 feedback camp. Possibly methane as well.

    B.C. FORESTS CONTRIBUTE ‘HIDDEN’ CARBON EMISSIONS THAT DWARF OFFICIAL NUMBERS

    “Climate-warming carbon emissions released from B.C. forests in both 2017 and 2018 were more than three times higher than emissions from all other sources combined in 2016. The vast majority of the estimated 237 million tonnes emitted resulted from another record-breaking wildfire season that burned more than 13,000 square kilometres of land.”

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/sierra-club-report-forest-carbon-emissions-1.4995191?fbclid=IwAR1a7ejPCAe3T-pBn53gvbvug6jyjbmtZPJkBVRezEeT3k_eQ6obb_f-byE

    1. Meanwhile,

      ANTARCTIC SEA ICE MELTS TO RECORD LOW FOR JANUARY

      “The area of sea ice around Antarctica on Jan. 1 was 11,600 square miles below the previous record low for that date, set in 2017. It was 726,000 square miles below average – an area roughly twice the size of the state of Texas.”

  13. Off subject but interesting. While reading “A Fortunate Universe” by Lewis and Barnes, I came across a statistic about water, that in H2O. A stat that I was totally unaware of. What percentage of water is hydrogen? Hint, there are two correct answers and neither is 66 and 2/3 percent.

    2. I Googled it because I thought it was a bit of a trick question, especially if you leave out the mass 😉

      Mass Percent of Hydrogen. To find the mass percent of hydrogen in water, take the molar mass of hydrogen in the water molecule, divide by the total molar mass of water, and multiply by 100. Dividing 2.016 by 18.016 gives you 0.1119. Multiply 0.1119 by 100 to get the answer: 11.19 percent.
      Mar 28, 2018

      What is the Mass Percent of Hydrogen in Water? | Sciencing
      https://sciencing.com/what-is-the-mass-percent-of-hydrogen-in-water-13710464.html

      1. But, with electrolysis you get 2 volumes of hydrogen for each volume of oxygen, so the percentage of oxygen in volume is 33.33%.

        1. Yeah, but the volume and the mass of a gas, are not interchangeable quantities!

          Boyle’s law states that, at a constant temperature, the volume of a given mass of gas varies inversely with pressure. 😉

          Methinks it’s a bit like comparing hard apple cider to freshly squeezed orange juice.

          Cheers!

          1. “Yeah, but the volume and the mass of a gas, are not interchangeable quantities!”

            Really? Who would have guessed? 😉

            1. Only people who had to work in hyperbaric environments where mixing gases of different atomic weights, partial pressures and gas volume percentages are critical to their survival 😉

      2. Okay, from the book:

        Even though oxygen is 16 times heavier than hydrogen, it is only 13 percent larger because positively charged nucleus keep the electrons close.

        So, I did the math and it come out to 11.11% by weight and 63.5% by volume. Okay, I guess 11.19% is the better answer. But my rudimentary math got me close.

      1. I was trying to explain exactly that to my family while discussing ocean acidification at the dinner table in Germany! Much to their disbelief, Fortunately there was a bottle soda water right there on the table and the label clearly stated ‘Mit Kohlensäure’! Needless to say, it was a bit of an aha moment, when I pointed to it.

        Kohlensäure (H2CO3) ist eine anorganische Säure und das Reaktionsprodukt ihres Säureanhydrids Kohlendioxid (CO2) mit Wasser.

  14. MORE EXTREME AND MORE FREQUENT: DROUGHT AND ARIDITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY

    “The field of climate science seems to contain many examples of alarming runaway feedback loops, vicious cycles, and previously unimagined detrimental synergistic effects arising within Earth systems—for example, the albedo effect with regard to melting sea ice; or melting permafrost releasing more methane to further accelerate the melting process. New research by a team from Columbia University continues in this vein with results from their recent study published in Science Advances. The study, “PROJECTED INCREASES IN INTENSITY, FREQUENCY, AND TERRESTRIAL CARBON COSTS OF COMPOUND DROUGHT AND ARIDITY EVENTS,” shows that the compound effects of soil moisture and vapor pressure deficit on terrestrial carbon uptake is greater than the effect of either variable when considered separately, and that these two conditions tend to mutually reinforce each other.”

    Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-extreme-frequent-drought-aridity-21st.html#jCp

    1. And, for David Archibald,

      ANTARCTIC ICE LOSS HAS TRIPLED IN A DECADE.

      The detailed record shows an acceleration, starting around 2002. Csatho noted that comparing the first and last five-year periods in the record reveals an even steeper acceleration. “If you compare 1997-2002 to 2012-2017, the increase is even larger — a factor of more than 5!!”

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/06/13/antarctic-ice-loss-has-tripled-in-a-decade-if-that-continues-we-are-in-serious-trouble/?utm_term=.648978138ffa

      1. The 200 year polar coupling is being overwhelmed now so I expect it will merely be a signal on top of the overarching global warming effects.

  15. The International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration
    A group of researchers and logistic experts have descended on West Antarctica to begin a five-year study of Thwaites Glacier. The project, known as the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, is supported by the US National Science Foundation and the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council. It aims to better understand the glacier’s dramatic ice loss and potential impact on sea level rise.

    “Thwaites is a very broad glacier that reaches deep into the West Antarctic Ice Sheet,” said Ted Scambos, research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and NSIDC. Without buttressing glaciers, the WAIS could send an additional 3 meters (10 feet) of melt water into the oceans over the next two centuries, doubling the current estimates. Thwaites Glacier and the surrounding coastal region alone could raise sea levels by half a meter (1.6 feet) within 100 years. Like several other West Antarctic glaciers, Thwaites is rapidly losing ice, and with it, the ability to hold back rising seas.

    https://nsidc.org/nsidc-highlights/2019/01/international-thwaites-glacier-collaboration

    1. If Thwaites can do that in 100 years then 10 glaciers could do it in ……. oh, shit!

      NAOM

        1. And there’s this:

          SEAS MAY BE RISING FASTER THAN THOUGHT

          “A new Tulane University study questions the reliability of how sea-level rise in low-lying coastal areas such as southern Louisiana is measured and suggests that the current method underestimates the severity of the problem.”

          Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-seas-faster-thought.html#jCp

          1. Yeah, This is what a typical King Tide in South Beach in Miami looks like today. Imagine that same street at high tide plus storm surge during a direct hit from a Cat 5 hurricane. Think that can’t happen. It’s only a matter of time. It’s like playing Russian Roulette with five bullets in the chambers instead of just one. Last year’s Irma was supposed to have been such a storm. Miami got incredibly lucky with that one! All it will take is a few more inches of sea level rise and you can fuggedabout Miami and most of the towns near where I live.
            .

    2. Speaking of Thwaites,

      HUGE CAVITY IN ANTARCTIC GLACIER SIGNALS RAPID DECAY

      “A gigantic cavity – two-thirds the area of Manhattan and almost 1,000 feet (300 meters) tall – growing at the bottom of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is one of several disturbing discoveries reported in a new NASA-led study of the disintegrating glacier. Researchers expected to find some gaps between ice and bedrock at Thwaites’ bottom where ocean water could flow in and melt the glacier from below. The size and explosive growth rate of the newfound hole, however, surprised them. It’s big enough to have contained 14 billion tons of ice, and most of that ice melted over the last three years.”

      https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7322

      1. Methinks the glaciers were at a tipping point anyway and only needed a small push from global warming to get them started. That whole southern ocean region has been receiving increased insolation for thousands of years of a magnitude much greater than AGW radiative increase.
        We can’t take all the credit, only for pushing a tipping point earlier.

        The scary part is that both poles are now warming simultaneously which is an abnormal condition and a forewarning of weather chaos to come. The Arctic is more susceptible to loss of ice and snow, so even with less insolation AGW is kicking it into a warm state. All atmospheric and ocean circulation systems can be expected to become chaotic.

        1. Methinks you are correct. One might add: “Since 1955, over 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases has been stored in the oceans. The remainder of this energy goes into melting sea ice, ice caps, and glaciers, and warming the continents’ land mass. Only the smallest fraction of this thermal energy goes into warming the atmosphere. Humans thus, living at the interface of the land, ocean and atmosphere, only feel a sliver of the true warming cost of fossil fuel emissions.”

          http://oceanscientists.org/index.php/topics/ocean-warming

          1. It takes about 200 years for the heat signal to be sent from pole to pole (assisted by Kelvin Wave), usually meaning the other pole gets colder, a seesaw pattern.
            Now that signals are being sent in both directions, I can only guess that there might be cancelation of the seesaw and/or a major disturbance in the heat transfer system.
            Things will be very unlike the past.

  16. Porsche says its first electric car will charge faster than any of its competitors — and it shows how Tesla’s greatest advantage may be fading away

    Porsche said on Monday that the Taycan, its first fully electric production vehicle, will be able to receive over 60 miles of range from a 4-minute charge.

    The automaker has said the vehicle will have a range of over 300 miles, produce over 600 horsepower, and accelerate from 0-60 mph in under 3.5 seconds. The Taycan is expected to start around $90,000, according to The Drive.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/porsche-says-its-first-electric-car-will-charge-faster-than-any-of-its-competitors-—-and-it-shows-how-teslas-greatest-advantage-may-be-fading-away/ar-BBSULLq?ocid=spartanntp

  17. WORLDWIDE THREAT ASSESSMENT of the US INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

    https://climateandsecurity.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/worldwide-threat-assessment_dni_2019.pdf

    Lots of threats, but for the climate and environment (at least some people in US institutions understand, even if the collective idiots in the White House administration don’t, though I’d imagine a few of the authors here might be looking for new jobs now or in the near future):

    Global environmental and ecological degradation, as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond. Climate hazards such as extreme weather, higher temperatures, droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, sea level rise, soil degradation, and acidifying oceans are intensifying, threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security. Irreversible damage to ecosystems and habitats will undermine the economic benefits they provide, worsened by air, soil, water, and marine pollution.

    Extreme weather events, many worsened by accelerating sea level rise, will particularly affect urban coastal areas in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Western Hemisphere. Damage to communication, energy, and transportation infrastructure could affect low-lying military bases, inflict economic costs, and cause human displacement and loss of life.

    Changes in the frequency and variability of heat waves, droughts, and floods—combined with poor governance practices—are increasing water and food insecurity around the world, increasing the risk of social unrest, migration, and interstate tension in countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia, Iraq, and Jordan.
    Diminishing Arctic sea ice may increase competition—particularly with Russia and China— over access to sea routes and natural resources. Nonetheless, Arctic states have maintained mostly positive cooperation in the region through the Arctic Council and other multilateral mechanisms, a trend we do not expect to change in the near term. Warmer temperatures and diminishing sea ice are reducing the high cost and risks of some commercial activities and are attracting new players to the resource-rich region. In 2018, the minimum sea ice extent in the Arctic was 25 percent below the 30-year average from 1980 to 2010.

    There’s a theme in a few different sections of Russia/China (considered now to be at their closest since the 1950s and surely some of that is because of how weakened, divided and alienated from previous allies the US has become under Tump) being a combined threat as in the Arctic.

  18. ALARMING NUMBER OF AMERICANS THINK CLIMATE-CHANGE DENIERS DESERVE TO GET HIT BY NATURAL DISASTERS, SURVEY FINDS

    https://earther.gizmodo.com/alarming-number-of-americans-think-climate-change-denie-1832129432

    In fact, roughly a third of Americans who understand that climate change is real and driven by human activities agree with the idea that climate deniers “get what they deserve” when disasters strike their communities, …

    How long until the villagers with flaming torches and pitchforks come for the deniers and polluters? It might start as lawsuits and distrained assets but if things get bad enough and the riots start in earnest the coal and oil company executive officers and property could easily become prime targets.

    1. A third of Americans who understand that climate change is real and driven by human activities agree with the idea that climate deniers “get what they deserve” when disasters strike their communities, …

      That’s GREAT news!

      It means that two thirds of Americans who understand that climate change is real and driven by human activities disagree with that premise and won’t be blaming the victims…
      Which in no way means, they shouldn’t hold those responsible, accountable for damages!

    2. Unfortunately, if their communities happen to be large, and especially if they happen to be rich and powerful, what they are apt to get after a natural disaster is a bail out.

      Since I live in a small, poor community, without political muscle, if we experience a natural disaster, all we can expect is a headline in a smallish local paper at best.

  19. https://www.techtimes.com/articles/238156/20190130/canadian-glacial-melt-uncovers-ancient-landscapes-hidden-for-40-000-years.htm

    While a lot of people are freaking out about a few records set for DAYS, going back no more than a century, here’s a place where records lasting forty thousand years over annual periods are falling …. now.

    Cold for a day or a week is weather. Snow and ice that have lasted forty thousand years, without melting back to expose the ground underneath…… melting and exposing plants buried for forty thousand years…… that’s climate change.

    That ice hasn’t melted over the space of a day or a week due to a hot spell.

    And of course record highs are being set in lots of places…. while far FEWER record lows are being set.

    1. The sun in combination with the earth is constantly going through heating and cooling cycles. Some of the cycles are very long. For example, science has been able to show the whole southern part of the US down to the Augusta-Macon-Columbus area was a shoreline once. A mini ice age occurred 10,000 years ago and is the reason why all the woolly mammoths are extinct. Then there are shorter cycles, as well, of around 30-35 years or so. For example, 1895-1925 was a cold period, 1925-1955 was a warm period, 1955-1985 was a cold period, the last 32 years, approximately, have been a warm period, and now the next cold period is upon us. The cold waves of increasing intensity we have been seeing these last few winters is a demonstration of the transition to the cold period being underway.

      1. The cold waves of increasing intensity we have been seeing these last few winters is a demonstration of the transition to the cold period being underway.

        No they aren’t. First, those cold waves have been decreasing in frequency pretty much everywhere. They are news now precisely because they have become so much more rare.

        Second, the crazily intense cold periods in specific areas are due to influxes of arctic air that are now more intense because of the weakening jet stream. This is an effect of global warming. The Arctic is warming faster than other areas, which reduces the temperature differential between the Arctic and the equator. That temperature differential is what powers the jet stream. The jet stream acts as a wall, keeping cold artic air up North. So, as the Arctic warms and the jet stream weakens, we get occasional intrusions of frigid Arctic air.

        This was all predicted by climate scientists decades ago. Deniers, as usual, have absolutely everything incorrect.

        1. I have been hearing something similar on the news all week, that global warming actually means more cold air outbreaks. Maybe someday it will make sense to me.

          2. It’s not too complicated. Jet streams are powered by heat differential between poles and equator, just like any heat engine. The jet streams act as atmospheric “walls”, making it harder for cold air to escape the poles. The poles tend to warm faster than the equator. This means the heat differential between the poles and equator is decreasing. This means that the ‘engine’ powering the jet stream is not as powerful as it once was. So the jet stream weakens, and becomes wavy, which means that strong incursions of cold polar air are more likely than the were in the past, since the weaker wavier jet stream allows polar air to travel further toward the equator.

      2. Alex- the new Trump Science Advisor
        “and now the next cold period is upon us. The cold waves of increasing intensity we have been seeing these last few winters is a demonstration of the transition to the cold period being underway.”

        In the real world- 17 of the warmest years globally, in past 136 years of records, have occurred in past 18 yrs.
        https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/

      3. Maybe you could explain to us your understanding of the words “global”, “average” and “trend”, because it obviously differs from that of the general population (e.g. ask an Australian at the moment).

    1. ‘The arts are the wilderness areas of the imagination,
      surviving like national parks, in the midst of civilised minds’
      —Gary Snyder

  21. Global Sales December & 2018: 2 Million Plug-In Electric Cars Sold

    Amazing year, amazing growth and records

    Sales of plug-in electric cars increased very fast and in December reached an all-time record of around 286,367 (according to EV Sales Blog estimations), which is the fourth consecutive new record.

    The rate of growth was 70%, which is enough to be happy with the progress.

    See more our sales reports for December 2018 here.

    Thanks to the superb end of the year, the year 2018 closed with 2 million sales! The estimated result stands at 2,018,247, which is 72% more than a year ago at an average market share of 2.1%.

    All-electric cars took 69% of sales, while PHEV 31%. Such high advantage for BEVs has not been seen since 2011.

    Next year result is expected at 3-3.5 million with a monthly record maybe at around 500,000.

    edit: Note on exponential growth. If global plug-in car sales were to continue to grow at 70% per year, the number sold in 2025 would be 82 million, more than the amount of just over 79 million total global car sales for 2017. In that case, Tony Seba would be “on the money”.

    1. Meanwhile global cars sales were flat or declined slightly.

      https://www.just-auto.com/analysis/global-automotive-market-report-q4-2018_id186810.aspx

      In the US sales increased by <170K compared to 2017 (less than 1% of 17.3m), according to the article.

      Tesla increased deliveries from about 103K to about 163K, an increase of about 160K.

      https://www.statista.com/statistics/502208/tesla-quarterly-vehicle-deliveries/

      In other words, Tesla was responsible for all growth of the American car market in 2018.

      1. 103k to 163k is only 63k, right? If so then Tesla only accounted for 1/3 of the sales increase.

        2. LOL my math was all wrong. According to the link I provided, 2018 deliveries were about 240K, an increase of about 140K.

          So I wasn’t quite as wrong as by bad math suggested.

          Meanwhile check out the interesting chart on page 04 [sic] of this report by Deloitte.

          https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/uk/Documents/manufacturing/deloitte-uk-battery-electric-vehicles.pdf

          They claim that production of cars and light duty trucks peaked in 2017, and any future growth will be EVs.

          That doesn’t mean the combustion engine fleet will stop growing however. As long as more combustion engines are built than scrapped, it will keep growing. But as the fleet ages, it will start to shrink.

    2. 2 million cars would use about 20,000 bpd – not much more than noise on OPECs production numbers.

    1. Not sure if factual enters the picture other than the basics of food, shelter, clothing. The remaining activities rest within or partly within a delusional state. Certainly the sex drive is enveloped in much self-delusion as well as all the ego building activities. 🙂
      “The basic ego of man knows no bounds.”
      Here is some philosophy on Mankind from decades ago from a celebrated storyteller and humorist.Enjoy.
      Since he wanders a bit you need to listen to the whole thing. Commercials have removed from the original broadcast.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H37aexyVEOA

  23. Fred, something (depressing) to go with your morning coffee,

    OCEAN HEAT WAVES LIKE THE PACIFIC’S DEADLY ‘BLOB’ COULD BECOME THE NEW NORMAL

    “Around the world, shifting climate and ocean circulation patterns are causing huge patches of unusually warm water to become more common. Already, ominous new warm patches are emerging in the North Pacific Ocean and elsewhere, and researchers are applying what they’ve learned from The Blob to help guide predictions of how future marine heat waves might unfold. If global warming isn’t curbed, scientists warn that the heat waves will become more frequent, larger, more intense, and longer lasting. By the end of the century the ocean is going to be a much different place.”

    http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/ocean-heat-waves-pacific-s-deadly-blob-could-become-new-normal

    1. This pacific warm ocean pattern “the blob” may grow in intensity and frequency to become a huge manifestation of global warming. And the ramifications are huge. For ocean life, and also for human. The deep SW drought during that episode was becoming a major issue, with increasing fires and severe drop in the levels of reservoirs. The economic impact to the nation could be massive from this pattern.
      This could be (one of the) ground zero in the global warming wave, along with coastal SE USA.

      https://www.decodedscience.org/california-drought-causes-predictions-infrastructure/55755
      https://news.uci.edu/2018/01/16/less-predictable-precipitation/

  24. Australian solar’s record-smashing year. In eye-watering charts

    By all accounts, 2018 was a stellar year for Australian Solar Power. To celebrate all of the solar glory, SunWiz has written a series of articles covering 2018 – the key trends, achievements, and milestones for each state and segment of the Australian solar industry.

    To say 2018 was a record year for Australian PV is practically an understatement. Every imaginable record was broken, and broken repeatedly. SunWiz’s monthly Insights releases detailed the records broken each and every month in 2018, and just when you thought a record would stand for years to come, it would be eclipsed the very next month.

    A look at the monthly registration volume nationally shows the series of repeatedly broken records as the market grew and grew and grew. Though some years in the past had months that were as large as some of the months in 2018, volumes in those years were never sustained in the way they were in 2018.

    This meant that every month in 2018 was higher than all but the top 5 months – two of which occurred at the end of 2017… and nine of the the top months recorded to date occurred in 2018. Starting to understand why saying “2018 was a record year” is an understatement?

    All this despite the best efforts of the Scott Morrison led Australian Federal Government to stymie the development of renewable energy in favour of coal. I continue to find developments in Australia intriguing.

    2. And yet these are the people we expect to co-operate in a sustainable non-growth economy to save the world.

  26. WASHINGTON (Reuters) – General Motors Co said late on Wednesday it will temporarily suspend operations at 11 Michigan plants and its Warren Tech Center after a utility made an emergency appeal to users to conserve natural gas during extreme winter cold.

    In the near future, the last line could easily read this-
    “conserve natural gas during the extreme shortage of supply over the next 6 months, and perhaps on into next year”, or
    “conserve electricity during the 5 month period from late Oct through March”.

    And the word appeal could replaced by ‘mandate’

  27. It’s going to be interesting, watching to see if Tesla can break the old franchised dealership mold as the company continues to grow.

    For now, all the legacy automakers are legally locked in to the dealership system, either by law or by contract or by both, and usually both, as far as I can tell.

    But I don’t see anything to stop any company new to the industry in the American domestic market adopting the Tesla sales model, if the company has the economic muscle to implement it.

    According to this link, Tesla is making very fast progress in improving repair turnaround time, and plans on putting about double the number of technicians in the field within a year or so.

    I wonder if an old legacy company such as Ford, Nissan, Toyota, GM, etc, could establish an entirely new division, or subsidiary, producing only its own model line, here in the states.

    I suppose it would take a few court cases to answer this question.

    https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-repair-service-rangers-double-capacity-parts-distribution-2019/

    My guess is that the most practical solution for Tesla, regarding repairs, is to certify a number of independent shops as Tesla approved, with for instance brake specialists doing brake work, ac specialists working on the AC only, some other shops certified to do suspension work, swap out motors and or batteries, etc. Some of these shops would likely eventually get their certifications to work in several areas.

    Given that the company has made so much progress in reducing the man hours per car while increasing production, layoffs were to be expected. There’s room for only so many people on a given assembly line, and as line operations are refined, you don’t need as many, even with the line moving faster.

    In the past, such news, layoffs included, generally seemed to BOOST stock prices. In Tesla’s case, the stock price went down. We live in a topsy turvy world these days.

  29. Weird, who would have thought?

    PASSING AIRCRAFT WRING EXTRA SNOW AND RAIN OUT OF CLOUDS

    Planes flying over rain or snow can intensify the precipitation by as much as 10-fold, according to a new study. The rain — and snow — bursts are not caused by emissions from the aircraft but are the peculiar consequence of the aircrafts’ wings passing though clouds of supercooled water droplets in cloud layers above a layer of active rain or snow.

    The interesting thing about this feature is that it is caused by aircraft, but it is not caused by pollution, said Dimitri Moisseev, a researcher at the University of Helsinki and the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the lead author of the new study in AGU’s Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. “Even if there would be absolutely ecological airplanes, which don’t have any combustion, no fuel or anything, it would still happen.”

    Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-aircraft-extra-clouds.html#jCp

  30. Interested article related to US shale from Rig Zone..
    https://www.rigzone.com/News/Print/158049/Trumps_Price_Policies_Hurting_US_Shale_Activity
    Seems djuring the last collapse in oil price in 2016 many was able to get some profit even WTI below 50.usd bbl , by use longer latheral, more wells from same pad, improved propant , drilling fluid. Think also shift of focus to sweet spots. To me it seems most of advantages by improved design, work process is already taken out. Horizontal latheral section seems to be linited by about 15 000 feet , that is already reached. As I see it the best sweet spots might already be fully utilized , cost if capital is increasing , also cost of labour and equipment. This together with rock that have reduced quality that gives less barrels each well in average will raise break even cost further. EIA predict oil will flow but it might be the pioneer Papa is correct when he told the best is already behind..

    2. The Red Queen is running out of steam.

      Mb>Hamsters on the U.S. Shale Oil Hamster Wheel of Debt are Running Faster to Get Less Production
      … But this dynamic appears to be a growing problem, one that could soon catch up with the industry. “It is also worth noting that with the continued growth in U.S. shale production, an increasing percentage of the new wells drilled are being consumed to offset the steep decline from the existing production base,” Kibsgaard told shareholders and analysts on Schlumberger’s earnings call. “The third party analysis shows that in 2018, this number was 54% of total CapEx and is expected to increase to 75% in 2021, clearly demonstrating the unavoidable treadmill effect of shale oil production.”

      https://community.oilprice.com/topic/4830-hamsters-on-the-us-shale-oil-hamster-wheel-of-debt-are-running-faster-to-get-less-production/

      And the full Oilprice article mentioned.
      https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Warning-Signs-Flash-For-US-Shale.html

    1. Oh, and there I was thinking nuklear was a reliable, fail proof power source, silly me.

      NAOM

  32. Interesting article on decommissioning oil platforms-

    “In 2014, Scarborough Bull and Love collaborated with colleagues at Occidental College to assess the biological productivity of oil rigs off the coast of California. Using standard models and metrics, the team compared the platforms to all the other habitats they could find information on. The results of the study were staggering. “Platforms off of California, as far as fish were concerned, were the most productive habitats in the world,” recalled Love.
    “More productive than coral reefs, more productive than Chesapeake Bay,” he continued.

    https://phys.org/news/2019-01-science-history-transitioning-oil-rigs.html

    1. Neat!

      Confirms what I already know: the Earth will continue just fine without us.

      1. There is little doubt that life will flourish again in a few million years after the current 6th mass extinction runs it course. And while offshore oil rigs and the bases of wind turbines do provide prime marine habitat as artificial reefs, one would need to compare that productivity, to the loss of the entire reef systems such as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, just to put things into some perspective.

        The fact is, stories like this, should give all of us pause.

        https://www.techtimes.com/articles/238212/20190131/california-coast-massive-starfish-die-off-caused-by-global-warming.htm

        California Coast Massive Starfish Die-Off Caused By Global Warming

        So if I were a betting man, I would say that the odds of there being a technological industrial civilization of some Homo species a million years from now to be quite low.
        While I also expect that life will flourish, I would also bet that future ecosystems will be very different than the ones we know today. So basically I agree that the earth will do just fine without us!

        Cheers!

        1. “The fact is, stories like this, should give all of us pause. ”

          Problem is, we have seen a thousand stories that should give us pause, from
          beheading in the name of _____(fill in your God’s name here), near extinction of the bison just to starve the indigenous of N. America, a nuclear bomb intentionally exploded over a major population center, …..(insert your top one thousand horror incidents here).

          But, collectively, we don’t pause for more than few moments.
          Throw it on the fire.

    2. Sounds like a bogus productivity claim, or it shows how natural area productivity has fallen off a cliff.
      No reference to productivity per area or volume.
      Artificial reefs do work, however this is like a light bulb burning brightly right before it dies. The very reason for the platform will end up killing and assisting to kill the very “productivity” that it aids.

  33. The BBC is reporting this as new but I think the idea has been around for a few years, maybe just some better data now:

    America colonisation ‘cooled Earth’s climate’

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47063973

    The colonisation of the Americas killed off about 90% of the population through measles, smallpox, flu, wars etc. and wiped out a lot of the agriculture allowing reforestation of an area the size of France from 1500 to 1750, which dropped CO2 by 7 ppm and, combined with some other natural changes contributed strongly to the 2nd phase of the little ice age in the 16/17 centuries, even up to the Thame frost fares of Dickensian times.

    Gives some indication of how little CO2 is needed to make change, also how many trees are needed to reverse emissions (7 ppm is 2 0r 3 years worth).

    1. Here is a bit of an addendum to that, for perspective.

      How much carbon does the planet’s vegetation hold?
      “It’s a colossal capacity, roughly equal to the amount of carbon that humans would pump into the atmosphere over 50 years at current rates of emission. But the study published in Nature also highlights what the world has lost: Researchers crunched the numbers and discovered that the planet’s vegetation could store a lot more carbon, roughly double the amount, if we returned to the forests and grasslands from before the rise of humankind.”

      http://futureearth.org/blog/2018-jan-31/how-much-carbon-does-planets-vegetation-hold

      1. “…if we returned to the forests and grasslands from before the rise of humankind.” That’s a big IF!

        EXPLODING DEMAND FOR CASHMERE WOOL IS RUINING MONGOLIA’S GRASSLANDS

        “A perfect storm of factors is damaging Mongolia’s grasslands, says Troy Sternberg, a researcher at the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment in the United Kingdom. From 1940 to 2014, annual mean temperatures here have increased by 2.07°C, more than double the global average. Ten of the warmest years on record have occurred since 1997, while rainfall has decreased, and seasonal weather patterns have shifted. This has exacerbated soil erosion, which has begun to alter the vegetation, a trend that projections show will intensify in the first half of the 21st century. Meanwhile, development, especially mining, has exponentially increased water usage. Twelve percent of rivers and 21% of lakes have dried up entirely. An increasing number of people, vehicles, and heavy equipment put additional stress on the land. But one factor stands out: overgrazing, which, according to a 2013 study by researchers at Oregon State University in Corvallis, has caused 80% of the recent decline in vegetation on the grasslands.”

        http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/exploding-demand-cashmere-wool-ruining-mongolia-s-grasslands

        1. Yes, Mongolia has many problems.
          76.8 percent of Mongolian land suffers from desertification

          According to the Report on Environmental State For 2015-2016, 76.8 percent of the Mongolian territory has been struck by desertification as a consequence of fast-spreading dryness in the recent years. The report was presented by Minister of Environment and Tourism, Ms D.Oyunkhorol at a cabinet meeting.

          The main cause of desertification was the 2.5 times increase in the population of livestock since 1990 and failure to maintain the traditional methods of pasture rotation and going on search for better grazing lands, says the report.

          Another concern is the increased frequency of atmospheric hazards. In specific, average of 30 atmospheric incidents were observed each year from 1990 and 2000, whereas the number had doubled between 2001 and 2016. For instance, the number of days with dust storms went up to 47 in 2015 from 37 in 2014.

          https://montsame.mn/en/read/129895

          But on the bright side one can see the 52.5 kg aerosiderite meteorite kept in Khuvsgul Museum for free.

          and:
          Off-road Nissan Leaf Sets Record at Mongol Rally

          Its name may sound like something straight out of Star Wars, but the Nissan AT-EV (All Terrain Electric Vehicle) is very real, and has just broken a record by completing the famous Mongol Rally. According to Nissan USA, the 8,000-mile journey makes Plug In Adventures’ the first team to enter and complete the rally in an electric car.

          http://www.thedrive.com/sheetmetal/14305/off-road-nissan-leaf-sets-record-at-mongol-rally

    2. George Kaplan,

      See William Ruddiman’s book Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum, the revised edition or later.

      It deals with the effects of the spread of agriculture (Plows), pandemics (Plagues), and the use of petroleum on the concentration of atmospheric CO2.

      I built a college course on it. Ruddiman is retired now; he was at Columbia and Virginia.

  34. New proposal in Utah: All high school students will be required to graduate with an understanding of free market economic capitalism because the youth of today are far too fascinated with socialism.

    https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2019/01/31/utah-gov-gary-herbert/

    As our students graduate they need the knowledge and skills necessary to prosper in a competitive global marketplace.

    So, I would like to see robust computer science courses offered to every middle school student in Utah. I would also like every student to have a better understanding of basic free market economics.

    When I meet with students, I am impressed by their intelligence and curiosity. But frankly, I have been disturbed by some of the rising generation’s fascination with socialism.

    What we see in Venezuela should remind us that tyranny and poverty follow economic systems where the state controls production, where bureaucrats allocate resources and where government picks the winners and the losers.

    That is why I support Representative Jefferson Moss’s bill to strengthen the curriculum in our required financial literacy course to include instruction on the core economic principles that have given us our freedom and our prosperity.

    It is imperative that Utah high school graduates understand not only their civic responsibility and the principles of our nation’s founding and constitution, but also the basic economic principles of free-market capitalism that have made America great.

    2. New proposal in Utah: All high school students will be required to graduate with an understanding of free market economic capitalism because the youth of today are far too fascinated with socialism.

      Sure! and while they are at it they should also be required to graduate with an understanding of advanced algebra, calculus, physics, chemistry, biology, ecosystems, non linear dynamics, logic and critical thinking skills… That way they could intelligently assess all the negative consequences of free market economic capitalism and recognize the difference between ordinary garden variety bullshit and finely refined Mongolian Yak dung!

      Cheers!

        1. If you take that text and Google Translate it to Mongolian than back again to English it begins to make a lot more sense…

          For example:
          New proposal in Utah: All high school students will be required to graduate with an understanding of free market economic capitalism because the youth of today are far too fascinated with socialism.

          Back to English from Mongolian

          New Utah offers: All senior high school students will need to graduate with the concept of free capitalism. Because today’s youth are too attractive to socialism.

          Works especially well with Trumps tweets… 😉

          Donald J. Trump
          ‏
          @realDonaldTrump
          Follow Follow @realDonaldTrump
          More
          ….I would suggest you read the COMPLETE testimony from Tuesday. A false narrative is so bad for our Country. I value our intelligence community. Happily, we had a very good meeting, and we are all on the same page!

          1:40 PM – 31 Jan 2019

          After English to Mongolian and then back to English.

          Donald J. Trump
          Me
          @realDonaldTrump
          Follow @ RealDonaldTrump
          Read more
          …. Read on COMPLETE from Tuesday. Lies in our country are very bad. I value my mental society. Fortunately, we meet very well and all have one page!

          1:40 PM – 31 Jan 2019

    3. Stupid idea. They should be taught the basics of how to save money, not how to be good Republicans.

      For example, school kids learn the Pythagorean equation, which is good for physics, but I’d say 99% of Americans can’t calculate a harmonic mean, which means they no nothing about interest rates.

      Seriously, how many people here can answer this without a calculator: What interest rate do you need to double your investment in 10 years? Shouldn’t kids learn that?

      1. Seriously, how many people here can answer this without a calculator: What interest rate do you need to double your investment in 10 years? Shouldn’t kids learn that?

        What?! Are you suggesting that Albert Barlett’s lecture on Arithmetic, Population and Energy is not mandatory in every high school in the land?

        https://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy_transcript_english.html

        …Well, if it takes a fixed length of time to grow 5%, it follows it takes a longer fixed length of time to grow 100%. That longer time’s called the doubling time and we need to know how you calculate the doubling time. It’s easy.

        You just take the number 70, divide it by the percent growth per unit time and that gives you the doubling time. So our example of 5% per year, you divide the 5 into 70, you find that growing quantity will double in size every 14 years.

        Well, you might ask, where did the 70 come from? The answer is that it’s approximately 100 multiplied by the natural logarithm of two. If you wanted the time to triple, you’d use the natural logarithm of three. So it’s all very logical. But you don’t have to remember where it came from, just remember 70.

        I would like to think that most of the readers of this site are quite capable of doing simple addition, multiplication, division and subtraction even without the use of a calculator. 😉

    4. True story:

      My father insisted I include some study of economics, with the same kind of vague idea that it would strengthen my enthusiasm for business.

      He was horrified when I reported that my professors taught that business monopolies caused higher prices…

  36. It’s my personal opinion, and that of the brainiest human I know, that the coming economic and ecological collapse can’t be predicted, precisely in time………. but that some worsening economic indicators will likely enable us to know that it’s getting closer, faster.

    (Just because I believe it’s coming does not mean I believe it must be global. It might be, no argument. But it might be regional, with some countries pulling thru more or less whole, without major loss of life etc. )

    This is one such sign.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-47033704

    1. It used to be that tramps, in London, would urinate in public to get a night in warm police cells and some food. Maybe they would get a short prison term with free board and lodging.

      NAOM

  37. Maybe we can forget about global warming after all. What a relief!

    IS NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT SET TO SELF-DESTRUCT?

    “At risk is not just the collapse of existing treaties, but a whole manner of interaction between Russia and the United States that has been crucial to maintaining stability over decades.”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46510957

    2. The MSM is reporting that Russia is violating the agreement. Russia spends a fraction of GDP on Defense that the US does. The Russian military did not loose track of 21 trillion. Let’s see some details on both sides

    1. With the exception of Nissan, appears CHAdeMO is almost history in the NA. Hate to report that the North American eNero will have CCS. The Criminal US Utility Policy group Edison Institute made sure that CCS excludes Bi-Directional power flow. A workaround will be to modify the car.
      Maybe the CCS Standard adds support in 2025 with the 1st car in 2030. So Sorry, fella, you can’t use the power you paid for. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?

      1. The Criminal US Utility Policy group Edison Institute made sure that CCS excludes Bi-Directional power flow.

        Fortunately the US makes up only 5% of the global population. Perhaps it will one day end it’s current head in the sand, xenophobic, isolationist, populist foray into stupidity and decide to rejoin the rest of the first world.

        1. It’s the corptocracy running the show my friend. They fear the growth of PV. We either break the hold on the government or we remain victims and a 2nd rate nation.

    1. On Solarcity, within about a year after being internalized by Tesla, they seemed to have dropped from public site in Calif, which I believe was their home market.
      They had been in every Home Depot with a table set up right near the entrance.
      And you’d see their installation vehicles on the highway often.
      Not any more.
      My guess is that they realized it was not generating much, or any, profit. This was at a time when Tesla was struggling to survive.
      I don’t know more than that.

      They’re are many leasing and sales PV outfits to choose from. Very competitive here in Calif, nonetheless.

    2. Elon sued and got a cease and desist for Short Cheerleading with untruths.
      https://seekingalpha.com/author/montana-skeptic#regular_articles
      Tesla needs to focus on Cars, Model Y and Pickup.
      IMO, A public company cant thrive in PV Deployment. In storage for the time being maybe,
      only because China does not export batteries in mass. only in products.
      Publics can own the PV. It’s immoral to store > 1kWh PV Power in Toxic Li Oxide Batteries for more than 60 seconds. This chem is needed for cars but not approate for stationary storage. Warren Buffet is the Player in BYD. A more appropriate chem for storage. The AC Battery from Enphase will be LiFe Chemistry.

  41. And in other news:

    https://medium.com/fast-company/what-happened-when-oslo-decided-to-make-its-downtown-basically-car-free-567cd0813499

    What Happened When Oslo Decided to Make Its Downtown Basically Car-Free?

    It was a huge success: Parking spots are now bike lanes, transit is fast and easy, and the streets (and local businesses) are full of people

    BTW my own little sleepy town of Hollywood Florida has been experimenting with making certain areas car free at least on weekends. The results have been quite encouraging!

    1. This used to be a busy, car treacle packed street with taxis crawling along shouting at everyone in sight for trade

      https://www.google.com/maps/@20.6113132,-105.234561,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sb_uODKzq5kEghcjNPnR5qg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

      The taxi unions and vested interests campaigned for it to be returned to roadway but the council has stuck to it and it is VERY popular with tourists. I am down there most mornings for a ride on the cycleway – pinchi gringos don’t seem to understand the concept of do not stand in the middle of the cycleway taking selfies.

      NAOM

      1. pinchi gringos don’t seem to understand the concept of do not stand in the middle of the cycleway taking selfies.

        ROLF, must be a thing with cycleways and tourists from the north. Here in my town it’s the Canadians…. 😉

      2. Really nice. They’ve been doing it in Germany since the oil crisis of 73. The areas keep getting bigger.

        This is a view of the town where I live.

        https://www.google.com/maps/@51.2972069,6.8493218,3a,75y,174.22h,90.9t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPuHo-Kt2Rt8zO4wi7UJgURQbeBiIVERmZDhDHa!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPuHo-Kt2Rt8zO4wi7UJgURQbeBiIVERmZDhDHa%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya281.5983-ro0-fo100!7i6656!8i3328

        Can’t explore though, because Germans hate google streetview.

        1. Neat, I like those European town squares. They feel comfortable.

          NAOM

  42. Actors?

    “During the entire clip, these persons were presented in a manner alleging that they had just recently defected and are now calling on others to follow their step. However, therein lies the problem. The badges on their uniform say FAN – Fuerza Armada Nacionales. This is an outdated pattern, which has been dropped. Now, Venezuela’s service members have a different badge – FANB, which means Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana. So, either the “Venezuelan army defectors” somehow lost the letter B from their uniform, or the entire interview is a staged show involving former Venezuelan service members, who have been living for a long time outside the country, or in the worst case – actors.”

    https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/alv49f/cnn_fake_venezuelan_defectors/

    (They would make Venezuela the new Pinochet-era Chile. Trump is not alone in supporting Saudi Arabia and its Wahabi terrorists acting, as Lyndon Johnson put it, “Bastards, but they’re our bastards.”)

    1. >> Although Somoza was reckoned as a ruthless dictator, the United States continued to support his regime as a non-communist stronghold in Nicaragua. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) supposedly remarked in 1939 that “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” <<

    2. It is possible they are wearing old insignia to show a break from the regime.

      NAOM

      1. I would say that is very creative thinking to support a held position.

          1. It could be that they are wearing the only clothing/ uniforms and insignia they have, or can get.

            But I don’t have any real idea what is going on there, other than it’s time for Maduro and company to GO AWAY…….

            It’s my firm opinion, from having followed the news there for some time, that the place he should go is jail…. for an extended period.

            But given that the news coming out of the country is so confused, it’s hard to have a firm opinion on who is who, in terms of the opposition, for the moment.

  43. Back to the Gilded Age of Robber Barons and Environmental Destroyers

    Bad Chinese Dams and much more…
    We sit down with Clare Rewcastle Brown, a British Investigative Journalist, who exposed corruption in Malaysia, much of which was tied to Chinese investment. China has pledged $1 Trillion in global infrastructure projects as part of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative. Only problem is…made in China can kill.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd5ZUOdJ4cU

  44. For some reason people seem concerned about the lifetime of EV batteries. They believe for some reason that they only last a couple of years, which shows their both their naiveté and their inability to even do proper searches using the internet. There has been so much data put out there about EV battery life it’s ridiculous. Of course as usual, one hears the worst examples most often. However in general EV batteries have outperformed their expectations, with some of them lasting well over 300,000 miles.
    Here is some info, I have no idea why anyone is that concerned. By the time their batteries wear out the technology will be much better and cheaper. Nobody complains about all the dead transmissions, blown head gaskets and worn pistons that fairly new ICE’s have had happen over the last couple of decades. Those and a plethora of other ills.
    Be warned, Tesla is a high end vehicle manufacturer and like other high end vehicles it costs more to fix anything. Costs will fall and maybe Tesla will eventually release it’s iron grip on the cars, which will cause repairs and replacements to fall in price.

    https://electrek.co/2018/04/14/tesla-battery-degradation-data/

    The popular Nissan Leaf has had some battery trouble, partly because of a lack of good thermal management, which has improved over time but is still short of some other manufacturers.
    https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/nissan-leaf-battery-capacity-range

    The Leaf is ideal for those who drive short distances per day or in general don’t drive long range often. Otherwise, one should look into a higher end EV or hybrid for those long daily commutes.

    But just remember, by the time one accumulates historical data on battery life and range, it’s already improved and gotten cheaper. So why worry? If you are not up to being on the frontier, stay in the village.

    1. RESEARCHERS IN NORWAY CLAIM LITHIUM ION BATTERY BREAKTHROUGH

      “Researchers at Norway’s Department of Energy Technology (IFE) in Kjeller say they have perfected a way to substitute silicon for the graphite commonly used in the anodes of lithium ion batteries. The discovery will lead to batteries that can power an electric car for 600 miles or more, the researchers claim. “You can say we have found the X factor we’ve been looking for. This has enormous potential and is something scientists around the world are trying to make.”

      “As usual with stories like this, the prospects are tantalizing but we are still a long way from being able to buy one of these batteries at your local AutoZone store. But you can almost feel the pace of development in battery technology accelerating day by day if not moment by moment. We certainly do live in interesting times.”

      https://cleantechnica.com/2018/07/12/researchers-in-norway-claim-lithium-ion-battery-breakthrough/

      1. Darn, I looked away for a moment and it changed again! What next?

      2. I am expecting to see, in 5 years, 2x range with 1/2 the batteries and, in 10 years, 2x range with 1/4 batteries or 4x range with 1/2 batteries.

        NAOM

    2. “Nobody complains about all the dead transmissions, blown head gaskets and worn pistons that fairly new ICE’s have had happen over the last couple of decades.”
      ROFL. especially the dealer workshops.
      “The Leaf is ideal for those who drive short distances per day or in general don’t drive long range often. Otherwise, one should look into a higher end EV or hybrid for those long daily commutes.”
      Same rule for IfCEs

      NAOM

    3. Hi GF,

      I read quite a lot about electric vehicles in particular, and renewable energy in general.

      Virtually all the complaints I see about short battery life, as opposed to short range, appear to be posted by trolls… as evidenced by their other comments revealing an anti renewable energy agenda.

      EV batteries as a rule last a long time, they’re full of shit, as you point out.

      My personal opinion is that once the cost of batteries falls by half again, a new ev won’t cost anymore than an otherwise comparable conventional car, and will be substantially cheaper to own over both the short and long term.

      Some people say a new ev is already cheaper than a new comparable conventional car, but they count tax subsidies into their argument, and ignore the opportunity cost of the extra purchase money. Plus we don’t know what the resale value of current ev’s will be five or ten years down the road.

      It’s for sure that Tesla cars cost as much as their competition, conventional cars, when repairs are needed. But hopefully, over time, once all the production bugs are exterminated, they will need considerably fewer repairs, given that conventional cars are now JAMMED with electronics anyway, and electric drive trains are inherently MUCH MUCH SIMPLER, and therefore should be far far more durable and less prone to breakdowns.

      1. I agree, some of the complexity is unnecessary. I don’t need all that glitz in a car, it’s not an extension of my ego.
        However the electronic age has even invaded diesel-electric locomotives.

        All Aboard! Industrial IoT Powers Today’s Locomotives
        A train pulled by a couple of locomotives can haul a ton of freight 500 miles on a single gallon of fuel. What makes this efficiency possible? A network of sensors distributed over the locomotive and the cars behind it. Today’s locomotives have up to 250 sensors that take in thousands of readings every minute. Modern locomotives are essentially rolling industrial power plants, and like all modern power plants, they benefit from the technology of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).

        https://www.mouser.com/applications/industrial-iot-powers-locomotives/

      2. In the other thread there was some discussion of EV battery life.
        Good blog post at link below.

        https://steinbuch.wordpress.com/2015/01/24/tesla-model-s-battery-degradation-data/

        Also

        https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-battery-life-80-percent-capacity-840km-1-million-km/

        The post above predicts an average life of 521,000 miles when battery life falls to 80% of original battery life. So for my Model 3 with about 310 miles range for new car this would fall to a range of 248 miles at 510,000 miles as long as the battery is charged appropriately (mostly keeping charge from 30% to 80% of capacity) and not use supercharging too much (so far for first 4 months I have used super charge only two times, most charging has been at slower rate of 30 to 40 miles of charge per hour from 240 V/40 amp circuit).

        1. Having personally done both diagnostics and repairs on similar issues, I’d bet heavily on it just being a problem with the instrument cluster board. Especially since the scan test seems to indicate that the fuel tank sending unit is still doing its job. I’d also bet that when he pulls the cover off the climate control panel he finds that there are no user replaceable bulbs and he needs to replace the entire control board for that as well.

          Cheers!

  45. The absurdity continues. So does the exponential harm. What effects will it bring, what will be the end result of all this technological/industrial/political hoopla?

    Don’t Breathe
    Imagine that you could buy, in thousands of shops across the country, canisters containing toxic gas. Imagine that some people walked the streets, squirting this gas into the face of every child they passed. Imagine that it became a craze, so that a child couldn’t walk a metre without receiving a faceful. Imagine that, while a single dose was unlikely to cause serious harm, repeated doses damaged their hearts, lungs and brains, affecting their health, their intelligence and their life chances.

    It would be treated as a national emergency. Sales of the canisters would immediately be banned. The police would be mobilised. If existing laws against poisoning children were deemed insufficient, new legislation would be rushed through parliament. It’s not hard to picture this response, is it? Yet the mass poisoning is happening. And nothing changes.
    **************

    Among the likely impacts of repeated poisoning, researchers now believe, is a “huge reduction” in intelligence. A paper published last year found that “long-term exposure to air pollution impedes cognitive performance in verbal and math tests.” Pollution stunts the growth of lungs as well as minds, raising the risk of asthma, cancer, stroke and heart failure throughout a child’s life.

    How will this affect the Diesel Generation: in other words, those born since 2001? This was the year in which Tony Blair’s government, rather than delivering the integrated public transport it had long promised, sought to tweak the carbon emissions from cars by taxing diesel engines at a lower rate than petrol engines. Diesel cars might produce a little less carbon dioxide, but they release more nitrogen oxides and particulates, a tendency exacerbated by the manufacturers’ cheating. An entire generation – 18 years of births – has been exposed to the results of this folly.

    https://www.monbiot.com/2019/01/11/dont-breathe/

    1. “Among the likely impacts of repeated poisoning, researchers now believe, is a “huge reduction” in intelligence”
      Must be popular with the right wing.

      NAOM

      1. Back in the old days we called them mad hatters. Now the mercury and other metals are sent direct to everyone, for no extra charge.

  46. As they say, the devil is in the details.

    Predicting urban and coastal microclimates
    However, because of their unique characteristics, developed urban and coastal locations are among the most difficult places to accurately forecast atmospheric conditions. Cities are often warmer than their suburban or rural surroundings because they are made of heat-absorbing materials such as concrete and steel, and they generate a significant amount of waste heat as a result of industrial energy usage. Tall buildings redirect air flow, altering wind speed and direction. By pushing warm, moist surface air into the cooler air above, skyscrapers can promote the formation of rain clouds. Because of these and other factors, urban areas are vulnerable to severe thunderstorms, heavy ice and snow, heat and cold waves, and other extreme weather events that pose risks to human health and safety
    https://phys.org/news/2019-01-urban-coastal-microclimates.html

    Will it be the extreme events that wear down civilization, the ones we note and concentrate upon. Or will it be all those smaller, yet different and slightly stronger events, that by the hundreds and thousands eat away our resilience? The smaller ones we barely note or notice much.
    I see in my own area the steady effects of both large and smaller events. The increased erosion, the minor damages must be repaired or are left go, the occasional loss of infrastructure from just thunderstorms, increasing incidences of grid power loss. A series of small events can take down a family just as well as one large one, as the abandoned houses now indicate. When will communities, states, nations be so near the brink they are taken down by just a single event, yet it was just the culmination of many smaller ones that put them in that position?
    Rapidly fluctuating temperatures wreck roads, ruin crops, slow business. Heavier rains and winds wreck infrastructure, erode soil, reduce crop production. Changing conditions allow increased disease to plants and animals to move and so does the extra stress involved.

    Death by a thousand small cuts is still death.

    Check your area for abandoned houses. In my area it is fairly simple now, the ones with complete snow on the roofs and no tracks leading into them. The ones without plowed drives.
    Then think about why are those houses abandoned during a time when unemployment is lowest and GDP is rising.

  47. Dementia, the growing problem, both harming people and costing 1 trillion dollars a year now worldwide.
    Set to double in cost by 2030. It is probably much worse than that since most people remain undiagnosed.

    “This means that if global dementia care were a country, it would be the 18th largest economy in the world. The annual costs exceed the market values of companies such as Apple (US $742 billion) and Google (US $368 billion). More information is available in our World Alzheimer Report 2015.

    Research shows that most people currently living with dementia have not received a formal diagnosis. In high income countries, only 20-50% of dementia cases are recognised and documented in primary care. This ‘treatment gap’ is certainly much greater in low and middle income countries, with one study in India suggesting 90% remain undiagnosed. If these statistics are extrapolated to other countries worldwide, it suggests that approximately three quarters of people with dementia have not received a diagnosis, and therefore do not have access to treatment, care and organised support that getting a formal diagnosis can provide.”

    https://www.alz.co.uk/research/statistics

    With the number of known cases rising at a rate twice as fast as population growth and many cases undiagnosed so it might be much faster, this condition involves a significant portion of the population.
    And yes, dementia can start at ages as low as the 30’s.

    1. I’ve recently become excited about finding some place where I can spend the night looking up and seeing the Milky Way. As I ponder how to do this I’ve started wondering about all of the aspects of the natural world we have become used to doing without and what we have accepted in its place; filthy air, dangerous chemicals, depleted soil, plastic in the ocean, etc. All of this must be leading to world wide psychoses, diagnosed as dementia past a certain age.

      At what point is technology past where it is mostly beneficial and becomes mostly hazardous?

      1. No doubt about it. To be human is to use and make technology. Technology R Us. But too much of something is no good for anyone or anything.

        Just one more growing crack in the fabric of civilization.

    2. Most dementia is over age 60.
      Perhaps we shouldn’t live so long.
      That is one part of the ecocide equation.
      The pharma industry is not good for the environment, in fact it is poisonous.
      Without meds, most people would not live so long. Although my healthy neighbor is 80 and takes no meds, she is a rare one.
      What is so noble about living to the point where you spend most of your time in chair?
      I wonder about these things. I am closer to sitting in a chair than mating with a virgin.
      As time goes on, more and more of the 7+ billion are old ones.

      1. The major reasons for not living long in the past was the death of children under 5.
        Now we have extended life at the other end a few years, which in no way is comparable to essentially living a whole lifetime instead of dying very young.

        “What is so noble about living to the point where you spend most of your time in chair?” You mean age 24?
        Typical day for office worker. Sleep 8 hours, get up, shower, shave, sit down in chair for breakfast. Walk out ot car, sit down in car, drive to office. Walk into office, sit down in chair for 8 hours or more, walk to car sit down again for ride home, work out for half hour, sit down to TV, make dinner, sit down for that, clean or other tasks, sit down for more TV, go to bed.
        Sounds to me like 2 or 3 hours up and 22 or 21 hours sitting down or in bed.
        That is much of the population now. So an extra 2 hours in a chair per day, big deal.

        OK, they might be more active on weekends, sometimes.

        I wish this was sarc.

        1. Not sarcastic. Simply- humans living longer is an environmental tragedy on a grand scale. Like a high birth rate. Like clearcutting from river to river.
          Sorry if it hits home.

          1. You misinterpreted. I meant I wished that what I said was sarcastic and not realistic. The life many people lead, bound in cubicles all day, many without windows, is a sad result of modern times. Lack of air and exercise is not a good thing. Then back to the car or other conveyance. Their life resembles being in a wheelchair to a large degree.
            Living for many people is a lost art.
            Not sure why you would say it’s hits home, just taking a shot I guess.

          2. The average lifespan of humans has increased, but not the total lifespan.
            We seem to have a limit, and it has not been exceeded.
            The oldest person we have records on died in the 1990’s.

            1. That’s true but nevertheless a whole lot more people reach a ripe old age than in earlier days. Modern medicine keeps people alive a lot longer. Most people living with diabetes today would be dead if insulin had not been discovered in 1936. I had a cancerous prostate removed in 2002. Otherwise I would have been dead by 2007.

      2. Dementia is a disease of affluence, strongly linked to overweight.

        “Eat real food, not too much”

        1. That’s from Michael Pollen. The entire quote is:

          Eat real food, not too much, mostly plants.

    3. In the last weeks New Scientist is an article about connection between tooth problems and alzheimer’s. It’s still investogated but it seems that poor dental hygiene may affect the plaque concentrations in brain.
      Remember to brush your teeth twice a day, eh?

      1. That’s shown up in a number of articles and the link seems to be certain bacteria getting into the brain. I suspect that nerve channels may be the conduit as there are several providing shortcuts from the jaw to the brain. The culprit seems to be certain bacteria so, maybe, a course of the right antibiotics may be the answer to Alzheimer’s.

        Gingivitis also seems to be linked to kidney disease in cats.

        NAOM

  49. FIRE/FLOOD — GOD UNHAPPY WITH AUSTRALIANS

    Townsville has received more than a metre of rain in just a week, which is more than 20 times the average for the time of year — beating the previous record set in 1998, in what became known as the Night of Noah. Meanwhile, parts of southern Australia are in the grip of a severe drought. January was the hottest month on record for Australia as a whole, with the southern city of Adelaide breaking its own records twice in the month, first reaching 47.7C and then 49.5C.

  50. Is this cool, or what?

    PUREST BEAM OF LIGHT (IN THE WORLD)

    “The device, built to be portable enough for use in space, produces a beam of laser light that changes less over time than any other laser ever created. Under normal circumstances, temperature changes and other environmental factors cause laser beams to wiggle between wavelengths. Researchers call that wiggle “linewidth” and measure it in hertz, or cycles per second. Other high-end lasers typically achieve linewidths between 1,000 and 10,000 hertz. This laser has a linewidth of just 20 hertz.”

    https://www.space.com/43210-purest-laser.html

  51. I have railed against the idea of cutting down forests for PV installations. Seemed that offended some people.
    Anyway, there is some experimenting with methods for dual use of land- both PV and vegetation.
    Good field of study. Of course the best use will depend on the climate zone, but elevating the panels up high enough to get sunlight and animal clearance may be well worth the extra resource spent on structural support in zones with enough rainfall for at least grassland level vegetation.

    http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2017/12/doubling-up-crops-with-solar-farms-could-increase-land-use-efficiency-by-as-much-as-60/

    btw- this website is new to me- anthropocene may be worth perusing – http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/

    More discussion on this topic here as well if interested-
    https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-06-08/energy-and-food-together-under-solar-panels-crops-thrive

    1. Hi Hickory,

      And thanks for the links!

      Most small scale and or subsistence farmers and gardeners as well have some knowledge and usually some experience, when it comes to growing things in partial shade. Yields do fall off, but NOT ALWAYS. Sometimes partial shade works better, as when the crop is better adapted to cooler weather. I can grow kale in partial shade into at least late spring on my place, but it’s done for the season three or four weeks sooner in full sun. I could plant late cabbage sooner, and get just as good a harvest, this way.

      In some cases, the runoff from solar panels could be directed to and applied directly to a few plants located near the panels, for the cost of nothing more than some plastic tubing…. This would enable a few tomato and pepper plants to thrive where and or when otherwise it would be too dry, necessitating irrigation.

      And maintaining the ground as crop land obviously means you don’t have to be out there trimming grass and weeds and saplings that would otherwise take over anyplace other than in a desert.

      On a large scale, the trick would be to space the panels so you can easily get thru with existing machinery, using existing conventional or organic techniques. Mount the panels high enough, and you could drive under them as well as between them, and cows could graze under them, or you could harvest hay under them, without much trouble. Other crops would be more troublesome, but could still be extremely practical.

      Any small scale farmer in a place with a good solar resource and capital to put in a solar system could make this work just fine.

      2. All good thoughts OFM, and Fred.
        In hot conditions where water uptake into the leaf may lag transpiration, the plant will shut its stoma, and if this is frequent productivity will suffer.
        On a small scale this is readily seen in gardens- tomatoes do well here the west when the get some afternoon shade for example.
        Also, in many grazing zones, the livestock love to huddle in the shade during the heat of the day. I see many ranches with little if any shade.
        Lots of room for innovation and co-use of the land.

  54. Another great link, if I do say so myself. LoL

    http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190114-compost-or-phosphorus-fertiliser-in-africa-agriculture

    Phosphorus is essential, and there’s no chance whatsoever that anything else can be substituted.

    It’s expensive, but the price is not much of a problem, for farmers who can pass along the costs. Even at today’s already high prices, the price of purchased phosphorus per unit of yield, say a bushel of wheat, is only a minuscule percentage of the market price, and when the wheat is converted into flour, the difference in the price per kilo is trivial.

    The worst thing about the article is that it is written in such a way as to give the impression something new has been only recently discovered, in scientific terms, which is entirely laughable. The ” new” involved goes no farther than politics and business practices. For all intents and purposes, everything in the article, in technical terms, was well known back in the dark ages when I was an undergrad.

    Mulches and composts work very well indeed, if you have the raw materials handy, and time enough to process them, etc.

    They don’t work so well on larger farms operated by one man , or two or three, using machinery to look after hundreds of acres, because as a general rule, the MATERIALS needed to make compost aren’t available near enough to the farm to be used. Long distance transportation is a killer, when you’re talking heavy, bulky, low cost materials, such as sand, gravel, woodchips,…… and manure.

    Gathering such materials as scrap wood and grass clippings is prohibitively expensive…… unless they are already in the waste collection stream, headed for a land fill.

    But I foresee a time when we will be processing human sewage for use on the grand scale, even in such rich countries as the USA.

    The technology is there, the NEED is there. But for now, N, P, and K are still affordable, in terms of the bottom line, on the farmer’s books. We farmers like all other business men do after all pass along our costs… or go broke.

    Once the price of mined phosphorus goes high enough, and the cost of manufactured nitrates goes high enough, and national security issues come into play, then it seems inevitable that unless industrial civilization collapses, we will see raw sewage piped out of cities to nearby locations where it can be processed to be used as fertilizer, and used as such, across the board. Some of it will be transported right back into the city to be used in community gardens, roof top greenhouses, and window boxes.
    Garbage will be sorted, with the organics separated for processing as well, same story.

    I’m not saying when, but neither am I saying IF. There’s no IF involved, this sort of thing will be NECESSARY at some point in time.

    Industrial farming is almost dead sure here to stay, at least until after the population falls WAY off, because it will be easier to adapt industrial farming tech and business practices to new realities than it will to move billions of people out of cities and back out into the countryside to grub in the dirt. The people would rather die than go, most of them, and there’s no housing or anything else out there for them, other than backbreaking labor, in such a scenario.

    So in the future we will do what we have to do to continue farming on the grand scale, only a few people out of the total population living and working on farms, in modern countries………

    But the farmers will be using ever less fossil fuels to run machinery per unit of output, ever less purchased fertilizers manufactured from depleting resources such as phosphate rock and natural gas, fewer throw away materials such as the card board boxes we currently use to ship apples, etc.

    We’ll go back to shipping by train, rather than plane, and there will be far less processing and packaging of bushels of potatoes into hundreds of little plastic bags of potato chips…… because we won’t be able to afford such frivolous luxuries forever.

    And although most of the farms where the bulk of our staple foods are produced will continue to operate with very few people on the scene, lots of diversified small farms, of the sort operated by my folks for generations, will come again……. because it will once again be possible to make a go of it on such farms, and plenty of people will be glad to live and work on them, considering the alternatives………

      1. Back atcha, Hickory

        Yep, pH is critical, but there is some leeway. Most of the time you get by ok if you are reasonably close to the ideal for your selected crop.

        Fortunately the world is well supplied with the go to solution to acidic soil…….. limestone. Of course it takes money to mine it and grind it up and transport it, but it’s still reasonably cheap, only about seventeen bucks a ton , loaded on my truck, at the nearest farm supply. A couple of tons works miracles even on highly acidic soil, given two or three years to react, and once the ph is about where you want it, half a ton or so per year per acre is generally enough, at least in my part of the world. It’s easily applied, you can just broadcast it, or plow it in. Most of the time you can combine the application with other work.

        Moving it from where it can be quarried is expensive. The nearest mine for me is only about forty miles away, but the freight bill, direct to the farm by heavy truck, is larger than the purchase bill.

        It’s usually transported by train if the haul exceeds about a hundred miles, to the best of my knowledge. I haven’t bothered to check the bulk purchase price in other places, where it is often necessary to transport it hundreds of miles.

    2. It’s worth mentioning that landfills have basically been banned in Europe by 2020, and a lot of countries have already shut them down, mostly by burning anything flammable. Germany claims about 98% of landfill waste has been eliminated.

      It’s interesting to watch construction in Germany. Greenfield construction is frowned on, so there is a lot of infill happening. This means going to site where existing buildings have to be removed. You can’t haul the stuff off to the dump. The foundations get dug up. Anything flammable is sent of for incineration. Brick, concrete and asphalt get separated in big piles. Rebars are extracted and recycled. Everything is ground down to fine gravel and the trucked off somewhere or reused in the new building.

      1. Mexican brickies often chip all the cement off old bricks to re-use them in construction. Wall comes down, pile of bricks goes up. Wall goes up, pile of bricks goes down. Old cement ends up being used for infill while rebar goes for recycling.

        NAOM

    2. They could need it for their semi truck, badly.

      Battery pack of 2 tons for 1000 kwh will bring the game on when these things have reached their development target.

  59. Thank’ee Doug.

    Reading about that quake in a warm region while I sit here in Seismic Hazard Zone 4 (it doesn’t go higher than 4) with a temperature of 25F (17F with windchill) and a wind bending trees is just the pick-me-up I need.

    I recall that the damage and death toll in the town were boosted by its location at the head of a long narrow inlet. The effect is the same as what gives the world-record tidal range at that bay in Nova Scotia that I used to be able to remember the name of. Since you ask.

    I get the paper copy of Nature Geoscience so it’ll be a while before the February issue comes. The January issue arrived last week. Good ol’ Springer; I strike back at them by renewing by cheque, heh heh.

    1. E. Synapsid,

      The effect is the same as what gives the world-record tidal range at that bay in Nova Scotia that I used to be able to remember the name of. Since you ask.

      Bay of Fundy. And no, I didn’t have to look it up 😉

      2. FredM,

        Neither did I until recently.

        (wonders where glass of Port went)

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