Open Thread Non-Petroleum, March 7, 2018

350 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, March 7, 2018”

1. SURPLUS ENERGY ECONOMICS
   Interpreting the post- growth economy
   Tim Morgan

   https://surplusenergyeconomics.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/surplus-energy-economics-interpreting-the-post-growth-economy1.pdf

   1. The info about renewables and EVs is unrealistic. One example: it argues that the grid can’t supply enough electricity for EVs, starting from the premise that power demand is growing at 2.5% per year – that’s no longer true. US power demand has been flat for a decade. And, EVs would only require an expansion of roughly 20% over 20 years – obviously not a big deal, especially when EVs are synergistic with renewables. EVs can charge when renewable output is high and other demand is low. That minimizes CO2 and cost for the driver, and raises prices for renewable power sellers. It’s a win-win.

      1. You are of course correct about EVS, The need to replace Oil and other *Fossil Fuels* when they run out does, however, need addressing.

         Tims SEEDS is a very important insight into energy based economics it is not in my opinion fully reflective of advances in technology or indeed technology generally.

         Read David MacKays Book its free on line and does what it says on the tin, although simplified and de jargonised it adds up and debunks.

         http://www.withouthotair.com/c3/page_29.shtml

         3 Cars
         For our first chapter on consumption, let’s study that icon of modern civi-
         lization: the car with a lone person in it.

         How much power does a regular car-user consume? Once we know the
         conversion rates, it’s simple arithmetic:

         For the distance travelled per day, let’s use 50 km (30 miles).

         For the distance per unit of fuel, also known as the economy of the
         car, let’s use 33 miles per UK gallon (taken from an advertisement for a
         family car):

         33 miles per imperial gallon ≈ 12 km per litre.
         Rather than willfully perpetuate an inaccurate estimate, let’s switch to the
         actual value, for petrol, of 10 kWh per litre.

         Congratulations! We’ve made our first estimate of consumption. I’ve dis-
         played this estimate in the left-hand stack in figure 3.3. The red box’s
         height represents 40 kWh per day per person.

         http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2017/08/renewableseroi-why-money-doesnt-cut-it.html

         http://www.theenergycollective.com/robertwilson190/257481/why-power-density-matters

         1. Thanks for dropping by, Roger. It’s appreciated.

            “Hi guys, what do you make of this comment by a Nick G. at Peak Oil Barrel regarding Tim’s PDF?…” ~ Caelan

            “…I note that data for the US is cited, the point being that electricity demand in the US is flat. Given population growth, it’s arguable that consumption per person is dropping.

            But didn’t I hear there was a world beyond the US?

            The US numbers, of course, are consistent with my report, which concludes that prosperity in the US is declining. Logically enough, if you’re getting poorer, you’re likely to use less electricity.

            My growth projections, however, were based on world trends. These are consistent with trend growth of 2.5%.

            We’re also using more of our energy as electricity, and less in other forms. This puts upwards pressure on generation even where total use of energy is flat.” ~ Dr. Tim Morgan

            1. Ah, so Dr. Morgan is being a head-in-the-sand idiot.

               But for the sake of argument let’s accept his 2.5% annual growth in total consumption of electricity.

               If we resume trend, then the yearly growth of wind power alone will exceed that number in three years. If we continue trend, then the yearly growth of solar power alone will exceed that number in 4 years. Policy hostility could slow that down and make it take 5 years.

               But I hope you see my point. The geometric growth curves for wind and solar have much higher growth rates than the growth in overall electricity demand, and they absolutely will exceed the overall growth in electricity demand; it is merely a matter of a few years.

         2. Neither MacKay or Wilson appear to give any accounting of the rejected energy losses of combustion engines or thermal plants. This is >60% of our present energy consumption.

            In his calculations of energy density, Wilson calculates the energy density of wind power based on the total gross area of the farm. Not the footprint of the tower base mind you, but the entire farm.

            I wonder why he hasn’t included the entire gross area of the oil field, coal mine, or tar sands mine in his calculations of the energy density of fossil fuels?

            MacKay seems to take no consideration of the energy efficiency of EV’s in his calculations of kWh/day of car transport. He uses 40kWh/day average, but an EV would be about 10kWh/day. His book is from 2009 however, so this is forgivable, but it also lets us know that his book needs to be revised to reflect the rapid advancements and plummeting costs of the last ten years in order to be relevant.

            Let’s come at the viability of substitution of renewable power for transport from a different angle – how much solar PV does one need to provide the average daily car miles for an American driving an EV? Not much.

            The NREL report for 2017 show utility scale fixed mount solar PV to be at $1.03Wdc, so if we allocate a very, very generous 4kW capacity array to provide for the average daily miles of an EV, you have a capex of ~$4k, and a ~25 year life span.

            https://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2017/nrel-report-utility-scale-solar-pv-system-cost-fell-last-year.html

            If someone wants it on their garage roof instead, U.S. costs are now at $2.80Wdc, so a homeowner would have to invest $12k to be largely energy independent in their transport for one car, for a quarter of a century.

            We may be doomed, but it’s not because it’s impossible to substitute renewable power and EV’s for F.F’s and ICE’s.

            1. I think the problem with Bob Wilson is that he’s attacking a strawman: the idea that cities need to be powered by local renewable power. That would indeed be a problem.

               I can’t imagine what’s wrong with cities being powered by regional renewable power.

            2. Bob, I have to correct you on one minor point. The so-called 25-year lifespan is a “commercial lifespan” — meaning nobody in the investment world cares about money recieved or saved after 25 years.

               In actual fact, silicon solar panels seem to last for a minimum of 40 years.

         3. Tims SEEDS is a very important insight into energy based economics it is not in my opinion fully reflective of advances in technology or indeed technology generally.

            Read David MacKays Book its free on line and does what it says on the tin, although simplified and de jargonised it adds up and debunks.

            I have read Mackay’s ‘Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air’ (2008).

            A good book to be sure, I learned quite a bit from it and it was a reality check back in 2008. But time hasn’t stopped and neither have advances in technology.

            Since David Mackay has passed on, he is unable to update his book based on recent advances in technology, so while his math and physics were accurate within the context and time of when he wrote his book, they no longer reflect the current reality on the ground. What he says is already quite obsolete in many respects.

            Right now if we are to have any hope of a future we need to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels. That is the 2 X 4 reality check upside the head, that all the renewables naysayers need to smacked with.

            As an example start thinking of thousands of EVs as a giant interconnected storage battery that can power the grid instead of thinking of them as a drain.

            1. The funny thing is that his presentation had already changed substantially. His first version was very anti-change, but he quickly realized that was unrealistic (i gave him some feedback, along with many others), and he updated many of the ideas, though there were funny remnants of the original pro-status quo approach (including the name of the presentation).

               Unlike many (Gail, for instance) he was willing to change his mind.

            2. The concern with some notions of so-called transition and/or ‘acceleration away from fossil fuels’, as you put it, is that they are couched in a particular type/style of supposed ‘transition’ (transition to ‘where’? Why? Says who?) that doesn’t necessarily stand to reason, that distracts from other potentially much more important forms related to true resilience and self-empowerment, such as with regard to local food and general market production, and depends on the (large scale centralize undemocracy) of the crony-capitalist plutarchy (telling us how we are to transition and pimping our labor to do it), and that could very well be suicidal.

               1. …that doesn’t necessarily stand to reason, that distracts from other potentially much more important forms related to true resilience and self-empowerment, such as with regard to local food and general market production, and depends on the (large scale centralize undemocracy) of the crony-capitalist plutarchy (telling us how we are to transition and pimping our labor to do it), and that could very well be suicidal.

                  You are starting to sound more and more like Steve Bannon!

                  https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/10/steve-bannon-france-national-front-marine-le-pen-454183

                  “You’re part of a worldwide movement bigger than France, bigger than Italy,” Bannon told National Front supporters, denouncing central banks, central governments and “crony capitalists.”

                  BTW, neither you nor Bannon seem to grasp the fact that human labor is already obsolete today and no one will be pimping it in the future. And “crony capitalism.” is a late 19th century anachronism… you really need to come up with a 21st century bogeyman .

               2. Split hairs and call it what you wish, Fred. It still has the planet by the ball.

            3. Fred

               Would you really be willing to allow your car battery to be drained at night to power the grid? You would be willing to leave yourself unable to get to work in the morning?

               https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?source=all-sources&year=2017&week=19

               Take any day in this week. At 6pm there is no more solar, everyone is driving home and many have to drive in the evening to go shopping, classes etc. There is insufficient wind to power the country. Do you know how long 10 million electric cars would power Germany for instance?

               Now what happens?

               If Germany tripled the amount of wind and solar installed power, that would be enough for 4/5 hours wither side of midday. After that you are draining batteries.

               1. Would you really be willing to allow your car battery to be drained at night to power the grid? You would be willing to leave yourself unable to get to work in the morning?

                  Why would you think the battery would be completely drained for any individual car among thousands? Do you really not understand how this would work or are you just being deliberately obtuse?!

                  BTW how does someone get to work now if for some reason their car doesn’t start in the morning? Oh, and work is for people who don’t know how to fish!

               2. Fred

                  Everyone reading your response will see you are utterly unable to answer even the most basic questions of power demand and stored supply.

                  If you tried to answer them you may actually learn something. But you won’t.

               3. Peter,

                  I answered your question several days ago. Perhaps you didn’t see it, or perhaps we need to proceed in smaller steps.

                  Okay first: in order to answer your question you need some basic numbers. In your sample week (or, if you prefer, a specific 3 day period) what was overall kWh consumption, what was wind/solar generation, and what was the installed capacity for wind and solar?

                  If you’re serious about answering your question, and not just trolling, you’ll start by finding out these basic numbers…

               4. Crazy Climate Change

                  “…I answered your question several days ago…” ~ Nick G

                  Could you give us a link to that please, Nick. Thanks.

                  In the meantime, I’ll just add that hypotheticals are all fine and nice as we’re all happily charging and discharging (eroding the batteries’ cycles/lifespans more than they were designed for?) our tens of millions of brand-spanky-new electric cars, wherever/however we got them in the current economic climate, until we get to the actual reality of things.

                  Even the climate scientists ostensibly discluded, from their models, a few, if not a lot, of feedback effects. And now we are getting what? Above freezing temperatures in the arctic in the middle of winter? Well, maybe this summer, we’ll see some catastrophic freezes of tropical crops to ‘balance things out’ and have the possibly-governpimp/corporapimp-funded anti-AGW folks appearing out of the woodwork as usual, celebrating this development.

               5. If you tried to answer them you may actually learn something. But you won’t.

                  It’s not my job to educate you. You can use Google yourself, but maybe try reading this:

                  http://smartgrid.ucla.edu/projects_evgrid.html

                  Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) research at UCLA SMERC is focused on demonstrating the possibility of V2G power flow from popular EVs. We are exploring how to achieve the maximum V2G power flow from each vehicle, while addressing challenges including response time and power sharing control. The SMERC research in V2G is also focused on facilitating a variety of applications, such as reactive power compensation, voltage regulation and distributed storage, to strengthen the power grid and lead EV usage to an entirely new, smarter era.

               6. Fred

                  You have to know something yourself first, people like you never think you need to learn anything.

                  As I said all those reading your comments will realise you don’t know what you are talking about.

               7. Peter, if people conclude I don’t what I’m talking about they are free to do their own research. As are you!

               8. There are 40 million cars in Germany. When everyone let’s give the utility company halt of the “tank” to play with, for a cheaper electricity bill for example, this would be

                  30 KwH (I assume better batteries then) * 40.000.000 = 1200 GwH. Enough for round about 20 hours night watch. And more than enough time to power up some old backup plants.

                  You miss one thing: When everyone has an electric car, batteries will be dirt cheap since technic has advanced. Electric companies will simply use big backup batteries in storage halls instead of pumped storage. There is much in the pipeline, inclusive solid state alkaline batteries with dirt cheap material. Not as compact as car batteries, but this doesn’t matter in a stationary use case.

                  The future will tell, and why not keep the old power plants as a backup for a few more years. They are already payed – and changing is a continous process. Gas backup power plants can be first fired with Nat gas today, later with bio gas from garbage and last with synthetic gas from too much wind / solar power. So no need to worry.

               9. Don’t forget that the first step is Grid to Vehicle, not Vehicle to Grid.

                  In other words, if you’ve got 1.2 terawatt hours of battery capacity, you can charge that any time of day, pretty much. Given that EVs are ultraconnected computers on wheels, they can charge when demand is lowest and wind/solar production is highest. That alone provides a very large part of what’s needed to balance supply and demand.

                  That completely avoids the question of “draining the battery”, or using additional charge/discharge cycles from the battery.

               10. Nick G

                   No it does not avoid the question of draining batteries.

                   As you can see from my data below there are weeks when German Wind and solar produce only a fraction of demand.

                   Here is another starting on the 16th of February

                   https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?source=conventional&year=2018&week=7

                   Considering Germany has 100Gw of installed wind and solar these weeks where wind and solar can only manage 1.900Gw and 700Gw are depressing.

                   https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=conventional&period=weekly&year=2018&week=8

                   Just to be clear 100GW power sources such as gas can deliver 16,800Gw in a week

                   Germany weekly demand is around 10,000Gw/h.

                   Taking into account hydro and biofuels, batteries would have to store 8,000Gw/h to make up for shortfall at the moment.

                   Double Germany installed wind and solar to an extraordinary 200Gw and in this week you are still short by 4,000Gw/h.

                   How many Tesla type home power batteries would it take?

                   https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/powerwall

                   I am for Tesla powerwall I think they are a great idea. I simply am pointing out the height of the mountain that is ahead of us.

               11. Peter,

                   Some ideas for market reform of European Power Markets in paper linked below.

                   https://windeurope.org/fileadmin/files/library/publications/position-papers/EWEA-Position-Paper-Market-Design.pdf

               12. Don’t fall for stupid scare tactics.

                   Doubling Germany’s installed wind will take 3 years (maybe longer if Merkel keeps sabotaging it with zoning-based attacks). Doubling Germany’s installed solar will take 2 years, and in 4 years it will be quadrupled. Despite extensive attacks on Solar from Merkel, the pricing is now such that *nothing* can stop that.

                   Look at the exponential growth curves, please.

                   What shortage?

               13. Eulenspiegel

                   Your figures are reasonable.

                   Let us assume after a week of good wind and solar all batteries are full.

                   Then Germany goes though the next 2 weeks where wind is low.

                   https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?source=all-sources&year=2017&week=18

                   Based on Germany having doubled solar and wind over the next 10 years ( a generous assumption considering it has taken 20 years to install what it has). Germany will have no nuclear power by then.

                   https://www.energy-charts.de/power_inst.htm

                   On the 5th May at 6.00pm solar is now effectively zero and wind is providing 15Gw, batteries in plugged in cars and in homes are being drained to make up the difference, people are driving home with their full batteries are being used up also.

                   https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?source=all-sources&year=2017&week=18

                   By 6am the following day all the batteries in Germany have around half their charge left.
                   Millions of people driving to work further depleting their energy.

                   During the day wind and solar power all industry and offices etc but is only able to recharge batteries by 10%, taking average over 7 days which is good enough for this discussion.

                   https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=conventional&period=weekly&year=2017&week=18

                   https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=all-sources&period=weekly&year=2017&week=19

                   With a daily deficit of between 400Gw and 500Gw all batteries would be dead in 3 days.
                   People such as doctors, nurses, ambulances, fire Engines would have to be given priority charging early on in order to get to work.

               14. There are daily storages, as current pumped hydro. They are even necessary with conventional power plants.

                   I described using the old plants first as an backup – later they can be powered by other means. If you have double wind / solar than peak demand, you can generate hydrogen and store it in the caverns used now for natural gas.

                   Yes right, natural gas supply is not enough for winter, we have a huge store of about 2 month usage here – the same thing we’ll have to do with alternative energies.

                   But first it will be good when the coal plants only run when storage is empty.

                   Personally I think with solar getting even cheaper, some day countries like Australia will export liquid hydrogen when natural gas is banned due to climate problems. With future 1 cent / kwh desert solar electricity this will be possible to produce. The backup power plants then will be fired with this stuff.

               15. Using today’s best solar panels. How many square meters of solar panels would be required to make enough hydrogen to replace Germany’s electricity produced from coal?

                   https://www.pv-magazine.com/2017/08/30/future-pv-the-feasibility-of-solar-powered-hydrogen-production/

                   Obviously there is loss of energy converting electricity to Hydrogen and burning hydrogen in power plants.

               16. This is an answer from several days ago – here it is again:

                   There are a number of answers to handling seasonal deficits of renewable power – it’s a mistake to think that there’s a single silver bullet. But, our space and time are limited, so here are two primary answers:

                   90GW of wind and solar can only be expected to produce very roughly an average of maybe 15%, or 13GW, in Germany. That’s what Oldfarmermac was getting at. So, if you want wind and solar to cover 100% of about 65GW of demand (on average) you’ll need roughly 430GW of capacity. Now, no one ever expects to build to an average – in the US we overbuild capacity by a factor of about 2.5:1 (about 1,150GW of capacity for 450GW of average demand). If we just use a factor of 2:1 for our wind and solar (because it’s more capex intensive) then you’d build about 860GW of capacity. That’s 10x as much as they have now. If Germany’s 90GW of wind and solar produced about 6.5GW, then 860GW would produce about 60GW. That’s close to 90% of demand.

                   The 2nd answer is “wind-gas”. If you overbuild wind and solar by 2:1 that means that you have a vast amount of surplus power to use for storage. That means you don’t need high efficiency. On the other hand, you do want to minimize capex – capex is the problem with batteries. So, convert surplus power to H2, store it cheaply underground, and burn it cheaply in ICEs or turbines (not expensive fuel cells) for a round trip efficiency of perhaps 25%, and low capex. That would give enough backup to cover supply deficiencies of very roughly 25%, which is far higher than we would see from a 50% deficit for 5 days – that’s a supply deficiency of about 1% of annual demand. Alternatively, overbuilding of just 1.25:1 would still give you a lot of surpluse power, likely more than enough to handle seasonal shortages.

                   Does that help?

               17. Nick, the questions are all wrong. The real question is how much power can we expect to get from fossil fuels a century from now?
                   The general consensus is not much.
                   We know renewable energy can provide many times what civilization needs since the daily input is so huge. We merely have to build systems and a society that functions around a sustainable energy source.
                   Only simpletons think that future society and systems will be the same as now, such as 100 percent power availability, 24/7 for everyone.

                   But that is delusion, current reality is much different.
                   Even now, here in the US we don’t have that. Power outages are common and last up to two weeks. Some people are still out of power in my region (I got it back after five days) and this is day 12 for them.
                   They would be glad to run on partial power use, I am sure.

                   Energy, such as electricity, will be run and operated by smart systems. There will be times of excess energy where certain industries, storage and businesses can use the cheap power to advantage. There will be times when power cutbacks and overall societal activity will be reduced or slowed.
                   Overall, it will be more reliable and far, far less dangerous than what is being done now.
                   So questions of coal replacement and gas replacement are not valid. Direct replacement into a dumb system is just that, stupid.

               18. GF,

                   Yeah, by far the cheapest and easiest way to match up supply and demand is Demand Side Management (DSM), also know as Demand Response by utilities.

                   For instance, EVs are likely to represent about 20% of overall power demand. That means they could reduce charging demand by 20% when wind/solar power generation is low, and increase demand by roughly 100% when needed by charging in the 4-5 hours of the day when demand is lowest.

                   And that’s just getting started.

               19. Nick,
                   And what makes it even more interesting is that a lot of the demand will also be providers, including cars with solar panels on top. 🙂
                   Luckily the AI will figure it all out until it decides we are no longer necessary. 🙁

               20. “…you can generate hydrogen and store it in the caverns used now for natural gas…” ~ Eulenspiegel

                   Storing hydrogen, a gas that is apparently very explosive and leak-prone, in ‘caverns’? What are some problems, if any, with this idea? What kind of caverns are they? Are they good caverns? Hydrogen-good?

                   As an aside– totally unrelated mind you– did a German-built Zeppelin once explode somewhere in an oh-the-humanity kind of way?

               21. A lot of that natural gas is used for heating, and could easily be replaced by better insulation or heat pumps.

      2. Hi Nick,

         Plus the people who are determined to believe what they please never take into account such factors as changing lifestyles.

         It may be true that electricity demand will grow at a fast clip, but it’s about equally likely in my opinion that we will see the per capita consumption remain flat or even decline, excepting any new consumption resulting from switching to electric cars.

         If I were building a new house today, it would need only half as much electricity for heating and cooling as the house I live in now…. which has been upgraded from fifties standards to nineties or oughties standards, which is about all I can afford to do on it, considering I won’t be around forever.

         And it’s almost dead certain that appliances will be twice as energy efficient as they are now, twenty years from now, because we’ve just scratched the surface in terms of energy efficiency when it comes to electric motors, insulation, electronic controls, etc.

         I believe in Jevon’s Paradox, but I’m not so stupid as to be religious about that belief, as a lot of people are, including some who post here.

         Almost every body I know used as much lighting as they pleased BEFORE they switched to LED’s……. I don’t know more than a couple of people who are still using the old incandescent bulbs. Net result, everybody I know, taken as group, has cut his energy for lighting by at least two thirds.

         And it’s simply not possible for most people to use a hell of a lot more gasoline simply because it’s cheap. They’re too busy. If per capita consumption of gasoline goes up, in developed countries such as the USA, it will be mostly because gasoline is cheap enough that oversized and and over powered vehicles remain popular.

         Nearly every body I know, including a lot of people below the official poverty line, eats as much as he wants, and way the hell more processed food than is good for him. Energy per capita for food isn’t likely to go up.

         Jevon’s Paradox isn’t as big a problem as most people seem to think, except in developing countries.

         I don’t see any problem at all with the grid in terms of charging electric cars. The people who own and run the industry seem to be salivating at the thought of selling more juice, lol, as best I can tell.

         When the demand is there, they will be GLAD to run more transmission lines, and to build or retain enough old generating capacity to meet the demand.

         The only real problems will likely arise in places where the very people most interested in electric cars will be opposed to allowing new transmission lines to be built.

         Consider New Yorkers, and their political tendencies, and desire to be clean and up to date. They need new gas lines, but they won’t allow them to be built. So they will get along as best they can using old and obsolete lines and tech, such as oil furnaces in some cases……. because they can’t get gas enough to switch, lol.

         Environmentally aware people, especially the ones with money, tend to be hypocritical about such things sometimes. We want electricity, we want gas, but we want it delivered by magic.

         1. Yeah.

            A few thoughts:

            Jevon’s Paradox

            Jevon was writing when coal was very young. Things have changed, and coal and other energy industries and forms of consumption have matured.

            The only real problems will likely arise in places where the very people most interested in electric cars will be opposed to allowing new transmission lines to be built.

            The environmental movement grew in part because people could see the local problems that needed to be solved. NIMBYism can be good. Sometimes, of course, it will lead to contradictions between different needs.

            OTOH, customer-side solar helps reduce the need for transmission, so…it may work out, if customers can get out from under the lead feet of utilities.

            1. Nick

               I could not respond to your previous comment.

               If hydrogen were manufactured using wind and solar it could be stored underground to be used in power plants and home heating and cooking.

               However it must be liquefied to be used in ICE vehicles.

               1. Peter,

                  The “wind gas” can be used in thermal power plants to produce electricity and power EVs. Home heating will be done with heat pumps in the future (ground source in colder climates), cooking will use inductive heating for greater efficiency, so most things will be run on electricity.

               2. Dennis

                  If hydrogen were to replace natural gas the entire pipework system in a country would need to be replaced. Do you know why?

                  Do you know what that would cost?

                  https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/wind-power-makes-hydrogen-for-german-gas-grid

                  The alternative is making the entire gas pipe system redundant and as you say installing heat pumps in every single home, factory, hospital and restaurant.

                  Everyone I know heats their homes with gas central heating and it is reasonable cheap.

                  Before I bought my home I looked very carefully at heat pumps and they are very expensive and often their efficiency is not what is claimed.

                  https://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/lessons-from-the-uk-heat-pump-study-insulate-first-and-know-what-you-are-getting.html

                  This is an honest appraisal of heat pumps.

                  https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2016/02/pros-and-cons-of-air-source-heat-pumps

                  Compared to gas they are very expensive, if this was not the case I would have fitted heat pumps.

                  The good thing about the future is anything is possible.
                  Today is reality and the reality is gas central heating is reliable and cheap. £1.5 per day for all our, heating, baths, showers and wife’s washing up.

               3. Peter,

                  Perhaps natural gas prices will always be low and natural gas output will never peak and decline.

                  I doubt this will be the case. There is also the problem of climate change, which perhaps you also dismiss.

                  Currently in cold weather areas (average winter temperatures below 40 F or 5 C) natural gas may be cheaper. In Nova Scotia the piece linked below suggests heat pumps may be cheaper, heat pumps have improved over the last few years, also ground source heat pumps are very efficient, though expensive.

                  https://www.sunshinerenewables.ca/heat-pump-vs-oil-furnace/

                  Ground source discussion below

                  http://idahogeothermal.com/open-loop-vs-closed-loop/

               4. So, regarding heat pumps:
                  (1) Yes, insulate first. Superinsulate. Airseal. Get an ERV.
                  (2) Air-source heat pumps do have the efficiencies they claim to have; the testing in the US is very reliable. These efficiencies are on a complex curve depending on outdoor temperature, however. In short, they work better in warm or hot climates and worse in cold climates.
                  (3) I can’t seem to find your UK retail NG prices (inclusive of distribution costs, which are very high), and I also can’t find your retail electricity prices. This makes it very very hard to tell which is actually cheaper in the UK. However, here in the *US*, the running costs are definitely lower for the air-source heat pump now. How long it takes for the savings to pay back the upfront costs depends on your situation (how cold it is, whether you have to borrow, how much NG prices go up, how much electricity prices go down, how large a unit you need, etc.)

               5. Hydrogen cars.

                  http://www.hydrogenhouseproject.org/genesis.html

                  http://www.hydrogenhouseproject.org/peugeot-h20-fire-engine.html

               6. Liquid Hydrogen is a poor solution for cars, very poor. Low density plus all the issues of a cryogen. Adsorption or high pressure (that has its risk too) is the preferred path.

                  NAOM

               7. Liquid hydrogen is too expensive and hard to handle or keep. Need a double Dewar with liquid nitrogen in the outer one to even have a chance at keeping it for very long.
                  Probably waste as much energy as one gets from it.

                  400 miles on those cars listed above is far enough and that could be improved.

         2. OFM,

            You make the point I have occasionally made on this forum and on TOD before that:

            Jevons Paradox only goes so far…one quickly runs into the ‘second master resource’ (besides energy)…which is time. Time is the ultimate limiting factor for human energy consumption…people only have 24 hours in one day, and that will not change. And those 24 hours have constraints…sleep, work, eating,personal hygiene…there is a lot less than 24 hrs per day for folks to cavort around in the cars/trucks/personal watercraft/ATVs/airplanes, etc. So, if the human population were to be managed to be sustained at a much lower level than the present case, a huge factor driving increased energy demand would evaporate.

            1. Great point, RA, and nice to have you drop in…

               It also makes me think about the kind of time we have left, if any, such as in the face of the time and vast materials and energies required for renewable buildout/transition, as well as in the face of serious concerns over anthropogenic climate change and mounting environmental and social costs.

            2. RA

               Exactly, population control is vital, what do you suggest?

               Think of the population of Birmingham

               https://www.intelligentcommunity.org/birmingham_england

               and how much energy, food, plastic, etc the 1.1 million use per year.

               and the global population will increase by 750 Cities the size of Birmingham in just 10 years.

               1. Worried about population growth? Google “Birth Control”. Margaret Sanger provided the solution 100 years ago. Give women the ability and power to use birth control, the population stabilizes in a generation.

                  Turns out it’s only men, like ibn Saud, who want 50 children. Women don’t like getting pregnant constantly.

            3. With automation, there are no human constraints on energy use.

               1. Automation can reduce energy consumption:

                  “Building automation is the automatic centralized control of a building’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning, lighting and other systems through a building management system or building automation system (BAS). The objectives of building automation are improved occupant comfort, efficient operation of building systems, reduction in energy consumption and operating costs, and improved life cycle of utilities.

                  Building automation is an example of a distributed control system – the computer networking of electronic devices designed to monitor and control the mechanical, security, fire and flood safety, lighting (especially emergency lighting), HVAC and humidity control and ventilation systems in a building.[1][2]

                  BAS core functionality keeps building climate within a specified range, provides light to rooms based on an occupancy schedule (in the absence of overt switches to the contrary), monitors performance and device failures in all systems, and provides malfunction alarms to building maintenance staff. A BAS should reduce building energy and maintenance costs compared to a non-controlled building. Most commercial, institutional, and industrial buildings built after 2000 include a BAS. Many older buildings have been retrofitted with a new BAS, typically financed through energy and insurance savings, and other savings associated with pre-emptive maintenance and fault detection.”

                  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_automation

               2. I don’t think that compensates for low R value buildings and ones that are mostly glass.
                  Buidings of R2 to R4 don’t cut it and often have very high solar gain so air conditioning runs much of the time.

                  https://buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-006-can-fully-glazed-curtainwalls-be-green

               3. Looks like a relatively modest investment in improved window design pays a very high return.

               4. It’s strange how most all the designs have been worked out for residences and small buildings, yet large office buildings and other large buildings are hopelessly poorly designed from an energy uptake/outflow perspective.
                  Those huge glass towers are full of heat loss/heat gain problems, as well as air leak problems. Each window has an insulation break and most provide no ventilation benefits. A certain amount of natural lighting is good for human productivity, but 80 percent is way overkill. Some of them are as near 100 percent glass as possible.

                  But speaking of insulation breaks there are thousands of air breaks in modern buildings, in fact many are so badly designed they almost appear to be designed to provide the improper air paths. That affects heating, cooling and moisture flows. Large building design is a huge area for improvement.

                  https://buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-002-the-hollow-building

                  And for some sick humor take a look at the eyesore of the month collections:
                  http://kunstler.com/featured-eyesore-of-the-month/

                  Enjoy!

               5. @Fish
                  My Father worked in a county planning office that moved to a new, custom built, office that was built on high ground outside the town. Lots of windows for light. To save money it was decided that no air conditioning was needed and people could just open windows.

                  Well, lots of windows, lots of solar gain so it was a case of bake or open windows. Did I say planning department? Plans, paperwork, through flow of wind – use your imagination! In the end air conditioning HAD to be retrofitted at far higher cost than if it had been installed from the start. There’s nothing like planning and that was nothing like planning!

                  NAOM

               6. Yep, NAOM, little things like awnings or overhangs to block summer sun have been somehow forgotten by building designers.
                  They work and use no energy. They also let in the winter sun to save on heating costs.

               7. Oh, the designs have been worked out for large buildings too; the problem is simply that they’re not being used.

                  Which is also the problem with small buildings. We’ve had the superefficient designs since the 1970s, but builders are still building leaky old 19th century designs.

               8. With humans doing their own local community resilient empowerment thing, there seems little point in automation.
                  And who’s asking or forcing who for, or onto/into, what? The corporates? The governments?
                  For example, are communities actually being asked what they want and votes made on it, etc.? And/Or are they being duped and steamrolled online and elsewhere by the renewables-indoctrinated and assorted shilling and guerilla ad campaigns, etc., and dictated what they want or need?

                  Manufactured needs anyone? Going once, going twice…

                  As for ‘automation’, you potentially get into, or perpetuate, other kinds of issues, such as surrounding mass production, scale, industrialization, societal effects and so forth.

                  Lots of recent talk about guaranteed basic income too. I wonder why. Welfare for everybody!

                  Let’s not pretend, GoneFishing, that we can get some things from, or for, nothing.

               9. “As for ‘automation’, you potentially get into”
                  Already here if you haven’t noticed.

                  Caelan, look around you. Automation is everywhere now. Are you thinking 1600’s or earlier? It’s the twenty-first century now.
                  I am not pretending, just observing reality.

               10. GoneFishing, look around you. Pollution is everywhere now. Are you thinking 1600’s or earlier? It’s the twenty-first century now.
                   I am not pretending, just observing reality.

               11. Caelan want a cracker?

2. “Is there a way to relatively-accurately gauge/evaluate our own personal current energy/ecological footprints? If so, how/where; if not, why?” ~ Caelan MacIntyre

   “Yes there is but you obviously haven’t put a lot of effort into understanding your own question. You might start by acknowledging that unless you are living alone in a cave you are benefiting from the very things you so like to disparage.” ~ Fred Magyar

   Not good enough, Fred.
   That question is more for you and your, apparently rather bloated, USA lifestyle than me or mine.
   (I’m fairly confident that I’m living on perhaps a quarter, maximum, of your footprint.)
   But thanks for the quote/link. I’ll check it out.

   Besides, I could say similar about you, and have already, namely; if you want to appear sincere about the ecosystem/climate, then you have to concede some aspects of your own lifestyle and do things about it rather than ‘passing the buck’.
   I’ve been trying near as best as I can with mine, but can only go so far if Earth is occupied by others whose greedy and destructive lifestyle is non-negotiable.
   In that case, there is little use being in a cave, except by those who might want to continue on with their suicidal effects on the planet.

   Then, it could be right where they want me. And more for them.

   If you want to endeavor to see the world, to paraphrase you, beyond black-and-white, then what are you waiting for?
   In fact, if you truly believe in science and ‘socioenvironmental’ ethics, then it’s your prerogative, or maybe you just want to fake it for brownie points.
   This would seem to include conceding that ‘technology’ has a myriad of contexts and, as such, is therefore nowhere near as black-and-white, either-or, extreme, or cut-and-dried as you may want to paint with a broad brush, as illustrated by your ridiculous and fallacic cave-or-high-horse reductive.

   By the way, this fallacy that you keep repeating ad nauseum, as if you’ve learned nothing, is called the either-or or false dilemma fallacy. I’m fairly sure I’ve already mentioned it, and likely in your case, but there it is. So kindly get out of your intellectual cave and learn it.

   1. Obvious hypocrites are always annoying to me as well.

      1. If you do a search, Fred is on record on here as suggesting that he’s actually proud of being contradictory or something to that effect. It’s hard to reason with that.
         A little bit of contradiction is fine and probably normal, but taken beyond that and with pride added seems like a problem.

         1. Neither of you know much about how I actually live or what my lifestyle is. At best your are making some assumptions about how you think I live. Here are some numbers. I live in a very modest 1 bed room condo apartment in South Florida. My monthly electric bill is on average under $40.00, that includes AC in summer. I drive an old sub compact 2.0 L manual transmission car an average of 6,000 mi per year. I often walk, bike and take public transport to get around. I don’t own a TV. My son lives close by but my extended family lives in Hungary, Germany and Brazil so about once a year we take turns visiting each other for family reunions. My actual carbon footprint compared to the average American is quite low. However compared to say your typical impoverished African, South American or Asian it is quite high. I am a product of 20th century western industrialized civilization. I was born into it but I don’t think my lifestyle is all that ostentatious.

            1. Good thing we have holier than thou thought/energy police monitoring your lifestyle, Fred.

               Caelen, we’re all guilty so get off your high horse. We are all doing our best, I’m sure.

               Changing subject. While I have enjoyed a restricted radio license for the last 45 years from being a commercial pilot, tonight I have my first course to obtain my Ham License including UHF. (I used to use HF a lot in the artic so I am dating myself). Anyway, I am really looking forward to connecting with others who live in the boonies and about the world. I hope to set up a solar powered station with batt bank for….whatever may or may not unfold. Plus, I can become involved with our local Search and Rescue and be a comm hub for this part of the Island. Anyway, I am really looking forward to it. I may even build my own radio as I get back into electronics. Lots to think about and hope its fun. There are supposedly 5 of us taking the course in our Valley. (I’m sure I know them!) 🙂

               1. Good for you Paulo, best of luck with your station.

                  Here is a story from a very avid HAM radio operator and how his class A license examination got him in deep, deep trouble. Back in the days of tubes and home built systems.

                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22fl5JtoZXU

                  Enjoy.

               2. Fred ‘policed’ himself, using his own position/argument, which I simply set up/indulged him with. It’s become a bit of a tradition.

                  Had you arrived earlier, Paulo, you might have helped save him from his own, as you put it, ‘thought/energy police lifestyle monitoring’ and reporting (not that he necessarily would have wanted you to).

                  Best with your HAM radio… Apparently, if understood correctly from looking into it some time ago, one might be able to check one’s email with it too.

            2. Fred, inquisitions are generally supportive of deeply ingrained religious beliefs. In this case it is the Derrick Jensen religion of a collapsed civilization making it all better for nature and the other species.
               In reality a fast collapse would be the most destructive scenario for the world’s species, but one can never get through to fanatics and fundamentalists. They merely keep responding mindlessly like an answering machine system.

               1. “In reality a fast collapse would be the most destructive scenario for the world’s species”

                  How fast is fast? Does the cause of the collapse matter (i.e. climate change induced famine vs peak oil induced famine vs something else)? Do you have any data to back up that assertion? Historical examples? Logic? How does that play out specifically?

                  It seems plausible to suggest that the more rapidly a super predator is removed from an ecosystem the better off the prey and displaced species might do in the long run. If the electricity was cut off for 12 months I think 90% of Americans would be dead by the end of the year, many sooner than that (no refrigeration, decreased healthcare technology, no electric pumps etc etc). What events would transpire in that 12 months that would be so bad for other species that it would be in the other species best interest to keep the electricity on? Are you meaning multiple nuclear power plant failures?
                  Bear in mind please that most folks (almost all folks really) can’t light a fire without a Bic lighter, hunt without a 4×4 (if at all), or sooth their mind without a TV.

                  http://energyskeptic.com/2016/emp-commission-estimates-nationwide-blackout-lasting-1-year-could-kill-up-to-9-of-10-americans-through-starvation-disease-and-societal-collapse/

               2. Sounds like you are another pro-collapsenik. Is that true?
                  There is no good way to collapse fast, nature bats last but is wrecked first.
                  No, the most likely fast collapse scenarios (less than a century) generally involve massive changes to the atmosphere, eradication of wild species at a scale way beyond what we have today, fast pollution plumes entering the environment, radiation disasters.
                  As the cities and towns burn and as people burn everything in site for warmth, power and just from chaos the initial cooling of the planet will be quickly overcome by even stronger heating. Many of the gas and oil wells will be untended, pipelines will spring more leaks, methane will be escaping continuously for the next century or more. Chemical storage will leak and burn, efforts to continue production will often end in failure and disaster. Coal will be used at high rates because it is available and easy to use/store.
                  Food shortages will have caused the eradication of local wildlife in short order. Many herds of cattle and other farm animals will die. Farming will become more primitive and not very safe, for a while. Some areas will light up again, others will be dark at night. Eventually new tech will filter in from the ROW as they move into the vacuum created.

                  Of course there are the very fast scenarios where various stressors provide initiation of wars including nuclear wars. None of it is clean or pretty and nature takes a huge hit, right up to planetary wide death.

                  In none of the scenarios do the wild animals or plants do well against the hungry/crazy bands of humans with their ability to screw up the world. The trees don’t either.

                  As far as the article you recommended, I stopped reading at “And hey, the truth is, the electric grid is coming down one way or another. Without natural gas, wind and solar can’t be balanced (no energy storage is in sight), and the electric grid is falling apart.” No sense in wasting time on an author that starts with a false premise.

                  Even if all Americans were magically wiped out in an instant, that is only about 5 percent of world population. So what? Big deal. The ROW can pop that amount of babies out in a few years. The ROW would probably breath a sigh of relief and then migrate into North America. Well, maybe not most of it as the nuclear facilities failed and made many areas very dangerous to inhabit.

                  Only sane way is to try and transistion to new energy and slowly change civilization into a workable system. Those who wish for fast collapses don’t know what they wish for, the planet will be an entirely new place, not one that humans or most life have endured before.

                  In fast scenarios, the survivors will generally repeat history or at least rhyme with it as they race to attain their former glories and take territory, energy and materials. Nobody said that stupidity can’t rule, it often does even during the best of times.

                  Welcome to the Red Forest.

                  Forests Around Chernobyl Aren’t Decaying Properly

                  It wasn’t just people, animals and trees that were affected by radiation exposure at Chernobyl, but also the decomposers: insects, microbes, and fungi

                  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/forests-around-chernobyl-arent-decaying-properly-180950075/

               3. “Sounds like you are another pro-collapsenik.”

                  Incorrect. I am not here to advocate for a certain outcome. I don’t particularly want collapse to happen, but irregardless of my wants I believe it will happen. Unlike you I’m am not here to advocate for the future as I wish it to be. I am here, in part, to discuss the future as I assess that it likely will be. A distinction that is apperently lost on you.
                  What I’d like to see happen and what I think will likely happen are two very different things. You should try it. You sound like a self driving car salesman most of the time.
                  I suspect a wide ranging famine will likely contribute to high mortality from a wide ranging illness, as it has done in the past. I don’t see your beloved self driving cars mitigating that event. If self driving cars were all that you say they’re cracked up to be then maybe we should send some to Syria and Yemen. Perhaps they’ll all be holding hands singing kumbayaby the end of the week.

                  Regardless of your thoughts about the article; the fact of the matter is that the EMP Commission estimates that a nationwide blackout lasting one year could kill up to 9 of 10 Americans through starvation, disease, and societal collapse. I’d call that a fast collapse. How is a slow collapse that sustains human populations and their ravenous consumption of resources better for the other species? I don’t think an EMP is likely, but the source of the electrical service interruption is not my point. My point is that without electricity some have concluded that 90% are gonners, mostly high density city folks I’d suspect.

                  “When the Black Death swept through Europe in 1347, it was one of the deadliest disease outbreaks in human history, eventually killing between a third and half of Europeans. … A widespread famine that weakened the population over decades could help explain the Black Death’s particularly high mortality.”
                  https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/01/did-famine-worsen-the-black-death/

               4. ? I don’t think an EMP is likely, but the source of the electrical service interruption is not my point

                  Perhaps it should be the point – can we imagine anything besides a very powerful EMP that would create that kind of electrical service interruption?

               5. Survivalist said”What I’d like to see happen and what I think will likely happen are two very different things. You should try it. You sound like a self driving car salesman most of the time.”
                  You have me confused with someone else. I have never advocated autonomous cars, in fact I have questioned their use as a service a number of times both logically and mathematically on this site. I do advocate EV’s as an alternative to ICE’s because of their lower energetics and lower environmental impact.
                  So get your people straight or what they say straight before riding roughshod over people.
                  We all know we walk a tightrope living at the whim of a mechanical construct powered by fossil fuels. My idea is to ease the destruction to nature by transistion to less destructive alternatives and methods. I never mentioned population levels in relation to an energy transistion, that was your fast collapse assumption. So to that end I advocate certain changes be encouraged to reduce the destruction.
                  I would rather see a somewhat viable environment than a completely destroyed one.

                  You believe there will be a collapse. OK, that is your belief. Fine. Peak oil helps with that, you are in the right place. Without alternatives peak oil with a fast drop would reduce global population by about 1/3 to 1/2. But since everyone knows about alternatives they would be built ASAP and the whole ball of wax would start all over again with coal and natural gas aiding the way. Population would rise again and …. into the next cycle of destruction and failure.

                  You need to face the facts that fast collapse would unleash the worst in mankind and cause untold amounts of harm to the environment as well as push climate change, if it didn’t outright destroy all life on the planet.

               6. My apologies if I have confused your messaging with someone else. It would not be unlike me to mix up the messages of those who seem overly optimistic to me. Sincerest regrets.

                  I think entropy and lack of maintenance will take care of the grid. Perhaps not very quickly everywhere at once, but certainly on a long enough time line.

                  http://theconversation.com/the-old-dirty-creaky-us-electric-grid-would-cost-5-trillion-to-replace-where-should-infrastructure-spending-go-68290

                  Other than the ramifications of multiple nuclear power plant meltdowns that might occur in a very fast collapse scenario, I’m not convinced that a fast collapse would be more detrimental to other species than a slow collapse. Given the loss of species over the last few decades it seems to me that the quicker those those other species are released from our imposing demands on the collective environment we share the better it would be for their future survival. A fast collapse/population bottleneck might select for intelligence, in which case the next future run of humans might not be as ravenous and destructive as the last. I don’t see a slow collapse smarting up the behaviour of this current bunch. I don’t see more time for education having much impact on the folks I see in this world.
                  Depressing trends vs hopeful possibilities, or as I’ve seen Ron call it- if things change then things will be different. I see no indication things will change (for the better). If you’re right then I’ll sell my retreat to someone shopping for a lake cottage, at a profit, if I’m right then you’ll be fertilizer much sooner than you might currently anticipate. Risk management 101.

               7. I actually lived a year without electricity or running water in Micronesia in the 1970’s.
                  I was a good spear fisherman. I agree most ‘Merikins would be helpless.

               8. Shit, we just went almost a week without power here in mid-winter. No helplessness here. Nobody hurt. No panic, just annoyance which happens anyway.
                  Now the city areas don’t have much recourse, experience or preparation for such events and would quickly have major problems.
                  I don’t know how water is supplied to all areas but the cities and towns in the dense regions east and south of me were using diesel pumps or had diesel pumps for backup, so water pressure stays up in power outages. Maybe that has changed over time.
                  I think the fantasy of a year without electric is just that. No one knows what an EMP would actually do and if it’s nuke war then it doesn’t matter anyway.
                  However the EMP commission did not find major damage to vehicles from the tests they did.
                  Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control scholar, wrote in Foreign Policy in 2013, “(the) EMP Commission exposed 37 cars and 18 trucks to EMP effects in a laboratory environment. While EMP advocates claim the results of an EMP attack would be “planes falling from the sky, cars stalling on the roadways, electrical networks failing, food rotting,” the actual results were much more modest. Of the 55 vehicles exposed to EMP, six at the highest levels of exposure needed to be restarted. A few more showed “nuisance” damage to electronics, such as blinking dashboard displays.”

                  https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a25883/north-korea-cant-kill-ninety-percent-of-americans/

                  Maybe the continued move toward increasingly distributed and home/building power systems is a good thing. The grid will shortly reach distribution parity anyway and shrivel in size.

               9. I would worry about lack of diesel first.
                  All major cities would be food free quickly.
                  We currently run on diesel, and literally can’t survive beyond a very short period without it.

               10. I am not going to play that game.

               11. I wouldn’t either—
                   You would lose, just by embracing reality.

               12. Good luck with leading your flock to paradise.

               13. Hightrekker,

                   Could you paint us a realistic scenario for diesel output decreasing very quickly?

                   It’s not likely to happen.

               14. Dennis-
                   Not currently.
                   We would starve without it in days for most.

                   With a much smaller population, possibly, but it would be challenging.

               15. Hightrekker,

                   Output declines gradually, prices increase, fuel is used more efficiently, more goods are shipped by rail, rail service is expanded, more EV and hybrid trucks are built or trucks convert to natural gas.

                   Diesel output is not likely to go from current levels to zero overnight, it will happen gradually over 30 to 40 years.

               16. I agree Dennis, it is going to go away gradually, not overnight.
                   We shall see the outcome, as many things are possible.
                   But the current system is headed for extinction.

               17. Hi Hightrekker,

                   I take it as given that things will change, always have, always will. What those specific changes are, will be influenced by the decisions humans make both collectively and individually and are impossible to predict accurately in advance.

                   Total fertility ratios (TFR) for women worldwide have been cut in half in about 40 years (5 to 2.5 births per woman from 1965 to 2005), should that trend continue (as has been the case in several nations in Europe and East Asia) and TFR worldwide average falls to 1.25 by 2060 ( a slightly lower decline rate than previously), then World population gets to sustainable levels by 2200 (around 1.5 Billion) just from a reduced birth rate (assuming average life expectancy tops out at 90 years).

                   Many things are possible, if we assume the constant change of the past continues into the future.

               18. Diesel’s an irrelevance. A certain amount of stupidity and heavy subsidies has caused American cities to import food using diesel trucks, but they can be replaced with electric trucks or electric railways without difficulty.

               19. I would worry about lack of diesel first.

                   No worries Exxon and Synthetic Genomics to the rescue… /sarc

                   CRISPR-edited algae with high biofuel yield created by ExxonMobil, Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics

                   https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2017/06/21/crispr-edited-algae-high-biofuel-yield-created-exxonmobil-craig-venters-synthetic-genomics/

                   La Jolla [California’s] Synthetic Genomics and oil giant ExxonMobil say they have created an oil-rich strain of algae that represents a major research advance toward commercializing algae-based biofuels.

                   Researchers have doubled lipid content in a genetically engineered strain of Nannochloropsis gaditana, the companies say in a study published … in Nature Biotechnology. It has been increased from about 20 percent in the natural form of this edible ocean algae to 40-55 percent in the engineered strain.

                   Moreover, this increase comes without significantly reducing the algae’s growth rate, the study said. And the oil-like lipids from may potentially be processed in existing refineries and used like diesel.

                   The technology is certainly real enough but I don’t see it ever scaling beyond just being an artisanal niche market product for specialty applications, just from an ERoEI and thermodynamics perspective.

                   Assuming civilization continues. In my view the future of transport is electric and not liquid fuel based. That includes trains, planes, ships, trucks buses, cars, bikes, you name it.

               20. I’m in awe of CRISPR (and two women should get the Nobel for it).
                   However, it is going to be a while before
                   “In my view the future of transport is electric and not liquid fuel based”
                   It is the obvious conclusion, but we will be really challenged to get there.
                   But I’m on your side!

               21. I’d guess that synthetic liquid fuels could replace about 5% of current liquid fuel consumption. That would do for long distance/high speed aviation, niche seasonal agricultural needs, and niche very long distance or remote transportation needs

               22. Seventh anniversary of Fukushima coming up 3/11. 40 plus reactors still down.

               23. No grid for forty five days and ninety percent of us would be dead. Maybe sooner.

                   I would be forted up, with a few old friends who are pretty salty characters, as salty as need be. Retired military who have been shot at, and hit too, sometimes.

                   We might make it, because I know how to grow enough food, and I have a substantial stash of diesel, fertilizer, and other essentials, enough to make it long enough to go back to the ways of my great grandparents , when electricity was something they had only heard of, but never seen applied.

                   But the odds we could survive are no better than even. There would be too many people going a viking. Sooner or later some of them would get us. Only the toughest and meanest sob’s would make it raiding for six months or longer, they would kill each other off, and in any case they would find fewer and fewer victims to rob from one week to the next.

                   Some of the last survivors, having proven themselves to be extremely good at their trade, would very likely find us, and pick us off. Ya gotta go outside to work.

                   Maybe we could go proactive, and hunt them, for a few miles around????

               24. OFM,

                   And how does the grid go down for 45 days worldwide?

                   World War 3, asteroid strike, something realistic?

               25. Realism, shmealism. It doesn’t make for a good story!

               26. Hi Dennis,

                   Barring an asteroid strike, I don’t see the grid going down, world wide.

                   But nuclear or cyber war could take it down in the USA, according to some people who ought to know.

                   If it ever goes down, hard enough to keep it down nationwide for a few days, there’s a real possibility so many things will go wrong so fast we will never be able to get it up again in time to prevent total economic and social collapse.

                   I don’t know enough about computers to understand the odds of the cyber war scenario. Hopefully there are plenty of really good programmers working on stopping it from happening.

                   But it seems rather likely to me that no more than a handful of EMP bombs, if they are really big ones, would be enough.

                   There’s a tendency among people who have a visceral dislike of Yankee military power, of the MIC, to allow this prejudice to lead them to thinking we’re the bad guys, and the rest of the world are the good guys, and that nobody will ever again attack us, that no powerful country will ever again wage a war of aggression.

                   That’s bullshit, pure and simple , in my estimation. It’s not to say we don’t have a few things to be ashamed of, such as nearly wiping out the people who got here before we Euro’s did, etc.

                   History ain’t over.

               27. Hi OFM,

                   In the highly interconnected World that currently exists, the kind of scenario you suggest seems unlikely.

                   This would be akin to burning the house down to catch a mouse.

                   Possible for an arsonist I guess, but unlikely to be a widespread WW3 type event.

                   Humans are stupid, but perhaps not that stupid.

                   Of course there was a recent election which suggests otherwise. 🙂

               28. Pffft. We are not that dependent on the larger grid.

                   Perhaps some areas have less local generation than the city I live in, which is aiming for 100% renewable local generation. We’d just have electricity shortages; something Africa and India live with.

                   I’ve lived through a multi-day blackout, covering the whole of the Northeast US, multiple times. It really wasn’t that big a deal. And that was when we were entirely dependent on large generators and local grids couldn’t “island”. Which they can now.

                   As for EMPs, there’s been a trend towards shielded equipment for major electrical stuff. It’s pretty well developed.

               29. Gonefishing, here’s a philosophical pondering for you in re: your post. Would you rather be a person who has all the opportunities but can’t see them or a person who can see all the opportunities but can’t have them?

               30. Stupid question. As if a person can be another person. What you propose is fantasy not philosophy.

            3. Fred,

               I wouldn’t grant the premise that your lifestyle is relevant.

               People who are trying to stall change (Climate deniers, FF advocates, collapseniks who believe FF propaganda, etc) focus on hypocrisy to change the subject. In fact, individual change is the wrong focus: we need systemic change which changes the rules for everyone. To argue that individuals need to unilaterally sacrifice is unrealistic.

               1. No worries! I’m highly aware that the main issues are all systemic. As an individual I only have so much control. I only responded with some aspects of my personal circumstance because I keep being called a hypocrite. LOL! now that is the perfect case of the kettle calling the pot black, if ever there was one.
                  And I know I don’t owe an explanation of how I live to anyone.

   2. Caelan,

      I Canada much different from the USA as far as real GDP per capita? That’s really the metric that determines environmental damage as it is a global market.

      In 2016 for Canada it was $50,262 per person in 2010 US$ and for the US it was $52,364 per person, about 4% higher.

      Not really a big difference from my perspective.

      https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDUSA

      https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDCAN

      1. I think that adjustment for cost of living would make the difference slightly larger. IOW, I suspect that exchange rates are screwing things up, because of Canadian oil exports.

         OTOH, Canadians use roughly as much oil and coal per capita as people in the US – I suspect that’s more important than GDP for environmental harm.

         1. Hi Nick,

            Cost of living comparisons between nations are difficult to do, using market exchange rates or purchasing power parity are the two methods used in standard international economics.

            Remember the goods are traded, doesn’t really matter where they are produced, they are consumed and so they are produced all over the World.

            China produces much that is consumed elsewhere (Europe, Canada, and the US). Europe seems very “clean” because they consume dirty goods produced elsewhere.

            1. Hmm. I haven’t read the first part of this conversation, so I’m not sure what’s being argued about.

               I was referring to Canadian consumption of FF, not their production. Canadians (like Aussies and Americans) are big FF consumers.

               Most Chinese production is consumed inside China. They have very large import & export flows, but their net exports aren’t really that large as a percent of world GDP – about .5% (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/11/china-reports-december-exports-import-trade-data.html). I suspect that Germany, for instance, is a large net exporter of heavy industrial goods.

      2. What exactly is your point, Dennis?

         The USA has ~10x the population of Canada, but you are talking global market anyway, yes?

         What about per capita parity? Where’s China or India? What about each individual, vis-a-vis, say, wealth and income disparities and statistical spreads and whatnot?

         What about all those problems with GDP?

         1. The point is that you live in Canada, others live in the US.

            GDP per capita is the impact of any average individual of a nation.

            The damage is done mostly in the production of goods all over the World as the system is interconnected, the production only happens because there is a demand for the consumption of those goods and services.

            Absolutely correct that poorer nations have a smaller impact from their average citizen because GDP per capita is lower than Canada or the US.

            My point was simply that the average Canadian has about the same impact on the environment as the average US citizen (about 4% lower impact due to slightly lower income.)

            Nick, the carbon intensity of goods produced in China tends to be high, but quite a large percentage of those goods are not consumed in China.

            I don’t have the data to determine the total environmental impact of the particular goods consumed in each nation. Found something at link below

            http://carbonfootprintofnations.com/content/environmental_footprint_of_nations/

            If we focus on carbon footprint, US is 2nd worst at 26 , Canada is number 5 at 21 and Australia is number 4 at 22, units at millions of tonnes of CO2 eq per capita. China is 4, India is 1.7, and Germany is 16, data is from 2004.

   3. “I’ve been trying near as best as I can with mine, but can only go so far if Earth is occupied by others whose greedy and destructive lifestyle is non-negotiable.”

      Indeed; it’s actually a game theory problem, the prisoners’ dilemma.

      I’ve explained before that I was happy to make money off of fossil fuel stocks because if I didn’t make money off them, some other jerk who was nastier than me would make money off them. I voted against the boards of directors every year, which is just virtue signalling, because corporate elections are essentially phony, but why not vote against them. I divested at the point at which I concluded that fossil fuels were *bad investments*. Now I look forward to watching the stupid greedheads *lose* their money in fossil fuel stocks while I profit off of renewables.

      I have no intention of reducing my lifestyle. Yet I’ve switched everything from fossil to electric as fast as I can, because in almost all cases, electric is actually nicer. Now that it’s also cheaper, it’s a no-brainer to switch. Of course I am pursuing superinsulation, because a tight home is more comfortable *and* cheaper. (I have, of course, abandoned any element of my lifestyle which doesn’t actually give me pleasure; that is just waste.)

      We are now at the point where insulation, energy efficiency, electrification and renewable energy give you a better lifestyle and make you richer. Heck, the middle-class of sub-Saharan Africa know this now, and are getting solar panels, LED lights, heat pumps, etc. as fast as they can afford to import them!

      Aggressively going 100% renewable is finanically sound at this point: it’s just late enough that you don’t pay an early adopter tax, and now the sooner you do it the richer you get. Now the other guys, the oil barons, are stuck in the prisoners’ dilemma: whichever ones defect first (such as DONG, which got out of oil and gas entirely) win.

      Market capitalism: love it or hate it, it’s worth understanding it.

3. Earth depicting today’s global SO2 concentration, it becomes obvious where the pollution is being generated and how widespread. The darker areas are generally 100 to 150 ug/m3 but some areas are above that and I found one over 400. Acid rain, wrecked lungs, and global dimming anyone?

   

   1. FYI: ?????

      

      1. That’s it, that is the response to a world changing and deadly global event? That is your comment on it? Sad. Does not bode well for humans or the environment.

4. Northern Hemisphere GISSTEMP anomalies by latitudinal zone. It can be seen that each zone temperature anomaly is now beyond it’s original range, lowest current anomaly is now higher than the highest original anomaly at data set start. The Arctic anomaly has increased about three times faster than the equatorial region.

   

   1. The temperature rise in the northern hemisphere is due to the magnetic north pole changeing positions. The poles reverse about every 20k yrs so the magnetic north from the 1980’s is around 140 mi south of today’s magnetic north.

      1. Thanks for coming out short bus.

         “Earth has settled in the last 20 million years into a pattern of a pole reversal about every 200,000 to 300,000 years, although it has been more than twice that long since the last reversal.”
         https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-poleReversal.html

         Stay in school kids! (Or you’ll end up a trump voting opiate fiend)

         1. Except the data hasn’t matched observations. Case in point. It is likely the rationale for what is happening, is the world’s poles are designed to gain ice on one side if they lose it on the other.

            1. He’s the drummer for The Police, what does he know but De Do Do Do De Da Da Da.

            2. Who designed them, Slartibartfast? He only did coasts really, no wonder the poles are screwed up.

               1. +1

               2. He also tried Fjords in Africa but his handlers told him that wouldn’t fly in the tropics… 😉

      2. The farce is strong with this one.

   2. The intelligence level around here is becoming skewed and strongly bimodal. NOT talking about the mental ones, they are more amusing in their long and contorted ramblings, though oft annoying.

      Hopefully a few are gaining something or at least thinking about what I present here.
      The festering low tail intellects seem to be attracted by it as bugs are attracted to any shining light in the darkness, yet heavily confused by it.

      1. Must be those damn magnetic reversals,

         ARCTIC HAS WARMEST WINTER ON RECORD: ‘IT’S JUST CRAZY, CRAZY STUFF’

         “The extended warmth really has staggered all of us,” Mottram said. In February, Arctic sea ice covered 5.4m sq miles, about 62,000 sq miles smaller than last year’s record low, the ice data center reported, and it was 521,000 square miles below the 30-year normal.

         https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/06/arctic-warmest-winter-record-climate-change

         1. Are you saying they have iron ore in their heads? 🙂
            Lots of magnetite around here so difficult to determine magnetic field changes.

            I guess the future slogan will not be “I don’t think we are in Kansas anymore.”
            instead it will be “Where did the Arctic go?”. The huge change will be in the sound of the region. Instead of crunch, crunch, crunch it will be splok, splush, splok to the tune of cries “Stuck in the mud again!” and “Where is my other boot #%!*$$?”.

            Of course the sun will still be reliable.

            1. Sad thought: we’ve lost Santa’s workshop and the Fortress of Solitude.

               1. Et Tu Nick G. Et Tu?

      2. Most of us aren’t dedicating our lives to climate change. We’ll only think about it if we happen to get an unusually warm day where we live or maybe there’s a bad flood nearby. When such things happen we’ll say our elected politicians “should do something about this” but only as long as there’s no cost or inconvenience to us.

         I believe the main reason you climate scientists have a life of frustration is how your job is to make all sorts of grandiose predictions about the far off future with no way for the general public to verify if you were right except in hindsight, which will be so many years away in most cases for people to care now.

         1. Hey look, I am dangling a string in front of you. Now you are distracted and all your worries are gone. No need to think about the difficult problems. Oh look, a mouse!

            1. No need to think about the difficult problems. Oh look, a mouse!

               Perhaps a mouse infected with toxoplasmosis?

               https://www.nature.com/news/parasite-makes-mice-lose-fear-of-cats-permanently-1.13777

               Parasite makes mice lose fear of cats permanently
               Behavioural changes persist after Toxoplasma infection is cleared.

               Eliot Barford

               A parasite that infects up to one-third of people around the world may have the ability to permanently alter a specific brain function in mice, according to a study published in PLoS ONE today1.

               Toxoplasma gondii is known to remove rodents’ innate fear of cats. The new research shows that even months after infection, when parasites are no longer detectable, the effect remains. This raises the possibility that the microbe causes a permanent structural change in the brain.,,

               …In humans, studies have linked Toxoplasma infection with behavioural changes and schizophrenia. One work found an increased risk of traffic accidents in people infected with the parasite2; another found changes in responses to cat odour3. People with schizophrenia are more likely than the general population to have been infected with Toxoplasma, and medications used to treat schizophrenia may work in part by inhibiting the pathogen’s replication.

               1. Doesn’t toxoplasmosis kill a lot of human embryos and cause major birth defects to those that survive?

         2. That’s a false premise: wind and solar power are BETTER than coal: cleaner, safer, healthier, cheaper.

            EVs are BETTER than conventional ICE cars: faster, more powerful, quieter, safer, cleaner, cheaper (if you take fuel and maintenance costs into account).

            There’s no sacrifice, really, to moving away from fossil fuels.

            1. And lots quieter. Finally some peace and quiet.

            2. “That’s a false premise: wind and solar power are BETTER than coal: cleaner, safer, healthier, cheaper.

               EVs are BETTER than conventional ICE cars: faster, more powerful, quieter, safer, cleaner, cheaper (if you take fuel and maintenance costs into account).” ~ Nick G

               So what.

               Is a gun better than a knife to murder someone with?

               Put it this way:
               If we select your hyperlinked name, we will find your blog, wherein its last article is about plastic, with its title being…

               ‘Do we need crude oil to make plastic?’…

               But is that the right or ‘the best’ question?

               How about,

               ‘Do we need plastic?’…

               …such that is ostensibly overwhelming our ecosystems, more specifically, perhaps, our oceans?

               IOW, are (manufactured/contrived) ‘imperatives’ for plastic, EV’s, or so-called renewables, etc., in particular contexts, ‘false premises’, so to speak?

               1. Hi Caelan,

                  Does your living space have heat? Electricity?

                  Let’s assume you and the rest of the World do not use any “so-called” renewable energy and stick with fossil fuels and nuclear energy only.

                  Is that a better solution? Seems kind of status quo to me.

               2. It is not an either-or question and you are ignoring the contexts, Dennis.
                  But it’s par for the course around here and elsewhere, so I’m used to it.
                  If the status-quo doesn’t allow us a viable planet, how is it supposed to give us electricity?
                  Do you want electricity on a dying planet? I don’t.

                  People and planet first, actual technology second. Pretty simple math, so why do some people not seem to get it. Maybe they are insane like this culture.

               3. Caelan,

                  So one would need to come up with a plan that works for 8 billion people.

                  I suggest transitioning to something more sustainable over time.

                  You seem to oppose positive changes that would reduce fossil fuel use and energy use in general.

                  One cannot wave a magic wand and solve all problems. A concrete plan is needed, I have not seen one. Wishing things were better is nice, a plan to accomplish the task is better.

               4. Caelan,

                  Correct there are an infinite number of possibilities. You don’t seem to think renewable energy is a good idea, consistently framing it as a poor choice. I imagine you believe continued use of fossil fuels (aka status quo) is also a bad idea.

                  So fill in the blank with your excellent idea that works ideally for 8 billion humans and the rest of life on the planet.

                  I consistently ask this, and you consistently change the subject or pretend you didn’t see the question.

      3. Are you sure this is the best medium to get people thinking about what you’re presenting? What is your target audience?

         1. You have a good point about looking for better places to implement thought and discussion. I haven’t thought of myself as a salesman or marketer or even an entertainer who needs to develop an audience. It’s just part of my journey of discovery and thought that I share with others. Others may find it valuable in one way or another, they don’t have to jump into the comment section which is under fire at all times. They can just read it and maybe it will stimulate them to pursue something or investigate something. That is all.

            The answers are all out there. I would recommend the book Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan to Reverse Global Warming. It is an interesting compendium of ideas from many sources along with researched numbers on costs and effects. I look on it as a nice long list for young people to find their vocations in the future. They can be on the forefront of change instead of just being part of a decaying machine.

5. The PowerPoint Philosophe
   Waiting for Steven Pinker’s enlightenment.
   https://www.thenation.com/article/waiting-for-steven-pinkers-enlightenment/

   1. George Monbiot has some strong opinions concerning Pinker’s Enlightenment.

      https://www.monbiot.com/2018/03/09/contrary-to-reason/

6. A warm approach to the equinox

   http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2018/03/a-warm-approach-to-the-equinox/

7. Good news for astronomy buffs:

   CHINA UNVEILS PLANS FOR X-RAY SATELLITE TO PROBE MOST VIOLENT CORNERS OF THE UNIVERSE

   Chinese scientists “are becoming leaders in the field of x-ray astrophysics,” says Andrea Santangelo, an astrophysicist at the University of Tübingen in Germany and eXTP’s international coordinator. Last year, the National Space Science Center launched the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope, which is observing high-energy objects such as black holes and neutron stars. As early as 2021 it will be joined by the Einstein Probe, a wide-field x-ray sentinel for transient phenomena such as gamma ray bursts and the titanic collisions of neutron stars or black holes that generate gravitational waves. “For years we have used data from U.S. and European missions,” says eXTP Project Manager Lu Fangjun, an astrophysicist at the CAS Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing. Now, he says, “We want to contribute [observational data] to the international community.”

   http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/china-unveils-plans-x-ray-satellite-probe-most-violent-corners-universe

   1. It’s so good to see space missions that are driven by exploration and knowledge seeking rather than military or frivolous communication systems. The Chinese are can be a strong force for positive change in the world and should be congratulated for their efforts.

      1. Should we also congratulate them for the militarism of tiny islands of the South China Sea and following the lead of Nicolas Maduro in establishing a “president for life” structure?

         Positive change is, apparently, in the eye of the beholder.

         1. The US Has Military Bases in 80 Countries.

         2. That’s nothing, the US can go way beyond setting up a monarchy and a few military posts by killing hundreds of thousands, displacing millions and racking up huge amounts of debt just because we want to, no actual reason.

            http://www.businessinsider.com/iraq-war-facts-numbers-stats-total-2013-3

8. A world fraying at the edges. It’s a world of boundaries and edges, often unseen or ignored, but the edges tell the tales of change.
   The obvious boundaries of ice and ocean are heavily discussed, but the local and regional boundaries are not.
   I live in a hill and mountain region not that far from coastal plains and at the edge of what is called the continental region.
   Here, just a few degrees determines whether there is 20 or 30 inches of snow versus rain, sleet, ice and low snow events. This winter has been one of those, with February being warmer so far than March yet heavy snow falls happening just 20 to 40 miles from me while I experience atypical early spring like messes of alternating freeze and thaw events or just rain all winter. I am now in a boundary region, on the very edge of change. Soon that will move north and west of me and I will be experiencing for the most part the climate of the more southern lowland coastal regions (with occasional incursions of cold northern air to remind one of the past climate). Having mud during winters is not the previous norm where the ground used to stay frozen until spring or near spring.
   The boundary lines of long term freeze are moving and that will change the life systems in those areas. Having less reflective snow in the winter and early spring is an obvious energy shift in the system. Having wild temperature and humidity/rainfall swings is less obvious though more devastating. Winter in the north is like a desert for plant and animal life. Now it is a chaotic, unpredictable world that will result in large changes in the biome as the boundaries move across the planet.

9. AS COUNTRIES CRANK UP THE AC, EMISSIONS OF POTENT GREENHOUSE GASES ARE LIKELY TO SKYROCKET

   “Growing populations and economic development are exponentially increasing the demand for refrigeration and air conditioning,” says Helena Molin Valdés, head of the United Nations’s Climate & Clean Air Coalition Secretariat in Paris. “If we continue down this path,” she says, “we will put great pressure on the climate system.” But a slow start to ridding appliances of the most damaging compounds, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), suggests that the pressure will continue to build. HFCs are now “the fastest-growing [source of greenhouse gas] emissions in every country on Earth,” Molin Valdés says.

   http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/countries-crank-ac-emissions-potent-greenhouse-gases-are-likely-skyrocket

   1. Not really to do with your post but I read somewhere that if the early refrigerant scientists had decided to use bromine instead of chlorine (i.e. BFCs) it might have all been over for us by now, as they are orders of magnitude more potent in catalysing ozone destruction. A near miss.

      1. You mean Halon, which was used as a refrigerant and is still used in fire suppression in some critical situations such as aircraft and military. The Montreal protocol caused the banning of manufacture in the US but not the substance itself. A quick internet search showed there is a market for Halon.

         Halon 1301 was only supposed to be sourced from the Halon storage bank, however Halon 1301 has been produced as a feedstock for making pesticides. This has caused concern that some will find it’s way into the fire suppression systems at a much lower price than from the storage bank (recycled Halon) and reduce the efforts to implement alternatives.

         1. Halon fire suppression = days of cleaning and rebuilding disk drives. Been there.

            NAOM

         2. IIRC In the 80’s FERC required periodic testing the Suppression systems at LNG Terminal. ~50K worth Halon per test. Most everyone had to leave.

         3. Some Halons might have bromine, but there would have been a full range as there are for CFCs, and obviously there are a lot more fridges and ACs than specialised fire systems. It was just that they chose chlorine, as it was a bit easier to get (when they were starting out bromine came from seaweed but would have still been available).

   2. We could reduce the use of AC with increased insulation and shading. Large buildings of glass concrete, and steel are just the opposite of what we need, they are solar collectors and heat traps. Design of buildings could go a long way to reducing AC energy demand and subsequently HFC’s.
      Refrigeration could also be dramatically by design.
      Mass production is great but only if it does not produce massive problems.

10. Off topic trivia (for astronomy buffs)

    NEUTRON STARS DISCOVERED ON COLLISION COURSE

    “What can PSR J1946+2052 do for us? This extreme system will be especially useful as a gravitational laboratory. Continued observations of PSR J1946+2052 will pin down with unprecedented precision parameters like the Einstein delay and the rate of decay of the binary’s orbit due to the emission of gravitational waves, testing the predictions of general relativity to an order of magnitude higher precision than was possible before.”

    http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/palfa-discovers-neutron-stars-on-a-collision-course/

    1. So a major collision will confirm general relativity? 🙂

11. Bonnet Carré Spillway Opens for 12th Time Since 1931 to Protect New Orleans
    https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/bonnet-carr-spillway-opens-12th-time-1931-protect-new-orleans

12. Earlier I mentioned a bimodal situation, however I did not realize it’s significance in the potential crash of civilization. In this case the bimodal situation is economic disparity. If taken to an extreme it apparently causes a crash of civilization all on it’s own. Of course there are now many other factors that can lead to the end of civilization.

    Some thoughts and investigations into a collapses of civilization.

    On the other hand, Western societies may not meet with a violent, dramatic end. In some cases, civilisations simply fade out of existence – becoming the stuff of history not with a bang but a whimper. The British Empire has been on this path since 1918, Randers says, and other Western nations might go this route as well. As time passes, they will become increasingly inconsequential and, in response to the problems driving their slow fade-out, will also starkly depart from the values they hold dear today. “Western nations are not going to collapse, but the smooth operation and friendly nature of Western society will disappear, because inequity is going to explode,” Randers argues. “Democratic, liberal society will fail, while stronger governments like China will be the winners.”

    http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse

    1. If the US follows the path of the UK, we’d be in pretty good shape. The UK doesn’t really seem to have lost much with the disintegration of the empire. They say that the average Roman was better off after the empire collapsed.

       I’m not sure empires provide much for the great majority of citizens beyond a very questionable prestige.

       1. I agree Nick, the US doesn’t have an empire in the colonial sense but it does have a widely stretched global military presence, an empire of force and control. This does not send back food or materials as the British empire did for England, it mostly just costs us a lot of money and resources. It acts as a huge drain on the nation, weakening us.
          Now the vultures are building an empire internally and sucking the US dry from the inside out while telling us it’s good for us.
          Yes, empire is just too expensive and leaves one open to parasitic infection. The ones most hurt by the factors leading to collapse are the lower classes, so collapse might very well be better for them.

          As far as the UK situation, let’s see how Brexit goes.

       2. I suspect that those who do best when an Empire disintegrates are those who are smart enough to stay out of all the various conflicts that erupt between the crisis cults in the process of it. Going down to the rally with brass knuckles to take a side in the Nazi vs the Antifacist protests/battles isn’t good for the health, and bears little impact on the outcome. The collapse of Rome was probably a nice thing for most, getting the Roman boot off your neck and all. But those who got sucked into the conflicts to preserve Empire, or dominate its ruins, just ended up maimed or dead. Throughout history many people have had a funny habit of lining up to sacrifice themselves for the preservation of the elites. Ever checked out a military recruiting office lately?

          Mexico is a interesting little collapse lab these days. Coming soon to a community near you.
          https://warisboring.com/mexico-has-no-clue-what-to-do-about-vigilante-militas/

          1. I think Tim Morgan has a lot of good points (above), but one issue I have is that he projects a decline as if it will be smooth, although there’s not much else he can do. Generally as things get scarce decisions get worse and more short term, so it goes down in a series of jumps, especially if things stay centralised and the hegemony extract a higher proportion of the available resources.

          2. I lived in Jalisco for quite a while in Mexico.
             Just don’t express wealth, and you are cool.
             No problems– the overwhelming force on you when you return to the States.

13. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-08/44-things-you-didnt-know-about-oil
    Quiz @ 16:00

14. Natural Gas will become very expensive.

    The predictions of stratospheric natural gas prices were a regular topic in 2005 and drove a search for alternatives. the graph shows why people were concerned.

    https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/06/11/Kliesen.pdf

    12 years later and those predictions never came to pass.

    https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/natural-gas

    I do not particularly wish for high gas prices, but I do wish the market worked in such a way as to make this disgraceful waste a thing of the past.

    http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2017/07/10/new-gas-flaring-data-shows-mixed-results

    If you consider that the UK consumes 4.2BCM of gas per year the flaring of an estimated 149BCM per year is grotesque in the extreme. Particularly when I know people living in cold houses because they cannot afford a £400 winter gas bill.

    12 years after all those dire predictions and the world burns up 35 times what the United Kingdom uses because the price is too cheap to get it to market.

    Free market economists have no answer to this waste, only anti free market laws will stop this and they are either not in place or not enforced.

    1. Hi Peter,

       “Free market” economists study externalities, which are the effects of the economy (both good and bad) which are not priced properly by markets. Government regulation and investment is needed in these areas for both pollution and public goods (roads and public transport).

       You are correct that generally governments do not do a very good job in these areas as they often get captured by special interest lobbies.

       1. “Special interests” are the norm. They’re what you start with, like the king of England before the Magna Carta. Government is what starts to devolve power from private feudal lords.

          Capture by special interests can be considered a flaw of government, but it’s the nature of things, it’s the eternal fight between the majority of people to have power over their lives, and the autocracies that resist.

    2. Yes, there is a 4 percent waste of natural gas energy due to flaring, mostly due to economics.

       1. Gone fishing,

          It is actually the lack of a market that is the problem. There is no “market” for clean air, it is a public good with no price attached. Economists know this should be handled with government regulation, but powerful special interests override the recommendations of economists and recommend little or no pollution regulations.

          No doubt you know about externalities, but for those who do not a brief summary at link below

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

          1. I wonder how much gets lost in the purifying, piping, and distribution.

15. This one is for every one, but especially for those of us who are dogmatically sure they know it all.;-)

    http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161021-why-there-could-be-many-copies-of-you

    It’s good to remember that there really is such a thing as a HIERARCHY of knowledge, where in laymen and tradespeople reside at the bottom, with teachers one step up, working professionals a step up, then working scientists in various fields such as geology, medicine, chemistry, etc, another step up, and then at the very top, physics. Everybody is necessarily forced to just DEAL WITH IT, to make whatever they think or believe or want to prove or disprove……… consistent with physics.

    The only step above physics is pure math…….. although the two are often one and the same at the extreme edge.

    It is said that such mathematicians suffer mere mortals to serve as their servants, but they converse only with God.

    http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161021-why-there-could-be-many-copies-of-you

    1. https://xkcd.com/435/

       1. Yes, let us all bow down to physics and mathematics that has placed all life on earth in imminent threat of complete extinction. Bow down to chemistry, the bringer of millions of products that make civilization operate while spewing horrendous and dangerous pollution across the globe, choking air, land and ocean. Forget not the purposeful chemical war on planetary life spawned by chemistry. Can’t live with it.
          But we cannot forget biology, now tinkering with the very genetic structures so hard won over eons of successful adaptation. Who knows what Frankensteinian monsters will be unleashed across the globe all for noble purposes such as soap, cosmetics, the better snack food and fuel for our butt movers. When that latest bio-weapon reduces a world of humans to a world of rotting corpses, hold high the science behind it. The rest of the creatures will not even celebrate, they will merely live their lives as the should.

          Yes, mankind and his great swollen ego of knowledge spewing destruction and pollution everywhere he touches and far beyond even that. Bow down to the great destroyers and producers of garbage who know few boundaries and follow not their so dearly held ethics and moralities. Bow down to all the greatness that science and mathematics has wrought upon the earth.

          Brought to you by the Reality Check Institute whose motto is “You can ignore things but they still exist.”

          1. All true, but let us not forget that we too are ultimately products of that very universe, from the quantum fluctuations that led to the big bang to the stars that died and produced the basic building blocks that underlie the chemistry of life that evolved by natural selection and produced the tree that bore us as fruit and within which emerged the property of consciousness that allows us to contemplate our own navels and place in that universe… we might now learn to manipulate that quantum reality to artificially enhance our intelligence and manipulate our own biology and consciousness and the universe won’t give a rats ass what the consequences of that will be. It is 100% up to us, what we do with our new found powers. What will be will be. Good luck to all!
             Cheers!

             1. Just a reality check Fred, to those who wave the banner too high and hold the fruits of civilization in a rose colored glass.
                Science and engineering can be used for much good and the potential for humans to reintegrate into a bio-scheme that fits within our planetary ecosystem is possible if our knowledge is used properly.
                When mankind finally realizes it’s true place in the web of life, as part of it and with the responsibility to assist it not harm it, then I will shut up. Until then we all need a dose of reality to deflate the hubris and shine a light upon the actual results of our actions, so far.

                I am also getting sick of the meme that the earth or the universe does not care. Of course it does. Were you not provided with a caring mother or father or both, a world full of everything that is needed for life, a genetic structure that assured a high degree of survival? That was all provided by this uncaring universe. It is the way of nature that the adult forms should then provide the caring they were given so freely when young. It is the way the universe cares. People just have to learn to care for their own and the world that provides for them and not be such needy greedy assholes.
                Otherwise, their new found powers will be the end of them.

                1. As I’m sure you are acutely aware, XKCD is, according to its own mast head:

                   A webcomic of romance,
                   sarcasm, math, and language.

                   More to the point with regards that particular comic, assuming one takes the trouble to read the rollover script by mousing over the center of the comic, it says:

                   “On the other hand, as physicists like to say, physics is to math, as sex is to masturbation.”

                   😉

                2. Please review “Forbidden Planet”. It’s fun and educational. 🙂

                3. Yeah, it is awesome!

                   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpBhpzenHfI
                   Forbidden Planet – Trailer

                   what’s a bathing suit?

          2. I expect the advertising industry has done, and continues to do, far more harm to the planet than mathematicians and physicists: this industry dedicated to making people unhappy with stuff they have, and which seems dedicated to filling the world with more and more junk. My wife was a mathematical-physicist who even as a teenager wore linen skirts and blouses because they were “environmentally friendly” and refused to ware out, dedicating her life to educating engineers, pursuing pure research and making sure her two daughters had similar values – the very opposite of an environmental train wreck. So, methinks ye protest too much.

             1. I too lost my wife Doug. She loved and helped nature. She also worked in the science fields that by their very nature destroy nature.

                I think, looking at the actual results, I protest far too little. The advertising industry is paid for by the corporate industry which hires scientists and engineers to make all the stuff we “need” and all the weapons we want to satisfy the end consumers who pay for all of it. All of science is supported and paid for by all this industry whether through direct payment or donations or taxes.
                Science and engineering do not exist in a vacuum, they are part and parcel of the human endeavor. Try looking at reality, the actual results and products of science and engineering. If someone as bright as you cannot see the larger picture, then nature will bat last, which is fine.
                There is no uncontaminated part of the world, there is no purity, the nukes are ready and primed to go and the pollution/destruction marches on as I write this.

16. SEA LEVEL RISE URGENTLY REQUIRES NEW FORMS OF DECISION MAKING

    “According to Boda, this indicates that Flagler Beach, along with many other American cities unable to afford ever more expensive re-nourishment projects, has effectively reached the limit of what actions it is able to take in terms of addressing erosion and sea level rise. The city is now effectively back where it started, holding the line against erosion with expensive and environmentally problematic temporary projects, with no clear plan for how to address future erosion caused by storms or to make the tough decisions needed to adapt to climate change. The continued degradation of the local environment will likely pose a major problem for the city’s tourism economy and tax base in the coming years, particularly as sea level rise continues.”

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180306115755.htm

    1. Florida is one of the most vulnerable states to sea level rise, yet the population keeps increasing.
       The Census Bureau hasn’t provided a new estimate for 2016, but extrapolating from last year’s figures we can expect the population to have increased by roughly a further 375,000 people, bringing the Florida population of 2018 up past 21.31 million. Florida’s 2016 growth rate is one of the faster in the country (ranked 4th) at 1.8%.

       At some point a lot of the population will have to leave or condense into the northern area of Florida. Sea level rise and increasing storms are not going to stop for a long time.
       Do people even think about all this as they move there? The insurance industry will abandon regions of Florida, governments will be stressed beyond any capacity to help. The federal government will turn it’s back on southern Florida after reducing response to disasters.

       But the many and the rich will still flock to coastlines. The draw of the ocean and the warm climate is just too strong for people to resist.

17. “There are too many deer!” 110,000 deer compared to 9 million people in the same state.
    There are too many geese, kill them, wreck their nests, they make poop on the grass.
    Now there are 77,000 geese and falling fast, compared to 9 million people. Geese are heading for another bottleneck.

    It wasn’t too long ago when people were planting lawns to attract birds because the goose population had fallen so low. It wasn’t that long ago that the US deer population had crashed. Why do we keep doing this? Is it just stupidity? Repeated genetic bottlenecks.
    Which species is overpopulated? Which one actually uses it’s brains?

18. Analysis: UK carbon emissions in 2017 fell to levels last seen in 1890

    Carbon Brief analysis shows the UK’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels fell by 2.6% in 2017, driven by a 19% decline in coal use.

    This follows on the heels of a larger 5.8% drop in CO2 in 2016, which saw a record 52% drop in coal use. The UK’s total CO2 emissions are currently 38% below 1990 levels and are now as low as emissions were back in 1890 – the year the Forth Bridge opened in Scotland and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was published.

    These findings are based on Carbon Brief analysis of newly released Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) energy use figures. The department will publish its own CO2 estimates in late March.

    Good news?

    1. Due to the bound hydrogen, methane is less of a CO2 producer than coal for the same energy output. The limiting factor is the carbon ratio which means that the replacement of coal by methane is limited to a 50% drop relative to original coal use. Since the UK is only using about 4% of the coal it previously used for power generation, that change in CO2 production has about run it’s course.
       Further CO2 abatement will have to come from replacement of natural gas and oil products by efficiency and renewable energy.
       But there are problems with fossil fuels in the future, both oil and natural gas sources nearby are depleting.
       http://www.ukoog.org.uk/onshore-extraction/uses

       Luckily the UK has a great untapped source of wind energy to compensate.

19. California hits new big solar peak – 50% of total demand

    The US state of California notched up a couple of impressive new solar generation records earlier this week, boosted by a couple of mild and sunny early Spring days.

    On Sunday March 4, at around 1pm local time, large scale solar supplied up 49.95 per cent of demand at its pea, beating the state’s previous record of 47.2 per cent that was set in May last year.

    The very next day, on March 5, a record peak for solar production was recorded at 10,411MW at 10:18am – up from 9,913MW set last June.

    On top of all that, the California Independent System Operator notes that the March 4 new solar record was accompanied by a record peak for ramping.

    

    1. That doesn’t include the impact of local solar, which has produced a new situation, where the demand that the utility sees has dropped dramatically at mid-day. Combined with large scale utility solar, the net power need from fossil fuels at mid-day has almost disappeared.

       There are some days, like March 5th, where thermal (FF) and imports have been reduced to their absolute minimum (perhaps 2GW out of what would have been a peak of roughly 30GW before local solar chopped off the peak level). California is starting to have to curtail solar at times like this – it’s time to ramp up Time of Use metering to move demand away from the current evening peak to mid-day where the surplus is developing; and ramp up battery storage to shift solar power to the evening.

       1. More solar installations pointing to the south west rather than south.

          NAOM

20. That’s an interesting challenge for the state to have but, I can’t imagine that the owners of FF powered generating plants are thrilled with any reductions in capacity factors that they are facing as a result of all this renewable energy on the grid.

21. Arctic GISSTEMP temperature values with linear and polynomial trends to 2030.

    

22. Fresh in from Soviet Kanuckistan

    The Curse of Energy Efficiency
    The more ‘efficient’ our technology, the more resources we consume in a downward spiral of catastrophe.

    https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2018/02/26/Energy-Efficiency-Curse/

    1. If we pursue energy efficiency, but don’t try to reduce overall energy consumption, sometimes we’ll get energy efficiency without reducing energy consumption.

       What a surprise.

    2. Yes, people are often confused by systems with more than one variable. If population and production increase over a period of time, some efficiency changes might not be enough to reduce the amount of energy used. If families go from one car to two or from one TV to three, etc., the amount of energy used would appear to rise with population and changing societal needs. Industry has grown since last century too. So one would need to normalize the systems to see the actual effectiveness of efficiency changes.

       However, efficiency works. Efficiency changes have only been dramatic in a few areas. It is difficult to see the changes against a backdrop of exponentially increasing population combined with lifestyle increases across the population. New energy using tech has entered the world since 1990. One would need mathematical ability and a good data set to see the change.

       Here is a simple test for the simple minded. Remove all efficiency improvements from society and then see what the energy used would be.
       CRRAACCK. I think society just blew the energy system.

       Of course Jevon’s Paradox fails as circumstances and systems change. Energy use per dollar of GDP has fallen in half (constant dollars). Energy per capita has been flat since the 1960’s in the US, despite a plethora of new energy using devices.

       

       1. Global picture
          http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9023
          US as well consumes many products that are derived from energy consumption elsewhere. Quite a bit so since mid 70’s, which likely explains the levelling off in energy consumption at home.
          https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/usa-has-run-annual-trade-deficits-41-straight-years

          1. Hmmm, do you have any energy numbers to back that up?

             US manufacturing increased by 2.5 times in that time period. Population grew in that time period also as well as the inclusion of many new energy using devices across the society.
             So explain the flattening without using efficiency changes. It certainly was not due to loss of manufacturing (which did not happen) or to a reduction in transportation (just the opposite).

             1. To back up that American imports are increasing? Not hard to find. I think google gave me a few 100 million hits in 0.58 seconds.

                I have not disputed the existence of increasing efficiency. I have pointed out that America has simply outsourced a great deal of its energy consumption by purchasing an ever increasing amount of goods from overseas.

                https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports

                Just imagine how low american energy consumption could be if it produced nothing and imported everything.

                https://therestartproject.org/consumption/the-footprint-of-those-iphones/

                https://www.statista.com/statistics/242269/apple-iphone-in-the-usa-sales-since-2nd-quarter-2007/

                https://www.engadget.com/2012/01/22/why-apples-products-are-designed-in-california-but-assembled/

                If one was to measure the energy consumption foot print of all that America consumes, not just that which it consumes of its own production, then it’s energy foot print would necessarily be larger.

                Perhaps you believe that America is to continue doing more and more with less and less, until one great day it will do everything with nothing.

                Just as Bob Frisky sometimes needs to be reminded that there is weather outside of Kansas, it might do you well to recall that there is energy consumption outside of America, and despite efficiencies being made, it (energy consumption) continues to increase. I suppose we could focus on American energy consumption, just as Bob seems rather myopic with regard to global warming and Kansas temps.

                https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

                https://yearbook.enerdata.net

                1. ” have not disputed the existence of increasing efficiency. ”

                   OK, that was the point.

                   Interesting that iPhone manufacture comprise 0.06 percent of the fossil fuel footprint in the world. I wonder what would happen when we look at the number of things that smartphones replace. The number of cameras, audio recorders, computers, TV’s, game systems, phones, watches, calculators, etc that were not manufactured because of the advent of the smartphone. Probably be a large carbon reducer. Oops, forgot GPS and mapping units no longer needed. Oh yeah, all at a much lower energy use too.

                   One needs to be very careful with simplistic views of things. Usually they are quite wrong.

                2. Phones replacing a lot of useless crony-capitalist corporatocratic crap we didn’t need in the first place. (We already had a lot of consolidation of those things with computers, and now we see people walking around everywhere staring at their phones like zombies and concerned parents or psychologists about their effects to boot.)

                   Reminds me of the concept of slowly diminishing the quality of something and then selling, or to then sell, an ‘improvement’ of it.

                   Life Cycle of Mobile Phones

                   “Mobile phones have become one of the more unsustainable consumer goods. In 2015, more than 1.5 billion new mobile phones were shipped worldwide, often replacing fully functional phones…

                   …the average lifespan of a mobile phone has decreased significantly. The rapid evolution of mobile technology, supported by marketing and promotion campaigns, is making mobile phones prematurely obsolete and transforming the device into a disposable product. The mobile phone industry is an extremely competitive and litigious sector, and it is associated with conflict minerals, labour rights issues and unsustainable e-waste practices…”

                   “One needs to be very careful with simplistic views of things. Usually they are quite wrong.” ~ GoneFishing

                   Agreed, and also with regard to ‘missing the system for the phones’.

                3. Just think of all the miles that are not driven because people are not getting lost now, great energy savings there. Just think of all those used phones getting new homes, which is what many of them do when the original owner changes phones.
                   Just think of all the paper saved because the lists and notes go on the phone now. Think of all the data stored on tiny chips of silicon instead of disk drives and discs.
                   Smart phones are a carbon reducer in the world. At least in the real world, not the imagined one of those who use imagined problems that have been shot down in previous comments to pursue their imagined agendas of rightness and betterment of mankind.
                   Delirium, dissociative mental states and drugs are the major problems in society. Tough for people to think clearly and make sound decisions when so disturbed. Too much noise in their heads.
                   Now quick, make some new tripe from my words, since you have none of your own and operate on borrowed thoughts and the intellect of others. Quick now, before society crashes and you wander around wondering what to do or say, with no phone to stare at.

                4. Yea, and all that great news!

                   https://thebaffler.com/latest/fresh-hell-4

                5. I use my smart phone and computer to read scientific articles/papers and watch science seminars. Lots of great stuff out there for free now.
                   Anyone watching the mainstream “news” or regular TV is mentally dumpster diving (for the most part). Much of American radio is just music or in the cesspool of mental creepdom now. Even NPR near me is just political talk now for the most part, at least when I tune in.
                   I recall when NPR had radio expeditions where scientists in the field would use satellite communications to describe their activities in far off places. A quick search only brought up an archive, so I guess that got ditched a while ago.

                   Once in a while though, a gem pops out and gives a greater perspective on modern events or important changes/discoveries are discussed. So the media is not dead yet.

                6. As someone who was at Moscone Center when Jobs introduced the iPhone, I was a very early adapter—
                   But wouldn’t have one now, for obvious reasons.

       2. Is it really true that energy consumption per $GDP has fallen – isn’t part of that because we outsource energy consumption to countries that actually make stuff – like aluminum in Canada, plastic widgets in China etc?
          Perhaps a more meaningful measure is global energy consumption vs global GDP?
          Add to that that as societies develop demand for certain (energy intensive) products like steel flatten out and even diminish at some point.
          Rgds
          WeekendPeak

          1. “Is it really true that energy consumption per $GDP has fallen – isn’t part of that because we outsource energy consumption to countries that actually make stuff”
             First, the US is the second largest manufacturer on the planet, so it actually makes a lot of stuff. What most people think about the US is wrong in so many ways, partly due to media promoting crap information. Output has been going up for decades in US manufacturing and there have been many other services added on top of that. Not everything needed in a modern world is a hard piece of equipment or material, much is information or capability.

             https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-manufacturing-dead-output-has-doubled-in-three-decades-2016-03-28#true

             People should actually look up what is made here in the US and also look at the size of the economy. Money is paid for value. Should we produce clothing, or a lot of steel, all old tech. Maybe we produce high tech and high end chemicals here.

             In some areas, especially commodities like aluminum and steel, foreign producers can make things cheaper than the US.
             Most jobs in aluminum are downstream, not in the smelting end.
             https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/01/foreign-suppliers-are-flooding-the-u-s-aluminum-market/?utm_term=.543798a0ef24

             So is it better to have commodities made elsewhere and the higher end products (aerospace and auto) made here? Most likely the ore would have to be imported anyway. Let the industry and politicians handle those questions. It’s a global world now and everything is made or sourced from everywhere.

             http://time.com/4681166/car-made-american/

             1. Should we produce clothing, or a lot of steel, all old tech… the ore would have to be imported

                Heck, the US makes about the same amount of steel as it always did, primarily from recycled scrap. I haven’t looked at the details in a while, but I think that the things the US imports are mainly specialty steels, for things like oil pipelines…

23. This seems to offer very little societal value for all the electricity consumed.

    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/09/bitcoin-mining-energy-prices-smalltown-feature-217230?cmpid=sf

    1. I don’t live in the town depicted from the article, but I am in the general region. I have seen some of the mining excitement firsthand, mostly with local businessmen building or renovating warehouse space for server farms. Regional economic growth organizations really like the economic potential, so it can’t be all that bad in total.

24. Looks like 13759813 is the new record low annual maximum
    https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop.ver1/data/graph/plot_extent_n_v2.csv

25. The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News
    Robinson Meyer Mar 8, 2018

    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/largest-study-ever-fake-news-mit-twitter/555104/

    The massive new study analyzes every major contested news story in English across the span of Twitter’s existence—some 126,000 stories, tweeted by 3 million users, over more than 10 years—and finds that the truth simply cannot compete with hoax and rumor. By every common metric, falsehood consistently dominates the truth on Twitter, the study finds: Fake news and false rumors reach more people, penetrate deeper into the social network, and spread much faster than accurate stories.

    “It seems to be pretty clear [from our study] that false information outperforms true information,” said Soroush Vosoughi, a data scientist at MIT who has studied fake news since 2013 and who led this study. “And that is not just because of bots. It might have something to do with human nature.”

    Though the study is written in the clinical language of statistics, it offers a methodical indictment of the accuracy of information that spreads on these platforms. A false story is much more likely to go viral than a real story, the authors find. A false story reaches 1,500 people six times quicker, on average, than a true story does. And while false stories outperform the truth on every subject—including business, terrorism and war, science and technology, and entertainment—fake news about politics regularly does best.

    1. “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

       ― Mark Twain
       tags: misattributed-mark-twain

       I haven’t tried to track down the original, but I’m fairly sure Twain did say this at some point. He didn’t miss much when it came to such observations.

       1. “A false story reaches 1,500 people six times quicker, on average, than a true story does”

          Before the election of 2016, there use to be a Russian troll that posted fake news here called OldFarmerMac. Like other trolls and bots that post here, he was confronted and chased away from Peak Oil Barrel. He was a cancer on this site.

    2. Yes, that is true. 🙂
       The Madhouse Effect: What is stopping action on climate change?

       Scientific communication against the most well organized and well funded disinformation campaign in the history of human civilization.
       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAbc7OUVbuU&t=3210s

       1. Scientific communication against the most well organized and well funded disinformation campaign in the history of human civilization.

          Nah, its all those lousy high school Chemistry teachers that couldn’t make basic chemistry interesting enough to keep their students awake in class… /sarc

          I’ve posted this chemistry lesson before but it goes right to the heart of the discussion about the Great Barrier Reef!

          Here’s a pretty good primer as to the basic chemistry: https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/Assets/Nemo/documents/lessons/Lesson_3/Lesson_3-Teacher's_Guide.pdf

          First, CO2 reacts with water to form carbonic acid (H2CO3-):
          (1) CO2 + H2O -> H2CO3
          –
          Carbonic acid can then dissociate into bicarbonate (H+ CO3-):
          (2) H2CO3 -> H+ + HCO3-
          –
          Bicarbonate can then dissociate into carbonate ions (CO3 –)
          (3) HCO3 -> H+ + CO3 —

          (1) CO2 + H2O -> H2CO3-

          (2) H2CO3 -> H+ + HCO3-

          (3) HCO3 -> H+ + CO3 —

          When first viewing these equations it may appear that both hydrogen ions and carbonate ions increase in solutions as a result of CO2 dissolving in seawater. This is not the case! This would be true if the reactions above only occurred in a single direction but chemical equations can actually go in either direction. A more correct representation of this would be:

          (4) CO2 + H2O H2CO3-

          (5) H2CO3- H+ + HCO3-

          (6) HCO3 H+ + CO3 —

          It is ultimately the rates of occurrence and net direction of the above reactions that determine seawater pH and carbonate availability. First when CO2 dissolves in seawater the primary reactions that occur are (1) and (2) going in the direction as listed.

          Equation (2) shows that formation of carbonic acid results in an increase in the
          hydrogen ion concentration (and thus a decrease in pH). This leaves equation (3) as a key player in determining carbonate availability in seawater. Chemical reactions inseawater can send any of the above equations in either direction as the system tries to maintain equilibrium. As more CO2 dissolves and H+ ions increase in solution, equation (3) will shift in the opposite direction (to the left) to produce bicarbonate. Thus in the system’s attempt to reduce the hydrogen ion concentration, it binds hydrogen and carbonate ions together thereby reducing carbonate availability to marine organisms.
          Bold mine.

          BTW I have plans to visit a project at the Miami Frost Museum of Science where they are using CRISPR to bioengineer symbiotic algae that live in corals and make them more heat resistant. But heat is just one part of the problem. If corals can’t build their carbonate structures due to acidification what good are heat resistant algae. I plan on asking that question when I get there…

          http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article203055574.html

          Reefs are dying. Miami scientists hope lab-bred ‘super corals’ can help revive them
          BY JENNY STALETOVICH

          Seems we continue as the blind men who can’t see the whole elephant and are telling us it is a snake, a tree trunk, a wall, a rope, etc… etc…

          1. Oh, sorry, fell asleep during the lecture. What was that you were saying? 🙂

             1. That’s ok, you can still go to summer school for remedial chemistry. 😉
                .

                

                1. Photoshop?

                2. Nope, found that one as is…

                3. Just pulling your chain for trying to teach chemistry to the chemist.

                   If it was just a matter of temperature, corals could be established further north.

                4. If it was just a matter of temperature, corals could be established further north.

                   Hmm… Maybe as the ice melts the seas around there will be diluted with pure water and will be less acidic than the tropics. Plus there will no longer be any ocean currents to mix things up. Hey could work out… /sarc

                5. Fred, the next one hundred thousand years or more are going to have more acidic oceans. So corals will have to move up into the freshwater system where pH buffers exist.

                6. So corals will have to move up into the freshwater system where pH buffers exist.

                   Either that or we can bioengineer corals to incorporate all that waste plastic into their structures and thereby become acid resistant,,,

                7. A grand evolutionary step forward for plastic. But be careful, soon the autons.

                8. The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”

                   Plastic… asshole.”

                   The late, great, George Carlin

                9. Yeah, but George never mentioned all those poor children slaving away deep in the plastic mines, getting it out of the earth for the rich assholes.

                10. http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn/#plastic-bottles

                    Plastic Bottles, 2007 60×120″
                    Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every fifteen minutes.

                11. Yeah, I know people who spend horrendous amounts of money on bottles of water and sugary drinks. They have good tap water and could use washable permanent drink containers, but it’s apparently easier to waste a few hours a week working to pay for all that junk and have something else fill the bottle, transport it long distances, go to the store and buy it, transport it home and drink the water or soft drink along with the plasticizers and estrogen analogs.
                    The alternative would be to go to the sink and fill up a glass or other non-hazardous container.

                12. @Fish
                    That is if you can drink the tap water. Here it is not advisable and most people buy purified water by the garrafon although Gringos often buy big packs in Costco. I also recall the tap water in Dallas, I’ve been in swimming pools with less chlorine – defiantly not drinking water.

                    NAOM

26. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/09/nuclear-fusion-on-brink-of-being-realised-say-mit-scientists

    New materials can make the formerly impossible possible.

    Maybe they can do it, but I’m willing to bet the farm that there won’t be any significant amount of fusion juice on the grid within twenty years time.

    1. Not counting the big yellow fusion reactor in the sky, of course.

27. This amazing yet disturbing film from a time when chemistry was really gaining ground in society. I especially like the cloned scientists.

    The Wonder World of Chemistry 1936 DuPont
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI_9I07AdyQ

    1. That’s the MAGA future that Trump wants to bring back.

       Unfortunately times have changed…

       https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-flaw-in-trumps-national-security-tariffs-logic-1520612895

       The Flaw in Trump’s National Security Tariffs Logic
       Levies don’t go far enough to eliminate reliance on foreign steel and aluminum, suggesting what’s really at work is plain old trade protectionism.

       1. The tariff is basically political bullshit, intended to help the R’s win upcoming elections. The political calculus is that it will help more than it hurts, resulting in a net positive influence for the R’s.

          In real terms, it won’t matter much, because the countries that are excepted can continue to export as much steel and aluminum to the US as they please, and if the price goes up a little, they can simply export some of their domestic production to the US, and buy any they need locally from any place they please.

          A lot of Trump’s announcements are made and tailored to the hard core R audience that hear them and repeat them and never check to see if they are actually implemented.

          This is not to say Trump isn’t a nut case, or that he isn’t doing the country great harm.

          I have asked a dozen hard core Trump fans where his daughter gets her stuff, the clothing for her fashion merchandise line.

          Not a single one of them knew it’s ALL imported, as far as I can find out, lol.

          But the ones of my acquaintance that are hard core Christians are now turning their back on him, pretty fast, since the evidence of his abuse of women is no longer something they can ignore.

          I’m hoping the D’s run a squeaky clean candidate next time, and that they are mean enough to lay it on Trump the way he laid it on HRC, with a never ending stream of negative ads.

          It’s not like they will run any risk of running short of ammo, lol.

          1. The ‘Christians’ who voted for Trump (basically 99% of his support) were morally bankrupt to vote for him in the first place.
             Shameful.

          2. I’m pleased that hardcore rightwing Christians are finding that abuse of women is something they can’t ignore.

             *THIS IS NEW*. They excused such things for so long I can’t even remember.

       2. The US has a rather low iron ore reserve.

          1. Are you suggesting that the US has an anemic economy?

             1. Good one Fred

28. Has GHG output fallen or reversed since this article was published?

    Earth warming to climate tipping point, warns study
    In the global carbon cycle, soils act as a depository, a place where carbon is stored in a state that does not directly influence the global climate system.

    He observed: “The carbon is trapped in the soil because it is taken from the atmosphere by plant material through photosynthesis. Particularly in cold places, it get stored in the soil for a very long time, and this minimises the atmospheric concentrations.

    “In the soil, there are microbes and soil animals, as well as plant roots, and they all use that soil carbon for their growth and activity.

    “Where it is really cold, the activity and growth is limited but when it warms, and warming is likely to be disproportionately happening in cold areas, then the more active they are set to become.”
    

    http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38146248

    1. “Has GHG output fallen or reversed since this article was published?”

       Doesn’t seem so. 🙂

       Daily CO2

       March 4, 2018: 409.97ppm

       March 4, 2017: 407.46 ppm

       1. Data from the Carbon Balance project gives trends that indicate land sinks could become net emitters as soon as 2020 or 2021.

          

          1. George,

             Generally I would say 6 years doesn’t tell us very much, there was a similar trend from 1974 to 1980, but it did not continue. That land sink data shows no trend from 1971-2016 and probably an increasing land sink from 1959 to 2016.

             1. Using data from link below

                http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/17/data.htm

                For the terrestrial sink we have the chart below for 1959-2016 data from the Global Carbon Budget.

                

                1. Problem is that the carbon output more than tripled in that time and the land uptake only roughly doubled.

                2. If we consider land and ocean sinks, those increased from 2.5 to 5.5 Gt C per year (linear trend 1959-2016).

                   Carbon emissions went from 3.8 to 10.5 Gt per year (also OLS 1959-2016) and atmospheric carbon growth 1.5 to 5 Gt per year (1959-2016 trend line).

                   Cumulative carbon emissions about 616 Gt from 1850-2016. Based on Allen et al 2009, we should limit Carbon emissions to 1000 Gt or less so only 384 Gt after 2016.

                   In reality, less would be better, though difficult to achieve.

                   It’s possible that peak fossil fuels and high fossil fuel prices, coupled with good policy decisions (rapid transition to wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, better buildings [passive solar], demand power pricing, better urban design, recycling, durably built products, higher efficiency in general) might get us there.

                   We may also need to find ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere (sequestering carbon in soil,etc).

                3. I agree, energy transistion over the next century will happen whether we implement it or not, so might as well give it our best shot.

       2. https://www.ecowatch.com/warning-to-humanity-scientists-2544973158.html

          20,000 Scientists Have Now Signed ‘Warning to Humanity’
          A chilling research paper warning about the fate of humanity has received 4,500 additional signatures and endorsements from scientists since it was first released last year.

          The paper—”World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice”—was published in November 2017 in the journal Bioscience and quickly received the largest-ever formal support by scientists for a journal article with roughly 15,000 signatories from 184 countries.

          Today, the article has collected 20,000 expert endorsements and/or co-signatories, and more are encouraged to add their names.

          The “Warning” became one of the most widely discussed research papers in the world. It currently ranks 6th out of 9 million papers on the Altmetric scale, which tracks attention to research. It has also inspired pleas from political leaders from Israel to Canada.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=8XJ1xv3Awcc
          Scientists’ warning to humanity ‘most talked about paper’

          AusSMC
          Published on Mar 7, 2018
          Twenty five years after the first World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity, a new report is continuing to gain momentum and is already the 6th-most-talked-about paper globally since Altmetric records began. Three letters in comment, as well as a response companion piece by the Warning authors publish today in the peer-reviewed journal BioScience, highlighting two key areas for action in policy and science.

          Interview with author Thomas Newsome.

          1. Fred — Did you notice if your friend Javier signed up?

          2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG0ochx16Dg

          3. That ‘warning’ completely pales in comparison to the OISM Petition Project. Go to the search engines to look that up. There you will find the names of 31,487 independent United States intensive research scientists who call out the truth about climate change. Proudly my name is in there as well, along with over 9,000 other PhD’s.

             1. Sounds like the modern version of the Flat Earth Society.

                How the OISM Petition Project casts doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change
                There are several claims that large numbers of scientists do not agree with the theory of climate change, the best known of which is a petition organised by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (the OISM petition). This petition now appears to be signed by over 32,000 people with a BSc or higher qualification. The signatories agree with these statements:
                •The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
                •There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.
                
                https://skepticalscience.com/OISM-Petition-Project.htm

                1. Yeah, that’s quite the fraud. I mean, nearly everyone has a BSc. Hundreds of millions of people. You can find 32,000 who are complete idiots or paid-off without even *blinking*.

             2. Proudly my name is in there as well, along with over 9,000 other PhD’s.

                I’m going to wager that A) your PhD is not in any climate science related field and B) you have not published any climate science related papers in a peer reviewed science journal.

                If perchance neither of those are the case, then kindly provide a link to your research and data so we can read it.

                1. Hi Fred,

                   Yes a PhD in Economics, Psychology, and many other areas doesn’t really count as far as knowing much about climate change.

       3. Not to worry, any lag on our part will be filled in by natural sources. Also methane is rising at greater than 1 ppm CO2 equivalent per year just to make it more interesting. The shift to using more natural gas seems to be working just fine.

          Meanwhile some still think the throttle is operational:
          Global CO2 Emissions to Hit Record High in 2017
          It would be a mistake to think that a 2 percent increase is not a big deal, said Colorado State University climate scientist Scott Denning.

          “It’s somewhat tempting to be complacent and say emissions have flattened out, but having them flatten out at that level is not going to help us,” Denning said. “We’ve got to cut emissions by half in the next decade, and by half again in the next two decades, as well. The fact that it’s going up is like a red flashing light on the dashboard.”
          
          https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12112017/climate-change-carbon-co2-emissions-record-high-2017-cop23

          Cutting global emissions in half within a decade is a huge job. Is that even possible?

          1. “Cutting global emissions in half within a decade is a huge job. Is that even possible?”

             Whether it could be done from the economic and technical points of view is debatable.

             I personally believe it’s unlikely we could to ramp up renewables that fast, even on a wartime economy footing, while still providing enough of the absolute essentials…… food, water, and shelter, on a global basis.

             As a practical matter, it’s utterly out of the question. Not one person in ten thousand takes the issue seriously enough to make the necessary sacrifices.

             I can’t think of a remotely likely scenario that would convince the people of the world that such a sacrifice is necessary.

             We’re just going to have to live with the consequences of using fossil fuels at about the same level we do now, globally, at the very minimum, for decades to come.

             About the best we can hope for, and that’s only HOPE FOR, is that between depletion and the growth of the renewable energy industries, is that we won’t use even MORE fossil fuels.

             If the technocopians are right, the renewable energy industries may ramp up fast enough that some of the regulars here will live to see a gradual decline in global fossil fuel consumption. It’s obvious enough that we’re all at least middle aged or older.

             Maybe the so called millennial generation will live to see substantially less fossil fuels used.

             Even the most cynical observer must admit that fossil fuels do deplete, lol.

             I won’t live long enough to see them produce, but I’m going to plant a few pecan trees. Thirty or forty years from now it’s likely they will produce just as well here as they do five hundred miles south today.

             1. “I won’t live long enough to see them produce, but I’m going to plant a few pecan trees. Thirty or forty years from now it’s likely they will produce just as well here as they do five hundred miles south today.”

                Yep, that is one of two very important things to do for the future. As the climate moves north homo sapiens has hands and a bit of forward looking intelligence, they can be instrumental in moving the biome north. The changes are happening too fast for the natural world to take care of the march northward, so we have to be the gardeners and foresters of the future, for the next several thousand years.

             2. Oh, I disagree — we absolutely could cut emissions by *90%* in 10 years. Technically, it’s trivial. Economically, it’s already happening: electricity will be 90% renewable by then based on pure market forces, while vehicles will be well on their way.

                Unfortunately, (A) we have political forces actively *slowing* the transition (such as Rajoy’s “Tax on the Sun” in Spain), and (B) we actually need to do more than that. The already-baked-in global warming is causing feedback loops which emit even more CO2 and methane, so stopping our own emissions isn’t enough.

                We have to actively reverse them and turn CO2 back into solid carbon in the ground. Scientists are working out how to do it as fast as possible, but the political will is missing.

                Planting the pecan trees seems like a good start.

29. My second home is in Bergen so do I have the right a brag a bit? Alas, probably not since my first home is (large) pickup truck haven (Western Canada) where Ford F250 and F350s are the norm. 🙂

    “Norway remains the worldwide leader (by market share) in electric cars: “Norway is currently the leader in deploying electric vehicles successfully in its car market. Almost a third of cars sold in 2016 in the country are electric. In one of its cities, Bergen, electric cars have an almost 50pc market share of the year’s sales.”

    https://cleantechnica.com/2017/08/19/top-electric-car-countries-charts/

    1. Don’t worry about it Doug, every bit of conservation we do is countered by rising use elsewhere and more. India has doubled it’s use of petroleum in 12 years and it is very environmentally conscious.

       Meanwhile back in China:
       China’s oil demand rose by 690,000 BPD in July, marking a 6% year-over-year (YOY) increase. China’s total oil demand reached 11.67 million BPD in July. Year-to-date data indicates an average growth of 550,000 BPD, more than double the 210,000 BPD growth recorded during the same period in 2016.
       https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/09/18/chinas-oil-demand-is-growing-at-more-than-double-last-years-pace/#d22d753ec03b

       It will be a number of more years before the developing countries back off from increasing fossil fuel use. I wonder what developing Africa will do to that equation.
       It’s good to lead the way but not good to be too concerned about the last of the ICE’s. They will fade with time. It took one hundred years to get here, give it another few decades. Going to be a real hoot when the autonomous cars meet the pickup truck drivers. Yeee-Haaaa!

       1. India’s been doing some dumb stuff; we’ll have to wait for the economics to change India’s trajectory. It has already done so with coal, but it’ll take a few years with electric cars.

          China… don’t believe everything you read in Forbes. China is the one country in the world where government policy is actually suppressing fossil fuel use, and the government is getting more aggressive.

30. I doubt anybody here reads Euan Mears Energy Matters blog regularly, but I used too, until I got tired of the utter refusal of the regulars there to admit the obvious.

    But I took a look at it again, and found that he’s posting links to some news stories that are of interest to the audience here, for instance about the growth of the battery industry. So it’s worth a peek just to check out the links.

    1. Thanks for the tip. I haven’t checked there since I read an article that more or less claimed El Niños are a magic porridge pots of heat and that more of them is why there is global warming.

    2. Sorry, I just went and I didn’t find any battery articles. Lots of dishonest garbage, though.

       I’ll stick with Cleantechnica, IEEFA, Reneweconomy, Electrek, Bloomberg, and Vox.

31. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/is-it-time-to-take-the-hyperloop-seriously/

    Worthy of discussion.

    I’m skeptical about the claimed cost.

    What I’m wondering is WHY we will need to continue to travel so much.

    As resource constraints of every imaginable fashion begin to really bite, I see society reorganizing itself so that we travel one hell of a lot less, per capita anyway.

    Why shouldn’t office buildings have every other floor reserved for housing for the people who live in them for instance, and with ever advancing technology, why can’t we eliminate half or more of the face to face meetings that seem to be essential today?

    And while others may disagree, I personally believe the poor ( in relative terms ) and intellectually challenged will always be with us, and that providing work for them , so that they may be self supporting, will continue to be necessary.

    So……… with just about everybody connected, why should anybody want to go to the pharmacy or hardware store when he can have his purchase delivered by somebody running the neighborhood equivalent of Fed Ex with a van within a couple of hours for less than the cost of fetching it himself?

    My guess is that people who really give a shit about seeing their kids or their parents won’t move so far away so often.

    Right now, it’s incredibly easy to find people who are commuting across town to work at the same job as they could work at within easy walking distance, for the same money.

    Maybe we will see a time again when local stores are mostly owned and operated by local people who live right on the premises….. above or in back of the store. The savings in time and money are enough to justify this arrangement, when tax and zoning regulations aren’t so rigid as to prevent it.

    My physician practices out of his house/ office. He jokes that his commuting time is about two minutes per day, and his commuting expenses are zero. He can see from two to six more patients per day while putting in the same total amount of time, compared to other physicians in this area who commute to their offices.

    I know a nice older woman who still works in a fast food restaurant, the same one for over twenty years now. It’s changed hands at least twice but she’s still at the same cash register, greeting old customers who stop for coffee and biscuits. She tells me she will NEVER quit, until she’s unable to work, because she can walk to work. Nothing else is close enough.

32. Republican candidate’s North Korea experience may not be all he claims

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/10/republican-candidates-north-korea-experience-may-not-be-all-he-claims
    “Of all the Americans I worked with, I would rank Saccone at the bottom.”

    Well, I don’t know if this helps or hurts him.
    Lying seems to be a positive for most repugs– and this is partially true– at least he was in North Korea- so this may diminish his chances.
    He used lots of oil to get there (don’t want to be off topic)

33. Review of an E O Wilson book

    https://medium.com/@mmeditations/e-o-wilson-on-the-upside-of-introversion-the-limits-of-iq-and-where-ideas-really-come-from-23cface0cd8b

34. “But since you are on here on this site, posting with composted leaves and dirt you are obviously not using anything that might have contaminated the planet right? When are you going to get off your high horse and quit your holier than thou attitude?” ~ Fred Magyar

    When the ‘social contract’, so to speak, gets fixed.

    Tu quoque… Latin for, ‘you also’… or the appeal to hypocrisy is an informal logical fallacy that intends to discredit the opponent’s argument by asserting the opponent’s failure to act consistently in accordance with its conclusion(s).” ~ Wikipedia

    “tu quoque

    You avoided having to engage with criticism by turning it back on the accuser – you answered criticism with criticism.

    …Literally translating as ‘you too’ this fallacy is also known as the appeal to hypocrisy. It is commonly employed as an effective red herring because it takes the heat off someone having to defend their argument, and instead shifts the focus back on to the person making the criticism.” ~

    The interesting, if unsurprising, thing with Fred’s regular and mindless usage of said fallacy, however, is that he seems to ‘get it wrong’ ‘twice’:..

    The first time is that we can at once ‘disparage’, as he puts it, the fruits of a breached social contract, while using said fruits because the social contract has been breached (and continues to be breached and enforced, such as, for example, on captive populations through coercion.)

    The second time is that my critical position, as per breached social contract and limited options on a dying planet, is therefore not actually hypocritical.

    1. Tu quoque… Latin for, ‘you also’… or the appeal to hypocrisy is an informal logical fallacy that intends to discredit the opponent’s argument by asserting the opponent’s failure to act consistently in accordance with its conclusion(s).” ~ Wikipedia

       So what is it called when you do it?
       .

       

       1. Your two errors as mentioned above, simplified, are…
          1. that mine is not a hypocrisy, and…
          2. that you nevertheless make a logical fallacy about it.

          Even if mine was a hypocrisy, you’d still be in error with the fallacy.

          Thus, in effect, it appears as the black pot calling the ‘white’ kettle, black.

          

35. The radical transformation of Jackson, Mississippi with Kali Akuno

    Just recently watched this and recommend it as it transcends Jackson, discussing such important issues as self and community-empowerment, land-ownership, gentrification and relocalization.

36. Stormy’s making America horny again.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/trump-the-porn-president.html?mabReward=ART_TS7&recid=11gI7zwe5gndEvEGjVV2ZPznsFB&recp=2&moduleDetail=recommendations-2&action=click&contentCollection=Politics&region=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&src=recg&pgtype=article

    I will say this much for DT’s wife. She does not appear to be running interference for him.

    Sometimes the only thing that really seems to work to get our attention is a muggers brick upside the head.

    Stormy looks as if she is the brick that was not only THROWN, but hit, nice and solid.

    Women all over the country are going to turn out in larger numbers than ever before in the mid terms.

    This bodes well for the country, and not only because it will help put the D’s back in control of DC.There will be a coattail effect all the way down to dogcatcher.

    And women as a group are more agreeable than men when it comes to doing the right thing for the people of this country. Long term, this year will mark an upward inflection point in women holding political office.

    The odds of passing environmentally sound laws and regulations will be better once we have more women in office.

37. Happy Adversary. 311.
    “My wife’s nurse had to stand for 30 mins and administer a drug slowly through a syringe because there are almost no IV bags in the continental US anymore,”
    WTF – Human Life Support tied to the Electrical Grid. And a .01% fuel shortage and its …. gone. Gets back toto’s Q – Are Humans smarter than yeast ?
    https://www.wired.com/story/medicines-long-thin-supply-chain/

    1. That is insane—-

       1. No it’s a large hurricane wrecking the manufacturer in Puerto Rico. Decisions to make PR a third world country are biting back at the mainland.

       2. Not more insane then the way the entire US health and pharmaceutical industries currently function. Not to mention that with that imbecil, bull in a China shop, Trump at the helm with his idiotic protectionist tariffs, we could inadvertently find ourselves in global trade wars with the very countries that currently supply us with such products. It takes decades to build up trust with other nations but that trust can be destroyed in an instant.

          1. 2016) Make America Great Again

             2020) Keep America Great!

             it”s so true..

          2. Well, we are behind Costa Rica, but ahead of Cuba (for women, men the same) in lifespan– But being in the late 30’s is one of the worst records in the “First World”.
             Spending twice as much as everyone else, you would think we could do better?

    2. In the fall, after Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico, something new joined the list: bags of sterile salt water…. they are unavailable for the same reason. The United States has allowed the manufacturing of most of its drugs and medical devices to drift offshore, at the end of long, thin supply chains.

       Uh….Puerto Rico isn’t “off-shore”. It’s part of the US.

       I’d guess that the primary problem isn’t off-shoring, and those mean and nasty furriners that Trump blames for all our problems. Labor strikes, manufacturing problems, transportation problems, bankruptcy, nuclear meltdown, earthquake, violence, pandemic or hurricane can disrupt key supplies. All of those things happen in the US.

       I’d say the main problem is that purchasing departments are only focusing on reducing cost, and not on supply redundancy. Economies of scale, and specialization, promote large regional industries that supply a single category of item for the whole world. If you want a reliable supply, you need to be willing to pay a premium to have two or three suppliers in very different places, with different ownership, etc.

       Are we willing to pay a premium for redundancy and resiliency? Will we complain about higher medical costs (“Look dear, at what they charged us for those saline bags!”)? We have to pay up or shut up. I suspect we should pay up, but I doubt we will.

38. How about abrupt climate change? You probably all thought that meant a few degrees over a lifetime or a generation. Sure that is abrupt and would be noticeable by humans. How about 1 degree per year? You would notice that. How about 5 degrees per year? Do you think anyone could not notice that?

    Climate is changing as humans put more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. With CO2 levels today around 400ppm, we are clearly committed to far more climate change, both in the near term, and well beyond our children’s future. A key question is how that change will occur. Abrupt climate changes are those that exceed our expectations, preparedness, and ability to adapt. Such changes challenge us economically, physically, and socially. This talk will draw upon results from ice core research over the past twenty years, as well as a new NRC report on abrupt climate change in order to address abrupt change, as seen in the past in ice cores, as seen today in key environmental systems upon which humans depend, and what may be coming in the future.
    ~ James White, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZdhPnsp4Is&t=665s

    1. You must live in some equator tropical area where the usual temperature between the overnight low and the daytime high is less than 5 degrees. Most everybody else lives somewhere where the daily temperature change between the overnight and the daytime is much more than 5 degrees. Actually usually the change is way more than 5 degrees to be accurate. For those of us who do live in these areas, life goes on just as normal with most people not really paying attention to temperatures on a day to day basis unless there is some kind of extreme unusual warmth or cold.

       1. Larry, think of living in Minnesota and then suddenly having the climate at the Arctic Circle. 5C per year Larry, not total.

       2. The former U.S. energy secretary Steven Chu discusses what 5 degrees means here:

          https://youtu.be/w4vtJWKF3E8?t=665

          At 5°c colder than the present, ice sheets covered all of Canada, and half of the United States.

          At +2­°c, sea levels will be >6.6 meters higher than present.

          You’d notice.

       3. But, but, but! If there is a reliable record of 1°C warming per year, for 5 year periods during the Younger Dryas, long before there was any anthropogenic release of CO2… Then 1) why are there still monkeys? And 2) should we lock Scott Pruitt in a cage and throw away the key?! Especially since it was he who proposed the climate change equivalent of the Scopes monkey trial with his ridiculous idea of a red vs blue team debate…

          1. Monkeys like trees, we haven’t cut them all down yet.
             It’s 5C/yr.

             I take no responsibility for SP or his boss. Do what you want or consult the French for ideas.

             1. Actually 5 to 10°C warming per year during Bolling Northern Greenland and only a modest 1°C per 5 year warming during Younger Dryas. Note: “a modest 1°C per 5 year warming” is still quite abrupt, eh?! Either way, doesn’t bode well…

                1. Meanwhile over on the other side of reality these assholes continue to push their bullshit!

                   http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/03/12/rep-lamar-smith-climate-change-and-scientific-method-should-welcome-new-research-not-resist-it.html

                   Rep. Lamar Smith: Climate change and the scientific method – we should welcome new research, not resist it

                   Climate alarmism has become the chant of the media and liberals who favor more government regulations. As Chairman of the House Science Committee, I have challenged the alarmist rhetoric and pursued the facts about climate change.

                   The Committee follows the scientific method, which welcomes critiques, avoids exaggerated predictions, and relies on unbiased data. Unfortunately, alarmists ignore all these principles.

                   So is the reality that it is possible for the climate to warm 5 to 10°C in a year alarmist?! That is the difference between ideological denial and scientific skepticism! It is past time to put the Lamar Smiths of the world out to pasture.

                2. Some more info on that time period. In this slide set it is claimed that “Bolling-Allerod -warming globally, especially North Atlantic (up to 20C)”.
                   Rapid Climate Change: Heinrich/Bolling-Allerod Events and the Thermohaline Circulation
                   http://www.inscc.utah.edu/~reichler/6030/presentations/Andy_RapidCC.pdf

                   Further back:
                   Unlike the larger warming that happened in the PETM, we still have ice sheets and some ocean ice cover that give an added ice albedo fast feedback in the system.

                   Like the PETM, we have lots of stored methane.

       4. We occasionally can get daily temperature swings of 60 deg here in MI, during the winter, for the most part. That’s why there’s the joke about how all you have to do is wait around 5 minutes if you don’t like the current climate/weather in these parts.

          Regards,
          Ralph
          Cass Tech ’64

          1. You are running about the same temp range as where I live. Looks like 10 to 15F daily range all week. Guess those occasional arctic blasts leave a heavy mark on the old memory. Happens here too once in a while, but not the norm.

             You like Belize?
             http://www.climatecentral.org/news/global-cities-climate-change-21584

             The difference between Ottawa Canada and Belize City is 7C.

       5. You are either a troll a bot or an idiot. Maybe all three rolled into one!

       6. I live in the tropics. If temperatures were to rise 5C then summer temperatures would become lethal.

          NAOM

          1. Yes, this is one of the bigger dangers of global warming. Large portions of the tropics will become uninhabitable.

             I went through every location in the world trying to work out which ones were safest for surviving global warming/ocean acidification, given the expected disasters… and I ended up with my home turf, the Great Lakes region of North America. Kind of random.

39. Three California Gas Plants to Shut Thanks to State’s Green Push
    March 9, 2018, 12:41 PM PST

    The Golden State is increasingly inhospitable to fossil-fuel power plants.

    In the latest development, NRG Energy Inc. plans to shutter three old gas-fired power plants in California, according to a Sierra Club statement Friday. The plants are operated by the company’s GenOn unit, which is expected to be spun off under a bankruptcy agreement that was approved last year.

    GenOn intends to shut down the Etiwanda plant in Rancho Cucamonga as of June 1. The Ormond Beach facility in Oxnard is slated to go dark as of Oct. 1 and the Ellwood site in Goleta is set to close as of Jan. 1 of next year. An NRG spokeswoman declined to comment Friday.

    California regulators are pushing utilities to ditch gas-fired power plants for clean-energy projects amid a state-wide effort to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions in half by 2030 from 2015 levels. In January, the California Public Utilities Commission approved an order that requires PG&E Corp., the state’s biggest utility, to change the way it supplies power when demand peaks, by using batteries or other non-fossil fuel resources.

    “Closing these plants is more proof that clean energy is driving gas out of California,” Evan Gillespie, a Sierra Club campaign manager, said in the statement.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-09/three-california-gas-plants-to-shut-thanks-to-state-s-green-push

    1. Funny how one paper (LA Times) says there is an energy glut and the plants were old and due for closure anyway and another source gives a completely different slant to the closures.

       NRG subsidiary to close three power plants in Southern California
       NRG spokesman David Knox said the three California plants are being closed for “economic reasons.”
       Gladys Limon, executive director of the California Environmental Justice Alliance advocacy group, said in a statement Friday that the retirement of the three plants was “long overdue” and called for state officials to look toward “clean energy solutions.”

       http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nrg-plants-20180309-story.html

       1. For A Cleaner Future

          The new Huntington Beach Energy Project will be cleaner and more responsive to California’s needs.

          The Huntington Beach Energy Project — which is now under construction — will help ensure a cleaner, more reliable energy future by replacing our existing plant with a modernized natural gas facility that is more efficient and responsive to California’s electricity needs.

          Huntington Beach with a sustainable and economically viable future, but also helping California meet its aggressive green energy goals by helping integrate more renewable power. The new plant will also have far superior “curb-appeal” than the existing plant — with a “surf city” theme in keeping with Huntington Beach’s unique history.

          After years of planning and review, in April 2017 the California Energy Commission (CEC) approved the license for the Huntington Beach Energy Project (HBEP), a lower-profile, more efficient and modernized natural gas power plant that will replace the existing AES Huntington Beach on Newland Street.

          The HBEP — which is currently under construction and making excellent progress — will help ensure a cleaner, more reliable energy future by replacing our existing plant with a modernized natural gas facility that is more efficient and responsive to California’s electricity needs.

          http://www.renewaeshuntington.com/index1.php

          

          1. Ooopsy, they forgot to mention CO2 emissions.

          2. Lived there in 1967.
             My rent for 3 months on the beach was $90.
             OC is the poster boy— well, I’ll let you use your imagination.
             (I lived in Laguna Beach for 10+ years, so I do have some perspective)

40. This is hilarious, and very much on point.

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/huppke/ct-met-stormy-daniels-trump-huppke-20180311-story.html

    But I will go so far as to cut the Christian voter some slack…. temporarily… since they really didn’t know very much about Trump before the election. Neither did anybody else, other than the relatively small fraction of us that actually pay attention to the news about celebrities.

    It takes a while, a lot more than a the length of a political campaign, for the general public,especially that part of the public that is hearing what it WANTS to hear from a candidate, to come to KNOW the candidate. This applied to HRC , in respect to her homie fans, who were always ready willing and eager to IGNORE anything pointing out her shortcomings as part of the GREAT RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY.

    For those of you who still don’t get it, have you ever wondered why so many Democrats were ready willing and EAGER to vote for anybody but HRC her first run? Obama came out of NOWHERE, and kicked her ass. Most people who only follow politics casually didn’t know him from Adam, before he started campaigning, and those who barely follow politics at all, meaning MOST of the people of this country, didn’t have even a foggy idea who he was. But tons of hard core Democrats, the ones who do and did follow politics, were eager to vote for ANYBODY BUT HRC. She left a bad taste in their mouths even back then. Over the years, they forgot that taste, and seeing she appeared to be invincible, having seized control of the Party the way the Rockefellers took over the oil industry once upon a time, to such an extent everybody else, excepting Bernie Sanders was unwilling to even CAMPAIGN seriously against her, knowing the game was rigged…… well, they forgot or pretended to forget, and voted for her. A lot of them were too young to know any better, since the only people publicizing her old scandals were the opposition, and we naked apes never believe anything the opposition says until it’s impossible to NOT believe it.

    So…… Trump’s real personal history is now coming out, but to be fair to the Christians who voted for him, it’s going to take a while for them to accept and digest this history. Say a year or so. People never want to admit they are wrong, especially when they are ON RECORD personally as being wrong.

    But my guess is that Christians are going to turn their backs on Trump in large numbers in the upcoming elections this fall. They will be staying home in lots of cases, and voting for the opposition in others.

41. Mac,

    I think you’re focusing too much on personality. I agree that Trump is unusually corrupt, and that Hillary was a low charisma candidate, but…Fox News and Murdoch want you to focus on personalities, because they know that Republican policies are bad.

    And, policy is the problem. If people looked closely at Trump’s proposals during the campaign, it was clear that the most important stuff, both the tax stuff and the environmental, were both deeply bad. Voters should have known that Trump would deliver for the wealthy, not the working poor.

    But…you can’t blame voters too much. Trump did promise to help the working poor. He promised not to hurt disability, social security, Medicare, etc. He promised jobs, better pay and healthcare, lower taxes, etc. Voters knew it was a gamble to trust him, but they thought they had nothing to lose.

    Now, they know that he lied to them, that’ he’s pushing classic Republican polices that hurt them. THAT’s why he’s lost so many voters. It’s not the personalities. It’s not the corruption, as bad as it is. It’s the policies. “It’s the economy, stupid”, as Bill Clinton liked to say. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_the_economy,_stupid

    1. Hi Nick,

       Maybe you’re right.

       Maybe I’m focused too much on personality, whatever that may mean, to you, exactly.

       But when it comes to the typical voter……. among the poorer classes of people who lack formal education…… their PERCEPTION of the candidate rules.

       The first thing I will point out about Trump voters is that NONE of them are the sort of people that hang out in this forum, people like you, Dennis, Ron, Fred, Gone Fishing.

       Some of them are hard core fundamentalists, or evangelicals, and they generally are as ignorant as fence posts when it comes to environmental questions, although they ARE NOT STUPID.

       There’s a HUGE difference between ignorance and stupidity, and we should remember that it’s NOT the fault of uneducated people that they ARE uneducated.

       The large majority of lucky people like us tend to forget WHY we are who we are, namely that we are the products of our environment. You aren’t likely to grow up ignorant if your parents are well educated and dedicated.

       The people some of the regulars here like to make fun of are who they are because of the culture they were raised in. You might as well ask them to speak a foreign language spontaneously as to ask them to change their mores, values, and culture.

       They don’t generally know shit from apple butter about peak oil, or climate change, or running out of water, or overpopulation, because they don’t read books, and they generally don’t pay much attention to the news, except as they perceive the news affects THEM in their daily lives.

       So…. They voted for Trump because they heard what they WANTED to hear. They didn’t know anything about him, except that he promised the sort of change they wanted. As I said earlier, they KNEW HRC, from WAY back, and they LOATHED her, they DESPISED her.

       Trump was a fucking TV personality. People like you knew he was a scumbag, from all the way back…….. but the public that voted for him DID NOT REALIZE THIS TO BE A HARD FACT.

       It’s almost impossible to get a well educated person to understand how people with little or no education think. A good friend of mine is sticking up for Trump based on one issue alone.. immigration, having had the experience of living in a formerly decent working class neighborhood taken over by a gang of violent young men from someplace south of Mexico….. obviously illegal immigrants. That ONE issue is the only one he really knows shit about. His LIFE just never included a course in the sciences. He hasn’t read a book since he was a kid…… other than a technical manual.

       He has plenty of brains. But he has virtually none of the DATA to work with that you do.

       Remember what Twain said, when two of his characters were fixing to pull a fast one on an entire town. Paraphrased, one says ain’t we got ever fool in town on our side……. and ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?

       I fear you have too high an opinion of your fellow citizens, when it comes to REAL knowledge involving politics.

       The Christians who voted for Trump, the ones who DID know his real nature, did so for the same reason the Democrats who went for Obama when he got the nomination coming from NOWHERE voted for HRC the second time around…… it was vote for HRC, or vote for Trump, or stay home.

       Christians who KNEW Trump’s record, and there weren’t many of them, who voted for Trump, held their noses and voted for him the same way SOME Democratic young women voted for HRC, even though they held her in contempt for sticking with Bill, and for running his bimbo squad, etc. They circled the wagons, and protected their own, just as a lot of Christians who privately despised Roy Moore voted for him………. to protect their own.

       Politics ain’t rocket science. It’s more about gut feelings, and tribal loyalties, and hot buttons, such as abortion, welfare, gun rights, in some cases……… Other voters hot buttons are environment, civil rights, etc, in the case of other voters. The ones in the middle who pay little attention to politics in general don’t pay much attention at all to ANY issue, other than the fucking economy.

       Bill Clinton understood this last fact. “It’s the economy, Stupid”.

       Hillary was a political klutz. She never really CONNECTED with the people. She acted like she was ENTITLED, she talked with her nose in the air, and she damned near IGNORED the people who are the real heart of the D party. Arrogance cost her the election. Arrogance led her to believe she could run a secret email system while thumbing her nose at the rules everybody else is supposed to follow, and the D’s who defended her, rather than going with somebody else, did pretty much EXACTLY the same thing, in principle, that more knowledgeable Republicans did when they supported Trump……

       Trump at least PRETENDS to like the people who voted for him. HRC made the fatal mistake of looking down on them. Even a DOG knows when you have a low opinion of him, and to be LIKED is the first rule of politics.

       I regard BILL C as one of the more capable politicians in modern history, the most capable American politician in recent times, and while I have a low opinion of his PERSONAL history, I would be glad to have him back…… Taken all around, he did a decent job.

       1. I say bullshit on your attempt to justify the shameful vote for trump. If one is ignorant (as you say they were) then they shouldn’t be voting. Poor excuse for a inexcusable show of extreme disdain for this country, and a for the expression of their moral bankruptcy.
          Shameful, simple and profound.
          Proclaim that to your neighbors.

          1. Damn Hickory,

             My opinion of your political smarts just fell off a cliff.

             Just how do you justify saying people shouldn’t VOTE?

             I know dozens of people, including some with doctorates from well known universities, who don’t know shit from apple butter about LOTS of major issues, such as the depletion of oil, loss of topsoil, water shortages, various public health problems, national security, the price of housing, unhealthy diets, I could go on all day. Note that I dam not saying any of these people are ignorant of ALL these things, just some or maybe even most of them.

             Where would you draw the line?

             Do you want to go back to the days when you had to own a lot of property, and be a MALE, and or be able to pass a literacy test? Be the right color? Be a member in good standing of a certain church? Simply live in the right neighborhood, instead of on the wrong side of the tracks?

             Furthermore, the less you know, the more likely it is that you DON’T know recognize your our own ignorance, lol.

             So WHERE are you going to draw the line? Obviously you have an opinion, I would love to hear it.

             I try to EXPLAIN things. I am not out to JUSTIFY anything, or anybody.

             Perhaps I fail to make myself CLEAR on this point sometimes.

             I TRY to talk like a COACH. Those who read my comments should try to interpret them as if they were PLAYERS, intent upon improving their game.

             I am not claiming I’m right all the time, I’m simply saying my comments should be given some thought, and implemented, if the reader finds them to be good.

             Your remark displays the sort of nose in the air contempt for people who as a rule are less fortunate than you are thru no fault of their own that pisses them off no end.

             It’s precisely and exactly the sort of remark that INFURIATES such people, and does as much or more to MAKE SURE they vote for Trump, so as to extend the middle finger, figuratively speaking, to you, and people who think like you do.

             The first rule of politics, if you want to win, is to be liked if at all possible, and if not liked, then at least not despised with a vengeance.

             Remember I’m talking like a coach. If you want to win, you need to THINK like a coach, run the right plays, and avoid running the wrong ones.

             You just fumbled and lost the ball on your own one yard line in football terms.

             1. Hey “COACH” Dumb Ass,

                “If one is ignorant (as you say they were) then they shouldn’t be voting”

                Don’t twist Hickory’s words. He is simply saying you don’t start the end of the bench and expect to win. You and your neighbors hate for the intellectual starters is why team USA is getting it’s ass kick at home and away games. The intellectual’s are watching a train wreck and your selling stale peanuts in the stands.

             2. OFM-
                Any idiot could have seen (before voting), that Trump was a materialist, narcissistic, ill-informed, racist bully with dictatorship tendencies. Also that he had very poor instincts.
                I won’t bother giving examples- there are so many and they were well publicized.
                No one had any reason to think that he was wise, compassionate, humble, insightful, well-informed, inspiring, or in any way up to the task of being the leader of the country, or a role model to the young.

                No excuse for the shameful vote.
                It doesn’t take a fortunate or educated person to see this.
                No religious organization worth anything would support a man like Trump. Just selfish, bigoted, or severely ignorant people.
                I am very surprised that you would see it as tour role to make excuses for that part of our culture. Call a spade a spade.

                1. Hickory — You overestimate idiots.

                   The fact is that idiots saw what they wanted to see in Trump. They actively denied reality, and substituted wish-fulfillment. This is not surprising. People do it all the time. It accounts for both elections of Ronald Reagan.

                   After a while, the accumulated evidence in their personal life gets through to *most* of them. Trump hasn’t done anything that they thought he would do, and has often done the exact opposite. So they’re going to vote against him next time. Most of them. Some are even stupider than that.

42. This just shows some more evidence of how big the internet’s anti vaccine problem has become.

    When WhatsApp’s Fake News Problem Threatens Public Health
    Megan Molteni 03.09.18

    https://www.wired.com/story/when-whatsapps-fake-news-problem-threatens-public-health/

    Yellow fever began expanding south, even through the winter months, infecting more than 1,500 people and killing nearly 500. The mosquito-borne virus attacks the liver, causing its signature jaundice and internal hemorrhaging (the Mayans called it xekik, or “blood vomit”). Today, that pestilence is racing toward Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo at the rate of more than a mile a day, turning Brazil’s coastal megacities into mega-ticking-timebombs. The only thing spreading faster is misinformation about the dangers of a yellow fever vaccine—the very thing that could halt the virus’s advance. And nowhere is it happening faster than on WhatsApp.

    In recent weeks, rumors of fatal vaccine reactions, mercury preservatives, and government conspiracies have surfaced with alarming speed on the Facebook-owned encrypted messaging service, which is used by 120 million of Brazil’s roughly 200 million residents. The platform has long incubated and proliferated fake news, in Brazil in particular. With its modest data requirements, WhatsApp is especially popular among middle and lower income individuals there, many of whom rely on it as their primary news consumption platform. But as the country’s health authorities scramble to contain the worst outbreak in decades, WhatsApp’s misinformation trade threatens to go from destabilizing to deadly.

    1. If God has decreed that someone should die of Yellow fever, it would be a sin to thwart God’s will via vaccination.

       1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yqGSwE7uNk
          Tim Minchin – Thank You God

          1. Tim is cool—–

             1. Nice eye-shadow.

       2. Doug, you are making that up. I just went over the list of 667 sins and there was nothing about vaccination, medicine or illness.
          Although I must warn you, astronomy is punishable by death, so stay out of churches.

          1. Yeah, I always cross to the other side of the street rather than get close to churches; which has kept me safe — so far.

    2. Quite frankly I don’t buy the story. While it is true that a lot of Brazilians use WhatsApp and Facebook to get their news and some are certainly influenced by fake news stories it is also true that Brazil has a better universal health care system than the US. Just this past weekend I had lunch in Miami with a Brazilian friend of mine who is a doctor and lives in the North East of Brazil an area that was heavily impacted by the Zika virus two years ago. He was telling me how they were using CRISPR and gene drives to eradicate the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes which are the vectors for Zika. He also discussed the epidemiology and the fact that there were about 700 confirmed cases of microencephaly in his state and that fact that they managed to control the outbreak. There are no new cases at present. Yellow fever is a tropical disease and while it poses a severe risk to the underprivileged population in Brazil, I have confidence that in both Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo states it will be controlled and most of the population will be vaccinated.

       1. I agree, SA is very on top of things.
          While I have not spent time in Brazil, I have in Colombia and Argentina.

43. How Bitcoin Ends

    “Bitcoin was a clever idea. Idealistic, even. But it isn’t working out quite as its developers imagined. In fact, once all the coin has been mined, bitcoin will simply reinforce the very banking system it was invented to disrupt.

    Watching the bitcoin phenomenon is a bit like watching the three-decade decline of the internet from a playspace for the counterculture to one for venture capitalists. We thought the net would break the monopoly of top-down, corporate media. But as business interests took over it has become primarily a delivery system for streaming television to consumers, and consumer data to advertisers…”

    Bitcoin is none of the things it was supposed to be

    “On Thursday, the price of Bitcoin fluctuated by thousands of dollars in a 24-hour period. The Coinbase app — which lets you buy and sell cryptocurrencies, and is the number two free app in the App Store as of this writing — started freezing and throwing errors, which the company said was due to high traffic. At one point, I tested the app by trying to sell some of my (very small) amount of Bitcoin, and the app simply buckled. ‘Bitcoin sales are temporarily disabled’, it said in an error message.

    This is not how Bitcoin was supposed to work.

    In fact, most of the current Bitcoin economy, worth around $276 billion at the time of writing, is antithetical to the premise of Bitcoin…”

    1. This is not how Bitcoin was supposed to work.

       Stupid argument! Unless someone is personally invested in Bitcoin, no one else cares! There are currently over 1300 cryptocurrencies based on blockchain technology. Most are working exactly as they were intended to work, they provide a highly secure, peer to peer means of exchanging value outside of the traditional banking systems.

       Just because the US dollar might crash and lose value compared to other currencies doesn’t mean that all the other currencies suddenly no longer work as a means of exchanging value. It’s only bad if you are heavily invested in US dollars…

       1. Cryptos are mostly worthless – because they are widely inflatable by everyone.

          Not in themselves, but by simply setting up new ones.
          Pizzacoin? Venezuela dictatorcoin? Funcoin?
          Just take the software, generate a new seed and the next uninflatable coin is born.
          Real life Example:
          https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/5277604/bitcoin-parody-dogecoin-one-billion-dollars/

          Other thing: Undocumented borderless payments are the least thing normal people need. They are most needed either to evade taxes, launder your drug money or selling weapons to “rebells”. Or selling the bitcoins owned by you a few minutes before you got that trojan without leaving a trace for the police.

          And no, the dollar and the Euro are not oszillating that heavy, it’s the toy named bitcoin.

          Bread, butter, my rent, the money from my paycheck and the airline prices where all the same and not oszillating up to 10% a day. For most people money is a tool.

          1. I have never understood WHY people should think bit coin, or anything like it, is necessarily going to survive as a store of value.

             So far as I can see, nothing BACKS bit coin other than FAITH on the part of people who own bit coins.

             And so far as I can see, there’s no real reason that sovereign governments can’t effectively out law bit coin. It wouldn’t be easy, but on the other hand, bit coin threatens Leviathan, and Leviathan does not take threats lightly.

             If any major sovereign government decides to destroy bit coin within its borders, it can probably do so, if by no other means, buying some and putting their best computer people to work on figuring out where the servers, and the people who own them, etc, are located.

             1. So far as I can see, nothing BACKS bit coin other than FAITH on the part of people who own bit coins.

                Absolutely correct! Same as any currency. Try the following experiment, offer a Chimpanzee a nice ripe banana and a pile of hundred dollar paper bills and see which one he takes.

                Maybe the Chimp doesn’t trust ‘GOD’…

             2. Hi OldMacDonald aka KGB Trumpster,

                Check out your idiot (R) Trump Education Secretary

                Betsy DeVos’ trainwreck interview on ’60 Minutes

                DEVOS: Well, in places where there have been — where there is — a lot of choice that’s been introduced — Florida, for example, the — studies show that when there’s a large number of students that opt to go to a different school or different schools, the traditional public schools actually — the results get better, as well.
                STAHL: Now, has that happened in Michigan? We’re in Michigan. This is your home state.
                DeVOS: Michi — Yes, well, there’s lots of great options and choices for students here.
                STAHL: Have the public schools in Michigan gotten better?
                DEVOS: I don’t know. Overall, I — I can’t say overall that they have all gotten better.
                STAHL: The whole state is not doing well.
                DEVOS: Well, there are certainly lots of pockets where this — the students are doing well and —
                If I was a boxing referee, I would have stopped this exchange about halfway through. If you are the secretary of education, you have to know you are going to be asked about the effects of school choice — particularly in your home state. So, if you’re going to argue that school choice has made public schools better, you had had better find a whole hell of a lot better spin that “I don’t know.”
                And don’t make things worse by trying to claim that there are “lots of pockets” where things are going well. That is what’s known in the business as cherry-picking.

                https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/12/politics/besty-devos-interview-analysis/index.html

          2. And no, the dollar and the Euro are not oszillating that heavy, it’s the toy named bitcoin.

             I don’t think you understand how this works… You’ve obviously never had to depend on the black market value of the dollar when you are living in country where the official currency is in the throes of hyperinflation.

             http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/brazilinfl.htm

             From 1980 when the IMF price level series began to 1995 the price level increased by a factor of 1.0 trillion. That which cost 1.0 Real in 1980 cost 1.0 trillion Reais in 1997.

             Now imagine that during that time the government will only allow you to buy $1,000.00 dollars at the official rate.

44. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and his Fourth Law of Thermodynamics. http://peakoil.com/consumption/the-view-from-les-houches-thermodynamics-vs-economics

45. Democratic Republic of the Congo holds roughly 50 percent of the world’s cobalt reserves. But with President Joseph Kabila and his government looking to grab a greater share of mineral revenue while avoiding any additional international pressure that could threaten Kabila’s hold on power, Kinshasa and international mining companies might soon find themselves on a collision course.

    “Right now China controls 60% of global cobalt production, almost all of which is sourced from the Congo’s southeastern region of Katanga, but Western mining companies also have a huge presence there as well. In the past, foreign leaders have been overthrown by the US for doing much less than what Kabila plans to do now, but the situation is more complex than it might seem at first glance…..Western interests in the Congo, however, are premised on cheap access to strategic minerals, not humanitarian concerns, cynically suggesting that this might horrifyingly be the US’ fallback strategy if Kabila goes through with his mining code reform. ”

    https://orientalreview.org/2018/03/12/congo-mining-code-kabila-vs-cobalt-companies/

    1. Patrice Lumumba: the most important assassination of the 20th century
       (lets remember campers)
       https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jan/17/patrice-lumumba-50th-anniversary-assassination

46. Tillerson sacked by Trump:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43388723

    1. He is losing allies, or at least friends of convenience, at an ever increasing rate.

       A lot of people are gradually turning their backs on him, leaving him with a smaller and smaller hard core of supporters as each month passes, but with the Congress on his side, for NOW, he will likely hold on.

       But the way things are going, the D’s may take control after the midterms. It’s still a long shot, but it looks less unlikely from one month to the next.

       I will be glued to my computer this evening following the special election in Pen state.

       1. Hey Dumb Ass glued to your computer,

          Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) did not mince words Monday night when responding to President Donald Trump’s recent attack on her.

          “Everybody knows who this bully is,” Waters told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. “This is a dishonorable human. He is a con man. He came to this job as a con man. I call him ‘Don the Con Man.’”

          Waters was responding to Trump’s insult of her during a political rally in western Pennsylvania on Saturday evening, in which he told a crowd of supporters that the congresswoman is “a very low IQ individual.”

          Trump continued to attack Waters, mocking her calls for his impeachment.

          Waters said she was not surprised at all by Trump’s Saturday evening comments.

          “All I know is this: If he thinks he can stop me from talking about ‘Impeach 45,’ he’s got another thought coming,” she said. “I am not intimidated by him. I’m going to keep saying that we need to impeach him.”

          https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/maxine-waters-trump-insult-don-the-con-man_us_5aa71383e4b009b705d56f35

          1. Hey HB,

             I’m glad you’re helping out a little once in a while.

             Here’s another link.

             https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/13/politics/john-mcentee-white-house-security-clearance/index.html

             That’s two insiders gone within the last two days. Pretty soon, Trump won’t have anybody left except family and inlaws, lol.

             You giving any thought yet to supporting a candidate next time around that isn’t pulling a career long baggage train?

             1. I am very interested to see who will be nominated to run next.
                I could live with Kasich I think. Not sure on the Dem side. No long baggage train would be very good.
                Sage observation High-Trekker “No one said late stage capitalism would be fun.”

             2. You Dumb Ass KGB,

                I’m not a fool like yourself who believe the Russian Republican Fox News Hannity baggage train Apple Butter lies your a sucker for.

       2. The midterms are crucial to the Dims.
          This Fall will be the test.
          Trump is in a free fall currently, with chaos in his simple and stupid worldview.
          No one said late stage capitalism would be fun.

    2. Lets hope that idiot Scott Pruitt is in line—-

    3. In a tweet no less…
       To be fair, I never was a fan of Tillerson, but what kind of a pathetic excuse for a human being sends out a tweet terminating the Secretary of State before letting him know in person or at least via a phone call.

       1. Tillerson is a genius. I’m not a fan, since Tillerson is also completely self-serving, but this is what he did:
          (1) Sold $325 million dollars of *restricted stock* in Exxon which was supposed to be held for up to ten years, all at once, by convincing the Exxon Board that he would be “their man” in the White House (which he wasn’t)
          (2) Sold all his other oil stocks and prohibited his investment managers from ever investing in oil again, under the pretext of “avoiding conflict of interest”; converting his money to long-dated Treasury Bonds, mostly, and going way beyond what was necessary legally to avoid conflict of interest
          (3) Managed to defer taxes indefinitely on the deal (!!!!) by staying in office for 12 months and benefiting from a provision specifically related to divestments for “conflict of interest” reasons
          (4) As soon as the 12 months were up, started taunting Trump in private (with lines like “fucking moron”) until Trump fired him in a way which made Tillerson look like a statesman and made Trump look even more like an idiot than before.

          Tillerson wasn’t looking so good before he ran this incredible con; he was being investigated for Exxon’s corrupt concealment of their knowledge of global warming, and his secret “Wayne Tracker” email account, and all his wealth was locked up in doomed oil stocks which he couldn’t sell. Now he’s completely out of the oil business with $325 million in tax-free money. And if the state Attorneys General go after him, he can offer to turn state’s evidence against ExxonMobil. He got away with everything.

47. It looks like VW management is betting the farm on electric cars.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-13/vw-secures-25-billion-battery-supplies-in-electric-car-surge

48. Apparently combustion of large amounts of coal was at least partially responsible for the Permian mass extinction according to a yet to be published study.

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a19418616/the-worlds-largest-mass-extinction-may-have-been-caused-by-burning-coal/

    The World’s Largest Mass Extinction May Have Been Caused by Burning Coal
    The Permian Extinction saw over 90 percent of marine species die. New evidence has been discovered that suggests a cause.

    There is also this link to an older paper, in the above article that addresses the same ideas:
    http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/12/12/1118675109

    Explosive eruption of coal and basalt and the end-Permian mass extinction
    Darcy E. Ogden and Norman H. Sleep

    Abstract
    The end-Permian extinction decimated up to 95% of carbonate shell-bearing marine species and 80% of land animals. Isotopic excursions, dissolution of shallow marine carbonates, and the demise of carbonate shell-bearing organisms suggest global warming and ocean acidification. The temporal association of the extinction with the Siberia flood basalts at approximately 250 Ma is well known, and recent evidence suggests these flood basalts may have mobilized carbon in thick deposits of organic-rich sediments. Large isotopic excursions recorded in this period are potentially explained by rapid venting of coal-derived methane, which has primarily been attributed to metamorphism of coal by basaltic intrusion. However, recently discovered contemporaneous deposits of fly ash in northern Canada suggest large-scale combustion of coal as an additional mechanism for rapid release of carbon. This massive coal combustion may have resulted from explosive interaction with basalt sills of the Siberian Traps. Here we present physical analysis of explosive eruption of coal and basalt, demonstrating that it is a viable mechanism for global extinction. We describe and constrain the physics of this process including necessary magnitudes of basaltic intrusion, mixing and mobilization of coal and basalt, ascent to the surface, explosive combustion, and the atmospheric rise necessary for global distribution.

    1. Volcanoes, coal burning? Forests and scrub buring along with it? Nature has nothing on us, we can produce GHG’s much faster and cleaner (less ash) than nature. In fact we are giving the natural world a kick in the pants to get going producing more GHG’s. Nature is such a dear, always willing to help out.

       It seems (seams?) nature is always willing to lend a hand. Or are we just being used?

       The World’s Oldest Underground Fire Has Been Burning For 6,000 Years
       Coal seam fires are incredibly common, as it happens, and thousands of them are now burning underground across the world. A coal seam some 700 miles south of Australia’s Burning Mountain caught fire a month ago, spewing poisonous gases and prompting intense firefighting efforts. Once an subterranean coal seam fire gets out of hand—as in Centralia, as in Burning Mountain—it’s nearly impossible to put out.

       https://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-oldest-underground-fire-has-been-burning-fo-1539049759

49. The View From Les Houches: Can We Move to Renewables Fast Enough?

    “While it is true that the prices of renewable energy are going down, at these investment rates it is clear that we can’t go through the transition fast enough to comply with the Paris targets. Possibly, we won’t even be able to replace fossil fuels before they become too costly to produce. This is the result that myself and my coworkers Csala and Sgouridis obtained two years ago. According to our calculations, humankind would need to invest at least ten times as much, likely much more, in terms of energy to go through the transition fast enough.”

    1. And therein lies the rub.

       1. Doug, it’s not a homogeneous world now and probably never will be. Results and implementations of various solutions will vary widely over the earth. We have large shortages of food, clean water, medicine and energy now in parts of the world. So predicting that there will or will not be enough of something in the future is like predicting the wind, it will be different from place to place.

          Cassandra was rarely invited to parties and then only to get the people out the door.

       2. Well, yeah. We’re going to have to do a lot of carbon fixation just to have a *chance* at avoiding human extinction.

50. CLIMATE DEAL CRITIC POMPEO TO REPLACE TILLERSON AS US SECRETARY OF STATE

    Donald Trump has chosen Mike Pompeo, ally of the Koch brothers and critic of the Paris climate agreement, to replace Rex Tillerson as foreign affairs chief. Pompeo described the Paris Agreement in 2015 as a “costly burden”. He is the all-time biggest beneficiary of campaign funding from Koch Industries, which opposes climate action, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

    1. So when does the majority get any representation?

       1. When the electoral college is revoked.
          When meaningful campaign finance reform is enacted.
          When partisan gerrymandering is curtailed.
          When people are trained better to separate reality from fake news/propaganda/theology.

51. In a world of change, the remaining abandoned relics of the past are a reminder of how endeavors come and go. Mining regions are especially vulnerable to that process, places abandoned as minerals ran out or just living dwindling remnants of boom times long gone. This process will continue into the future as dramatic changes occur in the world, industries move and people shuffle off to new opportunities or escape depleting, compromised or war torn regions.
    City areas tend to build over abandoned areas so much that is found today is in the countryside.

    https://www.countryliving.com/life/travel/g2665/spookiest-ghost-towns-in-america/

    Penn State has an index listing 11.000 abandoned mines in Pennsylvania.

    Little New Jersey has over 450 abandoned underground mines.

52. Automation is nothing new. Here is a machine that put many working children out on the streets. Just a few years later some of them would be vaporized by cannon fire or mowed down by machine guns while attacking the Germans in France. Gas! Gas!!! From dark and dirty coal breakers to the trenches where the machine and chemistry made war unlike it ever was before.

    Mr. A. Langerfeld and one of his machines for picking coal which does away completely with the use of breaker boys. The percent of slate that goes in with the coal separated by this machine is 1% to 2%, where the percent with the old primitive method of using boys is from 15% to 60%. This picture was taken at the breaker of the Spencer Coal Co., at Scranton, Pa., on March, 18, 1913. Location: Scranton, Pennsylvania

    https://www.loc.gov/resource/nclc.02854/

53. Here is a fine addition to any town or city area, the coal mine culm dump. Of course many of these are gone now, we burn them to produce electricity.

    https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3a24679/

    Burning our way to a cleaner landscape? The abandoned coal mine problems seem to never go away.

    The Coal Refuse Dilemma: Burning Coal for Environmental Benefits

    The coal refuse–to-power solution was conceived in the aftermath of the oil embargo of the 1970s. Just as Congress was preparing to vote for the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) in 1978, CFB technology was being developed and showing a capability to convert low–heating value carbonaceous material (such as coal refuse) into energy.

    The first CFB plant designed to convert large quantities of coal refuse into power—the 30-MW Westwood Generating Station in Schuylkill County, Pa.—came online in 1987. Eighteen more projects have since been grid-connected, 13 in Pennsylvania alone (Figure 3); two are in West Virginia, one in Montana, one in Utah, and one in Illinois.

    “The large new waste coal burning power plants planned for western [Pennsylvania] were granted permits in 2005 to release higher levels of [sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx)] and other air pollutants than the normal pulverized coal power plant proposed near Morgantown, W.Va.,” the group pointed out. Also, “If 100 tons of waste coal are burned, 85 tons will remain as waste coal ash,” it said.
    

    http://www.powermag.com/coal-refuse-dilemma-burning-coal-environmental-benefits/?pagenum=1

54. CHAIN REACTION OF FAST-DRAINING LAKES POSES NEW RISK FOR GREENLAND ICE SHEET

    “A growing network of lakes on the Greenland ice sheet has been found to drain in a chain reaction that speeds up the flow of the ice sheet, threatening its stability. Lakes form on the surface of the Greenland ice sheet each summer as the weather warms. Many exist for weeks or months but drain in just a few hours through more than a kilometre of ice, transferring huge quantities of water and heat to the base of the ice sheet. The affected areas include sensitive regions of the ice sheet interior where the impact on ice flow is potentially large. These cascading events — including one case where 124 lakes drained in just five days — can temporarily accelerate ice flow by as much as 400%, which makes the ice sheet less stable, and increases the rate of associated sea level rise.”

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180314092305.htm

    1. Here’s a little more gloom and doom for you

       https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/20/marine-heatwave-set-off-carbon-bomb-in-worlds-largest-seagrass-meadow

55. Consistent swings towards Democrats, averaging 17%, in US special elections:

    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/pennsylvania-18-district-lamb-results/

    November is likely to be a blowout.

Comments are closed.