159 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum October 15, 2020”

1. Meanwhile, closer to home.

   HEALTH ISSUES AS WILDFIRE SMOKE HITS MILLIONS IN U.S.

   “Wildfires churning out dense plumes of smoke as they scorch huge swaths of the U.S. West Coast have exposed millions of people to hazardous pollution levels, causing emergency room visits to spike and potentially thousands of deaths among the elderly and infirm, according to an Associated Press analysis of pollution data and interviews with physicians, health authorities and researchers. Major cities in Oregon, which has been especially hard hit, last month suffered the highest pollution levels they’ve ever recorded when powerful winds supercharged fires that had been burning in remote areas and sent them hurtling to the edge of densely populated Portland. Medical complications began arising while communities were still enveloped in smoke, including hundreds of additional emergency room visits daily in Oregon, according to state health officials.”

   https://phys.org/news/2020-10-health-issues-wildfire-millions.html

   1. And,

      EARTH JUST HAD ITS HOTTEST SEPTEMBER ON RECORD

      “Unprecedented heat around the world vaulted September 2020 to the hottest September since 1880, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. The month’s warmth also contributed to 2020’s trend as a remarkably hot year, with the year-to-date global temperatures running second highest in the 141-year climate record. The 10-warmest Septembers have all occurred since 2005, with the seven-warmest Septembers occurring in the last seven years.”

      https://phys.org/news/2020-10-earth-hottest-september.html

      1. Before publication the temperatures should have been calibrated, then re-calibrated, then re-re-calibrated. For this is a standard procedure in climate research.

2. Ron, I thought India is bad . I was wrong . This is a disaster or a catastrophe , I don’t know which word to use ,but Surely I am not going to be sleeping well tonight . Tks for the wake up call .

3. Ron — on a (very) personal note.

   About ten years ago my wife and I “adopted” a young girl in Uganda. Her name is Azzia. Azzia had been abandoned by her mother and her Dad made/makes his living guiding wildlife safaris (and couldn’t afford to send his daughter to a boarding school); that’s where we stepped in.

   Azzia has excelled in school and was, until the lockdown, debating, with herself, whether she would become a medical doctor or an engineer; that has all changed. Owing to the corona virus there are NO (mainly European) wildlife tours now. So, our family, here in Canada, has now been “forced” to support Azzia’s Dad, Mustafa, and his entire extended family, otherwise they will not even have minimal food; this can’t go on forever of course.

   Meanwhile, African wildlife will increasingly be becoming a source of food even for those, like Mustafa, who make/made their living sharing their love of native animals with the world. While this goes on, the human population of Uganda is exploding, which only exacerbates this rapidly developing crisis. Watching all this unfold is a tremendous tragedy to me (and to our family).

4. One thing I have had to do lately, (and I am sure it is the same for many), is be aware of our declining situation(s), but try and walk a line that allows sanity, or at least not total despondency. On one extreme we see the deniers to the nth degree, and at another level we see many without hope. My wife seems to slip into the latter category and it can be disturbing because her attitude does not actually change anything beyond her feeling totally shitty.

   What can we do when the situation is so dire, and perhaps on a trajectory of collapse? Furthermore, it is also interesting to see the industry of collapse and conservation activism itself, as promoting individuals vie for media attention, political influence, and funding. In BC I often see different groups co-opted along the way; for example indigenous rights and land claims aspirations harnessed to fight fish farming, logging, tourism, whatever. Yet at the same time there are fish farms operated by other native bands, whale watching and grizzly bear viewing tourist operations owned and run by natives, and logging timber sales awarded to ‘down Island bands’ who promptly run out and hire corporate contractors to do the work (logging) while taking a skim off the same raw log exports that everyone admits is despicable. And the timber sale clearcuts are the worst I have ever seen, (and I have been in the industry and living in logging country for most of my life).

   I look at individuals, like Doug supporting his Ugandan student, or those parking the car and limiting unnecessary travel, or people I know who just live ‘smaller’. Nothing galls me more than seeing anti-vaxer Robert Kennedy junior flying in and telling us how to live and manage our land, or William Shatner protesting fish farming and logging while he flies into an exclusive fishing resort and is transported out daily to the head of Seymour Inlet by helicopter for that perfect ‘wilderness experience’.

   What can we do and remain sane? Mindful living helps. Smaller families. Smaller footprints, and doing whatever we can. (sorry for the cliches). Maybe running a blog or adding an occasional comment. 🙂 I do know this, as an optimist I am not going to adopt the mindset of ‘all people bad’, point fingers, and state “You should do this”. And neither will I do the 180 and live like a mindless raging consumer. In our house we’ll just do our best. Stay informed. And vote…for us it is October 24th.

   regards

   1. Paulo, talking of sanity, you (or your wife) may enjoy this article:

      >> With winter approaching, I’m brainstorming ways to help myself, my friends and family, and my readers to stay sane.

      Darker, shorter, colder days are already harder on our mental health, but this time they’ll be combined with the isolating effect of pandemic lockdown. So we’re looking at a new challenge level. <<

      https://www.raptitude.com/2020/10/a-healthy-emotion-we-dont-get-enough-of/

   2. Well said Paulo. Yes it is indeed a challenge to find a relevant mental place in which to reside in this world. Since we are humans, perhaps the best we can do is to work hard to limit our personal contribution destruction of the world and its living creatures. There certainly is pain, that comes with awareness.

      When in evolution a mouth developed, followed by a mouth with teeth, and later the limbs to pull food [other living beings] into reach of the mouth, the epic tragedy of what it all has come to could not have been foreseen in the worst nightmare of any being who could have witnessed the billion year scene as an observer.
      It is an awesome world, but an extremely cruel one.

5. Americans eat bushmeat too, usually deer, squirrels and wildfowl. Also bullfrogs, rattlesnakes, alligators etc. Attacking people because they eat things you don’t is pretty obnoxious. I don’t particularly care for those pictures of monkeys, but their presence hardly adds to the content.

   1. I must say focusing entirely on Sub-Saharan Africa when discussing overpopulation is pretty poor optics too.

      1. Dear God, what planet are we living on? I wrote a short comment, not a book. Sometime in the future, I may cover Asia or South America. But nowhere on earth is the population increasing as fast as in Sub-Saharan Africa. Africa is where most of the remaining wildlife exist. The tragedy in Africa is particularly tragic because all those beautiful animals will soon be gone. No more rhinos, lions, giraffes, African elephants, hippos, chimps, gorillas, and hundreds more too numerous to name.

         And I am attacked because I failed to cover Asia, or South America, or wherever in this short post?

         Some people’s reasoning is simply unbelievable.

         Or perhaps I should ask, what is it about pointing out the horrible conditions, for both humans and other animals, in Africa that seems to get under some people’s skin? Is there something here that deeply bothers some people? Reality is sometimes horribly unpleasant. Try to dwell on that fact rather than attacking the messenger.

         1. Or perhaps I should ask, what is it about pointing out the horrible conditions, for both humans and other animals, in Africa that seems to get under some people’s skin? Is there something here that deeply bothers some people?

            Because it comes across as something a Karen would do, specifically using the part of the world where black people are majority to point out the global overpopulation problem. Once you’ve insulted a specific race in this way, you can justify all kinds of evil to “cure” the problem.

            1. I am trying very hard to be kind, and not call you a fu@#$% id&%$#@. But it’s hard. Global overpopulation is a problem. But it had nothing to do with my post. There are parts of the world where the population is declining. And there are other parts where overpopulation is a very serious problem. But none of that had one goddamn thing to do with my post.

               It comes across to me that neither you nor Alimbiquated, give a flying fuck about the extinction of all the wild animals of Africa. You are too busy trying to find faults in the political correctness of other people to give a shit whether chimps or gorillas survive at all.

               It bothers you not one whit whether deforestation destroys even the survivability of humans and all other animals in Africa. You are so goddamn busy trying to find some hint of racism. Trying to say “I am holier than thou” because the article is about a place where the population is black.

               And there is no goddamn “CURE” for the problem and no one is to blame for the problem. That is exactly what the last sentence of the post stated if you had just bothered to read it.

               Okay, final question. What can be done to remedy this situation?

               Answer. Not one damn thing. It is the nature of the beast to keep on doing what it has been doing for many thousand years.

               I am talking about the nature of Homo sapiens here. So don’t get any stupid ideas that I am speaking only of Africans.

               Karen? Really now? Is there a nickname for “I am holier than thou?”

               1. A jesuit father, head of a humanitarian organisation in Africa, said that humanitarian help in Africa should be concentrated on three objectives. First, family planning and contraception. Second, women empowerment to help them gaining financial independence in their marital life and then have the mastery of their fecundity. Third, building social security and retirement system. The children, in developping world, are the usual retirement system. Then, the more there are children, the more the retirement of the parents is ensured. A women from Burkina-Faso explained me that in her country some household head (men) were used to have numerous children as a show of whealthiness. By our country, it’s the number of cars and in other areas of the world, it’s the number of children.

               2. Jean, thanks for the reply. I agree completely although I am shocked that a Jesuit Priest would advocate contraception. However, the Pope just came out in support of same-sex marriages.

                  Ahhh the world is changing so fast it makes your head spin. 😉

         2. I think maybe this is too delicate of a subject to talk about without getting the perspective of the black community?

            1. Bullshit! Half the large wild animals have already disappeared from the earth. Now the other half is about to disappear. Children are starving because overpopulation has ravaged their homeland. Animals are starving because their habitat is being destroyed. And I must get permission from the black community, whomever that is, to talk about that?

               Some people have their politically correct head so far up their ass that they have lost their ability to reason.

               I apologize for the rant but this stupid shit is really starting to piss me off.

            2. The only race behavior we are talking about here is the human race.
               The whole earth matters.
               Whoever here is deviating the discussion from Rons message regarding global population overshoot to some discussion of this being a particular Africa problem is doing this whole subject a big disservice, not to mention Ron’s fine effort to bring this global issue to the forefront.

               Lets remember, the vast majority (>99% of wild animals over 3 lbs) in Europe were already killed and eaten- a continent process that was complete many hundreds of years ago. By 1500 the vast majority of Europe had been completely cleared of old growth/original forests, and the most habitable lands for wildlife and humans had been cleared multiple times. The only areas that were partially spared were those with poor and rocky soils with resultant poor vegetation growth.

               And don’t kid yourself thinking that the meat food system in the ‘developed’ nations such as the USA is better than a ‘bushmeat’ food systems by any kind of ecological or ethical measure. For example, all of the fertile lands devoted to animal agriculture on the continent of N America (and it is a huge swath of the best lands) replaces the habitat of “bush animals”, sometimes known as wildlife. It is simply expropriation of nature by humans on a grand scale. All to put animal flesh in the collective mouth of this monster called humanity.

               1. In the USA, about 41% of all the land was stolen from nature for animal agriculture. These are the lands that generally would be supporting the highest densities of wildlife, if left alone. Picture the wildlife of the Serengeti on a grand scale- a thousand miles across, and more.

                  When we say land, its not like suburban lots, or commercial warehouse district space, or shopping malls or airports. It is old forests, thick and tall and diverse, and filled with an incredible array of life. It is unplowed grasslands, and hundreds of miles in every direction of meadows intermixed with forest patches, with undammed streams that run clear.
                  It may sound foreign in Europe or Asia and N. America, thats because we already ate it, cut it down, fenced and plowed it.

                  Globally, if you take all the land stolen from wildlife (killed) for agriculture , about 77% of all that great land goes to feed animals that we eat.
                  Kill, and eat.

                  https://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/chart-shows-worlds-land-used/

               2. But it is really even worse that that. It is the mentality that we have the right to squeeze every last drop. Take that farmland through the midwest and the great plains. It used to be broken into fields. Sections, half sections etc. Between fields there would be fence lines. Small strips of unplowed land where shrubs, small trees etc would grow. Wildlife, birds in particular would use these small strips of land as corridors during migrations to move through the heartland. With the consolidation of the farms in the hands of agribusiness, a bunch of young turk MBA’s in these industries got their hands on Satellite images of their holdings and seeing these strips of “unproductive” land ordered them plowed up. To add that tiny fraction of land to their holdings. And now migratory bird populations have crashed. Because of the greed of a bunch of stupid fuckers who wanted to score some points during a board meeting.

               3. Hickory,

                  Your discussion of Europe, and the elimination of wildlife by 1500 provides a nice clarification that human elimination of wildlife doesn’t have much to do with overpopulation. The sad fact is that humans historically have been afraid of wildlife, and have eliminated it at every opportunity (whether or not it was edible). That can be changed on a cultural level: some people happily coexist with wildlife, so it’s not genetically hard wired (though I do think there’s a genetic basis for it – it’s simply possible for humans to override that, just as humans can choose to treat adopted children like genetic relatives). But it’s badly over-simplistic to suggest that overpopulation is the primary cause of wildlife extinctions, or that elimination of over-population would protect wildlife all by itself. No, human society has to make a conscious, society-wide decision to tolerate and encourage wildlife. Until then, even if Thanos eliminated 99% of humans, wildlife would not make a comeback.

               4. Nick, that is not my take on it.
                  Europeans, like others around the planet, did indeed hunt predator animal even when they weren’t hungry- agreed.
                  But agricultural output was low in Europe prior to the past century or so, and protein was generally scarce. Populations of the ‘common people’ (over 95% populations) in feudal Europe were teetering on protein malnutrition for many, many centuries. That was the base condition. Short life, short stature. Like in parts of the world today, capturing a racoon for the family to eat might be the only protein for the week, or longer. Much of the productivity of peasants also was siphoned off by the landowner class, and by militias. Famines were a recurring fabric of life. Read the Good Earth by Pearl Buck to get a sense of it from the China angle.
                  Any animal that could be caught to be eaten was, with an eagerness that only hunger can stimulate.

                  I saw in Hanoi food markets, even the tiniest snails (1 cm), and fish barely a sardine, from the entire surrounding countryside were brought in to eager buyers just looking for a little protein. Travel out into the countryside- the only visible wildlife anywhere is some small birds. People will grab any eggs they can find for certain. When there is hunger and protein malnutrition, dogs and monkeys are just as vulnerable as pigs to being eaten, systematically.

                  Its a human global issue that has been going on and escalating ever since we weaponized being an ape with tools and fire.
                  And yes, the scale of the problem (extinction level) is 100% about overpopulation.

               5. Yeah, the Japanese (who are not starving) eat tiny dried anchovies as a snack. Sometimes they mix them with roasted almonds.

                  When I lived in Würzburg I was always amazed to see them eat Meefischli caught from the Main river that flows through town. Traditionally they aren’t supposed to be eaten if they are smaller than the little finger of the statue of St. Killian on the bridge, but nobody checks.
                  https://www.wuerzburgerleben.de/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/09/KIlian_Festung-1067×800.jpg

               6. But it’s badly over-simplistic to suggest that overpopulation is the primary cause of wildlife extinctions,

                  Oh, good gravy. Nick, please, give some thought to what you are saying, or writing, before you do it. The primary cause of wildlife extinction is habitat loss. If animals have nowhere to live, or to find food, they die. It is that simple. In about 10 years, give or take, the orangutang will be completely extinct. Not because they were killed for food or sport but because their habitat was destroyed to create palm oil plantations.

                  There are virtually no wild animals left in Nigeria, well, damn few. That is not because they were killed for bushmeat, though that helped. But because their habitat was cut down for logging. Their habitat is now a wastland.

                  And yes, goddammit yes, all this is because of overpopulation. Overpopulation is, by any stretch the primary cause of animal extinction. We need the land to grow our food, for pasture for our domestic animals. And we need their forest for wood for firewood, for building construction. So we just take it. We take it because we can. And we will continue to take their resources, their territory until they are all gone. We need it to feed and shelter our massive and growing population.

                  or that elimination of over-population would protect wildlife all by itself.

                  Errr… Nick, there is no way to eliminate overpopulation. If you are talking about the natural decline in population because of some enlightenment of the population. Well, that is not going to happen. And even if it did it would take about a thousand years to get the population down to a long-term sustainable level. And by that time all wildlife larger than a rabbit would be extinct, centuries earlier.

               7. It’s interesting to see how Ethiopia has reacted to the catastrophic famines in the early eighties. The famine mostly affected mountainous Tigray Province. As you can see from the map I linked to elsewhere, the areas of Ethiopia now affected by hunger are the flat arid Eastern provinces.

                  The answer is improved farming methods aimed at capturing rainwater and reducing erosion. This allows soil to regenerate. Look at the terracing near the ancient city of Aksum.

                  https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tigray,+Ethiopia/@14.1386935,38.7409566,1093m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x166bfcea93ababf1:0x581e44edcd3248c6!8m2!3d14.0323336!4d38.3165725

                  There is still hunger in Ethiopia, but not in Tigray Province.

                  Ethiopians have been farming for millennia. Poor farming practices have degraded the land. A lot of topsoil was dumped each spring in the floods in Egypt. The ancient Egyptians thought it was a gift of the gods. Terracing reverses that trend.

                  In the 60s the Green Revolution resulted in huge improvements in agriculture. It focused on high yield seeds, fertilizers and mechanization. It allowed Indonesians to harvest three rice crops a year.

                  But it failed in a lot of places, especially those lacking water. Compare the boom in southern India with the continued poverty in dry Northern India. In California’s dry Central Valley, it resulted in a catastrophic decline in the water table.

                  There is a new agriculture revolution going on in arid places like Ethiopia, Maharashtra province in India, and the Sahel Zone in West Africa. It addresses the weaknesses of the previous advances, focusing on water and soil, better use of local resources and famine avoidance instead of yield maximization.

                  Just look at the terracing in Machakos County, Kenya. Its a new phenomenon:

                  https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kenya/@-1.5296929,37.3141535,563m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x182780d08350900f:0x403b0eb0a1976dd9!8m2!3d-0.023559!4d37.906193

               8. I come from Appalachia, which was very rich in the 1840s, thanks to timber and hog farming. The region suffered an ecological collapse in the late 19th century, less than a century after heavy European settlement began.

                  I think one major reason is that the European settlers were not familiar with the technique of flood control and terracing, and considered flooding and erosion acts of God rather than the inevitable consequence of poor land management.

                  It’s now fashionable to buy a gun to prepare for the end of the world. It would be smarter to learn from the Kenyan fanya-juu practices and buy a shovel and start digging ditches on contour.

                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80jirXONSpY

               9. In year 2050 Nigeria is projected to be the 3rd biggest country in the world at 401M, Ethiopia the 8th biggest at 294M, and Congo 9th at 194M.

                  Most of ‘Appalachia’ has farmland of relatively poor quality. After being logged the first time, being a poor farmer is par for the course on marginal farmland, unless you have a huge tract, a specialty crop like tobacco or weed, or perhaps free labor.

               10. It’s poor quality because of poor land management. The problem is erosion. If people in Appalachia knew howto control the flow of water across their land, the land would improve greatly. As it is, they degraded huge areas in a suprisingly short period.

                   Of course part of it wasn’t their fault. The fungus that killed the great chestnut forests was introduced to New York I think.

               11. Alim…I suppose many people, including yourself, don’t know much about soil science and farming. Its just not a field of expertise for people who aren’t in farming/horticulture, or well trained in Agronomy or related sciences.
                   To keep it brief, soils in different areas have inherent strengths and weaknesses when it comes to ability to support plant growth. Things like depth, slope, specific mineral content, particle size, organic matter content, pH, water holding capacity, for example.
                   The bountiful farm production of the Amish in Lancaster County PA is due to excellent management, but more importantly to excellent soils. Its no mistake these experienced farmer settlers knew good land when the saw it. Deep and fertile.
                   And it is not mystery why the farmers of Appalachia struggle to put shoes on their kids feet. The soil is poor for farming. Generally thin and rocky. Low density grazing is ok, and infrequent logging, but to expect more, no matter who the manager is, is just wishful thinking. The only exception being the small sections of bottom lands along the rivers.
                   Go anywhere in the world and you will find farmland priced by its quality.
                   Inherently good land may cost 10x’s as much as poor land, for very good reason- potential sustainable yield of food crops.

               12. I am with you Ron. We are destroying the planet and all you get for pointing it out is politically correct clap trap.

                   On the plus side, I doubt industrial civilisation can last much longer. Surely there is a limit to how much debt can be created before the whole system explodes?

               13. Ron,

                   Let me rephrase: I suspect that almost all wildlife will be eliminated except that which humans make a specific and conscious effort to save, with preserves, Endangered Species Acts, etc.

                   So, palm oil isn’t being produced because of overpopulation. It’s mostly sold to European and American companies. People in those countries are not starving or under stress due to population levels. They just…want it. And, at the moment, they don’t care very much about wildlife habitat being destroyed.

                   Much of the world is called “developed”. What is development? It’s pretty much eliminating “wild” stuff. Paving it over. What is the rest of the world? It’s “developing”…

                   Can we do it differently? Sure. There’s no gene for paving, or eliminating wildlife. But it’s a relatively low priority in most cultures, and it’s a hard sell where there’s a lot of poverty.

                   “Oooh, you don’t know what you’ve lost till it’s gone….pave paradise, put in a parking lot, hoo, wup, wup wup”.

               14. So, palm oil isn’t being produced because of overpopulation. It’s mostly sold to European and American companies. People in those countries are not starving or under stress due to population levels.

                   Nick, a nation’s people do not have to be starving to be overpopulated. Whatever gave you that idea? Whether a forest in Asia, Africa, or South America is cleared to grow palm oil, soybeans, or to graze cattle, it is because of World overpopulation. We live in a global society. Every part of the world is connected to every other part of the world.

                   Although the population is growing far faster in Africa than in any other part of the world, it is the whole world that is overpopulated.

               15. Whether a forest in Asia, Africa, or South America is cleared to grow palm oil, soybeans, or to graze cattle, it is because of World overpopulation.

                   How do you know that? The traditional Malthus-type argument is that population outstrips food production, creating the need to clear more land for food. But that’s not happening with palm oil.

                   Maybe it’s just out of control greed, destroying forests for what is often a very minor amount of temporary profit (rainforests, for instance, tend to make terrible farmland – often used once and then abandoned). Developers and exploiters will always look at a frontier or unexploited resource and say: “let’s get that!”. It doesn’t matter whether it’s needed or not.

                   So…how do you know it’s overpopulation and not compulsive exploitation?

               16. Nick, I find your post shocking.

                   The traditional Malthus-type argument is that population outstrips food production, creating the need to clear more land for food.

                   First, Malthus hasn’t a damn thing to do with this argument. Nothing has to fit a Malthus type argument. An overpopulated world demands more than just food to support itself.

                   So…how do you know it’s overpopulation and not compulsive exploitation? But that’s not happening with palm oil.

                   Palm oil is used in food and dozens of other products. It is the demands of an overpopulated world that creates the market for those products.

                   When you clear-cut a forest, for timber or to create farmland, it is to satisfy the appetite of a massively overpopulated world. You cannot have compulsive exploitation unless there is a market for the product being produced. Nay, not just a market, but a demand for that product.

                   Just curious Nick, but what is your position on overpopulation? Do you believe the world is overpopulated? How about overshoot? Do you believe the world population is in overshoot? This is important Nick, please reply.

            3. What I think Ron is trying to say is that the ecological destruction of Africa would be going on regardless of the racial makeup of the inhabitants there because the issue is human nature in general, not the behavior of Africans in particular. Unfortunately, due to cancel culture mixed in with the heated times politically and socially we find ourselves in, accusations of prejudice or worse often get thrown around at the slightest mention of anything involving non-white individuals and that significantly clouds discussion of the bigger picture.

               1. That is nonsense. His post is specifically attacking people for eating food he thinks is yucky. Again, it’s like attacking the Chinese for eating dogmeat, although pork consumption is a much bigger issue.

                  And “cancel culture” is just you regurgitating random propaganda unrelated to the topic at hand.

               2. Alimbiquated, now you have really pissed me off. You are worse than stupid, you are a stupid liar. I attacked nobody! My point was that all the wild animals will soon be extinct because of massive overpopulation and the famine that results from overpopulation. Post the sentence where I attacked the people of Nigeria or apologize.

               3. Ron:
                  You get my award today for Infinite patience. My head would have exploded reading some of the comments if I had provided the article. Thanks for you hard work!

      2. CB , where do you want to focus ? We are in overshoot worldwide except maybe Iceland (300000 pop) . You want to discuss India ? Let me know .

         1. Yes focus on global overpopulation, global being the key word. There’s much more to the world than just the cis yt str8 male view.

            1. “I will not accept being labeled cisgender by anyone.” ~ vera

               “Ah but Vera everyone has to have a label or how shall we know who is to be hated and who not.” ~ Dave Zoom

               “Bwahaha… and a cheery good night to you too, Dave! :-D” ~ vera

            2. CameronB….you are completely c r a z y

      3. CameronB. I think you are far off-base criticizing Ron on this. He did a fantastic job highlighting the issues of global humanity overshoot in one region. And it is the region with the highest population growth forecast for the rest of this century. Race has absolutely nothing to do with these issues he portrayed.

      4. CameronB – You could have simply said that the problem is not just in Nigeria, instead of hazing Ron’s excellent post with your ‘SJW street cred’. Congratulations, I guess, for drooling out a self-serving comment at the expense of an unbelievably tragic issue.

   2. Attacking people because they eat things you don’t is pretty obnoxious.

      Alimbiquated, sometimes your posts are just silly, but this post is unbelievably stupid. People kill, sell, and eat bushmeat because they are starving. Pointing that fact out is not attacking them.

      The fact that people are forced to kill and eat chimps and gorillas is a testament to the horrible condition humanity has found itself in. Yes, showing pictures of monkeys for sale for food does add to the content of the subject of massive overpopulation. It helps to show the horrible condition that humanity finds itself in.

      And Alimbiquated, get one goddamn thing straight. I never attack people, or blame them, for doing what nature has conditioned them to do to survive. I blame no one for the current condition of the human race or for the horrible things we are doing to the planet. It is no one’s fault! Evolution has conditioned all species to take food and territory from other species. It had to happen sooner or later. One species developed a weapon that made them a superpredator, to have dominance over all other species. That evolved characteristic is intelligence. We are Homo sapiens, (wise primates), wise but not quite wise enough. We are wise enough to know how to destroy the planet but not quite wise enough to know how to save it.

      Again, if you think explaining the horrible condition many Sub-Saharan Africans find themselves in is attacking them or blaming them for their predicament, then you are not quite wise enough to intelligently comment on the subject. That is as kind of a way I could put it. It took me several tries before I reduced the rath of my vernacular to a presentable form.

      1. Alimbiquated sounds quite delicious, like a de-limbed thing with BBQuated sauce.

      2. Absolutely correct on all points Ron. I would only add that the current condition humanity is in has been fantastically aided and abetted by 22,000 man-hours of work in every barrel of petroleum. Now THAT really poured unimaginable accelerant to the ancient fire of survival, and everything is getting blowtorched in kind.

         Really, the whole thing is surreal and it has enabled -among other things – extreme ideological dementia (cough Alimbiquated cough NickG)

      3. >People kill, sell, and eat bushmeat because they are starving.

         Not really. Germans aren’t starving, but I can get wild venison and pork at the grocery store, not to mention guinea fowl, wild duck, rabbit and pheasant. We call it “game” in East Tennessee. I think African eat primates and other exotic meat partly because they like it, and partly because it’s cheap. It’s like asking why the Chinese eat pangolins, or dogs for that matter. It’s not necessarily because they are starving. You disapprove of eating primates, but it isn’t better or worse than eating bacon.

         Malnutrion is a big problem in Africa, as illustrated here:

         https://www.worldvision.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/ml1-en-1280×801.png

         Unfortunately, the decades long decline in hunger has now stopped or been reversed. I also share your concern for the loss of natural habitat.

         1. I wrote: “People kill, sell, and eat bushmeat because they are starving.”

            You replied: Not really. Germans aren’t starving, but I can get wild venison and pork at the grocery store, not to mention guinea fowl, wild duck, rabbit and pheasant.

            Do you not see the logical inconsistency in that statement? If the Germans were not starving when they kill venison for food that means the Nigerians were not starving when they kill gorillas for food.

            I wrote a post about the environmental destruction overpopulation is causing. About the tragedy of all the megafauna of Africa becoming extinct. About the clearing of all the forest in Nigeria and the disaster that will cause.

            And you thought I was really just attacking black people for eating yucky food. Gad man, you are really fucking dense.

            Venison is not bushmeat:
            bush·meat
            /ˈbo͝oSHˌmēt/
            noun

            1.
            the meat of African wild animals:

            1. I’ve hear the term used for Southeast Asian hunting as well.

               Perhaps more to the point, Africa is where most of the growth of agricultural land use has come from in recent years. In the rich world it is gradually declining.

               https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/Agricultural_area_over_the_long-term%2C_OWID.svg/1024px-Agricultural_area_over_the_long-term%2C_OWID.svg.png?1603013219105

      4. Most of us get it. At least I understood Ron’s point completely. It’s clear this piece isn’t about “black Africans”, it’s about all of us diaspora Africans.

         And it’s all coming to a continent near you.

         1. some of us have been. gone for a while.
            we are all. of African orgin

         2. This is the first mention of the phrase “black Africans” in the thread, so it’s hard to guess who you are disagreeing with.

            It’s already been to a continent near you. Africa is the last holdout of the megafauna. The decline of wildlife in the US has been quite noticeable in my lifetime. As a child I assisted my father in his work on the North American Breeding Bird Survey for years. He did it for several decades. What he observed was, in his words, “a long-term secular decline in the number of species and the number of individuals”.

            One June morning during WWII my father decided to walk to work — gas was rationed, and he only lived a mile or two from the factory, taking a shortcut through the woods. He set out a half hour before sunrise, the hear the dawn chorus. It’s the breeding season. About 10 AM the boss called my mother and asked where he was. He eventually wandered in, reporting that he had observed more than 90 species of songbirds on his way. He was an expert at recognizing bird songs.

            About 1960 they flattened that forest and built a Sears, a grocery store and a vast parking lot. They gave it the name “Green Acres”. In the seventies Sears moved to nearby greenfield site, and the grocery store failed. Sears recently failed as well. There is still a vast parking lot where that forest was. It has revived a bit in recent years and there’s a strip mall or something there.

            https://www.google.com/maps/@36.5305168,-82.5302172,3a,26.9y,241.63h,87.5t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sO6vg3hfFRTQuHYZtaLfP6A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

            As Ron says, it’s loss of habitat that drives extinction.

            1. see way up thread, comments by Cameron and Sprouse. My comment probably isn’t placed properly.

6. Ron, continuing from the earlier thread where we discussed ” peak supply and demand ” . I said that the production of new ICE vehicles will continue to decline because of falling worldwide prosperity . Well, an associate of mine in Netherlands informed me just now that BMW has decided to wind up their operations in Holland . They made a premium BMW mini model . 5000 jobs gone down the tube . My contention is that the world is getting poorer by the day . I also visit a plant in Belgium that makes seats for Airbus and Jaguar . Empty parking lots . DAF has a plant in Belgium that makes axles and the front cabin for the truck .No better .

7. Continuing with my the decline of sales for the new ICE vehicles . Audi will quit India operations . Could only sell 5000 units in a year . Toyota already decided to quit India last month . This market after China was supposed to be the big daddy . Sorry ,pocket book prevails .

   1. Motorcycles continue to sell well in India, for what I think are obvious reasons. The Austrian manufacturer KTM makes many of it’s models -if not all of them- in India and appears to be doing OK.

      1. Mike ,there is a rebound yes but not a recovery . Up 11% in September from August but still 33 % down from year to date . The rebound is due to shutdown of the metro and restrictions in buses ,so the public bought motorcycles and scooters also . But still better than cars .
         https://www.motorcyclesdata.com/2020/10/04/indian-motorcycles-market/

8. I have to wonder how far things will go before cannibalism will rear its ugly head in an effort for those out of animals to eat to turn on their fellow human beings?

9. More numbers to go with the talk.

   HUMANITY HAS WIPED OUT 60% OF ANIMAL POPULATIONS SINCE 1970

   The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else. “We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff.”

   The biggest cause of wildlife losses is the destruction of natural habitats, much of it to create farmland. Three-quarters of all land on Earth is now significantly affected by human activities. Killing for food is the next biggest cause – 300 mammal species are being eaten into extinction – while the oceans are massively overfished, with more than half now being industrially fished.

   The worst affected region is South and Central America, which has seen an 89% drop in vertebrate populations, largely driven by the felling of vast areas of wildlife-rich forest. In the tropical savannah called cerrado, an area the size of Greater London is cleared every two months.

   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/30/humanity-wiped-out-animals-since-1970-major-report-finds

   1. Doug, you should see the overfishing problem that is currently being carried out by the Chinese. Apparently they’ve already overfished their own waters, and are now sending fleets into the South Atlantic. There are reports that Portuguese fishermen are publicly complaining about the issue. I’ve seen one report where they (the Chinese) stationed a trawler fleet off the Easter Islands, and fished it to depletion. This apparently is not being reported in the MSM.

      1. Mike — Yeah, the overfishing is no secret. Next it will be scraping the seafloor for minerals.

         HOW CHINA’S EXPANDING FISHING FLEET IS DEPLETING THE WORLD’S OCEANS

         China is not only the world’s biggest seafood exporter, the country’s population also accounts for more than a third of all fish consumption worldwide. Having depleted the seas close to home, the Chinese fishing fleet has been sailing farther afield in recent years to exploit the waters of other countries, including those in West Africa and Latin America, where enforcement tends to be weaker as local governments lack the resources or inclination to police their waters. Most Chinese distant-water ships are so large that they scoop up as many fish in one week as local boats from Senegal or Mexico might catch in a year…

         Still, China is hardly the worst offender when it comes to [fishing] subsidies, which conservationists say, along with over-capacity of fishing vessels and illegal fishing, is a major reason that the oceans are rapidly running out of fish. The countries that provide the largest subsidies to their high-seas fishing fleets are Japan (20 percent of the global subsidies) and Spain (14 percent), followed by China, South Korea, and the U.S.”

         https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-chinas-expanding-fishing-fleet-is-depleting-worlds-oceans

      2. Per capita, the USA harvests more seafood than China.
         Its like Covid deaths. Per capita is the accurate measure of performance, or abject failure as in the case of the trump administration.

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

      3. Prior to WW1 “worrying about the economy” meant, to most regular folks on the planet, worrying about starving,

         “Asian region- Overall, fish and seafood products were the third major source of dietary protein consumed after cereals and vegetables, representing 7.5 percent of total protein supply (21.9 percent of the total animal protein supply), 1.7 percent of total fat supply, and 1.3 percent of total calories.”
         https://www.aquaculturealliance.org/advocate/food-matters-comparative-analysis-fish-income-food-supply/

         Global Fisheries collapse should hot it up a bit.

         1. deleted wrong reply column

10. So…

    It appears that this fine site has been overrun by the stupid as well now.

    That’s very sad.

    🙁

    Keep up the good fight folks. It just got a lot harder.

11. Looking for good news? Then don’t look at the methane numbers.

    THE NUMBER OF GLOBAL METHANE HOT SPOTS HAS SOARED THIS YEAR DESPITE THE ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN

    “The worldwide number of methane hot spots has soared 32 percent so far this year despite the economic slowdown, according to satellite imagery. The largest leak was in Iraq, releasing 400 tons an hour. This plume stretched 200 miles from northern Iraq to Saudi Arabia. In the United States, the largest leak was from a pipeline emitting 150 tons of methane an hour, the greenhouse gas equivalent of more than 10 coal-fired power plants “at full steam.” “

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/10/14/number-global-methane-hot-spots-has-soared-this-year-despite-economic-slowdown/

    1. Global CH4 Monthly Means

       June 2020: 1872.2 ppb
       June 2019: 1858.8 ppb

       NOW COMES THE COMMENTS FROM MORONS CLAIMING METHANE CAN’T BE HARMFUL BECAUSE IT ONLY OCCURS IN TRACE AMOUNTS. 😉

       1. The record smashing global warming trend continues on like a slow motion bulldozer-
          As of Oct14,
          101 monthly national/territorial heat records beaten or tied in 2020.
          2 monthly national/territorial cold records beaten or tied in 2020.

          Thats 101 to 2. Some would call it a landslide. How fast can trees migrate?

          https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/10/september-2020-was-warmest-september-on-record-noaa-reports/

       2. I once had a run-in with “trace amounts” of a phototoxic substance in the furanocoumarins family. The phytophotodermatitis was a bitch.

          But nothing like what we’re going to suffer soon.

12. Hello Ron,

    Having seen the comments section I think you have seen part of the problem but kudos to you for broaching the subject.

    The question of what can be done ? or as you stated , remedy.

    1, birth control
    2, bigger cities ( in co junction with jobs ) * cities tend to encourage smaller families – not always , but in general)
    3, Wealth , basically this aids the notion of self , you have less babies to buy a car or go on holiday .

    I already hear the coffee being spilt onto thousands of keyboards as I type this…….

    Maybe I am barking mad but it is possible ……….maybe. depends doesnt it?

    anyone care to add with actual solutions ? ( except that one that just popped into your head , there’s still a good standard of morals on this board ).

    Well thats my tuppence worth.

    Forbin

    1. Forbin, concerning your remedies. Inform the 7.8 billion people alive today of your remedies. Convince them of what they must do.

       Get back to me with what they told you. 😉

       Forbin, I hope you now understand when I say there are no remedies that can actually be implemented.

       1. Oh Ron , convincing them is done via MSM , like papers , TV and Radio ( soaps and so forth ). Advertising works.

          Convincing their governements and tribal leaders is harder , a lot harder. But not impossible , probabilities are not good I would be the first to admit. We have the UN and WHO and the IMF for example . Yes they aint that good either but they are some of tools we have.

          And visit the countries yourselve and by pass the NGOs , see what you can do personally .

          I and others like me will do what we can, whilst we can.*

          and when that fails remember your single malt whiskey 😉 **

          Forbin

          * yah foolish person that I am , every day I wake up an opitimist and go to bed as a pessimist…..

          ** I’m trying the whiskey diet – I’ve managed to loose 3 days already(!)

          1. Forbin, you still must convince people. Mainstream media is people. Try convincing Fox news that Trump is an idiot. When you cannot convince a part of the media of the blatantly obvious, you have a problem. The media is just people. Stupid and wise, publishing their rags trying to change the world. None of them are having any luck.

             But the problem is even worst than that. You must convince people of locking up the horses decades after the horses have already escaped.

             No, no Forbin. The game is already over. There is no way to save the megafauna of Africa. Within twenty or thirty years it will all be gone. Too many people trying to stay alive will be the demise of all the megafauna of Africa. Gorillas, chimps, bonobos, rhinoceros, elephants, will all be gone within a few years. Baboons will last a bit longer. There are tens of thousands of them. But they are easy targets. And just one can feed a whole family for a week. They will all be gone within fifty years.

             It’s over. Learn to live with that fact.

             1. Giraffes as well, their population is collapsing. I agree, the African megafauna is doomed. As my father said to me fifty years ago, conservation is a rearguard action.

                1. “conservation is a rearguard action”
                   Yeh, good point. Its a last ditch effort to preserve a remnant.

       2. Birth rates have been steadily falling all over the world for decades. The question is whether they will fall fast enough.

          As I have said before here, population growth in most parts of the world is being driven by increased life expectancy, though Sub-Saharan Africa is an exception.

          https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AFR/africa/birth-rate#:~:text=The%20birth%20rate%20for%20Africa%20in%202018%20was%2033.628%20births,a%201.29%25%20decline%20from%202016.

          In Africa, the birth rate has been falling faster and faster since 1950. The UN estimates that this increasing decline will level off, but there is no particular reason to believe it.

    2. Forbin.
       The best I can come up with is legalizing, and accepting as OK, suicide and euthanasia. Any reason, any age, no fault. Forfeit life insurance, sorry.
       When someone wants to leave, let them go. Shouldn’t be hard, or messy- either physically or psychologically. How did these things become unacceptable anyway?

       The second best thing I can come up with is a 3% tax on meat products, with the money going to purchase habitat land. No hunting. The Nature Conservancy would be ideal to manage it.

       1. LOL, the Vatican, on Tuesday, reiterated the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to assisted suicide and euthanasia, which it called “intrinsically evil” acts, “in every situation or circumstance.” According to Wiki there are 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in the world; maybe start with Protestants? ?

          1. Or maybe quit adding religious fundamentalists to the supreme court. Of course that requires having a party in charge who does believe in separation of church and state.

          2. The position of the Catholic church on birth control is that it is “intrinsically evil” so they manage to be an enemy of just about everything that can save the planet.

             1. To each their own I suppose.
                At least for me.
                I decline (in the strongest terms) to voluntarily cede my personal freedom on matters as basic as personal matters of life and death to any organization, company, franchise, or man in a costume.
                I’m not a buyer of any theology.

13. Some food for thought.

    ARE CLIMATE SCIENTISTS BEING TOO CAUTIOUS WHEN LINKING EXTREME WEATHER TO CLIMATE CHANGE?

    “Drawing on a hypothetical example of a tornado forecaster whose false alarm ratio is zero, but is accompanied by a low probability of detection, such an overly cautious tornado forecasting strategy might be argued by some to be smart politics in the context of attributing extreme events to global warming, but it is inconsistent with the way meteorologists warn for a wide range of hazardous weather, and arguably with the way society expects to be warned about threats to property and human life…

    Why does this matter? If a forecaster fails to warn of a tornado there may be serious consequences and loss of life but missing the forecast does not make next year’s tornadoes more severe. On the other hand, every failure to alert the public about those extreme events actually influenced by global warming facilitates the illusion that mankind has time to delay the actions required to address the source of that warming. Because the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is many hundreds to thousands of years the cumulative consequences of such errors can have a very long lifetime.”

    https://phys.org/news/2020-10-climate-scientists-cautious-linking-extreme.html

    1. Simple … give more funding to their grant proposals and they won’t be so cautious no more. ( ͡• ͜ʖ ͡• )

14. Lets just kick this can down the road; something (else) our grandchildren can deal with. Shit, let’s kick all our problems down the road, we (humans) are really good at that.

    THE WORLD’S GROWING NUCLEAR WASTE DILEMMA

    “It’s true that nuclear disasters are exceedingly uncommon, and nuclear is much safer than the average person may believe, but there are other drawbacks to nuclear that are both common and considerable. One of these is the exceptionally high cost of nuclear power. Just last month, the World Nuclear Industry Status Report showed the shocking statistic that nuclear is now the most expensive form of power generation in the world, with the sole exception of gas peaking plants…

    And then there’s the issue of nuclear waste, and it’s not a minor one. Around the world, radioactive waste is piling up, and managing it is a huge expense, not to mention a public health risk of massive proportions if not handled appropriately. Spent nuclear fuel is so hazardous because the waste, in particular uranium and plutonium, is highly radioactive with a half-life that will outlast all of us…

    To date, no country has brought one of these final disposal sites online, but a small handful are actually working on developing one. Finland and Sweden have selected locations for construction and Finland is expected to start construction in the early 2020s. France is still conducting underground surveys.”

    https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/The-Worlds-Growing-Nuclear-Waste-Dilemma.html

    1. According to the nuclear industry, one of the selling points of the ‘new’ molten salt reactors is the ability to burn up spent nuclear fuel . There’s one under construction in Canada now. I’m not sure the waste issue is the primary selling point, but the new one is sited next to an existing reactor. I believe four provinces have now signed up push this technology.

       I was once involved in a project to evaluate waste storage techniques. Back then, one of the complications was that the industry wanted a disposal technique that would allow them to retrieve the waste for future uses, while others wanted the waste disposal to be permanent and one-way. Not sure what the current philosophy is.

       1. As I recall, the Molten Salt Reactor program closed down in the early 1970s in favor of the liquid metal fast-breeder reactor, after which research stagnated in the U.S. As of 2011, ARE and MSRE remained the only molten-salt reactors ever operated. The main problem, molten salts are corrosive, and there is not much data on nuclear suitable materials (low neutron absorption, low activation, low neutron induced damage/embrittlement) for the long life times which would be needed for such a reactor: the fuel salt contains a soup of dozens of fission product elements.

          DON’T BELIEVE THE SPIN ON THORIUM BEING A GREENER NUCLEAR OPTION

          “Without exception, [thorium reactors] have never been commercially viable, nor do any of the intended new designs even remotely seem to be viable. Like all nuclear power production they rely on extensive taxpayer subsidies; the only difference is that with thorium and other breeder reactors these are of an order of magnitude greater, which is why no government has ever continued their funding.”

          https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jun/23/thorium-nuclear-uranium

          1. The project i heard about is
             https://www.powermag.com/canada-smr-initiative-adds-new-brunswick-project/

             1. Gerry —

                Yes, this is actually a hybrid design between light water reactor fuel assemblies and traditional molten salt reactor approaches in which the fuel is mixed with the coolant. It’s still really in the “proof of concept” stage as far as I can tell. Will be interesting to follow.

                1. I can’t help but think that the real appeal of molten salt is that the companies committed to nuclear power now know enough about water cooled reactors to realize they are never going to be viable so they have switched to a technology that the understand less, hence don’t yet know the unsolvable problems. Yet.

                2. Molten salt reactors are seen as a promising technology principally as a thorium fuel cycle prospect (or for using spent LWR fuel).

15. If you have some money to give or leave, consider The Nature Conservancy, to help save remnants of nature. They do their best to target important habitats such as breeding grounds,wetlands and migration bottlenecks. They are expert at getting the most acreage for the dollar under protection.

    https://www.nature.org/en-us/

    The Nature Conservancy is a charitable environmental organization, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, United States. Founded in 1951, The Nature Conservancy has over one million members, and has protected more than 119,000,000 acres of land and thousands of miles of rivers worldwide.

    “Stand up for our natural world with The Nature Conservancy. Every acre we protect, every river mile restored, every species brought back from the brink, begins with you. Your support will help take action on the ground in all 50 states and 70 countries.”

16. I lived in Zambia for a bit; kitwe, up by the border with Zaire, as it was called at the time. Interesting times. Cecil Rhodes was a total Proud Boy.

17. There is a lot of behind the scenes activity in the ‘hydrogen as storage’ sector.
    Major players, like most of the big utilities have a lot of interest in this, for long duration (indefinate) energy storage.
    The gist of the idea is to take solar and wind electricity to create hydrogen, which can be stored until needed, like in the winter.
    Here a re few updates on this-
    “Conversion of 1,800MW Intermountain coal plant in Utah to 840MW gas-hydrogen facility moving forward”
    https://ieefa.org/conversion-of-1800mw-intermountain-coal-plant-in-utah-to-840mw-gas-hydrogen-facility-moving-forward/

    “To batteries and beyond: With seasonal storage potential, hydrogen offers ‘a different ballgame entirely’
    https://www.utilitydive.com/news/to-batteries-and-beyond-with-seasonal-storage-potential-hydrogen-offers/584959/

    1. Hickory, I also found this useful: “Sustainable and fossil hydrogen in all colors of the rainbow”…

       https://www.wattisduurzaam.nl/17586/energie-opslaan/waterstof/duurzame-en-fossiele-waterstof-in-alle-kleuren-van-de-regenboog/
       (right-click -> translate to English)

       Many ways to do hydrogen…

18. More joyful news on the environmental front, just what we need.

    MORE THAN 200 MILLION AMERICANS COULD HAVE TOXIC PFAS IN THEIR DRINKING WATER

    “There is no national requirement for ongoing testing and no national drinking water standard for any PFAS in drinking water. The EPA has issued an inadequate lifetime health advisory level of 70 ppt for the two most notorious fluorinated chemicals, PFOA and PFOS, and efforts to set an enforceable standard could take many years…

    PFAS are called forever chemicals because they are among the most persistent toxic compounds in existence, contaminating everything from drinking water to food, food packaging and personal care products. They are found in the blood of virtually everyone on Earth, including newborn babies. They never break down in the environment.”

    https://phys.org/news/2020-10-million-americans-toxic-pfas.html

    1. Concerns about the public health impact of PFAS have arisen for the following reasons:

       Widespread occurrence. Studies find PFAS in the blood and urine of people.

       Numerous exposures. PFAS are used in hundreds of products globally, with many opportunities for human exposure.

       Growing numbers. More than 4,700 PFAS exist, an increasing number as industry invents new forms of this type of chemical.

       Persistent. PFAS remain in the environment for an unknown amount of time and may take years to leave the body.

       Bioaccumulation. Different PFAS chemicals may enter the food chain in various ways, gradually accumulating and remaining in a body over time—a process due to more intake than excretion of the chemicals.

       1. Well thats one way to downsize. I still think euthanasia is a kinder method.

          1. 🙂

          2. Left expectancy and the birth rate are both falling in the US. Immigration will keep the population up, but it’s a zero sum game — it means a decline elsewhere. Urbanization is increasing and the population is aging, meaning less children. Also opposition to Obamacare and a general demonization of healthcare especially in red states is killing rural hospitals, pushing people out of low density areas where large families have room to grow.

19. How are the cornucopians who hate trump for fucking up COVID doing with their love for Musk these days? He came off looking a bit Trump’sh on the virus, no? Still eccentric, or a bad person yet?

    https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/behind-the-bastards/id1373812661?i=1000476632637

    1. Please note a nuance. People may not be an admirer of Musk, or Steve Jobs, yet still admire the innovation of the products their companies have brought to the market. I am one to fall in that category.
       Likewise, I do not hate Iranians even though I find their leadership culture grade F.

       Personally, I have no interest in Musk and his rocket ships, or people like him. But I am very interested in the technical innovations of Tesla. The technology beneath the vehicle clothing is cutting edge, as are the battery management and power management systems of Tesla. That is what gets my attention.
       Their success is stimulating all the other international manufacturers to speed up their own entry into the electric game, lest they be left so far behind in the dust.

       if you are unfamiliar, “Steve Jobs could also be a tyrant. He was obsessively controlling, and given to fits of rage, throwing tantrums and yelling at employees and board members….

       1. Yes, Jobs and Musk share a lot of similarities; the myth of the comprehensive designer. I’m wondering how the fanbois are holding up ever since Musk pulled a Trump over COVID. Denial I would assume. I once met a guy who was a Trumpster a Muskovite AND a bitcoiner; the dude was in a fantasy world.

          https://youtu.be/5gnlhmaM-dM

          Musk is the Donald Trump for the kind of unbearable people who upgrade to the latest model smartphone every year.

       2. The Fine Print: We Believe In Nature Too– With New Car Species!

          So, under this, Ron’s article of particular topics, you write about euthanasia (Who are more likely? The crony-capitalist plutocracy?) and soil quality while implying the support of a new car ‘species’ and surrounding tech of a branch of technologies that have had a hand in trashing the planet, such as with regard to increasing C02 and pollution, prime farmland and general paveovers of nature, suburban sprawl and (in-car bubbles of) spacial/temporal disassociations/dislocations.

          Nick G, along similar lines, even pens in these threads the lyrics to the song, ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ by Joni Mitchell:

          “Don’t it always seem to go
          That you don’t know what you’ve got
          Till it’s gone
          They paved paradise
          And put up a parking lot…”

          One really has to wonder how some people reconcile some contructs in their heads.
          Perhaps they are simply channelling the fundamental violence and hatred that is the general modus operandi of the nation-state and its governments and assorted biz players, sellouts and indoctrinees.

20. Ron, what’s with the bullshit worrying about African megafauna? Africa is just doing what the US did to it’s megafauna 170 years ago. Read the US Fish and Wildlife Service timeline of the bison population (https://www.fws.gov/bisonrange/timeline.htm). That’s not overpopulation, that’s overconsumption. Your own example of orangutans and palm oil is overconsumption, not overpopulation (palm oil – a fat used for mouth feel in chocolate and biscuits, not to sustain people). When the US lowers its consumption, and gives back to the natural world the land it’s raped for its material wealth, then it can start worrying about overpopulation in other parts of the world.
    P.S. I’m pretty confident the Africans will leave a few megafauna in National Parks for the tourists to see, a bit like Yellowstone, really.

    1. The continent of N America was overpopulated moderately in 1491.
       Beginning in 1492 it gradually became grossly over populated.

       This is a global problem of gross overpopulation. Africa is an just example, where there are still some remnants of megafauna, and where human population growth is the fastest.

       1. Yeah, It is really astonishing how some people can be so ignorant of what overpopulation really is, that is what the term really means. And if you mention a more complicated term, like “overshoot”, then they are really snowed.

    2. Ron, what’s with the bullshit worrying about African megafauna? Africa is just doing what the US did to it’s megafauna 170 years ago.

       So what the hell is that supposed to mean. If it was done here then it should be done there also.

       That’s not overpopulation, that’s overconsumption.

       Oh really? Does it take a large population to do all that consuming? The American megafauna was killed 1. for sport and 2. to make room for crop and pastureland to feed a growing population. The exact same things African megafauna is being killed for. Did you see the photos of Don Jr. with his African trophies?

       Palm oil is used to feed a growing population and for cosmetics for a growing population. It is all because of massive overpopulation.

       But zoos and parks will keep a few wild animals. That’s pure bullshit. Where are the thousands of species already extinct?

       1. Does it take a large population to do all that consuming?

          No, just a few guys with guns. And much of it wasn’t consumption, it was simply destruction. Bison, passengers pigeons: enormous populations, wiped out in a few years with somewhat modern weapons. Was all that space needed for a growing and hungry population? No, not then and not now. It was just profitable for ranchers and farmers.

       2. Ron,
          I think you are saying:
          biosphere degradation = fn ( population ).
          I’m trying to say:
          biosphere degradation = fn ( population x consumption level )
          The consumption level is at least as important as the population.
          Even if population decreases, consumption level increases can mean planetary degradation keeps increasing.
          Even if the African population decreased, if Africans try to live an US lifestyle the planet will be degraded further.
          I don’t see the point of a post that discusses population without discussing consumption level – I hope this reply is clearer than my last reply.
          Cheers, Phil

          1. Phil, there is no way of separating population from consumption. People are consumers. End of story. Of course the wealthier the population the more they consume. No big surprise there.

             The world population of wealthier nations will plateau and gradually decrease over many decades. But not fast enough to make much difference. The population of the underdeveloped countries will decrease when people start starving. Famine is the proper word. But the problem will be that the world cannot produce enough food to satisfy the appetite of both worlds.

             Okay, you want to blame the developed countries for their overconsumption. Of course, you must have a devil to blame. But people in both worlds are just trying to survive and have the best life they can have… under the circumstance.

             Phil, this is where I depart from almost everyone list, save a couple of more enlightened ones. People cannot be blamed for doing what their heredity and (mostly) environment has conditioned them to do. People live in the world they were born into.

             Just examine the world you live in and try to make the best of it. Yes, we are headed for collapse, we are headed for famine and misery of the unimaginable. But try to be among the survivors instead of trying to blame the “over consumers” or whatever other devil you can conjure up.

             1. Did you steal this line from Trump?

                Are you a fucking idiot or what? That is the opposite of what Turmp would say.. Trump always blames someone else for his stupid mistakes. Trump always has a devil to blame. Right now Biden and Fauci are his devils.

21. So, according to CNN, we blew it? Anyone surprised?

    “The pandemic could have been the decisive moment in the fight against climate change — an opportunity for leaders to bail out the environment and pivot the planet toward a greener future. But their research shows the world is running well behind already insufficient targets of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees. Instead, CNN has found that some of the biggest fossil fuel-producing countries are injecting taxpayer money into propping up polluting industries. And, this “exclusive new data” shows these decisions are taking the world a step closer to a climate catastrophe.”

    https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/09/world/climate-covid-money-intl/

    1. Meanwhile,

       BIG OIL’S ANSWER TO MELTING ARCTIC: COOLING THE GROUND SO IT CAN KEEP DRILLING

       The oil company ConocoPhillips had a problem. It wanted to pump 160,000 more barrels of oil each day from a new project on Alaska’s North Slope. But the fossil fuels it and others produce are leading to global heating, and the Arctic is melting. The firm’s drilling infrastructure could be at risk atop thawing and unstable permafrost. A recent environmental review of the project describes the company’s solution: cooling devices that will chill the ground beneath its structures, insulating them from the effects of the climate crisis…

       The oil industry is enjoying a renaissance in the region, in part thanks to technologies enabling infrastructure to withstand climatic shifts. Such technology is decades old, but veterans of the oil industry say that demand for it is becoming more ubiquitous and intense as the Arctic heats up.

       YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF TECHNOLOGY COMING TO OUR RESCUE. 😉

       https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/19/oil-alaska-arctic-global-heating-local-cooling

       1. Speaking of tech coming to the rescue…you decide-
          The first and only nuclear SMR [small modular reactor] approved for deployment in the USA is the product from NuScale, out of the Oregon St Univ.

          The DOE has approved a $1.4B cost share for the first deployment- to be a 12 module setup in Idaho, construction beginning around 2025.
          https://www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-approves-up-to-14b-to-test-12-module-nuscale-reactor/587265/

          “NuScale’s reactor has made some key advances recently in the licensing process, and in August its 50 MW design was the first of its kind to get safety approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”

          1. The “approval” claim is somewhat misleading. This thing isn’t even designed yet:

             “According to the NRC, NuScale plans to apply in 2022 for standard design approval of a 60 MW version of its module, which will require additional review.”

             This is about the Trump administration trying to bail out a project that is losing its sponsors thanks to cost overruns and delays. The price tag has doubled since the project began.

             https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-28/cities-snub-plan-to-save-nuclear-power-with-mini-reactors

             It is not at all clear who will buy the power, assuming the project is ever completed. Their target is $55 / megawatt hour sometime in the 2030s, but solar is already as low as $35 in some cases and still falling. Bloomberg New Energy is predicting $20 by 2030.

             1. Alim. Not true. The 50 MW designed has gone through the full approval process. The 60MW model is still needs final approval. If you read up on it some more, you will see. I don’t think this has to do with the trump admin. Much of the process happened during the Obama years, and before.

                This project has been ion the works for a long time-
                “NuScale was founded based on research funded by the Department of Energy from 2000 to 2003. After funding was cut, scientists with the program obtained related patents in 2007 and started NuScale to commercialize the technology.”
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power

                1. Yes, Bush started it, and Obama kept it alive, but the planned injection of cash despite the project’s obvious failure to meet any of the goals it set itself, and the abandonment by its customers, it from the current administration.

                   Also I’d like to update my previous remark that Bloomberg New Energy is predicting $20 per megawatt for solar by 2030. Los Angeles recently signed a battery solar agreement that gives them electricity under $20/MWh. The $55 target for Nuscale made sense in 2003, but now it is a joke.

                   The problem with nuclear (like geothermal) is that maintaining control over large quantities of hot corrosive fluids is messy and expensive. Hard radiation and heat are the least useful forms of energy and require complex devices to be converted into energy available to do mechanical work. A device like that can never compete against a solid state device that directly converts ambient radiation into electricity.

                   Building new solar is now cheaper than running most existing, paid-for power plants, even though the government has kept panel prices extremely high. There are now 115 GW of large scale solar projects in the pipeline in the US alone.

                   https://www.seia.org/research-resources/major-solar-projects-list

                   When the tariffs lapse in 2022, panel prices in the US will fall by 30% overnight. By the time these guys get their new design approved, the thermal power plant market will be completely broken. What comes next is anyone’s guess, but the dreams of the 1950s are over.

             2. Good points Alim.
                And no storage of high level radioactive waste, still.

                1. Yes, STORAGE! The one thing that nobody pushing for Nuclear ever wants to talk about.

22. As if we need any more evidence of what a blooming idiot Trump really is:

    Trump says people are tired of Covid

    “People are tired of Covid,” Trump said in a call with the staff of his reelection campaign against former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee.

    “People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots, all these idiots who got it wrong,” Trump said on the call.

    Trump also claimed that “every time [Fauci] goes on television there’s always a bomb,” an apparent reference to Fauci’s media appearances, which included him telling CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday night that he was “absolutely not” surprised that Trump himself caught the coronavirus.

    But Trump also offered an explanation for why he has not fired Fauci as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, despite his unhappiness with him.

    “There’s a bigger bomb if you fire him,” Trump said. “This guy’s a disaster.”

23. Seems like we forgot about how totally dependent we are on cross/interconnected supply chains and stability in MENA with all this flu drama center stage. How quickly we forgot about last year’s attack. Mess with a few select gadgets, and… TEOFWAWKI. There have been several other infrastructure black swans/close calls that have been not covered by the MSM in the last few years. No one’s talking about risks or infrastructure decay since Matt Simmons book, Twilight in the desert.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/isis-calls-followers-attack-westerners-oil-pipelines-inside-saudi-arabia

24. Earth Overshoot Day
    With Gonefishing, and Fred Maygar no longer here, and maybe Doug missed it (as far as google search can tell haha) thanks to Covid, Earth Overshoot day shifted back from July 29 last year to August 22 this year.
    I’m wondering who here has done their quiz at http://www.footprintcalculator.org/ to calculate their personal overshoot day. Mine was mid April 🙁
    And would anyone like to critique their methodology?
    Cheers, Phil

    1. Its a good exercise, to help people see the impacts of their life choices. April for me too.

       They left out the biggest factor however-
       Offspring.
       This is probably more important as a factor of ecological footprint than all of the other factors combined. At minimum, the first 20 years destructive ecological footprint should be attributed to the parents.

    2. They’re gone?
       Where or rather why did they go?

25. The best political blog on the net is this one, imo, updated daily, is Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American Unsubscribe

    Now let’s get back to collapse for a minute. I fully understand that we are experiencing a major extinction event, and that the climate probably WILL go nuts within a couple of generations, and will CERTAINLY go nuts, but that it might take longer.

    And I understand just how interconnected the entire world economy is these days.

    But nevertheless, I still maintain that the odds are that collapse will be regional and piecemeal, and that some or most of the better developed countries with relatively minor population problems have a fair to good shot at pulling thru without suffering a BIBLICAL level collapse, without having civil wars and millions of citizens dead due to exposure, thirst, famine, disease, and or violence.

    Pulling thru this way for a country such as the USA will almost dead sure mean having to go to a wartime type economic scheme, and giving up a lot of things we have come to think of as essentials, but I can’t think of very many that are really more than nice CONVENIENCES which necessarily come from the third world, or even from China.

    There’s a hell of a difference between having a forties or fifties level of consumer goods, or even a late nineteenth century level of such goods, but good basic health care, electricity, water and sewer, radio and tv, etc, and Somalia or North Korea, lol.

    No guarantees, of course. We could get dragged into WWIII, or the climate could get so bad we have serious trouble growing enough food just for ourselves here in the USA, but so long as the climate in Virginia doesn’t get any hotter than it is already in say Alabama, we can eat, collectively speaking.

    So what’s going to happen to the people in places such as Nigeria?

    I fear the worst for them.

    And while the typical reasonably well educated ( but nevertheless scientifically ignorant ) liberal only feels compassion for such people, poor people such as the community of voters committed to trump have a visceral fear of them……..

    And excuse me for being a redneck, and saying so, which is NOT at all something to be said in polite company, they’re right. They don’t want to think of Nigerians coming to the USA by the millions. Neither does anybody else with enough brains to know doo doo from apple butter. ( The fact that hardly any of them have the MEANS to get here is irrelevant to the political calculus.)

    I can’t see that it matters at all who or which party controls the federal government, when it comes to LARGE SCALE immigration into the USA.

    My attorney is visiting today. His thirtyish daughters are as solidly blue as some women in a movie, I forget the name of it, but they’re LITERALLY blue in the movie. But they aren’t living in gated communities….. yet.

    If just one of their former classmates is ever raped or murdered by an immigrant, or the electricity goes off for more than an hour or two, or their tax bite starts interfering with their shopping habits…… they’ll vote for a politician that promises to put a stop to such things.

    Bottom line, there won’t ever be any large scale immigration, at least not of illiterate people who can’t even speak English, permitted in the USA, within the foreseeable future.

    People in places such as Nigeria are mostly going to perish in place.
    This is what any biologist will tell you, assuming no migration and no substantial and long term support on a per capita basis of the people living in such places.

    This sort of thing is old hat, sad but common news to any farmer, because all of us know of somebody who had to sell his cows, hogs, or whatever at a SUBSTANTIAL loss in order to prevent them dying outright from starvation or thirst. Sometimes we can’t sell, and the animals do die on our premises.

    It’s tough to even discuss it theoretically, when talking about people with little kids, but what I fear will happen in places such as Nigeria is that maybe half of them will die in place,thereby relieving most of the population pressure…… temporarily.

    1. OFM —

       “…the climate probably WILL go nuts within a couple of generations, and will CERTAINLY go nuts, but that it might take longer.”

       Wrong in spades. It will NOT take a couple of generations, it’s happening NOW. Here is but one example:

       CALIFORNIA MEGAFIRES RISE EXPONENTIALLY AS GLOBAL HEATING TAKES THE GLOVES OFF

       “California is on the burning edge of climate breakdown. Record temperatures are teaming up with record droughts to turn the Golden State into a tinderbox. The megafires have followed, erupting with stunning speed and ferocity across forests, grasslands, rural areas and city neighborhoods’. These megafires, each burning more than 100,000 acres, are rising exponentially — both in frequency and size. And all this is unfolding with just one degree of global heating, so far. Unfortunately for all of us, the primary fuel for global warming — the CO2 humans are adding to our atmosphere — is also rising exponentially. We’ve already burned down our old, calmer and more stable climate. It’s gone. Sorry, kids.”

       NB As per usual, the author of this article is using the word exponentially incorrectly.

       https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/10/20/opinion/california-megafires-rise-exponentially-global-heating-takes-gloves

       1. Meanwhile, just like carbon dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4) is increasing in the atmosphere. The globally averaged monthly trend is now above 1,876 parts per billion Quite why methane is climbing as rapidly as it is, though, is not fully understood. Emissions associated with fossil-fuel use are obviously a major factor, but there are many natural sources of the gas that require a more complete explanation, too. What is certain, however, is that the rise cannot be left unchecked.

       2. Doug, your autism is showing again. Let’s take a deep breath, exhale slowly, and repeat until the hysteria comes down a few notches. Ok now, buddy?

          1. SB, I think you could possibly come up with a better reply. You cannot answer the man’s argument so you resort to silly nonsensual putdowns. Better not to answer at all if that is the best you can do.

       3. Hi Doug,
          I agree, the shit is in the fan in California, but even so, the large majority of Californians are not yet affected in any way that seriously impacts their day to day lives. The people in LA might as well be in NYC, as far as the fires are concerned.

          Perhaps I ought to express my thoughts more along these lines.
          The shit we see happening so far is like a poopy baby diaper. The shit we’re going to see is more like a honey wagon overturned in the street in front of your own house.
          NO MATTER WHERE YOUR HOUSE MAY BE, lol.

          A honey wagon, for those unacquainted with this colloquialism, is a tanker truck used to haul raw sewage.

          For what it’s worth,I’m probably going to put in a pecan grove on my place…….. even though pecans seldom ripen properly here, due to the season being a few weeks too short on average.
          I won’t live to see the trees old enough to have a decent crop…….. but whoever gets my place most likely will, assuming they’re younger people.

          1. I live in Sonoma County and have been evacuated twice in the past year. I would have been evacuated in 2017 also but I thought it was a crank call at 3AM! Right now we are anticipating a power shutoff tomorrow afternoon due to wind and high temperatures forecast. So maybe someone in California is not affected but probably fewer than you imagine.

             Regarding your further comments above about the immigration effects on the US of starvation in Africa I suspect that that, too, is an underestimation. Right now Al Qaida groups are growing in Africa and central to their ideology is hatred for the US. We have seen what the long arm of this kind of hatred is capable of and with increased suffering in Africa it will be easy to believe that the blame lies here. Combine that with our current nearness to tyranny and I think the dangers are larger and sooner than anyone can imagine.

    2. O.F.M. —

       0.5°C MATTERS: SEASONAL CONTRAST OF RAINFALL BECOMES INTENSE IN WARMING TARGET OF THE PARIS AGREEMENT

       “This study emphasizes the pronounced enhancement in seasonal cycle over land regions associated with the additional 0.5 degrees C warming, despite the insignificant increases in the annual precipitation,” added Chen. “Though the number in temperature seems small, 0.5 degrees C still matters.”

       https://phys.org/news/2020-10-05c-seasonal-contrast-rainfall-intense.html

    3. “I still maintain that the odds are that collapse will be regional and piecemeal, ”

       Yes, this is a certainty, as I see it.
       For the USA, in the intermediate term, I see the breakdown of civil society along tribal lines as the biggest threat to a stable life and country. Far more dangerous that climate change. Ignorance and brainwashing (faith based and media based) makes adaptation to changing conditions such as overshoot, economic change, environmental degradation- much less likely to be proactive, innovative and cooperative.

       1. I agree.

          As I see it, this is a long term conflict caused by the decline of extraction industries (especially FF) and the growth of knowledge based industries. Think Koch Industries vs Google, Putin & Trump vs Bezos, Fox vs CNN, Moscow vs California.

          The extraction industries are willing to deeply disrupt civilization in order to maintain their power. One small example:

          “It is also likely the Republicans are not eager to pass a big relief bill just before an election that might put a Democrat in power, thus boosting his chances of rebuilding the economy.” https://billmoyers.com/story/back-to-the-border/

          IOW, Republican minions of the extractive industries are willing to sink the economy to maintain power.

          1. I see it differently Nick.
             The source of tension I see is more focused on the have vs have-nots, the urban vs rural, those living in zones of innovation and thriving economy vs those in economic stagnation, the christian white supremacists and fundamentalists vs everyone else, as important example. In summary the people who would consider voting for trump vs the majority who wouldn’t.
             These tribal affiliations are becoming much more defining to the identity of America, than any sense of affiliation to the nation. And people have guns to accompany their ideology and ignorance.

    4. I think that is there is any large scale immigration to North America in this century, it will be by rich people, not by the huddled masses yearning to be free. Rich people get what they want in America, so border defenses won’t work. If say Shanghai or Bombay starts sinking under the waves, which is a somewhat realistic scenario, North America could see a huge wave of rich Asians buying property and moving in. Of course there will be rich Africans as well, but for now there are a lot more people in Asia.

       1. We have already seen a huge wave of rich mainly Hong Kong Asians buying property and moving to Vancouver area (Canada). This has been encouraged and is likely to continue. For years Chinese have dominated some of our university faculties, notably Pharmacy. Notwithstanding an ongoing problem with Asian gangs the great majority of these people are good citizens and contribute a lot to our country.

26. I don’t believe the headline for a minute, and wouldn’t suggest holding your breathe for success on the advancements they portray. Nonetheless, as good a summary of geothermal (now and future) as I have seen-

    ‘Geothermal energy is poised for a big breakout’
    “An engineering problem that, when solved, solves energy.”

    https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/10/21/21515461/renewable-energy-geothermal-egs-ags-supercritical

    1. A more realistic headline would be “Some oil industry people dream of moving into geothermal”. The problem is unlikely to be solved.

27. THE PLASTIC MYTH AND THE MISUNDERSTOOD TRIANGLE

    “It turns out that for decades the recyclability of plastics was grossly oversold by the plastics industry. The creation of this recycling myth is why, despite 30 years of being diligent recyclers, we have things like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In fact, we’ve only recycled 9% of all the plastics we’ve ever produced. And, our use of plastics is still increasing every year. The reality of the situation is that recycling plastics is actually really hard and expensive.”

    https://phys.org/news/2020-10-plastic-myth-misunderstood-triangle.html

    1. News of recycling breakthroughs. Of course the question is can it scale. A tax on disposable plastic would help.

       “Most plastics were never made to be recycled,” said lead author Peter Christensen, a postdoctoral researcher at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry. “But we have discovered a new way to assemble plastics that takes recycling into consideration from a molecular perspective.”

       https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190507110452.htm

       1. Hint:
          “Most plastics were never made to be recycled,”
          None actually– they we produced to be down cycled, and very limited.

          1. I wish, but not even that. There was no intent for recycling or down-cycling as far as I can tell. It turns out that *some* plastics can be down-cycled (made into lower grade plastics) but this is not by design. See William McDonough, Cradle to Cradle, 2002. We need to get better at this…

             1. I actually taught at a place where they were down cycled–
                But that was over 20 years ago.

       2. Today my ball point pen ran out of ink so I went to the Office Depot website to see if I could find a refill cartridge for it. I did.

          A package of two cartridges was $4.72. A package of two pens was $4.39. Obviously no one in their right mind, except maybe a crazed environmentalist would pay more for refills than for new pens. Unless this kind of madness is somehow stopped we can expect the plastic trash to continue to fill the oceans, the land fills and the roadsides.

28. Too late, they should be talking about overshoot!

    IT’S TIME ENVIRONMENTALISTS TALKED ABOUT THE POPULATION PROBLEM

    “We are already using more than what the planet can supply and we use more than the living fabric of the planet in supply. That’s why we wake up every day to fewer fisheries, less forests, more extinctions and so on. The human herd at eight billion is the greatest herd of mammals ever on this planet and it is unsustainable to have that growing…

    COVID-19 has killed more than one million people. While undeniably tragic, the figure is minor compared to world’s annual growth in population, estimated by the United Nations at about 83 million. In 1900, the world’s population was about 1.6 billion people. By 2023 it’s expected to hit 8 billion. According to the UN, it will reach 9.7 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100. The environmental movement, in particular, must awaken to the link between population growth and environmental degradation. “Business as usual” will hinder human development, further oppress women and magnify many forms of environmental damage.

    So why isn’t this being discussed: most obvious is the fear of being accused of racism. Some past advocates of population “control” supported eugenics and coercion, including forced sterilization and abortion. In fact, eugenics and forced sterilization has been reported in both rich and poor countries.

    Second, the Catholic Church has played a big role in suppressing the topic. In the 1960s a papal commission suggested the church’s decades-long ban on birth control be dropped. But in 1968, Pope Paul VI rejected the advice, and declared artificial birth control to be morally wrong.

    Third is the ascendancy of free-market economics. High population growth in low-income countries is convenient for capitalism, because these populations depress wages worldwide.”

    https://phys.org/news/2020-10-environmentalists-population-problem.html

    1. As we move from coal to gas (it’s not just human population growing).

       BIG OIL HAMSTRUNG IN TACKLING METHANE PROBLEM

       “When the coronavirus first spread around the world, emissions-tracking organizations reported good news: the drop in industrial activity and oil and gas drilling had resulted in lower emissions of a range of harmful chemicals. Yet despite this drop, emissions of one chemical continued to grow, unabated — and even increased. Big Oil has made ambitious pledges about methane emissions but this will not be enough to solve the problem.

       A recent report by data analytics company Kayrros revealed that global methane emissions grew by as much as 32 percent over the first eight months of 2020 compared with the same period a year ago. These emissions resulted from an increase in methane leaks, whose source is almost invariably the oil and gas extraction and transportation industry.”

       https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Big-Oil-Hamstrung-In-Tackling-Methane-Problem.html

    2. Meanwhile,

       POLAND ABORTION: TOP COURT RULES IN FAVOUR OF ALMOST TOTAL BAN

       Poland’s abortion laws were already among the strictest in Europe but the Constitutional Tribunal’s ruling will mean an almost total ban. Once the decision comes into effect, terminations will only be allowed in cases of rape or incest, or if the mother’s health is at risk.

       https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54642108

       1. Poland’s population peaked over a decade ago. That’s when you would expect some forced baby making via abortion restrictions. Almost no immigration. Very polarized, similar to USA.

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

    3. Everyone has been talking about the population problem since the 50s. The claim that environmentalists don’t is bizarre.

       Unfortunately, there is no practical way to reduce the population in the short term. The only way out of the current dilemma (besides screaming “O woe” as the world burns) is to find technical means of massively reducing our ecological footprint. There is no silver bullet here. Instead a wide range of measures need to be adopted and a wide range of technical solutions need to be found.

    4. “So why isn’t this being discussed: most obvious is the fear of being accused of racism.”

       Dead on.

       It’s extremely unfortunate that any serious discussion of population control by way of proactive measures is out of the question, politically, because the environmental/scientific community is almost entirely beholden for political support to the liberal political community.

       I have described myself at times as the resident token conservative of this forum, lol, and I don’t really give a shit what anybody says or thinks about me. I personally believe that the environmental situation is such that any country that’s not overpopulated already should be doing some SERIOUS thinking about sinking ships and lifeboats.

       If industrial civilization, version whichever, 3.0 or 6.0, is going to survive, it’s going to happen in parts of the world that are not yet SERIOUSLY overpopulated, economically strong, at least reasonably well educated, physically situated in such a way that immigration is easily controlled, well enough endowed that imported goods and raw materials are not ESSENTIAL, etc.

       And ya know what?

       That’s FORTRESS NORTH AMERICA.

       There are more than a few hard core right wing people who DO understand overshoot, and I talk to some of them from time to time.

       But I can’t see any likely way to get a productive dialog started between them and the left/ liberal camp.

       Now back to population control by proactive means……….

       Proactive does not necessarily mean forced sterilizations or that sort of thing.

       I would personally like to see some super rich people donate the money they will never live to spend anyway to providing free birth control to any woman willing to accept it…. plus also giving her some cash to further her education or make her life a little easier.

       So suppose she has her two kids already….. and she can get herself a couple of solar panels, some electric lights, a little tv set, maybe a refrigerator or sewing machine, etc…… if she takes a pill that means she will never have another baby. ( I know, that pill doesn’t yet exist in one time form.)

       The idiot box in and of itself apparently had one hell of a lot to do with the birth rate crashing in Brazil, once lots of poor women there could see other women on television, women with decent homes and clothing, jobs and some money……… possible if they have no children, or only one or two.

       1. The main impediment to family planning in American is religious nutjobs who oppose healthcare for women and contraception in particular.

          They even oppose basic sex education for children lol. German biology books for third graders would be banned in America as “child porn”. Why? because they show full frontal nude pictures of 12 year olds, 16 year olds and 18 year olds of both sexes. These illustrations are used to explain to children how their bodies will change as they grow up. Shocking! They also include detailed explanations of how sex works and what an orgasm is. Heavens!

          It has nothing to do with worries about racism. It’s about being backwards and opposed to moving forwards. Health care is bad news for religious nuts, because it undermines the need for “faith healing”. Just look at all those Jesus billboards in your neck of the woods. the entire racket is threatened by health care.

       2. “any country that’s not overpopulated already should be doing some SERIOUS thinking about sinking ships and lifeboats.”

          Is “sinking” a verb or an adjective?

          1. Hi Bob,
             I should have read that one over before posting it, lol, but in the wee hours when you’ve been up off and on all night looking after an invalid, it’s hard to get back to sleep, and even harder to think clearly.

             But “adjective” is the word. I don’t want my own country or ship sinking due to over population and people here living in lifeboat type situations because we get to be severely overpopulated.

             Depending on your politics, you can read it however you please. Some people in positions of power in some countries WILL sink refugee ships ,and life boats, in their near shore territorial waters, for sure, and quite possibly within our own remaining lifetimes. Things are going to get a HELL of a lot worse before they get better.

             At the moment, I was thinking about my own country having to deal with OTHER countries that will be “sinking” and whether we can afford to rescue such people, play life boat for them, by the millions, and if our borders were open, by the hundreds of millions.

             My personal position, politically and technically, thinking as a person reasonably well versed in the fundamentals of biology, is that we should be doing all we can to help third world countries achieve stable and then falling populations by any and all means that will work.

             I do not advocate allowing more people into this country, or even North America, because it’s quite obvious we are already well past the true long term carrying capacity of our continent, although most people, and especially people such as economists, don’t agree with me.

             But it’s really easy to get a biologist to agree with me……. privately. Every one I’ve had the opportunity to ask, in private with the understanding I won’t quote them, agrees that we should have FEWER rather than more people here in the USA as well as elsewhere.

             We already have a birth rate low enough to stabilize and then gradually reduce our own population, if we were to close our borders.

             Having said all this………..

             I do NOT advocate locking up or sending back the few thousands of people who currently risk their very lives to get here. Immigration on the SMALL scale is ok by me……. but so is bourbon.

29. Next Era Energy is the biggest USA utility, more than twice as big as the next in line.
    Here is what they are working on-
    “NextEra wind, solar backlog passes 15 GW as it looks to replicate renewables strategy with hydrogen ”

    The brief article is a good quick look into the direction utilities are going with their new deployments and planning. [even before the big new Biden Harris Energy plan]
    https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nextera-wind-solar-backlog-passes-15-gw-as-it-looks-to-replicate-renewable/587523/

30. More NG Pipelines exploding. https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=uMJ1W_1603370535
    And yes we have to have computers under every solar panel in the USA to protect firemen just in case they are gunning for a darwin award and use an Axe to shred PV panels in the daytime.

    1. Captivating filmic footage of falling stones(?), a fleeing guy, and the car going backwards.

       I seem to recall previously reading something about an exploding natural gas tank taking out some of a neighborhood’s buildings.

       “…just in case they are gunning for a darwin award and use an Axe to shred PV panels in the daytime…” ~ Longtimber

       Turquoise Hexagon Sun

31. I personally believe that we CAN reorganize our economy, including all the essential industries, in such a way that we can get along ok using almost all renewable energy, and that we could do it within a couple of generations.

    There are technologies in the early stages of roll out that can go a very long way toward making this work.

    This is one of them.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2020/10/24/why-vanadium-flow-batteries-may-be-the-future-of-utility-scale-energy-storage/#6472351a2305

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