248 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, June 5, 2018”

  1. Coming soon, 3.5 times increase in global lithium battery production in 4 year span and soon after that another doubling

    Today the Benchmark Mineral Intelligence megafactory tracker includes 26 battery cell plants that are either in production and due to expand capacity or new operations due to be in production by 2021.

    The combined planned capacity of these plants is 344.5GWh. To put that into perspective total lithium ion cell demand in 2017 is estimated at 100GWh.

    http://benchmarkminerals.com/where-is-new-lithium-ion-battery-capacity-located/

  2. Project Blitz: The Legislative Assault By Christian Nationalists To Reshape America

    The swamp of corruption that is the Trump administration is so vast and complex that whole other chapters of what is going on in the U.S. just just get lost. Here for instance is the very active and well-funded Project Blitz attempt by the christofascists to get control of the government.

    The emboldened religious right has unleashed a wave of legislation across the United States since Donald Trump became president, as part of an organised bid to impose hardline Christian values across American society.

    A playbook known as Project Blitz, developed by a collection of Christian groups, has provided state politicians with a set of off-the-shelf pro-Christian “model bills”.

    Some legislation uses verbatim language from the “model bills” created by a group called the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation (CPCF), set up by a former Republican congressman which has a stated aim to “protect religious freedom, preserve America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and promote prayer”.

    Go here to read the whole article: Project Blitz: the legislative assault by Christian nationalists to reshape America

    1. Just another sign, Ron. A bill is whizzing through the NC General Assembly to make it a law to prominently post “IN GOD WE TRUST” in all North Carolina public schools. I sent an email to my local representative to add a rider to that law requiring all schools must have toilet paper with the Constitution printed on it, First Amendment in bold.

      1. I sent an email to my local representative to add a rider to that law requiring all schools must have toilet paper with the Constitution printed on it, First Amendment in bold.

        You should have a couple cases printed up and send them to supply the restrooms at the White House, that way, who knows maybe Trump would get around to actually reading the Constitution. How much does anyone want to bet me that he has never read it?

      2. if i lived there i would write my congressman supporting that plan easy.. wifey an me just talked the other day about how kids minded manners an adults back when the bible got taught in the schools.. when we as a country turned our back on God thats when the downfall started.. he punishes sinners..

        1. Which god though?

          Stephen F. Roberts made this insightful comment:

          “I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

          -Stephen F Roberts

        2. Did a christian country refrain from genocide in WWII? Did a christian country refrain from dropping napalm on civilians in Vietnam? The list of these acts of terror by ‘believers’ could fill a thousand pages, and turn the oceans red.

        3. wifey an me just talked the other day about how kids minded manners an adults back when the bible got taught in the schools.. when we as a country turned our back on God thats when the downfall started.. he punishes sinners..

          Yea Right, we should go back to the Bible:

          Leviticus 25:44-46 “Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy your slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.”

          And God will punish sinners who don’t buy their slaves from Canada or Mexico or from such immigrants we find already here.

          1. Then again, as the say, ‘The Lord Moves in Mysterious Ways’… 😉

            https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-44366360

            Crocodile kills Ethiopian pastor during lake baptism

            “He baptised the first person and he passed on to another one. All of a sudden, a crocodile jumped out of the lake and grabbed the pastor,” local resident Ketema Kairo told the BBC.

            …The crocodile escaped.

          2. That passage is an example of why we have church authorities possessing the proper knowledge to translate the Bible into the modern vernacular for you. Ultimately, it is needed, just as one needs the physician when he feels unwell. Think about it, theoretically a person could get a medical textbook, as everything he would need to know is written in there, but he won’t have the ability to understand it without the necessary medical training. Thus a person’s own ignorance would stand in the way of achieving a cure from illness. Why should things be any different when talking instead about the Bible?

            1. That passage is an example of why we have church authorities possessing the proper knowledge to translate the Bible into the modern vernacular for you.

              It has already been translated. That is the modern vernacular! You are talking about Biblical Apologists who try to put lipstick on that ugly pig called the Holy Bible. Walter Kauffman called it gerrymandering.

              Theologians do not just do this incidentally: (gerrymander) this is theology. Doing theology is like doing a jigsaw puzzle in which the verses of Scripture are the pieces: the finished picture is prescribed by each denomination, with a certain latitude allowed. What makes the game so pointless is that you do not have to use all the pieces, and that pieces which do not fit may be reshaped after pronouncing the words “this means.”
              Walter Kaufmann:
              Critique of Religion and Philosophy.

              So your theologian, your Biblical Apologist tells you what this passage means. No, anyone with half a brain knows what it means, it means exactly what it says.

              But Richard Dawkins said it best:
              “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

            4. Hi Peggy,
              I have a theory that your comment seems to support:
              The idea of attempting to get a leg up on reality, maybe over anyone else, and irrespective of, or perhaps especially given, one’s shortcomings in that regard.
              The idea goes something like this: If one has a hard time with getting a handle on reality, one can always invent it or acquire an invention of it. And what is an invention of it, but religion? Religions set things all up, lay things all out, so that there’s less to think much about with regard to certain facets of reality, such as ‘what is’ or ‘how to act’. It’s all written down for you. All you have to do is use it for self-control, the control/influence of others and to regurgitate it, and not necessarily that well, because your bibles are kind of open to interpretation– not that you’d necessarily agree, at least openly.

    2. What Religion Gives Us (That Science Can’t)
      By Stephen T. Asma
      Mr. Asma is a professor of philosophy.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/03/opinion/why-we-need-religion.html

      One day, after pompously lecturing a class of undergraduates about the incoherence of monotheism, I was approached by a shy student. He nervously stuttered through a heartbreaking story, one that slowly unraveled my own convictions and assumptions about religion.

      Five years ago, he explained, his older teenage brother had been brutally stabbed to death, viciously attacked and mutilated by a perpetrator who was never caught. My student, his mother and his sister were shattered. His mother suffered a mental breakdown soon afterward and would have been institutionalized if not for the fact that she expected to see her slain son again, to be reunited with him in the afterlife where she was certain his body would be made whole. These bolstering beliefs, along with the church rituals she engaged in after her son’s murder, dragged her back from the brink of debilitating sorrow, and gave her the strength to continue raising her other two children — my student and his sister.

      To the typical atheist, all this looks irrational, and therefore unacceptable. Beliefs, we are told, must be aligned with evidence, not mere yearning. Without rational standards, like those entrenched in science, we will all slouch toward chaos and end up in pre-Enlightenment darkness.

      I do not intend to try to rescue religion as reasonable. It isn’t terribly reasonable. But I do want to argue that its irrationality does not render it unacceptable, valueless or cowardly. Its irrationality may even be the source of its power.

      1. “Religion” is vague! Which damn “religion” are you talking about? There are thousands of religions and many of them hate each other.

        “Its irrationality may even be the source of its power.” Yes, leading to war, suppression, ignorance and hate.

        On the anecdote about the woman you mention: There are plenty of people on this planet who have undergone torments like hers–and even worse–and they don’t pitch over into magical beliefs in order to sustain themselves.

        1. Well put, also To the typical atheist, all this looks irrational, and therefore unacceptable. – is there a typical atheist, if so I’m pretty sure they don’t find religion unacceptable, they accept that different people have different views, what they don’t accept is having those views imposed on others.

      2. Cats, thanks for the link. And to Michael B also, this is the kind of stuff that really burns my ass. I don’t mean the mother, my heart goes out to her. But what burns me up is this goddamn false dichotomy. That is absolute materialism, which is called science, and anything else, which is called religion.

        No, fuck no! Science does not mean absolute materialism and religion does not get to claim anything and everything else as its domain.

        Religion is bullshit. All religion is bullshit from top to bottom. All so-called holy books were written by fallible old men and were no more inspired by God than the Grimm brothers who wrote Grimms Fairy Tales. And anything that smacks of non-materialism, or ESP, or any kind of cosmic consciousness, is immediately labeled as theism, or religion. Religion then claims it as their domain, calls it God, then tells you the rules laid down by this God and demands 10% of your salary before taxes. And of course, science shuns it like the plague because they think it is all about theism.

        It has nothing to do with religion. Christopher Hitchens was right, “religion poisons everything”. Religion especially poisons science.

        I am trying to write a very short book about all that. I have about 60 pages complete and have about 20 more to go, give or take. But the book will not be about quantum mechanics as I know absolutely nothing about the subject. But Max Planck, the father of quantum mechanics did know a thing or two about the subject.

        As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.
        Max Planck

        I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.
        Max Planck

        And it has not one goddamn thing to do with religion.

        1. “We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind.”

          Wha..? Is he shitting us? What the fuck is “consciousness”?

          The problem with this physics stuff is it’s abstruse and inaccessible to us meat heads and always will be.

          I’m an atheist, period. Like Dan Dennett, I suspect consciousness is a “user illusion.”

          Would love to read your book–if there’s not too much physics in it. I’m an atheist and an evolutionist. Writers like Jerry Coyne are right up my alley.

          Also, an unintentionally funny thing you said (in a good way):

          All so-called holy books were written by fallible old men and were no more inspired by God than the Grimm brothers who wrote Grimms Fairy Tales.

          The Grimms Bros actually didn’t write those tales: they copied them, preserved them–just like those old fuckers who “wrote” the bible! They stole other people’s shit and called it inspiration. The Grimms Bros compiled stuff, too–but honestly.

          1. Thanks, Michael, you make my point…. in spades. I am not at all shocked that you, apparently, think Max Planck was such an idiot because he made the quotes I posted. I am sure you are familiar with his name, everyone should be, but apparently you have no idea who he was or what he did.

            I do not consider myself a meathead. I have read perhaps half a dozen books on quantum mechanics and watched perhaps 50 or so Youtube videos on the subject. I still do not understand it but I have read enough and watched enough that I do kinda get the gist of what it is all about. The quantum enigma is all about consciousness. Consciousness is the hard problem. A hard problem it is indeed, but it is pure science and has nothing to do with religion.

          2. The Brothers Grimm didn’t steal, they collected, and documented their sources carefully. I happen to have been in Lohr on Sunday, and their claim to be the “Snow White Town” is based on Grimm.

            More importantly, Jakob Grimm came up with Grimm’s Laws which show the connection between Germanic languages like English and the rest of the Indo-European languages.

        2. Ron, I’m only finding the quotes you cite with religious idiots or woo-peddlers.

          I fear it’s one of those invented quotes falsely attributed to scientists.

          1. No, they are from a speech made by Max Planck:
            “‘Das Wesen der Materie’ (‘The Nature of Matter’)”. Speech in Florence, Italy,, 1944.

            If you are only finding them with religious idiots then you haven’t looked very far. Just google “quotes by Max Planck” and you will find them hundred of places on the web.

            I have read at least half a dozen books on the subject but by far the best was:

            The Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness
            In trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics, the most successful theory in science and the basis of one-third of our economy. They found, to their embarrassment, that with their theory, physics encounters consciousness. Authors Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner explain all this in non-technical terms with help from some fanciful stories and anecdotes about the theory’s developers. They present the quantum mystery honestly, emphasizing what is and what is not speculation. Quantum Enigma’s description of the experimental quantum facts, and the quantum theory explaining them, is undisputed. Interpreting what it all means, however, is heatedly controversial. But every interpretation of quantum physics involves consciousness. Rosenblum and Kuttner therefore turn to exploring consciousness itself–and encounter quantum mechanics. Free will and anthropic principles become crucial issues, and the connection of consciousness with the cosmos suggested by some leading quantum cosmologists is mind-blowing. Readers are brought to a boundary where the particular expertise of physicists is no longer the only sure guide. They will find, instead, the facts and hints provided by quantum mechanics and the ability to speculate for themselves.

            1. Thanks Ron. Just bought the book. Loved the Max Planck quotes too. Hope all is well in Ajijic 🙂

            3. JN, thanks for the link. That was a great review. Here is a quote from it, bold mine:
              Despite the fact that I am heavily criticizing this book, above all for its timidity, I do highly recommend it, if only because, except for Nick Herbert’s excellent “Quantum Reality,” it is about the only available book that clearly brings out the amazing, the astounding, the utterly unbelievable simple facts. Although quantum cryptography and quantum computing are gradually forcing people to stop averting their eyes, there is still an amazing amount of ignorance about these unbelievable experimentally established facts.

              He is criticizing the book for its timidity. I can understand that. I do wish the authors had gone a bit deeper into the true meaning of quantum mechanics. But… but… I posted some of that deeper meaning in quotes from Max Planck. And you saw at least one comment that it drew. That comment, from Gerry, thought I was just quoting some religious nut who falsely attributed it to Planck. No, almost all physicists of Plank’s day, who studied quantum mechanics, made such statements. All except Einstein of course. He could never bring himself to accept such “spooky action at a distance”.

              But that reviewer, Professor Richard Conn Henry, was mistaken when he said there were no other (recent) books on the subject. No, there are other books but they are all written by religious nuts. I know because I have read them, or at least part of them. But after a while, I just had to throw them away because of their religious bullshit. However, there are Youtube videos, perhaps a hundred of them. And many of them by cosmologists as interviewed by Robert Lawrence Kuhn. And I have watched perhaps half of them.

              And I found one that just blew me away. I have watched it three times and will watch it again. It is called:
              The Simulation Hypothesis No one can criticize this video because of its timidity. And at no place in the video is there even a hint of religion.

            4. JN, I just finished reading that entire review you posted.

              Do you find any of these interpretations satisfactory? I certainly do not. And our authors clearly do not. So, let me offer the Henry interpretation: There is no actually existing universe at all. The universe is purely mental.
              And:
              Physics does not require you to make the leap of faith. But, should you choose not to leap, physics does then force you to believe that your mind alone is all that exists.

              I would slightly rephrase that. I would drop the “your” and simply say that mind alone is all that exists. However there is no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that the author of this review, Professor Henry, would agree with the conclusion in the link I posted above, “The Simulation Hypothesis”.

              Thanks again for posting that link, I loved it.

            6. Right, but that is not the simulation my link is talking about. In other words, we are not being simulated by some giant computer somewhere. No, the simulation is in the mind of the cosmic consciousness, and then in turn, in our consciousness. That goes back to the arguments of Planck, Bohr, Schrodinger, and Heisenberg.

              That concept was buried for half a century but is now coming back, in the opinion of a lot of physicists.

          2. There is a real connection between consciousness and quantum physics, which is that observations collapse the wave function (called phi).

            Phi squared gives you the probability that the particle is at a given point. Sum it across space and it adds up to 1, meaning the particle is somewhere with probability one.

            Make an observation and the particle is at the place you see it with probability one and has a zero probability of being anywhere else, so phi has “collapsed”.

            The observation is done by a scientist, who is different from a rock in that he is conscious. So there you have it.

            The only alternate explanation anyone has come up with is that the observation doesn’t collapse phi. Instead each observation ever made splits the universe into zillions of universes, each identical except for that observation. But that isn’t a very economical solution.

            The problem isn’t that Planck was nuts. The problem is that religious nuts claim to own consciousness, although (like the rest of us) they have no clue what it is.

            It’s just like religious nuts claim to own birth, death and marriage. They don’t know any more than anyone else, but they have staked a claim.

            1. alimbiquated, thanks, you are a man after my own heart. Yes, the religious nuts want to claim anything that is not completely materialistic as their own domain. They have no right, they are nuts. Religion poisons everything.

              That is what I am trying to write a book about. There is a lot of evidence that things are not at all entirely materialistic in this world. But just broach the subject and the religious nuts want to claim it as their own domain. Bullshit! They own nothing. It was that way before their stupid religion came along and it will be that way after their religion has run its course and is assigned to the dustbin of history.

              The world is the way it is and the religious nuts have no idea. But neither do the hardcore atheist.

  3. China shakes PV world

    The solar superpower’s departure from its ambitious PV targets has shaken the industry and put a dampener on share prices. Analysts from U.S. investment bank Roth Capital expect a module oversupply mountain of more than 30 GW as a result of the policy change.

    The recent joint announcement by China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), National Energy Agency (NEA) and Ministry of Finance (MOF) that development of new solar installations will be contained this year has shaken the global PV market, as significantly lower volumes of solar are expected to be deployed in the country.
    It is already evident the sharp decline in demand in China will affect PV markets around the world. According to analysts at U.S. investment bank Roth Capital, an oversupply of more than 30 GW of photovoltaic modules – with a corresponding negative impact on PV companies this year and next – will be the result.

    My guess is that a precipitous fall in module prices is to be expected as soon as this begins to take effect. Very good news for those looking to buy a PV system. Very bad news for any interests in module manufacturing. One man’s food is another man’s poison?

    1. General Motors Outlines Path to Zero Emissions in China

      GM is on track to deliver 10 new energy vehicle models in China between 2016 and 2020. From 2021 through 2023, GM will maintain momentum by doubling the number of new energy vehicles available.

      The fundamental building block of an all-electric vehicle is the battery. GM began developing in-house battery research and development expertise early on. It now possesses battery development, validation and testing capabilities in the United States and China.

      “For GM, driving toward a zero emissions future is more than just about building electric vehicles,” said Tsien. “We are committed to driving increased customer usage and acceptance of electric vehicles through no-compromise solutions, and to bringing the future forward to benefit generations to come.”

      http://media.gm.com/media/cn/en/gm/news.detail.html/content/Pages/news/cn/en/2018/June/0605_GM-Path.html

          1. LOL,

            From your link: Grenell said: “I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders.” Maybe they found this guy at the local chapter of the Mississippi KKK. Wonder why he’s not welcomed with open arms in Germany?

            2. Is it true that national security briefings now are given to the ‘president’ in comic book format? 10 minute limit, once a week.

            4. You have to say that if Putin did help get Trump elected in order to split the west, weaken and isolate USA and drive Europe and China more towards Russia then it is working brilliantly.

            5. Why is there less discussion on ‘why did Putin prefer Trump over Clinton?’
              It appears with a high degree of certainty that he had a very strong preference for Trump.
              My short answer is that he knew Clinton was a strong-willed and bright adversary, from his past experience with her.
              On the other hand, he saw Trump as an easily manipulated, mental lightweight, with very poor international experience and understanding- and thus prone to make big mistakes.
              More speculative I would say, is the possibility that the Russians have substantial ‘dirt’ on Trump that they could use to manipulate him.

            6. Hint:

              “I said here’s the problem with NATO: it’s obsolete.”
              – Donald Trump, April 2016, campaigning in Wisconsin

              “NATO, in particular, is one of the best investments America has ever made.”
              – Hillary Clinton, March 2016, Stanford University

  6. This technology could fundamentally change our relationship to electricity
    An “operating system” for power could double the efficiency of the grid.
    By David Roberts

    A great deal of the electricity in the United States goes to waste.

    Much is lost in the initial generation of electricity. And much is lost through the use of inefficient devices, like incandescent light bulbs that heat up a filament to produce light.

    But power is also lost in between, on the grid, as it is carried along hundreds of miles of wires, repeatedly shifted between different voltages, and converted from AC to DC and back, all in the split second between the time it enters the grid and the time it powers your computer.

    How much power is lost on the grid?

    The consensus among experts in the field is that most electricity is lost on the two ends, in generation and use, and not that much in between. The Department of Energy estimates that, of 37.7 quads (quadrillion BTUs) of “energy consumed to generate electricity,” 23.24 quads (about 62 percent) is wasted as “conversion losses.” After that, only 0.84 quads (roughly 2.2 percent) is lost or “unaccounted for” in transmission and distribution (T&D).

    Now a research and development lab-cum-start-up out of North Carolina’s research triangle has begun commercializing a technology it says can measure and manage electricity with a level of accuracy and precision far beyond any existing technology, using a cutting-edge application of real-time computing.

    https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/6/5/17373314/electricity-technology-efficiency-software-waste-3dfs

    1. From German numbers one gets the impression that less than 5% of the generated electricity is lost during transmission.

      1. That’s addressed in the article.

        I don’t know if it makes sense, but I have found the author to be pretty reliable. He agrees that the company may be flaky, but he thought it was worth investigating.

  7. The only way I will agree that what Putin has done is truly brilliant, is if he now goes the next step and forms a real economic alliance with China to promote alternative energy and EVs over fossil fuels and transitions Russia’s econonomy away from dependence on oil and gas. I’m going to bet he doesn’t do that and Russia will be one more economic victim of the end of the age of fossil fuels. Putin may be very ruthless and clever but he’s a long ways from what I would call a brilliant visionary. Though if Trump is an example of where the bar has been set, in comparison even a bag of rocks is still brilliant…

    1. Putin reminds me of Gaeseric, king of the Vandals. He elevated the tribe from obscurity and nearextinction by seizing and holding onto a big chunk of civilized world (North Africa except Egypt and the islands of the western Mediterranean) .

      He was primarily motivated by greed and a desire for revenge — the Romans and their Gothic allies had almost wiped out his tribe, including most of his family.

      He ruled for 50 years as a spoiler, destroying and plundering whatever he could get while negotiating with the empire. He was smarter than anybody else, but when he died the vandal empire collapsed.

      Putin wants revenge for the fall of the Soviet Union, which he blames the West for. He doesn’t have any real goals except expanding Russia, self enrichment and vandalizing the West.

      Putin‘s success in the Jade Helm incident where he got the Texas government to monitor the American military convinced him that he could affect elections.

      But Trump and Bernie were just intended as spoilers. Like the Bernie Bros, who claimed Clinton „stole“ the nomination, Trump‘s role was to lose and complain that he was cheated. He stupidly claims he was cheated because putin told him too, even though he won. Other than that, Trump and Putin are just winging it, and Sean Hannity is running the country.

    1. Re: Lithium batteries – Reusing lithium cells has become a sort of hobby for me. I raid the recycle bins at the big home stores for laptop and power tool battery packs, dismantle the packs, and test the cells (18650 3.7 volt nominal cells) for capacity and internal resistance. Around 90% of the cells I rescue are perfectly fine. For one reason or another, the battery pack circuitry has kicked in to tell the charger the pack is no good. This could be due to safety reasons after there have been so many problems with lithium batteries burning/exploding, or a ploy to sell more expensive battery packs.

      For power tool battery packs, if just one cell falls below 3 volts, the circuitry will set a fault that won’t let the battery pack charge. A number of things can cause this to happen, but if I open the pack, bypass the charging circuitry and charge the pack directly to above the per cell 3 volts ( or above about 13 volts total for an 18 volt pack), the charger will accept the pack again and I can put that battery set back to work. I often find battery packs that appear unused, recently scoring 5 Hoover Cordless Vac packs (looked unused), each with 10 high quality Samsung cells that sell new for $8-$10 each on Ebay. Every cell tested to new specs for capacity and internal resistance (those specs can be found online).

      As for building my own battery packs, the circuit boards for charging and protecting virtually any configuration/voltage of cell arrangements can be found online for a few dollars. Hundreds of videos on the subject are posted to Youtube. Some folks are even building their own “Powerwalls” to go off grid. That is my ultimate goal; replace our lead-acid batteries some day.. I have built a nice solar briefcase using parts I had lying around and the Hoover cells mentioned above, just to play with. It can power anything from 28 volts down to 1.5V, up to around 10 amps, and has charging inputs for PV panel and/or an AC/DC charger. With a full charge, it could fully charge 30 or more cell phones, tablets, other devices. It amazes me what people throw away. Again, I’ve discovered that around 90% of the cells that people discard are perfectly usable and at/near like-new capacity.

      Interesting about the graphene ball lithium batteries. I’ve seen that gold filaments are also being added to the mix with great results, improving charging, capacity and longevity:
      https://inhabitat.com/gold-infused-lithium-ion-batteries-could-increase-ev-battery-range/

      Will batteries save the world? Nah. We’re too screwed for that, but at least I can produce enough power to watch it play out from the cheap seats, or at least listen in on the shortwave, eh?

  9. “Of course The Heartland Institute has been working with EPA on policy and personnel decisions,” Tim Huelskamp, a former Republican congressman from Kansas who now leads the group, said in a statement to the AP.
    “They recognized us as the pre-eminent organization opposing the radical climate alarmism agenda and instead promoting sound science and policy,” Huelskamp wrote.
    He said Heartland would continue to help Pruitt and his staff.

    1. Meanwhile,

      Dennis Coyne says: 06/04/2018 at 5:50 pm “Wow, maybe that’s why Russia and KSA are talking about increased [oil] output.”

      And, G7 FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES WORTH $100BN A YEAR TO INDUSTRY

      http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/06/04/uk-taxpayer-support-fossil-fuel-industry-exposed-ahead-g7/

      And,

      May CO2 2018: 411.31 ppm, 2017: 409.91 ppm

      And,

      THE HEAT IS BACK ON HIGH: MAY SMASHES US TEMPERATURE RECORDS

      “Record heat returned to the United States with a vengeance in May. May warmed to a record average 65.4 degrees in the Lower 48 states, breaking the high of 64.7 set in 1934, according to federal weather figures released Wednesday. May was 5.2 degrees above the 20th century’s average for the month.”

      Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-high-temperature.html#jCp

      1. April turned out just about as cold as May was warm. Best practices if you wish to be seen as an unbiased reporter would be to consider both warmth and cold.

        1. To be unbiased would mean comparing it to global temperatures. April 2018 was 1.49 degrees above the 2oth century average temperature for April.

        2. Cold USA winter months are predicted from the disruption of polar air flow due to global warming (NOTA BENE GLOBAL NOT USA) so a cold April is evidence that this is correct.

          NAOM

        3. Before you can talk about unbiased reporting you need to have at least a basic grasp of the underlying science and the predictions that have been made based on that. A cold April is pretty much something that was expected.

          1. The problem is, we all naturally carry our own biases and flaws with us into the great climate change debate.

            2. Dan,

              Have you heard the expression: ‘Fiddling while Rome burns’? Well, that’s what you’re doing because there is no ‘great climate change debate’. Face it, Earth is in trouble.

              Last year Siberia experienced the worst wildfires in 10,000 Years. These fires are a direct threat to the role of Siberian forests in absorbing carbon emissions. And, it’s not just Siberia. According to Climate Central research, fire season in Alaska is 40 percent longer and large fires twice as common as they were 75 years ago. Fires are just one example. Grow up and do a little reading man.

  10. Arctic sea ice is about to get clobbered, positive anomaly almost everywhere for the next week, +30°C over parts of Siberia, but all of it warm over the big rivers, clear skies over the Pacific side and a deep cyclone hitting the thin ice on the Atlantic margin.

    http://cci-reanalyzer.org/wx/fcst/#gfs.arc-lea.t2

    1. And, it’s (wildfire season) just getting started:

      WILDFIRES RAGE IN RUSSIA’S FAR EAST, SIBERIA, TORCHING MASSIVE SWATHS OF LAND

      • Massive wildfires have burned for weeks in parts of Siberia and Russia’s Far East.
      • The fires have burned mostly in forested areas, but some cities in the region have been threatened.
      • This is the fire season for the area, but these fires are becoming more common and more intense.

      “A catastrophic wildfire season has persisted for weeks in Siberia and Russia’s Far East, during which hundreds of thousands of acres have been destroyed, and the flames have even invaded some inhabited areas. The fires marched across the land, burning everything in their path – including some roads and fields in the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, where more than 250,000 people live, according to the Siberian Times. The fires have burned for more than a month outside the city, and Komsomolsk-on-Amur’s residents have grown impatient by what they say has been a lack of resources dedicated to fighting the blaze.By late-April, the fires had already destroyed more than 16 square miles of land, according to Radio Free Europe, and in the three weeks since then, the infernos have advanced even further. As seen in the satellite image above, much of Russia’s Far East has been shrouded in smoke as the fires intensified.”

      https://weather.com/news/news/2018-05-16-siberia-wildfire-impacts

  11. Large area of surface melt in Greenland
    http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/
    3 day forecast of max temps NH
    http://cr.acg.maine.edu/wx_frames/gfs/ds/gfs_arc-lea_t2max_3-day.png

    Earth Null School is good for finding the forest fires- first look for high levels of carbon monoxide in the middle of nowhere.
    https://earth.nullschool.net
    Then cross reference those locations on NASA satellite imagery.
    https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov

    It’s burning up bigly between lake baikal and the sea of okhotsk (approx southern limit of continuous permafrost)

      1. Yep, I like George as well and have followed him for a few years now. Having had a few interactions with him on his blog. I agree with him on most levels and in this particular podcast, he touches on what in essence is the foundation of ecological thermodynamics. He mentions the concepts of exergy and emergy and how they are relevant to energy flows in ecosystems and how we can find parallels to that in our complex civilization.

        Having said that, one thing he mentioned in the podcast was the fact that we will need to reduce our use of energy if we intend to use alternatives like solar vs fossil fuels. Because as he claimed the EROEI of solar vs ‘Fossil Sunlight’ is much lower and he gives an example of it being necessary to have two football fields of solar panels to power a car with the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline. I think most of us would consider that a bit of an exaggeration, probably based on outdated ideas about the state of the art of PV efficiency and battery technology.

        The other thing that struck me in his otherwise excellent presentation was a rather strange omission in his comparison of PV to fossil fuels, is the fundamental fact that to obtain energy from fuels, you need to burn them to produce heat energy, which is then used to power extremely inefficient machines with huge losses through heat and friction involved with the thousands of moving parts in most combustion powered engines.

        He claims that the EROEI of solar is very low compared to fossil solar and I’m sure no one here would disagree but I feel he is missing the energy loss factors involved in ICE machines vs pure electrics. So while at the end of the day I would whole heartedly agree that human industrial civilization is facing a rather significant drop in the energy density available to it from fossil fuels I’m not so sure we have really understood how increased efficiency of an alternative energy paradigm fits into the big picture.

        I’m a quite hopeful that we can model a future low energy biophysical economy on some pretty efficient examples of natural ecosystems and still maintain a very high quality of living standard. There is no way to continue with our old wasteful ways!

        Cheers!
        Good explanation of ecosystem thermodynamics, exergy and emergy here:
        http://www.uni-kiel.de/ecology/users/fmueller/salzau2006/ea_presentations/Data/2006-07-05_-_Thermodynamics_II.pdf
        Aiko Huckauf. Review. Ecosystem. Thermodynamics. Introduction. Matter. Energy. Entropy. Exergy. Illustration. Dissipative Structures. Emergy.

        1. He claims that the EROEI of solar is very low compared to fossil solar and I’m sure no one here would disagree

          I’d disagree, very strongly. Oil EREOI is probably below 10:1, while solar PV is well above that, probably 30 or better these days. Wind is probably above 60:1.

          George is living in the 80’s. Or the 90’s, at best.

          1. I was comparing difuse solar energy arriving at the surface of the earth vs. the concentrated energy contained in fossil fuels.

            I wasn’t talking about the technologies used to obtain and harness them.

            1. That’s doesn’t really make sense.

              Oil is extremely diffuse, in the form it’s found in the ground. Think of the billions of square meters of surface area of oil fields, the trillions of cubic meters underground. Think of the millions of wells drilled, the enormous network of pipes, roads, etc. Think of the vast number and area of coal mines, both underground and on the surface.

              The end product of all of these systems is highly concentrated: fuel at a gas station pump, coal at a power plant, and renewable electricity at a power plug. To compare the concentration of the raw material is just not useful.

              At the end of the day we can measure the difficulty of extracting useful energy from the environment with such things as cost per kWh, or ratios like EROEI. And, the result? That wind and solar are very cheap, and high EROEI.

              George is living in the past, and his pessimism is no longer realistic. Really, it never was: I still have copies from 1980 of projections of cost reduction and expansion for solar, which were based on straightforward engineering and manufacturing experience, and which have been more than fulfilled. 30 years ago pessimism was at least defensible as not unreasonable, and as a reasonable precautionary approach, But now, it’s just highly unrealistic, just like those who deny climate change.

              And, dismissing wind & solar as too difficult in some way (diffuse, expensive, low net energy, socialist, killing birds and puppies…) only helps climate denial.

            2. I’m not exactly dismissive of PV and EVs and I also wrote this:
              Having said that, one thing he mentioned in the podcast was the fact that we will need to reduce our use of energy if we intend to use alternatives like solar vs fossil fuels. Because as he claimed the EROEI of solar vs ‘Fossil Sunlight’ is much lower and he gives an example of it being necessary to have two football fields of solar panels to power a car with the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline. I think most of us would consider that a bit of an exaggeration, probably based on outdated ideas about the state of the art of PV efficiency and battery technology.

              However I still happen to agree with George, that civilization is faced with a reduction of the available energy density of fuels such as gasoline.

              Gasoline has an energy density of about 44 megajoules per kilogram (MJ/kg). Gasoline thus has about 100 times the energy density of a lithium-ion battery.

              So the use of EROEI was not the correct terminology, I was really talking about Energy densities.

            3. Well, I’d say that’s not that important, mostly because maximum density isn’t needed for most stuff – batteries are good enough. Here are a few thoughts.

              First, you don’t need fossil fuels to have dense and portable energy storage. Synthetic hydrocarbons are absolutely feasible right now with current tech, though they’re not competitive (at perhaps 3x the cost, perhaps $2.50/litre for liquid fuels). They’re likely to eventually be roughly the same price as fossil fuels (that’s because they can be powered by very cheap surplus wind/solar power). What time frame is “eventually” for that surplus power? Well, roughly 30 years, which is probably the same time frame needed to replace fossil fuels with batteries in those areas where that works well, which is roughly 85% of that market (more below).

              2nd, let’s re-examine that ratio of 100:1. Conventional li-ion batteries are around .9MJ per kilo, and Tesla’s latest 2170 cells are probably 30% better. So, we’re talking maybe 40x difference, not 100x.

              3rd, gasoline engines are no more than 1/3 efficient and generally rather less, so we’re really talking maybe 15x difference.

              4th, EVs are much more streamlined: electric motors are much smaller and lighter, there’s much less ancillary equipment, etc. That reduces the effective ratio further.

              5th, once you add regen braking, weight is much less important. Aerodynamics now dominate efficiency. Even a small passenger vehicle can easily accommodate a 300 kilo battery pack. It would even increase relative safety by increasing vehicle mass and lowering centre of gravity (though increasing mass may be a zero-sum game…).

              The bottom line: not many things really need high density fuels: the majority of aviation, long distance water shipping, and maybe some seasonal agricultural equipment – that’s maybe 15% of fuel consumption.

              And…that can be handled by synthetic fuel, which is already cheap enough for niches of that size, and will get much cheaper.

              Make sense?

            4. Nick, with respect to myself, you are preaching to the choir, I’m already a convert when it comes to wind, solar, EVs etc… And I’m also a believer that all of industrial civilization needs to embark on a paradigm change of using all our limited resources much more efficiently than we have up to now.

              I think that is George Mobus’ main point as well.
              Cheers!

            5. The more I research EV’s the worse the picture looks.
              For example, a Chevy Volt battery is not really available to the public and to have the dealer do it can cost $34,000. The car is essentially junk if it has a battery problem after warranty.
              If they don’t support battery replacement in the Volt who could trust a Bolt.

              The Tesla, a grand example of where the company owns your car because it not only discourages non-Tesla repairs it will shut down key features (like charging) without notice if the car is deemed non-certified. Who needs auto tyrants?

            6. Yes, Fred, I think we’re in agreement.

              I suspect that we’re not really in sync with George, though. Really, there’s more than enough renewable energy to do whatever we might reasonably want to do. When it comes to energy, it’s less of a question of using limited resources, and more a question of stopping our current vandalism of nature.

              Emitting CO2 and other FF pollutants is like wearing hobnailed boots in the house on wood floors. No one says we’re reaching the limits of our house’s ability to absorb hob-nailed boot wear, we say “damnit, stop ruining the floors and just change out of those stupid boots!”.

            11. Wait until the Tesla owners try to trade in their vehicles, talk about sticker shock.

            12. Only minor correction: the best gasoline engines for land transportation are only 20% efficient.

              Regarding Tesla, yes, they are auto tyrants, but you’re going to end up buying an electric car from them, because it’s going to save you a ton of money and there won’t be any plausible alternatives. One must ask how other companies let them get into that position.

              Tesla cars last a very long time, barring crashes, and that’s intentional because Musk is trying to replace all gasoline cars, so replacing Teslas on the road is counterproductive. The resale values are better than for other cars with the same starting price. The TCO is better for anyone who drives a lot (taxis, limos, etc.) The operating cost is lower for anyone.

              Other companies could make similar EVs without being micromanaging tyrants, but have chosen not to. Musk actually *wants* them to, but the companies which got rich off gasoline are doing their best to avoid selling electric cars. I guess we will have to wait for the Chinese EV companies before we see a real alternatiev.

            13. “As promised yesterday, GM has officially taken the wraps off of its warranty program for the Volt… and it’s a doozy. The Volt will get what GM is calling the most comprehensive vehicle warranty in the industry, including an 8 year/100,000 mile warranty on the Volt’s 16 kWh battery pack.”

              http://www.plugincars.com/chevy-volt-will-have-most-comprehensive-warranty-including-8-years100000-miles-battery-49693.html

              “Many electric car shoppers worry that buying an EV might mean replacing an expensive battery after a few years of use. Those worries are unfounded for a number of reasons. First, electric car batteries are manufactured to last the lifetime of the vehicle—with very few reported incidents of total battery failure. The more common (but still rare) occurrence is a significant reduction in range over time. Regardless, the key to putting your mind at ease is a better understanding of the warranties that come with all electric cars and plug-in hybrids”

              http://www.plugincars.com/what-you-need-know-about-electric-car-battery-warranties-132884.html

              Fish, it must be safe to say no one has ever paid 34K for a Volt battery. I’m sure GM has replaced a few under warranty. In 4 or 5 years there will be aftermarket suppliers and you will see the real cost.

            14. Of course not Beach, one would have to be a lamebrain to pay more than the vehicle is worth. That is the idea. I was talking about out of warranty Volts.

            15. Now that I have established the risky economic nature of the last two thirds of the EV lifetime, I will point out that it is absolutely necessary to take those chances and move forward into EV’s ASAP as a first step toward reducing climate change.
              No big change comes without risk. Just best to walk into the situation with some knowledge of the risks involved.

            16. Ahem. That $34k figure for the Volt battery isn’t established – it’s completely flaky.

              The Volt battery is designed to last the life of the car, it’s still under warranty for the earliest models, and there have been almost no warranty replacements to this point.

              The Nissan Leaf battery is larger, and only costs 5.5k to replace. The Volt cost will be in the same range, if they replaced the whole thing, which is very unlikely – they’d just replace bad cells.

              But, again, replacements would be very, very rare. At worst, the electric range might fall from 45 miles to 30 after 20 years: no one would care. they’d just use the gas engine a little bit more.

              For pure EVs, the likely solution is either living with a modestly reduced range, or adding a few aftermarket cells, at low cost.

            17. Nick, that $34K is established by the dealerships and everything you just said is conjecture. It also makes little sense. If what you say is true, GM would have made the battery warranty much longer and sold a lot more. However, their calculations and tests probably showed failures after 100,000 miles so they cut their losses.
              Since you are so sure, then guaranty a Chevy Volt for me when I buy one. Just the battery, for 300,000 miles.

              You also miss the point, just replacing a cell or two will cost enough to junk an older Volt.

            19. GF,

              You didn’t provide any evidence for that $34k figure, so I did a quick search – I found that Autoblog article: it appears to be a figure that someone got by calling random dealer service departments 4-5 years ago – service guys who at that point were completely clueless about these replacements, as they had never done them. Read the article carefully – you’ll see that it’s completely unrealistic. Actual prices will never be anything like that.

              Again, the Volt battery is designed to last the life of the car, and if you do a little online reading you’ll see that it’s working out that way. The battery is carefully managed by the software to never discharge more to a depth of more than about 75%, and the battery could lose 25% of it’s capacity without losing it’s ability to proved the rated capacity, due to the reserve. Volts are being driven up to 300k miles, with no detectable loss of battery range.

              Oh, by the way, the warranty is established by the California Air Resources Board (CARB).

            20. Nick, so you say 4 or five years ago for that figure which would mean even more expense today with labor increases in that time and probably parts increase too. Nasty.
              Yeah, when the dealers tech crew don’t know what is going on that is a sign that support is lacking.

              Best to do a DIY or dump the car if it’s beyond warranty and starts to go. It’s got too low of an E miles range to tolerate less.
              Or maybe some locals will start getting interested and be able to do the job for less than an arm or leg.
              Since Chevy only sold about 100,000 cars total since the start, I can see their lack of interest and support.
              If what you say is true about how the battery works as it fades, it will fail very quickly since it will be using closer to 100 percent of it’s capacity. You sure about that?

            21. No, I’m not sure of that, and GM doesn’t seem to want to tell us. You’ve got a good point, and good practice would indeed suggest that they don’t do that.

            22. “The vertically integrated companies later de-integrated for reasons of complex financial shenanigans, basically to boost the profit returns to the CEOs.”

              As 75% of the energy is waste heat, battery technology is developing fst, and a battery can in contrast to a fuel tak provide structural stability we are talking of about one order of magnitude at best.

      1. Esteemed FredM,

        The T-shirt I designed says

        I missed the Rapture,
        too.

  14. Anyone can say what these active volcanoes near the equator will be doing to global climate this year? We are becoming concerned about our crops here.

    1. Simple, Wasantha Weerasekera, You just gotta toss a few goats, or maybe some of your local science deniers, into the calderas to appease the volcano gods so they will spare your crops!

      I just absolutely LUV! the creativity of Trolls in picking their handles… I could write a whole book on it…

      1. Kind of like you trolling me with someone else’s ‘Killian’ handle elsewhere, ay? Quite the stretch. Almost religious.

        Anyway, the internet is full of creative nicknames. Nothing new. Your book might make a good sleep-inducing one just before bedtime. Give it a go!

  15. I wonder if this could be used to get bitcoin mining more energy efficient. The amount of cooling needed for the servers is one big reason why so much electricity is used I think, but now with this system you could just release the heat into the ocean.

    Microsoft Just Put a Data Center on the Bottom of the Ocean
    Daniel Oberhaus

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pavq99/microsoft-project-natick-submarine-data-center

    Microsoft just sent its first self-sufficient, waterproof data center to the bottom of the ocean floor near the Orkney Islands in Scotland, the company announced on Tuesday. About the size of a shipping container, the tubular data center holds 12 racks loaded with 864 servers and is attached to a large triangular weight that anchors it to the seabed over 100 feet beneath the ocean surface.

    The deployment of the data center represents the culmination of a nearly four year research effort code-named Project Natick, which aimed to develop rapidly deployable data centers that can support cloud computing services near major cities.

    In addition to cutting down the amount of time needed to create a data center on land from about 2 years to around 90 days, the submarine data center has the added benefit of natural cooling from the ocean, eliminating one of the biggest costs of running a data center on land. The bottom of the ocean is also isolated from many disasters that could affect land based data centers, such as war or hurricanes, although Microsoft did not mention how difficult it would be to make repairs to the servers inside the container should they malfunction.

    1. The infinite growth/zero material consumption economy is now contributing to warming the oceans.

      1. Using wind, which is plentiful in the Orkneys. But the pressure tank is just bizarre. Why not just suspended from the dock with an access hatch on top?

    2. “also isolated from many disasters that could affect land based data centers, such as war or hurricanes”
      errr… what about trawlers, anchors etc?

      NAOM

  16. STUDY SUGGESTS THREE PERIODS OF GLOBAL WARMING SLOWDOWN SINCE 1891 DUE TO NATURAL TEMPORARY CAUSES

    A team of researchers from the U.K., Sweden and Australia has found that three periods of global warming slowdown since 1891 were likely due to natural causes rather than disruptions to the factors causing global warming — the time periods from 1896 to 1910, from 1941 to 1975, and then from 1998 to 2013. For the first slowdown, they found evidence of El Niño and La Niña weather patterns that likely reduced heating by producing more cloud cover. For the second slowdown, they found evidence of increased volcanism — smoke and ashes from volcanoes can block sunlight. The team asserts that the third slowdown, which is also the one on which many global warming skeptics rely, was likely caused by a combination of La Niña events and volcanism. They further note that the third slowdown was not a stopping point—temperatures continued to rise, they just did so at a slower pace.

    Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-periods-global-slowdown-due-natural.html#jCp

    1. And,

      WARNING FROM THE PAST: FUTURE GLOBAL WARMING COULD BE EVEN WARMER

      Future global warming will not only depend on the amount of emissions from man-made greenhouse gasses, but also on the sensitivity of the climate system and response to feedback mechanisms. By reconstructing past global warming and the carbon cycle on Earth 56 million years ago, researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute among others have used computer modelling to estimate the potential perspective for future global warming, which could be even warmer than previously thought. The results are published in the scientific journal, Geophysical Research Letters.

      “If we then also take into account the fact that climate sensitivity increases with the temperature, it means that it is all the more urgent to limit global warming as soon as possible by reducing the man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.”

      https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-06/uoc–wft062316.php

    2. In other words earth’s living history proves climate changed in the past without significant human industrial activity, but somehow a certain political camp has convinced themselves that nature no longer has any impact.

      1. Max, yes the climate has changed many times in the past. However, physics, chemistry and biology are not in any way shape or form influenced by any political camps.

        Nature doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether a CO2 molecule is emitted by a human induced industrial process or by vast seams of coal set ablaze by pyroclastic lava flows caused by deep geologic processes.

        Once that molecule of CO2 enters the atmosphere the basic laws of physics take over and it warms the atmosphere by virtue of the greenhouse effect. And we know with a large degree of certainty that rapid increases in CO2 have been linked to mass extinctions in epochs past.

        What part of all that do you not get?!

      2. No comprehension what is happening MG? We dig up old nature and put it back in the atmosphere, way faster than unaided nature does. We are making an atmosphere that has not existed for many millions of years and we are doing it in record time. Nature is jumping on the bandwagon and seems more than willing to move to an ice free world.
        You are lucky enough to see the start of it, it won’t end for a very long time and it won’t be our home anymore or the home for all those iconic and ignored animals out there. It will be a very different place.
        No need to travel to another planet, we are on a journey to a whole new world. One we and the rest of life has not existed within and most will not make the journey.
        Yet because we don’t learn, each day we keep doing the same thing over and over, changing the atmosphere, changing the oceans, changing everything.
        Geophysics and geochemistry don’t give one iota about political views or money. It is all changing as we watch.
        Got any magic to put it back?

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAi3VTSdTxU

        1. Fortunately, there’s less need than ever to have these sorts of worries because many smart people are working on solutions to solve our climate change with geoengineering. Take a look at this news I saw today on Reddit. We’re getting close to a realistic method of just sucking extra CO2 out of the air.

          MAYBE WE CAN AFFORD TO SUCK CO2 OUT OF THE SKY AFTER ALL
          https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611369/maybe-we-can-afford-to-suck-cosub2sub-out-of-the-sky-after-all/

          1. #1 It DOES NOT remove CO2, it recycles it as fuel which will return the CO2 to the atmosphere.

            #2 To remove just 2017’s CO2 it would cost nearly 1 trillion dollars.

            NAOM

            1. What % of the world’s GDP is that? It would be worth it to save civilization plus there would probably be quite a few angel investors out there.

            2. Yes, but if you read the article, you’ll see that this is not the optimal, cheapest solution.

              The cheapest solution is to stop burning fossil fuels ASAP.

            3. 0.74% but that is only for 2017, it goes up every year after and does not get rid of the backlog CO2, you’d probably need to fo to 5% to make a difference..oh…note #1! Remove fossil fuels and use renewables would be an accumulated saving as opposed to a one off.

              NAOM

          2. Fortunately, there’s less need than ever to have these sorts of worries because many smart people are working on solutions to solve our climate change with geoengineering.

            Au contraire mon ami!

            The last thing we need is so called smart people tinkering with complex chaotic systems they do not understand. What we need is wise people who apply systems thinking and the precautionary principle! There are no magic bullets that will allow us to continue on our current path. Anyone who says otherwise is either an idiot or flat out lying!

          3. The best bet is storing carbon in topsoil by preventing erosion. Adding a percentage of two of carbon content to the top six inches of topsoils around the world would probably cause an Ice Age. And plants would do all the work, if The runoff was just slowed down a bit.

            1. There is enough oil, gas and coal to cook the world. That action is not stopping. Though I hear more and more about geo-engineering all the time, I doubt it there is enough will or unity yet to do much. I see instead the realization of the seriousness of situation by a broader venue and a bit of panic setting in across the population. But not enough to take strong action.
              Heck, the US is taking no action against the most obvious threat that is right in it’s face. The world is still playing at “green” while still wanting things to be the same.
              Meanwhile the political polarization and isolation continues full steam ahead, for people think taking a side will do something positive. Instead of doing something positive.

  17. Fred —

    IN MALE DOLPHIN ALLIANCES, ‘EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME’

    “It’s not uncommon in dolphin society for males to form long-lasting alliances with other males, sometimes for decades. Now, after studying bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia, for more than 30 years, researchers find that these males retain individual vocal labels rather than sharing a common call with their cooperative partners…

    The analysis showed that males in an alliance retain vocal labels that are quite distinct from one another, suggesting that those calls serve a purpose similar to an individual name. That’s in contrast to findings in many other species where individuals with close relationships converge on shared vocalizations as a way of advertising their membership to that partnership or group.”

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180607112756.htm

    1. And,

      GULF OF MEXICO ‘DEAD ZONE’ FORECASTED TO EXCEED THE SIZE OF CONNECTICUT

      Nutrients from the Mississippi River watershed, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus, fertilize the Gulf of Mexico’s surface waters to create excessive amounts of algae. When the algae decomposes in the deepest parts of the ocean, it leads to oxygen distress and can even kill organisms in the Gulf of Mexico’s richest waters. These low oxygen conditions threaten living resources including fish, shrimp and crabs, which humans depend upon for food and industry.

      Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-gulf-mexico-dead-zone-size.html#jCp

      1. The fact that the Mississippi is muddy is already a bad sign. That’s America’s topsoil washing into the sea.

    3. I’m not all that surprised, Doug 😉

      https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171016122201.htm
      Whales and dolphins have rich ‘human-like’ cultures and societies
      Date:
      October 16, 2017
      Source:
      University of Manchester
      Summary:
      Whales and dolphins (cetaceans) live in tightly-knit social groups, have complex relationships, talk to each other and even have regional dialects — much like human societies. A major new study has linked the complexity of Cetacean culture and behavior to the size of their brains.

      Link to paper in Nature:
      https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0336-y

      Abstract
      Encephalization, or brain expansion, underpins humans’ sophisticated social cognition, including language, joint attention, shared goals, teaching, consensus decision-making and empathy. These abilities promote and stabilize cooperative social interactions, and have allowed us to create a ‘cognitive’ or ‘cultural’ niche and colonize almost every terrestrial ecosystem. Cetaceans (whales and dolphins) also have exceptionally large and anatomically sophisticated brains. Here, by evaluating a comprehensive database of brain size, social structures and cultural behaviours across cetacean species, we ask whether cetacean brains are similarly associated with a marine cultural niche. We show that cetacean encephalization is predicted by both social structure and by a quadratic relationship with group size. Moreover, brain size predicts the breadth of social and cultural behaviours, as well as ecological factors (diversity of prey types and to a lesser extent latitudinal range). The apparent coevolution of brains, social structure and behavioural richness of marine mammals provides a unique and striking parallel to the large brains and hyper-sociality of humans and other primates. Our results suggest that cetacean social cognition might similarly have arisen to provide the capacity to learn and use a diverse set of behavioural strategies in response to the challenges of social living.

    4. They don’t mention that the “alliances” among male bottlenose dolphins are perhaps best described as rape gangs.

      1. Yes, that is a rather well known fact to anyone who has followed male dolphin behavior. However calling it ‘rape’ is really an anthropomorphization of a natural mating behavior of wild dolphins. Apparently it is a rather successful strategy for perpetuating the species. In humans ‘rape’ seems to be more about control and psychological power than it seems to be about reproduction. Comparing dolphin and human behavior is truly an apples to oranges comparison.

  18. Running the gauntlet?

    The train through hell: Flames lick locomotive as a wildfire rages next to the track in Siberia
    • Shocking video footage shows a train in Russia battling through a raging fire
    • The driver swears as he drives through smoke while approaching the flames
    • Eastern Russia persistently tackles wildfires, with 23,700 square miles of the country currently ablaze

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5726231/The-train-hell-Flames-lick-locomotive-wildfire-rages-track-Siberia.html

    1. I get the impression the fires in Siberia don’t go out anymore, they just die down a bit and don’t make the news. In North America Alaska and California seem to be starting, but the big risk is the point around where NM, UT, AZ and CO meet, which is under extreme drought, and now extreme heat. Once that starts it will be headlines for weeks, assuming there’s much to burn there. Hope BC is spared this year.

      1. George –

        Yes, that’s my understanding as well, especially when there’s any peat involved.

        1. I am beginning to wonder if these fires will become a semi-permanent feature. Burning for years or decades on end, just varying in magnitude.

          NAOM

      2. George Kaplan,

        UT not NV

        Beautiful, beautiful country there. Visit if you can.

        1. NV is my secret backpacking area—-
          A fraction of the people on this overcrowded planet.

          1. Hightrekker,

            Shhh…it’s been my secret route to the Colorado Plateau for half a century.

            I love Nevada.

            2. I stumbled across an old Edward Abby campsite.
              Wasn’t anything there.

  20. Anyone got a good link for adding an electric motor to a bicycle? What sort of motors and power needed, battery packs etc. I’m not looking for long range endurance or speed as we are mostly level but there are some short, steep bits that are a struggle when laden with many kilos and I can do with a boost.

    NAOM

    1. I did one last year. Got a motor and battery from China. Much less expensive than buying a premade e- bike. Probably saved close to a thousand. Love it!
      Works great, and I got the kind i was looking for- (no throttle, rather pedal assist, and mounted at the mid-bike level rather than on the wheels- therefore less risk of flats, etc)

      Here are some good suppliers, etc-
      https://lunacycle.com/mid-drive-kits/
      http://www.auto-ebike.com/ (I bought my motor from these guys)
      https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=79788&start=250
      https://bmsbattery.com/home/803-sdz2-torque-sensor-central-motor.html
      https://em3ev.com/shop/bafang-48v-750w-bbs02-kit/

    2. You don’t want to “add” a motor to a bike; buy a wheel with a hub motor built in. There are lots of made-in-China conversion kits for $150 or so. Just search for “electric bike” on ebay or Amazon.

      I haven’t gotten one of those kits, but I do have electric bikes; they are great!

      1. The wheel hub motor is one way to go, but they are generally lower power for the money, and much more prone to flat tire related to the extra weight.
        There are many choices on the market.

    3. Thanks guys. Looks like I would lose my front gear shift with the central motor though a boost system would be good for what I need (just on steep rises). The rear wheel option looks more promising with the option of a quick swap out. DON’T talk about punctures! with ire from worn buss tires and broken glass I am very used to repairing them.

      NAOM

  21. World’s first grid-scale liquid air energy storage plant goes live

    LAES technology stores air as a liquid and then converts it back to a gas, involving an expansion process that releases stored energy, and this drives a turbine to generate electricity. In addition to providing energy storage, the LAES plant at Bury converts waste heat to power using heat from the onsite landfill gas engines.

    Highview Power chief executive Gareth Brett said the plant “is the only large scale, true long-duration, locatable energy storage technology available today, at acceptable cost. The adoption of LAES technology is now underway, and discussions are progressing with utilities around the world who see the opportunity for LAES to support the transition to a low-carbon world.”

    After the launch, demand response aggregator KiWi Power will be able to draw energy from the LAES plant to power about 5000 average-sized homes for around three hours. The plant will demonstrate how LAES can provide a number of reserve, grid balancing and regulation services

    https://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/2018/06/world-s-first-grid-scale-liquid-air-energy-storage-plant-goes-live.html

  22. ☞ Cae’s Cozy Corner Cafe ☜
    menu selections for the POB conference

    • Appetizer

    Everything you need to know about obeying the law
    (video, 2:54 minutes)

    • Main Course (BYOB)

    Days of Revolt: How We Got to Junk Economics
    (video, 28:26 minutes)

    “In this episode of teleSUR’s Days of Revolt, Chris Hedges interviews economist Michael Hudson on the history of classical economics and explores Marx’s interpretation of capitalism as exploitation“

    Steven Pinker’s Ideas About Progress Are Fatally Flawed. These Eight Graphs Show Why.

    “In Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress… Steven Pinker argues that the human race has never had it so good as a result of values he attributes to the European Enlightenment of the 18th century. He berates those who focus on what is wrong with the world’s current condition as pessimists who only help to incite regressive reactionaries. Instead, he glorifies the dominant neoliberal, technocratic approach to solving the world’s problems as the only one that has worked in the past and will continue to lead humanity on its current triumphant path…

    Pinker claims to respect science, yet he blithely ignores fifteen thousand scientists’ desperate warning to humanity. Instead, he uses the blatant rhetorical technique of ridicule to paint those concerned about overshoot as part of a ‘quasi-religious ideology… laced with misanthropy, including an indifference to starvation, an indulgence in ghoulish fantasies of a depopulated planet, and Nazi-like comparisons of human beings to vermin, pathogens, and cancer.’ He then uses a couple of the most extreme examples he can find to create a straw-man to buttress his caricature. There are issues worthy of debate on the topic of civilization and sustainability, but to approach a subject of such seriousness with emotion-laden rhetoric is morally inexcusable and striking evidence of Monbiot’s claim that Pinker ‘insults the Enlightenment principles he claims to defend…’ “

    Our New, Happy Life? The Ideology of Development by Charles Eisenstein

    “What hides behind the numbers

    …we need to come to grips with precisely the things that Stephen Pinker’s statistics leave out. Generally speaking, metrics-based evaluations, while seemingly objective, bear the covert biases of those who decide what to measure, how to measure it, and what not to measure. They also devalue those things which we cannot measure or that are intrinsically unmeasurable…

    Unfortunately, happiness statistics encode as assumptions the very conclusions the developmentalist argument tries to prove. Generally speaking, happiness metrics comprise two approaches: objective measures of well-being, and subjective reports of happiness. Well-being metrics include such things as per-capita income, life expectancy, leisure time, educational level, access to health care, and many of the other accouterments of development. In many cultures, for example, ‘leisure’ was not a concept; leisure in contradistinction to work assumes that work itself is as it became in the Industrial Revolution: tedious, degrading, burdensome. A culture where work is not clearly separable from life is misjudged by this happiness metric; see Helena Norberg-Hodge’s marvelous film Ancient Futures for a depiction of such a culture, in which, as the film says, ‘work and leisure are one’.

    Encoded in objective well-being metrics is a certain vision of development; specifically, the mode of development that dominates today. To say that developed countries are therefore happier is circular logic…”

    • Dessert

    De-Arrest Compilation Video
    (video, 5:15 minutes)

      2. Lemonade Company to Help Pay Gov’t Fines, Licenses for Kids’ Lemonade Stands

        “In a show of marketing brilliance, the Country Time lemonade company launched a campaign this week to help children who have had their lemonade stands shut down by local governments and police.

        Though lemonade stands have long been a popular way for kids to engage in entrepreneurship, in recent years city governments around the country have started to crack down, sending cops to inform them they require permits or licenses.”

        ^^ In another reality this would be an April Fool’s joke or something like that.

        In any case, some people seem to need in their lives such ‘sociopoliticostructural contrivances’ as the nation-state, ‘the plutarchy/oligarchy’, ‘the church’ and/or things along those lines (along with the usual authority and power to back it up and enforce/impose it on others) to hand-hold/-cuff them– their own freedoms be damned– in their navigation through complex and confusing reality.

          1. “Religions set things all up, lay things all out, so that there’s less to think much about with regard to certain facets of reality, such as ‘what is’ or ‘how to act’. It’s all written down for you. All you have to do is use it for self-control, the control/influence of others and to regurgitate it, and not necessarily that well, because your bibles are kind of open to interpretation…” ~ Caelan MacIntyre

            The bible, the law books– similar ideas, similar playbooks yes? Less difference than what we might think with Peggy Hahn’s ostensible sentiments?

            Did you listen to the interview in my previous post in this thread? The one with Chris Hedges? Neofeudalism? Blasphemy you think?

  23. This Big Truckmaker Aims to Roll Right Over Tesla’s Semi

    First up was the Freightliner eCascadia, a full-blown Class 8 heavy-duty truck based on Freightliner’s diesel-powered Cascadia. It has a 550-kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery pack feeding a heavy-duty 730-horsepower drivetrain, ample for hauling full-sized trailers. Daimler said it will have a range of about 250 miles, and its big battery pack can be recharged to about 80% capacity (or 200 miles’ worth) in less than 90 minutes.

    The other truck, the Freightliner eM2 106, is intended for what the industry calls “last-mile” duty — local-level distribution and delivery services. The eM2 has a 325-kWh battery pack, a 480 horsepower drivetrain, and range of about 230 miles. It can be recharged to 80% capacity (or about 184 miles of range) within 60 minutes, Daimler said.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/this-big-truckmaker-aims-to-roll-right-over-teslas-semi/ar-AAym8Zb?ocid=spartanntp

    2. A friend lives near a busy and noisy highway in Oakland. In ten-twenty years it will be a lot quieter, and with better air as well.
      EV’s are dangerous in how quiet they are.

    3. A key point: Daimler is only doing this because Tesla is forcing it to.

      Tesla continues to change the world…

  24. Billions In U.S. Solar Projects Shelved After Trump Panel Tariff

    The Republicans don’t believe in climate change or, if they do, their greed and desire for power, overwhelms their ability to think beyond the immediate. As a result the Trump energy policies are wounding the solar industry, just as the rest of the developed nations of the world are doing everything they can to exit the carbon-energy era.

    Trump and the Republicans are crippling the United States in ways that will take years, perhaps decade to repair — if they are ever repaired. And these men and women are doing it with the full complicity of a large block of American voters, 87 per cent of Republicans support what is happening. The Great Schism Trend grows ever deeper.

    1. I think it’s their diet of wheat, corn, soy and potatoes with milk and beef. Beside a horrible lack of phytonutrients and vitamins, that diet puts too much fat between the ears.

      I am preparing my escape to the heartland before the East collapses. Everything is cheaper there and all those people must have workable plans for a future happy and good life. My plan is to introduce them to vegetables such as cucumbers and tomatoes to aide their diet of corn, soy and wheat. It will be a tough go but someone has to invade the area and plant the seeds to reduce brain fat back down to 60 percent.
      Once we get them thinking again, the collapse can then proceed in a more orderly and predictable manner.

      sarc

    2. Large-scale centralized nation-states rely hugely on large scale FF-based energy for their operations and existence, such that FF’s still provide in predominant abundance, if in reducing quality and ease-of-extraction.
      Subtract that and ‘replace’ it with alternative energy and what happens to large scale centralized nation-states? What do they do exactly? Stall for time? Fight over the dregs? Ignore alternative energies as existential threats?
      Looking at the large scale centralized nation-state as an organism, rather like perhaps how Darwinian or Nate Hagens might, what happens to organisms when their predominant food source diminishes in quality and quantity and new and different food sources become available but in much more limited quantities and relative qualities? Any examples out there?

  26. Fred —

    HOW LONG DO TARDIGRADES LIVE?

    Many researchers have gone to extreme lengths to test tardigrade resilience, by blasting them (in their tun state) into space. In many of these studies, the space-traveling tardigrades were exposed to direct solar radiation and gamma-rays. But when they were popped into a water-filled petri dish back on Earth, they “basically walked away and said, ‘OK, where’s dinner?'”

    Tardigrades are seemingly able to resist radiation and even repair their DNA, which may explain why they’re so resilient to radiation’s extreme effects. So, as well as being impossibly cute, it would therefore seem that tardigrades are our surest hope for maintaining life on this planet.

    https://www.livescience.com/62720-tardigrade-lifespan.html

    2. HOW LONG DO TARDIGRADES LIVE?

      As individuals living under normal conditions, about 2.5 yrs.

      In their special state of suspended animation, probably decades.

      As a species, well they’ve been around for over 540 million yrs and counting.

      All in all pretty damn impressive little buggers.

      I think there will still be life on this planet for a long long time after hominids depart the scene…

  27. Big Coal Plant (NGS-2,250 MW) in AZ is losing its customer in 2019 and will close.
    NGS stands for Navajo Generating Station
    Too expensive compared to the alternatives.
    btw- SRP refers to a mix of generating sources including nat gas, smaller coal facilities and the big Palo Verde nuc plant

    “Power from the solar plant will cost about $25/MWh with no escalator,” while power from SRP will cost about $36/MWh, and power from NGS will cost about $56/MWh”

    https://www.utilitydive.com/news/navajo-coal-plant-nears-2019-closure-with-arizona-water-agency-decision/525259/

    1. Hickory,

      They’d been delaying a closure of the Navajo Generation Station while hoping for a buyer. I hope the decision to close is now final. There’s been a dismal effect on air quality over the Colorado Plateau for decades, from that power plant.

      Fingers crossed for a return of clean air and clear skies there.

  28. I remember the 1950’s—-
    Germany:
    New minimum temperature records are extremely rare now, with the last one being recorded more than 60 years ago in February 1956.
    http://www.dw.com/en/may-and-april-2018-hottest-in-germany-since-1881/a-44074472

    “May 2018 at De Bilt, will be about 16,5C to 16,8C. If this average temperature is indeed reached, the previous record of May 1889, which reached temperatures of 16,0 on average, will be broken. May 2018 would thus be the hottest in more than 300 years.”

    https://www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/dutch-expat-news/possibly-hottest-may-record-netherlands

    1. Whoa, careful now. Remember when our friend GoneFishing told us there’s no point in posting weather records because we can all look them up if we want?

      “So? Your point? We can all access weather records if we want.

      Yes, record highs and lows for certain places are likely to occur when the system is being perturbed with increasing energy and changing latitudinal differentials.
      Was explained decades ago, here is a more up to date analysis. It explains that one side of the Jetstream has cold air and the other has warm air, nothing new just the deep stuck loops are new.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wOw_jDUNH8

      There is lots of info on the internet, keep learning.”
      —GoneFishing, 05/03/2018 at 9:30 am

  29. What happens to any nuke plants along the ring of fire? Things seem to be getting especially active. Will nature help us bury all our nuclear waste?

    1. Frisky’s Tree?

      Cold or hot fluctuation reports, even in the context of climate change, are a bit of a ‘monocultural preoccupation’ that need to be systemically-contextualized more often than they are.
      That said, at the very least, we will count on folks like you, Bob, to give us the warm extremes, as well as related effects, such as hurricanes, tornadoes and forest fires, etc., right?

    2. Bob- “More unexpected cold has caught scientists off guard again.”
      Umm..wrong. Not at all surprising to have spots and times of relative cold.
      No fool, and certainly no scientist would expect a trend to proceed in a straight line without fluctuation.
      Why do you keep playing the fool?

    3. Hey Chilly Blob Bob, that one seems to have faded. There are bunch you missed. One off the southern tip of Africa, one off southern South America in the Pacific and the really big deep cool anomaly off of Antarctica.

      1. Look yea to the far south, the continent of ice, for the deepest and largest of the cold blue blobs. They are always lurking about the planet, twill be a while, as long as the mark is moved.

        1. Was referring to the US map only, as that is what Cold Blob Bob always does. He deliberately ignores the rest of the globe…

          1. Speaking of narrow viewpoints, I found a cold blue blob about the size of my refrigerator in my very own house. Though looking wider I found the house temperature was higher on average.

            1. Your fridge is proof that your house’s climate has always changed and that your house could be getting colder. ‘u^

  31. Wildfire feedback?

    “Scientists have observed a spike in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and aerosols since the recent [Spring] Siberian fires started raging. Aerosols, tiny airborne particles in the smoke, have been carried by weather fronts across the Pacific Ocean into Canada, according to NASA’s Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite. The large quantities and long-distance transport of aerosols could indicate a pyrocumulus event. Towering pyrocumulus clouds are formed by heat from fire, rather than evaporation from sun-warmed ground. They tend to loft smoke high into the atmosphere, where it can be swept away by upper–level winds. Also, high levels of carbon monoxide are forecasted to reach the Arctic, according to Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service of the European Centre for Medium–Range Weather Forecasts.”

    https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=92165

    1. It’s a mostly impoverished nation with a poor diet, expensive health care and lots of stress plus pollution. The recipe for a shorter life.
      Time to have more kids people. No sense in falling behind in all the metrics.

      1. I don’t need any more kids right now but we’ll keep practicing the drill just in case it seems like they are needed.

  33. Largest polluters:

    No. 5 in Alameda County: Tesla Motors.
    Industry sector 336 — transportation.
    Toxic waste releases — 20,400 pounds.

    Well, at least it is number 5——

    1. Not to worry, production is speeding up. That is only 0.0001 pound per square mile.

    2. Alameda County has one of the lowest toxic waste emissions in the entire world, so being #5 in Alameda County means you’re emitting next-to-nothing. I believe that’s all paint fumes. Tesla has a plan to reduce that.

  34. Trends in Northern Hemisphere Snow Cover
    Generally these changes in snow cover are happening along the periphery of areas where we typically observe snow on the ground in January. We haven’t observed much change in snow cover at the higher latitudes during January, so we focus on where the changes are occurring further to the south, along the edge of the typical snow covered areas.

    For June, the Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent is decreasing at a rate of 13.5 percent (about 490,000 square miles) per decade. July is losing snow cover at an even faster rate: 21.3 percent (301,000 square miles) per decade, the highest decline rate among all months.

  35. Cruises cut a slice through the Atlantic’s carbon pie

    Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and about a third of it winds up being absorbed by the ocean. This uptake slows the impact of carbon dioxide on Earth’s temperature, but it comes at the cost of ocean acidification that harms shellfish, coral, and other marine life. According to 2016 research from NOAA and university oceanographers, the amount of fossil-fuel carbon absorbed by the Atlantic Ocean increased significantly between the 1990s and the 2000s, causing surface pH to drop by roughly 0.4% per year.

    https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/cruises-cut-slice-through-atlantics-carbon-pie

    1. Ocean acidification is substantially more dangerous than global warming; if left unchecked it will cause the collapse of the ocean food chain, as happened in the P-Tr extinction.

      1. That is a strange claim to be made, since they are generally linked with the ocean pH change a result of the factors causing warming. Plus the releases of methane due to temperature rise can be catastrophic.
        Maybe the term global warming is too mild and should be termed global wrecking or global havoc.

    1. Literally every world leader, except one (Trump) thinks Trump is an unstable idiot now. Most of the power elite in DC thinks so too, but most of the Congressional Republicans are pathetic little lackeys so they’re still licking Trump’s boots.

      1. Unfortunately, a large portion of the US populace admires the unstable idiot.

        1. He’s a charismatic fake-populist. OldFarmerMac was right on one thing: Donald was more charismatic than Hillary. I think everyone underestimated how effective that could be with voters who had been systematically misinformed by Fox News.

          Of course, that’s unimportant when dealing with very successful politicians, like the leaders of the G7. At this level, he’s failing completely at the art of the deal.

          1. HRC was a nightmare candidate– Trumps win was not unexpected by me.

            “In America anyone can become president..That’s the problem..”

            -George Carlin

            1. “HRC was a nightmare candidate” says more about the poster Hightrekker than HRC. Simple minds will live in the simple slavery of serfdom. Now the free world lives with a dangerous charismatic authoritarian US president in debt to Putin who pretends to act like a moron. Please give me a single truth that Trump spoke during the campaign ?

              Birds of a feather flock together

            2. Trump is a late stage capitalism candidate, and well suited.
              Reformist politics are far in the rear view mirror.
              A little bit larger box Jimmy?

            3. You have the Trump cart before the intellectual horse and will have to live with your imaginary self inflicted late stage capitalism wound based on propaganda.

              Your wonder candidate is blowing bullshit up your ass and your to constipated to make it to the medicine cabinet for the MiraLAX.

              I noticed you couldn’t respond with one truth from the lips of your conman.

              Birds of a feather flock together

            4. Do you actually think I approve of Trump?
              Are you living in that small of a box?

            5. Hightrekker said: Do you actually think I approve of Trump?

              Well, you replied to that Trumpite moron troll, George Harmon:

              I’m kinda on your side—

              If you don’t approve of Trump then you should not side with idiots who do.

            6. “Do you actually think I approve of Trump?”

              That’s the same stupid comment all the Trump voting evangelicals make.

            7. Ron-
              Did you read the post? I was advocating Trump on a faster crash– its strange where posters have such a small world view, that their choices are either HRC or Trump. While the micro views are different, the macro views are very similar. You need a wider view, or you are locked into a small, similar political perspective.
              Get out of the small box, or a least into a larger one.

            9. “I was advocating Trump on a faster crash”

              That makes about as much sense as putting your gun in your mouth and pulling the trigger.

              “its strange where posters have such a small world view, that their choices are either HRC or Trump”

              You need to have your meds checked or advise us of your genus write-in selection, so we can all have a good laugh.

              “You need a wider view, or you are locked into a small, similar political perspective.”

              Oh please wise one. Give us your civilian destructive political perspective ?

            10. “I was advocating Trump on a faster crash”

              That makes about as much sense as putting your gun in your mouth and pulling the trigger.

              Sorry Jimmy—-
              You are just not smart enough to grasp that.

            11. What the hell is a faster crash? That makes no goddamn sense whatsoever. Also, I am for NAFTA and TPP and support trade with China and everyone else in the world. “Free trade” is something you just made up. No trade is free.

              However, it is not either HRC or Trump! Goddammit, that is a false dichotomy.HRC is no longer in the picture. And I do wish you Trumpites would quit bringing her up. She has nothing to do with anything anymore.

              That is what Hannity always does. That is the “what about” world. What about Hillary, what about Lewinski, what about Benghazi, what about this or that. No, goddammit is not a what about world, it is all about what Trump is doing and nothing else. So please, please don’t bring Hillary up anymore. It has not one goddamn thing to do with Hillary. Bringing up Hillary is just an attempt to distract attention from the very stupid and dangerous things Trump does every day.

            12. Hightrekker, Hillary looks less flattering in that picture. Do you have a better one?

            13. Your infographic on Clinton actually comes from a Russian source, but go ahead and pretend you aren’t working for the KGB.

            14. I have to mostly agree with you Jimmy, truth and facts are out of the window if they don’t involve immediate and continued profit for the rich.
              This whole twisted funhouse that society has become is drowning out the emergency calls to deal with the real problems. Humanity is caught in a trap and seems to mostly like it. That song will change in in a decade to screams, writhing and gnashing of teeth for more and more on the planet.
              Americans are easily conned, but when they finally realize that the backlash can be very immediate and violent.
              Meanwhile the techies lead us by the nose to a fully padded prison cell where we lose all control over every aspect of life.

            15. What makes you think any single person has the right to define what our “real problems” are?

            16. Oh goddammit Johnny, everyone has the right to define the problems as he sees them. Defining problems is a right everyone has. It’s called “free speech”, or “freedom of the press”, it’s the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Of course, he may get the problems wrong. But that is beside the point. He has every right to define them as he sees them.

              Imagine living in a world where no one has the right to define problems as he sees them. That would be a world where basic rights would not exist.

              Dammit Jhonny, do you really realize what a stupid question you just asked?

            17. My problem was mostly with the word “real” in “real problems” because, as you say, “of course, he may get the problems wrong”. It’s like the fake news outlets, just because they think of themselves as “real news” doesn’t mean that’s the case.

            18. You have no idea what I mean by real problems nor who has defined them or how, so you are just blowing verbal pollution.
              Crawl back in your hole.

            19. I doubt you have any idea either, GoneFishing, since you appear to be living in your own bubble of delusion and narcissism.

        2. I understand being a liberal these days in America is really tough, considering how you have to convince your average American that the following things are bad:

          1) Record low unemployment
          2) Booming economic growth
          3) Tax cuts for everyone
          4) Record high stock markets
          5) Peace summits and initiatives
          6) Annihilation of ISIS
          7) Keeping illegals out of the country

          The more the left keeps their victim noises going, the sweeter Trump’s second victory in 2020 is going to taste, especially against the slate of loonies the Dems are looking to run as candidates.

          1. The repugs control the Presidency, Senate, House, and the Supreme Court.
            Lets see what you can do— I’m kinda on your side— you can probably bring this train wreck into the ditch faster, although the dims seem pretty good at it also.

          2. What a line of bullshit. We had economic growth and low unemployment under Obama, however:

            3) Tax cuts for everyone

            You have a fucking fool to think that everyone got a tax cut. Most Americans got enough to buy a Big Mac and fries while the top 1% got millions. And the companies are not investing their cut, they are buying back stock.

            4) Record high stock markets

            The stock market has been going up for years. Well, actually since Obama came into office and we recovered from that disastrous mortgage bust under Bush.

            5) Peace summits and initiatives

            Oh good God, that one takes the cake. The G7 summit was an absolute disaster and a huge embarrassment for the US. Every summit Trump has attended has been a disaster and an embarrassment for the US because we have such an idiot for a president.

            6) Annihilation of ISIS

            Nope, they ain’t gone yet.

            7) Keeping illegals out of the country

            Our immigration policy is a disaster. Trump is an idiot who told goddamn lies about building a wall and having Mexico pay for it. Any man with half a brain knew Mexico was not going to pay for any wall. But the average Trump supporter was just stupid enough to believe him. That just proves how goddamn stupid the average Trump supporter really is.

            Oh good God, that one takes the cake. The G7 summit was an absolute disaster and a huge embarrassment for the US.

          3. You’re just a fucking moron and a troll!

            http://fortune.com/2018/06/04/trump-policies-u-n-report-u-s-poverty/

            The United Nations released a report last month on the state of poverty in the United States — and it specifically criticized President Donald Trump’s policies.

            “For almost five decades the overall policy response has been neglectful at best,” the report states, “but the policies pursued over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship.”

            The 20-page report follows a visit to the U.S. last year by Philip Alston, the U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, to speak with local, state, and federal officials, along with members of Congress and people living in poverty. Alston will present his findings to the U.N. Human Rights Council on June 21, which he hopes will help put a spotlight on the issue and spur a debate.

            Link to UN report: http://undocs.org/A/HRC/38/33/ADD.1
            This is way beyond the liberal vs conservative debate these are crimes against humanity!

  39. Mission Status of GRACE FO

    The Launch and Early Operations Phase (LEOP) was completed successfully on May 26, 2018. All flight and ground systems have performed exceptionally well throughout the period. The mission has moved to an on-orbit check-out phase. The accelerometer and microwave science instruments have been powered on successfully and the two satellites are in relative pointing mode. Ranging data are being collected. Initial evaluation of the data indicates the instruments are performing well.

    https://gracefo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/135/latest-spacecraft-status/

  40. A look into the future. Do you like it? Does it enhance your freedom or just make you irrelevant?

    Your Life in 2027: A Look at the Future
    Between driverless cars and AI and gene modification technology, we’re about to see a lot of very big changes in a short amount of time. But there’s a danger of people rebelling because things moved too fast. Imagine an angry, jobless populace once driverless cars take away the transportation industry and electric cars take away the gas industry. Will politicians have to enact universal basic income? It’s a sobering reminder that we are—as a country and as a species—still adapting to an every changing world. Even if it’s a world that we designed. Vivek tackles this and a host of other issues (as well as some great things to look forward to) in our first long-form video.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0wy0YYzU0s

  41. Attack of the Reddish Blobs – It’s World Wide

    They have mostly shoved the chilly blue blobs to Antarctica.

  42. The rise of more right wing parties in Europe is a natural reaction to the policy excesses of the utterly moronic left wing parties.

    They let in millions of immigrants without any consideration of who they were, good or bad. As long as they were dark skinned they qualified for asylum.

    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12066/germany-rape-crisis

    The first job of a national government is to protect it’s citizens.

    Left wing parties are so mindlessly determined to be seen to put foreign criminals before the safety of their own people.

    The majority are starting to see them for what they are.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundestag#Distribution_of_seats_in_the_Bundestag

    Afd only formed in 2013 and got over 5 million votes.

    France, Italy and others are waking up also. Checking who you let in is right and protects your own citizens.

    1. The rise of more right wing parties in Europe is a natural reaction to the policy excesses of the utterly moronic left wing parties.

      You are an ignorant fucking moron and a fascist with a 19th century neoclassical growth based capitalist economic outlook!

      You obviously do not understand anything about how the planet actually works either from a scientific or social sciences perspective. Hint, there are already 7.6 billion humans on a planet in deep ecological overshoot.

      The consequences of climate change alone are already causing massive populational displacement in many parts of the world. Everywhere on the planet we are also looking at technological disruptions that are converging to displace humans as members of the work force. This is already causing immense pressures on social safety nets around the world. The only way forward is more, not less global cooperation among nations, especially between the haves and the have nots.

      This is the 21st century and we have 21st century problems! Idiots like you don’t understand that 20th century nationalist or populist thinking isn’t going to solve them! We need completely new paradigms and social systems! Ignorant monocultural assholes like you are a huge part of the problem! This is NOT what you characterize as problems caused by the so called policies of the ‘Left’! This is a failure of all of humanity!

      Now go crawl back under whatever bridge you crawled out from under, in Stalingrad or St. Petersburg or wherever the hell it is that you are based!

      1. Fred

        The vileness coming out of your mouth is the vileness that is in your heart and mind.

        Just as the Bible says of people like you.

        May Christian wisdom lead you into the light.

        1. I can think of nothing more vile than ignorant Christian apologists!

            1. Lemmings have gotten such a bad rap.

              “It turns out that there is no proof that an assemblage of wild lemmings would actually drive themselves off of a cliff at all, but rather the myth was perpetuated by a 1958 Disney documentary called White Wilderness, in which the filmmakers manually ran a pack of lemmings off of a cliff to make for good television. The staged suicide turned out to be a critical success, as the movie went on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.“

              http://mentalfloss.com/article/50957/do-lemmings-really-run-cliffs-their-death

            2. Next you will tell me that lemmings don’t explode! I have software somewhere that shows otherwise.

              Do they think they are invincible?
              Are they easily convincible?
              It’s the Lemming Principle.

              We are going to bask in glory tomorrow morning.
              Even though we are to be strung out on a shoestring.
              We’ll all dance around the new found warrior king.
              Even though he robs us blind leaving not a thing.

              The common moron bangs on his victory tamborine.
              But all his hopes have been put into quarantine.
              He dresses in a funny suit just like Halloween.
              But it is just a line up for the guillotine.

              Let’s all pan for gold here on this bed of roses.
              We’ll pull it out and balance it on our noses.
              The water is parted by our brave new world Moses.
              But the only door to our own thoughts he closes.

              The great G-string of glory hangs out of the sky.
              Between the cheerleaders and the cynics it is held precisely.
              Dare not question the executioner who asks politely.
              If the last teaspoon of bile slipped down quite nicely.

              Now do you understand the difference between the Lemming Principle and actual lemming found strewn dead and eviscerated in fields during their mass migrations? The Lemming Principle is about humans!

            3. Oh, sure, it’s just a metaphor.

              But, there’s something to be said for having realistic historical/biological examples: they shape our thinking.

              For instance, the latest research suggests that Easter Island is not an example of human overshoot.

              And, of course, the 2007 Great Recession wasn’t really about Peak Oil, though you’ll see some people over on the Oily Thread assuming that it was.

            4. Nick, people live in a world of stories, dreams, memes and delusions. Reality is not their thing. I try to talk science and reality on this site and get either no response, trolls with agendas, or people who miss the point entirely and argue their point of view to the death while often getting quite personal and nasty during the process.
              So best to just go with the flow and realize that people are small biological realities with a giant bubble of mental unrealities surrounding themselves and their groups/societies. Big brain=big delusions.

              We Live In a Dream World
              I’ll prove everything you believe about the world beyond your perimeter is false
              https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/addiction-in-society/201710/we-live-in-dream-world

            5. 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.

Comments are closed.