Comments not related to oil and gas go in this thread please.
162 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, June 12, 2018”
After the G7 Trump experience, Canadians are just now beginning to realize how important it is to complete an oil export pipeline to the Pacific coast. Trump has single handedly united our Country against him. Unfortunately, this feeling of growing anger is also starting to be directed towards America, itself. It might take decades to restore a relationship, if ever.
I would think the political party that promises the re-purposed Energy East pipeline to the Atlantic coast, (for oil export to Europe), will win the next Canadian general election. That would remove 2-3 million/bpd flowing south and ensure World prices for WCS.
regards
Trump is an ignorant a-hole.
I suppose that confirms that at least half of USA is as well.
I guess we all really knew that already, even though we try to be good-natured and forget.
19 percent of the US population voted for Trump, so that confirms at least that much.
The popular vote was 46.1% Trump and 48.2% to Clinton, of those who voted. Only 136 million out of a total of 325.7 million voted, yet all are subject to the result.
“Four hours Some politicians and CEOs boast that they need only four hours’ sleep, but it simply isn’t true. Take Donald Trump, for example. If this were the case, the scientific evidence would suggest he would be overweight, show erratic behaviour, poor judgment and frequent mood swings.”
Long term loss of sleep causes permanent mental and physical damage.
Do I smell a border hedge to be planted?
Yeah, laurel….something soft. No thorns.
Okay, I’ve cooled down after a trip ‘down Island’ and after a quick ‘everyman for himself’ dinner. Tomorrow, we will cook a fine supper and give it the importance it is due. Tomorrow morning I will also bake bread as it will be raining.
Seriously, I think all of us regular citizens in our respective countries are being short changed. Maybe the best solution (some days) is just to turn off the news. Family, health, community, friends, values should be our focus, and while the order of this list sometimes changes and might need some additions, the importance does not.
I feel whipsawed and shell shocked with the constant onslaught of depressing news and public behaviours these past 2 years. If it was work it would be time for a vacation, or a job change. Since I am retired and now on a perpetual working vacation, let me share with you my new community and resilience focus.
I am tired of being angry and cynical. The following is positive news.
I am a new holder of a Basic with Honours Canadian Amateur Radio License. The Honours designation gives me (legal) access to all bands in the Amateur spectrum, including the lower HF bands. Our Regional District supplied the course for a scant $50 tuition in the hopes of recruiting HAMS in the event of an emergency that might knock out communications. Then, upon test completion they gave me a new radio. (I made money on the course :-). I also volunteered to be the local Emergency Communications Leader for our Valley, (50 miles from town). I have used company HF for many years working up north, but this Ham stuff is all pretty new and exciting for me. In a major ‘event’, one of the first casualties is comm, this could include cell, sat., and landlines. But radio works on a batt. A batt can be charged with a small panel, or portable generator, and a car batt remains powered up for days. I will be trained on a computer interface which takes digital info off my laptop (another batt) and loads it onto a mobile transceiver. The transmission is pretty simple using required stored forms for a common format, connecting to the ‘modem’, logging on, transmits on the stored freq, and then shuts down. It reminds me of the old dial up, and the commands remind me of DOS. A form might be: missing persons, required supplies, required equipment, casualties, etc. It saves the confusion of writing stuff out. The info would be transmitted to the Emergency Hdq and to the Head running Island-wide comms. It is also a log of who what where when what. On Monday (18th) we sign an agreement for the installation of a new antenna at the local community hall in case our repeater goes down. I live only 2 km from the hall.
Plus, we are part of the Island Trunk System, which links the whole of Vancouver Island and the mainland inlets including Gulf Islands. If the ITS goes down, my new radio is powerful enough to reach out, anyway. In fall I start the packet training and my Advanced course which will allow me to build and operate my own equipment and use up to 1,000 watts power. As said above, it’s exciting.
Plus, it compliments our family PO/Long Emergency mindset and what we have worked towards these past 15 years. We grow a lot of our food, including wild salmon for protein, eggs, etc. We have wood under cover for the next 5 years heating requirements, (woodlot, too), orchards, gardens etc. We have a good drilled well and also live on a river. Our neighbours are pretty solid. I have a couple of restored Trail 90s that run on fumes and are easy to fix, plus a good road bike. Bicycles, tools, stores, guns, ammunition, fishing gear….the kind of stuff all rural people collect over the years. Books and more books. The radio is the last piece of the puzzle for me and is also community focused. We now have 5 hams spread through out our 15 mile long valley.
Of course new radios can bypass the frequency restrictions as needed….(already programmed in and done 🙂
Once I get my HF base rig up and running I will post again about this in case anyone wishes to contact up by radio. I encourage any reader to check into amateur radio. In our Province it has been decreed that the Amateur system will be the backup for any emergency as opposed to commercial bands. It might be the same, elsewhere.
Hi Paulo,
Congratulations on receipt of your Canadian Amateur Radio License. My Dad had the second HAM License issued in Canada (VE7EI) and I retain fond memories of tinkering with vacuum tubes and all the other magical “toys” in his HAM shack. We had stacks of war surplus stuff to experiment with you could get for a few cents a pound. I still remember the smile on Dad’s face following his first contact with another HAM in Australia – one tube transmitter. Don’t remember how many watts but you could count them on your fingers. Later I remember my pride at looking at his QSL cards from around the world.
Strong work Paulo!
Congratulations. I did the RSGB C & G exam but never went on air 🙁 Finishing uni and starting work got in the way plus only being able to use the higher bands without the morse test was an off-putter.
NAOM
Congratulations! Welcome to a great group. I’ve been a Ham since 1986. I work here in Sweet Home, Oregon with the local county and town Emergency organizations. We’re using all the equipment and communication methods you mention. If you ever want to contact me, you can email at my callsign at arrl.net and the email will be forwarded to my regular address. Or, since you’re using Winlink, send an email to my callsign at winlink.org
August KG7BZ
“Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, look after our children. As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy—the restaurant business as we know it—in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers. Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are ‘stealing American jobs.’ But in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position—or even a job as prep cook. Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans, probably, simply won’t do. In nearly 30 years of cooking professionally, just about every time I walked into a new kitchen, it was a Mexican guy who looked after me, had my back, showed me what was what, was there—and on the case—when the cooks more like me, with backgrounds like mine—ran away to go skiing or surfing—or simply flaked”
– Anthony Bourdain.
Despite the truth in Bourdains statement, I do agree with the notion that a country has every right to choose its immigrant numbers, source, and attributes.
The democrats are making a mistake by failure to acknowledge that.
It hands the republicans an easy issue to get an infield 3rd base hit on.
Of course, the devils in the details of the policies, but the voters arn’t too swift on details (like their president).
“When humanity realizes the sheer uselessness of polarized political positions, hell will have frozen over, or more likely the Ice Caps will have melted and snow balls will be a thing of the past. ” GoneFishing
“A country that fights among itself will be left far behind and become irrelevant” GoneFishing
“Following the vision of a mad man is a sign of general insanity” Gone Fishing
“The inmates are running the asylum” from Dr. Caligari
Maybe I live in a unique area, but we just planted a few acres in near 100 degree temperatures with plants that required hand digging each hole and was done with all American labor sourced from Craigslist. We hired around 25 people per day from older to younger workers and maybe one or two was of Mexican heritage. No illegal workers that I could tell. We paid a decent wage, with breaks. Americans will do the work.
Where do you live?
It does sound like a unique area, from the labor perspective.
Regardless, immigrants are a huge part of the American story, thats how we all got here.
Question is how we manage it, legal and illegal.
Denial and bickering has been the primary mode of conversation.
That doesn’t have a good outcome either way.
Helps get idiots elected, here and in Europe.
I live in northern Colorado. It was an eye opening experience. Some were young people traveling around and earning money when they needed it, some were working it as a second job, some were down on their luck and needed a few bucks, and others just wanted to work in the outdoors and learn a little about farming. I would have never guessed we could have found such workers in the manner that we did. For the most part they worked hard and had pride in their work.
As to the usage of illegal labor, I don’t think it is a secret that if you really want to control that, the employers are the key. No paid work, then no illegal labor.
As to electing idiots, at least we have regular elections and can get rid of them. Sometimes even the worst accomplish some things that others could not.
Tesla to cut 9 percent of workforce, but spares factory
Minor bump in the road, with all those machines that don’t need humans.
Sounds like a good business move, getting rid of the dead wood in the white collar areas.
With 5000 Model 3 cars per week coming out soon, they should at least get decent cash flow.
The direct competition, the chevy bolt, is lagging way behind.
Leafs are hanging in there at about 1000 per month.
Total US sales of plug-ins in March was about 26,000.
Soon Tesla will be producing 20,000 per month of just the Model 3. Will be over a year to fill the pre-orders.
April total sold was just under 20,000 for all brands of plug-ins, in the US.
Let’s see where things go over the next year, since EV’s are not the hottest pursuit in the car market.
Just the Toyota Camry is selling 30,000 a month in the US.
Tesla: Both Sides Of The Case
by Jean-Louis Gassée
Now 15-years-old, Tesla enjoys a media presence that’s well out of proportion with the size of its sales. In the first quarter of this year, the company sold fewer than 30,000 cars; for reference, Toyota sells about 2.5M per quarter, 80 times more. The extravagant attention can be explained, at least in part, by Elon Musk’s impressive PR skills. Musk is a veritable quote machine, constantly providing fodder across the whole spectrum of media from blogs to Twitter, from the Wall Street Journal to The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Tesla may be the darling of the media and Musk may be a master showman, but facts are facts: The company has never made money. In order to survive, the company continues to rely on the generosity of shareholders and taxpayers. In 2015, cumulative state and federal subsidies were estimated at $4.9B — that’s $30K per vehicle.
Taxpayers have little choice, but shareholders? At this week’s close, TSLA was worth $49.6B vs $46.7 for Ford and $60.9B for GM. How long will shareholders support a company that doesn’t make money?
Furthermore, Tesla is the most shorted stock in the US market, meaning there are more people betting the company shares will plunge than with any other company. Today’s Tesla high stock market valuation gives it an opportunity to sell more shares, to raise more money without risking a sharp sell-off, but by the end of the year, the wisdom of the crowds could turn negative, causing the stock to plunge in an accelerated downward spiral as former believers rush to the exit.
Tesla is showing record sales, record increases in sales and production and record losses. It’s building fast and hard rather than staying small and profitable. Could be a big bust or could be a premiere big automaker in less than a decade.
“The company has never made money.”
That seemed to be no problem when Amazon did it.
Remember the time when Amazon faded into obscurity because they never made a profit?
I remember when Jean-Louis Gassée started BeOS and it immediately went tits up because it was a stupid idea that showed that he (and his backers) lacked a basic understanding of how the software market works.
But hey, I’m sure he’s an expert on the car business.
Amazon has half of all online sales—
When Tesla gets to 5% we can have a more valid comparison.
Hightrekker,
The point is that Amazon continued to thrive even though it was not profitable. EVs will be growing and at present Tesla has a large share of the EV market. Of EVs sold in the US in May 2018, Tesla had 73% of the market. The cost of EVs will continue to fall and oil prices will continue to rise and by 2030 EVs will be over 50% of light duty vehicles sold in the US.
In 5 years Tesla may be producing a lot of cars. Probably 1 to 2 million per year. In 10 years they may be up to 5 million, it will depend how quickly the other big players catch up.
The Third Industrial Revolution: A Radical New Sharing Economy
The global economy is in crisis. The exponential exhaustion of natural resources, declining productivity, slow growth, rising unemployment, and steep inequality, forces us to rethink our economic models. Where do we go from here? In this feature-length documentary, social and economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin lays out a road map to usher in a new economic system.
A Third Industrial Revolution is unfolding with the convergence of three pivotal technologies: an ultra-fast 5G communication internet, a renewable energy internet, and a driverless mobility internet, all connected to the Internet of Things embedded across society and the environment.
This 21st century smart digital infrastructure is giving rise to a radical new sharing economy that is transforming the way we manage, power and move economic life. But with climate change now ravaging the planet, it needs to happen fast. Change of this magnitude requires political will and a profound ideological shift.
Of course that may be the main reason why people don’t like science and engineering, they try to determine and use reality. Too much for most people.
The people who are doing the most damage to the planet don’t want to admit what science is telling them. They don’t want to exit from their little fantasy bubble dream worlds.
BAU has a very limited life left. So on to the next dream world. Dream of EV’s, PV’s, WT’s and Circular Economies. Dream of Smart Cities, Smart Power and Smart Houses.
Dream of Half Earth and New Mammoths. Dream of organic farms tended by little bots.
Reality might look more like this, but we can dream can’t we?
The magma economy is richer than ever.
“All those pieces are necessary in order to understand how much material is being recharged to the volcano,” said Jerry Fairley, a University of Idaho professor of geology who helped lead the project.
Based on their accounting, the actual amount of magma under the caldera may be as much as double of what scientists previously thought.
It’s good to remember that the vast majority of people would be better off with a new economy. It’s a small minority that would be hurt by a transition away from fossil fuels, and I suspect the same is true for the other changes we need.
The Kochs and Pruitts of the world aren’t primarily living in denial of reality, they’re primarily living in psychopathic denial of other people’s needs.
ANTARCTICA LOSES THREE TRILLION TONNES OF ICE IN 25 YEARS
“Antarctica is shedding ice at an accelerating rate. Satellites monitoring the state of the White Continent indicate some 200 billion tonnes a year are now being lost to the ocean as a result of melting. This is pushing up global sea levels by 0.6mm annually — a three-fold increase since 2012 when the last such assessment was undertaken…
In Imbie’s last assessment, the contribution of Antarctica to global sea-levels was considered to be tracking at the lower end of the projections that computer simulations had made of the possible height of the oceans at the end of the century. The new assessment sees the contribution track the upper end of these projections.”
That is one more 1/3 inch of sea level rise we have to deal with after 25 years.
the contribution of Antarctica to global sea-levels was considered to be tracking at the lower end of the projections that computer simulations had made of the possible height of the oceans at the end of the century. The new assessment sees the contribution track the upper end of these projections
In other words they’re clueless to what the future holds. More studies won’t help, either.
“In other words they’re clueless …” you’ve made a study to confirm that have you … no wait, studies don’t work so you just spew out any bullshit that confirms your pathetic biases.
Pathetic?
Supposed grown-ups who will grasp at any crap and defame others rather than face reality – it doesn’t get much more pathetic.
Where’s Javier when you need him to tell us ice is increasing….
Ice seems to grow in the winter and reduce in the summer. So somewhere on Earth the ice is increasing.
Cool! I have nothing against sending DNA via FedEx but…
I can imagine a time in the not too distant future when we can use computer code to write out the DNA segments as text, email them or store them in a database in the cloud. Then you could download them, transcribe them back into real DNA, insert them back into a living cells for whatever purpose you might need them for.
By using an existing programming language called Verilog, the MIT team designed logical circuits which were then coded into synthetic loops of DNA called plasmids, using a system called Cello.
These synthetic plasmids were then inserted into E.coli bacteria – in the same process currently used to add new genes to micro-organisms.
Cheers!
Did anyone else here follow that racoon trapped on a skyscraper and had to climb to the roof? That was incredible. I wonder how a racoon even gets in a downtown of a major city in the first place?
Did it make it? Did they manage to trap it? I haven’t seen any updates.
NAOM
It climbed to the top overnight, where food, water and live traps had been set. After the sun rose, building management went up and found it in one of the traps. Last I read, wildlife management was going to check it’s health and release it if there are no concerns.
Ra!
Ra!
Ra!
Raccoon!
NAOM
It’s been released…happily ever after!
I wonder how a racoon even gets in a downtown of a major city in the first place?
I live in a large metropolitan area and see wildlife all the time. Recently found a vixen with her cubs living in a concrete pipe by a boat dock. It is not all that unusual. Racoons are quite adaptable to human habitats as well.
In the Grammy-nominated 1995 pop song “One of Us,” singer Joan Osborne posed a question for the ages: If God had a face, what would it look like?
Now, thanks to team of psychologists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, we may have an answer: To most Christians, he looks like a young white dude.
“People tend to believe in a God that looks like them,” Professor Kurt Gray, the study’s senior author, told NBC News. “And most of the people who took part were male and white.”
What surprised the researchers, however, was that most of the women thought the Almighty was male, and “even many black Americans saw God as white … and with twinkling eyes, “ said Gray.
Politics also played a role in people’s perceptions of God, the researchers found.
Conservatives were more likely to see God as white and powerful. Liberals saw God as younger and loving.
In other news the Pope turns out to be catholic, who knew?
Don’t know much about this ‘God’ concept.
But I offer this inquisition, or I mean inquiry,-
why are saints only catholic?
Hickory,
If you’re talking only about Christian saints you find them in Orthodox, like Russian and Greek, and Oriental (eg. Ethiopian) churches too.
Depending on what is considered a saint they’re found in other religions as well. The Roman Catholics don’t have it all their own way.
Conservatives were more likely to see God as white and powerful. Liberals saw God as younger and loving.
Must be mainly a western civilization cultural problem, anyways sounds like a pile of bullshit to me! There are lot’s of deities worshiped by humans throughout history that have non human form.
I personally like the Australian Rainbow Snake GOD! Sure beats a a cruel, misogynistic authoritarian asshole of a god like the one worshiped by Christians, Jews and Moslems!
The Great Creator Serpent
In charge of Fertility, Growth and Refreshing Rain.
The RAINBOW-SNAKE is a bit of a mish-mash, with a kangaroo’s head, a crocodile’s tail and a python’s body, all decorated with water lilies and waving tendrils.
The Snake has many names and comes in male and female form. YINGARNA, the female, is the original Mother of Creation, and her son NGALYOD is the Great Transformer of Land. Family portraits go back 8,000 years, which makes the Rainbow Snake one of the oldest religious symbols. And it’s still going strong today.
.
I don’t know what God looks like. I am still trying to figure out why there are churches if God is everywhere? Why the need for a special place?
I think the smartphone will replace the church. That and some roving AI preachers.
IBM’s supercomputer Watson confirms what many already knew was obvious-
Jesus, the man, would not be a christian,
in fact he would be one of its strongest critics.
Not surprising.
What surprised the researchers, however, was that most of the women thought the Almighty was male, and “even many black Americans saw God as white
I don’t know why people are surprised when women are sexist, blacks have racist ideas, jews are anti-semitic, etc., etc. Everybody lives in the same culture, and they all absorb the same culture of misinformation and negative emotional associations.
It’s only been the last few decades that women start voting differently from men. 10x as many women subscribed to Cosmo as subscribed to Ms.
The 2018 soccer World Cup kicks off in Russia on Thursday and is likely to be one of the most widely viewed sporting events in history, more popular even than the Olympics. So the potential winners are of significant interest.
[In] recent years, researchers have developed machine-learning techniques that have the potential to outperform conventional statistical approaches. What do these new techniques predict as the likely outcome of the 2018 World Cup?
An answer comes from the work of Andreas Groll at the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany and a few colleagues. These guys use a combination of machine learning and conventional statistics, a method called a random-forest approach, to identify a different most likely winner.
It can be enlightening to occasionally read the Faux News version of reality, especially the comments section… they sound like mentally cornered rabid rats!
Berkeley declares ‘climate emergency’ worse than World War II, demands ‘humane’ population control
No information or facts are safe out there once in the hands of the people.
Now if liberals actually took this population reduction to heart, then in one generation there would not be enough to ever win an election (if most children have a similar ideology to their parents). Instant win for the conservatives and after that no problem. The results of living in a polarized representative democracy. Either keep up the numbers in the right places or become irrelevant.
So just stop buying so much unnecessary stuff, drive an EV, put PV on the roof, double insulate the house, put in all LED’s, grow some food in the backyard, stay home more often and eat local food, etc.
You will be doing the environment a favor, have lower bills and can watch as your conservative neighbors go into debt buying all that junk and having more kids than you. Sure they will take control of the government, but you will be righteous and maybe able to pay your bills.
Of course, since neither “side” actually did enough to really change anything (that would mean working together), the environment went to hell while everybody was arguing and wasting time.
When push comes to shove, do what you want. You will not reap what you sow, you will reap what the collective sows.
EHT project will generate images of two large black holes: One in the middle of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and another, bigger black hole, in the centre of nearby galaxy M87. Other telescopes in Chile and Hawaii will point in the same direction, and data will be pooled from all of the telescopes in the EHT project to produce the images. The EHT essentially turns the entire globe into one giant radio telescope, and the farther apart radio dishes in the array are, the sharper the images the EHT can make.
The phrase ‘necessary and sufficient’ blamed for flawed neuroscience
Muddled language can lead scientists in the wrong direction, neurobiologists claim.
“I’m tired of standing up and lying to the press everyday. @FoxNews offered me a chair.”
They are replacing nameplates with miniature whiteboards.
NAOM
Ignoring Science at Our Peril
Last March, Scott Pruitt, newly appointed to head the Environmental Protection Agency, rejected the previous administration’s proposal to ban agricultural use of a Dow Chemical Company pesticide, chlorpyrifos. The agency’s scientific advisory panel had concluded in 2016 that children risked irreversible brain damage and neurodevelopmental problems from very low levels of exposure to food residues of the chemical, which continues to be widely used on fruits and vegetables.
The government is supposed to protect the people not damage and kill them.
Maybe Dow Chemical promised Pruitt some expensive pens…
I think for the people who don’t like him, they also don’t like having our businesses be the best they can be by not having to have all these regulations hurting small business. Ok Dow chemical isn’t small business but so many regulations from Obama’s time really did hurt the U.S.A.’s small businesses, just talk to any small business owners you know. Then go talk to the chamber of commerce in your area, they know what the business climate is like in your area-and can explain what is best for the local economy and small businesses. Aster all that if your still not convinced, then nobody is making you stay in this country remember. Maybe take your small minds and pack up, move somewhere else you rather be.
So Pops, having children at risk of irreversible brain damage and neurodevelopmental problems is okay providing small businesses owners don’t suffer? Excuse me if I don’t see the logic in that.
No those things aren’t good at all but maybe the research was flawed and that’s why the E.P.A. is tossing out the regulations.
Pops,
Do you think Scott Pruitt know anything about science?
His undergraduate degree is in political science and communications and then he went to law school.
So, you are happy to harm children just in case you might do a little bit of harm to a company. Companies before people. It is time you packed your bags.
NAOM
Who’s side are normally on, big government with regulations telling everybody how to live and able to take away freedom’s on a whim, or the small business side that creates jobs and opportunity? I have to say me and most everyone I know appreciate the small business side most of the time. Even if there are some risks to it, we can better live with that over big government socialism and so on.
So, you are in favor of allowing trucks to drive on both sides of the road?
NAOM
He’s also probably in favor of bringing back DDT, lead paint, leaded gasoline, CFCs, asbestos fire protection, unregulated dumping of industrial toxins and heavy metals in rivers and streams, burning high sulfur coal, etc… etc…
He rails against protective social safety nets for the poor underprivileged and disenfranchised, like universal free healthcare and living wages while turning a blind eye to subsidies and trillion dollar tax cuts to richest 1%! According to him corporate socialism and corporate welfare are just dandy!
In any case it is difficult to tell if he is a brainwashed idiot, a paid troll or just a good Poe!
Oh, shit! Who let the damn trolls out again?!
Only a complete fucking moron doesn’t get, that without a healthy environment, there can be no business of any kind either.
Fred, they do not want to get it. They do not care who is harmed, killed or how sick and sad life on this planet becomes as long as they are free to achieve their simple minded agendas.
Appropriately, I now have a copy of Death In the Air and have read a few chapters. Tells of the previous reality where economics, politics and small mindedness brought about death, disease and natural disasters to the many. For many, money is the object above all else. They create, promote and fight for systems that kill and maim in the name of avarice.
But, is that really how your local Chamber of Commerce thinks?
After 30-plus years in her career, Donna is counting down the months until retirement. She gleefully shares with me everything she has planned for when she can do whatever she wants, whenever she wants. But in the middle of her excitement, something turns her mood. She clenches her fists and asks me demandingly, “Where are my grandbabies?”
Donna is not alone. While I can’t speak to her particular grandbaby-less predicament, I can say that her experience is part of a much bigger trend – one with serious implications for the Baby Boomers’ retirement plans.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention released new data showing that the birthrate has dropped to an all-time low in the United States. It seems that the Millennials just aren’t having kids, or at least they’re not having them yet. The only cohort of women showing an uptick in first time births are women over 35 years old. In fact, the rate of first time births for women between ages 40 and 44 years old doubled between 1990-2012.
Now, Millennials are not a different species. Most of them still dream of getting married, having children and of owning a home in the suburbs just as their parents did. Plenty of young buyers are already making the leap: Millennials are the largest cohort of home purchasers today, and they are mostly leaving urban spaces in favor of suburbia. But it’s happening later in life for them than for their predecessors. And, while Millennials report a desire for larger homes, their needs and budgets are small.
It’s not only that the rising generation of parents may be delaying kids; they are also just having less of them. Moreover, if economics is depressing the birthrate, it is also likely to be putting downward pressure on larger home purchases as well. And with that being the case, we can expect reduced demand for larger, typically more expensive, three-plus bedroom homes that were built with previous generations in mind.
Moreover, if economics is depressing the birthrate, it is also likely to be putting downward pressure on larger home purchases as well. And with that being the case, we can expect reduced demand for larger, typically more expensive, three-plus bedroom homes that were built with previous generations in mind.
Seems to be mostly a USian problem. In the rest of the world we are still adding about 80 million humans to the planet every year. Which, BTW, is definitely NOT! a good thing. As for housing in the US and elsewhere, the future may look a lot more like this.
Affordable house can be 3D printed for $4,000 in less than 24 hours
We are adding people, but we have reached peak child. The under 18 cohort is predicted to stay flat until 2050 and then start falling.
The population growth is all in the older age groups. People just aren’t dying as quickly as they used to.
An older populace means smaller households and less need for space, because old folks spend less time running around outside making noise, and are less willing or able to travel on a daily basis. It also means more stable communities, because older people move house less often. And of course it means fewer crimes and wars, which mostly involve young males.
It probably means less progress too, as government will be dominated by dim witted old farts living in the past.
Right now it is rich countries that are most affected, but China will be hit hard in a couple of decades, and South Asia and the Middle East not long afterwards.
That’s why I predict the 21st century will be an African century. That’s where all the action will be by 2050. everyone else will be living in retirement homes, if all goes well.
By 2050, I think even large parts of Africa will experience problems sustaining a birthrate above replacement level. Not to mention, global population projections exclude any major conventional wars or pandemics. Without some kind of mass political and societial initiatives across varying cultures tied into saving our global economy, there’s no real indication of the level population decline from 2050 will stop at.
I agree with you that the UN always underestimates the speed of falling birthrates.
Meanwhile it seems the Chinese are upping the ante in promoting climate change as a hoax! I guess they must be hell bent on selling their EVs and Solar panels and destroying the American way of fossil fuel based freedom… /sarc
Advances in Atmospheric Sciences
July 2018, Volume 35, Issue 7, pp 757–770 | Cite as
Climate Change of 4°C Global Warming above Pre-industrial Levels
Authors
Xiaoxin WangDabang JiangEmail authorXianmei Lang
Abstract Using a set of numerical experiments from 39 CMIP5 climate models, we project the emergence time for 4◦C global warming with respect to pre-industrial levels and associated climate changes under the RCP8.5 greenhouse gas concentration scenario. Results show that, according to the 39 models, the median year in which 4◦C global warming will occur is 2084. Based on the median results of models that project a 4◦C global warming by 2100, land areas will generally exhibit stronger warming than the oceans annually and seasonally, and the strongest enhancement occurs in the Arctic, with the exception of the summer season. Change signals for temperature go outside its natural internal variabilities globally, and the signal-tonoise ratio averages 9.6 for the annual mean and ranges from 6.3 to 7.2 for the seasonal mean over the globe, with the greatest values appearing at low latitudes because of low noise. Decreased precipitation generally occurs in the subtropics, whilst increased precipitation mainly appears at high latitudes. The precipitation changes in most of the high latitudes are greater than the background variability, and the global mean signal-to-noise ratio is 0.5 and ranges from 0.2 to 0.4 for the annual and seasonal means, respectively. Attention should be paid to limiting global warming to 1.5◦C, in which case temperature and precipitation will experience a far more moderate change than the natural internal variability. Large inter-model disagreement appears at high latitudes for temperature changes and at mid and low latitudes for precipitation changes. Overall, the intermodel consistency is better for temperature than for precipitation.
Attention should be paid to limiting global warming to 1.5◦C
Do all the MAGA idiots grasp the implications of that?!
Trump says Americans should ‘sit up at attention’ when he speaks like North Koreans with Kim Jong Un “I want my people to do the same.”
Any questions?!
Why is he still in office?
Dunno, maybe you can ask one of the good MAGA folk to explain it to us mortals of lesser intellectual capabilities.
Maybe it goes along with enhancing the business climate by removing environmental protections. BTW, where is that armed well organized militia when we seem to need it the most.
Hey, but you really can’t make this shit up, we are now friends with a notorious dictator who starves his people and had his uncle murdered. While at the same time having unfriended the weak and evil prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau.
U.S. President Donald Trump defended North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s human rights record moments after firing another shot at his ally north of the border, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Is this all just a really bad dream?
No dream, the Autumn People are taking over. “For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth….Such are the autumn people.”
Then the winter follows.
Mordor
.
Looks like a chemical factory I worked at for a while. About the same atmosphere and employees. The birds would turn away from that place, would not even fly over it.
🙂
BP’s annual Statistical Review of World Energy (a compendium of facts) is out. Among other revelations: COAL HAS THE SAME SHARE OF GLOBAL POWER GENERATION IT HAD 20 YEARS AGO
“In 1998, coal represented 38 percent of global power generation. In 2017, it represented … 38 percent of global power generation. In electricity, a sector that absorbs 40 percent of the world’s primary energy and produces more than a third of its emissions, the past 20 years have been running to stay still. NO NET DECARBONIZATION PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE. Nuclear has declined, renewables have risen, and the overall proportion of global electricity coming from non-fossil sources has remained roughly the same. That’s not going to cut it to avoid catastrophic climate change. Scenarios that show us hitting the climate targets agreed to in Paris involve OECD countries completely decarbonizing the electricity sector by 2030 or so, and other countries not long after. So, for all the bad news it has received lately, coal remains the greatest threat to a stable climate and the logical first target for a world serious about decarbonizing. It has got to go.”
THE TOP 10 COAL PRODUCERS IN THE WORLD (Million tons)
1 China 3,874.0
2 United States 906.9
3 Australia 644.0
4 India 537.6
5 Indonesia 458.0
6 Russia 357.6
7 South Africa 260.5
8 Germany 185.8
9 Poland 137.1
10 Kazakhstan 108.7
Oh yes, BP’s report shows that the world achieved a new oil production record of 92.6 million barrels per day (BPD), which is the 8th straight year global oil production has increased. The US was the world’s top oil producer in 2017, exceeding 13 million BPD for the first time ever. Saudi Arabia was second at 12.0 million BPD, while Russia came in at 11.3 million BPD.
So, growth of renewables wasn’t enough to prevent a new record for total fossil fuel consumption. Consequently, carbon dioxide emissions rose in 2017. Global carbon dioxide emissions rose 1.6% to a new record of 33.4 billion metric tons. Carbon dioxide emissions actually declined by 0.5% in the US as more coal-fired power was phased out, but strong growth was registered in the Asia Pacific region, Europe and in Africa. Of the 18 Asia Pacific countries reported, only Japan showed a decline in carbon dioxide emissions.
With 80 million more people each year, it’s tough to reduce carbon emissions unless an all out united blitz is made into renewable energy. The break point should happen in a few years if solar and wind keep growing fast. After that, carbon dioxide will still be produced but increases will hopefully stop and eventually decline.
The bad news is that natural gas has been steadily rising as a portion of primary energy since 1965, meaning more methane every year. A much more powerful GHG than CO2.
Isn’t it bad news that the world achieved a new oil production record of 92.6 million barrels per day (BPD) — the 8th straight year global oil production has increased? For that matter, isn’t it also bad news that carbon dioxide emissions have grown about 10 percent since 2007.
Horrible news Doug, just horrible. I will leave that for you to expand upon since you brought that up originally.
Well, perhaps the worst news, IMHO, is the 80 million people added to Earth each year. But, you’ve already mentioned that. 🙂
Isn’t it bad news that the world achieved a new oil production record of 92.6 million barrels per day (BPD) — the 8th straight year global oil production has increased?
Yes, and I agree with what GF said about it!
But, unless everything I have heard over the last decade and a half about peak oil and other fossil fuels, is mostly incorrect, how much longer can the party continue? Isn’t there supposedly a perfect storm of economic and geophysical factors converging to put a stop to continued increases in production?
I mean fossil fuels are a finite resource, no? It’s gotta stop flowing sooner or later, right?
Or is it actually abiotic and infinitely self replenishing?! /sarc
Sure Fred, I agree with all that but (maybe it’s just me) it’s hard to be positive about stuff when statistics are worse year after year. Especially: more people, more CO2, more FF burnt. What temperature are we going to commit to? I see 2 C minimum and think that will be a blooming disaster.
Humans and our livestock now make up 97 percent of all animals on land. Wild animals (mammals and birds) have been reduced to a mere remnant: just 3 percent. This is based on mass. Humans and our domesticated animals outweigh all terrestrial wild mammals and birds 32-to-1.
It is all but over——
Doug, we should have fairly good handle on how things will go by 2025. Of course by then ….
From NASA site The global average surface temperature rose 0.6 to 0.9 degrees Celsius (1.1 to 1.6° F) between 1906 and 2005, and the rate of temperature increase has nearly doubled in the last 50 years. Temperatures are certain to go up further
Lately it has been rising at 2C per century but since it’s accelerating …
Oh I’m not all that hopeful myself. Did you see this link I posted upthread from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China?
Advances in Atmospheric Sciences
July 2018, Volume 35, Issue 7, pp 757–770 | Cite as
Climate Change of 4°C Global Warming above Pre-industrial Levels
Authors
Xiaoxin WangDabang JiangEmail authorXianmei Lang
I will definitely not live to see the full effects personally but my son, nieces and nephews might, and there are a few grand nephews and nieces who most certainly would, barring unfortunate circumstance.
I do make an effort to put on a brave face for them but in my heart of hearts I know the truth and there is no sugar coating it.
Hey Doug, never mind, what little hope and optimism I might have had was totally misplaced. Fuck it! Humanity is completely and totally doomed! And while I’d like to call the current US President a total absolute fucking moron, that would just be an insult to morons everywhere!
Trump orders ‘immediate steps’ to boost coal, nuclear plants
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday directed Energy Secretary Rick Perry to prepare “immediate steps” to bolster struggling coal-fired and nuclear power plants to keep them open.
Trump believes that keeping America’s energy grid secure “protects our national security, public safety and economy from intentional attacks and natural disasters,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
Impending retirements of “fuel-secure” power plants that rely on coal and nuclear power are harming the nation’s power grid and reducing its resilience, Sanders said.
Just goes to prove that coal and nuclear are nonviable without massive subsidies. Now, the question is, just who was bitching about Chinese subsidies on solar?
NAOM
Re: President Trump
If you don’t like all the things he promised he was going to do for the country and now is doing to MAGA, that’s fine, but you should get out and campaign for the person you think could do better. Otherwise hateful rude comments are gonna have to stop. They make you look like a bunch of whiny sheep upset about your team losing. Yes I understand Obama caught some scorn as well but as somebody who supports our president, in my opinion Trump has done way more good for “we the people” so far in his first term than Obama did in his 2 terms.
Pat Clogger, You think this is about being rude or about giving a damn about what Obama did or didn’t do?
It has nothing to do with liking or disliking Trump personally! He is a corrupt crook and a wanna be dictator!
He is a danger to American democratic institutions and to a very delicate world order built up over decades and he is a clear and present danger to the planetary systems from a biological chemical and physical perspective. At the very least he is deeply stuck in the past when what the world needs is a clear vision of a way forward!
Anyone who looks the other way when Trump defends North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s human rights record is the worst possible kind of scoundrel, Apparently that is people like you, Pat Clogger!
U.S. President Donald Trump defended North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s human rights record moments after firing another shot at his ally north of the border, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
He is IMHO a traitor to everything the US has stood for since it was founded!
There is plenty of smoke regarding his disrespect of the law here is a clear and unequivocal example of a pattern of abuse that he and his family and associates continually engage in.
“It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant.” ― Barack Obama
Esteemed FredM,
I don’t remember whether I called attention the other day to coal being one of the items China will be imposing tariffs on. Last year’s imports of US coal to China were three times as much as the year before, and most was metallurgical coal (good news for West Virginia), but those import levels will drop you bet.
The uneconomical coal industry the Administration wants to support will become even more uneconomical, adding justification to the subsidy policy…oh, um, wait…
Time for more port, indeed
Esteemed Synapsid,
Time for more port, indeed
I’m sure you are aware of ethanol’s effect on serotonin levels in the brain 😉
Give me a pinch of psilocybin
To sprinkle in my beer,
That my psychopathic next-of-kin
May not seem quite so queer.
I hear that psilocybin helps fight acute depression…
It’s all going to happen at once Fred. The Arctic Blue Ocean event, oil decline, massive climate change, floods, fire, pestilence, famine, sea level rise, rising temperatures, slowing AMOC, melting Antarctic, goon squad government.
All at once, within a few years of each other. Instead of the Roaring Twenties it will be the Dismal 2020’s followed by the Dire 2030’s.
Wait, we have a lot of that now. OK, it’s just going to escalate. Think I will go out and buy a big old Buick Park Avenue or something like that to move things along. 🙂
BTW no more winter Olympics. The summer Olympics will be held in the fall or spring to have lower temps. On the plus side there will be several new events added. Climbing border fences, digging under border walls and pole vaulting border obstructions. Also a nautical race of overloaded boats and rafts racing toward a foreign beach.
Street kayak races and dehydration relays. Plus the piece de resistance, Capture the American Flag games.
Or maybe things will be just dandy. 🙂
Heh, I have a few plaques of ocean kayaking competitions I took part in. I might still do ok paddling down the street. 😉
What advice would you give a school district taking out a 25-year loan to build some new schools? Not worth it because the earth is going to be toast in less than a decade?
P.S. The problems with the Winter Olympics are mostly geopolitical, not physical. Modern snowmaking techniques allow for a wide range of locations to host the games. Real fallen snow hasn’t been used since 2006. Even this year in South Korea, where temperatures were near 0°F, the competition surfaces used artificial snow.
Not toast in a decade, just highly chaotic and headed toward toast.
I say build them with R8 or better windows, R30 walls and R60+ ceilings. Have roof extensions to shade the windows in summer but not block the winter sun. Heat pumps.
Plan on putting solar PV on or near the school and use all LED lighting.
Also include survival training, always a good course.
Schooling could and should change quite a bit in the next decade but a good building can always be put to good purposes. If they are well made, that will make it worth maintaining.
Certain areas of the country, all buildings should have strong basement safety areas. People in northeast Pa had to deal with damaging tornados with no basements in the shopping centers that got hit. I suspect the strength and possibly the frequency of strong storms will be increasing with time. So think shelters and emergency radio transmitters/rcvrs.
Adding to GF’s list. If low lying then the bunker should be above ground, a reinforced concrete vault, also escape stairs to the roof and shelter there in case of floods.
NAOM
“What advice would you give a school district taking out a 25-year loan to build some new schools? Not worth it because the earth is going to be toast in less than a decade?”
Well- it is a moot point.
Go for it!
2.5 billion (actually less) humans on the planet when I was born.
We’ve gone for a triple—
From the first page of the BP Statistical Review site. Global primary energy consumption grew strongly in 2017, led by natural gas and renewables, with coal’s share of the energy mix continuing to decline
If one looks back earlier in time coal has gone from 38% in 1965 to 28% of primary global energy.
Oil has fallen from 50% in 1973 to about 35%.
As far as electric generation, coal is down about 2% from 1985 (40% to 38%).
More dramatically, hydro generation went from 20% to 17 % from 1985 to 2017.
Renewables have risen from zero to about 10 % of generation in that period. While oil dropped from 11 % to 3%.
Carbon dioxide emissions have grown about 10 percent since 2007. Last year was 1.6% growth.
What would the environment be like at +3C global temperature rise?
In the Pliocene, three million years, temperatures were 3 degrees higher than our pre-industrial levels, so it gives us an insight into the three-degree world. The northern hemisphere was free of glaciers and icesheets, beech trees grew in the Transantarctic mountains, sea levels were 25 metres higher [Climate Dynamics, 26, 249-365], and atmospherc carbon dioxide levels were 360-400 ppm, very similar to today. There are also strong indications that during the Pliocene, permanent El Nino conditions prevailed. Hansen says that rapid warming today is already heating up the western Pacific Ocean, a basis for a coming period of ‘super El Ninos’ [Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 103, 39, 14288-93].
Between two and three degrees the Amazon rainforest, whose plants produce 10 per cent of the world’s photosynthesis and have no evolved resistance to fire, may turn to savannah, as drought and mega-fires first destroy the rainforest, turning trees back into carbon dioxide as they burn or rot and decompose [Theor. App. Climatology, 78, 137-56]. The carbon released by the forests destruction will be joined by still more from the world’s soils (see below), together boosting global temperatures by a further 1.5ºC [Nature, 408, 184-7]. It is suggested than in human terms the effect on the planet will be like cutting off oxygen during an asthma attack. A March 2007 conference at Oxford talked about ‘corridors of probability’ with models predicting the risk of the Amazon passing a “tipping point” at between 10 to 40 per cent over the next few decades. The UK’s Hadley Centre climate change model, best known for warning of catastrophic losses of Amazon forest, predicts that, under current levels of greenhouse gas emissions, the chances of such a drought would rise from 5% now (one every 20 years) to 50% by 2030, and to 90% by 2100.
The collapse of the Amazon is part of the reversal of the carbon cycle projected to happen around 3 degrees
A very small point of information: The beech trees in the TransAntarctic Mountains would have been the southern beech, which is not a beech but is related. Its genus is Nothofagus, while that of the beech is Fagus. Southern beech grows in southern South America, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Melaniesia; beeches are temperate Northern Hemisphere trees and a pest in the Spring on my street.
I am a lover of trees. Time for more port.
Blackout as power grid collapses again
(Nigeria, not who you think)
“A music video made entirely from wood for a song by bedtimes.xxx/music, WoodSwimmer is based on a concept I developed while designing a new stop-motion universe where wood is the primary element. The sequences are cross-sectional photographic scans of pieces of hardwood, burls and branches. It is a straightforward technique but one which is brutally tedious to complete.”
The Joinery
(a large assortment of animated gifs of illustrations of wooden joinery coming together)
“The complete 3D guide to joinery.”
Twenty-one national monthly/territorial heat records so far in 2018
January: Marshall Islands
February: Marshall Islands, Falkland Islands, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Palau.
March: Marshall Islands, Qatar, Armenia, Madagascar, Pakistan, Iraq, UAE, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan.
April: Albania, Montenegro
May: Hong Kong, Norway
(Courtesy of Maximiliano Herrera.)
National monthly cold records in 2018: none
No national monthly records for cold were set in May 2018.
PEEK AT THE FUTURE: ELECTRIC PLANE CRUISES SKIES OVER NORWAY
“Norway aims to be 100 percent electric by 2040 for all short-haul flights. Avinor, which is responsible for the country’s 44 airports, has bought the electric aircraft used Monday. The operator plans to launch a tender offer to test a commercial route flown with a small electric plane with 19 seats, starting in 2025.”
Yes, I’ve seen claims Norway’s first all-electric ferry reduced CO2 by 95% and operating cost by 80% resulting in many further orders for shipbuilder Fjellstrand. As everyone knows, Norway has salted away more than a trillion dollars in a rainy-day fund and has at least a decades worth of oil and gas reserves (currently producing roughly two million barrels per day). All-in-all, a well managed country with a reasonable distribution of wealth among its citizens — unlike some others I could name.
Now if we could just get the other 7.5 billion humans on board… yes, pun intended 😉
Hi gang, I have been out of pocket for the last five days. My internet has been down. I am not at an internet cafe trying to post. My internet should be up by tomorrow.
Have fun
Ron
Good luck, last outage took over 10 days and several visits to the local manager to fix.
NAOM
Ron, maybe use your cell phone as a hotspot?
>> I get 4G in Ajijic and it is more than fast enough for streaming. As I remember my 3G was too. Because both Telmex and Telecable provide I much cheaper internet option, I have only used my iPhone as a hotspot when away from home where there was no other more economical option for checking email, etc. <<
This article discusses the actual loss of forest area due to a variety of factors. Beyond this article lies the greater problem, tree species and forest areas in the process of stress and death without fire or development from humans intervening. Since plants are at the foundation of life support on this planet, I think this needs much further investigation.
I have posted numerous times on this site that the money will move to power storage in the future. It’s already happening. Apparently one gets paid for both selling the stored power as well as absorbing excess power. Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too?
The Tesla built battery was in ‘Load’ (charging) mode, while electricity was negatively priced, for at least 194 minutes. During that period the battery was accepting power at rates between 15-26MW, for varying time periods.
Roughly, during the four-hour period, the battery system absorbed greater than 66MWh of energy, which would be equal to at least AU$66,339 in revenue – and potentially up to $76,153.
Events of this nature occur when there is more electricity being produced than the power grid can absorb. Powerplants will sometimes disconnect themselves from the power grid when these things occur, transformers can blow, etc – this is what similar to what happened when the Tesla battery raced to action a few weeks back. The power grid managers try their best via predictive tools to manage energy usage with generation, but complexity always creeps in.
Those Tesla people are smart and with the Gigafactory getting nearer completion and full swing, they will be the biggest battery producers in the world.
Re batteries, see also:
“Coal to be kaput in Australia by 2050, as renewables, batteries take over”
Coal needed to be kaput as of yesterday. 2050 is way too late. I used the following analogy explaining why what we are doing is not enough when my sister told me good things were happening. “If a 150 lb man is drowning and you throw him a life preserver tha supports 149 lbs he can tread water for a while but unless you pull him out of tbe water he will still run out of energy and drown…
“Coal needed to be kaput as of yesterday.” Yup, that’s what not enough people get. We don’t have decades to play with.
Daily CO2 June 18, 2018: 410.35 ppm, June 18, 2017: 408.67 ppm
Actually eliminating coal eliminates ‘energy diversity’ within the system. That is an important concept in public utilities because you don’t want to be caught with your eggs all in one basket, but instead have several reliable energy sources you can turn to. Coal fulfills such a role honorably.
I’ll try to imagine an honorable coal company executive: Don Blankeship maybe?
Actually eliminating coal eliminates ‘energy diversity’ within the system.
Riiight! and eliminating the horse and buggy eliminated transportation diversity within the system back in 1913!
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said, faster horses”
The honorable Henry Ford!
Oh, and lest we forget: “‘The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.’ It ended because we invented bronze tools, which were more productive.”
The honorable former Saudi oil minister, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani,
Dim Joe Aond is an idiot and a troll!
Progress? We don’t need no clean progress.
Article From 1917: Don’t Worry About Coal, They’ll Definitely Be Using Something Else By 2017
How disappointing is that? Not only are we not flying around in personal aircraft but we are still burning coal.
But we do sit and stare at glowing screens.
Should we turn in the sapiens part for just plain sap?
Global Tree Cover Loss Rose 51 Percent in 2016 Global tree cover loss reached a record 29.7 million hectares (73.4 million acres) in 2016, according to new data from the University of Maryland released today on Global Forest Watch. The loss is 51 percent higher than the previous year, totaling an area about the size of New Zealand. http://www.wri.org/blog/2017/10/global-tree-cover-loss-rose-51-percent-2016
Yup, that’s what not enough people get.
The other thing that not enough people seem to get is we have pretty good knowledge as to what happened during the PETM mass extinction about 56 million years ago, a time during which the earth dumped almost all of its stored carbon into the atmosphere. For the record, Nature doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether CO2 molecules released into the atmosphere come from human industrial processes or some other natural phenomena, the results are exactly the same. And, It’s not just the amount of CO2 released, it’s also the RATE! at which it is released!
In fact, our current rate of anthropogenic carbon release is at least an order of magnitude (10x) higher than what the world experienced during the PETM. The study concludes that “given that the current rate of carbon release is unprecedented throughout the Cenozoic, we have effectively entered an era of a no-analogue state.” In other words, earth has apparently never seen a situation like today’s for at least 66 million years, if ever. At that time, the hothouse world lasted over 1,000 centuries…
….The abstract for the Nature Geoscience paper concludes:
“Given currently available records, the present anthropogenic carbon release rate is unprecedented during the past 66 million years. We suggest that such a ‘no-analogue’ state represents a fundamental challenge in constraining future climate projections. Also, future ecosystem disruptions are likely to exceed the relatively limited extinctions observed at the PETM.”
Zeebe says the two main conclusions are that ocean acidification will be more severe this time around, and that existing ecosystems may be hit harder because of the higher rate of carbon release.
.
Maybe we can substitute all politicians with AI… can’t be any worse than what we have now!
Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence
Solving the Rubik’s Cube Without Human Knowledge
Stephen McAleer, Forest Agostinelli, Alexander Shmakov, Pierre Baldi
(Submitted on 18 May 2018)
A generally intelligent agent must be able to teach itself how to solve problems in complex domains with minimal human supervision. Recently, deep reinforcement learning algorithms combined with self-play have achieved superhuman proficiency in Go, Chess, and Shogi without human data or domain knowledge. In these environments, a reward is always received at the end of the game, however, for many combinatorial optimization environments, rewards are sparse and episodes are not guaranteed to terminate. We introduce Autodidactic Iteration: a novel reinforcement learning algorithm that is able to teach itself how to solve the Rubik’s Cube with no human assistance. Our algorithm is able to solve 100% of randomly scrambled cubes while achieving a median solve length of 30 moves — less than or equal to solvers that employ human domain knowledge.
But can it be taught to lie, a requirement of the job?
“So, Elon Musk has claimed he is a ‘utopian anarchist’ in a way he claims is best described by the late science fiction author Iain M Banks. Which leads to one very relevant question: has Musk actually read any of Banks’s books?
…it is worrying that a tech entrepreneur thinks that a totalitarian, interventionist monolith is a role model. If there is an afterlife, Banks must be laughing his cotton socks off.”
After the G7 Trump experience, Canadians are just now beginning to realize how important it is to complete an oil export pipeline to the Pacific coast. Trump has single handedly united our Country against him. Unfortunately, this feeling of growing anger is also starting to be directed towards America, itself. It might take decades to restore a relationship, if ever.
I would think the political party that promises the re-purposed Energy East pipeline to the Atlantic coast, (for oil export to Europe), will win the next Canadian general election. That would remove 2-3 million/bpd flowing south and ensure World prices for WCS.
regards
Trump is an ignorant a-hole.
I suppose that confirms that at least half of USA is as well.
I guess we all really knew that already, even though we try to be good-natured and forget.
19 percent of the US population voted for Trump, so that confirms at least that much.
The popular vote was 46.1% Trump and 48.2% to Clinton, of those who voted. Only 136 million out of a total of 325.7 million voted, yet all are subject to the result.
“Four hours Some politicians and CEOs boast that they need only four hours’ sleep, but it simply isn’t true. Take Donald Trump, for example. If this were the case, the scientific evidence would suggest he would be overweight, show erratic behaviour, poor judgment and frequent mood swings.”
from
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2018/jun/11/8-and-half-hours-optimum-amount-sleep-time
’bout sums it up
NAOM
Long term loss of sleep causes permanent mental and physical damage.
Do I smell a border hedge to be planted?
Yeah, laurel….something soft. No thorns.
Okay, I’ve cooled down after a trip ‘down Island’ and after a quick ‘everyman for himself’ dinner. Tomorrow, we will cook a fine supper and give it the importance it is due. Tomorrow morning I will also bake bread as it will be raining.
Seriously, I think all of us regular citizens in our respective countries are being short changed. Maybe the best solution (some days) is just to turn off the news. Family, health, community, friends, values should be our focus, and while the order of this list sometimes changes and might need some additions, the importance does not.
I feel whipsawed and shell shocked with the constant onslaught of depressing news and public behaviours these past 2 years. If it was work it would be time for a vacation, or a job change. Since I am retired and now on a perpetual working vacation, let me share with you my new community and resilience focus.
I am tired of being angry and cynical. The following is positive news.
I am a new holder of a Basic with Honours Canadian Amateur Radio License. The Honours designation gives me (legal) access to all bands in the Amateur spectrum, including the lower HF bands. Our Regional District supplied the course for a scant $50 tuition in the hopes of recruiting HAMS in the event of an emergency that might knock out communications. Then, upon test completion they gave me a new radio. (I made money on the course :-). I also volunteered to be the local Emergency Communications Leader for our Valley, (50 miles from town). I have used company HF for many years working up north, but this Ham stuff is all pretty new and exciting for me. In a major ‘event’, one of the first casualties is comm, this could include cell, sat., and landlines. But radio works on a batt. A batt can be charged with a small panel, or portable generator, and a car batt remains powered up for days. I will be trained on a computer interface which takes digital info off my laptop (another batt) and loads it onto a mobile transceiver. The transmission is pretty simple using required stored forms for a common format, connecting to the ‘modem’, logging on, transmits on the stored freq, and then shuts down. It reminds me of the old dial up, and the commands remind me of DOS. A form might be: missing persons, required supplies, required equipment, casualties, etc. It saves the confusion of writing stuff out. The info would be transmitted to the Emergency Hdq and to the Head running Island-wide comms. It is also a log of who what where when what. On Monday (18th) we sign an agreement for the installation of a new antenna at the local community hall in case our repeater goes down. I live only 2 km from the hall.
Plus, we are part of the Island Trunk System, which links the whole of Vancouver Island and the mainland inlets including Gulf Islands. If the ITS goes down, my new radio is powerful enough to reach out, anyway. In fall I start the packet training and my Advanced course which will allow me to build and operate my own equipment and use up to 1,000 watts power. As said above, it’s exciting.
Plus, it compliments our family PO/Long Emergency mindset and what we have worked towards these past 15 years. We grow a lot of our food, including wild salmon for protein, eggs, etc. We have wood under cover for the next 5 years heating requirements, (woodlot, too), orchards, gardens etc. We have a good drilled well and also live on a river. Our neighbours are pretty solid. I have a couple of restored Trail 90s that run on fumes and are easy to fix, plus a good road bike. Bicycles, tools, stores, guns, ammunition, fishing gear….the kind of stuff all rural people collect over the years. Books and more books. The radio is the last piece of the puzzle for me and is also community focused. We now have 5 hams spread through out our 15 mile long valley.
Of course new radios can bypass the frequency restrictions as needed….(already programmed in and done 🙂
Once I get my HF base rig up and running I will post again about this in case anyone wishes to contact up by radio. I encourage any reader to check into amateur radio. In our Province it has been decreed that the Amateur system will be the backup for any emergency as opposed to commercial bands. It might be the same, elsewhere.
Hi Paulo,
Congratulations on receipt of your Canadian Amateur Radio License. My Dad had the second HAM License issued in Canada (VE7EI) and I retain fond memories of tinkering with vacuum tubes and all the other magical “toys” in his HAM shack. We had stacks of war surplus stuff to experiment with you could get for a few cents a pound. I still remember the smile on Dad’s face following his first contact with another HAM in Australia – one tube transmitter. Don’t remember how many watts but you could count them on your fingers. Later I remember my pride at looking at his QSL cards from around the world.
Strong work Paulo!
Congratulations. I did the RSGB C & G exam but never went on air 🙁 Finishing uni and starting work got in the way plus only being able to use the higher bands without the morse test was an off-putter.
NAOM
Congratulations! Welcome to a great group. I’ve been a Ham since 1986. I work here in Sweet Home, Oregon with the local county and town Emergency organizations. We’re using all the equipment and communication methods you mention. If you ever want to contact me, you can email at my callsign at arrl.net and the email will be forwarded to my regular address. Or, since you’re using Winlink, send an email to my callsign at winlink.org
August KG7BZ
“Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, look after our children. As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy—the restaurant business as we know it—in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers. Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are ‘stealing American jobs.’ But in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position—or even a job as prep cook. Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans, probably, simply won’t do. In nearly 30 years of cooking professionally, just about every time I walked into a new kitchen, it was a Mexican guy who looked after me, had my back, showed me what was what, was there—and on the case—when the cooks more like me, with backgrounds like mine—ran away to go skiing or surfing—or simply flaked”
– Anthony Bourdain.
Despite the truth in Bourdains statement, I do agree with the notion that a country has every right to choose its immigrant numbers, source, and attributes.
The democrats are making a mistake by failure to acknowledge that.
It hands the republicans an easy issue to get an infield 3rd base hit on.
Of course, the devils in the details of the policies, but the voters arn’t too swift on details (like their president).
“When humanity realizes the sheer uselessness of polarized political positions, hell will have frozen over, or more likely the Ice Caps will have melted and snow balls will be a thing of the past. ” GoneFishing
“A country that fights among itself will be left far behind and become irrelevant” GoneFishing
“Following the vision of a mad man is a sign of general insanity” Gone Fishing
“The inmates are running the asylum” from Dr. Caligari
Maybe I live in a unique area, but we just planted a few acres in near 100 degree temperatures with plants that required hand digging each hole and was done with all American labor sourced from Craigslist. We hired around 25 people per day from older to younger workers and maybe one or two was of Mexican heritage. No illegal workers that I could tell. We paid a decent wage, with breaks. Americans will do the work.
Where do you live?
It does sound like a unique area, from the labor perspective.
Regardless, immigrants are a huge part of the American story, thats how we all got here.
Question is how we manage it, legal and illegal.
Denial and bickering has been the primary mode of conversation.
That doesn’t have a good outcome either way.
Helps get idiots elected, here and in Europe.
I live in northern Colorado. It was an eye opening experience. Some were young people traveling around and earning money when they needed it, some were working it as a second job, some were down on their luck and needed a few bucks, and others just wanted to work in the outdoors and learn a little about farming. I would have never guessed we could have found such workers in the manner that we did. For the most part they worked hard and had pride in their work.
As to the usage of illegal labor, I don’t think it is a secret that if you really want to control that, the employers are the key. No paid work, then no illegal labor.
As to electing idiots, at least we have regular elections and can get rid of them. Sometimes even the worst accomplish some things that others could not.
Tesla to cut 9 percent of workforce, but spares factory
https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Tesla-to-cut-9-percent-of-workforce-but-spares-12988106.php?t=cca274bc00
Minor bump in the road, with all those machines that don’t need humans.
Sounds like a good business move, getting rid of the dead wood in the white collar areas.
With 5000 Model 3 cars per week coming out soon, they should at least get decent cash flow.
The direct competition, the chevy bolt, is lagging way behind.
Leafs are hanging in there at about 1000 per month.
Total US sales of plug-ins in March was about 26,000.
Soon Tesla will be producing 20,000 per month of just the Model 3. Will be over a year to fill the pre-orders.
April total sold was just under 20,000 for all brands of plug-ins, in the US.
Let’s see where things go over the next year, since EV’s are not the hottest pursuit in the car market.
Just the Toyota Camry is selling 30,000 a month in the US.
Tesla: Both Sides Of The Case
by Jean-Louis Gassée
https://mondaynote.com/tesla-both-sides-of-the-case-32bf53b8f4f1
Now 15-years-old, Tesla enjoys a media presence that’s well out of proportion with the size of its sales. In the first quarter of this year, the company sold fewer than 30,000 cars; for reference, Toyota sells about 2.5M per quarter, 80 times more. The extravagant attention can be explained, at least in part, by Elon Musk’s impressive PR skills. Musk is a veritable quote machine, constantly providing fodder across the whole spectrum of media from blogs to Twitter, from the Wall Street Journal to The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Tesla may be the darling of the media and Musk may be a master showman, but facts are facts: The company has never made money. In order to survive, the company continues to rely on the generosity of shareholders and taxpayers. In 2015, cumulative state and federal subsidies were estimated at $4.9B — that’s $30K per vehicle.
Taxpayers have little choice, but shareholders? At this week’s close, TSLA was worth $49.6B vs $46.7 for Ford and $60.9B for GM. How long will shareholders support a company that doesn’t make money?
Furthermore, Tesla is the most shorted stock in the US market, meaning there are more people betting the company shares will plunge than with any other company. Today’s Tesla high stock market valuation gives it an opportunity to sell more shares, to raise more money without risking a sharp sell-off, but by the end of the year, the wisdom of the crowds could turn negative, causing the stock to plunge in an accelerated downward spiral as former believers rush to the exit.
Tesla is showing record sales, record increases in sales and production and record losses. It’s building fast and hard rather than staying small and profitable. Could be a big bust or could be a premiere big automaker in less than a decade.
“The company has never made money.”
That seemed to be no problem when Amazon did it.
Remember the time when Amazon faded into obscurity because they never made a profit?
I remember when Jean-Louis Gassée started BeOS and it immediately went tits up because it was a stupid idea that showed that he (and his backers) lacked a basic understanding of how the software market works.
But hey, I’m sure he’s an expert on the car business.
Amazon has half of all online sales—
When Tesla gets to 5% we can have a more valid comparison.
Hightrekker,
The point is that Amazon continued to thrive even though it was not profitable. EVs will be growing and at present Tesla has a large share of the EV market. Of EVs sold in the US in May 2018, Tesla had 73% of the market. The cost of EVs will continue to fall and oil prices will continue to rise and by 2030 EVs will be over 50% of light duty vehicles sold in the US.
In 5 years Tesla may be producing a lot of cars. Probably 1 to 2 million per year. In 10 years they may be up to 5 million, it will depend how quickly the other big players catch up.
The Third Industrial Revolution: A Radical New Sharing Economy
The global economy is in crisis. The exponential exhaustion of natural resources, declining productivity, slow growth, rising unemployment, and steep inequality, forces us to rethink our economic models. Where do we go from here? In this feature-length documentary, social and economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin lays out a road map to usher in a new economic system.
A Third Industrial Revolution is unfolding with the convergence of three pivotal technologies: an ultra-fast 5G communication internet, a renewable energy internet, and a driverless mobility internet, all connected to the Internet of Things embedded across society and the environment.
This 21st century smart digital infrastructure is giving rise to a radical new sharing economy that is transforming the way we manage, power and move economic life. But with climate change now ravaging the planet, it needs to happen fast. Change of this magnitude requires political will and a profound ideological shift.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3M8Ka9vUA
As you said at the end of the last thread:
Of course that may be the main reason why people don’t like science and engineering, they try to determine and use reality. Too much for most people.
The people who are doing the most damage to the planet don’t want to admit what science is telling them. They don’t want to exit from their little fantasy bubble dream worlds.
BAU has a very limited life left. So on to the next dream world. Dream of EV’s, PV’s, WT’s and Circular Economies. Dream of Smart Cities, Smart Power and Smart Houses.
Dream of Half Earth and New Mammoths. Dream of organic farms tended by little bots.
Reality might look more like this, but we can dream can’t we?
LOL! It already does in many places! However technology is not deterministic.
There are people out there who see this:
https://www.metabolic.nl/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CircularBuiksloterham_ENG_FullReport.pdf
It’s only 176 pages…
But as dreams go, it ain’t one of the worse ones I’ve seen.
Cheers!
The magma economy is richer than ever.
“All those pieces are necessary in order to understand how much material is being recharged to the volcano,” said Jerry Fairley, a University of Idaho professor of geology who helped lead the project.
Based on their accounting, the actual amount of magma under the caldera may be as much as double of what scientists previously thought.
“What our work did is really showed that there’s a lot of heat unaccounted for if you just measure the hot water coming out,” Larson said.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/jun/12/wsu-and-ui-researchers-say-theres-more-magma-benea/#/0
It’s good to remember that the vast majority of people would be better off with a new economy. It’s a small minority that would be hurt by a transition away from fossil fuels, and I suspect the same is true for the other changes we need.
The Kochs and Pruitts of the world aren’t primarily living in denial of reality, they’re primarily living in psychopathic denial of other people’s needs.
Well said.
Thanks!
Cool video from NASA
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12858
NOAM
ANTARCTICA LOSES THREE TRILLION TONNES OF ICE IN 25 YEARS
“Antarctica is shedding ice at an accelerating rate. Satellites monitoring the state of the White Continent indicate some 200 billion tonnes a year are now being lost to the ocean as a result of melting. This is pushing up global sea levels by 0.6mm annually — a three-fold increase since 2012 when the last such assessment was undertaken…
In Imbie’s last assessment, the contribution of Antarctica to global sea-levels was considered to be tracking at the lower end of the projections that computer simulations had made of the possible height of the oceans at the end of the century. The new assessment sees the contribution track the upper end of these projections.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44470208
That is one more 1/3 inch of sea level rise we have to deal with after 25 years.
the contribution of Antarctica to global sea-levels was considered to be tracking at the lower end of the projections that computer simulations had made of the possible height of the oceans at the end of the century. The new assessment sees the contribution track the upper end of these projections
In other words they’re clueless to what the future holds. More studies won’t help, either.
“In other words they’re clueless …” you’ve made a study to confirm that have you … no wait, studies don’t work so you just spew out any bullshit that confirms your pathetic biases.
Pathetic?
Supposed grown-ups who will grasp at any crap and defame others rather than face reality – it doesn’t get much more pathetic.
Where’s Javier when you need him to tell us ice is increasing….
Ice seems to grow in the winter and reduce in the summer. So somewhere on Earth the ice is increasing.
High Temperatures Over Arctic Ocean In June 2018
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2018/06/high-temperatures-over-arctic-ocean-in-june-2018.html?m=1
For Fred: FedEx and CRISPR…
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/the-dna-depot-that-has-sent-crispr-to-62-countries/562370/
Cool! I have nothing against sending DNA via FedEx but…
I can imagine a time in the not too distant future when we can use computer code to write out the DNA segments as text, email them or store them in a database in the cloud. Then you could download them, transcribe them back into real DNA, insert them back into a living cells for whatever purpose you might need them for.
Something like this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3518802/Could-soon-HACK-human-body-Scientists-use-computer-program-change-living-cells-behave.html
By using an existing programming language called Verilog, the MIT team designed logical circuits which were then coded into synthetic loops of DNA called plasmids, using a system called Cello.
These synthetic plasmids were then inserted into E.coli bacteria – in the same process currently used to add new genes to micro-organisms.
Cheers!
Did anyone else here follow that racoon trapped on a skyscraper and had to climb to the roof? That was incredible. I wonder how a racoon even gets in a downtown of a major city in the first place?
Did it make it? Did they manage to trap it? I haven’t seen any updates.
NAOM
It climbed to the top overnight, where food, water and live traps had been set. After the sun rose, building management went up and found it in one of the traps. Last I read, wildlife management was going to check it’s health and release it if there are no concerns.
Ra!
Ra!
Ra!
Raccoon!
NAOM
It’s been released…happily ever after!
I wonder how a racoon even gets in a downtown of a major city in the first place?
I live in a large metropolitan area and see wildlife all the time. Recently found a vixen with her cubs living in a concrete pipe by a boat dock. It is not all that unusual. Racoons are quite adaptable to human habitats as well.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/20/urban-beasts-how-wild-animals-have-moved-into-cities
Urban beasts: how wild animals have moved into cities
The face of God is in the eye of the beholder, researchers say
by Corky Siemaszko
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/face-god-eye-beholder-researchers-say-n882491
In the Grammy-nominated 1995 pop song “One of Us,” singer Joan Osborne posed a question for the ages: If God had a face, what would it look like?
Now, thanks to team of psychologists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, we may have an answer: To most Christians, he looks like a young white dude.
“People tend to believe in a God that looks like them,” Professor Kurt Gray, the study’s senior author, told NBC News. “And most of the people who took part were male and white.”
What surprised the researchers, however, was that most of the women thought the Almighty was male, and “even many black Americans saw God as white … and with twinkling eyes, “ said Gray.
Politics also played a role in people’s perceptions of God, the researchers found.
Conservatives were more likely to see God as white and powerful. Liberals saw God as younger and loving.
In other news the Pope turns out to be catholic, who knew?
Don’t know much about this ‘God’ concept.
But I offer this inquisition, or I mean inquiry,-
why are saints only catholic?
Hickory,
If you’re talking only about Christian saints you find them in Orthodox, like Russian and Greek, and Oriental (eg. Ethiopian) churches too.
Depending on what is considered a saint they’re found in other religions as well. The Roman Catholics don’t have it all their own way.
Conservatives were more likely to see God as white and powerful. Liberals saw God as younger and loving.
Must be mainly a western civilization cultural problem, anyways sounds like a pile of bullshit to me! There are lot’s of deities worshiped by humans throughout history that have non human form.
I personally like the Australian Rainbow Snake GOD! Sure beats a a cruel, misogynistic authoritarian asshole of a god like the one worshiped by Christians, Jews and Moslems!
The Great Creator Serpent
In charge of Fertility, Growth and Refreshing Rain.
http://www.godchecker.com/pantheon/australian-mythology.php?deity=RAINBOW-SNAKE
The RAINBOW-SNAKE is a bit of a mish-mash, with a kangaroo’s head, a crocodile’s tail and a python’s body, all decorated with water lilies and waving tendrils.
The Snake has many names and comes in male and female form. YINGARNA, the female, is the original Mother of Creation, and her son NGALYOD is the Great Transformer of Land. Family portraits go back 8,000 years, which makes the Rainbow Snake one of the oldest religious symbols. And it’s still going strong today.
.
I don’t know what God looks like. I am still trying to figure out why there are churches if God is everywhere? Why the need for a special place?
I think the smartphone will replace the church. That and some roving AI preachers.
This guy discusses robot preachers being introduced into churches. The fan over his head looks like a mechanical halo!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgs5iWeVup4
At two minutes watch the lights in it’s hands
https://youtu.be/RM384va4Ojo
IBM’s supercomputer Watson confirms what many already knew was obvious-
Jesus, the man, would not be a christian,
in fact he would be one of its strongest critics.
Not surprising.
What surprised the researchers, however, was that most of the women thought the Almighty was male, and “even many black Americans saw God as white
I don’t know why people are surprised when women are sexist, blacks have racist ideas, jews are anti-semitic, etc., etc. Everybody lives in the same culture, and they all absorb the same culture of misinformation and negative emotional associations.
It’s only been the last few decades that women start voting differently from men. 10x as many women subscribed to Cosmo as subscribed to Ms.
https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=26651087
Machine learning predicts World Cup winner
by Emerging Technology from the arXiv
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611397/machine-learning-predicts-world-cup-winner/
The 2018 soccer World Cup kicks off in Russia on Thursday and is likely to be one of the most widely viewed sporting events in history, more popular even than the Olympics. So the potential winners are of significant interest.
[In] recent years, researchers have developed machine-learning techniques that have the potential to outperform conventional statistical approaches. What do these new techniques predict as the likely outcome of the 2018 World Cup?
An answer comes from the work of Andreas Groll at the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany and a few colleagues. These guys use a combination of machine learning and conventional statistics, a method called a random-forest approach, to identify a different most likely winner.
It can be enlightening to occasionally read the Faux News version of reality, especially the comments section… they sound like mentally cornered rabid rats!
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/13/berkeley-declares-climate-emergency-worse-than-world-war-ii-demands-humane-population-control.html
Berkeley declares ‘climate emergency’ worse than World War II, demands ‘humane’ population control
No information or facts are safe out there once in the hands of the people.
Now if liberals actually took this population reduction to heart, then in one generation there would not be enough to ever win an election (if most children have a similar ideology to their parents). Instant win for the conservatives and after that no problem. The results of living in a polarized representative democracy. Either keep up the numbers in the right places or become irrelevant.
So just stop buying so much unnecessary stuff, drive an EV, put PV on the roof, double insulate the house, put in all LED’s, grow some food in the backyard, stay home more often and eat local food, etc.
You will be doing the environment a favor, have lower bills and can watch as your conservative neighbors go into debt buying all that junk and having more kids than you. Sure they will take control of the government, but you will be righteous and maybe able to pay your bills.
Of course, since neither “side” actually did enough to really change anything (that would mean working together), the environment went to hell while everybody was arguing and wasting time.
When push comes to shove, do what you want. You will not reap what you sow, you will reap what the collective sows.
Also downsize your house and move into town.
Yep–
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/8b9af0faabe10a72bc3abb1a920673adc19b2627/0_0_1600_1200/master/1600.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=53b6270efa7eb7387ac692e21815323c
It was just stolen–
Well—-
https://i.imgur.com/ZxVyqddl.jpg
Something seems strange—–
Good news for astronomy buffs:
NEW GREENLAND TELESCOPE IS UP AND RUNNING
EHT project will generate images of two large black holes: One in the middle of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and another, bigger black hole, in the centre of nearby galaxy M87. Other telescopes in Chile and Hawaii will point in the same direction, and data will be pooled from all of the telescopes in the EHT project to produce the images. The EHT essentially turns the entire globe into one giant radio telescope, and the farther apart radio dishes in the array are, the sharper the images the EHT can make.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-greenland-telescope.html#jCp
The phrase ‘necessary and sufficient’ blamed for flawed neuroscience
Muddled language can lead scientists in the wrong direction, neurobiologists claim.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05418-0?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20180614&utm_source=nature_etoc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20180614&spMailingID=56809088&spUserID=MjA1Nzc0NjIwOAS2&spJobID=1422054713&spReportId=MTQyMjA1NDcxMwS2
Brexit could hurt UK car industry’s electric dreams
http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/06/investing/brexit-electric-cars-jaguar-land-rover/index.html?iid=EL
Sarah Sanders preparing to leave White House: report http://hill.cm/wSBjUyV
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1007316013476610049
“I’m tired of standing up and lying to the press everyday. @FoxNews offered me a chair.”
They are replacing nameplates with miniature whiteboards.
NAOM
Ignoring Science at Our Peril
Last March, Scott Pruitt, newly appointed to head the Environmental Protection Agency, rejected the previous administration’s proposal to ban agricultural use of a Dow Chemical Company pesticide, chlorpyrifos. The agency’s scientific advisory panel had concluded in 2016 that children risked irreversible brain damage and neurodevelopmental problems from very low levels of exposure to food residues of the chemical, which continues to be widely used on fruits and vegetables.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/well/ignoring-science-at-our-peril.html
The government is supposed to protect the people not damage and kill them.
Maybe Dow Chemical promised Pruitt some expensive pens…
I think for the people who don’t like him, they also don’t like having our businesses be the best they can be by not having to have all these regulations hurting small business. Ok Dow chemical isn’t small business but so many regulations from Obama’s time really did hurt the U.S.A.’s small businesses, just talk to any small business owners you know. Then go talk to the chamber of commerce in your area, they know what the business climate is like in your area-and can explain what is best for the local economy and small businesses. Aster all that if your still not convinced, then nobody is making you stay in this country remember. Maybe take your small minds and pack up, move somewhere else you rather be.
So Pops, having children at risk of irreversible brain damage and neurodevelopmental problems is okay providing small businesses owners don’t suffer? Excuse me if I don’t see the logic in that.
No those things aren’t good at all but maybe the research was flawed and that’s why the E.P.A. is tossing out the regulations.
Pops,
Do you think Scott Pruitt know anything about science?
His undergraduate degree is in political science and communications and then he went to law school.
See
http://www.eduinreview.com/blog/2017/03/scott-pruitts-educational-background/
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Pruitt
The man is a moron.
So, you are happy to harm children just in case you might do a little bit of harm to a company. Companies before people. It is time you packed your bags.
NAOM
Who’s side are normally on, big government with regulations telling everybody how to live and able to take away freedom’s on a whim, or the small business side that creates jobs and opportunity? I have to say me and most everyone I know appreciate the small business side most of the time. Even if there are some risks to it, we can better live with that over big government socialism and so on.
So, you are in favor of allowing trucks to drive on both sides of the road?
NAOM
He’s also probably in favor of bringing back DDT, lead paint, leaded gasoline, CFCs, asbestos fire protection, unregulated dumping of industrial toxins and heavy metals in rivers and streams, burning high sulfur coal, etc… etc…
He rails against protective social safety nets for the poor underprivileged and disenfranchised, like universal free healthcare and living wages while turning a blind eye to subsidies and trillion dollar tax cuts to richest 1%! According to him corporate socialism and corporate welfare are just dandy!
In any case it is difficult to tell if he is a brainwashed idiot, a paid troll or just a good Poe!
Oh, shit! Who let the damn trolls out again?!
Only a complete fucking moron doesn’t get, that without a healthy environment, there can be no business of any kind either.
Fred, they do not want to get it. They do not care who is harmed, killed or how sick and sad life on this planet becomes as long as they are free to achieve their simple minded agendas.
Appropriately, I now have a copy of Death In the Air and have read a few chapters. Tells of the previous reality where economics, politics and small mindedness brought about death, disease and natural disasters to the many. For many, money is the object above all else. They create, promote and fight for systems that kill and maim in the name of avarice.
But, is that really how your local Chamber of Commerce thinks?
Babylon 5 Londo sets a trap for Refa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zly_tL5mMc8
Pops in PA- you got an ugly heart. Probably ugly all over.
Millennials Aren’t Having Kids. Here’s Why That’s A Problem For Baby Boomer Real Estate & Retirement
Joseph Coughlin
https://www.forbes.com/sites/josephcoughlin/2018/06/11/millennials-arent-having-kids-heres-why-thats-a-problem-for-baby-boomer-real-estate-retirement/
After 30-plus years in her career, Donna is counting down the months until retirement. She gleefully shares with me everything she has planned for when she can do whatever she wants, whenever she wants. But in the middle of her excitement, something turns her mood. She clenches her fists and asks me demandingly, “Where are my grandbabies?”
Donna is not alone. While I can’t speak to her particular grandbaby-less predicament, I can say that her experience is part of a much bigger trend – one with serious implications for the Baby Boomers’ retirement plans.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention released new data showing that the birthrate has dropped to an all-time low in the United States. It seems that the Millennials just aren’t having kids, or at least they’re not having them yet. The only cohort of women showing an uptick in first time births are women over 35 years old. In fact, the rate of first time births for women between ages 40 and 44 years old doubled between 1990-2012.
Now, Millennials are not a different species. Most of them still dream of getting married, having children and of owning a home in the suburbs just as their parents did. Plenty of young buyers are already making the leap: Millennials are the largest cohort of home purchasers today, and they are mostly leaving urban spaces in favor of suburbia. But it’s happening later in life for them than for their predecessors. And, while Millennials report a desire for larger homes, their needs and budgets are small.
It’s not only that the rising generation of parents may be delaying kids; they are also just having less of them. Moreover, if economics is depressing the birthrate, it is also likely to be putting downward pressure on larger home purchases as well. And with that being the case, we can expect reduced demand for larger, typically more expensive, three-plus bedroom homes that were built with previous generations in mind.
Moreover, if economics is depressing the birthrate, it is also likely to be putting downward pressure on larger home purchases as well. And with that being the case, we can expect reduced demand for larger, typically more expensive, three-plus bedroom homes that were built with previous generations in mind.
Seems to be mostly a USian problem. In the rest of the world we are still adding about 80 million humans to the planet every year. Which, BTW, is definitely NOT! a good thing. As for housing in the US and elsewhere, the future may look a lot more like this.
https://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/icon-3d-printed-affordable-homes.html
Affordable house can be 3D printed for $4,000 in less than 24 hours
We are adding people, but we have reached peak child. The under 18 cohort is predicted to stay flat until 2050 and then start falling.
The population growth is all in the older age groups. People just aren’t dying as quickly as they used to.
An older populace means smaller households and less need for space, because old folks spend less time running around outside making noise, and are less willing or able to travel on a daily basis. It also means more stable communities, because older people move house less often. And of course it means fewer crimes and wars, which mostly involve young males.
It probably means less progress too, as government will be dominated by dim witted old farts living in the past.
Right now it is rich countries that are most affected, but China will be hit hard in a couple of decades, and South Asia and the Middle East not long afterwards.
That’s why I predict the 21st century will be an African century. That’s where all the action will be by 2050. everyone else will be living in retirement homes, if all goes well.
By 2050, I think even large parts of Africa will experience problems sustaining a birthrate above replacement level. Not to mention, global population projections exclude any major conventional wars or pandemics. Without some kind of mass political and societial initiatives across varying cultures tied into saving our global economy, there’s no real indication of the level population decline from 2050 will stop at.
I agree with you that the UN always underestimates the speed of falling birthrates.
Meanwhile it seems the Chinese are upping the ante in promoting climate change as a hoax! I guess they must be hell bent on selling their EVs and Solar panels and destroying the American way of fossil fuel based freedom… /sarc
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00376-018-7160-4
Advances in Atmospheric Sciences
July 2018, Volume 35, Issue 7, pp 757–770 | Cite as
Climate Change of 4°C Global Warming above Pre-industrial Levels
Authors
Xiaoxin WangDabang JiangEmail authorXianmei Lang
Abstract
Using a set of numerical experiments from 39 CMIP5 climate models, we project the emergence time for 4◦C global warming with respect to pre-industrial levels and associated climate changes under the RCP8.5 greenhouse gas concentration scenario. Results show that, according to the 39 models, the median year in which 4◦C global warming will occur is 2084. Based on the median results of models that project a 4◦C global warming by 2100, land areas will generally exhibit stronger warming than the oceans annually and seasonally, and the strongest enhancement occurs in the Arctic, with the exception of the summer season. Change signals for temperature go outside its natural internal variabilities globally, and the signal-tonoise ratio averages 9.6 for the annual mean and ranges from 6.3 to 7.2 for the seasonal mean over the globe, with the greatest values appearing at low latitudes because of low noise. Decreased precipitation generally occurs in the subtropics, whilst increased precipitation mainly appears at high latitudes. The precipitation changes in most of the high latitudes are greater than the background variability, and the global mean signal-to-noise ratio is 0.5 and ranges from 0.2 to 0.4 for the annual and seasonal means, respectively. Attention should be paid to limiting global warming to 1.5◦C, in which case temperature and precipitation will experience a far more moderate change than the natural internal variability. Large inter-model disagreement appears at high latitudes for temperature changes and at mid and low latitudes for precipitation changes. Overall, the intermodel consistency is better for temperature than for precipitation.
Attention should be paid to limiting global warming to 1.5◦C
Do all the MAGA idiots grasp the implications of that?!
A whole new warm world.
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-wants-americans-to-treat-him-like-kim-jong-un-770a83c41c9e/
Trump says Americans should ‘sit up at attention’ when he speaks like North Koreans with Kim Jong Un
“I want my people to do the same.”
Any questions?!
Why is he still in office?
Dunno, maybe you can ask one of the good MAGA folk to explain it to us mortals of lesser intellectual capabilities.
Maybe it goes along with enhancing the business climate by removing environmental protections. BTW, where is that armed well organized militia when we seem to need it the most.
Hey, but you really can’t make this shit up, we are now friends with a notorious dictator who starves his people and had his uncle murdered. While at the same time having unfriended the weak and evil prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4276460/donald-trump-blasts-justin-trudeau-defends-kim-jong-un/
U.S. President Donald Trump defended North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s human rights record moments after firing another shot at his ally north of the border, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Is this all just a really bad dream?
No dream, the Autumn People are taking over.
“For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth….Such are the autumn people.”
Then the winter follows.
Mordor
.
Looks like a chemical factory I worked at for a while. About the same atmosphere and employees. The birds would turn away from that place, would not even fly over it.
🙂
BP’s annual Statistical Review of World Energy (a compendium of facts) is out. Among other revelations: COAL HAS THE SAME SHARE OF GLOBAL POWER GENERATION IT HAD 20 YEARS AGO
“In 1998, coal represented 38 percent of global power generation. In 2017, it represented … 38 percent of global power generation. In electricity, a sector that absorbs 40 percent of the world’s primary energy and produces more than a third of its emissions, the past 20 years have been running to stay still. NO NET DECARBONIZATION PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE. Nuclear has declined, renewables have risen, and the overall proportion of global electricity coming from non-fossil sources has remained roughly the same. That’s not going to cut it to avoid catastrophic climate change. Scenarios that show us hitting the climate targets agreed to in Paris involve OECD countries completely decarbonizing the electricity sector by 2030 or so, and other countries not long after. So, for all the bad news it has received lately, coal remains the greatest threat to a stable climate and the logical first target for a world serious about decarbonizing. It has got to go.”
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/6/15/17467164/energy-chart-renewables-coal-climate-change
THE TOP 10 COAL PRODUCERS IN THE WORLD (Million tons)
1 China 3,874.0
2 United States 906.9
3 Australia 644.0
4 India 537.6
5 Indonesia 458.0
6 Russia 357.6
7 South Africa 260.5
8 Germany 185.8
9 Poland 137.1
10 Kazakhstan 108.7
Oh yes, BP’s report shows that the world achieved a new oil production record of 92.6 million barrels per day (BPD), which is the 8th straight year global oil production has increased. The US was the world’s top oil producer in 2017, exceeding 13 million BPD for the first time ever. Saudi Arabia was second at 12.0 million BPD, while Russia came in at 11.3 million BPD.
So, growth of renewables wasn’t enough to prevent a new record for total fossil fuel consumption. Consequently, carbon dioxide emissions rose in 2017. Global carbon dioxide emissions rose 1.6% to a new record of 33.4 billion metric tons. Carbon dioxide emissions actually declined by 0.5% in the US as more coal-fired power was phased out, but strong growth was registered in the Asia Pacific region, Europe and in Africa. Of the 18 Asia Pacific countries reported, only Japan showed a decline in carbon dioxide emissions.
With 80 million more people each year, it’s tough to reduce carbon emissions unless an all out united blitz is made into renewable energy. The break point should happen in a few years if solar and wind keep growing fast. After that, carbon dioxide will still be produced but increases will hopefully stop and eventually decline.
The bad news is that natural gas has been steadily rising as a portion of primary energy since 1965, meaning more methane every year. A much more powerful GHG than CO2.
Isn’t it bad news that the world achieved a new oil production record of 92.6 million barrels per day (BPD) — the 8th straight year global oil production has increased? For that matter, isn’t it also bad news that carbon dioxide emissions have grown about 10 percent since 2007.
Horrible news Doug, just horrible. I will leave that for you to expand upon since you brought that up originally.
Well, perhaps the worst news, IMHO, is the 80 million people added to Earth each year. But, you’ve already mentioned that. 🙂
Isn’t it bad news that the world achieved a new oil production record of 92.6 million barrels per day (BPD) — the 8th straight year global oil production has increased?
Yes, and I agree with what GF said about it!
But, unless everything I have heard over the last decade and a half about peak oil and other fossil fuels, is mostly incorrect, how much longer can the party continue? Isn’t there supposedly a perfect storm of economic and geophysical factors converging to put a stop to continued increases in production?
I mean fossil fuels are a finite resource, no? It’s gotta stop flowing sooner or later, right?
Or is it actually abiotic and infinitely self replenishing?! /sarc
Sure Fred, I agree with all that but (maybe it’s just me) it’s hard to be positive about stuff when statistics are worse year after year. Especially: more people, more CO2, more FF burnt. What temperature are we going to commit to? I see 2 C minimum and think that will be a blooming disaster.
Humans and our livestock now make up 97 percent of all animals on land. Wild animals (mammals and birds) have been reduced to a mere remnant: just 3 percent. This is based on mass. Humans and our domesticated animals outweigh all terrestrial wild mammals and birds 32-to-1.
It is all but over——
Doug, we should have fairly good handle on how things will go by 2025. Of course by then ….
From NASA site
The global average surface temperature rose 0.6 to 0.9 degrees Celsius (1.1 to 1.6° F) between 1906 and 2005, and the rate of temperature increase has nearly doubled in the last 50 years. Temperatures are certain to go up further
Lately it has been rising at 2C per century but since it’s accelerating …
Oh I’m not all that hopeful myself. Did you see this link I posted upthread from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China?
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00376-018-7160-4
Advances in Atmospheric Sciences
July 2018, Volume 35, Issue 7, pp 757–770 | Cite as
Climate Change of 4°C Global Warming above Pre-industrial Levels
Authors
Xiaoxin WangDabang JiangEmail authorXianmei Lang
I will definitely not live to see the full effects personally but my son, nieces and nephews might, and there are a few grand nephews and nieces who most certainly would, barring unfortunate circumstance.
I do make an effort to put on a brave face for them but in my heart of hearts I know the truth and there is no sugar coating it.
Hey Doug, never mind, what little hope and optimism I might have had was totally misplaced. Fuck it! Humanity is completely and totally doomed! And while I’d like to call the current US President a total absolute fucking moron, that would just be an insult to morons everywhere!
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/apxtrump-orders-immediate-steps-to-boost-coal-nuclear-plants/
Trump orders ‘immediate steps’ to boost coal, nuclear plants
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday directed Energy Secretary Rick Perry to prepare “immediate steps” to bolster struggling coal-fired and nuclear power plants to keep them open.
Trump believes that keeping America’s energy grid secure “protects our national security, public safety and economy from intentional attacks and natural disasters,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
Impending retirements of “fuel-secure” power plants that rely on coal and nuclear power are harming the nation’s power grid and reducing its resilience, Sanders said.
Just goes to prove that coal and nuclear are nonviable without massive subsidies. Now, the question is, just who was bitching about Chinese subsidies on solar?
NAOM
Re: President Trump
If you don’t like all the things he promised he was going to do for the country and now is doing to MAGA, that’s fine, but you should get out and campaign for the person you think could do better. Otherwise hateful rude comments are gonna have to stop. They make you look like a bunch of whiny sheep upset about your team losing. Yes I understand Obama caught some scorn as well but as somebody who supports our president, in my opinion Trump has done way more good for “we the people” so far in his first term than Obama did in his 2 terms.
Pat Clogger, You think this is about being rude or about giving a damn about what Obama did or didn’t do?
It has nothing to do with liking or disliking Trump personally! He is a corrupt crook and a wanna be dictator!
He is a danger to American democratic institutions and to a very delicate world order built up over decades and he is a clear and present danger to the planetary systems from a biological chemical and physical perspective. At the very least he is deeply stuck in the past when what the world needs is a clear vision of a way forward!
Anyone who looks the other way when Trump defends North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s human rights record is the worst possible kind of scoundrel, Apparently that is people like you, Pat Clogger!
U.S. President Donald Trump defended North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s human rights record moments after firing another shot at his ally north of the border, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
He is IMHO a traitor to everything the US has stood for since it was founded!
There is plenty of smoke regarding his disrespect of the law here is a clear and unequivocal example of a pattern of abuse that he and his family and associates continually engage in.
https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/court_stamped_petition.pdf
Go ahead let’s see you defend that one!
“It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant.” ― Barack Obama
Esteemed FredM,
I don’t remember whether I called attention the other day to coal being one of the items China will be imposing tariffs on. Last year’s imports of US coal to China were three times as much as the year before, and most was metallurgical coal (good news for West Virginia), but those import levels will drop you bet.
The uneconomical coal industry the Administration wants to support will become even more uneconomical, adding justification to the subsidy policy…oh, um, wait…
Time for more port, indeed
Esteemed Synapsid,
Time for more port, indeed
I’m sure you are aware of ethanol’s effect on serotonin levels in the brain 😉
Give me a pinch of psilocybin
To sprinkle in my beer,
That my psychopathic next-of-kin
May not seem quite so queer.
I hear that psilocybin helps fight acute depression…
https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC1922436&blobtype=pdf
Cheers!
It’s all going to happen at once Fred. The Arctic Blue Ocean event, oil decline, massive climate change, floods, fire, pestilence, famine, sea level rise, rising temperatures, slowing AMOC, melting Antarctic, goon squad government.
All at once, within a few years of each other. Instead of the Roaring Twenties it will be the Dismal 2020’s followed by the Dire 2030’s.
Wait, we have a lot of that now. OK, it’s just going to escalate. Think I will go out and buy a big old Buick Park Avenue or something like that to move things along. 🙂
BTW no more winter Olympics. The summer Olympics will be held in the fall or spring to have lower temps. On the plus side there will be several new events added. Climbing border fences, digging under border walls and pole vaulting border obstructions. Also a nautical race of overloaded boats and rafts racing toward a foreign beach.
Street kayak races and dehydration relays. Plus the piece de resistance, Capture the American Flag games.
Or maybe things will be just dandy. 🙂
Heh, I have a few plaques of ocean kayaking competitions I took part in. I might still do ok paddling down the street. 😉
What advice would you give a school district taking out a 25-year loan to build some new schools? Not worth it because the earth is going to be toast in less than a decade?
P.S. The problems with the Winter Olympics are mostly geopolitical, not physical. Modern snowmaking techniques allow for a wide range of locations to host the games. Real fallen snow hasn’t been used since 2006. Even this year in South Korea, where temperatures were near 0°F, the competition surfaces used artificial snow.
Not toast in a decade, just highly chaotic and headed toward toast.
I say build them with R8 or better windows, R30 walls and R60+ ceilings. Have roof extensions to shade the windows in summer but not block the winter sun. Heat pumps.
Plan on putting solar PV on or near the school and use all LED lighting.
Also include survival training, always a good course.
Schooling could and should change quite a bit in the next decade but a good building can always be put to good purposes. If they are well made, that will make it worth maintaining.
Certain areas of the country, all buildings should have strong basement safety areas. People in northeast Pa had to deal with damaging tornados with no basements in the shopping centers that got hit. I suspect the strength and possibly the frequency of strong storms will be increasing with time. So think shelters and emergency radio transmitters/rcvrs.
Adding to GF’s list. If low lying then the bunker should be above ground, a reinforced concrete vault, also escape stairs to the roof and shelter there in case of floods.
NAOM
“What advice would you give a school district taking out a 25-year loan to build some new schools? Not worth it because the earth is going to be toast in less than a decade?”
Well- it is a moot point.
Go for it!
2.5 billion (actually less) humans on the planet when I was born.
We’ve gone for a triple—
From the first page of the BP Statistical Review site.
Global primary energy consumption grew strongly in 2017, led by natural gas and renewables, with coal’s share of the energy mix continuing to decline
If one looks back earlier in time coal has gone from 38% in 1965 to 28% of primary global energy.
Oil has fallen from 50% in 1973 to about 35%.
As far as electric generation, coal is down about 2% from 1985 (40% to 38%).
More dramatically, hydro generation went from 20% to 17 % from 1985 to 2017.
Renewables have risen from zero to about 10 % of generation in that period. While oil dropped from 11 % to 3%.
Carbon dioxide emissions have grown about 10 percent since 2007. Last year was 1.6% growth.
What would the environment be like at +3C global temperature rise?
In the Pliocene, three million years, temperatures were 3 degrees higher than our pre-industrial levels, so it gives us an insight into the three-degree world. The northern hemisphere was free of glaciers and icesheets, beech trees grew in the Transantarctic mountains, sea levels were 25 metres higher [Climate Dynamics, 26, 249-365], and atmospherc carbon dioxide levels were 360-400 ppm, very similar to today. There are also strong indications that during the Pliocene, permanent El Nino conditions prevailed. Hansen says that rapid warming today is already heating up the western Pacific Ocean, a basis for a coming period of ‘super El Ninos’ [Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 103, 39, 14288-93].
Between two and three degrees the Amazon rainforest, whose plants produce 10 per cent of the world’s photosynthesis and have no evolved resistance to fire, may turn to savannah, as drought and mega-fires first destroy the rainforest, turning trees back into carbon dioxide as they burn or rot and decompose [Theor. App. Climatology, 78, 137-56]. The carbon released by the forests destruction will be joined by still more from the world’s soils (see below), together boosting global temperatures by a further 1.5ºC [Nature, 408, 184-7]. It is suggested than in human terms the effect on the planet will be like cutting off oxygen during an asthma attack. A March 2007 conference at Oxford talked about ‘corridors of probability’ with models predicting the risk of the Amazon passing a “tipping point” at between 10 to 40 per cent over the next few decades. The UK’s Hadley Centre climate change model, best known for warning of catastrophic losses of Amazon forest, predicts that, under current levels of greenhouse gas emissions, the chances of such a drought would rise from 5% now (one every 20 years) to 50% by 2030, and to 90% by 2100.
The collapse of the Amazon is part of the reversal of the carbon cycle projected to happen around 3 degrees
http://www.climatecodered.org/2010/09/what-would-3-degrees-mean.html
Gone Fishing,
Thanks for this overview.
A very small point of information: The beech trees in the TransAntarctic Mountains would have been the southern beech, which is not a beech but is related. Its genus is Nothofagus, while that of the beech is Fagus. Southern beech grows in southern South America, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Melaniesia; beeches are temperate Northern Hemisphere trees and a pest in the Spring on my street.
I am a lover of trees. Time for more port.
Blackout as power grid collapses again
(Nigeria, not who you think)
http://punchng.com/breaking-total-blackout-hits-nigeria-as-power-grid-collapses/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Its a big deal– they can’t watch the World Cup:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/world-cup-2018/6551013/nigerias-power-grid-meltdown-world-cup/
In case anyone is interested, very good presentation on the ‘Fungus Among Us’ 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3oFzGFJ_UQ
Paul Stamets: Mushrooms for People and Planet Ancient Allies for Modern Maladies
Stamets is very cool—
He has been around for quite a while, if you are into mycology.
I’m into anything that relates to the natural sciences and mycology certainly qualifies!
WoodSwimmer
The Joinery
(a large assortment of animated gifs of illustrations of wooden joinery coming together)
Twenty-one national monthly/territorial heat records so far in 2018
January: Marshall Islands
February: Marshall Islands, Falkland Islands, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Palau.
March: Marshall Islands, Qatar, Armenia, Madagascar, Pakistan, Iraq, UAE, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan.
April: Albania, Montenegro
May: Hong Kong, Norway
(Courtesy of Maximiliano Herrera.)
National monthly cold records in 2018: none
No national monthly records for cold were set in May 2018.
PEEK AT THE FUTURE: ELECTRIC PLANE CRUISES SKIES OVER NORWAY
“Norway aims to be 100 percent electric by 2040 for all short-haul flights. Avinor, which is responsible for the country’s 44 airports, has bought the electric aircraft used Monday. The operator plans to launch a tender offer to test a commercial route flown with a small electric plane with 19 seats, starting in 2025.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-peek-future-electric-plane-cruises.html#jCp
Times they are a changing.
NAOM
Let’s hope they buy a number of these for testing and move cargo with them during the testing. No sense in wasting energy and time.
Speaking of moving cargo.
Norway also has 100% electric ferries plying the Fjords. Go Norway!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW5Pw9s-8q8&t=1071s
Honda EV, Catamaran & a-ha | Fully Charged News
Electric Norwegian Ferries, at the 12:17 min. mark
Fred –
Yes, I’ve seen claims Norway’s first all-electric ferry reduced CO2 by 95% and operating cost by 80% resulting in many further orders for shipbuilder Fjellstrand. As everyone knows, Norway has salted away more than a trillion dollars in a rainy-day fund and has at least a decades worth of oil and gas reserves (currently producing roughly two million barrels per day). All-in-all, a well managed country with a reasonable distribution of wealth among its citizens — unlike some others I could name.
Now if we could just get the other 7.5 billion humans on board… yes, pun intended 😉
Hi gang, I have been out of pocket for the last five days. My internet has been down. I am not at an internet cafe trying to post. My internet should be up by tomorrow.
Have fun
Ron
Good luck, last outage took over 10 days and several visits to the local manager to fix.
NAOM
Ron, maybe use your cell phone as a hotspot?
>> I get 4G in Ajijic and it is more than fast enough for streaming. As I remember my 3G was too. Because both Telmex and Telecable provide I much cheaper internet option, I have only used my iPhone as a hotspot when away from home where there was no other more economical option for checking email, etc. <<
See discussion at:
http://www.chapala.com/webboard/index.php?/topic/66812-cell-phone-internet/
This article discusses the actual loss of forest area due to a variety of factors. Beyond this article lies the greater problem, tree species and forest areas in the process of stress and death without fire or development from humans intervening. Since plants are at the foundation of life support on this planet, I think this needs much further investigation.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/radical-conservation/2017/dec/22/failing-our-forests-in-two-years-weve-lost-enough-trees-to-cover-spain
I have posted numerous times on this site that the money will move to power storage in the future. It’s already happening. Apparently one gets paid for both selling the stored power as well as absorbing excess power. Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too?
The Tesla built battery was in ‘Load’ (charging) mode, while electricity was negatively priced, for at least 194 minutes. During that period the battery was accepting power at rates between 15-26MW, for varying time periods.
Roughly, during the four-hour period, the battery system absorbed greater than 66MWh of energy, which would be equal to at least AU$66,339 in revenue – and potentially up to $76,153.
Events of this nature occur when there is more electricity being produced than the power grid can absorb. Powerplants will sometimes disconnect themselves from the power grid when these things occur, transformers can blow, etc – this is what similar to what happened when the Tesla battery raced to action a few weeks back. The power grid managers try their best via predictive tools to manage energy usage with generation, but complexity always creeps in.
https://electrek.co/2018/01/14/teslas-massive-battery-in-australia-was-paid-up-to-1000-mwh-to-charge-itself/
Those Tesla people are smart and with the Gigafactory getting nearer completion and full swing, they will be the biggest battery producers in the world.
Re batteries, see also:
“Coal to be kaput in Australia by 2050, as renewables, batteries take over”
https://reneweconomy.com.au/coal-kaput-australia-2050-renewables-batteries-take-79854/
Coal needed to be kaput as of yesterday. 2050 is way too late. I used the following analogy explaining why what we are doing is not enough when my sister told me good things were happening. “If a 150 lb man is drowning and you throw him a life preserver tha supports 149 lbs he can tread water for a while but unless you pull him out of tbe water he will still run out of energy and drown…
“Coal needed to be kaput as of yesterday.” Yup, that’s what not enough people get. We don’t have decades to play with.
Daily CO2 June 18, 2018: 410.35 ppm, June 18, 2017: 408.67 ppm
Actually eliminating coal eliminates ‘energy diversity’ within the system. That is an important concept in public utilities because you don’t want to be caught with your eggs all in one basket, but instead have several reliable energy sources you can turn to. Coal fulfills such a role honorably.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bogs_TS3qCY
I’ll try to imagine an honorable coal company executive: Don Blankeship maybe?
Actually eliminating coal eliminates ‘energy diversity’ within the system.
Riiight! and eliminating the horse and buggy eliminated transportation diversity within the system back in 1913!
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said, faster horses”
The honorable Henry Ford!
Oh, and lest we forget: “‘The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.’ It ended because we invented bronze tools, which were more productive.”
The honorable former Saudi oil minister, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani,
Dim Joe Aond is an idiot and a troll!
Progress? We don’t need no clean progress.
Article From 1917: Don’t Worry About Coal, They’ll Definitely Be Using Something Else By 2017
https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/article-from-1917-dont-worry-about-coal-theyll-defini-1790706302
How disappointing is that? Not only are we not flying around in personal aircraft but we are still burning coal.
But we do sit and stare at glowing screens.
Should we turn in the sapiens part for just plain sap?
Only for thoses with minds like working parachutes:
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit
Global Tree Cover Loss Rose 51 Percent in 2016
Global tree cover loss reached a record 29.7 million hectares (73.4 million acres) in 2016, according to new data from the University of Maryland released today on Global Forest Watch. The loss is 51 percent higher than the previous year, totaling an area about the size of New Zealand.
http://www.wri.org/blog/2017/10/global-tree-cover-loss-rose-51-percent-2016
Yup, that’s what not enough people get.
The other thing that not enough people seem to get is we have pretty good knowledge as to what happened during the PETM mass extinction about 56 million years ago, a time during which the earth dumped almost all of its stored carbon into the atmosphere. For the record, Nature doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether CO2 molecules released into the atmosphere come from human industrial processes or some other natural phenomena, the results are exactly the same. And, It’s not just the amount of CO2 released, it’s also the RATE! at which it is released!
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/03/22/atmosphere-absorbing-co2-faster-petm/
In fact, our current rate of anthropogenic carbon release is at least an order of magnitude (10x) higher than what the world experienced during the PETM. The study concludes that “given that the current rate of carbon release is unprecedented throughout the Cenozoic, we have effectively entered an era of a no-analogue state.” In other words, earth has apparently never seen a situation like today’s for at least 66 million years, if ever. At that time, the hothouse world lasted over 1,000 centuries…
….The abstract for the Nature Geoscience paper concludes:
“Given currently available records, the present anthropogenic carbon release rate is unprecedented during the past 66 million years. We suggest that such a ‘no-analogue’ state represents a fundamental challenge in constraining future climate projections. Also, future ecosystem disruptions are likely to exceed the relatively limited extinctions observed at the PETM.”
Zeebe says the two main conclusions are that ocean acidification will be more severe this time around, and that existing ecosystems may be hit harder because of the higher rate of carbon release.
.
Maybe we can substitute all politicians with AI… can’t be any worse than what we have now!
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.07470
Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence
Solving the Rubik’s Cube Without Human Knowledge
Stephen McAleer, Forest Agostinelli, Alexander Shmakov, Pierre Baldi
(Submitted on 18 May 2018)
A generally intelligent agent must be able to teach itself how to solve problems in complex domains with minimal human supervision. Recently, deep reinforcement learning algorithms combined with self-play have achieved superhuman proficiency in Go, Chess, and Shogi without human data or domain knowledge. In these environments, a reward is always received at the end of the game, however, for many combinatorial optimization environments, rewards are sparse and episodes are not guaranteed to terminate. We introduce Autodidactic Iteration: a novel reinforcement learning algorithm that is able to teach itself how to solve the Rubik’s Cube with no human assistance. Our algorithm is able to solve 100% of randomly scrambled cubes while achieving a median solve length of 30 moves — less than or equal to solvers that employ human domain knowledge.
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