Open Thread Non-Petroleum, May 14, 2018

Ron Patterson Uncategorized

Please place all non-petroleum, non-extinction event comments here. Please post all petroleum comments in the OPEC post above and all extinction events comments in the extinction post below.

155 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, May 14, 2018”

    1. And I guess you posted this in the non-petroleum thread because Exxon has decided to come clean on its past deceptive tactics on climate change and make amends to humanity by investing heavily in carbon capture technology and alternative energy. 😉

  2. Hey Alexa, What Are You Doing to My Kid’s Brain?
    Robbie Gonzalez | Science

    https://www.wired.com/story/hey-alexa-what-are-you-doing-to-my-kids-brain/

    Among the more modern anxieties of parents today is how virtual assistants will train their children to act. The fear is that kids who habitually order Amazon’s Alexa to read them a story or command Google’s Assistant to tell them a joke are learning to communicate not as polite, considerate citizens, but as demanding little twerps.

    This worry has become so widespread that Amazon and Google both announced this week that their voice assistants can now encourage kids to punctuate their requests with “please.” The version of Alexa that inhabits the new Echo Dot Kids Edition will thank children for “asking so nicely.” Google Assistant’s forthcoming Pretty Please feature will remind kids to “say the magic word” before complying with their wishes.

    But many psychologists think kids being polite to virtual assistants is less of an issue than parents think—and may even be a red herring. As virtual assistants become increasingly capable, conversational, and prevalent (assistant-embodied devices are forecasted to outnumber humans), psychologists and ethicists are asking deeper, more subtle questions than will Alexa make my kid bossy. And they want parents to do the same.

    1. Parents that allow their kids to use this crap, and prolific ‘device’ time, don’t deserve the title. Of course it’s harder to get a drivers license than to get married and/or have a child.

  3. NEW PHASE OF GLOBALIZATION COULD UNDERMINE EFFORTS TO REDUCE CO2 EMISSIONS

    “The carbon intensity of the next phase of global economic development will determine whether ambitious climate targets such as stabilizing at 2 °C will be met, and our findings depict the nascent rise of energy-intensive and emissions-intensive production activities in other Asian countries such as Vietnam and Pakistan,” said Prof Guan. The success of international climate mitigation efforts may therefore depend on curtailing growth of coal-based energy and emissions in now-industrialising and urbanising countries. Otherwise, countries like China and India may meet their nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement by hollowing out low-value, energy-intensive manufacturing, and offshoring those activities to emerging markets elsewhere in Asia with less stringent climate policy measures.”

    Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-phase-globalization-undermine-efforts-co2.html#jCp

  5. Lightsource: No More Solar Bids Without Energy Storage West of the Colorado
    “For a utility-scale solar developer, we’re not putting forward any proposals without storage, currently, to anybody west of the Colorado,” she said. “Every utility process, every bilateral at this point, at least on the West Coast, is looking at solar-storage hybrids.”

    The American West enjoys a considerable solar resource, such that states like California and Arizona are starting to worry about a surfeit of solar on the grid at midday, with steep ramp requirements to meet peak demand in the evenings.

    That dynamic has driven groundbreaking solar and storage contracts, like the NextEra project for Tucson Electric Power and the First Solar plant to deliver evening power to Arizona Public Service …

    https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/lightsource-solar-bids-energy-storage-west-of-the-colorado#gs.YeT5SQ0

  6. I think they have cracked it. The solution to peak oil and global warming. Forget better MPG. Just get bigger springs, an extra axle and pile them on. Talk about better PMPG and freight too!

    1. Another peak FF solution. I think with better insulation if we just put enough people in each dwelling, no other heat source will be needed. No more fuel bills and split the rent fifty ways. Jus think of all the excess cash one could have from those $10 an hour jobs.

      1. You will need to “draw a line in the sand” for it to follow. 🙂

  7. Deadly Convenience: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll
    By David Jeans and Majlie De Puy Kamp

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/13/business/deadly-convenience-keyless-cars-and-their-carbon-monoxide-toll.html

    It seems like a common convenience in a digital age: a car that can be powered on and off with the push of a button, rather than the mechanical turning of a key. But it is a convenience that can have a deadly effect.

    On a summer morning last year, Fred Schaub drove his Toyota RAV4 into the garage attached to his Florida home and went into the house with the wireless key fob, evidently believing the car was shut off. Twenty-nine hours later, he was found dead, overcome with carbon monoxide that flooded his home while he slept.

    “After 75 years of driving, my father thought that when he took the key with him when he left the car, the car would be off,” said Mr. Schaub’s son Doug.

    Keyless ignitions are now standard in over half of the 17 million new vehicles sold annually in the United States, according to the auto information website Edmunds. Rather than a physical key, drivers carry a fob that transmits a radio signal, and as long as the fob is present, a car can be started with the touch of a button. But weaned from the habit of turning and removing a key to shut off the motor, drivers — particularly older ones — can be lulled by newer, quieter engines into mistakenly thinking that it has stopped running.

    1. Absolutely, we should eliminate all attached garages immediately. They are much better as extra rooms and cheap storage space anyway. Great places for that pool table or table tennis.
      Keep your cars out of your house.

      Here is a hint, EV’s don’t emit CO.

      1. With EVs, CO can’t get you, but exploding batteries and out of control autopilot can.

            1. Forget spiders and snakes, horses are more likely to kill you

              I quit riding them– they are dangerous.
              Took care of them daily– but quit riding.
              Just take a look at regular riders– and their hospitalizations.

            2. Yeah, a friend of mine who manages a helicopter company in northern BC informs me that most medical evacuations are horse related and most injuries are sustained by experienced wranglers. I would have thought vehicle accidents on the Alaska highway.

        2. Oh yeah, everywhere you go nowadays you have to be on the lookout for exploding batteries and all the autopilots gone berserk. Most dangerous of all are airliners flying around on autopilot! It’s just not safe to venture forth anymore in this day and age!

          But just for the record:

          On average, gas cars will catch fire at the approximate rate of 1 fire every 20 million miles driven. For EVs, the rate is 1 fire per 120 million miles driven. That’s 80% less if you’re taking notes…

          …More than 90 percent of car crashes in the U.S. are thought to involve some form of driver error.

          I could provide a bunch of links but since you are just another moronic Troll, I’ll let you google it yourself. But be very careful, Google uses AI algorithms in it’s search engine.

          Maybe you’d better just walk to your local library and do your research there the old fashioned way, much safer!

  8. 1812 — North America: Red Tide? Surf’s Up!! The Russians begin building Ft. Ross, California.
    (part of my neighborhood in Sonoma)

  9. How Much Money Do You Need to Be Wealthy in America?

    Many Americans cite leading a stress-free life and having “peace of mind” as their personal definition of wealth. That doesn’t sound too money-centric on the face of it—until you consider that money, or specifically the lack of it, is a major source of stress.

    Americans don’t like to admit that assets can buy happiness—just 11 percent of those surveyed for the second annual Modern Wealth Index from Charles Schwab chose “having lots of money” as their definition of wealth. But while most respondents selected more high-minded concepts as their keys to contentment, they weren’t afraid to put a number on what they needed to get them.

    To be financially comfortable in America today requires an average of $1.4 million, up from $1.2 million a year ago, according to the survey. The net worth needed to be “wealthy”? That’s an average $2.4 million, the same as last year in the online survey of 1,000 Americans between age 21 and 75.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/how-much-money-do-you-need-to-be-wealthy-in-america/ar-AAxiOUh?ocid=spartanntp&ffid=gz

  10. VTT MARILYN, A FINNISH ROBOT CAR, HAS TAKEN A LEAP TOWARDS AUTOMATIC 24/7 DRIVING

    VTT’s robot car, Marilyn, sees better than humans in foggy, and even snowy, conditions, and can now navigate without stopping – including in bad weather. It can also see a human through fog and avoid accident automatically. This is enabled by the LiDAR mounted on the car’s roof, which can see wavelengths that are beyond the human senses. As the technology evolves, this represents a big step towards a safe automated vehicle that is not even stopped by foggy conditions.

    https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-05/vtrc-vma051518.php

  11. ALMOST EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT E-WASTE IS WRONG

    “Minting a new bitcoin, for example, can produce seven to 12 tonnes of CO₂ per coin. Researchers estimate that electricity use for electronics in businesses and homes are responsible for about two per cent of total global greenhouse gas emissions. By 2040 those emissions could account for six to 14 per cent of total global greenhouse gas releases


    Manufacturing digital devices entails substantial tonnages of discards that, by weight, far exceed what consumers dispose of as e-waste. For example, in 2014, about 3.1 million metric tons of e-waste was collected from households in the European Union. Yet five times more waste, 16.2 million metric tons, arose from electronics manufacturing within the EU.”

    Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-e-waste-wrong.html#jCp

  12. As an avid (okay rapacious) Go player, I found this especially interesting:

    HOW THE ENLIGHTENMENT ENDS OR PHILOSOPHICALLY, INTELLECTUALLY—IN EVERY WAY—HUMAN SOCIETY IS UNPREPARED FOR THE RISE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

    “The speaker described the workings of a computer program that would soon challenge international champions in the game Go. I was amazed that a computer could master Go, which is more complex than chess. In it, each player deploys 180 or 181 pieces (depending on which color he or she chooses), placed alternately on an initially empty board; victory goes to the side that, by making better strategic decisions, immobilizes his or her opponent by more effectively controlling territory. The speaker insisted that this ability could not be preprogrammed. His machine, he said, learned to master Go by training itself through practice. Given Go’s basic rules, the computer played innumerable games against itself, learning from its mistakes and refining its algorithms accordingly. In the process, it exceeded the skills of its human mentors. And indeed, in the months following the speech, an AI program named AlphaGo would decisively defeat the world’s greatest Go players

    Before AI began to play Go, the game had varied, layered purposes: A player sought not only to win, but also to learn new strategies potentially applicable to other of life’s dimensions. For its part, by contrast, AI knows only one purpose: to win. It “learns” not conceptually but mathematically, by marginal adjustments to its algorithms. So in learning to win Go by playing it differently than humans do, AI has changed both the game’s nature and its impact. Does this single-minded insistence on prevailing characterize all AI

    Ultimately, the term artificial intelligence may be a misnomer. To be sure, these machines can solve complex, seemingly abstract problems that had previously yielded only to human cognition. But what they do uniquely is not thinking as heretofore conceived and experienced. Rather, it is unprecedented memorization and computation. Because of its inherent superiority in these fields, AI is likely to win any game assigned to it. But for our purposes as humans, the games are not only about winning; they are about thinking. By treating a mathematical process as if it were a thought process, and either trying to mimic that process ourselves or merely accepting the results, we are in danger of losing the capacity that has been the essence of human cognition.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/henry-kissinger-ai-could-mean-the-end-of-human-history/559124/

        1. My chemical view: It’s much less than a mol of dollars, therefore peanuts. 🙂

      2. How about this?

        The interior of dynamical vacuum black holes I:
        The Co-stability of the Kerr Cauchy horizon

        Mihalis Dafermos∗1 and Jonathan Luk†2
        1Department of Mathematics, Princeton University,

        And no, I didn’t understand any of it 😉

        Abstract
        We initiate a series of works where we study the interior of dynamical rotating vacuum black holes without symmetry. In the present paper, we take up the problem starting from appropriate Cauchy data for the Einstein vacuum equations defined on a hypersurface already within the black hole interior, representing the expected geometry just inside the event horizon. We prove that for all such data, the maximal Cauchy evolution can be extended across a non-trivial piece of Cauchy horizon as a Lorentzian
        manifold with continuous metric. In subsequent work, we will retrieve our assumptions on data assuming only that the black hole event horizon geometry suitably asymptotes to a rotating Kerr solution. In particular, if the exterior region of the Kerr family is proven to be dynamically stable—as is widely expected—then it will follow that the C0-inextendibility formulation of Penrose’s celebrated strong cosmic censorship conjecture is in fact false. The proof suggests, however, that the C0-metric Cauchy horizons thus arising are generically singular in an essential way, representing so-called “weak null singularities”, and thus that a revised version of strong cosmic censorship holds.

        1. Fred, I think someone is putting you on. That sounds like nothing more than mumbly bubbly bullshit. Richard Dawkins explains it all here:

          Postmodernism disrobed”
          Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content. The chances are that you would produce something like the following:

          And the following he posted sounds exactly like the crap you copied and pasted. It’s all postmodernism bullshit.

          1. It really about the behavior of (computer simulations of) black holes. Cauchy processes describe how a system made up of a huge number of particles moving at random develops.

            A Cauchy surface is a single “instance in time”. This turns out to be a tricky concept in Einstein’s world, hence the fancy terminology. A Cauchy process is just a stack of those instances (moving forward in time), which is what the simulations try to reproduce. And they use equations that are so hairy that there are still plenty of open questions about them. This paper answers one of them.

            Cauchy was a super smart French guy whose work is the foundation of just about all modern mathematical physics, so his name pops up a lot. For example Wikipedia says “in elasticity alone there are sixteen concepts and theorems named for Cauchy”. That’s how a basic concept like “now” gets a fancy name — somebody has to describe exactly what it means in a way that makes mathematical sense.

            The conclusion of the paper is that you can’t see inside a black hole, confirming what Hawkings and Penrose claimed in the 70s.

            There are a lot of questions about how black holes form, how they work, and about very violent events like supernovas. For example, supernovas are big stars that collapse and then “bounce” in a terrific explosion. But why do they bounce? What is going on exactly? Familiar physical concepts fail in such extreme situations. Proper simulations can be tested by looking at the real supernovas out there. There are a lot of them.

            This area is booming because there are open source tools like the Einstein toolkit (einsteintoolkit.org) available, and because computer power is increasing at an alarming rate. With the crash in bitcoin prices, GPU prices crashed as well. GPUs were invented for graphics cards, but are used in bitcoin mining, artificial intelligence and physics simulations. High end graphic card prices dropped by half a couple of months ago.

            We are experiencing the dawn of astrophysics. It’s an exciting time to be alive.

            1. Thanks, Alimbiquated, I knew it was probably some serious shit. But unless you are a cosmetologist it is all mumbo-jumbo.

              But in all fairness it was probably published in scientific paper delivered to other cosmologists. Therefore I should be impressed.

              Thanks for the explanation.

  14. About bloody time too:

    NEW DEVICE COULD INCREASE BATTERY LIFE OF ELECTRONICS BY A HUNDRED-FOLD

    “Among the chief complaints for smartphone, laptop and other battery-operated electronics users is that the battery life is too short and — in some cases — that the devices generate heat. Now, a group of physicists has developed a device material that can address both issues. The team has applied for a patent for a magnetic material that employs a unique structure — a ‘honeycomb’ lattice that exhibits distinctive electronic properties.”

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180516123644.htm

    1. Terrific. Now we can all trash our previous phones … again.

  15. Medical Mystery: Something Happened to U.S. Health Spending After 1980
    By Austin Frakt

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/upshot/medical-mystery-health-spending-1980.html

    The United States devotes a lot more of its economic resources to health care than any other nation, and yet its health care outcomes aren’t better for it.

    That hasn’t always been the case. America was in the realm of other countries in per-capita health spending through about 1980. Then it diverged.

    It’s the same story with health spending as a fraction of gross domestic product. Likewise, life expectancy. In 1980, the U.S. was right in the middle of the pack of peer nations in life expectancy at birth. But by the mid-2000s, we were at the bottom of the pack.

    What happened?

    [Paul Starr, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton] suggests that the high inflation of the late 1970s contributed to growth in health care spending, which other countries had more systems in place to control. Likewise, [Harvard health economist David Cutler] points to related economic events before 1980 as contributing factors. The oil price shocks of the 1970s hurt economic growth, straining countries’ ability to afford health care. “Thus, all across the world, one sees constraints on payment, technology, etc., in the 1970s and 1980s,” he said. The United States is not different in kind, only degree; our constraints were weaker.

    1. A stealthy Harvard startup wants to reverse aging in dogs, and humans could be next
      by Antonio Regalado

      https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611018/a-stealthy-harvard-startup-wants-to-reverse-aging-in-dogs-and-humans-could-be-next/

      The world’s most influential synthetic biologist is behind a new company that plans to rejuvenate dogs using gene therapy. If it works, he plans to try the same approach in people, and he might be one of the first volunteers.

      The stealth startup Rejuvenate Bio, cofounded by George Church of Harvard Medical School, thinks dogs aren’t just man’s best friend but also the best way to bring age-defeating treatments to market.

      The company, which has carried out preliminary tests on beagles, claims it will make animals “younger” by adding new DNA instructions to their bodies.

      Its age-reversal plans build on tantalizing clues seen in simple organisms like worms and flies. Tweaking their genes can increase their life spans by double or better. Other research has shown that giving old mice blood transfusions from young ones can restore some biomarkers to youthful levels.

      “Dogs are a market in and of themselves,” Church said during an event in Boston last week. “It’s not just a big organism close to humans. It’s something people will pay for, and the FDA process is much faster. We’ll do dog trials, and that’ll be a product, and that’ll pay for scaling up in human trials.”

      1. As it now stands, reversing the process of aging is poised to become an accelerating growth industry in the years ahead. As we keep obtaining new information to the prevention of Alzheimer’s and related ailments, we will likely see a rapid slowdown of the mind/body decay that up til now has been a routine process of aging. What this will allow is for the oldest citizens to continue being happy productive pieces of society for a much longer time than they would’ve been. With more people living full lives well into their 90s and 100s, there will be a demand for jobs and activities to keep them occupied. This would likely foster continuing economic growth. The entire concept of retirement could actually fade away.

        1. This would likely foster continuing economic growth. The entire concept of retirement could actually fade away.

          I can think of about a hundred or maybe 9 billion plus reasons why that, would probably be, a really really bad thing!

          The main reason is that ‘Economic Growth’ as we know and conceive of it today, is detrimental to the continued sustainability of the entire planet!

          https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_raworth_a_healthy_economy_should_be_designed_to_thrive_not_grow/up-next

          A healthy economy should be designed to thrive, not grow

          1. Come now, we can have infinite growth in finite system.
            Those scientists are scumbags , and just are in it for the money from one world dictators who want to destroy capitalism !

            1. Lets see, how can I capitalize on economic contraction?
              Offshore Barge Euthanasia clinics perhaps…

  16. So now we know folks, it’s those damn rocks:

    REPUBLICAN LAWMAKER: ROCKS TUMBLING INTO OCEAN CAUSING SEA LEVEL RISE

    “The Earth is not warming. The White Cliffs of Dover are tumbling into the sea and causing sea levels to rise. Global warming is helping grow the Antarctic ice sheet. Those are some of the skeptical assertions echoed by Republicans on the U.S. House of Representatives Science, Space and Technology Committee yesterday.”

    http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/republican-lawmaker-rocks-tumbling-ocean-causing-sea-level-rise.”

    1. Late stage capitalism was never going to be fun, but this is getting surreal.
      kakistocracy
      noun
      pl. kak·is·toc·ra·cies
      Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.

    3. The scientists should welcome the questioning and debate since it will allow them to see inconsistencies in the theory they would have probably never thought about otherwise.

      1. The scientists should welcome the questioning and debate

        They do! From other scientists who have put in the time and the effort to become experts as well. That’s why they have conferences and peer review. They don’t need the opinions of uneducated morons who suffer from severe Dunning Kruger syndrome to waste their time, thank you very much!

        The following is a comment from a scientist in one of the threads over at Realclimate.org addressing this very point:

        Ray Ladbury says:
        9 May 2018 at 7:49 AM
        DDS,
        What makes you guys dummies is that you think perusing a denialist climate blog for a couple of years makes you more of an expert than a PhD who has been studying climate for 30 years and has published hundreds of papers, advancing understanding of the field and earning the esteem of other similar experts.

        The thing is that you guys are not unique. I’ve dealt with cranks like you for decades who are “just sure” they can prove Einstein wrong if they can just find some nerd to work out the math. You just aren’t bright enough to get the jokes that you are.

        1. The thing the writer of the comment you posted fails to realize is that we’re far beyond the time when “trust me, I’m a PhD scientist” carried an argument. Thanks to the internet, scientific research has been completely democratized, with ordinary citizens being able to completely self-educate themselves using the same data and research tools that were once only available to those with science degrees.

          2. The thing the writer of the comment you posted fails to realize is that we’re far beyond the time when “trust me, I’m a PhD scientist” carried an argument.

            You are right! One scientist might be wrong. However when it is hundreds of PhDs from multiple disciplines and fields, their overall emerging consensus becomes somewhat more compelling.

          3. we’re far beyond the time when “trust me, I’m a PhD scientist” carried an argument.

            The premise is wrong: scientists very rarely, if ever, say such a thing. The guy Fred quoted was saying something very different: “don’t think that reading right wing blogs gives you the information you need to argue with scientists. You need to actually read and understand the research.”

            Personally, it doesn’t seem that important to me: there are plenty of convincing reasons to transition away from fossil fuels ASAP, even if you think climate change is hooey: other kinds of pollution and national security are plenty good enough.

            For instance, a thorough study from Harvard found that the external costs of coal (asthma, water pollution, occupational hazards, mercury, sulfur, etc., etc) added up to 14 cents per kWh. The additional costs of CO2 were only another 4 cents. If you charge coal 14 cents for pollution, that’s way more than enough to eliminate coal from the grid very, very quickly.

            1. This is hilarious!!! S H puts up two completely erroneous sentences and people are responding as if they might actually have some validity.
              The art of shysterism depends upon an audience willing to freely give the speaker a valid position. The speaker has no valid position but the audience acts that way.
              This is how a society collapses, cognitive collapse precedes physical collapse.

            2. I agree.

              That’s why I think it’s important to *first* question the basic premise of the argument. Too often people implicitly concede the basic premise, and then try to prepare a counter argument.

              Bad idea.

              On the other hand, it’s useful to provide good, clear, realistic information, like above. It’s a teachable moment.

            3. Nick, it’s impossible to teach a terminal cancer patient how to get well.
              We (society and the educational system) needed to nip this in the bud a long time ago. That did not happen and now the psychosis is solidly entrenched throughout the society. This causes irrational responses to existential threats and to desires for the common good. There is no way to fix this, it’s too far gone. The total lack of focused response to the psychotic effort to undermine society means an eventual complete takeover by a harmful and delusional component of society. Although at this point, one may question if it has not happened already.

    4. Goddamit! Another fucking moronic Alabama politician for me to be ashamed of. Why can’t they just take the money, shut the fuck up, and crawl back under a rock!

      1. What you don’t think that several feet of all the rocks and soil across all the continental land masses migrated into the oceans in the past century?
        Smart man.

  17. Climate change in action!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=MaxBOvQ2a_o
    For 15 Years, GRACE Tracked Freshwater Movements Around the World

    NASA Goddard
    Published on May 16, 2018

    Between 2002 and 2016, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) tracked the movement of freshwater around the planet.

    NASA scientists used GRACE data to identify regional trends of freshwater movement, and combined that information with data from other satellites, climate models and precipitation measurements to determine the causes of major regional trends in freshwater storage. Music: Iron Throne by Anthony Giordano [SACEM] Complete transcript available.

    This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12876

    Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Kathryn Mersmann

  18. This is for Fred Magyar.

    The following is from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

    See global temperature map for April 2018 here:

    https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201804

    Here is what they state in describing April temperature data:

    Much of the globe had warmer-than-average conditions during April 2018. The most notable warm temperature departures from average were observed across southern South America, central Europe, eastern Russia, and Australia where temperatures were +3.0°C (5.4°F) or higher. Record warmth was present across southern South America, central Europe, and scattered across all oceans and parts of Australia. The most notable cooler-than-average temperatures during April 2018 were present across much of Canada and the contiguous U.S., where temperatures were -3.0°C (-5.4°F) or cooler. Record cold temperatures were limited to parts of the Midwestern contiguous U.S. According to NCEI’s Regional Analysis, four of six continents had an April temperature that ranked among the five warmest Aprils on record, with South America and Europe having their warmest April on record.

  19. A few days back, there was a discussion on this site regarding the objectivity/biases/prejudices/”slant”, if you will, involving various media sources.

    Overlooked in that discussion is a rising force that – with blinding speed – is relegating legacy media to inconsequential status.

    That force is social media.

    While YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, real-time global bulletin boards like Voat, Reddit, the Chans are recognized, powerful disseminaters of data, blogs such as this one are also prominent in spreading information.

    All this is a prelude to inform you folks once again about the report from the DOJ’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz.
    It is said to be completed and being reviewed by the remaining DOJ employees named adversely in the report so that they may offer a final input before the release in a few days’ time.

    If the rumors rapidly circulating are accurate, several high ranking members of the FBI and the Department of Justice are being named as having broken federal law in the so-called Hillary Clinton email investigation and these individuals are being referred for criminal investigation.

    The IG only gathers information. It is not an enforcement entity.
    However, Federal Prosecutor John Huber has been working along with Horowitz and Huber can most certainly both subpoena and indict.

    Long way of saying to you folks, most especially those of you who have positive sentiments towards certain politicians and views of the world, that the coming days portend a horrific jolt regarding criminality, rule of law, and what the United States fundamentally will accept in the interplay between government and its varied citizenry.

    Buckle up.

    1. Coffeeguyzzzzzz,
      So the results will be that the Dems were ticketed for parking on an even-numbered day, while the Repubs will be charged with treason, money laundering, obstruction of justice, extortion, etc etc?

      1. We shall all see the results shortly.
        Early interpretations are 180 degrees from what you just said.

        1. Early interpretations from Fox News are predictable before the facts are even known.

    2. If the rumors rapidly circulating are accurate, several high ranking members of the FBI and the Department of Justice are being named as having broken federal law in the so-called Hillary Clinton email investigation and these individuals are being referred for criminal investigation.

      Seriously?! If you actually have something that you know for a fact, besides the ‘RUMORS’ then please provide a link to a reputable source of information. Otherwise you come across as just another conspiracy theory nut!

      The ‘RUMORS’ I’m hearing are that much sooner than later, Trump will be held accountable for at least some of his crimes. Not disclosing his 2017 reimbursement of payments by Michael Cohen for the Stormy Daniels hush money payments is a criminal offense. Lying about it for months would certainly fall under the heading of misdemeanors… And that will stand on its own merits or should I say demerits, regardless of whether or not the entire FBI is indicted for any criminal offenses.

  20. Fred —

    ONLY 1 PCT OF JAPAN’S BIGGEST CORAL REEF HEALTHY: SURVEY

    Japan’s biggest coral reef has not recovered from bleaching due to rising sea temperatures, with only one percent of the reef in a healthy condition, according to a government study. The overall volume of coral in Sekisei Lagoon in southwestern Japan near Okinawa had already plunged by 80 percent since the late 1980s due to rising water temperatures and damage caused by coral-eating starfish. Now only 1.4 percent of the lagoon, which stretches over 67.89 square kilometres, is in a healthy condition, the environment ministry said, after it was hit by mass bleaching in 1998, 2001, 2007 and most recently 2016.

    Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-pct-japan-biggest-coral-reef.html#jCp

    1. CLIMATE CHANGE IN AUSTRALIA: A CONTINENT ON THE BRINK

      “Australia is today’s example of how extreme weather caused climate change will impact the rest of the world in the near future. The livelihoods of many Australians are threatened by the extreme weather, and nature is being destroyed at an alarming pace
 Australia continues to mine for fossil fuels as if nothing is wrong. In fact, Australia is now overtaking Indonesia as the world’s biggest exporter of coal. More than any other country, Australia is leading the world in the destruction of coral reefs – and that includes the Great Barrier Reef.”

      http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/05/18/climate-change-australia-continent-brink/

    2. Yep! The state of the world’s coral reefs is something that really gets me quite depressed at times.

      I live right smack in the middle of the red zone highlighted in figure 1 at the link below:
      This particular disease is on top of all the things like warming, acidification, agricultural and industrial runoff. Oil slicks from rain washing off roads, herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, farmaceuticals, medication, caffeine, sunscreen, micro plastics and the list goes on and on…

      https://floridadep.gov/fco/coral/content/florida-reef-tract-coral-disease-outbreak

      Florida Reef Tract Coral Disease Outbreak
      Coral Disease Outbreak Across Florida Reef Tract
      (2014-present)

      Florida’s coral reefs are experiencing a multi-year outbreak of coral disease. While disease outbreaks are not unprecedented, this event is unique due to the number of coral species affected across a large portion of the Florida Reef Tract, and the ongoing nature of the event. The disease outbreak is highly prevalent and is estimated to have resulted in the mortality of millions of corals. In fall 2014, isolated sites with significant coral disease were reported near Key Biscayne in Miami-Dade County by FDEP’s Coral Reef Conservation Program staff as well as local scientists. By fall 2015, widespread disease was confirmed across approximately 55 linear miles of reef, including locations as far north as Pompano Beach in Broward County and as far south as Biscayne National Park with a few isolated reports in Palm Beach County. Disease continued to spread north and south into the Florida Keys throughout 2016, and by summer of 2017 reports of widespread disease were confirmed as far north as St. Lucie Inlet in Martin County and to the southern boundary of the upper Keys
      .

  21. CLIMATE CHANGE ON TRACK TO CAUSE MAJOR INSECT WIPE OUT, SCIENTISTS WARN

    Global warming is on track to cause a major wipe out of insects, compounding already severe losses, according to a new analysis. Insects are vital to most ecosystems and a widespread collapse would cause extremely far-reaching disruption to life on Earth, the scientists warn. Their research shows that, even with all the carbon cuts already pledged by nations so far, climate change would make almost half of insect habitat unsuitable by the end of the century, with pollinators like bees particularly affected.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/17/climate-change-on-track-to-cause-major-insect-wipeout-scientists-warn

  23. At this point, a “best fit” for the current increasing atmospheric CO2 levels is during the warm Pliocene, about 3 million years ago, at a time when there was no Greenland Ice Sheet and no West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Sustained atmospheric CO2 at this level does not sustain Northern Hemisphere or marine ice sheets.

    1. Filing under the talk of the increasing CO2 with increasing temperatures, I saw this interesting lecture the other day from a university science professor. I didn’t understand the math good enough to follow along in all parts but this was the slide they kept coming back to. If this is true some of the information many say is true will need to be rewritten. Can anyone say some thoughts?

      1. Heartland Basic Basics. Simple math for simple minds.
        Heartland Institute – an Unthink Tank spewing propaganda and brainwashing to protect entrenched business interests
        From Wikipedia:
        In the 1990s, the Heartland Institute worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question or deny the health risks of secondhand smoke and to lobby against smoking bans.[2][3]:233–34[4] In the decade after 2000, the Heartland Institute became a leading supporter of climate change denial.[5][6] It rejects the scientific consensus on global warming,[7] and says that policies to fight it would be damaging to the economy.[8]

      2. Hi Roy. Here is the simplest response I can muster to your request for thoughts- the whole issue is just a little more complex than what this lecture tried to portray. When you simplify something complex too much you can end up being far short of a truthful conclusion. If you look at the long (really long) records of earth, you can see a very strong correlation between CO2 and temperature. Things are just starting to change.
        Buckle up.

        1. Is simplification what we now call being purposefully misleading? Spin, spin spin.

  24. Study: 100% global energy system feasible

    “Several scientist have joined to rebut an Australian article that questions the feasibility of a global energy transition. For this purpose, they have gathered hundreds of studies on energy systems and conclude, that there are neither fundamental technical nor financial barriers to achieve 100% renewable energy supply.

    Academics and researchers on opposing sides of the debate surrounding the global energy transition continue to publish papers in support of their position. The latest finds that an 100% renewable global energy system is not only achievable, but feasible.

    Last September, the academic journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Review published the article: “Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of renewable-electricity systems” authored by a group of Australian scientists lead by Benjamin Heard. The paper questioned the feasibility of a comprehensive energy supply based on renewable resources.

    To counter this position, a group of global energy transition academics authored a rebuttal: “Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’”, which was published in the same journal. The conclusion: there are neither fundamental technical nor financial barriers on the path to a 100% renewable energy system.

    Scientists of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Lappeenranta University of Technology, Delft University of Technology and the University of Aalborg contributed to the paper.”

    Just thought I’d provide some weekend homework for the people around here who are constantly bleating that “renewable energy can’t keep the lights on”. Their assignment is to thoroughly read the rebuttal and see if they can come up with sensible rebuttals to the rebuttal! 😉

    1. Sure feasible, or possible.
      But affordable I ask?
      I wouldn’t be retiring my NGas peaker plant anytime soon, if I had one available. Especially if I lived in a region that wasn’t exceptionally sunny and or windy.

      1. Regions that aren’t exceptionally sunny or windy still have wind and sun.
        But most regions don’t have domestic NGas supplies.
        So, most of the time the NGas approach will make you more dependent on energy imports.

      2. Man up Hickory, a few days without power is no big deal.
        My area gets out of power for several days a time. Had one five day without and one four day without so far this year.
        Amazing, people get outside and talk to each other, help each other. When the power comes back on they mostly crawl back into their shells.
        Electricity is anti-community. Back to the TV, the computer, etc.
        People might even start reading books if those e-devices failed more often.

        1. My area gets out of power for several days a time. Had one five day without and one four day without so far this year.

          Yep! A good hurricane will usually accomplish the same down here where I am.

          1. Hurricane? This was just a regular storms, winds over 70 mph, several houses and an outbuilding crushed by trees in my neighborhood this year. We are getting these strong storms more often. Started back in the 90’s. Now it’s just rolling the dice who gets nailed next.

            1. Windstorm last year, 3 days no power. The storm only lasted a few tens of minutes.

              NAOM

          1. That is a sticking point but I am sure you will crack it with a little thought.

          2. Spent 5 days without electricity in Mill Valley.
            Probably harder than a year in Micronesia.

        4. Without electricity, I earn zero dollars, in fact I’m essentially unemployed. Who here among those who work, can do their job without electricity?

          I work from home and do have PV generating capacity of about 35% more electricity annually than my home consumption, but have not invested in battery storage. It wouldn’t be effective during the darker season anyway. Sidenote- this excess PV energy is enough for about 12,000 miles of EV travel/yr, once I get a plug-in hybrid or EV.

          The grid, as long as it is reliable, is a much better and cost effective method of energy storage at both the individual and regional level.
          I hope the utilities aren’t taking traditional sources of production down prematurely. We may learn the hard way on this.

          1. Who here among those who work, can do their job without electricity?

            Other than Caelan, not many 😉

            In my case I’m also dependent on my laptop, lot’s of highly specialized software and reliable internet access.
            Hunting rodents, picking berries and digging up roots with stone tools doesn’t quite cut it for me.
            .

            1. He probably does too.
              Even guinea pig groomers sometimes use electric shavers.

          2. Yair,

            “The grid, as long as it is reliable, is a much better and cost effective method of energy storage at both the individual and regional level”.

            Maybe, but have you looked at the Australian SWER line system where there can be a single homestead at the end of fifty miles of poles?

            It never seemed cost effective to me even when I was clearing right of ways over fifty years ago . . . ROW’s that have to be kept clear of regrowth.

            Each one of the poles has a number and (these days) a GPS coordinate and is visited and bashed with the back of an axe every year to check for rot or termites . . . and then, good Lord the carry on if a pole has to be replaced.

            Probably a million bucks worth of diggers and drillers and basket lifts and half a dozen crew to replace one thirty foot pole.

            Much of this bullshit is being replaced with solar which is proving more reliable and cost effective.

            Cheers.

            1. One day the light will go on (no pun) and the utilities will realise that it is cheaper to set you up with a solar station instead of all that palaver over 50 miles especially when they take into account the scrap value of a few tons of cable.

              NAOM

            2. I have a hunch that the old centralized distribution business model, via an electrical grid, that most utilities are still stuck on, is going to be seriously disrupted in the not too distant future. Sayonara those 50 plus miles of copper wires and electric poles.

              Our old acquaintance Robert Rapier has an article in Forbes
              A Battery That Could Change The World
              Robert Rapier , CONTRIBUTOR
              Last week I happened to catch an intriguing documentary on NOVA called Search for the Super Battery.
              http://www.pbs.org/video/nova-search-super-battery/

              The topic is of intense interest to me, as the development of better, cheaper batteries is critical for both the future of electric vehicles (EVs) and for the future electrical grid. Battery improvements are needed to increase the range of EVs, and cheaper batteries can help drive down the costs of EVs so more consumers can afford them.

              Also Jack Rickard of EVTV has been pretty busy lately with quite a few interesting updates:

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvCOcBynlq0&feature=share
              Tesla Model 3 Battery Removal and Dissasembly

            3. nova – not available in my region 🙁

              Yep, I see big changes in battery tech over the next few years especially in grid storage. Lithium will not stay king of the grid unless there is a big breakthrough, it is good for light and mobile but there are much more promising alternatives for big and stationary.

              As for 50 mile utilities, someone needs to do the math and see what the breakeven on solar + battery vs 50 miles of wet string over a number of years. There must be a point where putting the plant in at a monthly charge must cost less than all that work to keep the string up. Got to be around $4,000 of scrap copper that can offset the cost.

              Scrubs, how about shooting a letter to your utility with that for a proposal?

              NAOM

            4. My comments about the grid/storage apparently do not apply to situations far off the main road, but to the other 97% of home and business circuits, yes.

            5. Yeah.

              So far, grids in places like Germany and California are getting more reliable, even as they add wind & solar.

              The system operators are pretty thorough and professional in their planning. They analyze all the historical and operational data for the grid (including both consumption, and production by the generation sources), and prepare for contingencies.

              They’ve been doing it for a long time, and wind and solar isn’t really all that different: everything has it’s problems, and there are a lot of effective tools for dealing with them.

              In the US they’re called Independent System Operators. You can get a feeling for ISO planning and operations by looking at their planning documents on their web sites, and following their daily operations on their phone apps. You can start with the California ISO (CAISO), and the PJM ISO (mid N Atlantic). NY and ERCOT (Texas) are also very good.

          3. I spear fished in Micronesia– no need for the electricity at that point.
            But used a metal based spear, and rubber slings for thrust, and a metal trigger point.
            The gun itself was Ironwood from Palau.
            Mostly traded– fish being very high commodity.

    2. Yep and while we are at it some real world data points in support of Tony Seba’s technological disruption arguments when it comes to market penetration of EVs. Some interesting numbers beginning at around the 6:15 minute mark, in the Youtube Vid linked below.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s-I4vm9Q78

      The Electric Vehicle Experience Centre | Fully Charged

      Probably still not enough or in time to save the world’s coral reefs and stop the sixth mass extinction event we are in but something to have on our radars nonetheless!

      1. Yep in five years the onslaught of EV will be running full tilt. Even the backwards US will be seeing a lot of them.

  25. “There’s something about Baroque music that macho wannabe-gangster types hate.”
    (I love it!)
    (This is really OT)

    Baroque music seems to make the most potent repellant. “[D]espite a few assertive, late-Romantic exceptions like Mussorgsky and Rachmaninoff,” notes critic Scott Timberg, “the music used to scatter hoodlums is pre-Romantic, by Baroque or Classical-era composers such as Vivaldi or Mozart.” Public administrators seldom speculate on the underlying reasons why the music is so effective but often tout the results with a certain pugnacious pride. As a Cleveland official explained, “There’s something about Baroque music that macho wannabe-gangster types hate.” The police chief of Tacoma, Washington, echoed the same logic (and the same phrasing): “By playing classical music, we hope to create an unpleasant environment for criminals and gangster-wannabes.” One London subway observer voiced the punitive mindset behind the strategy in bluntest terms: “These juvenile delinquents are saying ‘Well, we can either stand here and listen to what we regard as this absolute rubbish, or our alternative — we can, you know, take our delinquency elsewhere.’”

    “Readers may wish to dispatch a flash mob of chamber music players to this year’s Heartland Institute International Conference on Climate Change, and report on who runs away first & fastest”

  26. If Renewables Are So Great for the Environment, Why Do They Keep Destroying It?
    Michael Shellenberger , Contributor

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/17/if-renewables-are-so-great-for-the-environment-why-do-they-keep-destroying-it/

    “To prevent extinctions in the future,” argued novelist and birder, Jonathan Franzen, in The New Yorker, “it’s not enough to curb our carbon emissions. We also have to keep a whole lot of wild birds alive right now.” [Emphasis in the original]

    Franzen’s essay resonated. One month after it was published in 2015, the American Bird Conservancy told CBS News, bluntly, “Wind turbines are among the fastest-growing threats to our nation’s birds.”

    Michael Hutchins of the Conservancy says “industry players have worked behind the scenes to try to minimize state and federal regulations and to attack important environmental legislation, such as the Migratory Bird Treaty Act
 Attempts to manage the wind industry with voluntary as opposed to mandatory permitting guidelines are clearly not working.”

    In 2013, federal wildlife officials took the unprecedented step of telling private companies that they will not be prosecuted,” The Los Angeles Times reported, “for inadvertently harassing or even killing endangered California condors,” a violation of federal law.

    The big environmental organizations appear unmoved. After acknowledging that the expansion of off-shore wind turbines in Germany “could be grave and even lead to the extinction of individual species,” including the Harbor Porpoise, Friends of the Earth-Germany (BUND) said, cheerily, “But things could also not be that bad after all. We simply do not know yet.”

    Can you think of another instance where Friends of the Earth (FOE) — an organization that has, since 1970, fought to kill hydro-electric dams, nuclear power plants, and fossil fuel plants — has shrugged its shoulders over the extinction of a whale at the hands of a big energy project?

    Perhaps it won’t be as bad as that, as FOE-Germany notes — or perhaps it will be worse. It’s notable that scientists radically underestimated how many bats would be killed by Hawaii’s wind farms, which are also killing the state bird, the nene, and the petrel seabird, both of which are endangered.

    1. “Wind turbines are among the fastest-growing threats to our nation’s birds.”

      Oh, fer fuck’s sake, not this bullshit again!

      Wind turbines kill between 214,000 and 368,000 birds annually — a small fraction compared with the estimated 6.8 million fatalities from collisions with cell and radio towers and the 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion deaths from cats, according to the peer-reviewed study by two federal scientists and the environmental …Sep 15, 2014

      Are you willing to join a campaign to eradicate feral domestic cats?!
      .

      1. An especially good question for a commenter using the name “cats@home”.

        If they really care so much about birds, they need to do something serious about those cats…

      2. Not to mention the number of birds killed flying into lit but unoccupied office buildings or are confused by the city lights.

        NAOM

      3. People aren’t even reading the article it seems. Note the windmill blades are cutting up rare and endangered birds leading to extinction of those species while housecats mostly hurt very common birds not in a risk of extinction.

        If Renewables Are So Great for the Environment, Why Do They Keep Destroying It?
        Michael Shellenberger , Contributor

        https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/17/if-renewables-are-so-great-for-the-environment-why-do-they-keep-destroying-it/

        Come on, you might be thinking — aren’t these impacts trivial compared to other threats? After all, house cats kill between one and four billion birds per year in the U.S.

        That number makes the 16,200 to 59,400 birds killed annually by solar farms in southern California, and the 140,000 to 328,000 birds killed annually by wind turbines in the U.S., seem like much ado about nothing.

        However, your perspective might change — as mine did — when you learn that the birds that cats kill are overwhelmingly small and common, such as pigeons, sparrows, and robins, while the birds that the wind turbines and solar farms kill are large, rare, and threatened, like the Golden Eagle, Red-Tailed Hawk, and American Kestrel, a bird so magnificent that I named my daughter after it.

        And any birder will remind you that large birds of prey like raptors are slower to reproduce, and so the death of breeding adults has a far more devastating impact on populations than do the deaths of small birds.

        1. Why don’t people take article like this seriously? Let’s start with the title, which is obviously in troll territory.

        2. Michael Shellenberger is a politician running for Governor of California on a pro nuclear anti solar and renewables platform! Here are some of his views.

          Protecting the air and land requires using nuclear energy. That starts with Diablo Canyon and San Onofre nuclear plants, which should be used to electrify transportation, desalinate, and recycle wastewater.

          Five million EVs would require the same amount of electricity produced annually by Diablo Canyon. Five Diablo Canyon-sized plants could generate enough power for 24 million EVs.

          Nuclear produces more power on less land. Diablo Canyon, for example, produces 15 times as much electricity as Topaz Solar farm — but on 4 percent of the land.

          We should end the discrimination against nuclear energy by including it in the state’s renewable portfolio standard. Doing so would prevent Diablo Canyon from closing and create a fair incentive to restart San Onofre.

          Sorry, but nuclear energy is neither economically viable nor ecologically sustainable and should not in any way shape or form be included under any renewable portfolio, period! Especially in earthquake prone California. Remember the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster!

          Furthermore there are ways to prevent raptors from being killed by wind turbines. And I still prefer to kill off the feral domestic cats ! Well, maybe gently euthanize them /sarc

          https://phys.org/news/2018-03-deterrent-eagles-turbines-coexist.html

          Albertani is working with Sinisa Todorovic, associate professor of computer science at OSU, and Matthew Johnston, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, on what they hope will be a major breakthrough in a safer-for-wildlife expansion of wind energy worldwide.

          The idea is that a computer-connected camera would determine if an approaching bird is an eagle and whether it’s flying toward the blades. If both those answers are yes, the computer would trigger a ground-level kinetic deterrent: randomly moving, brightly colored facsimiles of people, designed to play into eagles’ apparent aversion to humans.

          https://www.evergladesuniversity.edu/wind-turbines-killing-birds/
          Lots of ideas for protecting birds at the above link

          Maybe they should hang pictures of Scott Pruitt and Trump on the wind turbine towers, that ought to scare off any birds, even the eagles!

          1. Eliminate high rise glassed buildings. Saves birds, saves heating and air conditioning energy. There, two birds killed with one stone.

            Did I say something wrong?

        3. Well, the first solution is location. Take into account bird populations when deciding on siting wind generators. Unfortunately, local politics and nimbyism seem to take preference.
          Second, there is some work on making the blades more visibly to birds. (Anyone got any links?)
          Third, how about damage to bird populations caused by mountaintop removal, oil sands, oil pollution etc? Must be a few sensitive species being pressured there.

          NAOM

          Check over on Anthropocene extinction for some information on habitat loss as a threat to species.

          PS You called your daughter American Kestrel!?

    2. It’s notable that scientists radically underestimated how many bats would be killed by Hawaii’s wind farms, which are also killing the state bird, the nene, and the petrel seabird, both of which are endangered.

      How about the effects of petroleum products such as plastic on seabirds? How come you aren’t up in arms about that? BTW there are studies that show if you paint turbine blades purple they don’t attract the insects that the bats are hunting. The downside is people don’t like the way purple turbines look. They prefer grey blades that blend into the sky…

      You aren’t really the least bit interested in environmental protection or birds you are really someone with a pro fossil fuel anti renewables agenda.

  27. This might be my last post here ever, given that I have more to do than I have time to get done these days, including working on original materials for a site of my own.

    I’ve learned a HELL of a lot here, and enjoyed both the all the interaction, both friendly and otherwise, with all the forum members, and thank you all , everybody, including HB.

    But being who I am, I can’t resist one last parting shot about politics.

    Lets not forget that while I have often described myself as the token conservative of this forum, not to mention KJB agent, dumb old farmer, etc, anybody who actually tallies up the things I support would have to conclude I’m a liberal, or at least a middle of the roader.

    I don’t cut anybody any slack, when they spout bullshit, from either side.

    So …. consider this. Last time I posted, several weeks ago, Ron said liberals are very tolerant. Well, YES, so long as they get THEIR way, they are indeed.

    But it’s perfectly obvious that they are not willing to tolerate the culture of people who were the mainstream in this country no more than a generation or so ago, and who are still numerous enough to elect politicians like Trump…… not necessarily because they LIKE Trump, or his sort, but just as much because they DON’T like politicians like HRC, and they don’t like being forced by the courts to live according to values and laws contrary to their own mores, values, and beliefs.

    So…… Note that I ‘m not actually TAKING SIDES, I’m just trying to point out reality. Tens of millions of people believe abortion is murder, tens of millions of people don’t believe a baker should be forced to sell a wedding cake to gays or lesbians, etc, etc. Tens of millions of people have lost their jobs to globalization, and while the COUNTRY may be better off, as a whole, these people are sure as hell WORSE off, and quite a lot of them VOTE….. enough of them to put R’s in office and in control of the country.

    I am pointing out that forcing such changes, unwanted changes, on people is not exactly displaying tolerance for THEIR values and culture. Whether these things are right or wrong is irrelevant to the point I’m making.

    I am generally see both sides of this kind of question or issue.

    Now I hear a steady refrain, a continuous refrain, from the liberal camp, to the effect that the the conservative camp consists only of perverts, racists, xenophobes, idiots, all without moral values of any sort. I’m not saying there aren’t plenty of scumbags in the conservative camp, not at all, but I AM pointing out that if you want a person LEANING in that direction to vote R next election, and the ones after that, one of the best ways to get your wish is to continue to badmouth him and his culture.

    At various times past, I have pointed out Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s remarks about defining deviancy down, and nowadays when I run into a hard core right winger, one who happens to be smart enough to KNOW that Trump is a disaster in every respect, he is very apt to to retort that he’s simply fighting fire WITH fire at the ballot box.

    Read this link for insight into WHY Trump is president today, and why HRC was the worst possible candidate the D party could have nominated.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-hillary-clinton-normalized-trump-2018-5

    At some point, I will come back and post a link to my own new site…… If I ever get it like I want it, lol.

  30. GREENLAND LOST A STAGGERING 1 TRILLION TONS OF ICE IN JUST FOUR YEARS

    “It’s no news that Greenland is in serious trouble — but now, new research has helped quantify just how bad its problems are. A satellite study, published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that the Greenland ice sheet lost a whopping 1 trillion tons of ice between the years 2011 and 2014 alone. And a big portion of it came from just five glaciers, about which scientists now have more cause to worry than ever.”

    “The observed deficit indicates an annual contribution of 0.74 ± 0.14 mm/yr to global mean sea level, which is approximately double the 1992–2011 mean. Since 2011, ice sheet mass balance has been highly variable in space and time.”

    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GL069666

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/07/19/greenland-lost-a-trillion-tons-of-ice-in-just-four-years/?utm_term=.5ac5e9fd6c50

    1. A satellite study, published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that the Greenland ice sheet lost a whopping 1 trillion tons of ice between the years 2011 and 2014 alone.

      OK! Just some numbers to think about…

      One metric tonne is 1000 kilograms (1 tonne = 1000 kg)

      One metric tonne of water has a volume of one cubic meter (1 tonne water ≡ 1 m³)

      One gigatonne of water has a volume of one billion cubic meters, or one cubic kilomter.(1 Gt water ≡ 1 km³) Of course, one gigatonne of ice has a greater volume than one gigatonne of water. But it will still have a volume of 1 km³ when it melts.

      Then we also need to get our units clarified and define whose one billion and one trillion we are talking about:
      Until as recently as the 1970s there was some confusion about this. It seems the American billion and trillion have won out over the British numbers…

      Which means we can now safely use one billion as 1,000,000,000 and a trillion as 1,000,000,000,000 so one trillion is one thousand times one billion.

      So in conclusion: Greenland has lost roughly a thousand gigatonnes of ice from just five glaciers, which has ended up in the ocean in the 2011 to 2014 timeframe.

      And while “The observed deficit indicates an annual contribution of 0.74 ± 0.14 mm/yr to global mean sea level, which is approximately double the 1992–2011 mean. might not seem like a significant contribution to sea level rise. Given the increase in King Tide flooding events ocurring during that same period in Miami Florida and vicinity, the fact that we are seeing a doubling of the 1992–2011 mean, probably doesn’t bode all that well for the ongoing construction projects currently in South Florida.

      Cheers!

      1. Fred – more on units (yes, I know you know this):

        In the International System of Units, the prefix “giga” means 10^9, or one billion (1,000,000,000). Hence those terms like “gigawatt.” Thus, a gigaton is equivalent to a billion metric tons. It takes 360 gigatons of ice, (or lots of rocks falling into the sea) to raise the global sea level one millimeter. So right now, Antarctica is doing that about once every three years. Globally, though, sea level is going up at an increasing rate of 2.6 to 2.9 millimeters per year, because Antarctica isn’t the only contributor. The Greenland ice sheet, facing rising Arctic temperatures, is also contributing, and at least for now, appears to be throwing off more ice than Antarctica: let’s say, 378 gigatons per year. Glaciers around the world are also adding at the scale of many gigatons. Indeed, recent research suggests the glaciers of Alaska alone are now contributing 75 gigatons per year. That’s a millimeter per year right there. Meanwhile, roughly 9 gigatons of Carbon (GtC) are emitted from burning fossil fuels as 33 gigatons of Carbon Dioxide gas — per year.

          1. Well, if you want to convert gigatonnes to gigatons, multiply by 1. 🙂

            2. No, strictly a gigaton is not a SI unit but rather kiloton, megaton, and gigaton are (usually) used for the energy of nuclear explosions and other events in equivalent mass of TNT, (often loosely) as approximate figures. When used in this context, there is little need to distinguish between metric and other tons, and the unit is spelt either as ton or tonne with the relevant prefix attached.

            3. hmmm. Well, I’m familiar with that. It kind’ve makes sense, as TNT equivalents are indeed pretty loose.

              But…are we in that context?

            4. I can’t see any need to distinguish between metric and other tons when talking glaciers. Nor do Glaciologists.

            5. And NASA seems to agree. Of course, that’s caused a few problems:

              “NASA’s decision to engineer its replacement for the space shuttle using imperial measurement units rather than metric could derail efforts to develop a globalised civilian space industry, says a leading light in the nascent commercial spaceflight sector.”

              https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17350-nasa-criticised-for-sticking-to-imperial-units/

              And, of course, who can forget:

              “NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement while the agency’s team used the more conventional metric system for a key spacecraft operation, according to a review finding released Thursday.”

              http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/

            6. “NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement –”

              Lockheed Martin is great at blowing things up, but I would not trust them beyond that.
              (I’ve known quite a few engineers who worked for Lockheed, and the granddaughter of Jack Northrop, who bailed from the company).

            7. I suspect that any difference between gigaton of ice and gigatonne of ice will be lost in the margin of error.

              NAOM

            8. As most of my education took place in Brazil where the metric system is in use, I was using the metric tonne.

              Gram molar mass of water = 18 g
              So, moles of water in 1 kg = 1000/18 = 55.56 moles

              1 liter of pure distilled H2O at 1 ATM of pressure and at 4 °C is at it’s maximum non compressed density = 1 Kg.
              (or close enough for government work) 😉

              1 cubic meter of H2O = 1000 liters or 1 metric tonne.

            9. Nick, look at the error range of 38% for melt measurement. Does it matter?

            10. That’s a reasonable question. I started this dialogue mostly for fun, but…I think it does matter. For one thing, attention to proper use of units is important. Just look at how confused our “Peter” commenter gets about units – he clearly has trouble with quantitative analysis, and a clear understanding of units is a key foundation.

              For another, even where there is significant imprecision, and where we don’t want to overstate the precision of our knowledge…we still don’t want to introduce unnecessary additional error. And, we can see an example of an intuition of that idea in Doug’s post above, where he refers to Greenland’s ice sheet throwing off 378 gigatons of ice: he doesn’t round it to 380, he says 378. He doesn’t want to introduce an unnecessary error, even though the overall estimates have less precision than the three significant digits here would suggest.

        2. It takes 360 gigatons of ice, (or lots of rocks falling into the sea) to raise the global sea level one millimeter.

          Chortle!

          I think that begs the question, how many ‘Mo Brooks’ equivalents, who are dumber than a bag of rocks, (no disrespect toward any rocks intended) would it take to do the same?

      1. Nope! Never!

        But for the record, this is as probably as good a guess as any:

        https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Why-is-Greenland-called-so-though-it-has-no-vegetation/articleshow/1746564.cms

        Why is Greenland called so though it has no vegetation?

        The name Greenland comes from Scandinavian settlers. In the Norse sagas, it is said that Erik the Red was exiled from Iceland for murder. He set out in ships to find land rumoured to be to the northwest. After settling there, he named the land Grfnland (Greenland), possibly to attract more people to settle there. Greenland was also called Gruntland (Ground-land) on early maps. Whether Green is an erroneous transcription of Grunt (ground), which refers to shallow bays, or vice-versa, is not known. The southern portion (not covered by glacier) is very green in summer.

        Do you ever wonder why we call people like you, ‘TROLLS’?!

  31. The latest news is that China and the US have put the idea of tariffs on hold for the moment. I went looking for info about solar panels, but didn’t see anything yet. Does anyone know if Trump’s solar panel tariff will be shelved?

    1. I suspect the answer will be highly variable depending on which official is reporting it, at the time, and when and where. Answers may go up or down or both simultaneously.

      NAOM

  32. The Slimy Three:
    “Since Roosevelt’s time in office, every president aside from three, Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush, has used their authority to establish national monuments. In total, more than 120 national monuments have been dedicated since 1906.”

  33. Since the new melt season has started, just reminder of what the Arctic Ocean is doing for global warming.

    2. Come to Florida, people drive their cars into the canals around here every day.
      BTW I used to cut and arc weld pipe underwater in the ocean…. Yeah it can make your mercury fillings fall right out of your teeth, but hey, it makes life and even death so much more interesting… So many wusses out there.

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