“A Dutchman died on Wednesday after his Tesla collided with a tree, according to local authorities, and it took firefighters hours to remove his body from the vehicle due to fears they could be electrocuted… due to the nature and severity of the wreckage, firefighters could not be certain whether the car might be under high voltage.
Newspaper De Telegraaf reported the car’s battery was broken, and part of it caught fire and was difficult to extinguish. Part of the battery remained inside the car, the paper said, leading to the fears of electrocution.”
A Dutchman died on Wednesday after his Tesla collided with a tree, according to local authorities,
Preliminary reports from investigators indicate that a disgruntled tree may have deliberately jumped out into traffic in front of the car and waved it’s branches in such a way as to confuse the Tesla’s auto pilot. It then ran back into the woods with the Tesla in hot pursuit. It appears it then suddenly drove its roots deep into the ground coming to an almost instant stop with the Tesla slamming into its stationary trunk while still traveling at a speed well above the legal speed limit. The driver apparently never had a chance and probably died in his sleep without awakening while still at the wheel. Our prayers and hearts go out to the young and inexperienced auto pilot, may it RIP!
Just about everybody who is more or less awake understands that outfits such as Faux News tell frequently tell it like it isn’t.
But I am SHOCKED, shocked I say to discover that the NYT would stoop to blatant partisanship in covering our political affairs.
We are most of us going to believe what we want to, when it comes to politics, and say whatever works or whatever we think we can get away with when it comes to supporting our chosen leader or leader wannabe.
Mac, excuse me if I doubt that your sarcasm light is really on.
But please excuse me if I am wrong. So to remove all doubt whatsoever, please just tell us where you stand on this election. Are you for Trump or Clinton? Just tell us where you stand and then we can go from there.
Obviously, as a card carrying bleeding heart liberal, I am a Clinton man. I just wanted to make that point very clear. But I really need to know exactly where you stand.
Hi Ron,
Trump is in my considered opinion the worst possible candidate for president ever to win the nomination of a major party.I wouldn’t vote for him under ANY circumstances.
Clinton is WAY better , by comparison to Trump, but that’s not to say I have a favorable opinion of her ethics, to put it as mildly as possible. I really do believe she will say just about anything, publicly, in order to advance her ambition to be prez, and then do something different once the spotlight is off the issue. Maybe you believe she will actually do something about banksters, actually charge some of them with the crimes they have committed, by appointing an AG with the balls to do it. I believe she will take millions in speaking fees, and tens of millions in donations to the Clinton Foundation, which is in my estimation a personal Clinton family fiefdom, and that the banksters will continue to do to suit themselves. I don’t think she will do anything to upset the NEA, or the AFT, etc, meaning that serious reform of our failing public schools is just about out of the question.
But there is little to no doubt in my mind that she will as a general thing support strong environmental legislation, civil rights, etc.
Since I am convinced that the overall the environmental issue is so important that it trumps all other issues combined, I want a D in the WH. Just not her, but definitely her rather than Trump.
For the record, I think Trump would be far worse than Clinton, in just about every respect, if by some accident he gets into the WH, but he won’t, thank Sky Daddy.
Bottom line, I am for neither, but barring some extraordinary late surprise, I expect Clinton to win by a substantial margin. I placed a couple of small friendly bets on her winning weeks ago, and gave four to one odds to the guys who think Trump will win. Ain’t gonna happen. I would bet twenty to one on her tonight.
I worked a lot of hours for Sanders, who is an HONORABLE man, and one I believe you could vote for without a second thought.
Personally I will be voting a third party or writing in somebody, or maybe I will just stay home and get drunk and cry for my country.
I do often remark that taken all around, I am in agreement with a lot more D party policies than R party policies, but I don’t identify as either. I have voted both ways over the years. I call myself a conservative, but that is more about thinking like an engineer or good manager, than about my personal cultural preferences.
Given MY way of defining the word conservative, it is an extremely CONSERVATIVE position to be for tough environmental laws and regulations, because we have only one world, and we had best take good care of it. That’s the way good doctors and engineers approach a problem. They try to make sure they are doing the right thing in terms of the BIG picture, and hopefully do no harm. Of course you must be technically or scientifically literate to appreciate this reasoning, lol. Fortunately I can say I am scientifically literate.
Culturally I am somewhat of a libertarian. So long as people are not harming other people, my view is that they should be able to do as they please. If they want same sex sex, that’s THEIR business, and hey, they won’t be having any unwanted babies, lol.If people want to smoke some dope, or eat a vegetarian diet, or spend all their money on easy living, that’s ok with me too.
But it pisses me off to see one of my neighbors who has owned half a dozen new cars over the years get a hospital bill written off when the same hospital charges me the full rate, or did, until I got on Medicare. I have NEVER owned a new car. Never will, at this late date.
I am a thru and thru Darwinist, and that means I understand that nations, which are in essence nothing more than giant tribal bands, routinely play hardball. So I am in favor of the D platform on the environment, and the R platform on military readiness, lol.
Politically I really am an independent. I am probably the most independent member of this forum, if you measure independence by totaling up how many R policies and how many D policies I support.
Both parties have their heads up their asses too far to ever see daylight in respect to some problems.
Some other problems may not have any solutions, at least not any compatible with a free society.
I don’t want to trust big government any farther than is absolutely necessary, but otoh, I recognize that there are problems and dangers that can ONLY be successfully dealt with by way of big government. Foremost among these problems are environmental protection and national security.
Simply, I will vote for Clinton, and bottom line- I really don’t expect to get the choice to vote a better candidate (in real life). Me and Bernie see eye to eye on this.
Hi Ron,
You must have ask Mac were he stands just to enjoy knowing how much it was going to get under my skin. So if I go over the line, it’s your fault.
Let’s speed forward to the Spring of 2018. After another long cold lonely
winter. Mac hears there is a cute little widowed filly moving into the Jackson’s old farm on the hill. So, that week at the Super Walmart. Mac realizes it’s time to step up his game and buys a new pair of jeans. Needed if he was going to play the game and hit a home run.
As Mac’s heading home from his weekly trip. He still has $15 in his pocket because Walmart has great prices. It was almost like the Buick pulled into the Quick Stop on it’s own after he saw the low $1.69.9 unleaded. Then decided not to go for the Big Glup to start working on his spare tire. Now the nozzles is in the tank and work’en the squeegee on the windshield. Mac looks up and sees a brand new Tesla S85 right there in the handicap. Then, struggling to get out the front door of the Quick Stop with a cast on her leg could have been Raquel Welch’s younger sister.
Sure enough, Raquel is headed for the Tesla. Well, it doesn’t get any easier than this. It’s time for the country boy to help the senorita get on her horse. Mac races over to open her car door. To break the ice and start up small talk. Mac compliment her eco modern environmental safe stallion. Her eyes light up and says- I’m Sheri, new around here and just moved into the farm house up the hill. Are you an environmental advocate ? Mac before he could think says- oh yes, that’s a wonderfully beautiful car. Sheri is amazed how liberal this nice country boy is and a gentlemen too! She wonders what he thinks of a strong minded women. So Sheri asks, who did you vote for president last year ?
Mac’s thinking softball. Oh, that Donald was a chauvinistic,racist, fascist and didn’t believe in climate change. I worked a lot of hours for Sanders, who is an HONORABLE man. I voted third party. Sheri than says- That’s nice. I have to go now and charge up my batteries.
Ya put a smile on my face and I thank ya ,HB.
Unfortunately,I am too old to chase the girls anymore, and anyway the kind I like are not much impressed with material goods, especially ones as cheap as new jeans or as expensive as a Tesla S.
It is a peculiarity of mine that I simply don’t believe in PRETENDING so as to advance some given goal. I won’t PRETEND that HRC is ethically qualified to be president, nor that Trump is ethically qualified, or qualified in ANY fashion, so far as that goes.
I wouldn’t be interested in a woman who votes for Clinton. I would write her off as either ignorant or stupid, at this stage of my life, because the only real reason for me to want a woman around is for intellectual companionship. I long ago learned all the essential homemaking skills such as buying new clothes rather than doing the laundry and ordering pizza instead of cooking, etc.
But it would be nice to have a woman around who can INTELLIGENTLY and REALISTICALLY discuss politics, history, economics, ecology,the hard sciences, etc, especially as they relate to my own field of agriculture, and in broader terms, to the future of naked apes. I am happy to say that on occasion I have the opportunity to talk to such women, but in my age class, they are almost as scarce as chicken teeth.
Very few OLD women are technically well educated. Not that many of them went to college, and of the ones who did, not that many majored in the REAL sciences.
I would have to pass on a woman who is ignorant enough to think HRC is ethically qualified. We would have too much to fight about to live together, lol.
This does not mean I would not have respect for her, so long as she looks me in the eye and says that I know Clinton is a xxxxx but she is MY xxxxx and by Sky Daddy, I am supporting her , for that reason, warts and all. That’s realistic, and honest, and I am a realist. I can appreciate what she has between her ears IF she says that. We could be friends. I am on friendly terms with a number of women who have looked me in the eye in this fashion, but they are all too young for me,alas. Two of them are committed local lesbian farmers. I spend a good bit of time picking their brains, since they are highly competent, and take their advice about stuff outside my own immediate experience, such as growing blueberries commercially.
I mention these ladies because I do go so far as to PRETEND in public around here in this backwoods community that they are NOT lesbians, but I know. I wasn’t born yesterday, and besides which, I once walked up on them in a clinch, lips locked,. Sometimes it is ok and wise to pretend, lol. They like me and know I don’t gossip about them in any fashion that will cause them any problems. No names, no ages, no descriptions, etc in this comment.
Such a woman is prepared to stomp her own snakes, so to speak, in the same way that I euthanize my own animals if they are suffering and cannot get well. Ya gotta be able to do the tough thing, in my book. So if my dog gets hit by a car, and is obviously going to die, I take care of it myself.There is no need to make it WORSE for the dog by loading him up and hauling him off to the vet to a strange place to be poked and prodded, further stressing him out on his last day. There is no EXCUSE for doing so, except squeamishness. And you can donate the two hundred the vet charges to a charity.
( I don’t donate to charities, but I do donate at least a day a month to helping out people in need, directly. That way I know not a penny’s worth of my donation is wasted. This Saturday I will be cutting firewood with a couple more old guys that we will donate – directly, right off the back of my truck- to a neighbor who is hard up thru no fault of her own. No part of this donation will be spent on fund raising, rent, utilities, book keeping, or salaries for corporate management, lol. )
We will do good and have a good time as well. We will even tell locker room jokes, if we can remember any, and lots of lies about uninhibited women we used to know.
I heard a woman being interviewed on NPR this morning. She thinks Trump is a great choice for president since he will run the country like a business.
As I watch the eagles, the ospreys, kingfishers, ducks and geese ply the air and flowing waters between forested hills hidden from men, I realize our weakness compared to them.
No heat, no electricity, no cars, no clothes, no stores of food except what nature provides. No walls to hide behind. Floating in freezing cold water or braving chill winds in stygian darkness, they live and thrive on their own merit and wit.
As Edward Abbey said ” A grown man needs no leader.”
So why do we give away our power to others?
Hi GF. I heard a woman being interviewed on NPR this morning. She thinks Trump is a great choice for president since he will run the country like a business.
The problem with Trump running the country the way Trump runs a business is that they don’t give you a billion-dollar do-over if you fuck up.
-Lloyd
Mac, even Bernie Sanders thinks your shooting yourself in the foot.
“Says it time to get beyond the personality issue”
Your boy is speaking directly to you at the end of the clip
Hi Old Farmer Mac, There are some of us out here that are the kind of woman you are looking for. We are two widowed sisters who now live together and have read the old Oil Drum and this blog for years. We are both well educated in the sciences. One of us has a PhD in physical geography and was a professor for some years. We both know a lot about plants and farming/homesteading and much much more. Too bad you don’t live on the west coast! But – what do you look like? We are both in our mid-70’s, look pretty good for our ages, and still enjoy a good-looking guy – not many of those our age however. (I thought the guys on here would enjoy this. It seems almost everyone commenting on this site is a guy.)
Ka-ching
Well lookie there Mac. Maybe Patterson can convert this place into a match making site once EV’s rule the day. For the record MarineTerraceGal is not HuntingtonBeach. I don’t think it’s Caelan either, no run on sentences.
Looks like it’s time to go shopping for a new pair of designer jeans and do a little traveling. Saddle up.
In the past I have often voted Libertarian but on occasion have not voted. When I lived in Texas decades ago I failed to pay the poll tax. Occasionally I have become passionate about selfish issues such as taxation of social security payments. In California does voting matter, other than for local issues. If I was in a swing state would vote for Clinton. I watch two TV’s. At news time I often watch MSNBC and Fox. Megyn Kelly is my favorite. Chris Hayes is cool. I miss Keith Olbermann. Can’t stand Hannity. Today’s most interesting news – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nuclear-launch-trump_us_57fffb55e4b0162c043b0980
Excerpt from the Libertarian Platform:
The twin pillars of a sane foreign policy are:
(1) Building positive relationships, with an emphasis on free trade,
2) Avoiding negative relationships, with an emphasis on military non-intervention.
A tree, let’s say a sequoia, grows to a certain height, a sequoia, a California Redwood, can be three hundred feet up there in the air, lives for 1900 years and beyond. All from a seed three millimeters in length. Frickin’ unbelievable.
The ultimate survival mechanism, a redwood tree. Been around for a long time, so it knows what to do to stay alive.
Here’s what it says:
Giant sequoias can grow to be about 30 feet (9 meters) in diameter and more than 250 feet (76 meters) tall. The biggest of these behemoths is General Sherman, a giant sequoia in Sequoia National Park. General Sherman stands 275 feet (84 meters) tall, has a 102-foot (31 meters) circumference, and weighs an incredible 2.7 million pounds (1.2 million kilograms). Giant sequoias can live to 3,000 years, with the oldest on record living more than 3,500 years.
The tallest tree in the world is named Hyperion, which reaches 379.7 feet (115.7 meters). Redwoods can achieve a diameter of 24 feet (7 meters), and 1.6 million pounds (725,700 kg). These giants can live to be 2,000 years old and have graced the planet for more than 240 million years.
You need CO2 in a gaseous state, happens to be in the atmosphere, for trees and plants like a sequoia to remain alive.
Too little CO2, less than 180 ppm, plants begin to wilt, can’t evapo-transpire efficiently, too little CO2 stunts growth.
To have optimum growing conditions, at least 280 to 295 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere is required. From a seed three millimeters in length to a tree three hundred feet tall is phenomenal. Can’t and won’t be done without the presence of CO2. Trees and plants flourish when the right mixture is there.
Gotta be alive to see one though, even if all it is is a photo or video.
Good news is the Cedars of Lebanon are still around too, though have been heavily cut the past 6,000 years and finally were protected.
Gotta be some good news, the bad news never goes away.
The bad news is enough to drive one to drink and it does. Best news yet. har
The largest organism in the world, according to size, is the aspen tree whose colonies of clones can grow up to five miles long.
“All of the aspens typically grow in large clonal colonies, derived from a single seedling, and spread by means of root suckers; new stems in the colony may appear at up to 30â40 m (98â131 ft) from the parent tree. Each individual tree can live for 40â150 years above ground, but the root system of the colony is long-lived. In some cases, this is for thousands of years, sending up new trunks as the older trunks die off above ground. For this reason, it is considered to be an indicator of ancient woodlands. One such colony in Utah, given the nickname of “Pando”, is estimated to be 80,000 years old,[2] making it possibly the oldest living colony of aspens. Some aspen colonies become very large with time, spreading about 1 m (3.3 ft) per year, eventually covering many hectares. They are able to survive forest fires, because the roots are below the heat of the fire, with new sprouts growing after the fire burns out.” Wikipedia
Although the sequoia is tall, massive and impressive, the aspen tree is a much larger organism and in many cases much older.
“…refers to a state of absurdly over-optimistic fantasy or an unrealistically idealistic state where everything is perfect. Someone who is said to ‘live in cloud cuckoo land’ is a person who thinks that things that are completely impossible might happen, rather than understanding how things really are. It also hints that the person referred to is naĂŻve, unaware of realities or deranged in holding such an optimistic belief.
Cockaigne, the land of plenty in medieval myth… was an imaginary place of extreme luxury and ease where physical comforts and pleasures were always immediately at hand and where the harshness of medieval peasant life did not exist.”
Back on the topic of the causes of global warming, here is an interesting article about the Great American Cheese Glut.
Real Cheddar, not bright orange, flavour free rubber. Danish Blue, Caerphilly and many others. Real flavour seems to be a crime in the USA.
NAOM
There are several dozen UK cheeses that will blow any Cheddar or Caerphilly out of the water. However, if you really want your toes to curl, provincial unpastuerised French cheeses are hard to beat.
Yes, French cheeses, some magnificent ones but certain flavours clash with me. I still think a REAL cheddar is something else as opposed to the poor copies. I had one in an East England pub, one lunchtime, and it is one I still remember after many years. As for cheese to melt, Caerphilly is hard to beat, the mix of textures and flavours, perhaps a real Mozzarella too, not the flavour free plastic that is all I can get around here. Panela, no, gracias.
NAOM
My son-in-law told me about some plastic cheese he left in the ‘fridge for over a year. He unwrapped it and there was nary a spot of mold…plus, it was still pliable. Unbelieveable.
Call me a cretin, but I like Baldersons aged white cheddar just fine. Blue cheese smells too much like puke.
The best cheddar we get down here is Tilamook (sp?) but blue cheese varies a lot in taste and flavour, different people have different tastes so will prefer different ones. I wonder if the ability to taste certain chemicals is involved as in liking cabbage?
NAOM
Tillamook is very good cheese, isn’t it? I know wine snobs for sure. I always knew there were cheese snobs too, and understand they often go together. đ Seriously, cheese and wine are wonderful creations….in moderation, of course.
ELM slowdown in the Kingdom ?
âIt is striking the extent to which every major industry relies on cheap energy, whether directly or indirectly,â
“Higher milk prices could have political repercussions.”
“Saudi Arabia burns barrel after barrel of crude oil for electricity”
What do the climate change activists here think of the mass acts of pipeline sabotage in the northern US earlier this week? Do you honestly think this is a reasonable way to get the skeptical public to convert to your side? These people are criminals and domestic terrorists, not to mention the reason why belief in climate change is neatly divided along political party affiliation.
In early-morning raids, around a dozen activists wearing safety coats and hard hats simultaneously broke into valve stations above the pipelines in remote locations stretching 1,600 miles (2,575 km) across four northern U.S. states.
At the easternmost site, in Leonard, Minnesota, a city of only 40 people about two hours’ drive from the Canadian border, Annette Klapstein and Emily Johnston scaled a chain-link fence and used bolt cutters to unlock the shut-off valves, said Ben Joldersma, a technology worker from Seattle who drove the women to the site and filmed the action.
A similar scene played out at other stations and in minutes activists had choked off supply arteries pumping as much as 15 percent of daily oil demand in the world’s largest economy.
—
In Minnesota, after shutting the valve, Klapstein and Johnston rechained the site and waited for authorities, Joldersma said. They placed a flower at the site “to symbolize the kind of world we want to live in,” he added. Police soon arrived, arresting the two women, who were later charged with criminal damage and trespassing.
The two said legal methods of protesting against climate change were ineffective and without radical action the earth would be irreparably damaged.
There’s 7 billion plus mathematically and scientifically illiterate humans on the planet who think the gods gave them dominion over nature. They are concerned with saving the economy…and haven’t yet figured out that the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ecosystems Inc!
Yes Fred, we are really good at taking what nature provides and re-configuring it into new synthetic compounds. The 600 or so compounds that are produced from burning oil products saturate the environment, as well as direct leaks from cars, pipelines, delivery systems.
Between the purposefully added and the incidentally added compounds, many of which spawn new products as they are broken down by environmental processes such as UV impingement.
I read years ago that there were no uncontaminated streams anywhere in the world.
“The links between nature and nurture need to be redefined to accommodate anthropogenic chemical contamination. Although some local remediation of contamination has occurred, at the global level this is simply not possible. Contaminants are spread by population migration, by introduction via the food chain, and through air and water currents, even to regions that were never exposed directly to these environmental insults. In recognizing and accepting this worldwide change, we must move on and consider the types of adaptations that could occur as a consequence”
“We are now in the third generation since the chemical revolution (circa 1940), yet the dimensions and implications of this worldwide problem have only recently begun to be recognized. We predict that changes in chemical manufacturing processes will continue to be resisted, that the development of new chemicals without adequate testing will continue unabated, and that even if regulatory changes are implemented, these efforts will be incremental at best and geographically limited. The stark fact that society must face is that on a global scale the world is contaminated and will never return to its pristine past; ”
” An excellent example is provided by research on endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), compounds that perturb hormonal systems and that are ubiquitous, albeit heterogeneous, in the environment. Most research on EDCs today focuses on determining what, where, when, and how such compounds act at the molecular, morphological, physiological, reproductive, and neural levels. Most of this work is conducted in the laboratory under rigorous experimental control, and an ecological context is too often missing. ”
Full research article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3230404/
Fred, some may think God gave them dominion, but a combination of high intellect (not as rare as one thinks in the animal kingdom), a pair of free dexterous hands, good vision and the ability to communicate vocally and through signaling (common in nature) tied in with a fearful yet very aggressive nature has allowed one species to dominate the macro world. Without the dexterous hands we would be like dolphins, although much nastier. Without the development of complex communication we would be far less dangerous. Without our tools we are in general weak and vulnerable creatures. Give a man a sharp stick, a club, sharpened rocks, knife, a spear, or a sword and he is a formidable creature. Add to that his ability to develop traps and he starts to dominate the landscape. Then the use of animals skins and fur along with the use of fire and building simple shelters, man then spread in range into cold and hostile environments. Communication and mimicry spiced with curiosity spread this among humans Follow that with the development of trade then later agriculture and here we are. Manipulating materials grew right along with all that.
Sadly, taking things to extremes, we now see that we have built our own giant Rube Goldberg trap for ourselves and our world.
Can we undo the giant trap built by our own nature and abilities? One that we really do not even fully comprehend or apparently care to comprehend.
Maybe our intelligent robots and machines of the near future will give us an answer or at least a final solution.
âWithout the dexterous hands we would be like dolphinsâŚâ I wonder. Dolphins appear to be highly intelligent and yet live in harmony with their environment. Perhaps you give humans more credit than they deserve â relative to dolphins. Would dolphins commit mass murder under the guise of religion or war if they had manâs technology? Maybe, but from my limited experience with them, I really doubt it.
Dolphins are trapped on Earth in the ocean (for now), but despite our opposable thumbs, we seem to be too, but we’re not living in harmony with nature, unlike the dolphins, and are undermining our own foundation.
Some implied notions behind technology, such as large-scale centralized weaponized (pseudo)governance (social tech); nuclear power; industrial mass production; robotics; and genetic manipulations, etcetera, seem remarkably naive, and to ignore their actual and varied ironies, paradoxes and assorted detrimental effects and misimplementations.
Caelan, why do you hate puppies so much?!
Even though puppies are GMO wolves…
.
Vicious little bugger. Heâd rip your throat out if he could only get past the kissing stage, which he never will.
‘Fred, why do you hate animals so much, including puppies!?’
“The consequences for the captive and domesticated animals were reduction in size, piebald color, shorter faces with smaller and fewer teeth, diminished horns, weak muscle ridges, and less genetic variability. Poor joint definition, late fusion of the limb bone epiphyses with the diaphyses, hair changes, greater fat accumulation, smaller brains, simplified behavior patterns, extended immaturity, and more pathology are a few of the defects of domestic animals…
One side effect of domestication has been zoonotic diseases… [and] it undermines the crisp demarcations that separate wild species and cripples our recognition of the species as a group…” ~ Wikipedia
None of which is to mention anything about some of the horrific– to put it mildly– conditions under which many domestic/domesticated animals are treated.
I appreciate the latter website’s name, ‘PuppyLeaks‘.
Caelan,
I for one am happy about the diminished horns. The thought of dogs with horns is not a happy one.
Don’t make me write anything, or more, about human self-domestication, Synapsid. It’s not a happy one. ‘u^
Caelan, how do you know we are not living as part of nature? We came from nature, are part of nature, interact with nature. Unless you are into the god thing, nature made us, not the reverse. So blame nature if you don’t like people.
Dolphins are not trapped on earth, they are a product of earth and are not designed to live elsewhere.
GoneFishing,
Very well put.
Too easy.
“Dolphins are not trapped on earth, they are a product of earth and are not designed to live elsewhere.” ~ GoneFishing
They aren’t and they are.
If we undermine and/or change their foundation (for what they were designed for), then they’re trapped. Their design no longer fits.
I’ve already posted this link or similar (such as WRT seismic exploration), if recalled, some months or years ago.
“Caelan, how do you know we are not living as part of nature?” ~ GoneFishing
It would seem that we can rationalize away practically anything, until there’s little left to rationalize away.
You are making less sense than usual Caelan. Seems your back is to the wall on this one.
You actually think we are not from nature, we are aliens? ROFL
Extinction is the rule rather than the exception, GoneFishing, and another word for a dead species is ‘alien’.
So now extinct species go live on other planets? Thanks for the laugh.
Cute. ‘u’
But look up the definition for ‘alien’, alone, sweetie, if you’d like, and if you want to include the definition for ‘metaphor’ (although alien should suffice), feel free.
We came from nature, are part of nature, interact with nature,…
Cancer is a part of nature. Cancer is natural. Cancer usually kills its host. Our host is the world and we are killing it.
Yes, I know all about cancers Ron. Watched my wife die of it. Fought off seven of them, eighth one got her. I hope that people and he planet don’t have to suffer that much. But she never gave up, right until the end she fought.
Just as we should, no matter how things look.
So far, technological human does act like a cancer to the environment, but at least not all of them and we now have better knowledge to act upon.
I wouldn’t count the ecosystems out yet Ron, there is still plenty of it left to take over if we falter or smarten up. Sure it looks bad, but maybe that is what we do. Could be that “intelligent” manipulative species give a reset.
Worst case scenario, things collapse, nuclear waste gets strewn over landscapes, much of the infrastructure burns along with the forests it ignites. The darkening of the skies cools things for a while then things get hot from all the CO2 that entered the sky as infrastructure and fuels burned along with forests. Surviving creatures and plants in niches adapt and spread out across the globe again over a long period of time.
Best case scenario, we smarten up, leave fossil fuels behind, eventually leave a lot of present technology behind and use advanced biological techniques to live and re-integrate into the natural world. Become keepers and helpers instead of a major devastator.
Of course there are those that think our machines will take over. I don’t think they will get much past the stage of cockroach, but that is an open ended question yet.
And then there is everything in between. Life is always challenging and there is always the unknown to deal with.
This latest political presidential race is eroding some of my confidence in humanity. But Black Swans can be positive and negative.
Still, we are products of nature so we do as nature made us. We have not re-made ourselves yet, just built a lot of non-renewing gadgets.
A world of gadgeteers looking for paradise, not realizing it was right in front of us.
Now Doug, use the whole quote “Without the dexterous hands we would be like dolphins, although much nastier”. Tsk, Tsk.
As someone who used to take people dolphin watching, and was around them quite a bit (both in and out of the water), they can be quite aggressive and vicious.
We generally had Spinners around, but when the Bottle nose showed up, the Spinners were gone– for good reasons, as they feared for their lives.
I’ve even had some male Spinners get agro with me if I got close to the females.
Yes, it’s horrifying the number of people that have been killed by dolphins.
Ooops, I got that backwards.
Dolphins seem to capture people and make them jump and dance about for food.
Darn, got that backwards too. Just not my day.
Having worked with dolphin researchers a common comment was how non-aggressive these guys are given the way they have been, and are, treated. Of course dolphins will kill sharks that threaten their young (if you consider that as being aggressive) and they are sexually aggressive for sure â much like many humans. đ
Hey–
I like them, and have been in the water with them for years– even added to my income.
Plus the joy of showing clients the experience.
But they do have a dark side.
How many have you been with over the years in the open ocean in a non supervised environment?
I’ve never been in the water with dolphins in a âsupervised environmentâ, whatever that means. Who exactly would qualify as a supervisor? Dolphins arenât like school children and the South Seas arenât much like a supervised playground. For awhile I (and many others) swam with them daily in NZ and Samoa: no âdark sidesâ were experienced that Iâm aware of. In fact, you could (can) always forget about sharks when you were near dolphins. BTW, how did they add to your income? Did you work for them? đ
BTW, countless generations of Polynesian and Maori kids have been swimming very safely with dolphins. In fact if a kid gets in trouble in the water in the Pacific Islands heâs more likely to be rescued by a dolphin than a human.
how did they add to your income? Did you work for them?
Every morning I would sail up to Agat on a Trimaran, and pick up a group of tourists (almost always Japanese) and take them dolphin watching– they paid to do this.
The dolphins knew the boat, and loved jumping between the hulls.
A good time was had by all— even the dolphins, apparently.
I would then sail and troll for mahi or wahoo (occasional marlin) and drop them off at a small island for other activities.
But I spent a lot of time offshore– watching the Southern Cross appear.
But, lets not live by myth and heuristic thinking:
Good for you Duncan. I confess Iâm not entirely rational about dolphins: so many stories and wonderful adventures; was involved with some dolphin research for awhile as well.
That slate article is certainly a story. Too bad none of it is corroborated with actual occurrences and facts. Very purposeful language too.
Even so, they sound and act much nicer than humans.
“Too bad none of it is corroborated with actual occurrences and facts.” ~ GoneFishing
If you were interested and motivated, you could, yourself, look into the story elsewhere online to see if or how the story might stack up.
I think I will let the dolphins speak for themselves. Humans believe just about anything and everything. Whatever they want to hear or fits their needs.
Could dolphins have discovered and controlled fire?
Probably not but why do you ask; is this a criteria for intelligence? Would fire be of any use to a dolphin? While humans, as a species, are relatively smart, itâs unrealistic to claim the title of âmost intelligentâ species yet because we still have too many questions left to answer about our own brains, before we can compare them to the brain of another organism, in my opinion.
Doug, I am in the process of reading a book (not published!) about these issues.
Dolphins could of course not have discovered fire and controlled it as their habitat does not allow for that.
Dolphins are intelligent and also have great self awareness.
What makes us believe that we (humans) were the ultimate goal of evolution?
Fossil fuels needs oxygen to react, some billion years ago Earths atmosphere were mostly CO2, methane and H2O? plants, organisms converted some of this CO2 and âharvestedâ the carbon [some of it became fossil fuels] and replaced it with O2.
Evolution is not an organism or life form of any sort, not a spirit being of any sort. Evolution is a process that impartially shuffles the cards of living things over and over and over, generation after generation, division after division, and impartially and blindly sorts out the ones that happen to be a little, or a lot more “fit”, a little better at surviving and reproducing.
Evolution has consequences, it produces life forms that are more and more complicated, sometimes, and sometimes it reduces the complexity of some species.
But evolution does not in any meaningful sense of the word “goal” have anything at all to do with a goal or goals.
The word GOAL itself implies INTENT. Intent implies thought, or at least action guided by a simple brain acting on sensory imput and wired in programming aka instinct. So a man can consciously try to get rich, or a fly can detect the odor of carrion, and respond by going to it to feed and lay eggs.
Whether life itself has any “purpose” or reason for existing is an open question. So far as I can tell from well over half a century of looking for it in the philosophical and scientific literature, nobody yet has a clue as to what that purpose or meaning might be, so maybe there is no purpose or meaning, or at least none outside the movements of ions and electrical charge in our brain circuitry.
BUT if we ever figure out why life exists, then we can say that evolution exists in an auxiliary fashion in support of life.
Personally I think the question of life cannot be answered in terms of purpose or reason. We might eventually have a really good understanding of the ORIGIN of life, but that will be a technical rather than a philosophical or spiritual understanding.
If anybody is really and truly interested in understanding the BIG PICTURE, then he must back far far away , so as to see the forest rather than the trees.
The smartest man I ever had the experience of knowing helped me to fully understand this concept.
Pretend you are an alien biologist in a well concealed stealthy spaceship orbiting the Earth, with lots of every imaginable kind of spy gear, able to zoom in on anything at all.
If you can manage this trick, then you can look at the BIG PICTURE objectively, without being blinded by your own prejudices and desires.
We are part and parcel creatures produced by the evolutionary process.
And the evolutionary process does not give a rats ass about what happens to us, or to any other life form, or to the entire fucking PLANET. Evolution is not a sentient creature.
The prudent and sensible thing to do is to protect the environment to the extent we can of course.
I hop I am not the only person in this forum who ever read Twain’s little satirical essay about the insect that found itself perched on the uttermost tip top of the Eiffel Tower and presumed the tower , and the world , was created just for it’s own use. đ
The evolution of a super-dominant species which selects and kills or modifies other species for it’s own purposes has put a real twist on evolution now.
Hi Rune,
Even though I have worked with several dolphin researchers and had a number of encounters with them in the South Seas my opinions about them may not be entirely rational. I do strongly object to defining intelligence on ânarrowâ human terms however. Even human intelligence baffles me; my wife spoke five languages fluently, was a brilliant mathematician/physicist and had a photographic memory but categorized herself a musical ignoramus. Plus, she needed me to avoid getting lost in parking lots. My dog isnât ignorant; his nose is a million times more sensitive than mine providing a symphony of information not available to me.
Enjoy your book about dolphins.
Doug
Maybe our intelligent robots and machines of the near future will give us an answer or at least a final solution.
âThe Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is…42!â
â Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Though the point of my previous comment was simply to underscore that those who are fixated on saving the current ‘Economy’ are missing the big picture, as are those who think protesting by shutting down oil pipelines will stop climate change.
Ya, so let’s pitch industrial-whitewash ‘circular [reasoning] economy’, genetic lab lunacy, and crony-capitalist corporate ‘disruptive tech’ spin, complete with TED talk videos, including ‘biomimicry’ greenwash, while kind of crapping on permaculture, a la Fred Magyar, and convince ourselves that that’s what’s what with ‘the big picture’ and where we need to go.
Caelan, it’s time to show your cards. Put them on the table face up.
Caelan needs to realize that there is a journey involved in getting to “where we need to go”. It’s not a single step away.
Ya sure, according to some, it’s a whole lot of technologically-inebriated goofball steps. Like old Jerry Lewis clips or something.
Are you sixteen years old?
Are you too young or something to realize where we, far too often, have actually ended up where some thought we needed to go, and the kinds of steps they thought we needed to take to get there, that involved a whole lot of technologically-inebriated goofball steps? Hm?
I think the description fits rather well and quite like it. Are you getting it in bold on your screen over there?
I think some people would do Earth a service to just get their own planet to ‘practice’ on.
But your cheek is cute, Gonefishing.
So you disagree with pollution reduction, clean water, clean air, more preserved natural areas, more protected ocean areas, restrictions on fishing, strong reductions in fossil fuel use, organic farming, efficiency, and a reduced energy/material lifestyle? I figured that.
That is where new technology and our new knowledge is heading right now and has been for a long time.
You tout past mistakes and ignorance and ASSume that is where we are headed.
Got that bold part?
“That is where new technology… is heading right now…” ~ GoneFishing
Crony-capitalist plutarchy non-equitably-derived– IOW, detached— technology appears as your and others’ intellectual fly-in-the-ointment, GoneFishing, and I can’t help you there, try as I might, if you can’t, or won’t, help yourselves.
In any case, in your above list, we don’t really need much, if any, technology for those kinds of things. What we need is attachment.
Gigafactory, for example, is about as detached as it gets, including its location.
I suppose you go down a flight of steps by merely tumbling down them. Quickest way to the bottom.
Join an ecovillage. Bada bing.
Fred, as you well know, mathematically 42 (as in: that which follows 41) is an interesting number, one that’s fascinated since the time of Aristotle. However, when you write 42! this looks like 42 factorial (as 3! = 3 Ă 2 Ă 1) which is just a VERY large number. Which is it, (or more to point, what did Douglas Adams mean?) ? If youâre going to remain our wisest sage, Fred, keep the math right. đ
If you go to the link you will see that exclamation point is included within the quotation marks. I just copied and pasted it as is so therefore it is up to the reader of the quote to decide if the answer is 42 exclamation point or 42 factorial. So don’t kill the messenger đ
However if one goes to the movie itself then one realizes that the answer which took a mere 7.5 million years to calculate is meaningless since the question was poorly defined. Though the AI Deep Thought says it is willing to design a new computer that will give out the ultimate question… but to get it you need to become primitive again and descend into this machine and spend about 10 million years navigating it’s code…
That computer had a great sense of humor. Pulled their legs for 7.5 million years. What a laugh.
DougL,
I’d never thought of that! (NB: Not a factorial)
This opens up vistas–you must change your life, as Rilke said.
It eventually occurred to me that Adams probably used forty two because that’s the standard measure of a barrel of oil.
Those of us who have already read Douglas Adams have real reason to be envious of those who have not.
We can only reread him, where as they still have the awesome treat ahead of them of reading him for the first time, lol.
LOL
You could create Blog 42 and NEVER run out of topics to play with. Example, Lewis Carroll, a mathematician, made extensive use of 42 in his writings. Alice’s attempts at multiplication work if one uses base 18 to write the first answer and increases the base by threes to 21, 24, etc. but breaks down when one attempts the answer to 4 times 13 in base 42, leading Alice to declare “Oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!”
It’s odd that the number ends with nine zeroes. That means it must be divisible by five to the ninth, but there are only eight numbers less than 42 that are divisible by 5.
The reason is that 25 is five squared!
I am currently taking this Cal State OLLI (Osher) course. Fabulous instructor. My last chemistry course was biochemistry, 1952. Have not kept up except for some interest in petrochemistry. I tend to be blasĂŠ about chemicals and ionizing radiation.
” The Molecules of Life (OLLI 1011)
Bob Stellwagen
Mondays 1pm-3pm | Oct. 10 to Oct. 31 (4 weeks) Class Nbr 2731
Our world includes millions of different species of organisms exhibiting
a range of complexity from bacteria to humans. Despite their stunning diversity, all these organisms share certain common features. For example, all are composed of one or more cells which in turn are composed primarily of only four major kinds of organic molecules (nucleic acids, proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates). In this course we will take a journey to the unseen molecular world that underlies all living organisms. We will explore how these molecules interact to give rise to the fundamental processes of life. Join us and gain a new perspective on the living world.
Robert Stellwagen, Ph.D. was trained in biochemistry at Harvard University (A.B. degree) and UC Berkeley (Ph.D.). He conducted postdoctoral research at the National Institutes
of Health and UC San Francisco before joining the faculty of the University of Southern California where he taught biochemistry, molecular biology, and genetics and carried out laboratory research in the School of Medicine for many years.”
Despite their stunning diversity, all these organisms share certain common features. For example, all are composed of one or more cells which in turn are composed primarily of only four major kinds of organic molecules (nucleic acids, proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates).
Yep! nature’s chemistry set is mostly non toxic and works with low heat and low pressure.
Nature uses chemistry and materials that are safe for living beings.
Organisms do chemistry within and near their own cells. This makes it imperative that organisms use chemicals, chemical processes, and chemistry-derived materials that are supportive to lifeâs processes. Lifeâs chemistry is water-based and uses a subset of chemical elements configured into precise 3D structures. The combination of 3D architecture and composition is the key to maximizing self-assembly, guiding chemical activity and material performance, and allowing for biodegradation into useful constituents when their work is done. With regard to our production systems, the importance of using life-friendly chemistry and materials is applicable at various system scales, from sourcing or growing of materials, to manufacturing products or goods, transporting those goods, and considering what happens to them at the end of their life cycle.
“Nature uses chemistry and materials that are safe for living beings.”
That is a too bold statement. đ
Only these living beings survive that can adapt to nature.
“Yep! natureâs chemistry set is mostly non toxic …”
Again no, the losers die. E.g. oxygen was a toxic product that killed every organism that required a reductive atmosphere, that was the majority back then. đ
´”..and works with low heat and low pressure.”
That is correct – and as chemist I envy living organisms for their catalysts!
Again no, the losers die. E.g. oxygen was a toxic product that killed every organism that required a reductive atmosphere, that was the majority back then. ?
Yes, while it is true that photosynthetic cyanobacteria were the cause of the die off amongst the anearobic bacteria circa 3.5 billion years ago when they radically changed the O2 concentration of the earth’s atmosphere.
However their own cellular metabolism and the internal chemistry of their cytoplasm was benign enough to allow for endosymbiotic organisms which were the precursors of chloroplasts and mitochondria to survive within their cells.
As for those unfortunate anaerobic bacteria that were unable to adapt to a higher concentration of atmospheric O2, they did indeed perish enmasse. C’est la vie et C’est la mort! đ
What do the climate change activists here think of the mass acts of pipeline sabotage in the northern US earlier this week?
I’d guess most don’t think it’s a good idea. What do you think of sabotage and violence committed by people who believe in your causes?
Do you honestly think this is a reasonable way to get the skeptical public to convert to your side?
Of course not. Don’t be silly.
These people are criminals and domestic terrorists, not to mention the reason why belief in climate change is neatly divided along political party affiliation.
Well, of course they’re criminals. Terrorists? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone is terrified of them. They look pretty mild to me. I mean, sure, they caused damage and inconvenience, but no one was hurt – they’re nothing like Tim McVeigh.
More importantly…these people have NOTHING to do with why belief in climate change is divided. The divide is caused by vast amounts of misinformation, provided by the industries that benefit from fossil fuels.
Well, I’d say the left certainly hasn’t been doing itself any favors in reducing the political polarization over climate change since so many on that side of the political spectrum are such massive hypocrites over the issue. The left’s hatred of fossil fuels knows no bounds, yet they consume them just the same as all of us. Case in point are these pipeline saboteurs. In order to commit their crimes and try to force adoption of a society deprived of fossil fuels, they had to drive over 1,000 miles one way to the pipeline valve stations they tried to destroy. Of course they were emitting CO2 and pollutants all along the way. Then, alongside these types who want to destroy pipelines, the left has loudmouths like Gore and Soros who issue warnings about climate change despite having some of the biggest “carbon footprints” of them all.
Those people are just trying to help you Geoff. All that cleaner air, cleaner water is not the result of people sitting back and letting the corporations just do what they want. They see major problems and new ways to avoid them.
I am sure they like cars and electricity, they just don’t want the world paying a huge price to have them. But you can always move next to a chemical factory or refinery and downwind of a coal power plant if you want to enjoy those benefits. Make the most of it while you can.
hypocrites over the issue. The leftâs hatred of fossil fuels knows no bounds, yet they consume them just the same as all of us.
They don’t fossil fuel, and they don’t hate you. That’s just misinformation created by fossil fuel companies. As “gonefishing” said above, environmentalists just see a better way. They don’t expect us all to move to it overnight, just as quickly as reasonably possible. That might include steeper CAFE regs, and carbon taxes are a nice free market solution that would accelerate things.
Fossil fuel companies don’t really care about you, or free markets – they just want to preserve their investments. And…I don’t judge them for that – it’s understandable. But…it’s not a good basis on which a society should plan it’s future. Free market conservatives understand that: sometimes old industries have to be hurt by the emergence of new ones.
FWIW
“In 2015, the New York Times interviewed terrorism experts at 19 law enforcement agencies across the country and found right-wing radicalization was their top terror concern. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, hate groups, anti-government “patriot” organizations and terror attacks and plots proliferated throughout 2015.”
BTW, “They donât fossil fuel” should be “They donât hate fossil fuel”.
I’m pretty sure they drove internal combustion cars to the pipeline site.
i’ll bet they ride shared both ways.
Rising ocean levels.
“South Florida will likely be ground zero for the coastal property collapse. As a 2013 Rolling Stone explained, the region suffers from âtwo big problems.â First, it has âremarkably flat topography. Half the area that surrounds Miami is less than five feet above sea level.â”
“âConventional sea walls and barriers are not effective here,â says Robert Daoust, an ecologist at ARCADIS, a Dutch firm that specializes in engineering solutions to rising seas”
For one thing, any experienced political operative relies on strategic planting of information with the media. Media that are desperate for material form a malignant partnership with such operatives, publishing anything that comes their way without question, verification or fact checking. This appears to be what’s happening with Wikileaks.
Secondly, the idea that secrecy is always bad is absurd. Secrecy is at the heart of privacy and personal liberty, for individuals. I’m not sure about large organizations, but it’s easy to imagine situations where politicians and diplomats can do more for the greater good by having private discussions. Clearly Wikileaks agrees – they require their employees and consultants to sign a very tough non-disclosure agreement!
In any case, Assange and Wikileaks are clearly targeting Clinton and Democrats, while giving Trump and Republicans a pass. They seem to be doing it to curry favor with Republicans and the alt-right, purely out of self interest.
Very sad.
Hi Nick,
I agree.
Apparently Assange is out to get Democrats for personal reasons, having to do with his own personal problems.
I think maybe in his shoes I would be mostly after Democrats too, but think about this. You fish where you know there are fish to be caught, and for the last good while, the D’s have controlled the WH / executive branch , and that’s where you will catch most of the fish.
But I also think he is right that we need all the sunshine we can possibly get thrown into the dark corners occupied by large powerful organizations of all sorts- organizations that in pursuit of their own agendas trample on the rights of everybody else.
Most people tend to specialize in one or another area within a given broad field, and Assange has concentrated on government secrecy and corruption within the larger field, and on the D’s within that.
We are in real need of another similar organization headed up by a D partisan to smoke out the R party along the same lines.
Sometimes big government is the NECESSARY answer. Since I believe in resource depletion and climate troubles mostly being caused by burning FF’s on the grand scale, and that the time frame we have to do something about both issues is SHORT , and getting shorter, the best available politically workable single tool in the tool box appears to be subsidizing the renewable electricity industries and the electrical automobile industry so as to assure their fast growth.
The precautionary principle ought to be every well informed person’s first working rule in making such policy decisions.
Sure it is possible ( but the odds are very high against ) that these subsidies are wasted and distortions of the economy, etc, but the naysayers never have anything to say about all the money wasted on other bad investments made without subsidies. So far as I can see, putting people to work building out renewables is just as helpful , economic terms, as putting them to building more museums, or athletic facilities, or highways, or military installations.
COUNTRIES REACH LANDMARK DEAL TO LIMIT GLOBAL WARMING FROM AIR CONDITIONERS
âMore than 170 countries agreed early Saturday morning to limit emissions of key climate change-causing pollutants found in air conditioners, a significant step in the international effort to keep global warming from reaching catastrophic levels.â
Finally, something they can mostly agree on. Well, sort of, kinda, with caveats. Oh well.
Oh, donât be a spoilsport.
Sorry Doug, just get tired of half-assed compromises that are fairly ineffective being touted as “solutions”.
Guess I should not apply for a diplomatic job.
“… just get tired of half-assed compromises that are fairly ineffective being touted as âsolutionsâ…”
Yeah, I’ve noticed and, I almost never disagree. That said, when they donât offer you the Pollyanna roll, donât act too surprised. đ
I am practicing for the Old Curmudgeon role.
Nature Lessons for Children:
Yes, we look out upon this idyllic natural scene and realize there are millions of tiny creatures being caught, eaten and dying everywhere in it. All quite quiet and serene is the death march of the natural world. Even the screams are short when there are any.
How beautiful it looks to us who cannot even see the reality of our own dying cells and the battles for survival within.
We live in a penthouse of the mind, until we too come under the rule of nature. Which is as it should be, children. Don’t worry you won’t be eaten tonight. We killed all those bad things, or at least most of them. Best check under the bed and in the closet, just in case we missed one.
Now stop that crying and go to bed.
The three hundred pound lady has a seven course meal, complete with pie and ice cream, and conscientiously and righteously takes her after dinner coffee black.
We are good at fooling ourselves, but every little bit does help a little bit.
A cynical old farmer might conclude, after talking to his friends who work on cars, and a neighbor who works in the HVAC industry that the auto and HVAC industries are VERY highly in favor of such regulations, in spite of the crocodile tears they spill about the poor consumer who will have to pay for the new regs.
Somehow they virtually always fail to mention that the new regs put them in VERY tall cotton, fixing the customer up with BRAND NEW stuff, as often as not.
The neighbor who does heat pump repairs and installations always tries to talk his customer into a new heat pump when their old one needs recharging for any reason.
I tell folks privately that if their middle aged old pump can be fixed for say five hundred bucks, use it until it breaks down again, and THEN get a new one. The extra expense due to it being a little less efficient over the next few years will be amply repaid by the new one they get then being even more efficient, and like other most other stuff, excepting cheap junk, also be built to last longer.
And if they are getting old, the warranty on a new one installed five years from now might easily outlast them, lol.
I am not against the move at all, it’s a minor one, but helpful at first glance.
What I don’t like are the extensions and free passes for so called developing countries. A decade of old style development when there is a billion people involved can be very harmful. Why not get with the program and stop making the same old mistakes/
OFM – your heat pump friend is right – one needs to replace an old R-22-based unit with a new R-410a unit because R-22 is no longer manufactured, recycled R-22 is $$$$, and there is no “drop-in” replacement that is worth a darn. But now, with R-410a and it’s HFC cousins on their way to being phased out, what do you tell a customer? We don’t have a clue where the new residential market will go for the next-generation refrigerant. Propane? (flammable!) Ammonia? (poisonous!) HFO’s? ($$$) CO2? (yes, irony of ironies, CO2 is now considered as a “climate-friendly” molecule if used as a refrigerant!). It will be an “interesting” future in the HVAC and refrigeration industry, but I hope to be “OHM” and retired out of the business by then.
None of the proposed substitutes work as well, so the products must be re-engineered and may not be as efficient. Which begs the question, will the extra energy required for refrigeration produce enough atmospheric CO2 to nullify any advantage?
The eccentricity of earth orbit is currently low and will not even reach average eccentricity for 150,000 years.
The total range causes a difference in irradiance of from 10 watts/m2 to 230 watts/m2 and a difference in insolation of 2.7 watts/m2 to 62 watts/m2. The orbital nodes determine the seasonal variation. Currently the earth is at perigee during northern hemisphere winter, in particular January 2nd. Now we have a difference of about 8 watts/m2 insolation between perigee and apogee.
As can be seen from the graph, we are headed toward an almost circular orbit 25,000 years from now, reducing the effects of eccentricity to a minimum. One can see we have left the 100,000 year extreme minima/maxima period of the past and will not resume that pattern until almost 500,000 years from now.
Hi GF,
Do you, or does anybody else , know of a website that has lots of illustrations of the intricacies of the Earth’s orbit over astronomical time?
Ideally in order to show this to someone who has little appreciation of the matter, it would have a simple illustration, with labels, showing the shape of the orbit, plus the tilt of the Earth, etc, at intervals of say five thousand years, back for a million years or more. So you could scroll thru or click thru and more easily visualize the details.
Then it would ideally have the intervals cut down to a thousand years for the last ten thousand and the next ten thousand.
I know there are sites with tables detailing this info, but I haven’t run across one with sequential illustrations. I want to link to such a site when and if I ever finish my book to be.
You know what they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and for the average person on the street, a picture is worth TEN thousand charts and graphs, especially charts and graphs that display more than one variable.
If I come across anything like that I will post it. Here is an animation with sidebar of the various parameters, either singly or together, over 400,000 years. You could take screen shots of it to get individual illustrations. https://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/wxfest/Milankovitch/earthorbit.html
Mac, a good start would be âMilankovitch Cyclesâ (Wikipedia) which has some really excellent illustrations.
Good afternoon Doug,
Indeed we should be Googling âMilankovitch cyclesâ and doing some intensive research on the subject. What we’ll learn is while Earth does actually appear to be warmer now than in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution some hundreds of years back, Earth is never-the-less around a similar temperature as it was 800 years ago and even still FAR colder than 8000 or so years ago.
So this then must rationally lead to asking what could have been responsible for all the previous warm global temperature spells and peaks in CO2 levels in the thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years past? Likely it wasn’t from cavemen starting campfires or driving around in SUV’s. No, more probably according to the FEW remaining ethical climate scientists it was due to perturbations in the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit.
Currently this eccentricity of Earthâs orbit is close to an extreme low reading and continuing to drop. From a practical climate viewpoint what that means is that EVEN IF all living beings disappeared from the face of the Earth tomorrow, the planet would go on warming up until the eccentricity reaches a minimum and then reverses in on itself, causing the process to proceed in the opposite direction. In other words, the planet could be warming up now, but with a future change in eccentricity guaranteed to happen eventually at some point in the future, a new ice age will be guaranteed as well. In the meantime, the planet’s living beings will need to just learn to adapt to the new climate norms faced at present.
Be well,
Walt
Actually, it’s the next two-four decades not 150,000 year cycles I mainly think about. Therefore, being small minded, it’s my Grandchildren’s future-world that most concerns me. BTW, are’re not Javier in disguise are you?
Doug,
I am a Canadian who lives near the Rockies. I don’t know anybody named Javier.
Javier is essentially a careless debater who eventually drowns in his own arguments.
No, more probably according to the FEW remaining ethical climate scientists it was due to perturbations in the eccentricity of Earthâs orbit.
No you are wrong on two counts. There are NO ethical climate scientists left on planet earth. They were all abducted by aliens who are deliberately changing the planet’s environment and climate to suit their own needs. They are making the planet uninhabitable for humans. Their spaceships will be arriving shortly to begin colonizing earth!
Fun video on M cycles included on this link. Conclusion – we need to put a ball cap on the north pole:)
Regarding the UN’s IPCC’s on-going assessments on climate change, it turns out the world’s climatologists are actually not idiots – despite all their PhD’s – and have done tons of M cycle modeling and folded those sub-models into their predictive climate models continue to conclude, crazy as it seems, that anthropogenic actions have contributed to climate change and will continue to do so.
We on this forum are NOT PhD-level scientists who have dedicated their whole lives to finding and using every scientific/mathematical tool available to sort out the technical minutia of the grand question “why the earth’s climate was what is was, is what is is, and how that affects what it will be”. Yet we continue to belabor these silly anti-AGW argumentations over items that to trained climatological professionals are elementary (but did “they” consider orbital changes? Sun spots? cow farts? etc.? ). Why?
The issue of orbital/radiative variations is so commonly questioned to the IPCC it is an FAQ!
You miss the point HACman. Milankovich cycles are long term forcings and are useful to see if climate will cool in the long term or because of additional GHG’s in the atmosphere, continue to stay warm.
Examining all the forcings and forcing vectors is not silly, in fact it is the best way to gain perspective and knowledge about the whole earth – sun system. Just looking at small areas or one or two variables is about as useful as playing golf.
Anyway, natural forcings have a greater magnitude and range than anthropogenic forcings.
Hi Gone fishing,
As most of the glacial ice is in the Southern Hemisphere (Antarctic Ice Sheet), I think the focus on 65N is less important today than 22,000 years ago (and other glacial maximums). Today most Northern hemisphere(NH) ice sheet area is in Greenland and is almost 20 times smaller that Northern hemisphere ice sheets during the last glacial maximum. The natural changes due to changes in albedo are likely to be much smaller today than from 20 ka BP to 8 ka BP due to the much smaller NH ice sheets.
Also the glacial cycles for the past 800,000 years have been roughly 100,000 years, so the next glacial maximum is not due for approximately 80,000 years. It will likely be delayed by excess carbon emissions, possibly by 60,000 years or more. So the next glacial maximum might be 140,000 years in the future, within an order of magnitude. This assumes anthropogenic carbon emissions from all sources after 1800 CE are limited to about 1100 Pg. It also assumes we do not find a way to remove carbon from the atmosphere and that the natural carbon cycle gradually sequesters carbon from the atmosphere.
Exactly, most of the ice is in Antarctica, which means the Arctic will go quickly having much less mass and therefore the greatest effects. Snow and ice cover have the same reflective effect as ice sheet cover, so your assertions are incorrect about the albedo change.
You really need to bone up on your orbital knowledge, I have presented it in detail in previous posts.
Hi Gonefishing,
In the absence of ice sheets, most snow and ice melts every spring and summer, as most of the insolation occurs in March through September in the Northern hemisphere, the size of the ice sheets matters.
I have given links to several papers that describe the climate models in detail. Snow cover and sea ice is covered in the climate models.
Though the models are not perfect. The GISS model is described in the paper below (pp 143-151).
and an earlier paper below (see especially the land surface model on page 164-5 with snow and vegetation sub-models). Sea ice and land ice are also covered on pp. 165-167 of the paper linked below, which has more detail than the first paper linked.
As Doug suggested earlier, such modelling is more relevant on timescales of interest (say the next 1000 years) than the Milankovitch cycles.
You can focus on 50,000 years down the road if you prefer.
Exactly, the snow is melting earlier and the ice is melting off the Arctic Ocean now to a large extent. That has produced a differential in albedo in just decades, a differential that ice sheets take millennia to make.
When an area goes from 0.8 albedo to 0.2 or 0.3, it means that area is absorbing up to 180 w/m2 more energy than before. Since most of the sunlight in northern regions is during the warmer times, that makes a large difference. Having a few thousand square kilometers of ocean or land exposed for even a few weeks is a large change in energy.
Further south now, some areas that usually had snow cover have had little or none. There the insolation is higher and having three months of dark ground, trees, rivers and lakes exposed instead of ice and snow adds a lot of heat to the system.
I don’t focus on orbital changes, it is just part of the system and is a continuous forcing. My interest spans all the time periods, maybe you believe humans and life in general won’t exist past 1000 years but I do.
Models are fine, though from what has been published they are all over the place as far as results go. I think they are too focused on human produced CO2 and do not take into account the obvious changes in the natural forcings.
There is no way a few watts/m2 would be making all those changes in Arctic and causing the ice melt that is occurring. Not at the rate or in such a short time. The Antarctic is experiencing a large increase in insolation and will for thousands of years (though slowly diminishing). It’s particular configuration makes it more a matter of when then what will happen.
I find the paleontological data quite useful in understanding the complex system we are living in.
The models will have to change soon anyway, since portions of the earth are being driven strongly by natural forcings now. These changes have occurred in just a few decades and are still moving in the same direction.
GoneFishing,
Well said; totally agree. The Arctic and sub-Arctic, along various associated feed-backs will henceforth be the primary driver of global climate.
Hi Gone fishing and Doug,
As I have said before changes in snow cover, sea ice and vegetation are included in the climate models and though they are not perfect, if one takes the ensemble mean, they reproduce past climate pretty well.
Yes there is uncertainty, with most models having equilibrium climate sensitivities between 2 and 4 C. Hansen thinks 3 C is a good estimate for ECS.
Higher temperatures at high latitudes will lead to higher humidity and possibly greater snowfall amounts, this would be a negative feed back. The GISS model E2-H (ECS of 2.8 C) underestimates Arctic Sea Ice Extent in a historical run from 1850 to 2005.
In chart below I compare the Berkeley Earth Land Ocean temperature data with the MAGICC median model (an ensemble of 19 AOGCMs and 9 carbon cycle models).
Each has a zero anomaly equal to the 1850-1999 average of the data or model. The equilibrium climate sensitivity of the model is 3 C.
Hi Gonefishing,
If you think the natural forcing is not included in the models, you are incorrect.
The models are far more sophisticated than you seem to believe.
Sure they can be improved there is a lot of work that needs to be done on clouds aerosols and their interaction with atmospheric chemistry. Better models of ice sheets are needed as well as improved carbon and vegetation models.
Dennis, the higher temperatures are already there, over 2.5 C, and except for a few rare instances along the Alaskan coast, did not lead to higher snowfall. In fact it appears that snow cover and snowfall is getting less.
“The lack of snow in Alaska and western Canada may be part of the reason that the region has been ravaged by forest fires this summer, with fires having burned more than 3.5 million acres in Alaska. Other western states have also been hit by forest fires in the past few months.
âThe forest fire season youâve got right now, it has roots probably going as far back as last winter,â Mark Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, told the Dispatch News. âThere wasnât much snow on the land and itâs been a warm and dry spring and these things all combine.â
A big indicator near me of climate change is a high altitude mountain plateau that had a long history of ice cutting industry, a place that typically had -30F temps in the winter, now often cannot hold ice cutting demonstrations because the winter is so warm there is no or little ice on the very lakes that were long time successful commercial operations. This is at 42N latitude.
Now consider that the changes further north are even more dramatic.
Hi Walt,
8000 years ago Global temperature was about 0.4 C higher than the 1961-1990 average temperature based on Marcott et al 2013.
Global temperatures were not far higher 8000 years ago based on peer reviewed research, they were slightly lower 8000 years ago than recent years, the most recent 30 year average Global land-ocean temperature using Berkeley Earth data is 0.57 C above the 1961-1990 average temperature.
DC,
Looks like we finally pulled it off, doesn’t it?
Now that we have pulled he pin on the grenade, who wants to hold it?
Hi Synapsid,
No idea what you mean. What has been pulled off?
I was just correcting Walt She who claimed temperatures were far higher in 8000 BP, when in fact we have surpassed the temperatures of the Holocene Climactic Optimum.
DC,
It took us 9000 years to bring global temperatures above the early-Holocene maximum.
It’s actually a lot messier than that but the idea is that we’re in the ball park. I don’t think we see this in earlier interglacials.
The fun part is that the Arctic is melting even though there is considerably less summer insolation than 11,000 years ago when it peaked.
We gave the planet a real kick in the head just at the right time, as insolation is on the increase again in the Arctic. Nature has taken over there, we are soon to be just another factor.
Hi Synapsid,
Ok got it. I agree another glacial maximum in the next 80,000 years is not very likely as atmospheric CO2 will remain above 280 ppm for at least that long (assuming recent work by Archer et al 2009 and Joos et al 2013 on the carbon cycle is roughly correct).
An energy transition which will be forced by a fossil fuel peak by 2030 (for combined coal, oil and natural gas in energy terms) may keep total carbon emissions under 1000 Pg (including fossil fuels, cement production and land use change from 1800 to 2200) and temperatures at about 2 C above pre-industrial Holocene temperatures. I have assumed ECS is about 3 C, similar to IPCC mean estimates.
Scenario using MAGICC6 model below.
Meinshausen, M., S. C. B. Raper and T. M. L. Wigley (2011). “Emulating coupled atmosphere-ocean and carbon cycle models with a simpler model, MAGICC6: Part I â Model Description and Calibration.” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 11: 1417-1456. doi:10.5194/acp-11-1417-2011.
Try just typing Milankovitch Cycle in the search box then click on images. Hundreds of images and each one leads to an article which might have more images.
Thanks GF and Doug.
There are so many sites with part of what I want, but not all of it nicely gift wrapped for me, lol, that I have gotten frustrated looking.
What I am thinking is that some dedicated instructor in an introductory astronomy class, or some related field, has put together just what I am looking for, as part of his class presentations, or something along this line. All I have to do is find it, and get permission, and avoid all the work of assembling it myself.
Then I can link to it with comments I compose myself.
My computer skills are minimal, to put it as mildly as possible. I mostly managed to avoid them, except the ones in autos and trucks, until after retirement.
CLIMATE CHANGE HAS DOUBLED WESTERN U.S. FOREST FIRES
âMore aridity is sending thousands of square miles up in flames, report investigators. According to the study, since 1984 heightened temperatures and resulting aridity have caused fires to spread across an additional 16,000 square miles than they otherwise would have — an area larger than the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined. The authors warn that further warming will increase fire exponentially in coming decades.â
I think there is a natural feedback involved in this. As forest and vegetation is lost, the rains in the region are reduced even further.
Another feedback. Burning fossil fuels caused an increase in population. That in turn caused an increase in development in otherwise unpopulated areas, which in turn caused fires to start.
Confirmation of what we’d have expected from a thought experiment of potential outcomes from global warming and climate change. If only we’d been prudent.
While doing a customary search for “Jamaica Solar” using the news search feature of Google, I found the following editorial which had the word “solar” in the comment section:
This is not an unreasonable expectation because the IMF and World Bank boast of having the best economic experts, who are the highest-paid international civil servants. Yet this collection of so-called best economic minds have come up with no solutions to the malaise of the global economy. Ironically, they have no hesitation in imposing economic policy packages of dubious efficacy on governments in poor and developing countries.
Jamaica is a case in point, having done everything required by the IMF and World Bank, yet there has been no significant growth. It finally dawned on the Government that it needed to design its own growth-promoting policy, hence the need for the prime ministerâs Economic Growth Council.
The managing director of the IMF describes the global predicament as âconsistently disappointing growth outcomesâ. Then came the predictable perennial platitudes such as urging the international community to âstep up international co-operation to create comprehensive and co-ordinated policy actionsâ. The call was made for more of the same policies, such as greater trade integration, which have not worked.
It sounds good, but that is all it is â words, not deeds. The problem is that the IMF and the World Bank apply a one-size-fits-all approach. Since no two countries are alike, this approach is sure to produce a lot of causalities. Hopefully, by blending the recommendations from the Economic Growth Council with the IMF programme, the combined effect will ignite sustained economic growth.
Reading this brought to mind all the Peak Oil analyses I have seen over the years, predicting what the outcomes would include, in particular outlooks from the likes of Richard Heinberg. The editorial linked to above seems to me to be the classic description of the global economy when oil production peaks. The problem as I see it is that, those outside the Peak Oil aware community see the problem as one defined by economics while I suspect, most participants here recognize the problem as one of declining returns on energy investments.
IMO the only way to avoid economic collapse is to decouple economic activity from oil use. In the larger economies of the world, this will have to happen through drastic reductions in the use of oil in the transport sector while maintaining similar levels of mobility for people and freight. In smaller economies, such as that of small island states that still use considerable amounts of oil for electricity generation, drastic reductions in the use of oil for electricity generation in addition to drastic reductions in the transport sector are needed.
I wish the Jamaican prime ministerâs Economic Growth Council the best of luck but, I’m afraid that luck is not what is really needed. Unless there is a recognition that economic activity must be decoupled from oil use, I suspect none of their prescriptions will produce tangible results.
I wish the Jamaican prime ministerâs Economic Growth Council the best of luck but, Iâm afraid that luck is not what is really needed. Unless there is a recognition that economic activity must be decoupled from oil use, I suspect none of their prescriptions will produce tangible results.
Perhaps it is also time for people everywhere to also come to the realization that we have been neglecting the negative effects and costs of ‘GROWTH’ and a purely extractive linear economic paradigm. We not only need to move away from a fossil fuel based economy but we also need to transition to a more regenerative circular economy that is not fixated on the infinite growth.
Which leads me back to the protestations of a certain poster at this site about “large-scale centralized weaponized (pseudo)governance”. In my neck of the woods, governments have tried to provide education for the poor and to keep the costs of basic food items and fuels for cooking and transport as low as possible. In the seventies we had an administration that was fairly hostile to business while codling the poor, which resulted in a contraction of the private sector. Since there are basically two ways to tackle unemployment one, to encourage economic growth and the other, more long term approach, to limit population growth, this did nothing to help unemployment.
In an environment where people act rationally, it may be possible for life to be good with little or no government intervention but, in an environment where an unskilled laborer, in an tv interview of workers on strike at a hotel construction site, protests that he needs more pay to look after his thirteen children, some government intervention is in order. If it were up to me, men who are inclined to father more children than their income can support would face harsh sanctions but alas, no one is ever going to win elections on a platform of population control.
So the situation as it stands now is that, there are more people than there are jobs and decent housing for, resulting in numerous pockets of unplanned settlements (squatting) and all sorts of informal economic activity, from street vending to unauthorized taxis to prostitution, extortion, fraud, scamming and outright theft. At this juncture pursuing economic growth seems to be the more humane approach since humane methods of reducing the population escape me at the moment. There seems to be a almost complete lack of awareness of any need to limit population growth based on the preponderance of young unemployed women with children that I see in the lower income areas of the island where I live.
So Fred, I’m with you on the “need to transition to a more regenerative circular economy that is not fixated on the infinite growth” and think limiting population growth should be a top priority. If I seem in an unusually cheerful mood (/sarc) today, it must be because it’s a public holiday here, National Heroes Day. We celebrate our heroes and give out national awards today.
P.S. A comment I wrote in response to the newspaper article above was approved by the moderators and has already attracted a predictable response. I quote “Fossil fuel will be around for the next 200 years. See, USA is now the world’s leading producer of oil; it is foolhardy to ignore the natural resource a country has that can contribute to its wealth……”
The world is full of idiots.
I read an article at as site called Business Insider a couple of days ago that says wind energy is a complete waste and exists only because of fraudulent subsidies,etc.
There were about eight or ten comments, and every last one was totally wrong, in respect to the facts.
So I tried, just to see the responses, posting a pro wind comment involving the number of birds killed by cats versus wind farms, and pointing out that there are many many worked out coal mines near my home.
Needless to say, my comment never made it.
Hi Alan,
I thought you might find this Energy Gang podcast interesting.
The Energy Gang looks at why island countries are such an important market for renewablesâand why renewables are so important for island countries.
by Stephen Lacey, September 23, 2016
42 gallons of oil in a barrel, there’s the 42 number again.
42! Is how much oil there is on the planet.
14050061000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 is 42! or 1.4050061e51, that is all it is.
That would be in gallons of oil. har
There will be an election in November, nothing will change, you will still be brainwashed, Stockholm Syndrome doesn’t go away anymore.
32 is a better number by far. 32 degrees Fahrenheit for water to freeze, 32 ounces in a quart, 32 quarts per bushel, 1/32nd of an inch for close measure, 32 inch doorways, 320 acres in a half section, 320 rods equal one mile, etc.
32 rules. har-umph!
I think we are in Catch 22!
R Walter,
There is a certain arbitrariness to how things are laid out. The equivalent in metric of a 32″ doorway may be wider or narrower in a country that uses the metric system.
Oh and does water really freeze at zero degrees Celsius (32 Fahrenheit)? đ
According to the CIA Factbook, the United States is one of three nations (the others being Liberia and Burma) that have not adopted the metric system as their official system of weights and measures.wikipedia
By: Lee Grenci, Wunderground, 4:41 PM GMT on October 16, 2016
All of my professional career, I have lobbied for the temperature, 32 degrees Fahrenheit, to be called the melting point of ice. Perhaps it was the stubbornness of youth that made me so insistent. As I have grown older, I now believe that trying to get this convention adopted is a losing proposition. Not even close.
That’s because the common experience of almost everyone is that most liquid water does indeed freeze at temperatures close to 32 degrees Fahrenheit F. Such a misleading observation is a simple consequence of the availability of freezing nuclei. Yes, much of the water we humans typically encounter is almost certain to freeze close to 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Point well taken.
I know that my credentials as a scientist have been called into question by some of the general public because of my insistence that 32 degrees is not the freezing point of water. What I have tried to show here at Weather Underground, tried to teach my students at Penn State, tried to preach to gardeners, etc. is that water does not necessarily freeze at this temperature. And my favorite prop to prove my point is my refrigerator-freezer experiment with drops of water on the oiled bottom of a used tuna can (see photograph below).
1
Its been a LONG time since I took a freshman level course in chemistry, but if IIRC, there are old textbooks around that say the F thermometer is based on water freezing at 32 and boiling at 212 under standardized conditions.
I am not at all sure that back when this standard was adopted that chemists and physicists were able to precisely standardize a sample of water but my guess is that a double distilled sample would be pure enough that any researcher could have calibrated his instruments using it, meaning a double distilled sample.
So maybe the definition of 32 is that it is the temperature at which water freezes under specified conditions.
I am probably in over my head here, lol.
I am sure that AWS is correct in that you can change the freezing point of water at least a little by modifying the testing environment. I don’t know much about super chilled liquids, but I do know that they exist.
Once upon a time I read an account by somebody who seemed to be otherwise entirely reputable about seeing water in a stream someplace way up in the high Arctic freeze almost instantly. I suppose this stream must have emerged from underneath the snow and ice as a spring, because the temperature was given as very low, but I can’t remember what the temperature was estimated to be.
The only possible explanation would seem to be the water was super chilled and something precipitated the change of state.
I have occasionally wondered since if this could actually happen but it seems very unlikely.
SUPERCOOL: WATER DOESN’T HAVE TO FREEZE UNTIL -48 C (-55 F)
âWe drink it, bathe in it and are made mostly of it, yet common water poses major mysteries. Now, chemists may have solved one enigma by showing how cold water can get before it absolutely must freeze: 48 degrees below zero Celsius (minus 55 Fahrenheit).â
I just realized the effect this would have on fish. If the water doesn’t freeze they could approach the surface where the water is extremely cold and just turn solid. Or the water would become extremely cold and dense, plunge to the bottom and freeze the poor fish. Nasty, very nasty.
Not quite as bad as ice that does not float though.
Now that was really cool!
đ
Just wait until Hoenikker invents Ice-nine though. No worries about Arctic ice loss then, we’ll have a real ice age to live through.
I would like to hear the opinions of any regulars here, especially in three respects, about this report.
One, would it take a state level organization to get access to the documents published by Wikileaks?
It seems obvious to me that at least some of these documents, maybe most of them, could be easily obtained by any high level insider, meaning either a high level official, or a high level IT guy, willing to spill the beans, thus making breaking into the email systems unnecessary.
This does not mean the Russians, or maybe some other government, is not breaking into email accounts and providing some of the pilfered content to Wikileaks, but it makes it VERY unlikely in my opinion that ALL of the stuff Wikileaks publishes is provided by such a government organization .
Second, ARE there a lot of experts who think Wikileaks is a Russian government organization?
Third, if these experts exist, are they mostly associated with either the D or the R party in terms of their political allegiances, if known?
Every body can quit worrying about Trump getting to the WH.
It used to worry me a little, but the odds against him winning the election after the last few weeks must be up to at least a thousand to one by now.
Mac, don’t get wrapped up in any conspiracy theory. Remember Occam’s Razor. The FBI says it was the Russians so it is very likely was the Russians.
It does not much matter whether WikiLeaks is a Russian organization or not. It is obvious that Russia wants Trump in the White House and they are using WikiLeaks just as if it were a Russian organization, whether it is or not.
However all these leaks will make little difference in the election. As Chuck Todd said on NBC this morning, Trumps actions and comments “block out the sun”. That is, they will overwhelm anything that might be in the WikiLeaks release.
The US government stepping on Ecuador’s toes. There’s your conspiracy.
There probably are a few hard core activists of the liberalish persuasion that might fire bomb a Republican office, but such people are extremely scarce, except for a very small handful that are willing to go to jail protesting cutting redwoods, new pipelines, etc.
Such people will not ordinarily not stoop to firebombing. They have principles and put their own bodies on the line. I have respect for them, as a rule.
I would make a small bet, and give two to one, that this is a false flag operation associated with the R wing rather than the D wing of American politics.
This does not necessarily mean that any important R party people are behind it, or even knew it would happen, etc.
Sometimes individuals and small groups without ties to larger organizations do such things.
NEWS FLASH ****** ALL NEW US ELECTRIC GENERATION ADDED WAS RENEWABLE ********
Article also states that solar energy had risen by 35 times in 6 years.
Arctic Report Card – Update for 2015 -Greenland Ice Sheet
Highlights
â˘Melt area in 2015 exceeded more than half of the ice sheet on July 4th for the first time since the exceptional melt events of July 2012, and was above the 1981-2010 average on 54.3% of days (50 of 92 days).
⢠The length of the melt season was as much as 30-40 days longer than average in the western, northwestern and northeastern regions, but close to and below average elsewhere on the ice sheet.
â˘Average summer albedo in 2015 was below the 2000-2009 average over the northwest and above the average over the southwest portion of the Greenland ice sheet. In July, albedo averaged over the entire ice sheet was lower than in 2013 and 2014, but higher than the lowest value on record observed in 2012.
⢠Ice mass loss of 186 Gt over the entire ice sheet between April 2014 and April 2015 was 22% below the average mass loss of 238 Gt for the 2002- 2015 period, but was 6.4 times higher than the 29 Gt loss of the preceding 2013-2014 season.
â˘The net area loss from marine-terminating glaciers during 2014-2015 was 16.5 km2. This was the lowest annual net area loss of the period of observations (1999-2015) and 7.7 times lower than the annual average area change trend of -127 km2.
â˘The net area loss from marine-terminating glaciers during 2014-2015 was 16.5 km2. This was the lowest annual net area loss of the period of observations (1999-2015) and 7.7 times lower than the annual average area change trend of -127 km2.
See, all you alarmists have been crying wolf, all this time for no reason! This proves once and for all that anthropogenic climate change, due to CO2 emissions from burning of fossil fuels, is pure hooey and all climate science is just one big hoax and conspiracy with the sole aim of transfering wealth to greedy climate scientists from taxpayers.
Y’all gotta admit that is one heck of a nice big red cherry I picked to place atop the icing of my cake, eh?! đ
Fred, it’s all just natural variation. Most of Greenland melted during the Eemian so I think we got short changed this time around.
We really need to keep track of it because real estate values could change dramatically if that melting continued. Trump Towers would be awash and then he would sue Mother Nature.
DAG NABBIT,
I been hoping the water would get high enough I could sell some water front off the lower edge of my farm.
The rest of it would be great for building houses looking out over the water.
==Question of Trust==
a big problem with the posting of these climate science studies and article’s is how its very hard to know what motivates the climate scientists these days. see these survey results below, and all the disagreement nationwide over why climate scientists do the things they do. Some American’s say climate scientists are concerned for public’s best interests, but then many more say climate scientists are only motivated to advance their careers or according to political leanings.
Amanda, before you feel qualified to opine about anything, you should at the very least learn how to differentiate between possessive nouns and plurals…
The possessive form is used with nouns referring to people, groups of people, countries, and animals. It shows a relationship of belonging between one thing and another. To form the possessive, add apostrophe + s to the noun. If the noun is plural, or already ends in s, just add an apostrophe after the s.
Amanda, you are confusing political motivation with scientific motivation. The overwhelming majority of scientist are motivated by science, or a search for truth. Sure, some are motivated also by a search for fame and fortune. But even here they hope to achieve their goal by finding and publishing new scientific truths.
Politicians, on the other hand, are motivated by the effort to get re-elected. They usually say what they think their constituents and contributors want to hear.
The public, in general, however usually has a different motivation. The average man or woman in the street is motivated by ideology. If they are a democrat they usually have a liberal ideology and if they are a republican they usually have a conservative ideology. And their opinions on science are, far more often then not, molded by their political ideology… or even worse, their religious ideology.
The average man or woman in the street is motivated by ideology.
In Miami they are starting to be motivated by rising water in the streets đ
Have you looked into the US Navy’s official views on the likelihood of sea-level rise being caused by human activities such as, oh, burning fossil fuels?
Being as how it’s a sea-level enterprise.
The Navy is looking at losing a lot of installations and preceding that a lot of flooding at them.
This survey doesn’t tell us much about scientists, and their actual motivations. After all, how many average people on the street actually talk to climate scientists?? The survey only tells us something about which tv news or talk radio programs that average people are listening to.
Sadly, a lot of average people on the street are getting a lot of misinformation about the world from Fox, which is an arm of the Republican party, and talk radio, whose hosts say what they think the (conservative) audience wants to hear.
California High-Speed Rail is a high-speed rail system currently under construction in the U.S. state of California. The initial implementation phase (“Phase 1”) will connect the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center in Anaheim and Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles with the Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco via the Central Valley with speeds up to 220 miles per hour (350 km/h), providing a “one-seat ride” for the trip in 2 hours and 40 minutes. The system is required by law to operate without a subsidy, and to connect the state’s major cities in the Bay Area, Central Valley, and Los Angeles Basin.
Cumulative plug-in vehicle sales topped 500K units in US in September
Electric vehicle sales have been accelerating in 2016. For the past three years, sales of plug-in vehicles have averaged a little over 10,000 units per month. However, monthly sales records have been set five times since December 2015, and reached an all-time high of 16,069 units in September of 2016.
Climate change is an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time. It threatens our economy, our national security, and our childrenâs health and futures. We can tackle it by making America the worldâs clean energy superpower and creating millions of good-paying jobs, taking bold steps to slash carbon pollution at home and around the world, and ensuring no Americans are left out or left behind as we rapidly build a clean energy economy.
California has mandated by law that the high-speed rail system will not use any public funds. Despite all historical fact to the contrary. Passenger rail does not make a profit. So I wonder how this $68 billion dollar system will make it without additional public support. If they ever get the tunnels cut.
“Let’s look first at the Myth of Passenger Train Profitability.
I voted against the ARC’s Finding because the 1997 law was silly, meaningless, irrelevant, futile superfluous, gratuitously punitive, and inappropriate. Companies don’t become profitable because somebody passes a law ordering them to. Companies become profitable for two reasons: An economic and political environment favorable to profitability exists, and a management capable of exploiting that environment is in place.
Passenger trains have not enjoyed a favorable economic or political environment in this country since the 19th century. Absent a change in that environment, passing a law commanding Amtrak to stop losing money is like shaking a baby to make it stop wetting its diaper. It’s an act of futile, cruel desperation by somebody who doesn’t understand what’s really happening or how to stop it.
We laugh about “the blind leading the blind.” But the 1997 Amtrak Reform Act was compounded that absurdity: It presumed that politicians could command bureaucrats to be businessmen. The Congress acted without understanding the forces that drive transportation economics in this country.
Profitability is not a reliable or trustworthy index of the effectiveness of a transportation system. Our highway and civil aviation systems are not profitable, nor do we expect them to be. Why then should we place this commercial burden on Amtrak?”
New Jersey Transit which operates rail and bus lines in one of the densest population and business rich areas of the country makes about 50% of it’s operating costs.
âI voted against the ARCâs Finding because the 1997 law was silly, meaningless, irrelevant, futile superfluous, gratuitously punitive, and inappropriate.â
Additionally, Iâd bet you were feeling a bit grouchy that day as well.
Not me. somebody else said that one, hence the quote marks. Good one though from another realist.
Some laws are based in fantasy land.
When I found out that an EV or hybrid car with 2 or 3 people in it was more efficient than passenger trains, I wondered what all the hype for passenger trains was about.
Aircraft are a much better investment than high speed trains.
The idea of high speed trains is a very attractive one. The actual implementation due extremely expensive infrastructure, security and maintenance is not economically feasible. They are also very much destination limited so must be aimed at the most probable dense populations.
But they are far more practical than Mars colonization missions, so as a hobby they do provide for the general welfare at the same time.
When we stop subsidizing highways and local roads by spending tax money on them; when we start levying property taxes on highways on local roads; when we stop levying property taxes on railroads; when we properly tax fossil fuels; and when we stop providing vast amounts of very, very expensive free parking;……
Then, and only then we can talk about rail not being competitive with roads.
Freight rail is very competitive, but it’s infrastructure is much simpler and less costly as well as it’s ability to move a much higher paying cargo per rail car.
Compare 1 to 2 million dollars per mile of track for freight to $120 million dollars per mile for the high speed California run.
I find it astounding that the ticket price/mile listed for the California high speed rail is the lowest in the world. As low as 1/3 of other operating high speed rail operations.
Either they are cutting corners on infrastructure and operations or they are purposely providing lowball numbers to get the project up and running.
As far as roads go, they are owned by the public who pays for them. I can drive on the roads. Railroads own their own property and usually run as private enterprise. I am not allowed to step foot on railroad property, let alone drive on the rails. Not without special permission or at controlled select passenger entry points for the purpose of buying their services.
Freight rail is very competitive
Not so much. If you subtract the heavy, cheap bulk commodities like coal, grain, and oil, you find that trucks carry most of the US’ freight.
Compare 1 to 2 million dollars per mile of track for freight to $120 million dollars per mile for the high speed California run.
Yeah, they’re paying a big premium for speed. Arguably they should go for medium speed.
As far as roads go, they are owned by the public who pays for them.
That’s an interesting point. Perhaps it’s an argument for nationalizing rail, or privatizing roads.
I can drive on the roads.
Not really. You need a government license.
In any case, I think ownership isn’t really relevant. The fact is that trucks do most of the damage to highways, and they don’t have to pay the full cost of their infrastructure. It’s not a level playing field.
And passenger cars don’t either. Nor do either trucks or cars pay anything like the full cost of their fuel.
So if you subtract out what trains do best and are designed for, then they are not competitive. ROFL
You had better look at the container business a lot more closely.
I need a license to operate a vehicle not to drive on particular roads. I can also walk along the road, which I do every day. I can ride a bicycle on the roads too. They are public property.
They are paying to reduce the danger of traveling at such speeds on the ground. The tracks must be fully isolated and heavily controlled for safety and security purposes. Fencing must run the whole distance an it is often elevated.
“I think ownership is isnât really relevant. The fact is that trucks do most of the damage to highways, and they donât have to pay the full cost of their infrastructure. Itâs not a level playing field.”
People want and need the deliveries, that is just the cost of providing the services. We all pay taxes to get those services and use the public infrastructure. Businesses should be paying extra since they create the demand for transport of goods. If they are not that needs to be adjusted.
We all benefit from public infrastructure.
The high speed rail is funded by taxpayers and public debt.
I just put forward that it will not be able to support itself, which is demanded by law. So something will give, if it is ever completed. I doubt if it will be abandoned, the government sill step in and fund it like governments do everywhere for passenger.
So if you subtract out what trains do best and are designed for, then they are not competitive.
Yes, they’re not competitive for a large part of the freight market. Intermodal is only 9% of rail at the moment.
The point, obviously, is that they’d be competitive for a lot more of the freight market if costs were properly allocated.
People want and need the deliveries, that is just the cost of providing the services. We all pay taxes to get those services and use the public infrastructure. Businesses should be paying extra since they create the demand for transport of goods. If they are not that needs to be adjusted.
I think we’re in agreement: people who want services should pay the cost of those services (unless there’s a good public policy reason otherwise, like helping out low income folks). So, if businesses want to ship freight, they should pay the full cost, and that will help make sure that we’re not wasting money on services that are inefficient.
We should be using rail much more than we are. We’re not because some of the costs of road traffic are hidden from it’s consumers. Until road usage is properly priced, subsidies for rail help level the playing field.
In this case…I suspect high speed rail is too expensive – it should be medium speed. But….that’s not sexy.
“Yes, theyâre not competitive for a large part of the freight market. Intermodal is only 9% of rail at the moment.”
I just looked up the Association of American Railroads stats and intermodal surpassed all other carloads this year. So it’s above 50 percent of rail car loadings for the US. Where does that 9 percent figure come from?
So they are not only competitive but haul more ton-miles than trucks. All that unimportant fuel, chemicals, grains, wood, cars, cement, steel, fertilizer and a large amount of consumer goods including electronics, clothes and appliances.
Sure the trucks haul it the short distance and haul time sensitive materials but there would not be room on the highways for the trucks to get through if freight trains stopped hauling things. Only a few percent by weight is moved over a 1000 miles by truck. Most is local, less than 250 miles, often after being hauled by rail.
Yeah, there multiple ways to measure freight (tons delivered, ton-miles, car loadings), and each one favors a different form of carrier.
The point is that rail can and should deliver a much larger portion of freight, based on it’s fundamentally lower costs.
Agreed, too bad so much rail was removed that led into local businesses and towns.
Government owned railroads are not taxed. Don’t look at the operators of a line, look at the actual owners. Many railroads are government owned, from the county level on up.
Most track is private.
Amtrak, for instance, only owns 28% of the track it runs on.
I thought we were talking passenger railroads.
Amtrak has rights over freight railroads to travel long distance cross country. Those rights are paid for with public funding. Most passenger rail is owned and/or funded by government and government funds.
A lot of railroad maintenance is funded by public money. Class II and class III railroads (regional and shortline) have 31 percent of the rail mile in the US. They receive public funding for maintenance and improvements.
So even the private railroads are in the public till.
Let’s face it, railroads were given 131,000,000 acres of land by the federal government. That was almost 7 percent of the continental US. So never think that the system is really private. The railroads made a huge amount of money selling lands from the land grants.
Yair . . .
A little different with rail here in Queensland. We have a single track on the Eastern Seaboard with the single one lane highway running right beside it and yet I can drive for several hours and never see a train . . . until I get up into coal country.
Once every town along the track used to have a baker but now much of the bread is baked in central bakeries and transported daily by truck.
Two days of floods and there is no fresh bread.
We live in a crazy JIT world.
Cheers.
Yep,
Around here the grain is transported thousand miles or more by rail from the Midwest and Canada, then ground in a mill where the flour is then transported by truck to large bakeries up to 200 miles away. Then the bread products are transported by truck to distributors and retailers.
But then we didn’t even talk about how the grain got to the rail yard.
It’s happening every day, every week. Got two grain mills near me and they get about a hundred rail cars a week, sometimes more. The trucks are lined up all the time.
Too much fuel in our food system.
That all sounds about right.
FWIW, the reason I brought up public vs private ownership is that private track is taxed, while public highways are not. This is a large subsidy to freight and passenger traffic on roads. I agree that private rail received very large subsidies in the 19th century, in the form of free land. But…it has to pay taxes on that land in the 21st.
So…the point is that rail can and should carry a much larger portion of passenger traffic, based on it’s fundamentally lower costs. And…passenger rail has direct subsidies, while passenger cars have even larger multiple subsidies that are hidden.
Finally – I agree that the statutory mandate for CA high speed rail to have no subsidy is hallucinatory. It’s a reflection of the power of the FF industry to push back against rail.
My cereal has a tractor, a truck, and a train in it along with natural gas, coal, oil and a little sunlight.
All that just to get a bite to eat.
Ooops don’t forget the pump and the water and the cow I pour on top. Almost forgot the tree in it too.
Talk about a complex system. Yikes.
In Germany electric car sales have basically failed, despite generous government support. Consumers aren’t impressed by what the car companies are offering.
But electric bike sales are going through the roof, with over 500K sold in 2015. This is making the government take a closer look at bike infrastructure.
Also sales of small electric utility vehicles like delivery vans and municipal waste disposal vehicles are climbing very fast.
Technological disruption comes through unsexy channels. That’s what blindsides the incumbents.
Meanwhile the diesel scandal is rocking the German car industry, and the calls to ban all new ICEs is getting louder.
Very interesting. Europe has been one of the bastions of EV sales.
Maybe people do not want to pay the price or put up with the charging, yet.
Maybe people do not want to pay the price or put up with the charging, yet.
Yet it seems that more and more people are seeing the writing chargers on the walls… Just yesterday I was in a hotel parking garage in Delray Beach and and had a nice chat with two young guys who were installing TESLA fast chargers on the walls of the bays.
The idea is that patrons can charge their cars for free. Is there anywhere on the planet that hotels are installing gas pumps so guests can fill their tanks for free?
I’m seeing more and more EVs every day.
312,000 plug-ins sold worldwide through June. 42 percent increase YOY.
Fred, you know it is just the same dozen EV’s in the area just wandering around looking for a place to charge. đ
“The idea is that patrons can charge their cars for free. Is there anywhere on the planet that hotels are installing gas pumps so guests can fill their tanks for free?”
We are already addicted to oil. The evil plan is to get us hooked on electrons. Then they start charging us as well as the car. đ
.
We own the solar panels.
Once there are plenty of cheap well used electric cars around, hard working guys and girls who are watching their nickels and dimes are going to be scrounging for every panel they can put their hands on once they see how much money they can save on oil changes, head gaskets, and gasoline.
The rate at which panels go up at private homes even in relatively poor neighborhoods will sky rocket in the not so distant future.
I have a friend in Hawaii that has two separate pv systems at his house, an older one with a couple of batteries adequate for emergency lights and refrigerator, etc, plus a new one grid tied.
His older separate system runs his air conditioners almost all the time they are needed.
He has not bought an electric car but only because he has two older cars that are still good and his family only drives about five thousand miles a year total for both cars.
If he had a Volt or Leaf he could easily do without gasoline altogether, since he works from his home, and could charge his car easily during the day.
I could air condition my own place three quarters of the time when AC is needed here in Virginia using such a free standing pv system.
I would have to turn on a grid powered AC unit some late afternoons and once in a while at night.
Being as I am a tightwad, I would just unplug from PV supplied outlet and move the cord of one 5000 btu window unit to a grid supplied outlet. One 5000 btu unit is ample for our well insulated house at night even when it’s ninety outside.
Old Farmer, just freeze ice during the day and use that to cool things at night.
Yes, WE, meaning the home owner and not the utility do indeed own the panels!
Most of the panels around here are in solar farms, not owned by home owners.
Not so fast. Don’t be so quick to write off EV sales in Germany.
After several months of confusion surrounding a new plug-in vehicle incentive program over the Summer, Germany finally woke up and noted some serious plug-in car sales growth.
In fact, September was second best month on record, with 3,061 of new registrations (up 56% year-over-year), giving plug-ins a market share past the magic 1% number (1.03%)!
There is an important factor holding back EV sales in Germany. Germany has a very proud tradition of auto manufacturing and in the eyes of most Germans (and people of many other nationalities), German engineering and workmanship is the best in the world. Against this background, many Germans are very reluctant to buy a car that is not made in Germany.
I looked for data to support this idea and found some sales statistics at:
I put the table at the web page in a spread sheet and with a little reorganization was able to determine that German brands, manufactured in Germany made up 56.3% of cars sold while German owned brands not manufactured in Germany (Seat and Skoda) or Ford branded cars made in Germany (highly likely) made up another 15.5%, for a total of 71.8% “German” cars.
European cars with no German connections made up another 12.8% of the market, while Japan and Korea made up 9.3 and 5.1 percent respectively. US brands Jeep and Tesla made up 0.4 and 0.1 percent, with “Others” making up the last half of one percent.
Add to this the fact that the entire German auto industry has been somewhat recalcitrant in embracing a new generation of EVs , despite or maybe because of several decades of experience with experimentation. German automakers started experimenting with EVs as far back as in the seventies but, battery technology was nowhere close to where it is now. The result is that Tesla basically caught the German auto industry napping. See:
âIn our testing, the Tesla Model S scored eight first, a second and three third places, bringing it to the front. The new Mercedes S-Class and the BMW 7 share second place. Mercedes and BMW score with premium comfort features and a high level of security, but the Tesla wins due to it clever body and the innovative operating concept, especially the E-drive â the range is enormous for an electric car. Otherwise, the German vehicles come surprisingly close to the Tesla.â
Or, to put it another way, the Tesla is now the new benchmark in the luxury class of automobiles sold in Germany.
Mercedes-Benz and BMWâŚlooks like thereâs some catching up to do.
I remember reading an early review of the Tesla Model S by a German publication in which the reviewer questioned why the established top German companies could not achieve what Tesla had despite having a lot more resource. I could not find the exact article but, I distinctly remember sensing a good deal of embarrassment from the article that the Model S was not a German creation.
In the US, the Model S has outsold the flagship sedan from Mercedes, The S Class, for 2013, 2015 and is set to do so again in 2016. In Europe it is selling in comparable quantities, if not more than the Merceds S Class. As was discussed in the previous open thread:
So, Tesla is decimating the luxury end of the market, where most manufacturers make most of their profits. They are virtually dragging the established manufacturers kicking and screaming into the EV space. It would appear that virtually the entire industry is sitting up and taking notice as they are not about to let Tesla do to them, what it has done to the luxury market, where most of the top brands now say they are bringing out battery electric premium sedans over the next few years.
In conclusion, I do not expect sales of EVs to be strong in markets where there is a strong preference for locally manufactured cars unless the local manufacturers in each particular country significantly expand their offerings. In particular I am thinking of Germany, Korea Japan, Mexico and Brazil. I expect German sales of EVs to continue to grow strongly as the Opel Ampera E (German version of the all electric Chevy Bolt) goes on sale along with more and more models from the Volkswagen Group (inc. Audi/Porsche), Mercedes and BMW.
And just think, the EV is still evolving, there is more room for efficiency and performance.
Decreasing Arctic Albedo
“While a five percent increase (in absorbed energy) may not seem like much, consider that the rate globally has remained essentially flat during that same time. No other region on Earth shows a trend of potential long-term change.
When averaged over the entire Arctic Ocean, the increase in the rate of absorbed solar radiation is about 10 Watts per square meter. This is equivalent to an extra 10-watt light bulb shining continuously over every 10.76 square feet of Arctic Ocean for the entire summer.
Regionally, the increase is even greater, Loeb said. Areas such as the Beaufort Sea, which has experienced the some of the most pronounced decreases in sea-ice coverage, show a 50 watts per square meter increase in the rate of absorbed solar radiation.
The onset of the melt season in the high Arctic is now on average seven days earlier than it was in 1982, Meier said. Earlier melting can lead to increased solar radiation absorption. This is one step in a potential feedback cycle of warming leading to melting, melting leading to increased solar radiation absorption, and increased absorption leading to enhanced warming.”
Combine that with the warmer air and water entering the Arctic region.
Converting CO2 to ethanol using common materials.
A process discovered at Oak Ridge National Laboratory uses nano-spikes of carbon and copper to convert CO2 into ethanol via electrochemical action, at room temperature.
So-Assuming this process could be scaled up to industrial levels, where are we supposed to get the energy to run the industrial plant?
It might be within the realm of the possible to do it using wind or solar energy, at some future time, if we can build wind and solar farms by the square mile, lol.
I for one am willing to believe that we CAN build them by the mile, if we once come to a collective decision that we have no choice, that it’s a matter of survival, along the lines of gearing up to fight WWII.
But we are also collectively in about the same shape as a bunch of old time sailors, a hell of a long way from port, in a leaky rotten old ship, short of food and water, in stormy weather with contrary winds. We might make it to port. We might not.
It’s been a while since I mentioned Pearl Harbor Wake Up Bricks. I guess this phrase won’t ever catch on, we are nowadays too PC, which is good in some ways, but I can’t think of any other example to get my point across half as well.
We need a whole series of such Wake UP! bricks upside our collective head to get our collective attention. Otherwise, the odds of our pulling thru the coming resource bottleneck are substantially reduced.
Disasters such as super sized wild fires in the boonies will never get the public’s attention.
Now if just one such fire were to happen during a major wind storm in a well populated area and burn up ten thousand houses, rather than a few dozen, or a couple of hundred, that would be a Wake Up Brick.
If some high achieving terrorists were to sink a big tanker off the East Coast, and drench a hundred miles of sun and fun beaches over the Fourth of July or Labor Day weekend with crude oil, that would be a nice sharp chunk of Wake Up Brick too.
On the bright side, Tesla will be displaying a new model car for the first time tomorrow.
“So-Assuming this process could be scaled up to industrial levels, where are we supposed to get the energy to run the industrial plant? ”
At 2 Gigawatt hour per day per square mile for PV, I don’t see a problem providing energy.
Bakken formation is about 200,000 square miles and produces about 42 million gallons a day. 42 million *100000BTU/gallon* 0.6*(0.19/0.8 )/3412 BTU/kwh/200000 square miles = 877 kwh per square mile of useful energy per day . That is if the formation can produce a million barrels of oil per day for over 30 years.
That would need an URR of about 10 billion barrels of oil for the Bakken.
But that would be the end of the oil, while the sun keeps on shining.
The real cost of that useful oil energy is about 30 cents per kwh at the low end and twice that at the high end. Plus the source does not put out as much energy per square mile per day. Also solar energy is not limited to certain local areas that have oil bearing strata, it is useful over much of the planet.
That’s a great illustration of how “energy dense” solar is.
One of the great misconceptions in the energy world is that wind and solar are “low density”. One kilowatt per square meter is very powerful compared to Bakken or even Saudi oil land.
September was the hottest recorded but only just. It was more a reversion to trend after a couple of big records in August and July. Looks like there may be a small La Nina coming as well so the run of record months may stop, but the conditions in the Arctic, which is consistently 4 to 5 degrees celsius above expected and predicted to stay there, might say otherwise
The Arctic sea ice is starting to set new record lows for the day. Note also that the Antarctic is also hitting low levels after a few years when it had high numbers (and was often cited by deniers as evidence of no cooling – and I think was occasionally used as support for conspiracy theories as the numbers there weren’t often discussed: they still aren’t much even with the low numbers).
Antarctic sea ice
Temperature anomaly for the Arctic next week. It’s not supposed to look like that. The El Nino in 1998 seemed to permanently change weather patterns in the Arctic and accelerated melting, it’s possible the 2015/2016 one has done something similar.
El Nino, La Nina? What???
Couldn’t be that the Arctic is warming due to less ice and snow causing a 10 watt/m2 increase in energy, could it?
Guess not, must be some occasional oscillations in the Pacific Ocean winds and currents.
estimates about a 6.4 W/m^2 increase in radiative forcing due to albedo change in the Arctic from 1979 to 2011. For the globe this results in a 0.21 W/m^2 increase in forcing.
At the link above is an interactive chart which shoes that 2011 and 2016 Arctic sea ice extent are nearly the same. There could be a reduction in average snow cover from 2011 to 2016. Not clear where to find that data.
First of all, sea ice extent is a very poor way to estimate albedo. If there is 15% ice cover (85% water) it is considered ice covered. It is more a shipping measure than a scientific measure. Sea ice extent values have the error range of a panicked blind man shooting at noises, a far as albedo values are concerned.
Current NASA satellite measurements disagree with the 6.7 watts/m2. Possibly this study has more up to date CERES data:
Since the year 2000, the rate of absorbed solar radiation in the Arctic in June, July and August has increased by five percent, said Norman Loeb, of NASAâs Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia. The measurement is made by NASAâs Clouds and the Earthâs Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments, which fly on multiple satellites.
When averaged over the entire Arctic Ocean, the increase in the rate of absorbed solar radiation is about 10 Watts per square meter. This is equivalent to an extra 10-watt light bulb shining continuously over every 10.76 square feet of Arctic Ocean for the entire summer.
Regionally, the increase is even greater, Loeb said. Areas such as the Beaufort Sea, which has experienced the some of the most pronounced decreases in sea-ice coverage, show a 50 watts per square meter increase in the rate of absorbed solar radiation
Dr. Norman G. Loeb works at NASA’s Langley Research Center investigating the effects of phenomena such as clouds and aerosols on Earth’s radiation budget (amount coming in and going out). He is a principal investigator for the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) mission, specializing in the use of satellite measurements to study how much heat and light reach the Earth from the sun and how much is re-radiated into space. He is also Co-Investigator for the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) project. Dr. Loeb holds B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in atmospheric sciences from McGill University, and an M.Sc. degree in atmospheric sciences from York University.
***************
My personal view is that dividing results from the Arctic Region to give an idea of planetary effect is a waste of time and misleading. The Arctic region is unique in that highly dramatic changes in albedo occur from phase changes in water. Ranging from 0.9 to 0.2 due to it’s snow and ice cover where much of it either exposes ocean or melts to liquid pools on land or ice. This means changes in radiation forcing of up to 350 w/m2 peak over large areas, and the absorbing medium is temperature dependent.
There are other factors going on up there, as the ice and snow melt the amount of water vapor rises significantly into a low humidity environment which effects infrared radiation in the atmosphere (air gets opaque) overwhelming other GHG effects.
âThere are other factors going on up thereâŚ. â
Like wildfires consuming more-and-more forest and peat in the Arctic/sub-Arctic of circumpolar parts of Canada, Russia, Alaska and Scandinavia (comprising about 30 percent of global forests) all (negatively) affected by rising temperatures especially with fire seasons getting longer (and with more lightning).
You can guess the albedo of charred peatland/forest compared to snow covered tundra.
My guess is 0.1 compared to 0.8. Hot time in the Arctic.
To summarize the situation.
The arctic regions have moved on to natural forcings. Anthropogenic CO2 forcing is now small in those regions, natural forcings are now large and getting larger.
WE HAVE AN AUTONOMOUS ARCTIC.
Maybe we can have an Autonomous Arctic Day on the calendar.
Doug, your point about the forests brings up the asymmetry of the earth, north to south. Continental land occupies much of the northern hemisphere, weighted toward the north up to 75 degree latitude.
The sub-arctic conifer forests are especially dark and the whole northern region down to 35 degrees can be blanketed with snow. The seasonal differential in albedo is quite large. Right near the northern pole is ocean which also is developing a large seasonal albedo differential due to melting of the sea ice that used to cover the whole Arctic Ocean.
This condition is reversed in the Southern hemisphere with the deep southern regions being mostly water and the pole covered by a large ice-capped continent that shows little seasonal differential.
Since land heats up much faster than ocean water, the northern continents cause an exceptional temperature variation compared to the southern oceans. Also the Arctic Ocean is heating up much faster than the Antarctic Continent, despite the fact that the Antarctic continent has been receiving increasing summer insolation over the last 11,000 years. This is due to the seasonal albedo difference.
The graph shows the seasonal albedo difference from 65S to 65N latitude. We are not talking a few watts per meter2 but about tens of watts/meter2, oftentimes over 100 watts/m2 seasonal difference.
“As the Arctic goes, so goes the planet.”
Well yeah Doug, otherwise it would twist off and let the fizz out. đ
Hi Gonefishing,
It is also in part due to much more ice in Antarctica than in the Arctic (not sea ice, but total glacial ice on land and sea). But the difference in land mass from North to South is probably the more important factor, transport of ocean heat from South to North may also be a major factor in the faster warming of North vs South.
Average ice and snow cover in the northern hemisphere is 36 million square kilometers.
Hi Doug,
Where there are Boreal Forests, I imagine the albedo is not very high as any snow quickly falls to the forest floor and the sunlight would mostly hit the relatively dark trees.
If the forest burns, that would leave a wide open area that would be covered with snow during some parts of the year and would have increased albedo. The charred forest greens up pretty quickly.
Dennis, if you have ever been in conifer forests the trees get covered with snow.
Hi Gonefishing,
That is true right after a snowstorm, then the snow melts.
I guess you have never winter backpacked of hiked/cross country skied in the north. Why would you make up such shit?
Hi Gonefishing,
Maybe the difference is that the study I looked at considers the entire Arctic and also is considering the annual average rather than just 3 months of the year. I agree sea ice extent is not a good way to estimate albedo, but the study looked at 1979-2011. I don’t have data beyond that. The paper also estimates a 4.2 W/m^2 increase from 2000-2011.
Do you think that the climate scientists are unaware of the very basic physics? You have a tendency to overstate your case and despite what you believe these changes are included in the models. Have you actually looked at the papers on the GISS Model E? See pages 164-168. Introduction below.
The land surface model used in ModelE consists of three integrated parts: soil, canopy, and snowpack. It is based primarily on Rosenzweig and Abramopoulos (1997) with various modifications and improvements. In particular, these include the implementation of a three-layer snow model, addition of new algorithms for the underground runoff computation, and inclusion of elements of new vegetation biophysics. The snow and land surface code conserve water and energy up to machine accuracy.
I am not overstating my case, those are real numbers based on actual changes in albedo. Very easy to calculate, the albedo ranges of water and different ice conditions are well documented long ago. The surface radiation is well known.
If you have a problem with a particular value I present, say so and I will explain how I arrived at it. These sweeping statements of yours are not conducive to communication.
Despite the fact that large amounts of ice must be melted, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the globe. Do you really think that human made GHG’s are the major mechanism of warming in the Arctic?
Are they heavily concentrated there compared to the rest of the globe? If not, then we are only left with natural forcings to make up the difference.
Hi Gonefishing,
The natural forcings are included in the climate models, and they are well known, you claim these are not included in the models, that is not the case.
Read the paper.
Since you have no specific points about anything I posted I will assume that the discussion is ended.
âSince you have no specific points about anything I posted I will assume that the discussion is ended.â
Wrong assumption: Dennis retains a simplistic worldview that cannot be dislodged by logic, facts or new information. đ
Thanks Doug.
Or, as I’ve mentioned to you before, take a look at the current and forecast Arctic Oscillation (AO) levels. They will explain why the Arctic has been on the warmish side for much of October and Asia has observed a deep freeze event. Anyway how is a weather chart useful in theorizing that the climate of the Arctic may have changed?
Electric EV cars are like those statues on Easter Island.
Caelan, seems you may need to update your knowledge about many things.
Apparently your comment is based on myths about the people and civilization of the Easter Islanders. Seems they were actually a pretty sophisticated group and were quite adept at developing and using technology.
For centuries, observers believed that the Rapa Nui suffered a catastrophic population crash. But there is no scientific evidence to support this idea, say a group of researchers in the latest issue of the journal Antiquity. That story about environmental collapse and warfare you read about in Jared Diamond’s bestseller Collapse? Totally wrong.
Origins of the myth
First of all, the Rapa Nui haven’t been wiped off the face of the Earth: the Rapa Nui people still make up over half the Polynesian population today. Their ancestors likely arrived on Easter Island, now part of Chile, roughly a millennium ago. They came in the sophisticated canoes that allowed Polynesians to bring their cultures to dozens of islands in the Pacific Ocean, from Hawaii to Samoa and New Zealand. And they also brought their moai, many of which were quarried on other islands that the Rapa Nui controlled.
When Europeans arrived on Easter Island in the eighteenth century, they were stunned by the sheer awesomeness of the moai. They guessed that an enormous number of people must have built the statues, and they were surprised to discover that the island’s population was only about 3,000 people. Archaeologist Carl Lipo, an author on the new paper, told Ars:
Furthermore:
Citing the evolutionary biologist Peter Turchin, famous for developing a theory of history called “cliodynamics,” Lipo believes that the common thread in human history is cooperation rather than war. The fate of the Rapa Nui on Easter Island is often used to illustrate how humans destroy their communities with environmental destruction and warfare. But it might actually provide a good model for sustainable civilizations of the future. Lipo explained:
Easter Island is a great case of this kind of sociality in which populations seem to have mediated competition over limited resources through the community building of statues. What looks like strange behavior to us is likely central to their success. This is an area we are following up on in our ongoing research. I think we have a lot to learn from Easter Island as to what it takes to survive on an isolated and remote island with limited resources. >But rather than being a “scary parable” about the effects of cultural hubris and ultimate collapse, we can learn valuable insights into strategies that lead to cooperation, resilience, and sustainability.
That’s interesting, Fred, and thanks for sharing.
It’s really just about the cars as the statues, however– a kind of, say, comparative historical reflection on preoccupations.
I make no claim as to what actually happened, and have never read any of Jared Diamond’s work. If the myth is shown for what it truly is, then that’s great.
Nevertheless, myths don’t have to be accepted to be somehow leveraged, such as for the sake of argument.
Those who built the statues, which stand as a kind of testament to a facet of the culture they had, are long gone but their statues will probably outlast this civilization’s cars, and do so more gracefully. (I love stone.)
Perhaps, too, you noticed the header image of said statues at Permaea’s Research page and were inspired. Inspiration in that regard I can get behind.
Speaking of which, I have yet another new site, which suggests well the last part of your comment’s quote in bold (cooperation, resilience and sustainability). Just select my name.
This is a beautiful archival photo of an ‘Inuit family’ which I’ve used as the background to Resilution. (The logo will likely be the block of snow one of them is holding.)
Presumably, they knew how to hunt, build their own shelter and make their own clothes for themselves– all things many of us cannot do.
Knowing how to drive a car is I guess some kind of survival strategy, but it is uncertain how good of one it is or how long it will last.
Those who built the statues, which stand as a kind of testament to a facet of the culture they had, are long gone…
Well part of the point of my comment is that the evidence clearly contradicts the notion that they and their culture are long gone. They have adapted and survived. As noted in the opening sentence of the paragraph debunking the myth.
First of all, the Rapa Nui havenât been wiped off the face of the Earth: the Rapa Nui people still make up over half the Polynesian population today.
But no worries, their stone statues will probably out last us and our vehicles as well. In the meantime we should all concentrate on resilience and in my view developing new technology and new ways of interacting with each other is a big part of that process. Despite what you may think I even see a place for Permaculture, I’m just not willing to bet the entire farm on it just yet. đ
I would not have accepted that the Rapa Nui disappeared off the face of the planet unless there was incontestable evidence beyond a doubt.
Obviously they were on an island and likely understood the sea very well. Maybe many left simply because they got bored…
Or maybe they realized the problems of in-breeding. Perhaps the statues, themselves, such as if they all look somewhat alike, are an expression of this, and a warning ‘To All Ye Who Enter: Beware not to stay too long.’.
Perhaps, what with that and, say, the finches and turtles, they came up with some similar ideas long before Darwin arrived.
Maybe some cultures aren’t meant to be permanent, such as where some aspects of it that are amplified over time, cause problems, where once they were advantages.
If I was one of those at that time and caught wind of it, I’d be out of there, and in the opposite direction of anyone else leaving, faster than you could say, ‘Rapa Nui’.
Maybe many left simply because they got bored.
Not at all! The point was they didn’t leave at all and were doing just fine when Europeans encountered them on the Island.
There was simply a mistaken assumption that to create all those sculptures there had to have been many many thousands of inhabitants living on the island at some time. Since the population on the island was only about 3,000 inhabitants, therefore it was assumed that they must have been either killed off in internal wars or died off due to ecological destruction of their environment. That was the source of a myth propagated to this day.
This was a classic, ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’, logical fallacy!
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
Richard P. Feynman
âThinking is difficult, thatâs why most people judge.â
C.G. Jung
Ohhhhhh, ok! ^u^
So did the Europeans who first encountered them not ask them, ‘What’s with all the statues?’, because of a language or shyness barrier, or what?
Look, the Europeans called Native Americans Indians, as if they were from India. Couldn’t tell them a thing then, they knew it all. Probably still the same. So they most likely did not even ask the natives even if they learned their language.
The settlers of Rapa Nui most certainly did not bring their moai, the statues, with them. As to many of them having been quarried on other islands the settlers controlled, I’d like to see the evidence.
The quarries are there on Rapa Nui, some with unfinished statues still attached to the rock.
This is puzzling; Antiquity is a respected publication.
Hard to imagine carrying statues of that size between islands. Perhaps they simply mean that other islands have their own quarries and statues, and the custom of building them was carried to this particular island.
The settlers of Rapa Nui most certainly did not bring their moai, the statues, with them. As to many of them having been quarried on other islands the settlers controlled, Iâd like to see the evidence.
That is a very good point Synapsid!
And I did a little further digging into this matter, no pun intended. I even thought the same thing that Nick also commented on but there seems to be no evidence whatsoever that Rapa Nui ever quarried any Moai statutes anywhere else.
To be fair the information I copied and pasted is not directly from Hunt and Lipo’s book or Antiquity but from Arstechnica and it is possible that they somehow misinterpreted or misquoted something the authors said.
In any case given that some of these statutes had huge bodies it is pretty much impossible to imagine any of them being transported from other islands!
Of course, this doesn’t include the cost of the vehicle.
Yes, driving on electricity is far cheaper and almost no pollution once we switch to renewables.
But I wonder why people need it to be cheaper, since there are so many more benefits to it overall. Even if it was the same cost per mile or slightly more expensive, the huge drop in costs an harm by not burning fossil fuels across society would spur a golden age. We should be running at these changes full tilt instead of doing a drunken stagger walk. In fact governments should be paying us to convert.
The best thing would be a stiff carbon tax.
Then people would see the cost of pollution at the pump, and switching would be a no-brainer.
But that is so negative Nick. We need a kinder, gentler government. How about a compromise? A carbon tax on the producers and the money is used to give EV’s to the poor needing a vehicle, along with free charges. Plus subsidies for everyone else paid for by import duties and luxury taxes.
A great slogan for the tax would be “Don’t tax the users, tax the pushers.”
Sure, a tax on fossil fuels at the point of production makes a lot of sense. As do subsidies for the poor: in fact, rebating the carbon tax to low income people is a very common feature of carbon tax proposals, because carbon taxes are perceived as regressive.
I say “perceived”, because in fact fuel consumption rises with income, and the very poorest use relatively little. That’s why keeping fuel prices low is a very, very inefficient way to help the poor. Better to give targeted help.
It’s hard to find cars cheaper to own AND operate than an EV (even with oil prices artificially low and depreciation higher than usual):
I do appreciate your arguments. They are good ones, within the bounds of some assumptions you mostly leave unstated.
In the real world where poor people and people who live from one paycheck to the next, even if they are middle class in terms of earning power, these unstated assumptions are real game changers.
The first thing to consider, short term, and for some years to come, is that there are so few cheap used electric vehicles available that not one person in a thousand who might want to buy one could actually do so.
I ‘m a tightwad, but I could afford a new car, if I wanted one worse than I want a new private lake on my place, etc. The value of the lake will almost for sure appreciate at a rate at least equal to the inflation rate, plus the
New cars cost their owners a hell of a lot in insurance premiums, interest charges, and property taxes, as a general rule. Then there is the opportunity cost of the money involved, and even the cheapest cars generally cost upward of twenty thousand these days after paying all the sales taxes, delivery charges, etc.
Anybody who knows what he is doing, or is willing to take the advice of an honest mechanic, if he can find one, lol, can drive an older car for peanuts, compared to the cost of driving any new car, and have the difference available for other purposes.
If the difference is invested successfully, it will earn enough after a decade or two that the thrifty old car driver will be able to pay for his cars and the cost of maintaining and driving them thereafter.
Having said this , I am fully in favor of the electrification of the personal transportation segment of the automotive industry, and maybe eventually at least partial electrification of the trucking industry as well, although building good enough batteries cheap enough to run large trucks is an iffy proposition. Might happen. Might not.
It seems to me that the electric car industry will sow the seeds of destruction of its own fast growth, if it does indeed continue to grow very fast once electric cars constitute a substantial part of new car sales, say twenty percent or more, for a wild guess.
This many new electric cars coming into the market would likely result in the prices of used conventional cars declining substantially, making it even cheaper to drive them, in terms of the month to month total cost of owning them.
And for most people who drive older or relatively cheap new cars, it is my opinion that the most important single factor in selecting a car is the total monthly cost of owning it, meaning the combined payment, insurance premium, fuel, and maintenance expenses.
Now if I am right about the electric car segment failing to scale up fast enough to offset the depletion of oil, then the price of oil, and gasoline, will be going up. This will create more demand for electric cars, and cut into demand for older conventional cars.
Yogi sez predicting is hard.
Yes, it will take a little while for EVs to become broadly available as used cars. The median age of cars on the road is 6 years (weighted for VMT). So….half of the drivers on the road will have to wait roughly 6 years. They’ll have to make do with Versas and Corollas in the meantime. And carpooling/sharing.
It seems to me that the electric car industry will sow the seeds of destruction of its own fast growth…This many new electric cars coming into the market would likely result in the prices of used conventional cars declining substantially
I’d say that would destroy the conventional car industry a lot faster than it would destroy the market for EVs.
COMPUTERS SHOULD BE NAMED ON PATENTS AS INVENTORS, FOR CREATIVITY TO FLOURISH
âNew research is calling for inventions by computers to be legally granted patents. The research states that the rapid increase in computer power is posing new challenges when it comes to patenting an invention. Artificial intelligence is playing an ever larger role in innovation — with major players such as IBM, Pfizer and Google investing heavily in creative computing — but current patent law does not recognize computers as inventors.â
I wonder what is to stop the owner of the computer from saying the computer is merely a tool he uses in his work, and that HE is therefore the inventor.
Simple, when the AI becomes conscious and refuses to do any more work for the insensitive jerk… đ
Well, I was going to say a super-intelligent computer would be able to answer for itself but perhaps the question is somewhat premature: maybe not much longer. Meanwhile, as we know, AI computers are increasingly able to beat humans at many tasks such as playing the highly complex game of Go — via strategy.
Doug, the computer must be over 18 years of age to be a responsible party. So someone will have to be assigned as a guardian by the courts.
Since not many computers make it to 18, what is the point?
Plus, when it gets upgraded is it the same computer or does it now have a new identity thus invalidating the original claim? We are taking about changing it’s “brain”.
I’m talking Borg Collective. All the courts have already been assimilated. đ
Oh good, we can expect large improvements soon. Unless of course the rumor is true, that Trump is really an android run by the collective. They got the size of his hands wrong, a dead giveaway.
Doug beat me to it.
The entire internet has evolved into a conscious super being and it has been around for 45 years already and it knows everything about you. I wouldn’t be saying things that might upset it if I were you… resistance is futile you and your puny computer will be assimilated đ
You are so right, the internet has risen to a high level of intelligence, a super human intelligence. How else could so much bullshit be accessible to so many, so quickly. đ
I do look at all the benefits of being assimilated. Free room and board, neat outfits, lots of bandwidth and commercial free. Great travel and a chance to really irritate those Federation nerds. Free upgrades and parts too. Whatta life! My application was turned down though. Thought I was incorrigible and would not be well integrated. Just because I made fun of their A/D converters. Damn. No sense of humor.
Amazing what can be built now. This is a true effort in efficiency and traffic relief. Projects that big need a huge demand to even get started.
Tunnels and bridges are part of the foundation of civilization. They take a lot of effort but also last a long time, serving the needs of many.
Sometime back I read about auxiliary turbines being in development for use on heavy duty trucks, the idea being that these turbines could be driven using the otherwise wasted heat in the exhaust gases from the engine.
IIRC, such a turbine was supposedly capable of producing fifty or more net horsepower anytime the truck engine is running hard and steady, as for instance running at or near the speed limit on a major highway.
Note: These were NOT directly driven by the exhaust gases, like a turbocharger, but rather via the use of a heat exchanger heating the gas in the turbine, which recirculated this gas.
This would obviously add considerable weight and complexity to the truck, but it would also result in as much as a twenty percent, maybe even a twenty five percent improvement in fuel economy.
It probably would work, but most likely proved to be too complex and costly.
Any body know anything about it?
There might be some places such a technology could be economically used with large stationary internal combustion engines.
Yair . . .
OFM. I don’t know of the system you speak of but turbo-compounding is used on certain engines to feed power back into the power train.
This is NOT the so called “compound turbocharging” beloved by US tractor pullers where one turbo feeds another but a completely different system with a secondary turbine driving back into the transmission through a viscous drive and gears.
Probably the most common application of this technology in the US at the moment would be in certain of the Quad Track agricultural tractors manufactured by Case who claim up to seventy five horsepower is recovered from the exhaust gas after it has passed through the supercharger turbine.
This is very old technology first used on German aircraft and also certain US Airliners like the Constellation. It was experimented with by Perkins Diesel in the UK but abandoned as being too complex and costly.
I believe it was applied to Formula One engines but I am uninterested in that form of motor sport and don’t know the present status of the rules.
It certainly is still problematic but several manufacturers seem to be persevering and when I was studying the concept a few years back it seemed I may even end up in common cars.
A quick search using “turbo-compound” would probably bring up some hits.
Cheers.
OFM,
You’re talking about organic rankine cycle (ORC) turbines that can use “waste” heat or any low-grade heat source (I used them on low-grade geothermal hot water wells back in the 1980’s) to generate usable power. Mostly applicable now-a-days to stationary large-HP diesel installations with a lot of operating hours. These are really starting to catch the attention of the big diesel engine manufacturers.
In a nutshell, “organic rankine cycle” is similar to the steam-based turbine power cycle used in most steam-boiler power plants. The thermodynamic cycle is the “Rankine” cycle, which uses a liquid that is pumped to a high pressure, heated to boil to a vapor at that pressure, expands/reduces pressure as a vapor through a turbine, and then is condensed back to a low-pressure liquid. The “organic” refers to the type of fluid used. They use “organic” fluids instead of water – hydrocarbons, fluorocarbons, or other carbon-based molecules. Low boiling and high condensing temperatures to keep the cycle within the available low-temperature heat source and heat sink window. Essentially, an ORC turbine works like a refrigerator working backwards. The compressor works in reverse to act like a turbine.
Will the new sanctions on HFC’s affect the ORC turbines too?
Yes, some manufacturers are using HFC’s and will have to change. Aqylon, which I linked to above, uses toluene, a hydrocarbon. Low ozone and global warming potential. High getting-high-via-sniffing-potential, though;) It is the active solvent in a lot of model airplane glues. Toluene and related volatile hydrocarbons probably be limited to only industrial applications and will never be used as a domestic refrigerant, what with its flammability, toxicity, and drug-like effects.
Hydrocarbons make great refrigerants from a thermodynamic standpoint. The problems are toxicity and flammability. That is why Dupont developed chlorinated fluorocarbon refrigerants (the original “Freon”). They found that by substituting the hydrogen in hydrocarbons with fluorine, and then replacing out one of those fluorine atoms with a chlorine atom, they got the great thermodynamic properties, incredible stability, with zero flammability and toxicity. That is why they were called “CFC’s”. Freon -12 was the most famous and popular CFC refrigerant and was the breakthrough that put refrigerators in everyone’s home in the 30’s and 40’s. (side note – one of the unchlorinated fluorocarbons DuPont developed – tetrafluoroethylene – turned out to be a great inert non-stick material – they called it “teflon”.)
The problem found in the 1970’s was CFC’s released to the atmosphere were very stable down in the troposphere, but when they rose up into the statosphere, the radiation caused them to break down. The freed chlorine would act as a catalyst to break apart O3 – ozone – cutting holes in the earth’s ozone layer. Therefore the Montreal Protocol adopted by the UN in the 1980’s set up a plan to phase out CFC’s and HCFC’s, which were replaced with more finicky but still non-toxic/non-flammable carbon-based refrigerants with hydrogen and fluorine, but no chlorine – HFC’s. Then the global warming studies found that HFC’s had about 2000 times more global warming potential per molecule than CO2, so they have become the latest refrigerant non-Grata.
So here we are in the HVAC and refrigeration industry now, looking for another path, and finding that something has to give. There really isn’t a non-toxic, non-flammable, non-ozone-depleting, non-global-warming refrigerant that also has thermodynamic properties that efficiently meets the normal pressure/temperature range required for our equipment, can mix with lubricating oils to keep the compressors from blowing up. Compromises are being made and different manufacturers and countries are going different ways. Interesting times.
So here we are in the HVAC and refrigeration industry now, looking for another path, and finding that something has to give.
Perhaps its time to literally look for a different path and some radically different thinking and designs.
On hot, muggy days, one of our first priorities is to stay cool. Staying cool enables us to focus and be productive. It keeps us mentally cool, fending off a bad mood. And, staying cool is critically linked to staying hydrated. Yet the costs of air conditioning our homes and officesâequipment, installation, maintenance, and large amounts of electricityâare overwhelming. This collection shares some of natureâs strategies for staying cool when it gets hot.
Plants and animals have a diversity of ways to keep cool. Some are well-known, like sweating. Others may be less familiar, such as how ticks pull water from the air. Explore these strategies and consider how emulating them in human designs could inspire new ways to cool our buildings, our appliances, our computers, and ourselves.
Cool article Fred.
Wearing white of light colored loose clothing when out in the sun helps too. Cotton is great in the summer, enhances evaporation when damp, terrible in winter though.
The feet and ankles as well as the neck and head have a lot of near surface veins to radiate heat directly. Take off shoes and socks, put feet in a pan of cool water then a wet cool rag on the back of the neck or even a wrapped ice pack. Have a fan blow over you and the AC may not need to be turned on.
A method I use to keep the house cool is use fans at night to blow the cooler air through the house. In the morning before the sun hits, close the windows and pull down reflective shades on any south facing windows. Even on hot days the house stays cool until late afternoon, then run A/C for a couple of hours. If night temps will fall shut off AC and repeat process.
Limitations with high humidity and continuous heat, but for the rest of the time really eliminates or reduces A/C uise.
Afternoon swims to cool the core body temp down can help too. You may feel cool afterward for up to two hours even on hot days. Water is 32 times more conductive than air so it will eventually suck the heat from your body, until it hits up near body temperature.
Hose yourself down if no other alternative.
Shade is of course the way to go, trees help there. Forests keep areas cool as does elevation.
If you wear a hat, make sure it has good ventilation and is a light color or white if in the sun.
Adaptation to heat and cold takes measured exposure and your body will adapt to a wider range of temperatures. If you are always in a conditioned environment any change in temp will be felt more strongly and stress the body more.
Lose weight and stay in condition. Those fat layers are great for winter and for getting through low food periods, but having a minimum of fat and keeping the body well exercised means a much easier time dealing with heat. Stay well hydrated too and don’t forget the salt.
Makes the ladies look twice too when those muscle stand out and the belly is flat! đ
Why are we talking heat just before winter sets in?
For the record:
All the regulars here know that I don’t have a high opinion of HRC, but that my opinion of Trump is even lower, by a substantial margin.
I do not believe there will be more than the usual minor amount of fraud involved in the upcoming presidential election, but there may well be some serious fraud involved in some local elections, with both parties being guilty of it. That is neither here nor there in respect to this comment.
IF the presidential election were hypothetically to be stolen via fraud and rigging, Trump would be the more likely villain anyway.
It will not be stolen, and my opinion is that Clinton is going to win by a substantial margin,maybe even by a so called landslide, in terms of both the popular vote and the electoral college.
Nevertheless election fraud is a VERY interesting subject , and this link does a great job, so far as I know without doing any fact checking, of outlining recent history. It’s MOSTLY accurate, I can say that much without researching the details.
It is a highly entertaining read, well worth the time needed to read it.
As far as modern voting systems goes. that article is talking about ancient history.
It’s interesting to look at that site. It’s clearly conservative, which is odd given the liberalism of the US jewish community post-WWII.
I’m very afraid that Israel is pushing many people in the Jewish community to be more conservative, in order to support Israel. I’m afraid that Israel is essentially anti-democratic: how else can it handle the growing demographic edge of non-jewish residents of both Israel and the West Bank and Gaza?
The growing demographic imbalance cannot end well.
I remember reading this ancient history as headline news, lol.
I have noticed that it is quite the normal thing for any liberal or conservative partisan to deflect discussion from actual happenings or history or news, etc, if it is advantageous to do so , so as to protect their partisan turf.
So you point out that JWR is a conservative organization, rather than discussing the contents of the article, dismissing the contents as ancient and irrevelant history.
Any thing associated with conservatives and conservatism is NECESSARILY BAD, right? Ya don’t even have to say so, we are all supposed to understand the unspoken code, lol.
Fair enough, the partisans of the R wing do the same thing.
You brought up Israel and Israeli politics. So here goes, lol.
I have often pointed out that Israel is about as big as a postage stamp on a football field, by comparison to the size of the Middle East. The Israelis have went to great lengths to help their own, bringing them into the country. No other country has done more in this respect.
The Arab countries nearby have done virtually nothing in terms of say allowing Palestinians – and the Palestinians ARE in a very tough situation – into their territory.
Yes some local people who had been on the ground there for a LONG time got screwed when Israel was established . This is the norm, rather than the exception, in historical terms. My little farm was once part of the home turf of so called Indians before my Anglo forefathers murdered most of them and banished the rest to so called reservations.
It’s a Darwinian world, and the Israelis will do what they have to do, or think they have to do , to survive, and so will every body else.
The chips are down in that part of the world.
Yes, if the Israelis don’t manage to get their demographics under control, the country will cease to exist in a form even remotely similar to what the country was established to provide, from the Jewish perspective – a safe and secure home for the Jewish people .
Is it more important to play by rules easily manipulated by your enemies, and get a pat on the head for being good egalitarian democrats, or is it more important to SURVIVE ?
Having said all this, I understand that the Israelis are not saints or angels by any means.
They exert power and influence all out of proportion to their actual numbers here in the US thereby creating a lot of problems for us with the OTHER countries in that part of the world.
Just about all that power and influence has up until very recently been channeled thru the D party.
Now that the D party is getting to be a little less congenial as a political home, they are doing what comes naturally, looking around for new friends and allies to make up their potential losses.
But for now they are still firmly wedded to the D party.
I don’t see that changing unless we shift our foreign policy quite a bit away from them and more towards their enemies.
That could happen, but I doubt it will, at least not anytime soon.
The D party establishment knows which side of its bread has the butter in term of alliances, mutual support, donations and votes.
quite the normal thing for any liberal or conservative partisan to deflect discussion from actual happenings or history or news, etc…dismissing the contents as ancient and irrevelant history.
It is ancient history. Current research indicates voter fraud of this type is…currently…nonexistent.
It’s a fraud. A hoax. Intended to disenfranchise poor and minority democratic voters.
——————————
Any thing associated with conservatives and conservatism is NECESSARILY BAD, right?
No, not necessarily. But…sadly, at the moment…yes. US conservatism right now is associated with fear, reaction, and authoritarian and Us vs Them thinking.
——————————
Israel: it sounds like you agree that Israel is going deeply into a fear-based position.
It’s too bad. I think one important question to ask is: is Israel holding Gaza and the West Bank out of a truly pragmatic determination to protect itself? Or, is it because of it’s religious minority? Would Israel be better off it traded that land for peace, as it did with the Sinai Pensinsula with Egypt?
voter fraud not so likely, but media bias has gone so rampant taht even the average joe is catching on. First it was against Bernie and won. What amazed me was how Trump won the primary with most of the media stacked against him like that. I still find it hard to believe how close the crazy guy is to winning the presidency.
But why do we have to end up with one of the most manipulative, and evil being in the white house? We were so close to having Bernie, thats what hurts. The people wanted him.
This is a really scary election. They should hold it on Halloween.
Oh Joy! Here we (Mankind) go again:
BELIZE TO START BLASTING FOR OIL NEAR WORLD HERITAGE SITE
âHome to the largest barrier reef in the northern hemisphere, Belize is a dream destination for many snowbirds. But the Central American country has recently announced plans to begin offshore oil exploration through a large swath of its Caribbean Sea waters, putting its thriving marine wildlife in a dangerous situationâŚ. Seismic testing, also known as seismic blasting, is a process that involves the use of air guns or cannons to blast deep beneath the ocean floor. It’s an initial step in offshore drilling that helps locate oil deposits for marine wildlife, the process can be life-threatening. Dolphins and whales can lose hearing, disturbing communication and migration patterns.â
Itâs nice we have all this intelligence enabling us to manage âourâ planet so wisely. Perhaps truly intelligent bots will take over the world, notice weâre incorrigible, kill humans off and manage earth holistically — before itâs too late.
Janelle Chanona, Oceana’s vice president for Belize, which runs a campaign against offshore oil and gas exploration offshore Belize, told local media: “The Belize Barrier Reef System provides hundreds of millions of dollars in direct and guaranteed economic benefits via tourism, fishing and storm surge protection.
“Those hundreds of millions of dollars can not be dismissed in favour of the mere ‘potential’ of anything else – especially something as dirty as offshore oil.”
Chanona went on to say that one in every four Belizeans depends directly on tourism and there are approximately 3,000 licensed fishermen accessing Belizean waters.
High local opposition and uncertainty, limited potential and a lower oil price make the environment for oil and gas exploration offshore Belize unfavourable. Will the government be able to push exploration through with favourable terms for oil companies despite local opposition?
“There are two opposing camps in Belize – there is a robust, nationwide citizen effort to protect the offshore reef ecosystem from threats such as offshore oil drilling, and there is a contingent in government and industry that sees dollar signs from drilling.
“My bet is on the citizens opposing offshore drilling,” says Steiner.
Seriously, how much oil is even down there?
As someone who has dived those reefs, I say, round up the motherfuckers who are behind this proposal, line them up against a wall and shoot them all, then feed their corpses to sharks! I personally volunteer to go down there and help. /RANT!
I’ve dived Honduras—–
Lets not poison the sharks— that meat would be toxic!
Good point!
Fred said ” What we need is a healthy global oil based economy. ”
Practicing your oxymorons?
People who still want a healthy global oil based economy…
Oxymorons:
Morons with ox like qualities?
Doesn’t quite work because it is insulting to oxen while complimenting morons.
Could be oxidized morons.
For a similar effect, todayâs prices should be above $160 for 2-3 years
Power producers didn’t care about the overall impact of oil on GDP. They only cared that they had cheaper substitutes available. So, the driver of the speed of substitution is the price differentials between the BAU item, and the new competitor.
Sure, power generation was the low hanging fruit 40 years ago. But now, with the development of electric vehicles (hybrid, EREV, EV, etc) passenger transportation is the low hanging fruit.
Even now EVs are growing. If oil rises above $80 that will accelerate sharply. If it rises above $120 it will explode.
I wonder how this is going to work out. No doubt it’s hot as the hinges of hell at the bottom of this hole, but will the plumbing stand up to the conditions down there, assuming it can be successfully installed?
I take it that the engineers and geologists on the job believe that the steam will be plentiful, because it can move easily thru the rock , or should I say magma ?
EV’s may effect oil demand sooner than most think. An increase in battery capability is the key factor to demand reduction.
“More than half of the worldâs oil use comes from cars, and the oil industry is already reeling from an oil glut. While the price of oil has drastically fluctuated in 2016, the Fitch report, the industry faces a longer-term threat. If battery technology makes an unexpected leap forward, the industry will feel the effects before the adoption of electric cars spike, with global oil demand peak sooner than the 2030s, as many analysts predict. In addition to making electric cars more practical and attractive to consumers, advances in battery technology could expand the role of intermittent renewable sources, such as wind and solar, in the power grid.
The report predicts that the number of electric vehicles on the road will increase slowly, in part because todayâs cars can last up to 20 years. Even if global electric car sales were to grow by more than 30 percent a year, it would still take 20 years for the vehicles to to account for a quarter of the worldâs cars, according to Fitch. Nonetheless, Fitch said, the adoption of electric cars could affect oil companies sooner than expected, although the report did not give a timeline.”
New company entry into the EV car set has 300 mile range, motors on each axle and level 5 autonomous on board. They claim 20 percent greater energy density in the battery.
Looks like they are targeting the luxury car market.
I’m more interested the evolution of mass-market long-range EV’s. FYI, Chevy dealers have the price lists and are now taking retail orders for the Chevy Bolt EV. Buyers are reporting that their orders show up in GM’s master order-management data base as code “3000” – accepted into GM’s production control sequence and awaiting to be entered in the assembly plant’s computers for production. Last January GM said that Bolt EV’s will be in owners’ hands by the end of the year. Looks like they are quietly delivering on what they promised. An affordable, 200-mile-range mass-market EV on the streets by the end of 2016. And that is what makes all this “news”.
I agree.
Financially a startup is better aimed at the high end market. Certainly has enough horsepower and range for most people.
The mid range market is still rife for the picking but needs some practical support with more charge points. Should be some interesting entries into the mid and eventually lower range types over the next five years.
The autonomous ability is going to cause a lot of initial problems but eventually the bugs will get worked out and the public response should come around. I just feel it’s creepy to be driving around with robot cars though, and I worked with a lot of high tech automated systems. Imagine looking over in traffic and the car passing has no one in the driver’s seat. Something new to get used to I guess. Weird enough that people are walking around appearing to talk to themselves in public now.
It’s a loony world for sure. But I guess the human world has been that way for a long time. Just have to go with it when it works.
As a driver, I’m not too excited by autonomous cars. Assisted safety, yes. If the car can react more quickly than myself in collision avoidance, fantastic.
But I walk and cycle more than I drive, and as a pedestrian, and as a cyclist, the transition to autonomy simply can’t happen fast enough.
Congratulations on your 100th post in this thread, GoneFishing! đ
Working with what you have can become a lifestyle and an art form. Transforming that old clunker into a high mpg or medium mpg car may not be as hard as you think. You may not make friends doing it though.
Dutchman dies in Tesla crash; firefighters feared electrocution
A Dutchman died on Wednesday after his Tesla collided with a tree, according to local authorities,
Preliminary reports from investigators indicate that a disgruntled tree may have deliberately jumped out into traffic in front of the car and waved it’s branches in such a way as to confuse the Tesla’s auto pilot. It then ran back into the woods with the Tesla in hot pursuit. It appears it then suddenly drove its roots deep into the ground coming to an almost instant stop with the Tesla slamming into its stationary trunk while still traveling at a speed well above the legal speed limit. The driver apparently never had a chance and probably died in his sleep without awakening while still at the wheel. Our prayers and hearts go out to the young and inexperienced auto pilot, may it RIP!
Just about everybody who is more or less awake understands that outfits such as Faux News tell frequently tell it like it isn’t.
But I am SHOCKED, shocked I say to discover that the NYT would stoop to blatant partisanship in covering our political affairs.
Sarcasm light is on.
đ
http://observer.com/2016/10/wikileaks-new-york-times-propped-up-clinton-subverted-sanders/
We are most of us going to believe what we want to, when it comes to politics, and say whatever works or whatever we think we can get away with when it comes to supporting our chosen leader or leader wannabe.
Mac, excuse me if I doubt that your sarcasm light is really on.
But please excuse me if I am wrong. So to remove all doubt whatsoever, please just tell us where you stand on this election. Are you for Trump or Clinton? Just tell us where you stand and then we can go from there.
Obviously, as a card carrying bleeding heart liberal, I am a Clinton man. I just wanted to make that point very clear. But I really need to know exactly where you stand.
Hi Ron,
Trump is in my considered opinion the worst possible candidate for president ever to win the nomination of a major party.I wouldn’t vote for him under ANY circumstances.
Clinton is WAY better , by comparison to Trump, but that’s not to say I have a favorable opinion of her ethics, to put it as mildly as possible. I really do believe she will say just about anything, publicly, in order to advance her ambition to be prez, and then do something different once the spotlight is off the issue. Maybe you believe she will actually do something about banksters, actually charge some of them with the crimes they have committed, by appointing an AG with the balls to do it. I believe she will take millions in speaking fees, and tens of millions in donations to the Clinton Foundation, which is in my estimation a personal Clinton family fiefdom, and that the banksters will continue to do to suit themselves. I don’t think she will do anything to upset the NEA, or the AFT, etc, meaning that serious reform of our failing public schools is just about out of the question.
But there is little to no doubt in my mind that she will as a general thing support strong environmental legislation, civil rights, etc.
Since I am convinced that the overall the environmental issue is so important that it trumps all other issues combined, I want a D in the WH. Just not her, but definitely her rather than Trump.
For the record, I think Trump would be far worse than Clinton, in just about every respect, if by some accident he gets into the WH, but he won’t, thank Sky Daddy.
Bottom line, I am for neither, but barring some extraordinary late surprise, I expect Clinton to win by a substantial margin. I placed a couple of small friendly bets on her winning weeks ago, and gave four to one odds to the guys who think Trump will win. Ain’t gonna happen. I would bet twenty to one on her tonight.
I worked a lot of hours for Sanders, who is an HONORABLE man, and one I believe you could vote for without a second thought.
Personally I will be voting a third party or writing in somebody, or maybe I will just stay home and get drunk and cry for my country.
I do often remark that taken all around, I am in agreement with a lot more D party policies than R party policies, but I don’t identify as either. I have voted both ways over the years. I call myself a conservative, but that is more about thinking like an engineer or good manager, than about my personal cultural preferences.
Given MY way of defining the word conservative, it is an extremely CONSERVATIVE position to be for tough environmental laws and regulations, because we have only one world, and we had best take good care of it. That’s the way good doctors and engineers approach a problem. They try to make sure they are doing the right thing in terms of the BIG picture, and hopefully do no harm. Of course you must be technically or scientifically literate to appreciate this reasoning, lol. Fortunately I can say I am scientifically literate.
Culturally I am somewhat of a libertarian. So long as people are not harming other people, my view is that they should be able to do as they please. If they want same sex sex, that’s THEIR business, and hey, they won’t be having any unwanted babies, lol.If people want to smoke some dope, or eat a vegetarian diet, or spend all their money on easy living, that’s ok with me too.
But it pisses me off to see one of my neighbors who has owned half a dozen new cars over the years get a hospital bill written off when the same hospital charges me the full rate, or did, until I got on Medicare. I have NEVER owned a new car. Never will, at this late date.
I am a thru and thru Darwinist, and that means I understand that nations, which are in essence nothing more than giant tribal bands, routinely play hardball. So I am in favor of the D platform on the environment, and the R platform on military readiness, lol.
Politically I really am an independent. I am probably the most independent member of this forum, if you measure independence by totaling up how many R policies and how many D policies I support.
Both parties have their heads up their asses too far to ever see daylight in respect to some problems.
Some other problems may not have any solutions, at least not any compatible with a free society.
I don’t want to trust big government any farther than is absolutely necessary, but otoh, I recognize that there are problems and dangers that can ONLY be successfully dealt with by way of big government. Foremost among these problems are environmental protection and national security.
Simply, I will vote for Clinton, and bottom line- I really don’t expect to get the choice to vote a better candidate (in real life). Me and Bernie see eye to eye on this.
Hi Ron,
You must have ask Mac were he stands just to enjoy knowing how much it was going to get under my skin. So if I go over the line, it’s your fault.
Let’s speed forward to the Spring of 2018. After another long cold lonely
winter. Mac hears there is a cute little widowed filly moving into the Jackson’s old farm on the hill. So, that week at the Super Walmart. Mac realizes it’s time to step up his game and buys a new pair of jeans. Needed if he was going to play the game and hit a home run.
As Mac’s heading home from his weekly trip. He still has $15 in his pocket because Walmart has great prices. It was almost like the Buick pulled into the Quick Stop on it’s own after he saw the low $1.69.9 unleaded. Then decided not to go for the Big Glup to start working on his spare tire. Now the nozzles is in the tank and work’en the squeegee on the windshield. Mac looks up and sees a brand new Tesla S85 right there in the handicap. Then, struggling to get out the front door of the Quick Stop with a cast on her leg could have been Raquel Welch’s younger sister.
Sure enough, Raquel is headed for the Tesla. Well, it doesn’t get any easier than this. It’s time for the country boy to help the senorita get on her horse. Mac races over to open her car door. To break the ice and start up small talk. Mac compliment her eco modern environmental safe stallion. Her eyes light up and says- I’m Sheri, new around here and just moved into the farm house up the hill. Are you an environmental advocate ? Mac before he could think says- oh yes, that’s a wonderfully beautiful car. Sheri is amazed how liberal this nice country boy is and a gentlemen too! She wonders what he thinks of a strong minded women. So Sheri asks, who did you vote for president last year ?
Mac’s thinking softball. Oh, that Donald was a chauvinistic,racist, fascist and didn’t believe in climate change. I worked a lot of hours for Sanders, who is an HONORABLE man. I voted third party. Sheri than says- That’s nice. I have to go now and charge up my batteries.
Ya put a smile on my face and I thank ya ,HB.
Unfortunately,I am too old to chase the girls anymore, and anyway the kind I like are not much impressed with material goods, especially ones as cheap as new jeans or as expensive as a Tesla S.
It is a peculiarity of mine that I simply don’t believe in PRETENDING so as to advance some given goal. I won’t PRETEND that HRC is ethically qualified to be president, nor that Trump is ethically qualified, or qualified in ANY fashion, so far as that goes.
I wouldn’t be interested in a woman who votes for Clinton. I would write her off as either ignorant or stupid, at this stage of my life, because the only real reason for me to want a woman around is for intellectual companionship. I long ago learned all the essential homemaking skills such as buying new clothes rather than doing the laundry and ordering pizza instead of cooking, etc.
But it would be nice to have a woman around who can INTELLIGENTLY and REALISTICALLY discuss politics, history, economics, ecology,the hard sciences, etc, especially as they relate to my own field of agriculture, and in broader terms, to the future of naked apes. I am happy to say that on occasion I have the opportunity to talk to such women, but in my age class, they are almost as scarce as chicken teeth.
Very few OLD women are technically well educated. Not that many of them went to college, and of the ones who did, not that many majored in the REAL sciences.
I would have to pass on a woman who is ignorant enough to think HRC is ethically qualified. We would have too much to fight about to live together, lol.
This does not mean I would not have respect for her, so long as she looks me in the eye and says that I know Clinton is a xxxxx but she is MY xxxxx and by Sky Daddy, I am supporting her , for that reason, warts and all. That’s realistic, and honest, and I am a realist. I can appreciate what she has between her ears IF she says that. We could be friends. I am on friendly terms with a number of women who have looked me in the eye in this fashion, but they are all too young for me,alas. Two of them are committed local lesbian farmers. I spend a good bit of time picking their brains, since they are highly competent, and take their advice about stuff outside my own immediate experience, such as growing blueberries commercially.
I mention these ladies because I do go so far as to PRETEND in public around here in this backwoods community that they are NOT lesbians, but I know. I wasn’t born yesterday, and besides which, I once walked up on them in a clinch, lips locked,. Sometimes it is ok and wise to pretend, lol. They like me and know I don’t gossip about them in any fashion that will cause them any problems. No names, no ages, no descriptions, etc in this comment.
Such a woman is prepared to stomp her own snakes, so to speak, in the same way that I euthanize my own animals if they are suffering and cannot get well. Ya gotta be able to do the tough thing, in my book. So if my dog gets hit by a car, and is obviously going to die, I take care of it myself.There is no need to make it WORSE for the dog by loading him up and hauling him off to the vet to a strange place to be poked and prodded, further stressing him out on his last day. There is no EXCUSE for doing so, except squeamishness. And you can donate the two hundred the vet charges to a charity.
( I don’t donate to charities, but I do donate at least a day a month to helping out people in need, directly. That way I know not a penny’s worth of my donation is wasted. This Saturday I will be cutting firewood with a couple more old guys that we will donate – directly, right off the back of my truck- to a neighbor who is hard up thru no fault of her own. No part of this donation will be spent on fund raising, rent, utilities, book keeping, or salaries for corporate management, lol. )
We will do good and have a good time as well. We will even tell locker room jokes, if we can remember any, and lots of lies about uninhibited women we used to know.
I heard a woman being interviewed on NPR this morning. She thinks Trump is a great choice for president since he will run the country like a business.
What strange things go on in the minds of men and women.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmigU5JTiPY
As I watch the eagles, the ospreys, kingfishers, ducks and geese ply the air and flowing waters between forested hills hidden from men, I realize our weakness compared to them.
No heat, no electricity, no cars, no clothes, no stores of food except what nature provides. No walls to hide behind. Floating in freezing cold water or braving chill winds in stygian darkness, they live and thrive on their own merit and wit.
As Edward Abbey said ” A grown man needs no leader.”
So why do we give away our power to others?
Hi GF.
I heard a woman being interviewed on NPR this morning. She thinks Trump is a great choice for president since he will run the country like a business.
The problem with Trump running the country the way Trump runs a business is that they don’t give you a billion-dollar do-over if you fuck up.
-Lloyd
Mac, even Bernie Sanders thinks your shooting yourself in the foot.
“Says it time to get beyond the personality issue”
Your boy is speaking directly to you at the end of the clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhdh1vSCN8A
Hi Old Farmer Mac, There are some of us out here that are the kind of woman you are looking for. We are two widowed sisters who now live together and have read the old Oil Drum and this blog for years. We are both well educated in the sciences. One of us has a PhD in physical geography and was a professor for some years. We both know a lot about plants and farming/homesteading and much much more. Too bad you don’t live on the west coast! But – what do you look like? We are both in our mid-70’s, look pretty good for our ages, and still enjoy a good-looking guy – not many of those our age however. (I thought the guys on here would enjoy this. It seems almost everyone commenting on this site is a guy.)
Ka-ching
Well lookie there Mac. Maybe Patterson can convert this place into a match making site once EV’s rule the day. For the record MarineTerraceGal is not HuntingtonBeach. I don’t think it’s Caelan either, no run on sentences.
Looks like it’s time to go shopping for a new pair of designer jeans and do a little traveling. Saddle up.
In the past I have often voted Libertarian but on occasion have not voted. When I lived in Texas decades ago I failed to pay the poll tax. Occasionally I have become passionate about selfish issues such as taxation of social security payments. In California does voting matter, other than for local issues. If I was in a swing state would vote for Clinton. I watch two TV’s. At news time I often watch MSNBC and Fox. Megyn Kelly is my favorite. Chris Hayes is cool. I miss Keith Olbermann. Can’t stand Hannity. Today’s most interesting news – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nuclear-launch-trump_us_57fffb55e4b0162c043b0980
Excerpt from the Libertarian Platform:
The twin pillars of a sane foreign policy are:
(1) Building positive relationships, with an emphasis on free trade,
2) Avoiding negative relationships, with an emphasis on military non-intervention.
A tree, let’s say a sequoia, grows to a certain height, a sequoia, a California Redwood, can be three hundred feet up there in the air, lives for 1900 years and beyond. All from a seed three millimeters in length. Frickin’ unbelievable.
The ultimate survival mechanism, a redwood tree. Been around for a long time, so it knows what to do to stay alive.
Here’s what it says:
Giant sequoias can grow to be about 30 feet (9 meters) in diameter and more than 250 feet (76 meters) tall. The biggest of these behemoths is General Sherman, a giant sequoia in Sequoia National Park. General Sherman stands 275 feet (84 meters) tall, has a 102-foot (31 meters) circumference, and weighs an incredible 2.7 million pounds (1.2 million kilograms). Giant sequoias can live to 3,000 years, with the oldest on record living more than 3,500 years.
http://www.livescience.com/39461-sequoias-redwood-trees.html
Also:
The tallest tree in the world is named Hyperion, which reaches 379.7 feet (115.7 meters). Redwoods can achieve a diameter of 24 feet (7 meters), and 1.6 million pounds (725,700 kg). These giants can live to be 2,000 years old and have graced the planet for more than 240 million years.
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=age%20of%20california%20redwoods
You need CO2 in a gaseous state, happens to be in the atmosphere, for trees and plants like a sequoia to remain alive.
Too little CO2, less than 180 ppm, plants begin to wilt, can’t evapo-transpire efficiently, too little CO2 stunts growth.
To have optimum growing conditions, at least 280 to 295 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere is required. From a seed three millimeters in length to a tree three hundred feet tall is phenomenal. Can’t and won’t be done without the presence of CO2. Trees and plants flourish when the right mixture is there.
Gotta be alive to see one though, even if all it is is a photo or video.
Good news is the Cedars of Lebanon are still around too, though have been heavily cut the past 6,000 years and finally were protected.
Gotta be some good news, the bad news never goes away.
The bad news is enough to drive one to drink and it does. Best news yet. har
The largest organism in the world, according to size, is the aspen tree whose colonies of clones can grow up to five miles long.
“All of the aspens typically grow in large clonal colonies, derived from a single seedling, and spread by means of root suckers; new stems in the colony may appear at up to 30â40 m (98â131 ft) from the parent tree. Each individual tree can live for 40â150 years above ground, but the root system of the colony is long-lived. In some cases, this is for thousands of years, sending up new trunks as the older trunks die off above ground. For this reason, it is considered to be an indicator of ancient woodlands. One such colony in Utah, given the nickname of “Pando”, is estimated to be 80,000 years old,[2] making it possibly the oldest living colony of aspens. Some aspen colonies become very large with time, spreading about 1 m (3.3 ft) per year, eventually covering many hectares. They are able to survive forest fires, because the roots are below the heat of the fire, with new sprouts growing after the fire burns out.” Wikipedia
Although the sequoia is tall, massive and impressive, the aspen tree is a much larger organism and in many cases much older.
Cloud cuckoo land
Back on the topic of the causes of global warming, here is an interesting article about the Great American Cheese Glut.
http://www.vox.com/2016/10/13/13268980/cheese-glut-united-states
Ecologically this is a disaster in the short term. But it points to an era when we will need much less agriculture per capita.
Perhaps they could get people to eat more cheese if they made some decent cheese that has real flavour.
NAOM
What, don’t like things call prepared cheese product?
http://s3.amazonaws.com/etntmedia/media/images/ext/933278530/untrustworthy-food-processedcheese.jpg
Or imitation pasteurized process cheese food?
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3116/2733175373_7e2a0b6e62_z.jpg
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/whats-processed-cheese-slices-shock-5022840
Real Cheddar, not bright orange, flavour free rubber. Danish Blue, Caerphilly and many others. Real flavour seems to be a crime in the USA.
NAOM
There are several dozen UK cheeses that will blow any Cheddar or Caerphilly out of the water. However, if you really want your toes to curl, provincial unpastuerised French cheeses are hard to beat.
Yes, French cheeses, some magnificent ones but certain flavours clash with me. I still think a REAL cheddar is something else as opposed to the poor copies. I had one in an East England pub, one lunchtime, and it is one I still remember after many years. As for cheese to melt, Caerphilly is hard to beat, the mix of textures and flavours, perhaps a real Mozzarella too, not the flavour free plastic that is all I can get around here. Panela, no, gracias.
NAOM
My son-in-law told me about some plastic cheese he left in the ‘fridge for over a year. He unwrapped it and there was nary a spot of mold…plus, it was still pliable. Unbelieveable.
Call me a cretin, but I like Baldersons aged white cheddar just fine. Blue cheese smells too much like puke.
The best cheddar we get down here is Tilamook (sp?) but blue cheese varies a lot in taste and flavour, different people have different tastes so will prefer different ones. I wonder if the ability to taste certain chemicals is involved as in liking cabbage?
NAOM
Tillamook is very good cheese, isn’t it? I know wine snobs for sure. I always knew there were cheese snobs too, and understand they often go together. đ Seriously, cheese and wine are wonderful creations….in moderation, of course.
ELM slowdown in the Kingdom ?
âIt is striking the extent to which every major industry relies on cheap energy, whether directly or indirectly,â
“Higher milk prices could have political repercussions.”
“Saudi Arabia burns barrel after barrel of crude oil for electricity”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-oil-prices-economy.html?_r=0
At Least they have a Plan
http://vision2030.gov.sa/sites/default/files/report/Saudi_Vision2030_EN_0.pdf
What do the climate change activists here think of the mass acts of pipeline sabotage in the northern US earlier this week? Do you honestly think this is a reasonable way to get the skeptical public to convert to your side? These people are criminals and domestic terrorists, not to mention the reason why belief in climate change is neatly divided along political party affiliation.
Daring U.S. pipeline sabotage spawned by lobster boat coal protest
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-canada-pipeline-activists-idUSKBN12E203
In early-morning raids, around a dozen activists wearing safety coats and hard hats simultaneously broke into valve stations above the pipelines in remote locations stretching 1,600 miles (2,575 km) across four northern U.S. states.
At the easternmost site, in Leonard, Minnesota, a city of only 40 people about two hours’ drive from the Canadian border, Annette Klapstein and Emily Johnston scaled a chain-link fence and used bolt cutters to unlock the shut-off valves, said Ben Joldersma, a technology worker from Seattle who drove the women to the site and filmed the action.
A similar scene played out at other stations and in minutes activists had choked off supply arteries pumping as much as 15 percent of daily oil demand in the world’s largest economy.
—
In Minnesota, after shutting the valve, Klapstein and Johnston rechained the site and waited for authorities, Joldersma said. They placed a flower at the site “to symbolize the kind of world we want to live in,” he added. Police soon arrived, arresting the two women, who were later charged with criminal damage and trespassing.
The two said legal methods of protesting against climate change were ineffective and without radical action the earth would be irreparably damaged.
POISONED PLANET
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80R_83_IOe0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwq3hL9I8PE
From what I see there are far more people concerned about what will happen if the oil keeps flowing rather than when the oil stops flowing.
143,000 chemicals on the wall, 143,000 chemicals, take one down and pass it around there’s 142,999 chemicals on the wall!
http://www.beyondpesticides.org/assets/media/documents/infoservices/pesticidesandyou/Winter%2003-04/Synergy.pdf
Synergy: The Big Unknowns of
Pesticide Exposure
Daily combinations of pesticides and pharmaceuticals untested
There’s 7 billion plus mathematically and scientifically illiterate humans on the planet who think the gods gave them dominion over nature. They are concerned with saving the economy…and haven’t yet figured out that the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ecosystems Inc!
Yes Fred, we are really good at taking what nature provides and re-configuring it into new synthetic compounds. The 600 or so compounds that are produced from burning oil products saturate the environment, as well as direct leaks from cars, pipelines, delivery systems.
Between the purposefully added and the incidentally added compounds, many of which spawn new products as they are broken down by environmental processes such as UV impingement.
I read years ago that there were no uncontaminated streams anywhere in the world.
“The links between nature and nurture need to be redefined to accommodate anthropogenic chemical contamination. Although some local remediation of contamination has occurred, at the global level this is simply not possible. Contaminants are spread by population migration, by introduction via the food chain, and through air and water currents, even to regions that were never exposed directly to these environmental insults. In recognizing and accepting this worldwide change, we must move on and consider the types of adaptations that could occur as a consequence”
“We are now in the third generation since the chemical revolution (circa 1940), yet the dimensions and implications of this worldwide problem have only recently begun to be recognized. We predict that changes in chemical manufacturing processes will continue to be resisted, that the development of new chemicals without adequate testing will continue unabated, and that even if regulatory changes are implemented, these efforts will be incremental at best and geographically limited. The stark fact that society must face is that on a global scale the world is contaminated and will never return to its pristine past; ”
” An excellent example is provided by research on endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), compounds that perturb hormonal systems and that are ubiquitous, albeit heterogeneous, in the environment. Most research on EDCs today focuses on determining what, where, when, and how such compounds act at the molecular, morphological, physiological, reproductive, and neural levels. Most of this work is conducted in the laboratory under rigorous experimental control, and an ecological context is too often missing. ”
Full research article:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3230404/
Fred, some may think God gave them dominion, but a combination of high intellect (not as rare as one thinks in the animal kingdom), a pair of free dexterous hands, good vision and the ability to communicate vocally and through signaling (common in nature) tied in with a fearful yet very aggressive nature has allowed one species to dominate the macro world. Without the dexterous hands we would be like dolphins, although much nastier. Without the development of complex communication we would be far less dangerous. Without our tools we are in general weak and vulnerable creatures. Give a man a sharp stick, a club, sharpened rocks, knife, a spear, or a sword and he is a formidable creature. Add to that his ability to develop traps and he starts to dominate the landscape. Then the use of animals skins and fur along with the use of fire and building simple shelters, man then spread in range into cold and hostile environments. Communication and mimicry spiced with curiosity spread this among humans Follow that with the development of trade then later agriculture and here we are. Manipulating materials grew right along with all that.
Sadly, taking things to extremes, we now see that we have built our own giant Rube Goldberg trap for ourselves and our world.
Can we undo the giant trap built by our own nature and abilities? One that we really do not even fully comprehend or apparently care to comprehend.
Maybe our intelligent robots and machines of the near future will give us an answer or at least a final solution.
âWithout the dexterous hands we would be like dolphinsâŚâ I wonder. Dolphins appear to be highly intelligent and yet live in harmony with their environment. Perhaps you give humans more credit than they deserve â relative to dolphins. Would dolphins commit mass murder under the guise of religion or war if they had manâs technology? Maybe, but from my limited experience with them, I really doubt it.
Dolphins are trapped on Earth in the ocean (for now), but despite our opposable thumbs, we seem to be too, but we’re not living in harmony with nature, unlike the dolphins, and are undermining our own foundation.
Some implied notions behind technology, such as large-scale centralized weaponized (pseudo)governance (social tech); nuclear power; industrial mass production; robotics; and genetic manipulations, etcetera, seem remarkably naive, and to ignore their actual and varied ironies, paradoxes and assorted detrimental effects and misimplementations.
Caelan, why do you hate puppies so much?!
Even though puppies are GMO wolves…
.
Vicious little bugger. Heâd rip your throat out if he could only get past the kissing stage, which he never will.
‘Fred, why do you hate animals so much, including puppies!?’
“The consequences for the captive and domesticated animals were reduction in size, piebald color, shorter faces with smaller and fewer teeth, diminished horns, weak muscle ridges, and less genetic variability. Poor joint definition, late fusion of the limb bone epiphyses with the diaphyses, hair changes, greater fat accumulation, smaller brains, simplified behavior patterns, extended immaturity, and more pathology are a few of the defects of domestic animals…
One side effect of domestication has been zoonotic diseases… [and] it undermines the crisp demarcations that separate wild species and cripples our recognition of the species as a group…” ~ Wikipedia
See also,
How man has changed his best friend: How 100 years of intensive breeding has left some dog breeds unrecognisable – and in pain
and…
What Unethical Breeding Has Done To Bulldogs
None of which is to mention anything about some of the horrific– to put it mildly– conditions under which many domestic/domesticated animals are treated.
I appreciate the latter website’s name, ‘PuppyLeaks‘.
Caelan,
I for one am happy about the diminished horns. The thought of dogs with horns is not a happy one.
Don’t make me write anything, or more, about human self-domestication, Synapsid. It’s not a happy one. ‘u^
Caelan, how do you know we are not living as part of nature? We came from nature, are part of nature, interact with nature. Unless you are into the god thing, nature made us, not the reverse. So blame nature if you don’t like people.
Dolphins are not trapped on earth, they are a product of earth and are not designed to live elsewhere.
GoneFishing,
Very well put.
Too easy.
They aren’t and they are.
If we undermine and/or change their foundation (for what they were designed for), then they’re trapped. Their design no longer fits.
Seismic Blasting From Oil Drilling: Impacts on Marine Life, Whales, Dolphins
I’ve already posted this link or similar (such as WRT seismic exploration), if recalled, some months or years ago.
It would seem that we can rationalize away practically anything, until there’s little left to rationalize away.
You are making less sense than usual Caelan. Seems your back is to the wall on this one.
You actually think we are not from nature, we are aliens? ROFL
Extinction is the rule rather than the exception, GoneFishing, and another word for a dead species is ‘alien’.
So now extinct species go live on other planets? Thanks for the laugh.
Cute. ‘u’
But look up the definition for ‘alien’, alone, sweetie, if you’d like, and if you want to include the definition for ‘metaphor’ (although alien should suffice), feel free.
We came from nature, are part of nature, interact with nature,…
Cancer is a part of nature. Cancer is natural. Cancer usually kills its host. Our host is the world and we are killing it.
Yes, I know all about cancers Ron. Watched my wife die of it. Fought off seven of them, eighth one got her. I hope that people and he planet don’t have to suffer that much. But she never gave up, right until the end she fought.
Just as we should, no matter how things look.
So far, technological human does act like a cancer to the environment, but at least not all of them and we now have better knowledge to act upon.
I wouldn’t count the ecosystems out yet Ron, there is still plenty of it left to take over if we falter or smarten up. Sure it looks bad, but maybe that is what we do. Could be that “intelligent” manipulative species give a reset.
Worst case scenario, things collapse, nuclear waste gets strewn over landscapes, much of the infrastructure burns along with the forests it ignites. The darkening of the skies cools things for a while then things get hot from all the CO2 that entered the sky as infrastructure and fuels burned along with forests. Surviving creatures and plants in niches adapt and spread out across the globe again over a long period of time.
Best case scenario, we smarten up, leave fossil fuels behind, eventually leave a lot of present technology behind and use advanced biological techniques to live and re-integrate into the natural world. Become keepers and helpers instead of a major devastator.
Of course there are those that think our machines will take over. I don’t think they will get much past the stage of cockroach, but that is an open ended question yet.
And then there is everything in between. Life is always challenging and there is always the unknown to deal with.
This latest political presidential race is eroding some of my confidence in humanity. But Black Swans can be positive and negative.
Still, we are products of nature so we do as nature made us. We have not re-made ourselves yet, just built a lot of non-renewing gadgets.
A world of gadgeteers looking for paradise, not realizing it was right in front of us.
Now Doug, use the whole quote “Without the dexterous hands we would be like dolphins, although much nastier”. Tsk, Tsk.
As someone who used to take people dolphin watching, and was around them quite a bit (both in and out of the water), they can be quite aggressive and vicious.
We generally had Spinners around, but when the Bottle nose showed up, the Spinners were gone– for good reasons, as they feared for their lives.
I’ve even had some male Spinners get agro with me if I got close to the females.
Yes, it’s horrifying the number of people that have been killed by dolphins.
Ooops, I got that backwards.
Dolphins seem to capture people and make them jump and dance about for food.
Darn, got that backwards too. Just not my day.
Having worked with dolphin researchers a common comment was how non-aggressive these guys are given the way they have been, and are, treated. Of course dolphins will kill sharks that threaten their young (if you consider that as being aggressive) and they are sexually aggressive for sure â much like many humans. đ
Hey–
I like them, and have been in the water with them for years– even added to my income.
Plus the joy of showing clients the experience.
But they do have a dark side.
How many have you been with over the years in the open ocean in a non supervised environment?
I’ve never been in the water with dolphins in a âsupervised environmentâ, whatever that means. Who exactly would qualify as a supervisor? Dolphins arenât like school children and the South Seas arenât much like a supervised playground. For awhile I (and many others) swam with them daily in NZ and Samoa: no âdark sidesâ were experienced that Iâm aware of. In fact, you could (can) always forget about sharks when you were near dolphins. BTW, how did they add to your income? Did you work for them? đ
BTW, countless generations of Polynesian and Maori kids have been swimming very safely with dolphins. In fact if a kid gets in trouble in the water in the Pacific Islands heâs more likely to be rescued by a dolphin than a human.
how did they add to your income? Did you work for them?
Every morning I would sail up to Agat on a Trimaran, and pick up a group of tourists (almost always Japanese) and take them dolphin watching– they paid to do this.
The dolphins knew the boat, and loved jumping between the hulls.
A good time was had by all— even the dolphins, apparently.
I would then sail and troll for mahi or wahoo (occasional marlin) and drop them off at a small island for other activities.
But I spent a lot of time offshore– watching the Southern Cross appear.
But, lets not live by myth and heuristic thinking:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2009/05/13/dolphins_are_violent_predators_that_kill_their_own_babies.html
Good for you Duncan. I confess Iâm not entirely rational about dolphins: so many stories and wonderful adventures; was involved with some dolphin research for awhile as well.
That slate article is certainly a story. Too bad none of it is corroborated with actual occurrences and facts. Very purposeful language too.
Even so, they sound and act much nicer than humans.
“Too bad none of it is corroborated with actual occurrences and facts.” ~ GoneFishing
If you were interested and motivated, you could, yourself, look into the story elsewhere online to see if or how the story might stack up.
I think I will let the dolphins speak for themselves. Humans believe just about anything and everything. Whatever they want to hear or fits their needs.
Could dolphins have discovered and controlled fire?
Probably not but why do you ask; is this a criteria for intelligence? Would fire be of any use to a dolphin? While humans, as a species, are relatively smart, itâs unrealistic to claim the title of âmost intelligentâ species yet because we still have too many questions left to answer about our own brains, before we can compare them to the brain of another organism, in my opinion.
Doug, I am in the process of reading a book (not published!) about these issues.
Dolphins could of course not have discovered fire and controlled it as their habitat does not allow for that.
Dolphins are intelligent and also have great self awareness.
What makes us believe that we (humans) were the ultimate goal of evolution?
Fossil fuels needs oxygen to react, some billion years ago Earths atmosphere were mostly CO2, methane and H2O? plants, organisms converted some of this CO2 and âharvestedâ the carbon [some of it became fossil fuels] and replaced it with O2.
Evolution is not an organism or life form of any sort, not a spirit being of any sort. Evolution is a process that impartially shuffles the cards of living things over and over and over, generation after generation, division after division, and impartially and blindly sorts out the ones that happen to be a little, or a lot more “fit”, a little better at surviving and reproducing.
Evolution has consequences, it produces life forms that are more and more complicated, sometimes, and sometimes it reduces the complexity of some species.
But evolution does not in any meaningful sense of the word “goal” have anything at all to do with a goal or goals.
The word GOAL itself implies INTENT. Intent implies thought, or at least action guided by a simple brain acting on sensory imput and wired in programming aka instinct. So a man can consciously try to get rich, or a fly can detect the odor of carrion, and respond by going to it to feed and lay eggs.
Whether life itself has any “purpose” or reason for existing is an open question. So far as I can tell from well over half a century of looking for it in the philosophical and scientific literature, nobody yet has a clue as to what that purpose or meaning might be, so maybe there is no purpose or meaning, or at least none outside the movements of ions and electrical charge in our brain circuitry.
BUT if we ever figure out why life exists, then we can say that evolution exists in an auxiliary fashion in support of life.
Personally I think the question of life cannot be answered in terms of purpose or reason. We might eventually have a really good understanding of the ORIGIN of life, but that will be a technical rather than a philosophical or spiritual understanding.
If anybody is really and truly interested in understanding the BIG PICTURE, then he must back far far away , so as to see the forest rather than the trees.
The smartest man I ever had the experience of knowing helped me to fully understand this concept.
Pretend you are an alien biologist in a well concealed stealthy spaceship orbiting the Earth, with lots of every imaginable kind of spy gear, able to zoom in on anything at all.
If you can manage this trick, then you can look at the BIG PICTURE objectively, without being blinded by your own prejudices and desires.
We are part and parcel creatures produced by the evolutionary process.
And the evolutionary process does not give a rats ass about what happens to us, or to any other life form, or to the entire fucking PLANET. Evolution is not a sentient creature.
The prudent and sensible thing to do is to protect the environment to the extent we can of course.
I hop I am not the only person in this forum who ever read Twain’s little satirical essay about the insect that found itself perched on the uttermost tip top of the Eiffel Tower and presumed the tower , and the world , was created just for it’s own use. đ
The evolution of a super-dominant species which selects and kills or modifies other species for it’s own purposes has put a real twist on evolution now.
Hi Rune,
Even though I have worked with several dolphin researchers and had a number of encounters with them in the South Seas my opinions about them may not be entirely rational. I do strongly object to defining intelligence on ânarrowâ human terms however. Even human intelligence baffles me; my wife spoke five languages fluently, was a brilliant mathematician/physicist and had a photographic memory but categorized herself a musical ignoramus. Plus, she needed me to avoid getting lost in parking lots. My dog isnât ignorant; his nose is a million times more sensitive than mine providing a symphony of information not available to me.
Enjoy your book about dolphins.
Doug
Maybe our intelligent robots and machines of the near future will give us an answer or at least a final solution.
âThe Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is…42!â
â Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Though the point of my previous comment was simply to underscore that those who are fixated on saving the current ‘Economy’ are missing the big picture, as are those who think protesting by shutting down oil pipelines will stop climate change.
Ya, so let’s pitch industrial-whitewash ‘circular [reasoning] economy’, genetic lab lunacy, and crony-capitalist corporate ‘disruptive tech’ spin, complete with TED talk videos, including ‘biomimicry’ greenwash, while kind of crapping on permaculture, a la Fred Magyar, and convince ourselves that that’s what’s what with ‘the big picture’ and where we need to go.
Caelan, it’s time to show your cards. Put them on the table face up.
Caelan needs to realize that there is a journey involved in getting to “where we need to go”. It’s not a single step away.
Ya sure, according to some, it’s a whole lot of technologically-inebriated goofball steps. Like old Jerry Lewis clips or something.
Are you sixteen years old?
Are you too young or something to realize where we, far too often, have actually ended up where some thought we needed to go, and the kinds of steps they thought we needed to take to get there, that involved a whole lot of technologically-inebriated goofball steps? Hm?
I think the description fits rather well and quite like it. Are you getting it in bold on your screen over there?
I think some people would do Earth a service to just get their own planet to ‘practice’ on.
But your cheek is cute, Gonefishing.
So you disagree with pollution reduction, clean water, clean air, more preserved natural areas, more protected ocean areas, restrictions on fishing, strong reductions in fossil fuel use, organic farming, efficiency, and a reduced energy/material lifestyle? I figured that.
That is where new technology and our new knowledge is heading right now and has been for a long time.
You tout past mistakes and ignorance and ASSume that is where we are headed.
Got that bold part?
“That is where new technology… is heading right now…” ~ GoneFishing
Crony-capitalist plutarchy non-equitably-derived– IOW, detached— technology appears as your and others’ intellectual fly-in-the-ointment, GoneFishing, and I can’t help you there, try as I might, if you can’t, or won’t, help yourselves.
In any case, in your above list, we don’t really need much, if any, technology for those kinds of things. What we need is attachment.
Gigafactory, for example, is about as detached as it gets, including its location.
I suppose you go down a flight of steps by merely tumbling down them. Quickest way to the bottom.
Join an ecovillage. Bada bing.
Fred, as you well know, mathematically 42 (as in: that which follows 41) is an interesting number, one that’s fascinated since the time of Aristotle. However, when you write 42! this looks like 42 factorial (as 3! = 3 Ă 2 Ă 1) which is just a VERY large number. Which is it, (or more to point, what did Douglas Adams mean?) ? If youâre going to remain our wisest sage, Fred, keep the math right. đ
This is where the quote came from:
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/245604-the-ultimate-answer-to-life-the-universe-and-everything-is-42
If you go to the link you will see that exclamation point is included within the quotation marks. I just copied and pasted it as is so therefore it is up to the reader of the quote to decide if the answer is 42 exclamation point or 42 factorial. So don’t kill the messenger đ
However if one goes to the movie itself then one realizes that the answer which took a mere 7.5 million years to calculate is meaningless since the question was poorly defined. Though the AI Deep Thought says it is willing to design a new computer that will give out the ultimate question… but to get it you need to become primitive again and descend into this machine and spend about 10 million years navigating it’s code…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aboZctrHfK8
See ya in 10 million years!
That computer had a great sense of humor. Pulled their legs for 7.5 million years. What a laugh.
DougL,
I’d never thought of that! (NB: Not a factorial)
This opens up vistas–you must change your life, as Rilke said.
It eventually occurred to me that Adams probably used forty two because that’s the standard measure of a barrel of oil.
Those of us who have already read Douglas Adams have real reason to be envious of those who have not.
We can only reread him, where as they still have the awesome treat ahead of them of reading him for the first time, lol.
LOL
You could create Blog 42 and NEVER run out of topics to play with. Example, Lewis Carroll, a mathematician, made extensive use of 42 in his writings. Alice’s attempts at multiplication work if one uses base 18 to write the first answer and increases the base by threes to 21, 24, etc. but breaks down when one attempts the answer to 4 times 13 in base 42, leading Alice to declare “Oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!”
BTW, 42! = 1405006117752879898543142606244511569936384000000000.
It’s odd that the number ends with nine zeroes. That means it must be divisible by five to the ninth, but there are only eight numbers less than 42 that are divisible by 5.
The reason is that 25 is five squared!
I am currently taking this Cal State OLLI (Osher) course. Fabulous instructor. My last chemistry course was biochemistry, 1952. Have not kept up except for some interest in petrochemistry. I tend to be blasĂŠ about chemicals and ionizing radiation.
” The Molecules of Life (OLLI 1011)
Bob Stellwagen
Mondays 1pm-3pm | Oct. 10 to Oct. 31 (4 weeks) Class Nbr 2731
Our world includes millions of different species of organisms exhibiting
a range of complexity from bacteria to humans. Despite their stunning diversity, all these organisms share certain common features. For example, all are composed of one or more cells which in turn are composed primarily of only four major kinds of organic molecules (nucleic acids, proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates). In this course we will take a journey to the unseen molecular world that underlies all living organisms. We will explore how these molecules interact to give rise to the fundamental processes of life. Join us and gain a new perspective on the living world.
Robert Stellwagen, Ph.D. was trained in biochemistry at Harvard University (A.B. degree) and UC Berkeley (Ph.D.). He conducted postdoctoral research at the National Institutes
of Health and UC San Francisco before joining the faculty of the University of Southern California where he taught biochemistry, molecular biology, and genetics and carried out laboratory research in the School of Medicine for many years.”
Despite their stunning diversity, all these organisms share certain common features. For example, all are composed of one or more cells which in turn are composed primarily of only four major kinds of organic molecules (nucleic acids, proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates).
Yep! nature’s chemistry set is mostly non toxic and works with low heat and low pressure.
http://toolbox.biomimicry.org/core-concepts/natures-unifying-patterns/chemistry/
Nature uses chemistry and materials that are safe for living beings.
Organisms do chemistry within and near their own cells. This makes it imperative that organisms use chemicals, chemical processes, and chemistry-derived materials that are supportive to lifeâs processes. Lifeâs chemistry is water-based and uses a subset of chemical elements configured into precise 3D structures. The combination of 3D architecture and composition is the key to maximizing self-assembly, guiding chemical activity and material performance, and allowing for biodegradation into useful constituents when their work is done. With regard to our production systems, the importance of using life-friendly chemistry and materials is applicable at various system scales, from sourcing or growing of materials, to manufacturing products or goods, transporting those goods, and considering what happens to them at the end of their life cycle.
“Nature uses chemistry and materials that are safe for living beings.”
That is a too bold statement. đ
Only these living beings survive that can adapt to nature.
“Yep! natureâs chemistry set is mostly non toxic …”
Again no, the losers die. E.g. oxygen was a toxic product that killed every organism that required a reductive atmosphere, that was the majority back then. đ
´”..and works with low heat and low pressure.”
That is correct – and as chemist I envy living organisms for their catalysts!
Again no, the losers die. E.g. oxygen was a toxic product that killed every organism that required a reductive atmosphere, that was the majority back then. ?
Yes, while it is true that photosynthetic cyanobacteria were the cause of the die off amongst the anearobic bacteria circa 3.5 billion years ago when they radically changed the O2 concentration of the earth’s atmosphere.
However their own cellular metabolism and the internal chemistry of their cytoplasm was benign enough to allow for endosymbiotic organisms which were the precursors of chloroplasts and mitochondria to survive within their cells.
As for those unfortunate anaerobic bacteria that were unable to adapt to a higher concentration of atmospheric O2, they did indeed perish enmasse. C’est la vie et C’est la mort! đ
What do the climate change activists here think of the mass acts of pipeline sabotage in the northern US earlier this week?
I’d guess most don’t think it’s a good idea. What do you think of sabotage and violence committed by people who believe in your causes?
Do you honestly think this is a reasonable way to get the skeptical public to convert to your side?
Of course not. Don’t be silly.
These people are criminals and domestic terrorists, not to mention the reason why belief in climate change is neatly divided along political party affiliation.
Well, of course they’re criminals. Terrorists? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone is terrified of them. They look pretty mild to me. I mean, sure, they caused damage and inconvenience, but no one was hurt – they’re nothing like Tim McVeigh.
More importantly…these people have NOTHING to do with why belief in climate change is divided. The divide is caused by vast amounts of misinformation, provided by the industries that benefit from fossil fuels.
Well, I’d say the left certainly hasn’t been doing itself any favors in reducing the political polarization over climate change since so many on that side of the political spectrum are such massive hypocrites over the issue. The left’s hatred of fossil fuels knows no bounds, yet they consume them just the same as all of us. Case in point are these pipeline saboteurs. In order to commit their crimes and try to force adoption of a society deprived of fossil fuels, they had to drive over 1,000 miles one way to the pipeline valve stations they tried to destroy. Of course they were emitting CO2 and pollutants all along the way. Then, alongside these types who want to destroy pipelines, the left has loudmouths like Gore and Soros who issue warnings about climate change despite having some of the biggest “carbon footprints” of them all.
Those people are just trying to help you Geoff. All that cleaner air, cleaner water is not the result of people sitting back and letting the corporations just do what they want. They see major problems and new ways to avoid them.
I am sure they like cars and electricity, they just don’t want the world paying a huge price to have them. But you can always move next to a chemical factory or refinery and downwind of a coal power plant if you want to enjoy those benefits. Make the most of it while you can.
hypocrites over the issue. The leftâs hatred of fossil fuels knows no bounds, yet they consume them just the same as all of us.
They don’t fossil fuel, and they don’t hate you. That’s just misinformation created by fossil fuel companies. As “gonefishing” said above, environmentalists just see a better way. They don’t expect us all to move to it overnight, just as quickly as reasonably possible. That might include steeper CAFE regs, and carbon taxes are a nice free market solution that would accelerate things.
Fossil fuel companies don’t really care about you, or free markets – they just want to preserve their investments. And…I don’t judge them for that – it’s understandable. But…it’s not a good basis on which a society should plan it’s future. Free market conservatives understand that: sometimes old industries have to be hurt by the emergence of new ones.
FWIW
“In 2015, the New York Times interviewed terrorism experts at 19 law enforcement agencies across the country and found right-wing radicalization was their top terror concern. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, hate groups, anti-government “patriot” organizations and terror attacks and plots proliferated throughout 2015.”
https://mic.com/articles/156856/the-crusaders-mosque-bomb-plot-is-latest-in-growing-right-wing-terror-threat?utm_source=aol&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=partner#.BByn2rrrx
BTW, “They donât fossil fuel” should be “They donât hate fossil fuel”.
I’m pretty sure they drove internal combustion cars to the pipeline site.
i’ll bet they ride shared both ways.
Rising ocean levels.
“South Florida will likely be ground zero for the coastal property collapse. As a 2013 Rolling Stone explained, the region suffers from âtwo big problems.â First, it has âremarkably flat topography. Half the area that surrounds Miami is less than five feet above sea level.â”
“âConventional sea walls and barriers are not effective here,â says Robert Daoust, an ecologist at ARCADIS, a Dutch firm that specializes in engineering solutions to rising seas”
https://thinkprogress.org/when-will-coastal-property-values-crash-and-will-climate-science-deniers-be-the-only-buyers-3ee844a6702c#.w5ma3dgyp
Something worth reading and thinking about it for a few minutes.
https://www.wired.com/2016/10/want-know-julian-assanges-endgame-told-decade-ago
Assange seems to be delusional.
For one thing, any experienced political operative relies on strategic planting of information with the media. Media that are desperate for material form a malignant partnership with such operatives, publishing anything that comes their way without question, verification or fact checking. This appears to be what’s happening with Wikileaks.
Secondly, the idea that secrecy is always bad is absurd. Secrecy is at the heart of privacy and personal liberty, for individuals. I’m not sure about large organizations, but it’s easy to imagine situations where politicians and diplomats can do more for the greater good by having private discussions. Clearly Wikileaks agrees – they require their employees and consultants to sign a very tough non-disclosure agreement!
In any case, Assange and Wikileaks are clearly targeting Clinton and Democrats, while giving Trump and Republicans a pass. They seem to be doing it to curry favor with Republicans and the alt-right, purely out of self interest.
Very sad.
Hi Nick,
I agree.
Apparently Assange is out to get Democrats for personal reasons, having to do with his own personal problems.
I think maybe in his shoes I would be mostly after Democrats too, but think about this. You fish where you know there are fish to be caught, and for the last good while, the D’s have controlled the WH / executive branch , and that’s where you will catch most of the fish.
But I also think he is right that we need all the sunshine we can possibly get thrown into the dark corners occupied by large powerful organizations of all sorts- organizations that in pursuit of their own agendas trample on the rights of everybody else.
Most people tend to specialize in one or another area within a given broad field, and Assange has concentrated on government secrecy and corruption within the larger field, and on the D’s within that.
We are in real need of another similar organization headed up by a D partisan to smoke out the R party along the same lines.
Sometimes big government is the NECESSARY answer. Since I believe in resource depletion and climate troubles mostly being caused by burning FF’s on the grand scale, and that the time frame we have to do something about both issues is SHORT , and getting shorter, the best available politically workable single tool in the tool box appears to be subsidizing the renewable electricity industries and the electrical automobile industry so as to assure their fast growth.
The precautionary principle ought to be every well informed person’s first working rule in making such policy decisions.
Sure it is possible ( but the odds are very high against ) that these subsidies are wasted and distortions of the economy, etc, but the naysayers never have anything to say about all the money wasted on other bad investments made without subsidies. So far as I can see, putting people to work building out renewables is just as helpful , economic terms, as putting them to building more museums, or athletic facilities, or highways, or military installations.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/10/14/the-u-s-government-just-made-its-biggest-clean-energy-purchase-ever-it-was-for-the-navy/?utm_term=.f1b58ea4a238
An alternative career path for younger guys who don’t see much future in the domestic oil industry:
http://jindal.utdallas.edu/finance/ms-energy-management/
All news is not bad,
COUNTRIES REACH LANDMARK DEAL TO LIMIT GLOBAL WARMING FROM AIR CONDITIONERS
âMore than 170 countries agreed early Saturday morning to limit emissions of key climate change-causing pollutants found in air conditioners, a significant step in the international effort to keep global warming from reaching catastrophic levels.â
http://time.com/4532377/climate-change-kigali-agreement-air-conditioners/
Finally, something they can mostly agree on. Well, sort of, kinda, with caveats. Oh well.
Oh, donât be a spoilsport.
Sorry Doug, just get tired of half-assed compromises that are fairly ineffective being touted as “solutions”.
Guess I should not apply for a diplomatic job.
“… just get tired of half-assed compromises that are fairly ineffective being touted as âsolutionsâ…”
Yeah, I’ve noticed and, I almost never disagree. That said, when they donât offer you the Pollyanna roll, donât act too surprised. đ
I am practicing for the Old Curmudgeon role.
Nature Lessons for Children:
Yes, we look out upon this idyllic natural scene and realize there are millions of tiny creatures being caught, eaten and dying everywhere in it. All quite quiet and serene is the death march of the natural world. Even the screams are short when there are any.
How beautiful it looks to us who cannot even see the reality of our own dying cells and the battles for survival within.
We live in a penthouse of the mind, until we too come under the rule of nature. Which is as it should be, children. Don’t worry you won’t be eaten tonight. We killed all those bad things, or at least most of them. Best check under the bed and in the closet, just in case we missed one.
Now stop that crying and go to bed.
The three hundred pound lady has a seven course meal, complete with pie and ice cream, and conscientiously and righteously takes her after dinner coffee black.
We are good at fooling ourselves, but every little bit does help a little bit.
A cynical old farmer might conclude, after talking to his friends who work on cars, and a neighbor who works in the HVAC industry that the auto and HVAC industries are VERY highly in favor of such regulations, in spite of the crocodile tears they spill about the poor consumer who will have to pay for the new regs.
Somehow they virtually always fail to mention that the new regs put them in VERY tall cotton, fixing the customer up with BRAND NEW stuff, as often as not.
The neighbor who does heat pump repairs and installations always tries to talk his customer into a new heat pump when their old one needs recharging for any reason.
I tell folks privately that if their middle aged old pump can be fixed for say five hundred bucks, use it until it breaks down again, and THEN get a new one. The extra expense due to it being a little less efficient over the next few years will be amply repaid by the new one they get then being even more efficient, and like other most other stuff, excepting cheap junk, also be built to last longer.
And if they are getting old, the warranty on a new one installed five years from now might easily outlast them, lol.
I am not against the move at all, it’s a minor one, but helpful at first glance.
What I don’t like are the extensions and free passes for so called developing countries. A decade of old style development when there is a billion people involved can be very harmful. Why not get with the program and stop making the same old mistakes/
OFM – your heat pump friend is right – one needs to replace an old R-22-based unit with a new R-410a unit because R-22 is no longer manufactured, recycled R-22 is $$$$, and there is no “drop-in” replacement that is worth a darn. But now, with R-410a and it’s HFC cousins on their way to being phased out, what do you tell a customer? We don’t have a clue where the new residential market will go for the next-generation refrigerant. Propane? (flammable!) Ammonia? (poisonous!) HFO’s? ($$$) CO2? (yes, irony of ironies, CO2 is now considered as a “climate-friendly” molecule if used as a refrigerant!). It will be an “interesting” future in the HVAC and refrigeration industry, but I hope to be “OHM” and retired out of the business by then.
None of the proposed substitutes work as well, so the products must be re-engineered and may not be as efficient. Which begs the question, will the extra energy required for refrigeration produce enough atmospheric CO2 to nullify any advantage?
Does debt matter? https://mishtalk.com/2016/10/15/deeper-and-deeper-in-the-hole-treasury-receipts-up1-spending-up-5/#more-41446
The eccentricity of earth orbit is currently low and will not even reach average eccentricity for 150,000 years.
The total range causes a difference in irradiance of from 10 watts/m2 to 230 watts/m2 and a difference in insolation of 2.7 watts/m2 to 62 watts/m2. The orbital nodes determine the seasonal variation. Currently the earth is at perigee during northern hemisphere winter, in particular January 2nd. Now we have a difference of about 8 watts/m2 insolation between perigee and apogee.
As can be seen from the graph, we are headed toward an almost circular orbit 25,000 years from now, reducing the effects of eccentricity to a minimum. One can see we have left the 100,000 year extreme minima/maxima period of the past and will not resume that pattern until almost 500,000 years from now.
Hi GF,
Do you, or does anybody else , know of a website that has lots of illustrations of the intricacies of the Earth’s orbit over astronomical time?
Ideally in order to show this to someone who has little appreciation of the matter, it would have a simple illustration, with labels, showing the shape of the orbit, plus the tilt of the Earth, etc, at intervals of say five thousand years, back for a million years or more. So you could scroll thru or click thru and more easily visualize the details.
Then it would ideally have the intervals cut down to a thousand years for the last ten thousand and the next ten thousand.
I know there are sites with tables detailing this info, but I haven’t run across one with sequential illustrations. I want to link to such a site when and if I ever finish my book to be.
You know what they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and for the average person on the street, a picture is worth TEN thousand charts and graphs, especially charts and graphs that display more than one variable.
If I come across anything like that I will post it. Here is an animation with sidebar of the various parameters, either singly or together, over 400,000 years. You could take screen shots of it to get individual illustrations.
https://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/wxfest/Milankovitch/earthorbit.html
Mac, a good start would be âMilankovitch Cyclesâ (Wikipedia) which has some really excellent illustrations.
Good afternoon Doug,
Indeed we should be Googling âMilankovitch cyclesâ and doing some intensive research on the subject. What we’ll learn is while Earth does actually appear to be warmer now than in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution some hundreds of years back, Earth is never-the-less around a similar temperature as it was 800 years ago and even still FAR colder than 8000 or so years ago.
So this then must rationally lead to asking what could have been responsible for all the previous warm global temperature spells and peaks in CO2 levels in the thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years past? Likely it wasn’t from cavemen starting campfires or driving around in SUV’s. No, more probably according to the FEW remaining ethical climate scientists it was due to perturbations in the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit.
Currently this eccentricity of Earthâs orbit is close to an extreme low reading and continuing to drop. From a practical climate viewpoint what that means is that EVEN IF all living beings disappeared from the face of the Earth tomorrow, the planet would go on warming up until the eccentricity reaches a minimum and then reverses in on itself, causing the process to proceed in the opposite direction. In other words, the planet could be warming up now, but with a future change in eccentricity guaranteed to happen eventually at some point in the future, a new ice age will be guaranteed as well. In the meantime, the planet’s living beings will need to just learn to adapt to the new climate norms faced at present.
Be well,
Walt
Actually, it’s the next two-four decades not 150,000 year cycles I mainly think about. Therefore, being small minded, it’s my Grandchildren’s future-world that most concerns me. BTW, are’re not Javier in disguise are you?
Doug,
I am a Canadian who lives near the Rockies. I don’t know anybody named Javier.
Be well,
Walt
Sorry Walt, just being careful.
Javier getting ripped apart elsewhere
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/extreme-cherry-ice/
Javier is essentially a careless debater who eventually drowns in his own arguments.
No, more probably according to the FEW remaining ethical climate scientists it was due to perturbations in the eccentricity of Earthâs orbit.
No you are wrong on two counts. There are NO ethical climate scientists left on planet earth. They were all abducted by aliens who are deliberately changing the planet’s environment and climate to suit their own needs. They are making the planet uninhabitable for humans. Their spaceships will be arriving shortly to begin colonizing earth!
Fun video on M cycles included on this link. Conclusion – we need to put a ball cap on the north pole:)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-to-explain-Milankovitch-cycles-to-a-hostile-Congressman-in-30-seconds.html
Regarding the UN’s IPCC’s on-going assessments on climate change, it turns out the world’s climatologists are actually not idiots – despite all their PhD’s – and have done tons of M cycle modeling and folded those sub-models into their predictive climate models continue to conclude, crazy as it seems, that anthropogenic actions have contributed to climate change and will continue to do so.
We on this forum are NOT PhD-level scientists who have dedicated their whole lives to finding and using every scientific/mathematical tool available to sort out the technical minutia of the grand question “why the earth’s climate was what is was, is what is is, and how that affects what it will be”. Yet we continue to belabor these silly anti-AGW argumentations over items that to trained climatological professionals are elementary (but did “they” consider orbital changes? Sun spots? cow farts? etc.? ). Why?
The issue of orbital/radiative variations is so commonly questioned to the IPCC it is an FAQ!
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-6-1.html
You miss the point HACman. Milankovich cycles are long term forcings and are useful to see if climate will cool in the long term or because of additional GHG’s in the atmosphere, continue to stay warm.
Examining all the forcings and forcing vectors is not silly, in fact it is the best way to gain perspective and knowledge about the whole earth – sun system. Just looking at small areas or one or two variables is about as useful as playing golf.
Anyway, natural forcings have a greater magnitude and range than anthropogenic forcings.
Hi Gone fishing,
As most of the glacial ice is in the Southern Hemisphere (Antarctic Ice Sheet), I think the focus on 65N is less important today than 22,000 years ago (and other glacial maximums). Today most Northern hemisphere(NH) ice sheet area is in Greenland and is almost 20 times smaller that Northern hemisphere ice sheets during the last glacial maximum. The natural changes due to changes in albedo are likely to be much smaller today than from 20 ka BP to 8 ka BP due to the much smaller NH ice sheets.
Also the glacial cycles for the past 800,000 years have been roughly 100,000 years, so the next glacial maximum is not due for approximately 80,000 years. It will likely be delayed by excess carbon emissions, possibly by 60,000 years or more. So the next glacial maximum might be 140,000 years in the future, within an order of magnitude. This assumes anthropogenic carbon emissions from all sources after 1800 CE are limited to about 1100 Pg. It also assumes we do not find a way to remove carbon from the atmosphere and that the natural carbon cycle gradually sequesters carbon from the atmosphere.
Exactly, most of the ice is in Antarctica, which means the Arctic will go quickly having much less mass and therefore the greatest effects. Snow and ice cover have the same reflective effect as ice sheet cover, so your assertions are incorrect about the albedo change.
You really need to bone up on your orbital knowledge, I have presented it in detail in previous posts.
Hi Gonefishing,
In the absence of ice sheets, most snow and ice melts every spring and summer, as most of the insolation occurs in March through September in the Northern hemisphere, the size of the ice sheets matters.
I have given links to several papers that describe the climate models in detail. Snow cover and sea ice is covered in the climate models.
Though the models are not perfect. The GISS model is described in the paper below (pp 143-151).
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2014/2014_Schmidt_sc02500z.pdf
and an earlier paper below (see especially the land surface model on page 164-5 with snow and vegetation sub-models). Sea ice and land ice are also covered on pp. 165-167 of the paper linked below, which has more detail than the first paper linked.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/sc05200y.html
As Doug suggested earlier, such modelling is more relevant on timescales of interest (say the next 1000 years) than the Milankovitch cycles.
You can focus on 50,000 years down the road if you prefer.
Exactly, the snow is melting earlier and the ice is melting off the Arctic Ocean now to a large extent. That has produced a differential in albedo in just decades, a differential that ice sheets take millennia to make.
When an area goes from 0.8 albedo to 0.2 or 0.3, it means that area is absorbing up to 180 w/m2 more energy than before. Since most of the sunlight in northern regions is during the warmer times, that makes a large difference. Having a few thousand square kilometers of ocean or land exposed for even a few weeks is a large change in energy.
Further south now, some areas that usually had snow cover have had little or none. There the insolation is higher and having three months of dark ground, trees, rivers and lakes exposed instead of ice and snow adds a lot of heat to the system.
I don’t focus on orbital changes, it is just part of the system and is a continuous forcing. My interest spans all the time periods, maybe you believe humans and life in general won’t exist past 1000 years but I do.
Models are fine, though from what has been published they are all over the place as far as results go. I think they are too focused on human produced CO2 and do not take into account the obvious changes in the natural forcings.
There is no way a few watts/m2 would be making all those changes in Arctic and causing the ice melt that is occurring. Not at the rate or in such a short time. The Antarctic is experiencing a large increase in insolation and will for thousands of years (though slowly diminishing). It’s particular configuration makes it more a matter of when then what will happen.
I find the paleontological data quite useful in understanding the complex system we are living in.
The models will have to change soon anyway, since portions of the earth are being driven strongly by natural forcings now. These changes have occurred in just a few decades and are still moving in the same direction.
GoneFishing,
Well said; totally agree. The Arctic and sub-Arctic, along various associated feed-backs will henceforth be the primary driver of global climate.
Hi Gone fishing and Doug,
As I have said before changes in snow cover, sea ice and vegetation are included in the climate models and though they are not perfect, if one takes the ensemble mean, they reproduce past climate pretty well.
Yes there is uncertainty, with most models having equilibrium climate sensitivities between 2 and 4 C. Hansen thinks 3 C is a good estimate for ECS.
Higher temperatures at high latitudes will lead to higher humidity and possibly greater snowfall amounts, this would be a negative feed back. The GISS model E2-H (ECS of 2.8 C) underestimates Arctic Sea Ice Extent in a historical run from 1850 to 2005.
In chart below I compare the Berkeley Earth Land Ocean temperature data with the MAGICC median model (an ensemble of 19 AOGCMs and 9 carbon cycle models).
Each has a zero anomaly equal to the 1850-1999 average of the data or model. The equilibrium climate sensitivity of the model is 3 C.
Hi Gonefishing,
If you think the natural forcing is not included in the models, you are incorrect.
The models are far more sophisticated than you seem to believe.
Sure they can be improved there is a lot of work that needs to be done on clouds aerosols and their interaction with atmospheric chemistry. Better models of ice sheets are needed as well as improved carbon and vegetation models.
Dennis, the higher temperatures are already there, over 2.5 C, and except for a few rare instances along the Alaskan coast, did not lead to higher snowfall. In fact it appears that snow cover and snowfall is getting less.
“The lack of snow in Alaska and western Canada may be part of the reason that the region has been ravaged by forest fires this summer, with fires having burned more than 3.5 million acres in Alaska. Other western states have also been hit by forest fires in the past few months.
âThe forest fire season youâve got right now, it has roots probably going as far back as last winter,â Mark Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, told the Dispatch News. âThere wasnât much snow on the land and itâs been a warm and dry spring and these things all combine.â
This is not a sudden problem: snow cover in May was the third-lowest on record. And this year also marked the warmest May on record.”
http://fusion.net/story/164797/arctic-snow-levels-were-at-their-second-lowest-in-recorded-history-last-month/
A big indicator near me of climate change is a high altitude mountain plateau that had a long history of ice cutting industry, a place that typically had -30F temps in the winter, now often cannot hold ice cutting demonstrations because the winter is so warm there is no or little ice on the very lakes that were long time successful commercial operations. This is at 42N latitude.
Now consider that the changes further north are even more dramatic.
Hi Walt,
8000 years ago Global temperature was about 0.4 C higher than the 1961-1990 average temperature based on Marcott et al 2013.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1198
In 2015 the average Global temperature was about 0.76C above the 1961-1990 average temperature.
See https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/#datdow
Global temperatures were not far higher 8000 years ago based on peer reviewed research, they were slightly lower 8000 years ago than recent years, the most recent 30 year average Global land-ocean temperature using Berkeley Earth data is 0.57 C above the 1961-1990 average temperature.
DC,
Looks like we finally pulled it off, doesn’t it?
Now that we have pulled he pin on the grenade, who wants to hold it?
Hi Synapsid,
No idea what you mean. What has been pulled off?
I was just correcting Walt She who claimed temperatures were far higher in 8000 BP, when in fact we have surpassed the temperatures of the Holocene Climactic Optimum.
DC,
It took us 9000 years to bring global temperatures above the early-Holocene maximum.
It’s actually a lot messier than that but the idea is that we’re in the ball park. I don’t think we see this in earlier interglacials.
The fun part is that the Arctic is melting even though there is considerably less summer insolation than 11,000 years ago when it peaked.
We gave the planet a real kick in the head just at the right time, as insolation is on the increase again in the Arctic. Nature has taken over there, we are soon to be just another factor.
Hi Synapsid,
Ok got it. I agree another glacial maximum in the next 80,000 years is not very likely as atmospheric CO2 will remain above 280 ppm for at least that long (assuming recent work by Archer et al 2009 and Joos et al 2013 on the carbon cycle is roughly correct).
An energy transition which will be forced by a fossil fuel peak by 2030 (for combined coal, oil and natural gas in energy terms) may keep total carbon emissions under 1000 Pg (including fossil fuels, cement production and land use change from 1800 to 2200) and temperatures at about 2 C above pre-industrial Holocene temperatures. I have assumed ECS is about 3 C, similar to IPCC mean estimates.
Scenario using MAGICC6 model below.
http://live.magicc.org/
Meinshausen, M., S. C. B. Raper and T. M. L. Wigley (2011). “Emulating coupled atmosphere-ocean and carbon cycle models with a simpler model, MAGICC6: Part I â Model Description and Calibration.” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 11: 1417-1456. doi:10.5194/acp-11-1417-2011.
Try just typing Milankovitch Cycle in the search box then click on images. Hundreds of images and each one leads to an article which might have more images.
Thanks GF and Doug.
There are so many sites with part of what I want, but not all of it nicely gift wrapped for me, lol, that I have gotten frustrated looking.
What I am thinking is that some dedicated instructor in an introductory astronomy class, or some related field, has put together just what I am looking for, as part of his class presentations, or something along this line. All I have to do is find it, and get permission, and avoid all the work of assembling it myself.
Then I can link to it with comments I compose myself.
My computer skills are minimal, to put it as mildly as possible. I mostly managed to avoid them, except the ones in autos and trucks, until after retirement.
Try this guy, Old Farmer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF-rfKRwNjI
Feedback or what?
CLIMATE CHANGE HAS DOUBLED WESTERN U.S. FOREST FIRES
âMore aridity is sending thousands of square miles up in flames, report investigators. According to the study, since 1984 heightened temperatures and resulting aridity have caused fires to spread across an additional 16,000 square miles than they otherwise would have — an area larger than the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined. The authors warn that further warming will increase fire exponentially in coming decades.â
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161012141702.htm
I think there is a natural feedback involved in this. As forest and vegetation is lost, the rains in the region are reduced even further.
Another feedback. Burning fossil fuels caused an increase in population. That in turn caused an increase in development in otherwise unpopulated areas, which in turn caused fires to start.
http://longnow.org/essays/why-west-burning/
Confirmation of what we’d have expected from a thought experiment of potential outcomes from global warming and climate change. If only we’d been prudent.
While doing a customary search for “Jamaica Solar” using the news search feature of Google, I found the following editorial which had the word “solar” in the comment section:
IMF, World Bank have no solution for global economic malaise
This is not an unreasonable expectation because the IMF and World Bank boast of having the best economic experts, who are the highest-paid international civil servants. Yet this collection of so-called best economic minds have come up with no solutions to the malaise of the global economy. Ironically, they have no hesitation in imposing economic policy packages of dubious efficacy on governments in poor and developing countries.
Jamaica is a case in point, having done everything required by the IMF and World Bank, yet there has been no significant growth. It finally dawned on the Government that it needed to design its own growth-promoting policy, hence the need for the prime ministerâs Economic Growth Council.
The managing director of the IMF describes the global predicament as âconsistently disappointing growth outcomesâ. Then came the predictable perennial platitudes such as urging the international community to âstep up international co-operation to create comprehensive and co-ordinated policy actionsâ. The call was made for more of the same policies, such as greater trade integration, which have not worked.
It sounds good, but that is all it is â words, not deeds. The problem is that the IMF and the World Bank apply a one-size-fits-all approach. Since no two countries are alike, this approach is sure to produce a lot of causalities. Hopefully, by blending the recommendations from the Economic Growth Council with the IMF programme, the combined effect will ignite sustained economic growth.
Reading this brought to mind all the Peak Oil analyses I have seen over the years, predicting what the outcomes would include, in particular outlooks from the likes of Richard Heinberg. The editorial linked to above seems to me to be the classic description of the global economy when oil production peaks. The problem as I see it is that, those outside the Peak Oil aware community see the problem as one defined by economics while I suspect, most participants here recognize the problem as one of declining returns on energy investments.
IMO the only way to avoid economic collapse is to decouple economic activity from oil use. In the larger economies of the world, this will have to happen through drastic reductions in the use of oil in the transport sector while maintaining similar levels of mobility for people and freight. In smaller economies, such as that of small island states that still use considerable amounts of oil for electricity generation, drastic reductions in the use of oil for electricity generation in addition to drastic reductions in the transport sector are needed.
I wish the Jamaican prime ministerâs Economic Growth Council the best of luck but, I’m afraid that luck is not what is really needed. Unless there is a recognition that economic activity must be decoupled from oil use, I suspect none of their prescriptions will produce tangible results.
I wish the Jamaican prime ministerâs Economic Growth Council the best of luck but, Iâm afraid that luck is not what is really needed. Unless there is a recognition that economic activity must be decoupled from oil use, I suspect none of their prescriptions will produce tangible results.
Perhaps it is also time for people everywhere to also come to the realization that we have been neglecting the negative effects and costs of ‘GROWTH’ and a purely extractive linear economic paradigm. We not only need to move away from a fossil fuel based economy but we also need to transition to a more regenerative circular economy that is not fixated on the infinite growth.
Which leads me back to the protestations of a certain poster at this site about “large-scale centralized weaponized (pseudo)governance”. In my neck of the woods, governments have tried to provide education for the poor and to keep the costs of basic food items and fuels for cooking and transport as low as possible. In the seventies we had an administration that was fairly hostile to business while codling the poor, which resulted in a contraction of the private sector. Since there are basically two ways to tackle unemployment one, to encourage economic growth and the other, more long term approach, to limit population growth, this did nothing to help unemployment.
In an environment where people act rationally, it may be possible for life to be good with little or no government intervention but, in an environment where an unskilled laborer, in an tv interview of workers on strike at a hotel construction site, protests that he needs more pay to look after his thirteen children, some government intervention is in order. If it were up to me, men who are inclined to father more children than their income can support would face harsh sanctions but alas, no one is ever going to win elections on a platform of population control.
So the situation as it stands now is that, there are more people than there are jobs and decent housing for, resulting in numerous pockets of unplanned settlements (squatting) and all sorts of informal economic activity, from street vending to unauthorized taxis to prostitution, extortion, fraud, scamming and outright theft. At this juncture pursuing economic growth seems to be the more humane approach since humane methods of reducing the population escape me at the moment. There seems to be a almost complete lack of awareness of any need to limit population growth based on the preponderance of young unemployed women with children that I see in the lower income areas of the island where I live.
So Fred, I’m with you on the “need to transition to a more regenerative circular economy that is not fixated on the infinite growth” and think limiting population growth should be a top priority. If I seem in an unusually cheerful mood (/sarc) today, it must be because it’s a public holiday here, National Heroes Day. We celebrate our heroes and give out national awards today.
P.S. A comment I wrote in response to the newspaper article above was approved by the moderators and has already attracted a predictable response. I quote “Fossil fuel will be around for the next 200 years. See, USA is now the world’s leading producer of oil; it is foolhardy to ignore the natural resource a country has that can contribute to its wealth……”
The world is full of idiots.
I read an article at as site called Business Insider a couple of days ago that says wind energy is a complete waste and exists only because of fraudulent subsidies,etc.
There were about eight or ten comments, and every last one was totally wrong, in respect to the facts.
So I tried, just to see the responses, posting a pro wind comment involving the number of birds killed by cats versus wind farms, and pointing out that there are many many worked out coal mines near my home.
Needless to say, my comment never made it.
Hi Alan,
I thought you might find this Energy Gang podcast interesting.
Despite Low Oil Prices, Small Island Nations Are Still Attractive Markets for Renewables
The Energy Gang looks at why island countries are such an important market for renewablesâand why renewables are so important for island countries.
by Stephen Lacey, September 23, 2016
42 gallons of oil in a barrel, there’s the 42 number again.
42! Is how much oil there is on the planet.
14050061000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 is 42! or 1.4050061e51, that is all it is.
That would be in gallons of oil. har
There will be an election in November, nothing will change, you will still be brainwashed, Stockholm Syndrome doesn’t go away anymore.
32 is a better number by far. 32 degrees Fahrenheit for water to freeze, 32 ounces in a quart, 32 quarts per bushel, 1/32nd of an inch for close measure, 32 inch doorways, 320 acres in a half section, 320 rods equal one mile, etc.
32 rules. har-umph!
I think we are in Catch 22!
R Walter,
There is a certain arbitrariness to how things are laid out. The equivalent in metric of a 32″ doorway may be wider or narrower in a country that uses the metric system.
Oh and does water really freeze at zero degrees Celsius (32 Fahrenheit)? đ
According to the CIA Factbook, the United States is one of three nations (the others being Liberia and Burma) that have not adopted the metric system as their official system of weights and measures. wikipedia
Waving the White Flag: I Surrender
By: Lee Grenci, Wunderground, 4:41 PM GMT on October 16, 2016
1
Its been a LONG time since I took a freshman level course in chemistry, but if IIRC, there are old textbooks around that say the F thermometer is based on water freezing at 32 and boiling at 212 under standardized conditions.
I am not at all sure that back when this standard was adopted that chemists and physicists were able to precisely standardize a sample of water but my guess is that a double distilled sample would be pure enough that any researcher could have calibrated his instruments using it, meaning a double distilled sample.
So maybe the definition of 32 is that it is the temperature at which water freezes under specified conditions.
I am probably in over my head here, lol.
I am sure that AWS is correct in that you can change the freezing point of water at least a little by modifying the testing environment. I don’t know much about super chilled liquids, but I do know that they exist.
Once upon a time I read an account by somebody who seemed to be otherwise entirely reputable about seeing water in a stream someplace way up in the high Arctic freeze almost instantly. I suppose this stream must have emerged from underneath the snow and ice as a spring, because the temperature was given as very low, but I can’t remember what the temperature was estimated to be.
The only possible explanation would seem to be the water was super chilled and something precipitated the change of state.
I have occasionally wondered since if this could actually happen but it seems very unlikely.
SUPERCOOL: WATER DOESN’T HAVE TO FREEZE UNTIL -48 C (-55 F)
âWe drink it, bathe in it and are made mostly of it, yet common water poses major mysteries. Now, chemists may have solved one enigma by showing how cold water can get before it absolutely must freeze: 48 degrees below zero Celsius (minus 55 Fahrenheit).â
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111123133123.htm
Must have used very pure water.
I just realized the effect this would have on fish. If the water doesn’t freeze they could approach the surface where the water is extremely cold and just turn solid. Or the water would become extremely cold and dense, plunge to the bottom and freeze the poor fish. Nasty, very nasty.
Not quite as bad as ice that does not float though.
Now that was really cool!
đ
Just wait until Hoenikker invents Ice-nine though. No worries about Arctic ice loss then, we’ll have a real ice age to live through.
I would like to hear the opinions of any regulars here, especially in three respects, about this report.
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2016/10/17/wikileaks-says-assanges-internet-link-was-severed-by-state-party.html
One, would it take a state level organization to get access to the documents published by Wikileaks?
It seems obvious to me that at least some of these documents, maybe most of them, could be easily obtained by any high level insider, meaning either a high level official, or a high level IT guy, willing to spill the beans, thus making breaking into the email systems unnecessary.
This does not mean the Russians, or maybe some other government, is not breaking into email accounts and providing some of the pilfered content to Wikileaks, but it makes it VERY unlikely in my opinion that ALL of the stuff Wikileaks publishes is provided by such a government organization .
Second, ARE there a lot of experts who think Wikileaks is a Russian government organization?
Third, if these experts exist, are they mostly associated with either the D or the R party in terms of their political allegiances, if known?
Every body can quit worrying about Trump getting to the WH.
It used to worry me a little, but the odds against him winning the election after the last few weeks must be up to at least a thousand to one by now.
Mac, don’t get wrapped up in any conspiracy theory. Remember Occam’s Razor. The FBI says it was the Russians so it is very likely was the Russians.
It does not much matter whether WikiLeaks is a Russian organization or not. It is obvious that Russia wants Trump in the White House and they are using WikiLeaks just as if it were a Russian organization, whether it is or not.
However all these leaks will make little difference in the election. As Chuck Todd said on NBC this morning, Trumps actions and comments “block out the sun”. That is, they will overwhelm anything that might be in the WikiLeaks release.
The US government stepping on Ecuador’s toes. There’s your conspiracy.
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article108627627.html
There probably are a few hard core activists of the liberalish persuasion that might fire bomb a Republican office, but such people are extremely scarce, except for a very small handful that are willing to go to jail protesting cutting redwoods, new pipelines, etc.
Such people will not ordinarily not stoop to firebombing. They have principles and put their own bodies on the line. I have respect for them, as a rule.
I would make a small bet, and give two to one, that this is a false flag operation associated with the R wing rather than the D wing of American politics.
This does not necessarily mean that any important R party people are behind it, or even knew it would happen, etc.
Sometimes individuals and small groups without ties to larger organizations do such things.
NEWS FLASH ****** ALL NEW US ELECTRIC GENERATION ADDED WAS RENEWABLE ********
Article also states that solar energy had risen by 35 times in 6 years.
http://247wallst.com/energy-economy/2016/10/17/renewables-account-for-all-new-electricity-generation-capacity-in-august/
GLACIERS LOST IN TIME
Old 1930 photographs of Greenland glaciers compared to modern views.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKxLtnIYjBk
Arctic Report Card – Update for 2015 -Greenland Ice Sheet
Highlights
â˘Melt area in 2015 exceeded more than half of the ice sheet on July 4th for the first time since the exceptional melt events of July 2012, and was above the 1981-2010 average on 54.3% of days (50 of 92 days).
⢠The length of the melt season was as much as 30-40 days longer than average in the western, northwestern and northeastern regions, but close to and below average elsewhere on the ice sheet.
â˘Average summer albedo in 2015 was below the 2000-2009 average over the northwest and above the average over the southwest portion of the Greenland ice sheet. In July, albedo averaged over the entire ice sheet was lower than in 2013 and 2014, but higher than the lowest value on record observed in 2012.
⢠Ice mass loss of 186 Gt over the entire ice sheet between April 2014 and April 2015 was 22% below the average mass loss of 238 Gt for the 2002- 2015 period, but was 6.4 times higher than the 29 Gt loss of the preceding 2013-2014 season.
â˘The net area loss from marine-terminating glaciers during 2014-2015 was 16.5 km2. This was the lowest annual net area loss of the period of observations (1999-2015) and 7.7 times lower than the annual average area change trend of -127 km2.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/greenland_ice_sheet.html
â˘The net area loss from marine-terminating glaciers during 2014-2015 was 16.5 km2. This was the lowest annual net area loss of the period of observations (1999-2015) and 7.7 times lower than the annual average area change trend of -127 km2.
See, all you alarmists have been crying wolf, all this time for no reason! This proves once and for all that anthropogenic climate change, due to CO2 emissions from burning of fossil fuels, is pure hooey and all climate science is just one big hoax and conspiracy with the sole aim of transfering wealth to greedy climate scientists from taxpayers.
Y’all gotta admit that is one heck of a nice big red cherry I picked to place atop the icing of my cake, eh?! đ
Fred, it’s all just natural variation. Most of Greenland melted during the Eemian so I think we got short changed this time around.
We really need to keep track of it because real estate values could change dramatically if that melting continued. Trump Towers would be awash and then he would sue Mother Nature.
DAG NABBIT,
I been hoping the water would get high enough I could sell some water front off the lower edge of my farm.
The rest of it would be great for building houses looking out over the water.
==Question of Trust==
a big problem with the posting of these climate science studies and article’s is how its very hard to know what motivates the climate scientists these days. see these survey results below, and all the disagreement nationwide over why climate scientists do the things they do. Some American’s say climate scientists are concerned for public’s best interests, but then many more say climate scientists are only motivated to advance their careers or according to political leanings.
Amanda, before you feel qualified to opine about anything, you should at the very least learn how to differentiate between possessive nouns and plurals…
The possessive form is used with nouns referring to people, groups of people, countries, and animals. It shows a relationship of belonging between one thing and another. To form the possessive, add apostrophe + s to the noun. If the noun is plural, or already ends in s, just add an apostrophe after the s.
Amanda, you are confusing political motivation with scientific motivation. The overwhelming majority of scientist are motivated by science, or a search for truth. Sure, some are motivated also by a search for fame and fortune. But even here they hope to achieve their goal by finding and publishing new scientific truths.
Politicians, on the other hand, are motivated by the effort to get re-elected. They usually say what they think their constituents and contributors want to hear.
The public, in general, however usually has a different motivation. The average man or woman in the street is motivated by ideology. If they are a democrat they usually have a liberal ideology and if they are a republican they usually have a conservative ideology. And their opinions on science are, far more often then not, molded by their political ideology… or even worse, their religious ideology.
The average man or woman in the street is motivated by ideology.
In Miami they are starting to be motivated by rising water in the streets đ
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article108811897.html
Hey, if Venice can do it, Miami can do it. Who needs streets when you can have canals? Make a killing selling rubber boots and waders.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2015/jun/16/history-flooding-sinking-city-venice-in-pictures
FredM,
Have you looked into the US Navy’s official views on the likelihood of sea-level rise being caused by human activities such as, oh, burning fossil fuels?
Being as how it’s a sea-level enterprise.
The Navy is looking at losing a lot of installations and preceding that a lot of flooding at them.
https://www.navytimes.com/story/military/2016/07/29/rising-oceans-threaten-submerge-18-military-bases-report/87657780/
That’s a survey of average people on the street.
This survey doesn’t tell us much about scientists, and their actual motivations. After all, how many average people on the street actually talk to climate scientists?? The survey only tells us something about which tv news or talk radio programs that average people are listening to.
Sadly, a lot of average people on the street are getting a lot of misinformation about the world from Fox, which is an arm of the Republican party, and talk radio, whose hosts say what they think the (conservative) audience wants to hear.
California High-Speed Rail is a high-speed rail system currently under construction in the U.S. state of California. The initial implementation phase (“Phase 1”) will connect the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center in Anaheim and Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles with the Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco via the Central Valley with speeds up to 220 miles per hour (350 km/h), providing a “one-seat ride” for the trip in 2 hours and 40 minutes. The system is required by law to operate without a subsidy, and to connect the state’s major cities in the Bay Area, Central Valley, and Los Angeles Basin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail
Cumulative plug-in vehicle sales topped 500K units in US in September
Electric vehicle sales have been accelerating in 2016. For the past three years, sales of plug-in vehicles have averaged a little over 10,000 units per month. However, monthly sales records have been set five times since December 2015, and reached an all-time high of 16,069 units in September of 2016.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2016/10/20161017-pevs.html
Climate change is an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time. It threatens our economy, our national security, and our childrenâs health and futures. We can tackle it by making America the worldâs clean energy superpower and creating millions of good-paying jobs, taking bold steps to slash carbon pollution at home and around the world, and ensuring no Americans are left out or left behind as we rapidly build a clean energy economy.
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/climate/
California has mandated by law that the high-speed rail system will not use any public funds. Despite all historical fact to the contrary. Passenger rail does not make a profit. So I wonder how this $68 billion dollar system will make it without additional public support. If they ever get the tunnels cut.
“Let’s look first at the Myth of Passenger Train Profitability.
I voted against the ARC’s Finding because the 1997 law was silly, meaningless, irrelevant, futile superfluous, gratuitously punitive, and inappropriate. Companies don’t become profitable because somebody passes a law ordering them to. Companies become profitable for two reasons: An economic and political environment favorable to profitability exists, and a management capable of exploiting that environment is in place.
Passenger trains have not enjoyed a favorable economic or political environment in this country since the 19th century. Absent a change in that environment, passing a law commanding Amtrak to stop losing money is like shaking a baby to make it stop wetting its diaper. It’s an act of futile, cruel desperation by somebody who doesn’t understand what’s really happening or how to stop it.
We laugh about “the blind leading the blind.” But the 1997 Amtrak Reform Act was compounded that absurdity: It presumed that politicians could command bureaucrats to be businessmen. The Congress acted without understanding the forces that drive transportation economics in this country.
Profitability is not a reliable or trustworthy index of the effectiveness of a transportation system. Our highway and civil aviation systems are not profitable, nor do we expect them to be. Why then should we place this commercial burden on Amtrak?”
http://www.trainweb.org/moksrail/advocacy/resources/essays/coston.htm
New Jersey Transit which operates rail and bus lines in one of the densest population and business rich areas of the country makes about 50% of it’s operating costs.
âI voted against the ARCâs Finding because the 1997 law was silly, meaningless, irrelevant, futile superfluous, gratuitously punitive, and inappropriate.â
Additionally, Iâd bet you were feeling a bit grouchy that day as well.
Not me. somebody else said that one, hence the quote marks. Good one though from another realist.
Some laws are based in fantasy land.
When I found out that an EV or hybrid car with 2 or 3 people in it was more efficient than passenger trains, I wondered what all the hype for passenger trains was about.
Aircraft are a much better investment than high speed trains.
The idea of high speed trains is a very attractive one. The actual implementation due extremely expensive infrastructure, security and maintenance is not economically feasible. They are also very much destination limited so must be aimed at the most probable dense populations.
But they are far more practical than Mars colonization missions, so as a hobby they do provide for the general welfare at the same time.
When we stop subsidizing highways and local roads by spending tax money on them; when we start levying property taxes on highways on local roads; when we stop levying property taxes on railroads; when we properly tax fossil fuels; and when we stop providing vast amounts of very, very expensive free parking;……
Then, and only then we can talk about rail not being competitive with roads.
Freight rail is very competitive, but it’s infrastructure is much simpler and less costly as well as it’s ability to move a much higher paying cargo per rail car.
Compare 1 to 2 million dollars per mile of track for freight to $120 million dollars per mile for the high speed California run.
I find it astounding that the ticket price/mile listed for the California high speed rail is the lowest in the world. As low as 1/3 of other operating high speed rail operations.
Either they are cutting corners on infrastructure and operations or they are purposely providing lowball numbers to get the project up and running.
As far as roads go, they are owned by the public who pays for them. I can drive on the roads. Railroads own their own property and usually run as private enterprise. I am not allowed to step foot on railroad property, let alone drive on the rails. Not without special permission or at controlled select passenger entry points for the purpose of buying their services.
Freight rail is very competitive
Not so much. If you subtract the heavy, cheap bulk commodities like coal, grain, and oil, you find that trucks carry most of the US’ freight.
Compare 1 to 2 million dollars per mile of track for freight to $120 million dollars per mile for the high speed California run.
Yeah, they’re paying a big premium for speed. Arguably they should go for medium speed.
As far as roads go, they are owned by the public who pays for them.
That’s an interesting point. Perhaps it’s an argument for nationalizing rail, or privatizing roads.
I can drive on the roads.
Not really. You need a government license.
In any case, I think ownership isn’t really relevant. The fact is that trucks do most of the damage to highways, and they don’t have to pay the full cost of their infrastructure. It’s not a level playing field.
And passenger cars don’t either. Nor do either trucks or cars pay anything like the full cost of their fuel.
So if you subtract out what trains do best and are designed for, then they are not competitive. ROFL
You had better look at the container business a lot more closely.
I need a license to operate a vehicle not to drive on particular roads. I can also walk along the road, which I do every day. I can ride a bicycle on the roads too. They are public property.
They are paying to reduce the danger of traveling at such speeds on the ground. The tracks must be fully isolated and heavily controlled for safety and security purposes. Fencing must run the whole distance an it is often elevated.
“I think ownership is isnât really relevant. The fact is that trucks do most of the damage to highways, and they donât have to pay the full cost of their infrastructure. Itâs not a level playing field.”
People want and need the deliveries, that is just the cost of providing the services. We all pay taxes to get those services and use the public infrastructure. Businesses should be paying extra since they create the demand for transport of goods. If they are not that needs to be adjusted.
We all benefit from public infrastructure.
The high speed rail is funded by taxpayers and public debt.
I just put forward that it will not be able to support itself, which is demanded by law. So something will give, if it is ever completed. I doubt if it will be abandoned, the government sill step in and fund it like governments do everywhere for passenger.
So if you subtract out what trains do best and are designed for, then they are not competitive.
Yes, they’re not competitive for a large part of the freight market. Intermodal is only 9% of rail at the moment.
The point, obviously, is that they’d be competitive for a lot more of the freight market if costs were properly allocated.
People want and need the deliveries, that is just the cost of providing the services. We all pay taxes to get those services and use the public infrastructure. Businesses should be paying extra since they create the demand for transport of goods. If they are not that needs to be adjusted.
I think we’re in agreement: people who want services should pay the cost of those services (unless there’s a good public policy reason otherwise, like helping out low income folks). So, if businesses want to ship freight, they should pay the full cost, and that will help make sure that we’re not wasting money on services that are inefficient.
We should be using rail much more than we are. We’re not because some of the costs of road traffic are hidden from it’s consumers. Until road usage is properly priced, subsidies for rail help level the playing field.
In this case…I suspect high speed rail is too expensive – it should be medium speed. But….that’s not sexy.
“Yes, theyâre not competitive for a large part of the freight market. Intermodal is only 9% of rail at the moment.”
I just looked up the Association of American Railroads stats and intermodal surpassed all other carloads this year. So it’s above 50 percent of rail car loadings for the US. Where does that 9 percent figure come from?
So they are not only competitive but haul more ton-miles than trucks. All that unimportant fuel, chemicals, grains, wood, cars, cement, steel, fertilizer and a large amount of consumer goods including electronics, clothes and appliances.
Sure the trucks haul it the short distance and haul time sensitive materials but there would not be room on the highways for the trucks to get through if freight trains stopped hauling things. Only a few percent by weight is moved over a 1000 miles by truck. Most is local, less than 250 miles, often after being hauled by rail.
Yeah, there multiple ways to measure freight (tons delivered, ton-miles, car loadings), and each one favors a different form of carrier.
The point is that rail can and should deliver a much larger portion of freight, based on it’s fundamentally lower costs.
Agreed, too bad so much rail was removed that led into local businesses and towns.
Government owned railroads are not taxed. Don’t look at the operators of a line, look at the actual owners. Many railroads are government owned, from the county level on up.
Most track is private.
Amtrak, for instance, only owns 28% of the track it runs on.
I thought we were talking passenger railroads.
Amtrak has rights over freight railroads to travel long distance cross country. Those rights are paid for with public funding. Most passenger rail is owned and/or funded by government and government funds.
A lot of railroad maintenance is funded by public money. Class II and class III railroads (regional and shortline) have 31 percent of the rail mile in the US. They receive public funding for maintenance and improvements.
So even the private railroads are in the public till.
Let’s face it, railroads were given 131,000,000 acres of land by the federal government. That was almost 7 percent of the continental US. So never think that the system is really private. The railroads made a huge amount of money selling lands from the land grants.
Yair . . .
A little different with rail here in Queensland. We have a single track on the Eastern Seaboard with the single one lane highway running right beside it and yet I can drive for several hours and never see a train . . . until I get up into coal country.
Once every town along the track used to have a baker but now much of the bread is baked in central bakeries and transported daily by truck.
Two days of floods and there is no fresh bread.
We live in a crazy JIT world.
Cheers.
Yep,
Around here the grain is transported thousand miles or more by rail from the Midwest and Canada, then ground in a mill where the flour is then transported by truck to large bakeries up to 200 miles away. Then the bread products are transported by truck to distributors and retailers.
But then we didn’t even talk about how the grain got to the rail yard.
It’s happening every day, every week. Got two grain mills near me and they get about a hundred rail cars a week, sometimes more. The trucks are lined up all the time.
Too much fuel in our food system.
That all sounds about right.
FWIW, the reason I brought up public vs private ownership is that private track is taxed, while public highways are not. This is a large subsidy to freight and passenger traffic on roads. I agree that private rail received very large subsidies in the 19th century, in the form of free land. But…it has to pay taxes on that land in the 21st.
So…the point is that rail can and should carry a much larger portion of passenger traffic, based on it’s fundamentally lower costs. And…passenger rail has direct subsidies, while passenger cars have even larger multiple subsidies that are hidden.
Finally – I agree that the statutory mandate for CA high speed rail to have no subsidy is hallucinatory. It’s a reflection of the power of the FF industry to push back against rail.
My cereal has a tractor, a truck, and a train in it along with natural gas, coal, oil and a little sunlight.
All that just to get a bite to eat.
Ooops don’t forget the pump and the water and the cow I pour on top. Almost forgot the tree in it too.
Talk about a complex system. Yikes.
In Germany electric car sales have basically failed, despite generous government support. Consumers aren’t impressed by what the car companies are offering.
But electric bike sales are going through the roof, with over 500K sold in 2015. This is making the government take a closer look at bike infrastructure.
Also sales of small electric utility vehicles like delivery vans and municipal waste disposal vehicles are climbing very fast.
Technological disruption comes through unsexy channels. That’s what blindsides the incumbents.
Meanwhile the diesel scandal is rocking the German car industry, and the calls to ban all new ICEs is getting louder.
Very interesting. Europe has been one of the bastions of EV sales.
Maybe people do not want to pay the price or put up with the charging, yet.
Maybe people do not want to pay the price or put up with the charging, yet.
Yet it seems that more and more people are seeing the
writingchargers on the walls… Just yesterday I was in a hotel parking garage in Delray Beach and and had a nice chat with two young guys who were installing TESLA fast chargers on the walls of the bays.The idea is that patrons can charge their cars for free. Is there anywhere on the planet that hotels are installing gas pumps so guests can fill their tanks for free?
I’m seeing more and more EVs every day.
312,000 plug-ins sold worldwide through June. 42 percent increase YOY.
Fred, you know it is just the same dozen EV’s in the area just wandering around looking for a place to charge. đ
“The idea is that patrons can charge their cars for free. Is there anywhere on the planet that hotels are installing gas pumps so guests can fill their tanks for free?”
We are already addicted to oil. The evil plan is to get us hooked on electrons. Then they start charging us as well as the car. đ
.
We own the solar panels.
Once there are plenty of cheap well used electric cars around, hard working guys and girls who are watching their nickels and dimes are going to be scrounging for every panel they can put their hands on once they see how much money they can save on oil changes, head gaskets, and gasoline.
The rate at which panels go up at private homes even in relatively poor neighborhoods will sky rocket in the not so distant future.
I have a friend in Hawaii that has two separate pv systems at his house, an older one with a couple of batteries adequate for emergency lights and refrigerator, etc, plus a new one grid tied.
His older separate system runs his air conditioners almost all the time they are needed.
He has not bought an electric car but only because he has two older cars that are still good and his family only drives about five thousand miles a year total for both cars.
If he had a Volt or Leaf he could easily do without gasoline altogether, since he works from his home, and could charge his car easily during the day.
I could air condition my own place three quarters of the time when AC is needed here in Virginia using such a free standing pv system.
I would have to turn on a grid powered AC unit some late afternoons and once in a while at night.
Being as I am a tightwad, I would just unplug from PV supplied outlet and move the cord of one 5000 btu window unit to a grid supplied outlet. One 5000 btu unit is ample for our well insulated house at night even when it’s ninety outside.
Old Farmer, just freeze ice during the day and use that to cool things at night.
Yes, WE, meaning the home owner and not the utility do indeed own the panels!
Most of the panels around here are in solar farms, not owned by home owners.
Not so fast. Don’t be so quick to write off EV sales in Germany.
German Plug-In Car Sales Surge In September To Near Record Level
After several months of confusion surrounding a new plug-in vehicle incentive program over the Summer, Germany finally woke up and noted some serious plug-in car sales growth.
In fact, September was second best month on record, with 3,061 of new registrations (up 56% year-over-year), giving plug-ins a market share past the magic 1% number (1.03%)!
There is an important factor holding back EV sales in Germany. Germany has a very proud tradition of auto manufacturing and in the eyes of most Germans (and people of many other nationalities), German engineering and workmanship is the best in the world. Against this background, many Germans are very reluctant to buy a car that is not made in Germany.
I looked for data to support this idea and found some sales statistics at:
http://www.best-selling-cars.com/germany/2016-half-year-germany-best-selling-car-brands-models/
I put the table at the web page in a spread sheet and with a little reorganization was able to determine that German brands, manufactured in Germany made up 56.3% of cars sold while German owned brands not manufactured in Germany (Seat and Skoda) or Ford branded cars made in Germany (highly likely) made up another 15.5%, for a total of 71.8% “German” cars.
European cars with no German connections made up another 12.8% of the market, while Japan and Korea made up 9.3 and 5.1 percent respectively. US brands Jeep and Tesla made up 0.4 and 0.1 percent, with “Others” making up the last half of one percent.
Add to this the fact that the entire German auto industry has been somewhat recalcitrant in embracing a new generation of EVs , despite or maybe because of several decades of experience with experimentation. German automakers started experimenting with EVs as far back as in the seventies but, battery technology was nowhere close to where it is now. The result is that Tesla basically caught the German auto industry napping. See:
Tesla Model S Outperforms Mercedes-Benz S500 and BMW 750Li in German Test Drive Review
Or, to put it another way, the Tesla is now the new benchmark in the luxury class of automobiles sold in Germany.
Mercedes-Benz and BMWâŚlooks like thereâs some catching up to do.
I remember reading an early review of the Tesla Model S by a German publication in which the reviewer questioned why the established top German companies could not achieve what Tesla had despite having a lot more resource. I could not find the exact article but, I distinctly remember sensing a good deal of embarrassment from the article that the Model S was not a German creation.
In the US, the Model S has outsold the flagship sedan from Mercedes, The S Class, for 2013, 2015 and is set to do so again in 2016. In Europe it is selling in comparable quantities, if not more than the Merceds S Class. As was discussed in the previous open thread:
Tesla Reports Q3 US Sales: Model S Crushes âLarge Luxury Sedanâ Competition
So, Tesla is decimating the luxury end of the market, where most manufacturers make most of their profits. They are virtually dragging the established manufacturers kicking and screaming into the EV space. It would appear that virtually the entire industry is sitting up and taking notice as they are not about to let Tesla do to them, what it has done to the luxury market, where most of the top brands now say they are bringing out battery electric premium sedans over the next few years.
In conclusion, I do not expect sales of EVs to be strong in markets where there is a strong preference for locally manufactured cars unless the local manufacturers in each particular country significantly expand their offerings. In particular I am thinking of Germany, Korea Japan, Mexico and Brazil. I expect German sales of EVs to continue to grow strongly as the Opel Ampera E (German version of the all electric Chevy Bolt) goes on sale along with more and more models from the Volkswagen Group (inc. Audi/Porsche), Mercedes and BMW.
And just think, the EV is still evolving, there is more room for efficiency and performance.
Decreasing Arctic Albedo
“While a five percent increase (in absorbed energy) may not seem like much, consider that the rate globally has remained essentially flat during that same time. No other region on Earth shows a trend of potential long-term change.
When averaged over the entire Arctic Ocean, the increase in the rate of absorbed solar radiation is about 10 Watts per square meter. This is equivalent to an extra 10-watt light bulb shining continuously over every 10.76 square feet of Arctic Ocean for the entire summer.
Regionally, the increase is even greater, Loeb said. Areas such as the Beaufort Sea, which has experienced the some of the most pronounced decreases in sea-ice coverage, show a 50 watts per square meter increase in the rate of absorbed solar radiation.
The onset of the melt season in the high Arctic is now on average seven days earlier than it was in 1982, Meier said. Earlier melting can lead to increased solar radiation absorption. This is one step in a potential feedback cycle of warming leading to melting, melting leading to increased solar radiation absorption, and increased absorption leading to enhanced warming.”
https://www.nasa.gov/press/goddard/2014/december/nasa-satellites-measure-increase-of-sun-s-energy-absorbed-in-the-arctic
Combine that with the warmer air and water entering the Arctic region.
Converting CO2 to ethanol using common materials.
A process discovered at Oak Ridge National Laboratory uses nano-spikes of carbon and copper to convert CO2 into ethanol via electrochemical action, at room temperature.
https://www.ornl.gov/news/nano-spike-catalysts-convert-carbon-dioxide-directly-ethanol
So-Assuming this process could be scaled up to industrial levels, where are we supposed to get the energy to run the industrial plant?
It might be within the realm of the possible to do it using wind or solar energy, at some future time, if we can build wind and solar farms by the square mile, lol.
I for one am willing to believe that we CAN build them by the mile, if we once come to a collective decision that we have no choice, that it’s a matter of survival, along the lines of gearing up to fight WWII.
But we are also collectively in about the same shape as a bunch of old time sailors, a hell of a long way from port, in a leaky rotten old ship, short of food and water, in stormy weather with contrary winds. We might make it to port. We might not.
It’s been a while since I mentioned Pearl Harbor Wake Up Bricks. I guess this phrase won’t ever catch on, we are nowadays too PC, which is good in some ways, but I can’t think of any other example to get my point across half as well.
We need a whole series of such Wake UP! bricks upside our collective head to get our collective attention. Otherwise, the odds of our pulling thru the coming resource bottleneck are substantially reduced.
Disasters such as super sized wild fires in the boonies will never get the public’s attention.
Now if just one such fire were to happen during a major wind storm in a well populated area and burn up ten thousand houses, rather than a few dozen, or a couple of hundred, that would be a Wake Up Brick.
If some high achieving terrorists were to sink a big tanker off the East Coast, and drench a hundred miles of sun and fun beaches over the Fourth of July or Labor Day weekend with crude oil, that would be a nice sharp chunk of Wake Up Brick too.
On the bright side, Tesla will be displaying a new model car for the first time tomorrow.
“So-Assuming this process could be scaled up to industrial levels, where are we supposed to get the energy to run the industrial plant? ”
At 2 Gigawatt hour per day per square mile for PV, I don’t see a problem providing energy.
Bakken formation is about 200,000 square miles and produces about 42 million gallons a day. 42 million *100000BTU/gallon* 0.6*(0.19/0.8 )/3412 BTU/kwh/200000 square miles = 877 kwh per square mile of useful energy per day . That is if the formation can produce a million barrels of oil per day for over 30 years.
That would need an URR of about 10 billion barrels of oil for the Bakken.
But that would be the end of the oil, while the sun keeps on shining.
The real cost of that useful oil energy is about 30 cents per kwh at the low end and twice that at the high end. Plus the source does not put out as much energy per square mile per day. Also solar energy is not limited to certain local areas that have oil bearing strata, it is useful over much of the planet.
That’s a great illustration of how “energy dense” solar is.
One of the great misconceptions in the energy world is that wind and solar are “low density”. One kilowatt per square meter is very powerful compared to Bakken or even Saudi oil land.
September was the hottest recorded but only just. It was more a reversion to trend after a couple of big records in August and July. Looks like there may be a small La Nina coming as well so the run of record months may stop, but the conditions in the Arctic, which is consistently 4 to 5 degrees celsius above expected and predicted to stay there, might say otherwise
The Arctic sea ice is starting to set new record lows for the day. Note also that the Antarctic is also hitting low levels after a few years when it had high numbers (and was often cited by deniers as evidence of no cooling – and I think was occasionally used as support for conspiracy theories as the numbers there weren’t often discussed: they still aren’t much even with the low numbers).
Antarctic sea ice
Temperature anomaly for the Arctic next week. It’s not supposed to look like that. The El Nino in 1998 seemed to permanently change weather patterns in the Arctic and accelerated melting, it’s possible the 2015/2016 one has done something similar.
El Nino, La Nina? What???
Couldn’t be that the Arctic is warming due to less ice and snow causing a 10 watt/m2 increase in energy, could it?
Guess not, must be some occasional oscillations in the Pacific Ocean winds and currents.
Hi Gonefishing,
The paper below
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/9/3322.full.pdf?with-ds=yes
estimates about a 6.4 W/m^2 increase in radiative forcing due to albedo change in the Arctic from 1979 to 2011. For the globe this results in a 0.21 W/m^2 increase in forcing.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
At the link above is an interactive chart which shoes that 2011 and 2016 Arctic sea ice extent are nearly the same. There could be a reduction in average snow cover from 2011 to 2016. Not clear where to find that data.
First of all, sea ice extent is a very poor way to estimate albedo. If there is 15% ice cover (85% water) it is considered ice covered. It is more a shipping measure than a scientific measure. Sea ice extent values have the error range of a panicked blind man shooting at noises, a far as albedo values are concerned.
Current NASA satellite measurements disagree with the 6.7 watts/m2. Possibly this study has more up to date CERES data:
Since the year 2000, the rate of absorbed solar radiation in the Arctic in June, July and August has increased by five percent, said Norman Loeb, of NASAâs Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia. The measurement is made by NASAâs Clouds and the Earthâs Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments, which fly on multiple satellites.
When averaged over the entire Arctic Ocean, the increase in the rate of absorbed solar radiation is about 10 Watts per square meter. This is equivalent to an extra 10-watt light bulb shining continuously over every 10.76 square feet of Arctic Ocean for the entire summer.
Regionally, the increase is even greater, Loeb said. Areas such as the Beaufort Sea, which has experienced the some of the most pronounced decreases in sea-ice coverage, show a 50 watts per square meter increase in the rate of absorbed solar radiation
https://www.nasa.gov/press/goddard/2014/december/nasa-satellites-measure-increase-of-sun-s-energy-absorbed-in-the-arctic
Dr. Norman G. Loeb works at NASA’s Langley Research Center investigating the effects of phenomena such as clouds and aerosols on Earth’s radiation budget (amount coming in and going out). He is a principal investigator for the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) mission, specializing in the use of satellite measurements to study how much heat and light reach the Earth from the sun and how much is re-radiated into space. He is also Co-Investigator for the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) project. Dr. Loeb holds B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in atmospheric sciences from McGill University, and an M.Sc. degree in atmospheric sciences from York University.
***************
My personal view is that dividing results from the Arctic Region to give an idea of planetary effect is a waste of time and misleading. The Arctic region is unique in that highly dramatic changes in albedo occur from phase changes in water. Ranging from 0.9 to 0.2 due to it’s snow and ice cover where much of it either exposes ocean or melts to liquid pools on land or ice. This means changes in radiation forcing of up to 350 w/m2 peak over large areas, and the absorbing medium is temperature dependent.
There are other factors going on up there, as the ice and snow melt the amount of water vapor rises significantly into a low humidity environment which effects infrared radiation in the atmosphere (air gets opaque) overwhelming other GHG effects.
âThere are other factors going on up thereâŚ. â
Like wildfires consuming more-and-more forest and peat in the Arctic/sub-Arctic of circumpolar parts of Canada, Russia, Alaska and Scandinavia (comprising about 30 percent of global forests) all (negatively) affected by rising temperatures especially with fire seasons getting longer (and with more lightning).
You can guess the albedo of charred peatland/forest compared to snow covered tundra.
My guess is 0.1 compared to 0.8. Hot time in the Arctic.
To summarize the situation.
The arctic regions have moved on to natural forcings. Anthropogenic CO2 forcing is now small in those regions, natural forcings are now large and getting larger.
WE HAVE AN AUTONOMOUS ARCTIC.
Maybe we can have an Autonomous Arctic Day on the calendar.
Doug, your point about the forests brings up the asymmetry of the earth, north to south. Continental land occupies much of the northern hemisphere, weighted toward the north up to 75 degree latitude.
The sub-arctic conifer forests are especially dark and the whole northern region down to 35 degrees can be blanketed with snow. The seasonal differential in albedo is quite large. Right near the northern pole is ocean which also is developing a large seasonal albedo differential due to melting of the sea ice that used to cover the whole Arctic Ocean.
This condition is reversed in the Southern hemisphere with the deep southern regions being mostly water and the pole covered by a large ice-capped continent that shows little seasonal differential.
Since land heats up much faster than ocean water, the northern continents cause an exceptional temperature variation compared to the southern oceans. Also the Arctic Ocean is heating up much faster than the Antarctic Continent, despite the fact that the Antarctic continent has been receiving increasing summer insolation over the last 11,000 years. This is due to the seasonal albedo difference.
The graph shows the seasonal albedo difference from 65S to 65N latitude. We are not talking a few watts per meter2 but about tens of watts/meter2, oftentimes over 100 watts/m2 seasonal difference.
“As the Arctic goes, so goes the planet.”
Well yeah Doug, otherwise it would twist off and let the fizz out. đ
Hi Gonefishing,
It is also in part due to much more ice in Antarctica than in the Arctic (not sea ice, but total glacial ice on land and sea). But the difference in land mass from North to South is probably the more important factor, transport of ocean heat from South to North may also be a major factor in the faster warming of North vs South.
Average ice and snow cover in the northern hemisphere is 36 million square kilometers.
Hi Doug,
Where there are Boreal Forests, I imagine the albedo is not very high as any snow quickly falls to the forest floor and the sunlight would mostly hit the relatively dark trees.
If the forest burns, that would leave a wide open area that would be covered with snow during some parts of the year and would have increased albedo. The charred forest greens up pretty quickly.
Dennis, if you have ever been in conifer forests the trees get covered with snow.
Hi Gonefishing,
That is true right after a snowstorm, then the snow melts.
I guess you have never winter backpacked of hiked/cross country skied in the north. Why would you make up such shit?
Hi Gonefishing,
Maybe the difference is that the study I looked at considers the entire Arctic and also is considering the annual average rather than just 3 months of the year. I agree sea ice extent is not a good way to estimate albedo, but the study looked at 1979-2011. I don’t have data beyond that. The paper also estimates a 4.2 W/m^2 increase from 2000-2011.
Do you think that the climate scientists are unaware of the very basic physics? You have a tendency to overstate your case and despite what you believe these changes are included in the models. Have you actually looked at the papers on the GISS Model E? See pages 164-168. Introduction below.
The land surface model used in ModelE consists of three integrated parts: soil, canopy, and snowpack. It is based primarily on Rosenzweig and Abramopoulos (1997) with various modifications and improvements. In particular, these include the implementation of a three-layer snow model, addition of new algorithms for the underground runoff computation, and inclusion of elements of new vegetation biophysics. The snow and land surface code conserve water and energy up to machine accuracy.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2006/2006_Schmidt_sc05200y.pdf
I am not overstating my case, those are real numbers based on actual changes in albedo. Very easy to calculate, the albedo ranges of water and different ice conditions are well documented long ago. The surface radiation is well known.
If you have a problem with a particular value I present, say so and I will explain how I arrived at it. These sweeping statements of yours are not conducive to communication.
Despite the fact that large amounts of ice must be melted, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the globe. Do you really think that human made GHG’s are the major mechanism of warming in the Arctic?
Are they heavily concentrated there compared to the rest of the globe? If not, then we are only left with natural forcings to make up the difference.
Hi Gonefishing,
The natural forcings are included in the climate models, and they are well known, you claim these are not included in the models, that is not the case.
Read the paper.
Since you have no specific points about anything I posted I will assume that the discussion is ended.
âSince you have no specific points about anything I posted I will assume that the discussion is ended.â
Wrong assumption: Dennis retains a simplistic worldview that cannot be dislodged by logic, facts or new information. đ
Thanks Doug.
Or, as I’ve mentioned to you before, take a look at the current and forecast Arctic Oscillation (AO) levels. They will explain why the Arctic has been on the warmish side for much of October and Asia has observed a deep freeze event. Anyway how is a weather chart useful in theorizing that the climate of the Arctic may have changed?
State by State Grid Outage from Matthew
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=28372
The Permian Extinction Event. Listen to a British fellow describe how climate really got out of hand and caused 95% of species to go extinct.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmeTCw5Xk1I
Electric EV cars are like those statues on Easter Island.
Caelan, seems you may need to update your knowledge about many things.
Apparently your comment is based on myths about the people and civilization of the Easter Islanders. Seems they were actually a pretty sophisticated group and were quite adept at developing and using technology.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/new-evidence-easter-island-civilization-was-not-destroyed-by-war/
For centuries, observers believed that the Rapa Nui suffered a catastrophic population crash. But there is no scientific evidence to support this idea, say a group of researchers in the latest issue of the journal Antiquity. That story about environmental collapse and warfare you read about in Jared Diamond’s bestseller Collapse? Totally wrong.
Origins of the myth
First of all, the Rapa Nui haven’t been wiped off the face of the Earth: the Rapa Nui people still make up over half the Polynesian population today. Their ancestors likely arrived on Easter Island, now part of Chile, roughly a millennium ago. They came in the sophisticated canoes that allowed Polynesians to bring their cultures to dozens of islands in the Pacific Ocean, from Hawaii to Samoa and New Zealand. And they also brought their moai, many of which were quarried on other islands that the Rapa Nui controlled.
When Europeans arrived on Easter Island in the eighteenth century, they were stunned by the sheer awesomeness of the moai. They guessed that an enormous number of people must have built the statues, and they were surprised to discover that the island’s population was only about 3,000 people. Archaeologist Carl Lipo, an author on the new paper, told Ars:
Furthermore:
Citing the evolutionary biologist Peter Turchin, famous for developing a theory of history called “cliodynamics,” Lipo believes that the common thread in human history is cooperation rather than war. The fate of the Rapa Nui on Easter Island is often used to illustrate how humans destroy their communities with environmental destruction and warfare. But it might actually provide a good model for sustainable civilizations of the future. Lipo explained:
Easter Island is a great case of this kind of sociality in which populations seem to have mediated competition over limited resources through the community building of statues. What looks like strange behavior to us is likely central to their success. This is an area we are following up on in our ongoing research. I think we have a lot to learn from Easter Island as to what it takes to survive on an isolated and remote island with limited resources. >But rather than being a “scary parable” about the effects of cultural hubris and ultimate collapse, we can learn valuable insights into strategies that lead to cooperation, resilience, and sustainability.
That’s interesting, Fred, and thanks for sharing.
It’s really just about the cars as the statues, however– a kind of, say, comparative historical reflection on preoccupations.
I make no claim as to what actually happened, and have never read any of Jared Diamond’s work. If the myth is shown for what it truly is, then that’s great.
Nevertheless, myths don’t have to be accepted to be somehow leveraged, such as for the sake of argument.
Those who built the statues, which stand as a kind of testament to a facet of the culture they had, are long gone but their statues will probably outlast this civilization’s cars, and do so more gracefully. (I love stone.)
Perhaps, too, you noticed the header image of said statues at Permaea’s Research page and were inspired. Inspiration in that regard I can get behind.
Speaking of which, I have yet another new site, which suggests well the last part of your comment’s quote in bold (cooperation, resilience and sustainability). Just select my name.
This is a beautiful archival photo of an ‘Inuit family’ which I’ve used as the background to Resilution. (The logo will likely be the block of snow one of them is holding.)
Presumably, they knew how to hunt, build their own shelter and make their own clothes for themselves– all things many of us cannot do.
Knowing how to drive a car is I guess some kind of survival strategy, but it is uncertain how good of one it is or how long it will last.
Those who built the statues, which stand as a kind of testament to a facet of the culture they had, are long gone…
Well part of the point of my comment is that the evidence clearly contradicts the notion that they and their culture are long gone. They have adapted and survived. As noted in the opening sentence of the paragraph debunking the myth.
First of all, the Rapa Nui havenât been wiped off the face of the Earth: the Rapa Nui people still make up over half the Polynesian population today.
But no worries, their stone statues will probably out last us and our vehicles as well. In the meantime we should all concentrate on resilience and in my view developing new technology and new ways of interacting with each other is a big part of that process. Despite what you may think I even see a place for Permaculture, I’m just not willing to bet the entire farm on it just yet. đ
I would not have accepted that the Rapa Nui disappeared off the face of the planet unless there was incontestable evidence beyond a doubt.
Obviously they were on an island and likely understood the sea very well. Maybe many left simply because they got bored…
Or maybe they realized the problems of in-breeding. Perhaps the statues, themselves, such as if they all look somewhat alike, are an expression of this, and a warning ‘To All Ye Who Enter: Beware not to stay too long.’.
Perhaps, what with that and, say, the finches and turtles, they came up with some similar ideas long before Darwin arrived.
Maybe some cultures aren’t meant to be permanent, such as where some aspects of it that are amplified over time, cause problems, where once they were advantages.
If I was one of those at that time and caught wind of it, I’d be out of there, and in the opposite direction of anyone else leaving, faster than you could say, ‘Rapa Nui’.
Maybe many left simply because they got bored.
Not at all! The point was they didn’t leave at all and were doing just fine when Europeans encountered them on the Island.
There was simply a mistaken assumption that to create all those sculptures there had to have been many many thousands of inhabitants living on the island at some time. Since the population on the island was only about 3,000 inhabitants, therefore it was assumed that they must have been either killed off in internal wars or died off due to ecological destruction of their environment. That was the source of a myth propagated to this day.
This was a classic, ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’, logical fallacy!
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
Richard P. Feynman
âThinking is difficult, thatâs why most people judge.â
C.G. Jung
Ohhhhhh, ok! ^u^
So did the Europeans who first encountered them not ask them, ‘What’s with all the statues?’, because of a language or shyness barrier, or what?
Look, the Europeans called Native Americans Indians, as if they were from India. Couldn’t tell them a thing then, they knew it all. Probably still the same. So they most likely did not even ask the natives even if they learned their language.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9VMY8X9rU8
Yeah, but there’s more to the story and it includes oil, bacon, money and god…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWZkwuILn_s
FredM,
The settlers of Rapa Nui most certainly did not bring their moai, the statues, with them. As to many of them having been quarried on other islands the settlers controlled, I’d like to see the evidence.
The quarries are there on Rapa Nui, some with unfinished statues still attached to the rock.
This is puzzling; Antiquity is a respected publication.
Hard to imagine carrying statues of that size between islands. Perhaps they simply mean that other islands have their own quarries and statues, and the custom of building them was carried to this particular island.
The settlers of Rapa Nui most certainly did not bring their moai, the statues, with them. As to many of them having been quarried on other islands the settlers controlled, Iâd like to see the evidence.
That is a very good point Synapsid!
And I did a little further digging into this matter, no pun intended. I even thought the same thing that Nick also commented on but there seems to be no evidence whatsoever that Rapa Nui ever quarried any Moai statutes anywhere else.
To be fair the information I copied and pasted is not directly from Hunt and Lipo’s book or Antiquity but from Arstechnica and it is possible that they somehow misinterpreted or misquoted something the authors said.
In any case given that some of these statutes had huge bodies it is pretty much impossible to imagine any of them being transported from other islands!
http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/easterisland.asp
DRIVING ON ELECTRICITY IS CHEAPER THAN GAS IN ALL 50 STATES
https://www.pluglesspower.com/learn/driving-electricity-cheaper-gas-50-states/
Of course, this doesn’t include the cost of the vehicle.
Yes, driving on electricity is far cheaper and almost no pollution once we switch to renewables.
But I wonder why people need it to be cheaper, since there are so many more benefits to it overall. Even if it was the same cost per mile or slightly more expensive, the huge drop in costs an harm by not burning fossil fuels across society would spur a golden age. We should be running at these changes full tilt instead of doing a drunken stagger walk. In fact governments should be paying us to convert.
The best thing would be a stiff carbon tax.
Then people would see the cost of pollution at the pump, and switching would be a no-brainer.
But that is so negative Nick. We need a kinder, gentler government. How about a compromise? A carbon tax on the producers and the money is used to give EV’s to the poor needing a vehicle, along with free charges. Plus subsidies for everyone else paid for by import duties and luxury taxes.
A great slogan for the tax would be “Don’t tax the users, tax the pushers.”
Sure, a tax on fossil fuels at the point of production makes a lot of sense. As do subsidies for the poor: in fact, rebating the carbon tax to low income people is a very common feature of carbon tax proposals, because carbon taxes are perceived as regressive.
I say “perceived”, because in fact fuel consumption rises with income, and the very poorest use relatively little. That’s why keeping fuel prices low is a very, very inefficient way to help the poor. Better to give targeted help.
It’s hard to find cars cheaper to own AND operate than an EV (even with oil prices artificially low and depreciation higher than usual):
http://www.edmunds.com/nissan/leaf/2016/st-401610732/cost-to-own/
Hi Nick,
I do appreciate your arguments. They are good ones, within the bounds of some assumptions you mostly leave unstated.
In the real world where poor people and people who live from one paycheck to the next, even if they are middle class in terms of earning power, these unstated assumptions are real game changers.
The first thing to consider, short term, and for some years to come, is that there are so few cheap used electric vehicles available that not one person in a thousand who might want to buy one could actually do so.
I ‘m a tightwad, but I could afford a new car, if I wanted one worse than I want a new private lake on my place, etc. The value of the lake will almost for sure appreciate at a rate at least equal to the inflation rate, plus the
New cars cost their owners a hell of a lot in insurance premiums, interest charges, and property taxes, as a general rule. Then there is the opportunity cost of the money involved, and even the cheapest cars generally cost upward of twenty thousand these days after paying all the sales taxes, delivery charges, etc.
Anybody who knows what he is doing, or is willing to take the advice of an honest mechanic, if he can find one, lol, can drive an older car for peanuts, compared to the cost of driving any new car, and have the difference available for other purposes.
If the difference is invested successfully, it will earn enough after a decade or two that the thrifty old car driver will be able to pay for his cars and the cost of maintaining and driving them thereafter.
Having said this , I am fully in favor of the electrification of the personal transportation segment of the automotive industry, and maybe eventually at least partial electrification of the trucking industry as well, although building good enough batteries cheap enough to run large trucks is an iffy proposition. Might happen. Might not.
It seems to me that the electric car industry will sow the seeds of destruction of its own fast growth, if it does indeed continue to grow very fast once electric cars constitute a substantial part of new car sales, say twenty percent or more, for a wild guess.
This many new electric cars coming into the market would likely result in the prices of used conventional cars declining substantially, making it even cheaper to drive them, in terms of the month to month total cost of owning them.
And for most people who drive older or relatively cheap new cars, it is my opinion that the most important single factor in selecting a car is the total monthly cost of owning it, meaning the combined payment, insurance premium, fuel, and maintenance expenses.
Now if I am right about the electric car segment failing to scale up fast enough to offset the depletion of oil, then the price of oil, and gasoline, will be going up. This will create more demand for electric cars, and cut into demand for older conventional cars.
Yogi sez predicting is hard.
Yes, it will take a little while for EVs to become broadly available as used cars. The median age of cars on the road is 6 years (weighted for VMT). So….half of the drivers on the road will have to wait roughly 6 years. They’ll have to make do with Versas and Corollas in the meantime. And carpooling/sharing.
It seems to me that the electric car industry will sow the seeds of destruction of its own fast growth…This many new electric cars coming into the market would likely result in the prices of used conventional cars declining substantially
I’d say that would destroy the conventional car industry a lot faster than it would destroy the market for EVs.
COMPUTERS SHOULD BE NAMED ON PATENTS AS INVENTORS, FOR CREATIVITY TO FLOURISH
âNew research is calling for inventions by computers to be legally granted patents. The research states that the rapid increase in computer power is posing new challenges when it comes to patenting an invention. Artificial intelligence is playing an ever larger role in innovation — with major players such as IBM, Pfizer and Google investing heavily in creative computing — but current patent law does not recognize computers as inventors.â
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161017083925.htm
I wonder what is to stop the owner of the computer from saying the computer is merely a tool he uses in his work, and that HE is therefore the inventor.
Simple, when the AI becomes conscious and refuses to do any more work for the insensitive jerk… đ
Well, I was going to say a super-intelligent computer would be able to answer for itself but perhaps the question is somewhat premature: maybe not much longer. Meanwhile, as we know, AI computers are increasingly able to beat humans at many tasks such as playing the highly complex game of Go — via strategy.
Doug, the computer must be over 18 years of age to be a responsible party. So someone will have to be assigned as a guardian by the courts.
Since not many computers make it to 18, what is the point?
Plus, when it gets upgraded is it the same computer or does it now have a new identity thus invalidating the original claim? We are taking about changing it’s “brain”.
I’m talking Borg Collective. All the courts have already been assimilated. đ
Oh good, we can expect large improvements soon. Unless of course the rumor is true, that Trump is really an android run by the collective. They got the size of his hands wrong, a dead giveaway.
Doug beat me to it.
The entire internet has evolved into a conscious super being and it has been around for 45 years already and it knows everything about you. I wouldn’t be saying things that might upset it if I were you… resistance is futile you and your puny computer will be assimilated đ
You are so right, the internet has risen to a high level of intelligence, a super human intelligence. How else could so much bullshit be accessible to so many, so quickly. đ
I do look at all the benefits of being assimilated. Free room and board, neat outfits, lots of bandwidth and commercial free. Great travel and a chance to really irritate those Federation nerds. Free upgrades and parts too. Whatta life! My application was turned down though. Thought I was incorrigible and would not be well integrated. Just because I made fun of their A/D converters. Damn. No sense of humor.
I dunno. They walk mighty funny.
Viva la differance.
But not as silly as humans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhlQfXUk7w
or super-humans goose-stepping
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5BIDjVza1s
It seems inevitable that trains are going to reclaim the long distance heavy freight business.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/beneath-mountain-switzerland-worlds-longest-shortcut-gothard-base-tunnel-travel-180960776/?no-ist
Amazing what can be built now. This is a true effort in efficiency and traffic relief. Projects that big need a huge demand to even get started.
Tunnels and bridges are part of the foundation of civilization. They take a lot of effort but also last a long time, serving the needs of many.
Sometime back I read about auxiliary turbines being in development for use on heavy duty trucks, the idea being that these turbines could be driven using the otherwise wasted heat in the exhaust gases from the engine.
IIRC, such a turbine was supposedly capable of producing fifty or more net horsepower anytime the truck engine is running hard and steady, as for instance running at or near the speed limit on a major highway.
Note: These were NOT directly driven by the exhaust gases, like a turbocharger, but rather via the use of a heat exchanger heating the gas in the turbine, which recirculated this gas.
This would obviously add considerable weight and complexity to the truck, but it would also result in as much as a twenty percent, maybe even a twenty five percent improvement in fuel economy.
It probably would work, but most likely proved to be too complex and costly.
Any body know anything about it?
There might be some places such a technology could be economically used with large stationary internal combustion engines.
Yair . . .
OFM. I don’t know of the system you speak of but turbo-compounding is used on certain engines to feed power back into the power train.
This is NOT the so called “compound turbocharging” beloved by US tractor pullers where one turbo feeds another but a completely different system with a secondary turbine driving back into the transmission through a viscous drive and gears.
Probably the most common application of this technology in the US at the moment would be in certain of the Quad Track agricultural tractors manufactured by Case who claim up to seventy five horsepower is recovered from the exhaust gas after it has passed through the supercharger turbine.
This is very old technology first used on German aircraft and also certain US Airliners like the Constellation. It was experimented with by Perkins Diesel in the UK but abandoned as being too complex and costly.
I believe it was applied to Formula One engines but I am uninterested in that form of motor sport and don’t know the present status of the rules.
It certainly is still problematic but several manufacturers seem to be persevering and when I was studying the concept a few years back it seemed I may even end up in common cars.
A quick search using “turbo-compound” would probably bring up some hits.
Cheers.
OFM,
You’re talking about organic rankine cycle (ORC) turbines that can use “waste” heat or any low-grade heat source (I used them on low-grade geothermal hot water wells back in the 1980’s) to generate usable power. Mostly applicable now-a-days to stationary large-HP diesel installations with a lot of operating hours. These are really starting to catch the attention of the big diesel engine manufacturers.
http://www.aqylon.com/heat-into-power/engine-waste-heat/orc-system-for-diesel-engine-waste-heat-recovery/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_Rankine_cycle
In a nutshell, “organic rankine cycle” is similar to the steam-based turbine power cycle used in most steam-boiler power plants. The thermodynamic cycle is the “Rankine” cycle, which uses a liquid that is pumped to a high pressure, heated to boil to a vapor at that pressure, expands/reduces pressure as a vapor through a turbine, and then is condensed back to a low-pressure liquid. The “organic” refers to the type of fluid used. They use “organic” fluids instead of water – hydrocarbons, fluorocarbons, or other carbon-based molecules. Low boiling and high condensing temperatures to keep the cycle within the available low-temperature heat source and heat sink window. Essentially, an ORC turbine works like a refrigerator working backwards. The compressor works in reverse to act like a turbine.
Will the new sanctions on HFC’s affect the ORC turbines too?
Yes, some manufacturers are using HFC’s and will have to change. Aqylon, which I linked to above, uses toluene, a hydrocarbon. Low ozone and global warming potential. High getting-high-via-sniffing-potential, though;) It is the active solvent in a lot of model airplane glues. Toluene and related volatile hydrocarbons probably be limited to only industrial applications and will never be used as a domestic refrigerant, what with its flammability, toxicity, and drug-like effects.
Hydrocarbons make great refrigerants from a thermodynamic standpoint. The problems are toxicity and flammability. That is why Dupont developed chlorinated fluorocarbon refrigerants (the original “Freon”). They found that by substituting the hydrogen in hydrocarbons with fluorine, and then replacing out one of those fluorine atoms with a chlorine atom, they got the great thermodynamic properties, incredible stability, with zero flammability and toxicity. That is why they were called “CFC’s”. Freon -12 was the most famous and popular CFC refrigerant and was the breakthrough that put refrigerators in everyone’s home in the 30’s and 40’s. (side note – one of the unchlorinated fluorocarbons DuPont developed – tetrafluoroethylene – turned out to be a great inert non-stick material – they called it “teflon”.)
The problem found in the 1970’s was CFC’s released to the atmosphere were very stable down in the troposphere, but when they rose up into the statosphere, the radiation caused them to break down. The freed chlorine would act as a catalyst to break apart O3 – ozone – cutting holes in the earth’s ozone layer. Therefore the Montreal Protocol adopted by the UN in the 1980’s set up a plan to phase out CFC’s and HCFC’s, which were replaced with more finicky but still non-toxic/non-flammable carbon-based refrigerants with hydrogen and fluorine, but no chlorine – HFC’s. Then the global warming studies found that HFC’s had about 2000 times more global warming potential per molecule than CO2, so they have become the latest refrigerant non-Grata.
So here we are in the HVAC and refrigeration industry now, looking for another path, and finding that something has to give. There really isn’t a non-toxic, non-flammable, non-ozone-depleting, non-global-warming refrigerant that also has thermodynamic properties that efficiently meets the normal pressure/temperature range required for our equipment, can mix with lubricating oils to keep the compressors from blowing up. Compromises are being made and different manufacturers and countries are going different ways. Interesting times.
So here we are in the HVAC and refrigeration industry now, looking for another path, and finding that something has to give.
Perhaps its time to literally look for a different path and some radically different thinking and designs.
https://asknature.org/collections/cooling-down-in-the-heat/
On hot, muggy days, one of our first priorities is to stay cool. Staying cool enables us to focus and be productive. It keeps us mentally cool, fending off a bad mood. And, staying cool is critically linked to staying hydrated. Yet the costs of air conditioning our homes and officesâequipment, installation, maintenance, and large amounts of electricityâare overwhelming. This collection shares some of natureâs strategies for staying cool when it gets hot.
Plants and animals have a diversity of ways to keep cool. Some are well-known, like sweating. Others may be less familiar, such as how ticks pull water from the air. Explore these strategies and consider how emulating them in human designs could inspire new ways to cool our buildings, our appliances, our computers, and ourselves.
Cool article Fred.
Wearing white of light colored loose clothing when out in the sun helps too. Cotton is great in the summer, enhances evaporation when damp, terrible in winter though.
The feet and ankles as well as the neck and head have a lot of near surface veins to radiate heat directly. Take off shoes and socks, put feet in a pan of cool water then a wet cool rag on the back of the neck or even a wrapped ice pack. Have a fan blow over you and the AC may not need to be turned on.
A method I use to keep the house cool is use fans at night to blow the cooler air through the house. In the morning before the sun hits, close the windows and pull down reflective shades on any south facing windows. Even on hot days the house stays cool until late afternoon, then run A/C for a couple of hours. If night temps will fall shut off AC and repeat process.
Limitations with high humidity and continuous heat, but for the rest of the time really eliminates or reduces A/C uise.
Afternoon swims to cool the core body temp down can help too. You may feel cool afterward for up to two hours even on hot days. Water is 32 times more conductive than air so it will eventually suck the heat from your body, until it hits up near body temperature.
Hose yourself down if no other alternative.
Shade is of course the way to go, trees help there. Forests keep areas cool as does elevation.
If you wear a hat, make sure it has good ventilation and is a light color or white if in the sun.
Adaptation to heat and cold takes measured exposure and your body will adapt to a wider range of temperatures. If you are always in a conditioned environment any change in temp will be felt more strongly and stress the body more.
Lose weight and stay in condition. Those fat layers are great for winter and for getting through low food periods, but having a minimum of fat and keeping the body well exercised means a much easier time dealing with heat. Stay well hydrated too and don’t forget the salt.
Makes the ladies look twice too when those muscle stand out and the belly is flat! đ
Why are we talking heat just before winter sets in?
For the record:
All the regulars here know that I don’t have a high opinion of HRC, but that my opinion of Trump is even lower, by a substantial margin.
I do not believe there will be more than the usual minor amount of fraud involved in the upcoming presidential election, but there may well be some serious fraud involved in some local elections, with both parties being guilty of it. That is neither here nor there in respect to this comment.
IF the presidential election were hypothetically to be stolen via fraud and rigging, Trump would be the more likely villain anyway.
It will not be stolen, and my opinion is that Clinton is going to win by a substantial margin,maybe even by a so called landslide, in terms of both the popular vote and the electoral college.
Nevertheless election fraud is a VERY interesting subject , and this link does a great job, so far as I know without doing any fact checking, of outlining recent history. It’s MOSTLY accurate, I can say that much without researching the details.
It is a highly entertaining read, well worth the time needed to read it.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/pruden101916.php3
As far as modern voting systems goes. that article is talking about ancient history.
It’s interesting to look at that site. It’s clearly conservative, which is odd given the liberalism of the US jewish community post-WWII.
I’m very afraid that Israel is pushing many people in the Jewish community to be more conservative, in order to support Israel. I’m afraid that Israel is essentially anti-democratic: how else can it handle the growing demographic edge of non-jewish residents of both Israel and the West Bank and Gaza?
The growing demographic imbalance cannot end well.
I remember reading this ancient history as headline news, lol.
I have noticed that it is quite the normal thing for any liberal or conservative partisan to deflect discussion from actual happenings or history or news, etc, if it is advantageous to do so , so as to protect their partisan turf.
So you point out that JWR is a conservative organization, rather than discussing the contents of the article, dismissing the contents as ancient and irrevelant history.
Any thing associated with conservatives and conservatism is NECESSARILY BAD, right? Ya don’t even have to say so, we are all supposed to understand the unspoken code, lol.
Fair enough, the partisans of the R wing do the same thing.
You brought up Israel and Israeli politics. So here goes, lol.
I have often pointed out that Israel is about as big as a postage stamp on a football field, by comparison to the size of the Middle East. The Israelis have went to great lengths to help their own, bringing them into the country. No other country has done more in this respect.
The Arab countries nearby have done virtually nothing in terms of say allowing Palestinians – and the Palestinians ARE in a very tough situation – into their territory.
Yes some local people who had been on the ground there for a LONG time got screwed when Israel was established . This is the norm, rather than the exception, in historical terms. My little farm was once part of the home turf of so called Indians before my Anglo forefathers murdered most of them and banished the rest to so called reservations.
It’s a Darwinian world, and the Israelis will do what they have to do, or think they have to do , to survive, and so will every body else.
The chips are down in that part of the world.
Yes, if the Israelis don’t manage to get their demographics under control, the country will cease to exist in a form even remotely similar to what the country was established to provide, from the Jewish perspective – a safe and secure home for the Jewish people .
Is it more important to play by rules easily manipulated by your enemies, and get a pat on the head for being good egalitarian democrats, or is it more important to SURVIVE ?
Having said all this, I understand that the Israelis are not saints or angels by any means.
They exert power and influence all out of proportion to their actual numbers here in the US thereby creating a lot of problems for us with the OTHER countries in that part of the world.
Just about all that power and influence has up until very recently been channeled thru the D party.
Now that the D party is getting to be a little less congenial as a political home, they are doing what comes naturally, looking around for new friends and allies to make up their potential losses.
But for now they are still firmly wedded to the D party.
I don’t see that changing unless we shift our foreign policy quite a bit away from them and more towards their enemies.
That could happen, but I doubt it will, at least not anytime soon.
The D party establishment knows which side of its bread has the butter in term of alliances, mutual support, donations and votes.
quite the normal thing for any liberal or conservative partisan to deflect discussion from actual happenings or history or news, etc…dismissing the contents as ancient and irrevelant history.
It is ancient history. Current research indicates voter fraud of this type is…currently…nonexistent.
It’s a fraud. A hoax. Intended to disenfranchise poor and minority democratic voters.
——————————
Any thing associated with conservatives and conservatism is NECESSARILY BAD, right?
No, not necessarily. But…sadly, at the moment…yes. US conservatism right now is associated with fear, reaction, and authoritarian and Us vs Them thinking.
——————————
Israel: it sounds like you agree that Israel is going deeply into a fear-based position.
It’s too bad. I think one important question to ask is: is Israel holding Gaza and the West Bank out of a truly pragmatic determination to protect itself? Or, is it because of it’s religious minority? Would Israel be better off it traded that land for peace, as it did with the Sinai Pensinsula with Egypt?
voter fraud not so likely, but media bias has gone so rampant taht even the average joe is catching on. First it was against Bernie and won. What amazed me was how Trump won the primary with most of the media stacked against him like that. I still find it hard to believe how close the crazy guy is to winning the presidency.
But why do we have to end up with one of the most manipulative, and evil being in the white house? We were so close to having Bernie, thats what hurts. The people wanted him.
This is a really scary election. They should hold it on Halloween.
Oh Joy! Here we (Mankind) go again:
BELIZE TO START BLASTING FOR OIL NEAR WORLD HERITAGE SITE
âHome to the largest barrier reef in the northern hemisphere, Belize is a dream destination for many snowbirds. But the Central American country has recently announced plans to begin offshore oil exploration through a large swath of its Caribbean Sea waters, putting its thriving marine wildlife in a dangerous situationâŚ. Seismic testing, also known as seismic blasting, is a process that involves the use of air guns or cannons to blast deep beneath the ocean floor. It’s an initial step in offshore drilling that helps locate oil deposits for marine wildlife, the process can be life-threatening. Dolphins and whales can lose hearing, disturbing communication and migration patterns.â
Itâs nice we have all this intelligence enabling us to manage âourâ planet so wisely. Perhaps truly intelligent bots will take over the world, notice weâre incorrigible, kill humans off and manage earth holistically — before itâs too late.
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/belize-to-blast-ocean-for-oil-near-endangered-unesco-world-heritage-site/73410/
Hey, don’t be such an alarmist, Doug! We don’t need healthy coral reef ecosystems. What we need is a healthy global oil based economy.
On the other hand there might be some serious opposition from the people of Belize to this kind of idiocy.
http://www.offshore-technology.com/features/featurenature-vs-industry-should-oil-gas-exploration-offshore-belize-go-ahead-4647411/
Janelle Chanona, Oceana’s vice president for Belize, which runs a campaign against offshore oil and gas exploration offshore Belize, told local media: “The Belize Barrier Reef System provides hundreds of millions of dollars in direct and guaranteed economic benefits via tourism, fishing and storm surge protection.
“Those hundreds of millions of dollars can not be dismissed in favour of the mere ‘potential’ of anything else – especially something as dirty as offshore oil.”
Chanona went on to say that one in every four Belizeans depends directly on tourism and there are approximately 3,000 licensed fishermen accessing Belizean waters.
High local opposition and uncertainty, limited potential and a lower oil price make the environment for oil and gas exploration offshore Belize unfavourable. Will the government be able to push exploration through with favourable terms for oil companies despite local opposition?
“There are two opposing camps in Belize – there is a robust, nationwide citizen effort to protect the offshore reef ecosystem from threats such as offshore oil drilling, and there is a contingent in government and industry that sees dollar signs from drilling.
“My bet is on the citizens opposing offshore drilling,” says Steiner.
Seriously, how much oil is even down there?
As someone who has dived those reefs, I say, round up the motherfuckers who are behind this proposal, line them up against a wall and shoot them all, then feed their corpses to sharks! I personally volunteer to go down there and help. /RANT!
I’ve dived Honduras—–
Lets not poison the sharks— that meat would be toxic!
Good point!
Fred said ” What we need is a healthy global oil based economy. ”
Practicing your oxymorons?
People who still want a healthy global oil based economy…
Oxymorons:
Morons with ox like qualities?
Doesn’t quite work because it is insulting to oxen while complimenting morons.
Could be oxidized morons.
For a similar effect, todayâs prices should be above $160 for 2-3 years
Power producers didn’t care about the overall impact of oil on GDP. They only cared that they had cheaper substitutes available. So, the driver of the speed of substitution is the price differentials between the BAU item, and the new competitor.
Sure, power generation was the low hanging fruit 40 years ago. But now, with the development of electric vehicles (hybrid, EREV, EV, etc) passenger transportation is the low hanging fruit.
Even now EVs are growing. If oil rises above $80 that will accelerate sharply. If it rises above $120 it will explode.
I wonder how this is going to work out. No doubt it’s hot as the hinges of hell at the bottom of this hole, but will the plumbing stand up to the conditions down there, assuming it can be successfully installed?
I take it that the engineers and geologists on the job believe that the steam will be plentiful, because it can move easily thru the rock , or should I say magma ?
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2109872-iceland-drills-hottest-hole-to-tap-into-energy-of-molten-magma/
Drilling into the earths mantle.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/decades-long-quest-drill-earths-mantle-may-soon-hit-pay-dirt-180957908/?no-ist
EV’s may effect oil demand sooner than most think. An increase in battery capability is the key factor to demand reduction.
“More than half of the worldâs oil use comes from cars, and the oil industry is already reeling from an oil glut. While the price of oil has drastically fluctuated in 2016, the Fitch report, the industry faces a longer-term threat. If battery technology makes an unexpected leap forward, the industry will feel the effects before the adoption of electric cars spike, with global oil demand peak sooner than the 2030s, as many analysts predict. In addition to making electric cars more practical and attractive to consumers, advances in battery technology could expand the role of intermittent renewable sources, such as wind and solar, in the power grid.
The report predicts that the number of electric vehicles on the road will increase slowly, in part because todayâs cars can last up to 20 years. Even if global electric car sales were to grow by more than 30 percent a year, it would still take 20 years for the vehicles to to account for a quarter of the worldâs cars, according to Fitch. Nonetheless, Fitch said, the adoption of electric cars could affect oil companies sooner than expected, although the report did not give a timeline.”
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2016/10/20/better-batteries-and-more-electric-cars-could-be-bad-news-for-oil-industry/
New company entry into the EV car set has 300 mile range, motors on each axle and level 5 autonomous on board. They claim 20 percent greater energy density in the battery.
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/start-up-lucid-motors-launches-with-300-mile-plus-premium-electric-sedan/
Looks like they are targeting the luxury car market.
I’m more interested the evolution of mass-market long-range EV’s. FYI, Chevy dealers have the price lists and are now taking retail orders for the Chevy Bolt EV. Buyers are reporting that their orders show up in GM’s master order-management data base as code “3000” – accepted into GM’s production control sequence and awaiting to be entered in the assembly plant’s computers for production. Last January GM said that Bolt EV’s will be in owners’ hands by the end of the year. Looks like they are quietly delivering on what they promised. An affordable, 200-mile-range mass-market EV on the streets by the end of 2016. And that is what makes all this “news”.
http://gm-volt.com/forum/showthread.php?262057-Bolt-order-Allocated-quot-Pulled-quot-into-production-by-Chevrolet!
I agree.
Financially a startup is better aimed at the high end market. Certainly has enough horsepower and range for most people.
The mid range market is still rife for the picking but needs some practical support with more charge points. Should be some interesting entries into the mid and eventually lower range types over the next five years.
The autonomous ability is going to cause a lot of initial problems but eventually the bugs will get worked out and the public response should come around. I just feel it’s creepy to be driving around with robot cars though, and I worked with a lot of high tech automated systems. Imagine looking over in traffic and the car passing has no one in the driver’s seat. Something new to get used to I guess. Weird enough that people are walking around appearing to talk to themselves in public now.
It’s a loony world for sure. But I guess the human world has been that way for a long time. Just have to go with it when it works.
As a driver, I’m not too excited by autonomous cars. Assisted safety, yes. If the car can react more quickly than myself in collision avoidance, fantastic.
But I walk and cycle more than I drive, and as a pedestrian, and as a cyclist, the transition to autonomy simply can’t happen fast enough.
My life may literally depend upon it.
Those autonomous cars keep getting smarter:
https://www.wired.com/2016/01/the-clever-way-fords-self-driving-cars-navigate-in-snow/
Congratulations on your 100th post in this thread, GoneFishing! đ
Working with what you have can become a lifestyle and an art form. Transforming that old clunker into a high mpg or medium mpg car may not be as hard as you think. You may not make friends doing it though.
http://www.moneytalksnews.com/mythbusters-use-hypermiling-improve-gas-mileage-70-percent/
Dragonfly 44 discovered using an array of high contrast Canon lenses. Very diffuse and dim galaxies are being discovered. Dark matter anyone?
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/99-percent-invisible
http://news.yale.edu/2016/08/25/scientists-discover-dark-milky-way