304 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum-Sept 4, 2016”

  1. Hi all,

    Using a scenario with 1100 Pg of total Carbon emissions from 1765 to 2100, I used MAGICC to simulate 7 climate models with equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) between 2.26 C and 3.23 C, the average of the 19 AOGCMs used in MAGICC 6 is 2.88 C, but when the highest model(1.4 C higher than the rest) is thrown out the average is about 2.7 C. The lowest 2 are combined to give a “low” model with average ECS of 2.27C, the middle 3 are averaged to give the “medium” model (ECS-2.72 C), and the highest 2 (see list below) are the “high” model with ECS =3.22C. In 2100 the temperature is 2.1 C to 2.4C above the 1880-2009 average temperature (which is close to the Holocene average before 1750 or 11,300 BP to 200 BP) for the medium and high models.

    GISSER, 2.26
    GFDLCM21, 2.28
    GISSEH, 2.54
    ECHO G, 2.63
    HADGEM1, 3
    HADCM3, 3.21
    ECHAM5, 3.23

    1. Hi Dennis, your comparison with Holocene temperatures caught my attention since I hadn’t seen that comparison before. In an attempt to educate myself further, and relying on a quick google search (bad form I know) the temperature series I could find had a 1 degree C range for most of the Holocene, and the current average global temperature about equal to the holocene average 8000-6000 BP. To me, this would make your projections for 2100 about 1.5 to 1.9 C above the holocene warm plateau periods. Have I misread your comparison, or used “bad” holocene temp graphs?
      Thanks for the post. Phil

      1. Hi PhilS,

        The so-called HCE (Holocene Climate Optimum) was about 0.38 C (call it 0.4 C) above the 1951-1980 average from 10,000 BP to 5000 BP. It has never been clear what the baseline period for 0C should be, but choosing the average from 1700 CE to 11,300 BP (the preindustrial Holocene) makes more sense that choosing 5000 BP to 10,000 BP as a baseline. We could also choose the 2000 years before 1760 CE, which would be -0.2 C relative to the 1951-1980 average, or 5000 years before 1760 CE, which would be 0.0 C relative to the 1951-1980 average. To my mind, the Milankovitch forcing of the most recent 5000 years is likely to be closer to the forcing from such factors for the next 5000 years so using the 1951-1980 average seems a reasonable baseline.

        It has never been clear to me how the 2C limit was chosen and what was meant by “pre-industrial” temperature.

    2. Dennis, all those models, even the low ones require that the warming rate accelerates significantly quite soon to achieve the >+2.0°C before 2100, and therein lies the problem. The warming rate has not accelerated significantly, and it is very similar 1900-2015 versus 1950-2015. So there is a total disconnect between the fiction that the models propose and the reality of what nature is doing.

      1. Actually, Javier, the rate of temperature increase has accelerated by about 50% or more, while the rate of CO2 forcing has accelerated by a bit less than 50%. So you are wrong, as proven by the math…

        temp trend 1900 -2016:
        GISS = 0.088 degC/decade
        HadCRUT4 = .078

        temp trend 1950-2016:
        GISS = 0.141
        HadCRUT4 = 0.117

        temp acceleration:
        GISS = (0.141-0.088)/0.088 = 60%
        HadCRUT4 = (0.117-0.078)/0.078 = 50%

        CO2 forcing acceleration:

        ln(CO2) for 1900 = 5.688838
        ln(CO2) for 1950 = 5.740630
        ln(CO2) for 2016 = 5.999837

        delta 1900-2016 = 0.310999
        delta 1950-2016 = 0.259207

        forcing rate of change 1900-2016 = 0.310999/11.6 decades = 0.00268/decade
        forcing rate of change 1950-2016 = 0.259207/6.6 decades = 0.003927/decade

        CO2 forcing acceleration = 46%

          1. Hi Gone fishing,

            Good catch, but it doesn’t really change the conclusion as both are too low by an order of magnitude so the ratio doesn’t change.

      2. Hi Javier

        The models underestimate the trend from 1880 to 2014 relative to the data.

        The higher the ECS, the closer the model is to the data.

        1. Dennis, as I have told you many times, models do not constitute empirical evidence. No increase in the warming rate means no chance temperatures will go >+2°C by 2100. After 35 years it remains an hypothesis not supported by evidence.

          1. Hi Javier,

            The models are not monolithic as you claim. The models have different temperature trends over the past 130 years (two 65 year cycles). Those models with lower ECS have a temperature trend that is much lower than the actual temperature data over the same period, in fact the CMIP3 models need an ECS of about 3.75 C before they come close to the “actual” temperature trend from 1885 to 2015.

            Note that I doubt that ECS is actually this high, it is more likely to be around 3 C based on paleoclimatic data.

            1. Hi Javier,

              Note that a model is tested against the empirical evidence (the BEST Land Ocean data), I have never claimed that a model constitutes empirical evidence, the point is that you have claimed that the models overestimate the ECS.

              When I show that is not the case you state that models are not empirical evidence, that is correct, but not relevant. Clearly it is the data that is the empirical evidence.

              You have also claimed that it is the temperature trends that are important and that there may be a 65 year cycle of natural variability. I will assume those claims are correct and choose a 130 year period to consider which would be two full 65 year cycles to eliminate the natural variability from the trend (or at least reduce it.) Above I show what the model (an average of 19 AOGCMs) with an ECS of 3.75 C would look like relative to the data, the temperature trends are very close (empirical trend slightly higher).

          2. Hi Javier,

            If we consider the trends for the past 65 years (1951-2015) and use a lower ECS model of 2.85C, we find the model slightly overestimates the actual trend in the data from 1951-2015, slightly lower model with ECS of 2.7C matches better over that period.

      3. Hi Javier,

        From 1886 to 2015 (130 years or 2 full 65 year cycles), the model underestimates the temperature trend (CMIP3 average model of 19 AOGCMs) using the model average of 2.88 C for the equilibrium climate sensitivity and comparing with BEST Land Ocean data. For the most recent 65 years (1951-2015) a model with ECS of 2.7 C matches best with the data, paleaoclimactic data suggests ECS should be about 3 C.

  2. Here is the official IPCC temperature projection scenario graph.

      1. Ultraviolet (no extra carbon scenario -baseline)
        Dark Blue 2.6
        Light Blue 4.5
        Orange 6.0
        Red 8.5
        Infrared (adds in actual natural feedbacks)

        1. Hi Gonefishing,

          The models I used are the older CMIP3 models. Even RCP4.5 has higher fossil fuel emissions than are likely, if my medium scenarios are correct.

          Doug Leighton often calls them fantasy land scenarios, you take my medium scenarios as the low case and perhaps would take my high scenarios as the “medium case”.

          You guys agree on climate change, but you are not on the same page as far as fossil fuel.

          You both agree with Javier that the models are no good.

          Interesting, I don’t think we know if the models are high or low and so take the best guess of the climate scientists and my best guess on fossil fuels based on the research I have read by Steve Mohr, Jean Laherrere, and the USGS, we don’t know the answer on fossil fuels either.

          If there are less fossil fuels, it would be better for climate change and more difficult to make the energy transition. More fossil fuels would make an energy transition easier and keeping climate change from becoming a problem more difficult. RCP4.5 is close to my “high” fossil fuel scenario through 2250. Total carbon emissions are 1514 Pg for RCP4.5 from 1765 to 2250, where my “high” fossil fuel scenario has 1620 Pg of total carbon emitted from 1765 to 2250.

          I doubt the high scenario will prove correct and would take RCP4.5 as the highest likely scenario.

          1. “You both agree with Javier that the models are no good.”

            No, no, no, no……. I don’t agree with Javier on ANYTHING. And, your models are OK Dennis. I simply hate to see stuff with an infinite number of variables projected all the way to infinity. Maybe it comes from many years fighting with non-linear stuff. 🙂

            1. Hi Doug,

              It also occurred to me that you may believe my “oil” scenarios are ridiculously high, but perhaps you might think the coal and natural gas scenarios are way too low.

              I haven’t really projected the scenarios to infinity, only to 2500. 🙂

              I don’t really believe the scenarios, they are “what if” exercises.

              Clearly I don’t know what the future will bring.

              I was kidding about you agreeing with Javier, but you have (I think) said that the models cannot properly capture the chaotic nature of climate (and I agree), implying that the are “not very good”. Javier also often claims the models are not very good.

              I agree that the models are far from perfect and that the uncertainty about future climate (and the ECS, which is likely to be non-linear) is reason to be cautious.

              Note that most of the AOGCMs do in fact show non-linear behavior of the ECS, the main problem with much of the analysis is that unrealistic assumptions are made about fossil fuel availability. RCP8.5 requires about 4500-5000 Pg of total carbon emissions, where my “high” scenarios (which I consider ridiculously high) result in total carbon emissions of 1600 Pg from 1765 to 2250 (RCP4.5 is about 1500 Pg from 1765-2250.)

              The medium scenario is about 1200 Pg of total carbon (and you have on occasion referred to these as fantasyland estimates, I think.)

              Total carbon means carbon emissions from fossil fuels, cement production, natural gas flaring, and land use change. For carbon dioxide multiply carbon by 3.667. (Doug knows this, others may not.)

            2. Hi Doug,

              I forgot the variables, not sure how many there are, I couldn’t count that high. 🙂

            3. Doug, I think determining the results at infinite time is far simpler than determining the world conditions over the next few centuries. 🙂

            4. And, speaking of non-linear matters (parameters),

              CLIMATE CHANGE, ARCTIC SECURITY, AND METHANE RISKS

              “Assessing impacts of methane releases goes beyond consideration of meeting 2°C temperature targets at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations, and should be increasingly framed as abrupt climate changes and impacts… Rather than the gradual and linear changes to air temperature that are often discussed, methane release poses the risk of sudden climatic changes and runaway greenhouse gas emissions, as warming temperatures release ever more CH4….”

              http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/climate-change-arctic-security-methane-risks/

          2. I don’t know what you were drinking or smoking but to say I agree with Javier on models (or anything) is about as far from reality as possible.

            I just do not agree that the average models correctly factor aerosols and natural feedbacks. On the other side, I do not think they take into account the huge energy to melt ice, move more water vapor, and make more chaotic/energetic weather.

            It doesn’t matter what small differences there are in how those models are calculated, they have very wide error bars so those lines should be ranges, not lines.

            I also do not believe the fossil fuel industry will just give up and collapse, new technologies could very easily expand the economic production of fossil fuels. Also there is a significant chance that the environmental movement will be heavily hindered or collapse if we are faced with energy shortages. Keeping the wheels turning, farms running and people from freezing will take precedent over carbon reduction.
            The amount of fossil fuel produced is dependent upon human activity, so you should not be so certain in your claims about how much will be produced, as well as how much forest and scrub will be burned.

            There is still a lot of work to be done on modeling climate, it is by no means a finished science.
            Here is an article about research (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Yale) questioning climate modeling of cloud formations becoming very bright in the future
            https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160407221445.htm

            We can all hope and work for a smooth energy transistion, but the human world and physical world are very complex and the current world culture is mostly devised for war, greed and power.

            1. Hi Gonefishing,

              The point of agreement is that there is much more work on the models that need to be done. Javier agrees with that I think, he would also likely agree that there is a great deal of uncertainty about how much climate change there will be in the future.

              The disagreement comes from your belief that there will tend to be more climate change and his opposite view.

              I do not know if it will be more or less, I take the best guess of climate scientists as a group as a starting point and think we don’t really know more than that. The latest model from Gavin Schmidt et al has an ECS of about 2.7 C (GISS-E2H). Perhaps that is too low, but there is a lot included in that model.

            2. I am very sorry to hear that you give credence to Javier’s postings. He has no credibility left as far as I and other’s are concerned. For some strange reason you keep introducing him into the discussion, he is quite capable of posing his own beliefs.

            3. Javier is not without credibility, although I do believe he is wrong in saying there is no substantial evidence that we are changing the climate for the worse.

              He obviously has an excellent understanding of environmental issues other than climate, and there IS a non zero chance he is right about that.

              Maybe he is a troll or a shill for the Koch brothers, but the consensus opinion of the scientific establishment is not NECESSARILY correct.

              The climate evidence is statistical in nature, and I have been following the establishment statistically based arguments about human nutrition since the sixties, when I first studied nutrition as part of my own professional training.

              The establishment has been wrong as often as it has been right in that field.

              For the record I believe that warming is real, and that it is already causing real trouble on the grand scale, and that it is apt to get a hell of a lot worse, before it gets better a thousand years or more from now.

            4. Thanks OFM, I know that some people have made such article of faith about catastrophic global warming that they react very negatively against people that disagree.
              The past 15 years of reduced warming should give people pause about the veracity of the favored hypothesis about global warming, despite reassurances from some scientists that warming is proceeding as expected towards thermaggedon. Of course we can still claim that everything bad that happens, from the Syrian war to cold winters is global warming’s fault, and therefore our fault. But that doesn’t make it so.

              Just be well and keep alert for the dissonances between reality and what we are told to increase. You won’t be fooled much longer.

            5. I blame nutrition science for why people don’t believe scientists anymore.

              I was just reading about how eating too much spinach, beets, chard, or kale – all of which our garden has produced abundantly this year – is bad for you.

            6. Hi Gonefishing,

              I have only agreed with Javier on the fact that there is more work to be done in climate science.

              I believe you said as much, I have disagreed with most of what Javier has said, except that the models need more work, all three of us agree on that point.

            7. Anyone who repeatedly says models are useless does not know how science works.

            8. Hi Gonefishing,

              A good paper by Hansen and Sato from 2011 at link below:

              http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110118_MilankovicPaper.pdf

              No doubt you have seen it already.

              Seems the main concern is Sea level rise, more so than temperature change in and of itself. Note that if the Pliocene was about 1.5 C warmer than Holocene preindustrial, this implies an Earth System Sensitivity(ESS) of about 2.8C. Edit: I miscalculated ESS. Delta T is about 1.5 with CO2 change of 278 ppm (Holocene) to 380 ppm (Pliocene) which would imply an Earth System sensitivity of 3.2 C.

              Hansen also focuses on a Business as Usual Scenario (RCP8.5) which is not likely due to peak fossil fuels, in my view.

              The non-linear aspect of ice sheet disintegration is interesting, it would be wise to keep this in mind, it seems the mainstream of glaciologists don’t agree with Hansen’s assessment, or they are less vocal.

            9. Much of the interior West Antarctic ice sheet is grounded on rock that is below sea level. The ice shelves are breaking away. Once the water reaches inland, much of the West Antarctic ice sheet will become ice shelf and eventually disintegrate.
              Richard Alley does not know when or how fast, he merely recognizes that it might happen quickly.
              There simply are not enough researchers on the ground and working on the problem. Once we take this situation seriously, money and effort will be thrown at it and we might get decent models of the ice sheet physics.
              Until then, it is just another mystery that has the potential of flooding major coastal cities and ports in the world. When? We don’t know and really don’t care. We are more interested in sports and TV shows and burning fossil fuel.

            10. Hi Gonefishing,

              I agree there is much work that needs to be done on the ice sheets.

              Had you seen that 2011 paper by Hansen?

              What is interesting is that the ESS implied by that paper is far lower than his earlier estimates of 5 to 6 C, approximately 3.3 C is implied by the 1.5 C temperature difference between the Pliocene (with roughly 380 ppm of CO2) and the preindustrial- Holocene (about 278 ppm on average).
              ln(380/278)=0.31255,
              lamba=1.5/0.31255=4.799
              ln(2)=0.69315
              ESS=4.799*0.69315=3.33

            11. The mid-Pliocene warm period (2-3C higher than present and similar CO2 levels) is considered a model for our future climate. Significantly higher sea levels, 10C-20C higher temps near the poles, major changes in ocean currents and wind patterns.
              We could emulate the Pliocene Warm Period in the near future.

            13. Hi Gonefishing,

              Hansen has a lower temperature estimate of 1 to 2 C above pre-industrial Holocene for the Pliocene warm period.

              Did you read the 2011 paper?

              Hansen is not very conservative about the risks of future climate change and that is his estimate.

              Yes sea level will be higher, though we do not know how long it will take for the ice sheets to disintegrate, this is an area of active research where there is much to learn.

            14. Dennis, what Hansen actually says is that the near term boundaries for global temperature rise are less than 2C( fossil fuel phase out) and 3 to 6 C for BAU.
              For fossil fuel phase out to work, he says CO2 emission levels have to fall before 2019 and most of the remaining fossil fuels must stay in the ground. (we know that won’t happen)
              The 2C rise scenario requires something in between, with reductions occurring later and sea level rise still a problem.

              So far it is BAU. If our ability to extract and burn fossil fuels fades the future, it looks like a near term 3C. We could get lucky and temperatures not advance past that, but those temperatures were stable in a natural world, not a manipulated one. They were also initiated in a world that had much less ice. If you understand what that implies.

            15. Hi Gonefishing,

              Hansen says ECS is 3 C, the implied ESS is 3.3 C. Note that you cannot compare the temperature change from glacial maximum to interglacial because current ice sheet area is roughly 10 times lower than the LGM.

              The BAU scenarios are unrealistic (Such as the old A1 or the current RCP8.5). They require 5000 Pg of Carbon emissions, which will never happen.

              My medium scenario is roughly 1200 Pg C and my high fossil fuel scenario is 1600 Pg C, the peak in fossil fuels and the likely steep rise in fossil fuel prices that will result is likely to keep us at 1000 Pg of total carbon emissions. This will result in a peak of about 475 ppm CO2 which will fall to 450 ppm and keep us close to the 2 C limit.

              A more rapid energy transition would be better and sea level rise may be a big problem, though this is not well understood (we don’t have a good handle on the ice sheet physics).

              The best we are likely to do is about 924 Pg of total carbon emissions from 1765 to 2250, though there may be land use change strategies that could help sequester more carbon. The best approach is to emit as little into the atmosphere as possible.

            16. Dennis we are less than 14 years from a doubling of CO2 equivalent GHG’s.

              I don’t see GHG input falling.

            17. Hi Gonefishing,

              The CO2 equivalent is much less important than CO2 itself because most of the other greenhouse gases have a much lower atmospheric lifetime than CO2, read papers by David Archer for details (no doubt you are familiar). The focus should remain squarely on CO2. The MAGICC model includes all the gases. Also note the Kyoto Protocol CO2 Eq is not accurate.
              For the ECS=2.75C and 1094 Pg C emission scenario, the CO2, CO2 Eq and Kyoto CO2 eq (which is obsolete) are shown in the chart below.

            18. Hi Gonefishing,

              You mentioned earlier that there should be a range of estimates. To simulate this I chose 2.75C as a central estimate for ECS (similar to GISS E2 models) for the average CMIP3 model in MAGICC (18 lowest AOGCMs of 19, with the highest thrown out because the ECS was 5.7 C with the other 18 models from 1.9 to 4.1C). Also note that of the 19 CMIP3 AOGCMs included in MAGICC, 14 have and ECS between 2.25 and 3.25C (2 are lower and 3 are higher.) The upper and lower bound are at 2.25C and 3.25C. The emissions scenario has total carbon emissions of 1094 Pg of carbon from 1765 to 2250. SOx emissions drop sharply from 2070 to 2080 and are zero after 2080.

              It is possible (with aggressive action on a transition to non-fossil fuel energy) that carbon emissions might be limited to 925 Pg of total carbon from 1765 to 2250 under fairly reasonable scenarios (my opinion).

            19. Hi Gone fishing,

              I missed the part about you shouldn’t be so sure about …

              I am not sure, I present three very different scenarios for fossil fuels. Shown in chart below. If there is no reduction in fossil fuel use from the high prices that are likely to result from peak fossil fuels (highly unlikely imo), then total carbon emissions from all sources (including cement production and land use change) would be 1010 Pg, 1140 Pg, and 1320 Pg for the low, medium and high scenarios respectively from 1800 to 2100. A reasonable (some would say conservative) energy transition scenario leads to about 925 Pg of carbon emissions for the Medium scenario.

              If no emissions reduction occur before 2194, then total carbon emissions would be 1130 Pg, 1310 Pg, and 1560 Pg for these scenarios from 1800 to 2194.

            20. Hi Gone fishing,

              You said you don’t see GHGs falling. Not yet, but when peak fossil fuels arrives emissions of GHGs will fall, especially CO2.

              For my 3 fossil fuel scenarios, the chart below gives the carbon emissions to the atmosphere from fossil fuels only (land use change, cement production, and natural gas flaring are not included).

              I mistakenly put Pg/year, that is wrong the units on the vertical axis are millions of metric tonnes per year (or divide by 1000 to get Pg.) Sorry.

              Also it occurs to me that someone will believe that I expect that the future will follow one of these three paths exactly.

              Think of the high and low cases as upper and lower probability bounds (I do not have enough information to assign probabilities). The most likely scenario is somewhere between the high and low scenarios, the path of fossil fuel emissions is unknown but is likely to be bounded by the high and low case. The “medium” scenario is simply an average case between the high and low cases.

            21. Dennis , just considering other GHG’s and their effects, you need to multiply your values by 1.54 to get even near what is happening now.
              And don’t give me the story that other GHG’s don’t count. They are in continuous and growing concentration and will move right along with fossil fuel use, although some are independent. A sizable amount of CO2 is not even derived from fossil fuel burning.

            22. Gone fishing

              The RCP4.5 scenario is what I use, only CO2 is adjusted and I make SOx lower.

              The MAGICC model includes all the GHG.

              The CO2 is more important because it’s remains in the atmosphere much longer than other GHG.

            23. Hi Gone Fishing,

              The majority of net emissions are from fossil fuels.

              http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/15/hl-compact.htm

              From link above we have total carbon emissions of 10.7 Gt of carbon in 2014, 9.17 Gt of this was from fossil fuel, so 85.7% of total carbon emissions was from fossil fuels, there was also about 0.9 Gt from land use change, 0.56 Gt from cement production and 0.06 Gt from natural gas flaring.

              Looking back to 1959, nonfossil fuel emissions have been increasing, in the 1970s they were about 4.24% and in 2014 they had risen to 6.4%, most of this was due to an increase in emissions from Cement production which was 2% of the total in the 70s and 5.7% of carbon emissions in 2014.

              http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/15/data.htm

            25. Hi Gonefishing

              The RCP 4.5 scenario has more carbon emissions than my scenario. Which has 1100 Pg C emissions from 1765 to 2250, RCP 4.5 has 1500 Pg C over same period. My high scenario is about 1600 Pg C.

            27. Dennis, other industrial uses is not fossil fuel. Did you even look at the EPA site?

              Back in 2005 a NASA scientist showed that methane was twice as strong of a GHG as listed by the IPCC . Also that long term decay song you keep playing has nothing to do with the effect due to an atmospheric concentration. What is in the atmosphere currently has about 100 times the effect of CO2. That whole decay thing is not only misinformed, but has nothing to do with the current concentration effect.

              Anyway, methane decays into two different GHG’s. Also the greater the concentration of methane the lower the hydroxyl concentration, therefor the longer the lifetime.

            28. Hi gf

              The EIA may be incorrect. The source I used tracks global emissions. It gives the total carbon emissions.

              Over the long term it is carbon emissions that are most important.

              I will go with the opinion of the scientists at real climate.

              You can choose other opinions.

            29. The originating source I used for global emissions was the IPCC.

            31. Hi Gone Fishing,

              The RCP4.5 Scenario has about 1470 Pg of carbon emissions from 1800 to 2200, this is between my medium (1320 Pg C) and high (1570 Pg C) scenarios.

              My 1100 Pg scenario is based on a reduction of carbon emissions to zero by 2100, the medium scenario has 1140 Pg C emissions (from all sources) from 1800 to 2100, the RCP4.5 Scenario has 1270 Pg C emissions from 1800-2100.

              The extra 330 Pg of carbon emissions (190 Pg after 2100) keeps temperature rising after 2100.

    1. Thanks Gonefishing,

      Does the view point expressed in that piece seem a little too optimistic to you?

      I hope that he is correct and that EVs and solar (and wind) grow as fast as the PC market in the 1990 to 2015 period. An interesting point that I had not considered before is (an Elon Musk quote, I think):

      When true self-driving is approved by regulators, it will mean that you will be able to summon your Tesla from pretty much anywhere. Once it picks you up, you will be able to sleep, read or do anything else enroute to your destination.

      You will also be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you’re at work or on vacation, significantly offsetting and at times potentially exceeding the monthly loan or lease cost. This dramatically lowers the true cost of ownership to the point where almost anyone could own a Tesla. Since most cars are only in use by their owner for 5% to 10% of the day, the fundamental economic utility of a true self-driving car is likely to be several times that of a car which is not.

      In cities where demand exceeds the supply of customer-owned cars, Tesla will operate its own fleet, ensuring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are.

      1. Hi Dennis,
        First Tesla has to get through the next couple of years and actually produce it’s claims without foundering.
        After that, I think all the claims are easily within current advancing technology. The major difficulty will be on the political/government scene. We will probably see some of everything in the next few decades unless the whole thing collapses or we decide to go to war with China.
        I think the best economic thing to happen in the world would be to pursue the energy and transportation transistion very aggressively.
        However humans and their devious methods are involved. I have seen very good ideas and product lines disappear to be replaced with generally mediocre ones.
        At least the potential is there and the timeline is fairly short, most of us will see either the demise or rise of the legacy auto industry.

        I do have one big question though. What do the younger generations want? What is their vision of the world and are older generations now trying to fit the wrong paradigm upon them?

        1. Hi Gonefishing,

          The younger generation will dump the ice like a rock when the Tesla Model 3, Chevy bolt and similar cars from competitors are produced.

          Probably 35 years at most before 75% (at minimum) of new car sales are EVs and plugin hybrids.

          Once autonomous cars are legalized (20 years maybe) the vehicle fleet may decrease rapidly and we might have ubiquitous car sharing/pooling.

          It will certainly be good on the climate change front.

          I absolutely agree on the rapid as possible energy transition. peak fossil fuels (and the high fossil fuel energy prices that will result) cannot happen soon enough in my opinion. Hopefully my WAG of 2025 for peak fossil fuels will be correct (though sooner would be even better.) Cheaper wind, solar and batteries will also help speed the transition.

          1. “The younger generation will dump the ice like a rock when the Tesla Model 3, Chevy bolt and similar cars from competitors are produced.”

            Won’t be just the youngsters, and here’s why:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_jUmqnDAIc

            Tesla Model X vs Alfa Romeo C4.
            Best drag race ever.

            Performance and status sell.

            1. Hi Bob,

              It is important to some, but most are looking for a reliable low cost car. Oil prices will rise to $4/gallon and the total cost of ownership of EVs and plugins will be far below the cost of even a hybrid (non-plugin).

              The market for high performance cars is pretty small, though from a marketing standpoint having fast EVs is pretty important.

            2. Hhmmmm…kind’ve.

              New cars need to be “affordable”, not low cost. For instance, the very efficient, low cost original Honda Insight just didn’t sell. It’s the kind of car that some here are calling for, and it bombed completely.

              Further, luxury cars generate a disproportionate share of car maker profits and prestige. Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Lexus…they’re all terrified of Tesla. And, yet, they dislike EVs enough that they’re still moving very, very slowly, producing “concept” cars meant for production in 3-5 years.

            3. Hi Nick,

              By low cost, I mean low cost of operation, generally what people consider “affordable”.

              The old insight was very small, a two seater, and had very poor performance (except gas mileage). The new insight was competing with the Prius and was just not as good a car.

              Also by “low cost”, I don’t necessarily mean lowest cost, but really just medium cost (the bolt an model 3 are aiming at the middle of the market which is best). I simply mean the opposite of high cost. The model S and X will never gain a large share of the total car market, they are too expensive for the average car buyer.

              I agree aiming for the low end of the market (Toyota Yaris quality) would be a mistake, the Corolla or Civic to Camry/Accord space is the segment to go after (and eventually RAV4 and Highlander space).

            4. Yeah, we agree.

              I think some people miss the fact that Tesla knows all this. From the beginning their long-term strategy was to start with luxury cars and end up with affordable cars.

            5. My view is that people are looking for the best performing and highest status vehicle in their desired vehicle class that they can afford.

              If “most” are looking for a reliable low cost car, why is everyone driving oversized trucks and SUV’s that are rarely used for hauling or towing?

              It’s all about tribal identity and status, and Nick G has it right IMO.

              The motor heads and coal rollers will only ever accept EV’s when they are so bad ass that it overwhelms their revulsion to any taint of green.

              I didn’t explicitly say so when posting that drag race vid, but I expect the performance ethos that informs the Tesla Model X to also be present in the Models 3 and Y.

              Elon Musk understands that if you want to revolutionize the world, you don’t do it selling sack cloth and ashes. Only the Puritans get off on that.

  6. Daily CO2

    September 3, 2016: 401.07 ppm

    September 3, 2015: 398.15 ppm

    1. Hi Duncan,

      I use the 19 CMIP3 models with the high model thrown out (because the ECS is 5.7 C and all other models have ECS of 4.1C or less), the average ECS of the remaining 18 models is 2.72C which I use for the model presented here. The average ECS when all 19 models are included is 2.88 C, but I consider the highest model an outlier. Note that the “low model” is 1.9 C and is only 0.3C lower than the next lowest model, that model does not look like an outlier to me.

      In any case, CO2 for this model with ECS of 2.72 with the RCP4.5 scenario from 1950 to 2100 is shown below. Global temperature rises to 2.1C above the 1951-1980 global average by 2100 and to 2.34 C by 2250, it is doubtful that carbon emissions will be as high as RCP 4.5 which is close to the level of my “high” fossil fuel scenario. (only 100 Pg C lower)

      1. Global temperatures for RCP 4.5 with CMIP3 model with ECS=2.72C, relative to a temperature anomaly of 0 C for the 1951-1980 average temperature. Note that the data from Marcott et al (2013) suggests that the Holocene average temperature from 11,300 BP to 1760 CE was 0.2 C above the 1961-1990 average temperature. Based on the BEST LO temperatures 1961-1990 was about 0.055 C above 1951-1980. So Pre-industrial Holocene temperatures (before 1760) were about 0.25 C above 1951-1980 average temperatures.

          1. Actually the cooling trend ended at the bottom of the Little Ice Age, about 350 years ago. Well before any significant anthropogenic emissions. Since then sea levels hace been rising, glaciers receding, and sea ice decreasing. A lot of people tend to forget that because it is an inconvenient truth.

            2. As per IPCC, anthropogenic forcing was negative (cooling), or not significant prior to mid 20th century. Of course they might be wrong on that as in many other things.

            3. Hi Javier,

              A combination of Milankovitch cycles, volcanoes, and other natural variability are the obvious explanation.

              In the grand scheme 350 years is a small slice in time, for most of the other 3650 years the trend was cooling.

            4. And 65 years is an even much smaller slice, Dennis. As multi-centennial warming trends do exist in the past 5000 years, perhaps it is a little bit premature to affirm that the primary trend has changed.

            6. Hi Javier,

              Over the period from 11,300 BP to 1760 BP the highest rate of centennial warming (based on the Marcott et al 2013 analysis) was 10 times lower that the rate of warming from 1916 to 2015.

              It is the rate of global warming that is unprecedented in the past 11,300 years.

    2. Should we be expecting some scientific paper soon that says we’ve jumped from 2.4 ppm increase per year to around 3 ppm? And if so what would be the reason – fossil fuel use has increased, despite the country reports saying it hasn’t, La Nina hasn’t come to save us, permafrost melt, something else has gone wrong in the carbon cycle?

      1. In general scientists tend to know that El Niño increases CO2 production from natural sources. They don’t get to publish what is generally known.

        1. Really?
          Come now my ideologically crippled friend.
          If you have a well researched and data relevant paper (especially one that breaks the current data) Science or Nature would be all over it.
          But you just can’t make stuff up– they catch you doing that.

          1. Well known since the 90’s, just not by you.

            The influence of El Niño on the equatorial Pacific contribution to atmospheric CO2 accumulation
            R. A. Feely, R. Wanninkhof, T. Takahashi, P. Tans
            Nature, 398, 597–601 (1999)
            “The equatorial oceans are the dominant oceanic source of CO2 to the atmosphere, annually amounting to a net flux of 0.7–1.5 Pg (1015 g) of carbon, up to 72% of which emanates from the equatorial Pacific Ocean (Houghton et al., 1994; Tans et al., 1990; Takahashi et al., 1997). Limited observations indicate that the size of the equatorial Pacific source is significantly influenced by El Niño events (Feely et al., 1995; Wanninkhof et al., 1996; Murray et al., 1994; Feely et al., 1987; Inoue and Sugimura, 1992; Goyet and Peltzer, 1994; Archer et al., 1996), but the effect has not been well quantified. Here we report spring and autumn multiannual measurements of the partial pressure of CO2 in the surface ocean and atmosphere in the equatorial Pacific region. During the 1991–94 El Niño period, the derived net annual sea-to-air flux of CO2 was 0.3 Pg C from autumn 1991 to autumn 1992, 0.6 Pg C in 1993, and 0.7 Pg C in 1994. These annual fluxes are 30–80% of that of 1996, a non-El-Niño year. The total reduction of the regional sea-to-air CO2 flux during the 1991–94 El Niño period is estimated to account for up to one-third of the atmospheric anomaly (the difference between the annual and long-term-average increases in global atmospheric CO2 content) observed over the same period.”
            http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel1868/text.shtml

            1. Exchange of CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere is a normal occurrence.

              Carbon is readily exchanged between the atmosphere and ocean. Each year, approximately 90 gigatons of carbon are exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean in each direction, leading to a quick equilibration of surface ocean and atmospheric carbon levels.[4] In regions of oceanic upwelling, carbon is released to the atmosphere. Conversely, regions of downwelling transfer carbon (CO2) from the atmosphere to the ocean. Interactions with the atmosphere also influence the rate of carbon uptake from other systems. Extreme storms such as hurricanes and typhoons bury extremely large amounts of carbon, because they wash away so much sediment.[8]
              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_carbon_cycle

              The pH of the ocean is decreasing.

  7. Hi Dennis, I have a comment near this place in the thread that’s stuck in the spam folder. Thanks!

    1. Hi Caelan,

      In the future use only one name (the one you used in the post above), I cannot be bothered constantly retrieving stuff, the comment has been lost.

      1. Hi Dennis,

        I have only used my name in the post-in-question and would not have mentioned it otherwise.
        Incidentally, WRT ktos’ comment, it was not mine in case you might be referring to that, such as just because they placed a music link in it.

        Anyway, understood about the spam and your time limits, and I would feel the same way. Best with the site management.

        1. Hi caelan

          You often add stuff after your name it creates extra work for me and I may choose to delete those.

          1. Oh ok, you mean those titles. Fair enough, Dennis, I’ll keep them to a minimum and accept the consequences if a title is used and they get permanently swallowed, if that works for you.

            1. Hi Caelan,

              If you would like to add something after your name, you are free to do that, each time the name is different from “Caelan MacIntrye”, you will have to wait for me to moderate the comment, I cannot be present 24/7.

    1. We shall see—
      Lithium Ion is 1990’s Japanese technology, and still is the best we have that scales.
      It has been a while—

      1. The incandescent light bulb was 1870’s technology. Changes happen faster now.

        1. It has been a while.
          the 1990’s have been a while.
          Humans have not exceeded the speed of Apollo 11 in 1969.

          1. “Humans have not exceeded the speed of Apollo 11 in 1969.”
            They don’t need to, they have the internet now.
            Anyway, we send robot craft to do our dirty work in deep space, much cheaper and they don’t have a union yet.

            1. There is a difference between changes– whether they happen faster now or not– and meaningful changes.

              Fast and disruptive changes sounds like a Fred meme.

              “We’ve already passed peak internet functionality; from now on, the costs will climb and the benefits will slump, year after dreary year, until every bit of creativity and intelligence is gone and people endure the internet only if they have no other choice.” ~ John Michael Greer

            3. Graeber’s a self-described anarchist if recalled and I first heard of him during the Occupy movement.
              I came across that article and read most of it some time ago when ‘flying cars’ was part of an online search.
              I like the ‘moonarchy’ image in the article.

              Here’s a pertinent quote that echoes the sentiments of an increasing global chorus that has realized something important about technology’s promise as it relates to such things as equality and related.

              “And if we’re going to invent robots that will do our laundry and tidy up the kitchen, then we’re going to have to make sure that whatever replaces capitalism is based on a far more egalitarian distribution of wealth and power—one that no longer contains either the super-rich or the desperately poor willing to do their housework. Only then will technology begin to be marshaled toward human needs. And this is the best reason to break free of the dead hand of the hedge fund managers and the CEOs—to free our fantasies from the screens in which such men have imprisoned them, to let our imaginations once again become a material force in human history.” ~ David Graeber

            4. It was right around 1970 when the increase in the number of scientific papers published in the world—a figure that had doubled every fifteen years since, roughly, 1685—began leveling off. The same was true of books and patents.

              Toffler’s use of acceleration was particularly unfortunate. For most of human history, the top speed at which human beings could travel had been around 25 miles per hour. By 1900 it had increased to 100 miles per hour, and for the next seventy years it did seem to be increasing exponentially. By the time Toffler was writing, in 1970, the record for the fastest speed at which any human had traveled stood at roughly 25,000 mph, achieved by the crew of Apollo 10 in 1969, just one year before. At such an exponential rate, it must have seemed reasonable to assume that within a matter of decades, humanity would be exploring other solar systems.

              Since 1970, no further increase has occurred. The record for the fastest a human has ever traveled remains with the crew of Apollo 10. True, the commercial airliner Concorde, which first flew in 1969, reached a maximum speed of 1,400 mph. And the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144, which flew first, reached an even faster speed of 1,553 mph. But those speeds not only have failed to increase; they have decreased since the Tupolev Tu-144 was cancelled and the Concorde was abandoned.

        2. Actually slower.
          Between 1870 and 1970 we went from horse and buggy to putting a man on the Moon.
          Electricity, automobile, aircraft, running water, antibiotics, Haber, washing machines, sanitation, birth control, etc.
          We have been in the doldrums.

          1. Worse than that it feels. We have ended up in the doldrums, and I was happy there for the time it allowed to reflect and relax, but then a fierce gale picked up and started blowing us back in the direction we came and no amount of clever tacking was enough. We also began taking on water and no amount of bailing was enough to stem the deluge.

            Abandon ship! Abandon ship!

            1. This is the boat that society sold us on. We had high hopes.

          2. There are no scheduled or non-scheduled moon flights, so that was a dead end.
            DI, you are just not paying attention and are using selective blinders to make your assessments. In 1870 we had steam ships and railroads, along with a heavy industrial backbone.
            The INTERNET, genetics, medicine, electronics, computing, material sciences, specialty chemicals, polymers, metallurgy, space exploration, astronomy, physics, printing. Touchscreens, LED’s, drones, smart-everything. Computers that fit in your pocket, cell phones, space stations, and on and on and on.
            Nope, we do not have anti-gravity or force fields yet, but my outside spotlights turn on when someone walks near and we have a bunch of satellites circling Mars (why?).
            You need to read the scientific, engineering, pharmaceutical, biomedical and industrial journals if you want any idea what is being invented. Just the advances in battery technology have been amazing.
            The shampoo people use is composed of smart polymers and other advanced polymer systems. Your cellphones needed large advances in adhesive technology to be made so small.
            The advances are all around you.

            1. I fall asleep at night listening to scientific papers.
              You need some deeper exploration.
              In biology we have made major strides (most off DNA from 1954 however).
              Physics?
              https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160809-what-no-new-particles-means-for-physics/

              Actually the diesel engine is the most important invention in your world and for your survival, with the exception of germ theory and the Haber Process. And they was invented in the 1800’s

              http://eh.net/book_reviews/prime-movers-of-globalization-the-history-and-impact-of-diesel-engines-and-gas-turbines/

            2. So, what’s your argument? Why should we care about the rate of publication hitting a plateau?

              From the article you provided:

              “There’s still hope that new physics will show up. But discovering nothing, in Spiropulu’s view, is a discovery all the same — especially when it heralds the death of cherished ideas. “Experimentalists have no religion,” she said.

              Some theorists agree. Talk of disappointment is “crazy talk,” Arkani-Hamed said. “It’s actually nature! We’re learning the answer! These 6,000 people are busting their butts and you’re pouting like a little kid because you didn’t get the lollipop you wanted?”

            3. In a way, Nick, perhaps we share the same bed: Presumably, we both want technology to actually work. My difference, maybe, is that I want it to work for everyone and every thing (nature), as opposed to a relatively-limited group of ‘crony-capitalist plutarchs’. I want people to actually control, relatively-fully, what they make and use, and the conditions in which they live and work, and we both know they/we don’t.

              Solar panels go up on Fred’s African mud huts in a myriad of contexts, some of which, if not most, are very dubious. Why? Because society, as it currently operates and is manifest, is very dubious, that’s why.

            4. 1974 Charmed quark discovered
              1975 Tau lepton discovered
              1977 Bottom quark discovered
              1980 Quantum Hall effect discovered
              1981 Theory of cosmic inflation
              Fractional quantum Hall effect discovered
              1995 Top quark discovered
              1998 Accelerating universe discovered
              2000 Tau neutrino discovered
              2012 Higgs Boson discovered
              2015 Gravitational waves detected

            5. Higgs and Gravity just filled out 1975 Standard Model.
              The rest is way below 2000, and not of major importance.
              (Expansion is a new view)

            6. You are right, there have been no new discoveries, compounds, pharmaceuticals, materials, etc. in the year 2017.
              Yet.

            7. I’d say it’s a tad premature to dismiss importance of Higgs since it isn’t even remotely understood yet. Perhaps if it (the Higgs) decays to dark matter or introduces new experiments confirming super-symmetry or whatever, you might reassess your (narrow) view.

            9. Even the microprocessor going forward is just a update on old technology.

              That doesn’t seem like clear analysis.

              A smart phone is just a landline with a screen.

              A PC is just a small mainframe.

              A PC is just a TV with a processor (I’ve actually seen this argument made with a straight face).

              PV is just a rock that generates power…

            10. “Even the microprocessor going forward is just a update on old technology.” Well, quantum computers are coming aren’t they?

            11. Not only that, Duncan, but we still live in relatively neofeudal systems, so we have yet to advance on that front as well.

              …And isn’t that the kind of advancement that counts and that have a certain indicative quality about it? That makes the difference between whether our science and technology matters or not, and whether we have a clean, viable planet or are in the kinds of peak-oil/environment/society-related predicaments we are in right now?

            12. Quantium Computers are struggling to compute 3X5.
              I would not hold your breath.

            13. Hi Duncan

              Perhaps we have made most of the obvious discoveries.

              If so the rate of new discoveries will slow down.

            15. It’s interesting how technology is often naively, superficially and/or conveniently laid out in rote as if to infer that it’s all good. Context? What’s that?

              Cellphones and the internet/computers isolate people and questionably drain their time; chemicals toxify the environment and people’s bloodstreams; drones blow people up remotely; pharmaceuticals dumb down and treat rather than cure people while creating cash cows for industry; ‘heavy industrial backbones’ ‘break’ people’s, communities’ and local environments’ ‘backs’; and space exploration ‘fumbles around in the dark’ with people’s stolen money (coercive taxation), for examples.

              There are as much, if not more, regressions than advancements.

              “Using evidence from epidemiology, anthropology, and archaeology, Cohen provides fascinating evidence about the actual effects of civilization on health, suggesting that some aspects of civilization create as many health problems as they prevent or cure.”
              ~ book description for ‘Health and The Rise of Civilization’, by Mark Nathan Cohen

              It’s All Good

            16. Cellphones and the internet/computers isolate people and questionably drain their time;

              Says the guy who incessantly wastes his time telling the entire world how terrible technology is by using the very cellphones and the internet/computers that he claims isolate everyone from each other.

              Why don’t you practice what you preach and isolate yourself already by pulling the plug and thereby saving the internet from being exposed to your cognitive dissonance.

              Most people frequenting this site are well aware of the negative aspects of civilization and technology however someone who consistently ignores the positives and displays a holier than thou attitude while using that very technology to preach to the, in your opinion, unenlightened, is rather tiring and pathetic.

            17. It seems rather ironic, maybe even tragic in considering the larger picture, to make pronouncements of some questionable notions of the supposed positives of technology on a supposed peak oil site, and while discouraging or avoiding an adequate analysis or discussion of it from various angles.

              It’s rather like, insofar as one can kill a patient in order to save them, so one can save a patient in order to kill them later.

              Technology has no absolute positive if we’re working with it on a runaway train or sinking titanic or if its being concocted and sold by a relative minority that claims it knows what’s right for the rest of us.

              The whole point that seems to be missed continuously with regard to technology is that it’s supposed to improve lives, not to make them, ultimately, worse.
              And when I write, ‘technology’, I also mean ‘social technology’, like government. They have to actually be as they claim and to work, and often on and in a myriad of levels and ways, respectively, as well as over significant lengths of time. If they do not, then they are not ultimately viable, no matter how magical they appear or are made to appear.

            18. Incidentally, there is no real contradiction in using computer/internet technology to critique it and technology, etc., in general– quite the opposite in fact.
              But it is something which you would seem to agree with anyway (along with replying to my comments ‘u^), speaking of contradiction.

            20. Hi Dennis,

              Along with the press, we now have CCTV’s, face recognition software, the NSA, Snowden’s revelations, Facebook ‘backdoor’ access, drones, Wikileaks revelations, and as we recently seemed to have discovered, the various hacking tools at NSA’s disposal. Etc..

              It is not just the printing press, but who controls them and what they are made to do and so forth.

    2. I’ll keep my regular gasoline powered car over the new “green” scams thank you. I have the luxury of coming and going as I please without having to worry about getting electricity to charge it up. Plus I don’t have to rely on public transport meaning I would need to depend on someone else’s schedule…not to mention not worrying about knifed or worse in the process by some of the low life who you see frequent the urban orientated public transport.

      1. You don’t have to worry about getting electricity to charge it up but you have to find a gas station to gas it up, right? I’ll take the electricity coming out of my garage outlet anytime over breathing in the carcinogens coming out of that gas pump. But each to his own. No one will force you to give up that dinosaur method of personal transportation you love so, so dearly.

      2. not to mention not worrying about knifed or worse in the process by some of the low life who you see frequent the urban orientated public transport.

        Another highly intelligent Trump supporter!

        1. Nope guess again. I live in Canada, not the US. And given the top two choices this year I probably wouldn’t be voting even if I did live in the US.

          1. Nope guess again. I live in Canada, not the US.

            Same shit different flies! It doesn’t matter where you live or who you might choose to vote for. It is the arrogance, clueless elitism and xenophobic paranoia of your remark that clearly identifies you as someone who is an ideological twin of a Trump supporter.

            1. So writes someone who plugs, and relatively-devoid of sociocultural analysis, crony-capitalist plutarchy-derived corporate— sorry, disruptive— technology, and hypocritical, puke-inspiring shit stuff like this:

              “…Now is the time to [embrace] …the rapid disruptive change happening all around us…” ~ Fred Magyar

              “Good Luck to All! And may that Star Spangled Banner yet wave upon the early morning light of a new world. A world connecting people to people with all the benefits of technology and helping us better understand and help each other.” ~ Fred Magyar

              “No asshole, you missed my point completely…” ~ Fred Magyar

              Ironically, Fred, Trump may help ‘continue the tradition’, one where the star-spangled banner continues to piss shine all over the world and trickle down in theory to the manufacured lower levels, such as to your ‘poor’ Africans, made largely ‘poor’, perhaps, by said piss shine, yes?

              …Say, is that some corporate brown on your nose there, or something else?

              Napkin?

            2. …I suppose one could call Trump a disruption of sorts, yes?

              And what is the status-quo after all, but one big disruption to the planet?

              You want disruption? Careful what you wish for.

              But then Javier might tell us that it’s no big deal and something to embrace, like extra C02.

              Might as well get in early and consider writing a book, called… how about, ‘Tantric Tundra Gardening’… and an inspirational kick-off Arctic cruise on the very first ice-free summer.

              Book now and we’ll throw in a signed copy of Javier Nomdeplume’s, Tantric Tundra Gardening– at no extra charge!

      3. Hi Lydia,

        Peak oil is not a scam, it is reality which either has occurred (in 2015) or will occur no later than 2025 (my best guess is 2020-2022). Gasoline will become quite expensive when peak oil is here. It will be a personal choice whether to pay far more for gasoline (maybe $10/gal in 2016 US$), or pay 1/4th that amount for the inconvenience of having to stop and charge your car for 30 minutes every 250 miles when making a long trip.

        For most uses you will be able to charge at home or wherever you stop in the future, there will be charging stations everywhere eventually.

        You won’t have to choose public transportation if you don’t like it. You can spend your time in traffic jams instead, much safer I hear 🙂

        1. It will be a personal choice whether to pay far more for gasoline (maybe $10/gal in 2016 US$), or pay 1/4th that amount for the inconvenience of having to stop and charge your car for 30 minutes every 250 miles when making a long trip.

          Don’t forget the 3rd choice: plugin hybrids, which run on cheap electricity 90% of the time, and on expensive gas 10% of the time. Of course, at some point gas stations may become very hard to find…

          1. Hi Nick,

            Correct, but at some point the plugin hybrid might be quite a bit more expensive as battery cost comes down, but it is a good bridge until charging stations become ubiquitous and for people that don’t like the idea of renting a car for the occasional long trip. EVs will rule the day when gasoline gets to $10/gallon (in 2016 US$) in my opinion.

            Public transportation, more walkable neighborhoods and bike paths are also a sensible way forward, bikes are kind of tough in Cold climates in winter though.

            1. Sure.

              OTOH, a plugin hybrid will also come down in price as the investment in the development of the system is amortized. After all, it’s just a small battery combined with a small onboard backup generator.

              The point is that there will be many options available, that will give people something at least as affordable and convenient as what they have now.

            2. Hi Nick,

              I am thinking the cost and complexity of the plugin hybrid will not be a great option for most relative to the equivalent of a Model 3 Tesla, which in the future may get 400 miles of range. There might be niche uses for plugin hybrids, but in my mind these will be for the range anxious slow adopters, 10 years from now.

            3. I agree.

              Still, I think it’s worth including when educating people who are anxious about the transition. It’s good for them to know that there will be an affordable and convenient option for any scenario, such as people in very rural locations (who seem to be over represented on POB).

            5. Just a few items.
              Many of the places I used to go only had dirt roads, far removed from towns and cities. Doubt if charging stations will be out there.

              You can easily get 400 mile range now, just drive slowly.

              One thing that is not mentioned often is the decay rate of the charge on the batteries. Let a car sit a few days and the losses will mount up.

            6. Hi Gone fishing,

              If the destination is more than 400 miles from the nearest charging station, you would be out of luck. Most destinations have electricity, if not, an EV would not be a great choice and a plugin hybrid would be better.

              There will be EV SUVs, dirt roads generally are not a problem, assuming you can get down them now, there will be an EV in the future which can also travel those roads.

              Note that in the future wherever there is now a gas station will also have a charging station, probably with a restaurant or at least counter service so you can get a bite while you charge.

  9. Continued from above,

    “…In developing scenarios to assess climate vulnerabilities, the Department of Energy and Department of Defense approaches relied upon scientific expertise, but security planners moved well beyond what was already well known or considered ‘most probable’ in terms of risk. The standard scientific approach to methane influences on climate change rely upon peer-reviewed studies that require 95% certainty of conclusions, which lends a form of conservatism to predictions of future conditions. Changing boundary conditions undermine certainty, like trying to predict how fast a car is driving while it slides sideways on ice. Yet as retired flag officers mentioned in the 2007 CNA Corporation report on climate security, in military terms, waiting for full information and certainty means waiting too long. Planning scenarios also tend to work best when combining factors (rather than examining only one variable, such as daytime air temperature), as most disasters are improbable combinations of probable factors, thus eluding plans for ‘most likely’ events. Rather than rely upon historically-based risks, security planners more often find it useful to explore probabilistic “long tails,” where potential impacts are catastrophic and probabilities largely unknown due to shifting boundary conditions…”

    1. BTW Dennis, though I don’t normally extend gushing compliments, I will say you’ve used (embraced) arguments somewhat similar to the above from time-to-time. 🙂

      1. Hi Doug,

        Thanks. I think either you are giving me too much credit, or I am not understanding you correctly. Probably both 🙂

    1. Ha! Uppsala University is located in the liberal socialist country of Sweden and is obviously part of the international UN based conspiracy to propagate the climate change hoax with the intent of funneling wealth, mostly from US taxpayers to the coffers of money grubbing climate scientists.

      Kevin Anderson’s entire lecture was beyond alarmist and was based on flawed and manipulated data. CO2 is good for plants and we should burn as much fossil fuel as is possible to give humanity at least a slight edge against the devastating Ice Age that will surely doom us all in the near future.

      We need more growth, more consumption more people and far less biodiversity on this planet! We can do just fine with chickens, cows and pigs and potatoes, rice, corn and soybeans! Well. maybe a few pigeons and sparrows and some palm trees and a few pines here and there. We can farm fish in the middle of the ocean too.

      At least until we can get off this hell hole of a planet and go terraform Mars!

      1. This is a right slap in the face to pretty much the whole global community. Climate change denial is a sign of contempt for science, reason, and for all rational people who comprehend climate change to be a critical element that must be addressed to ensure long term peace or even survival of our species.

        2. CameronB,

          You’re pickin’ on the wrong dude man. But do save your comment because we have a guy here who could benefit from your insight(s); not that he’ll ever admit it.

      3. Yeah, apart from that dynamite group, ABBA, what has Sweden contributed to the world? Oh, there was dat blonde too, Ursula Undress, or somethin.

        1. Yeah, they had that dumb chemist Svante Arrhenius who started the entire CO2 global warming hoax back in 1896…

          1. And then there is that guy Hans who uses boxes to show population change.

            1. Well even the worst societies occasionally produce a brilliant critical thinker like Dr. Hans.

      4. FredM,

        Some palm trees? You mean as amenities? You’re missing a big opportunity, then: Palm-oil trees, that’s the ticket. They produce palm oil and palm-kernel oil (two of the top four highest saturated oils) AND they require that rain forest be cut down to make room for the plantations.

        1. AND they require that rain forest be cut down to make room for the plantations.

          Yup, and as a bonus, it eliminates all the remaining orangutans, all in one fell swoop, win win!

  11. Is there a problem with the servers running this blog or something? Comments don’t go through, pages are sometimes slow to load or, worse yet, never load at all. The whole site is teetering on the edge of being unreadable. I wish somebody would take a look at some of these things.

    1. Yair . . . .

      Dunno GEOFF RILEY.

      Down here with a dodgy wireless connection in Central Queensland its one of the quickest sites around.

      I assumed due to no adds and bullshit . . . your end maybe?

      Cheers.

      1. I tried posting some comments in the last oil post, but when I hit the post button, the page refreshed with my comments nowhere to be found. There was no indication of what happened to them – no message saying they hadn’t been received, that they had been rejected, that they were sent to a moderation queue, etc. Nothing at all. Then, after that, the whole site stopped loading. I would get an error message mentioning a stack trace something and to contact the site’s DNS providers.

        For now though I guess everything is working as intended again. Although I noticed each comment gets assigned a sequential number. Placing the cursor over the date/time comment was sent displays a link that contains the number at the end. From what I’ve observed, around 1/3 to 1/4 of all comments never go through. Probably they get lost to the cyberspace like I’ve experienced. I wonder if that is why some familiar names who used to post here in the past seem to have dropped off?

        1. In my experience, some comments are sent to the trash by the filter. That’s why the numbers do not coincide with the comments. As this is a one person shop we have to be understanding. If your message went to the trash one email will have it rescued. It is also a good idea to copy your message before sending it.

    3. Hi Geoff Riley,

      Sorry you have been having problems.

      An email to peakoilbarrel@gmail.com can sometimes help, but sometimes I forget to check, better to just alert me here if you can and save your comments in a Word processor if you can. I don’t run the servers, so sometimes there are glitches outside my control.

      There is a lot of Spam that gets filtered and sometimes people just stop posting or lose interest.

      1. Never, ever rely on websites to save your text.

        It’s best to type in a simple word processor, and copy it over. If that seems too tedious, then save the text before telling the web site you’re done. On a PC, hit CTRL-A to highlight all text, then CTRL-C to save it. Then, if it gets lost you can try again, and paste the old comment in with CTRL-V.

  13. I have observed that during May, June, July, and August, the sun moves not quite as fast across the sky, gets into a groovy groove, even the sun enjoys the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, wants to hang out more, wants to shine to make everything shine.

    Then when winter rolls around, for some unknown reason, the sun shines 1/3 the time that it does in June, around the 21st or so, ergo, the sun gets really cold because it is winter. The sun goes to bed early to stay warm, must be the reason why. In the summer, the sun stays outside a lot to keep cool, summers can be hot, so the sunshine keeps the sun purdy cool.

    Also, global warming heats up the sun, so it is easier for the sun to stay warm, especially during the winter.

    One can conclude that it can get hotter than hell, and probably will, all because fossil fuels are being burned to beat hell.

    Colder winters that last all year round will solve the global warming predicament.

    Summer will be a thing of the past, the sun won’t want to shine if there is no summer, so prepare for permanent perpetual winter for the rest of your born days.

    Just my opinion, but now you know why anthropogenic climate change will create madness!

    har

    1. The librarians of the world are eventually going to have to make room on the shelves near the works of Uncle Remus for our own Ronald Walter.

      😉

      I am wondering if around his place is a good spot for an old hippie like me to look for mushrooms.

    2. “One can conclude that it can get hotter than hell, and probably will, all because fossil fuels are being burned to beat hell.”

      Well there’s Aldous Huxley’s hypothesis: “Maybe Earth is another planet’s hell.”

      1. On the other hand, according to Doctor Faustus:

        “Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed
        In one self place, for where we are is hell,
        And where hell is must we ever be.”

  14. The DMI model for ice volume keeps going down faster than seems reasonable at this time of year. However I read a possible explanation – the model may overestimate thickness on thin ice. When that ice disappears the model has to force the volume to zero, hence a much larger fall than in reality is happening. That means the volume may be overestimated in recent years late in the summer (when there has been more thin ice). PIOMAS numbers are supposed to be better but might have a similar, but less severe, issue. It’s value for August was about equal with 2011 and above only 2012.

    1. Ok, so in a decade or so it all melts out for a time then re-freezes in the winter. A few degrees warmer still won’t make it a very pleasant place to be and the resort fees are going to be very high in the winter. A one night stay up there could take two months or more.

  15. One good result of the low oil price is that the Saudis are starting to shut down their schools overseas. For example the King Fahd school in Bonn, which is a training ground for Salafists, is shutting down.

      1. You beat me to it! The answer is absolutely not!

        The latest kick in the pants to the Malthusian doomsayers is a bumper global wheat harvest. Defying not only the Club of Rome doomsayers, but also the climate Chicken Littles who have been warning about damage from rising temperatures to world agriculture, food production is booming even as meteorologists call July 2016 the hottest month ever.

        Whoever wrote that has never read Malthus and has even less of a clue as to what the Club of Rome is about and the work they have done, hint they have never made any predictions so they can’t be called doomsayers.

        Furthermore all global food production is definitely not booming even if there was a 1% increase in wheat production this year. They did report the fact that July 2016 was the hottest July ever, correctly! I guess that means they are finally beginning to accept the fact that the planet is warming… We could call that progress.

        Wattsupwiththat is a well know climate change denialist site with an agenda, they have zero scientific credibility.

          1. The ongoing fast degradation of farm land due to erosion, over use of fertilizers, salty irrigation water, etc will soon be cutting into food production in many many places.

            Some places are already running desperately short of irrigation water of any sort at all, even salty water.

            Then there is the additional loss of land to development.

            It’s an open question how much longer food production can even be held steady, let alone increased to feed a still growing world population.

            New technology will help, but given the political calculus, it seems unlikely to be it will be developed and adopted fast enough to offset losses for the reasons I mention above.

            Betting on new technology is generally a safe bet, but betting on it being commercialized and widely adopted within any given time frame is NOT AT ALL a safe bet, especially if the time frame is short.

            And Sky Daddy alone knows how long it will be before the climate changes enough to start reducing the average yield of staple crops in the world’s breadbasket areas.

            A matter of only five or ten days of reliably frost free weather make a HELL of a difference when you are planting and harvesting. Most well informed people understand the importance of the growing season, but other than people in the field, hardly anybody appreciates just how big a down side difference a few extra days of extra hot weather can make. Combine extremely hot weather for a week or two with dry weather at the same time, and you may be looking at a potential loss of production that can run as high as twenty to thirty percent in grain fields even if you get rain right afterwards.

            Some people who are qualified to have opinions think we have seen substantial climate disruption already, but that so far it is being offset by more irrigation, more fertilizer, more pesticide,etc.

            There is no doubt at all that some countries in the Middle East and Africa are already suffering from unusually bad and prolonged droughts that may be worse than usual due to forced warming.

            The current generation of orchardists in my area are losing substantial production to frost probably twice as often over the last decade or two as their parents and grand parents lost out to frost going back to about 1900.

            My personal knowledge based on conversations with the old folks now long gone doesn’t extend past that point. They didn’t keep written records, but nobody who farms has any trouble remembering the years he was wiped out by bad weather. My personal knowledge extends back to the fifties.

            It’s not that frost is coming later, but rather that we are experiencing unusually warm late winter weather that brings the trees out of dormancy earlier, and then a frost that would normally not be a problem morphs into a REAL problem, real fast.

            You work your orchard for a year at a loss. You can turn your back on a cornfield or wheat field wiped out by bad weather, but you can’t abandon an orchard for a year without bringing on serious problems later.

            A man with his feet in a fire and his hands in ice water may be statistically comfortable……………

    2. Read this paper from Nature!

      http://goo.gl/1BzTqx

      Similar estimates of temperature impacts on global wheat yield by three independent methods

      The potential impact of global temperature change on global crop yield has recently been assessed with different methods.Here we show that grid-based and point-based simulations and statistical regressions (from historic records), without deliberate adaptation or CO2 fertilization effects, produce similar estimates of temperature impact on wheat yields at global and national scales. With a 1◦C global temperature increase, global wheat yield is projected to decline between 4.1% and6.4%. Projected relative temperature impacts from different methods were similar for major wheat-producing countries China,India, USA and France, but less so for Russia. Point-based and grid-based simulations, and to some extent the statistical regressions, were consistent in projecting that warmer regions are likely to suffer more yield loss with increasing temperature than cooler regions. By forming a multi-method ensemble, it was possible to quantify ‘method uncertainty’ in addition to model uncertainty. This significantly improves confidence in estimates of climate impacts on global food security.

      Whatsupwiththat is just plain full of shit! Not that that should be a surprise to anyone who is scientifically literate.

  18. LATEST OCEAN WARMING REVIEW REVEALS EXTENT OF IMPACTS ON NATURE AND HUMANS

    “Most of the heat from human-induced warming since the 1970s — a staggering 93% — has been absorbed by the ocean, which acts as a buffer against climate change, but this comes at a price. We were astounded by the scale and extent of ocean warming effects on entire ecosystems made clear by this report…”

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160906085016.htm

    1. The lake near me used to have lots of fish. In the winter the ice fishermen would put out a couple of tip-ups and get all the fish they wanted. Now they put out nearly a dozen and often don’t get many fish.
      Same thing happened to the Japanese fishing fleet, 10 times the number of boats, less fish.
      Too many predators with nets.
      The warming cannot be stopped. It will go on for long time. The fishing can be reduced and controlled.

      The president more than quadrupled the size of the Papahanaumokuakea (pronounced “Papa-ha-now-moh-koo-ah-kay-ah”) Marine National Monument to 582,578 square miles of land and sea in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands
      https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-to-create-the-largest-protected-place-on-the-planet-off-hawaii/2016/08/25/54ecb632-6aec-11e6-99bf-f0cf3a6449a6_story.html

      1. Hey Gonefishing,

        I didn’t know they did ice fishing in Hawaii. 🙂

        2. DC,

          Well, there are moraines on Mauna Loa (or Mauna Kea?) so there used to be glaciers.

          That was before there were Hawaiians, though.

    2. If anyone should want to download and read the full report the PDF file can be downloaded here:

      https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/46254

      Warning full PDF is almost 20 Mb.

      For the climate change is no big deal crowd, you are fractally wrong! The vast majority of scientists from multiple fields are in agreement, Humans are significantly changing the environment by burning fossil fuels and this is definitely NOT a good thing.

      An excerpt from the Conclusion section:

      In this report we have focused on the facts.
      Bold mine.

      Leading scientists from around the world were invited to join
      with colleagues to contribute individual chapters and
      sections. Each was subject to peer review and tells in the
      scientist’s own words the scale and nature of changes
      being driven by ocean warming, often in association
      with other stressors such as ocean acidification and
      deoxygenation. The report demonstrates the origin,
      scale and nature of ocean warming from a wide variety of
      aspects. In so doing, it describes the impacts on better
      known ecosystems such as seagrasses and coral reefs,
      and regions such as the Arctic and Antarctic, but has
      expanded that view to many other aspects – ranging from
      the smallest micro-organisms to the biggest whales.
      The ocean has been a vital moderating influence on the
      scale of global warming up to now having absorbed a
      significant amount of the excess heat and CO2 produced
      as a result of the burning of fossil fuels.       This regulating
      function happens at the cost of profound alterations of
      the ocean’s physics and chemistry, especially leading
      to ocean warming and acidification, and consequently
      sea-level rise.

      N.B.
      Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. The empirical and observational evidence is at this point beyond overwhelming. While one can debate or quibble with the occasional data point here and there, it is no longer possible to deny the big picture emerging from so many different fields of scientific inquiry that are all pointing to the same smoking gun, which would be us, burning fossil fuels!

      1. “……..which would be us, burning fossil fuels!” Shit man, none but an idiot would argue with that. Why are we even still talking cause?

        1. Why are we even still talking cause?

          Because as you well know there are very powerful groups with vested interests, hell bent on sowing as much doubt and obfuscation as possible, so as to hide the truth. Then there are those with blinders on that simply deny reality because it conflicts with their ideological beliefs. Finally there are those who simply don’t want to know the truth because if they acknowledged it they would also have to admit that we need to make profound and fundamental changes to our way of life. And change can be a scary and unpleasant undertaking.

          BTW, I’m having a slow work day so I’m in the process of reading the full PDF.
          It is very difficult to read the individual peer reviewed papers of all these scientists and not get extremely angry at those who supposedly have a scientific background and chose to help the vested interests with their continued obfuscation. Let’s call a spade a spade these people are sellout scum bags of the lowest order. They are not in any way legitimate skeptics let alone honest brokers!

          1. Finally there are those who simply don’t want to know the truth because if they acknowledged it they would also have to admit that we need to make profound and fundamental changes to our way of life

            I wouldn’t exaggerate the level of change. That’s something that the opponents of change use as a weapon.

            For instance, the average driver 50 years from now will think that the elimination of liquid fossil fuel is a complete non-event.

  19. While the subject of this link is not closely related to energy, it still says a lot about why we have so much trouble solving problems.

    The biggest single source of problems is probably the collective set of solutions to older problems. Somebody else said this first, in more elegant language, but I can’t remember the exact quote.

    We have various special interests piling on looking after their own turf in just about every kind of industry. The collective drag imposed by all these competing interests is enough to bring the industry to a near halt in the case of medicine.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2016/09/07/doctors-wasting-over-two-thirds-of-their-time-doing-paperwork/#5b80d17a6e5d

    1. Such a bad article.

      It’s true that a lot of software is badly designed. But I’m blown away that anyone can suggest that the way to reduce the time required to enter an order is to…add another layer of communication and paperwork by adding a clerk to enter the order. The whole point of order-entry systems is to have the person who’s ordering the test or prescription be the ONLY one to create the order.

      Doctors are nostalgic for the era when they could write something illegible, incomplete and just flat out dangerous, and no one would notice (usually, if something goes wrong, no one would ever know why). Or, they’d notice at the pharmacy, safely away from the doctor’s view.

      1. The Pharmacy should write prescriptions with your input, he’s the one looking at your meds. No way a US Doctor knows your state of health or meds status, too far removed from the patient.

        1. It’s an interesting idea, but at the moment that’s just not done. I’ve never heard any pharmacists suggest it, either. They like advising, but I’ve never heard suggest that they be the prime mover.

          1. My Parents ( who in their 80’s spent 5 months a year in Spain) got needed meds from the Pharmacist out of pocket. Doctor here confirmed the drugs were the same. Many meds not affordable in USA. It’s simple racketeering.

            1. It takes a lot of money and risk to develop new drugs. To copy and produce them involves no risk and little money.
              My beef with the pharmaceutical industry is the actual efficacy of the products they produce and the many dangerous side effects.

              Warfarin (common blood thinner)
              Benefits in NNT
              •1 in 60 were helped (preventing stroke)
              •1 in 360 were helped (preventing systemic embolism)
              Harms in NNH
              •1 in 167 were harmed (fatal hemorrhage)
              •1 in 25 were harmed (hemorrhage requiring hospitalization

              Anti-hypertensives
              Benefits in NNT
              •1 in 125 were helped (prevented death)
              •1 in 67 were helped (prevented stroke)
              •1 in 100 were helped (prevented heart attack*)
              Harms in NNH
              •1 in 10 were harmed (medication side effects, stopping

              Statins (given five years to people with no known heart disease)

              Benefits in NNT
              •None were helped (life saved)
              •1 in 104 were helped (preventing heart attack)
              •1 in 154 were helped (preventing stroke)
              Harms in NNH
              •1 in 100 were harmed (develop diabetes*)
              •1 in 10 were harmed (muscle damage)

              Statins (known heart disease – given for five years)
              Benefits in NNT
              •1 in 83 were helped (life saved)
              •1 in 39 were helped (preventing non-fatal heart attack)
              •1 in 125 were helped (preventing stroke)
              Harms in NNH
              •1 in 100 were harmed (develop diabetes*)
              •1 in 10 were harmed (muscle damage)

        2. I have a certain amount of expertise in health care, having been most of the way thru nursing training. I had to abort that third professional career when my parents got so decrepit it was drop out or put them in a nursing home. We don’t put our old folks in warehouses in my family. It was fun hanging out with the young women, lol, and I had nothing more interesting to do at the time, being retired already anyway. School keeps old brain cells young.

          Pharmacists have ESSENTIALLY NO TRAINING in diagnosing illness, disease or injury. A good pharmacist does keep up with all the meds his customers are using, and warn them when they are at risk of dangerous drug interactions. But if you are seeing more than one doctor in the USA, and getting some prescriptions filled at other pharmacies, etc, he knows only what you tell him yourself.

          The French model health care system is far superior in this respect, there your records are all kept together for full electronic access at any time by people with the need to know.

          Stick to your physician when it comes to diagnosing and prescribing medicines. And pray your physician is competent!

          Pardon me for being BLUNT, but Long Timber obviously doesn’t know doo doo from apple butter about the AMERICAN medical establishment.

          It is customary in this country for physicians , or their helper the nurse, to maintain a record of all medications used by a given patient, and for this information to be in the chart provided by the nurse to the doctor when he examines the patient. My personal physician takes an extensive health history personally at your first visit, and maintains my records personally at each and every visit.

          It is worth noting that he gave up his practice in the big city and moved out here to the boonies so he “could practice medicine the way it should be done”.

          He doesn’t take insurance, except for Medicare, and his nurse/ bookkeeper/ receptionist wife takes your money, but on the other hand he charges about half what most others charge for an office visit. He spends maybe three or four minutes updating your records while actually asking the relevant questions. Lives upstairs, practices downstairs. Zero commute time, near zero interaction with insurance companies.

          He is of course the exception that proves the rule about excessive paperwork.

          1. Once upon a time in a land far, far away, a young girl was working in the kitchen at the farm. Her older brother argued with her, a scuffle began, her brother was armed with a butcher knife, a cut into the palm of his sister was the result. Soon afterwards blood poisoning developed, in a panic, her parents rushed her to doctors at a hospital in the nearby larger town.

            The news was grim, the young girl was sent home to die, nothing the doctors could do.

            On the way back home to the farm, the parents stopped at the aunt and uncle’s farm. The dire circumstances were revealed, the daughter was going to die. The neighboring farmer’s wife happened to be there at the time. She learned of the life and death matter, sent the farmer out to the barn to retrieve some fresh cow manure, stuffed the manure into a brown paper bag, then she shoved the infected arm and hand of the young girl into the paper bag full of fresh cow manure, before the young girl was home, the blood poisoned arm was on the mend.

            She lived 97 years is all. She lived until the cows came home, no bullshit, all true.

            A doctor was going to buy a new car, the doctor asked what could be done if he got a lemon. The salesman asked what the doctor does with his mistakes.

            “I bury them,” the doctor replied.

            1. R Walter,

              Old quote: Doctors bury their mistakes. Architects plant ivy.

    2. Another thought:

      The increase in paperwork is partly driven by doctors gaming the system: they create complex ways to divide one bill into many line items to allow them to charge more.

      And don’t let physicians tell you that 3rd payors dictate short exam times: doctors choose to see more patients in order to bill more.

      1. I must agree that the vast majority of physicians are out to take in every dime they can put their hands on, no question about it.

        But to say that they see more patients simply because they can bill more that way is a serious oversimplification.

        Insurance companies with big contracts , Medicare, etc, are in a position to put a lot of price pressure on physicians, and naturally they fight back against this price pressure any way they can.

        I have talked to more than just one or two about this sort of thing, and they would prefer to charge more, and do a more thorough job, while still making the same money. This would of course mean seeing fewer patients.

        It is quite common for physicians and dentists to charge cash on the barrel head patients substantially more for the same services than they get for these services in reimbursement from insurance companies, not to mention the hassles involved in billing. This is more the rule than the exception, especially at hospitals.

        I am mostly very much of a free enterprise sort of guy, but there isn’t much in the way of free enterprise in the American health care system. It has been captured and hog tied by the various industries and professions involved with it.

        The regulated have captured the regulators by way of the revolving door and outright purchases of politicians via campaign contributions, etc.

        Sometimes socialism actually works. We would be better off, as a country, if we were to adopt a system along the lines of those used in Western Europe and Scandinavia.

        1. Yes, it’s very complex.

          Are doctors overpaid? Would they be paid less in a truly competitive system, with published prices, competition from advanced practice nurses, independent labs and testing services that didn’t require doctor prescriptions, reduced FDA regulation of personal diagnostic devices, etc? Seems likely.

          Would one-payor be better? My hesitation is investment in R&D. The US pharma establishment has many problems, but it does invest far more in creative R&D than almost anywhere else in the world, where politicians are even more short sighted than drug company executives (hard to believe, I know). That investment is enormously valuable to our future, and it should be dramatically increased and not endangered in any way.

          Personally, I would make the kind of competitive changes outlined in the 1st paragraph, and dramatically expand government R&D (NIH, CDC, etc).

          I would also change the current 3rd party payor payment schedule which pays too little for doctor’s visits and exam time, and too much for “procedures”. This system is a key reason why doctors don’t spend enough time with patients. Despite what doctors say, this system is fiercely supported by the physician establishment, because they see it (probably correctly) as increasing their income.

          1. “That investment is enormously valuable to our future, and it should be dramatically increased and not endangered in any way.”

            Exactly this is disputed. As long as there is no correlation between life expectancy of a population and expenditures for health care and R&D in this field, one could argue that other investments make more sense.

            E.g. as long as an increasing BMI of the population with all its ugly economic implications could be “simply” treated by promotion and implementation of life style changes, which are cheaper than other solutions, pouring more money into R&D does not make sense, esp. when the products of this R&D do not deliver better results than the cheap alternative.

            1. Her in the US it is a very toxic world, chemicals are sprayed everywhere. Farms, sides of roads and railroads, residential areas, lakes and ponds, the poisons are everywhere. Fossil fuels also are ubiquitous and all carry toxins and mutagens.

              We are not just human, we are a biome with lots of gut bacteria that assist our health and well being. Toxins can not only cause disease directly but messing with our bacteria can cause disease also.

              Until the root causes of many of these diseases is investigated and removed, medicine is just a set of pumps trying to stem the flow of a flood from a broken dam.

              Oh yes, we breathe it in too as well as absorb some through the skin.

            2. To me, the obvious approach is to do both: improve medicine with research & development, AND push aggressively to prioritize weight loss, dietary improvement, reduction in environmental hazards, etc.

              The US and Europe are reasonably affluent. We have enough “stuff”. We don’t need more cars or TVs per capita. We don’t need bigger houses. We have enough entertainment: video, games, etc. So…if we want GDP to grow, if we want life to get better, what’s our priority??

              Health. If you’re old enough, you’re staring at disease, disability and death. If not, your parents are.

              So…we do “all of the above”. We lose weight, we exercise, we stop smoking, we meditate, we push for fewer toxins in our food, air and water. AND, we develop better drugs, procedures and surgeries to deal with the illness that will, absolutely, still remain.

              What’s more important than our health???

  21. Having been part of a discussion about what will happen to old solar PV installations when the production has declined to a significant degree, I thought that others here might find this article about the revamping of a 22 year old facility interesting.

    Ingeteam successfully completes the first revamp of the oldest megawatt-scale PV plant in Europe

    Ingeteam (Sarriguren, Navarra, Spain) has completed the revamp work on the solar photovoltaic (PV) modules at the 1 MW Toledo PV plant, managed by Gas Natural Fenosa Renovables and located in the municipality of La Puebla de Montalbán in Toledo.

    This was the first PV plant of this size to be constructed in Europe. In 1994, the year in which the plant was commissioned, it had a power output of 1 MW in standard conditions. However, the latest study conducted in August 2015 revealed that the effective power output had dropped by 37%.

    Against this background, the management of Toledo PV requested the contractor, Ingeteam (the current plant operator and maintainer), to carry out revamp work at the plant in order to restore its power output to its original values.

    I was somewhat surprised to see no mention of replacement of inverters but, on the other hand, inverters might be replaced on a different schedule or when/if they fail.

    1. That system likely had MC3 problematic connectors, likely under 500V, and no O&M contract. All new systems have string monitoring or even Module monitoring. Reduces O & M cost by an order of magnitude.

  22. In a post responding to Gone Fishing saying “current (EV) offerings are not taking the world by storm, especially in the US where one might expect it”, on the previous non petroleum open thread, I wrote “IIRC, one in four new cars sold in Norway has a plug. Sales growth is decent in France the UK and the Netherlands.”

    In support of that I present the following:

    EVs Sales In Norway Up By 43% In August, As Some Model X Volume Arrives In Europe

    Norway’s plug-in electric vehicle market continues to grow, despite the huge market penetration already for electrification.

    For August, an impressive 43% year-over-year growth rate was noted.

    Total BEV/PHEV registrations amounted to 3,772 new passenger vehicles, which is the third best result ever. EV market share for the month stood at 28.5%.

    The majority of the plug-in sales in Norway this month came via all-electric cars, with some 2,010 worth. However this category is actually lower than last year by 7.2%, as new interest in plug-in hybrids has not only been eating into traditional petrol sales, but some all-electric ones as well. Plug-in hybrid sales in August increased by 277% to 1,762.

    Norway registrations also include 50 new and 14 used imported all-electric vans, and 494 used imported passenger BEVs.

    August EV Sales In The UK Nears 1.5% Market Share

    UK is one of the few countries which has noted growth of plug-in electric car sales/registrations (year-over-year), every month in 2016 (with the US and China also being part of that small club).

    This year’s growth is maintained despite the fact the country’s the plug-in car grant has been slightly convoluted.

    In August (one of two historically slowest months of the calendar year for EV sales in the UK) new plug-in car registrations increased 24% to 1,201, which translated to a decent 1.47% market share.

    The “big rush”, as always, is expected in September – between 4,000 to 5,000 units.

    Last month BEVs again decreased a little bit (13%) to 336, while plug-in hybrids are now far ahead in overall sales with 865 registrations and increase of 48%. Of interest: ~94 of the 335 sales were the Model S and X.

    1. Depletion never sleeps, and the population is growing.

      Electric vehicles may indeed eventually reduce the demand for oil to such an extent that the price of it stays in the doldrums for a long time, conceivably even permanently.

      BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT–

      This WON’T happen until AFTER electric vehicles become VERY numerous, meaning there will be tens of millions of them on the roads.

      Now it is possible the price of batteries may come down enough, soon enough, that electrics will dominate even with oil at forty or fifty bucks.

      But in my estimation, the next oil price spike, back into the hundred dollar range, is the kick in the ass that is going to really get the public scrambling to get on the electric car bandwagon.

      When oil goes up, and it will, probably within the next two or three years, you may have to wait in line for a new electric car. The line might wind all the way around the block, lol.

      1. Not 10’s of millions, but over 1.3 million EV’s and PHEV’s in-operation world-wide to-date. Looks like 2016 will be a record year for US sales – on track for about 140,000+ for this year alone, and over 500K on the road cumulatively. InsideEVs.com has yearly scorecards for US and global sales going back to 2010:

        http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/

    1. Newest Scribbler ain’t good news
      Coming Big Arctic Ocean Warm-Up May Extend Sea Ice Melt Season

      GFS model runs show a strong pulse of warm air will rise up over the Atlantic Ocean and Barents Sea in the next 72 hours. This warm air then will ride in over the Greenland Sea and invade the Arctic Ocean north of Svalbard. Local temperatures over water are expected to be between 4 and 8 degrees Celsius above average over a broad region of the Arctic. Meanwhile, general departures for the entire region above 66° North Latitude are expected to hit around 2 to 2.5 C above average.
      https://robertscribbler.com/2016/09/09/coming-big-arctic-ocean-warm-up-may-extend-sea-ice-melt-season/

      1. I’d been wondering how all this heat in the system couldn’t but help extend the Arctic melt season.

  24. My computer skills are nothing to brag about even for a fourth grader.

    If anybody will provide me with some suggestions for keywords to search for the answer to a few particular questions, I say thankya in advance.

    Background: Increasing penetration of wind and solar power on the grid cuts into coal consumption and almost for dead sure cuts into total gas consumption as well, but in some cases gas consumption might actually go up LOCALLY or REGIONALLY due to switching from more coal to less coal and more wind and solar with gas backup .

    So the questions are :

    About how much coal and gas are actually burnt, under any given set of circumstances, SOLELY to maintain any EXTRA hot spinning reserve needed due to having a lot of wind and or solar power on the grid?

    About how much LESS coal and gas do we burn in total, nationally, due to getting five percent plus of our juice now from wind and solar power?

    How much effect does this loss of market have on the price of coal and gas?

    It’s very easy to turn up a thousand articles that deal with these questions in non specific or qualitative terms, but I am hoping to find some actual numbers, even though they will be only estimates, I am sure.

    Something tells me that the route to a redneck conservative voters actual vote is to show him that his dollar and cent cost of living is actually LOWER with more renewable power on the grid.

    My personal guess so far is that we now have enough wind and solar power on the grid that the prices of coal and gas are depressed more than enough to offset the subsidies paid to wind and solar producers.

    And since coal and gas are primary inputs into many industries, as well as gas being used for home heating, etc, this means virtually everybody buys a great many things a little cheaper than would be the case otherwise.

    By way of example, there is a strong direct correlation between the price of gas and nitrate fertilizers, and there is a direct correlation between the price of nitrates and the price of wheat , and thus the price of bread.

    1. OFM,

      Look up “load-following power plants”. Plants that ramp their output up or down to match instantaneous load. Most coal plants are base-load. That is, they output pretty much the same kW constantly. It’s in the nature of how they turn coal to steam and steam to electricity. Changes have to happen very slowly. They can’t be “spinning reserve” unless they are specifically engineered to have load-following capability. That is more what hydro, gas/diesel engines and gas turbines can do. Come on-line, go off-line, and ramp up or down relatively rapidly to match instantaneous load.

      Here’s a wiki link:

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

      1. Thanks HVAC,

        I am familiar with the basics of load following on the grid.

        What I am trying to do is determine if it is true that having wind and solar power on the grid, especially in substantial amounts, requires MORE than the usual amount of hot spinning reserve.

        It is my understanding that a certain amount of more or less immediately available, meaning within a minute or even less, reserve is necessary, because any given generating plant could go offline suddenly. And of course on top of that, the actual load on the grid changes pretty fast too, at certain hours of the day, or if the weather changes fast, as for example if a fast moving hot or cold front comes thru.

        So- Unless enough reserve hydro power is available, then at least one or two coal or gas fired plants in any given general area must be kept hot, running at less than capacity or just idling, and thus not contributing much if any thing to the total load. Hydro can be ramped up on very short notice, so long as there is water enough in the reservoir, and the plant is running at less than capacity, as I understand it.

        SO- Some people argue that when you have intermittent wind or solar on a grid, you necessarily have to have an EXTRA hot spinning reserve above and beyond the level required when you are using only gas, coal, hydro and nukes. They even go so far as to say this extra expense incurred is enough to wipe out any savings on the purchase of coal and gas.

        One thing I am trying to do is to come up with some actual numbers to disprove their argument.

        Another argument I am trying to prove, which I believe to be true, is that the subsidies that are given to the wind and solar industries are at least partially offset by way of the fossil fuel plant operators buying less coal and gas, in total.

        My current guess is that we are collectively burning at least four percent, and probably close to five percent, less gas and coal, here in the USA, because we are getting over five percent of our juice from the wind and solar industries now.

        This does not necessarily mean the savings on the purchase of coal and gas will be passed on of course, but it does mean that the combined total SALE of coal and gas for electrical generation is reduced by four percent or more, assuming I am right.

        Now this is a SUBSTANTIAL amount of lost market, which is basically very good news for everybody but the people in the coal and gas industries, because it means everybody else gets their coal and gas for less money.

        This brings me to my third point, the most important one.

        If the people of this country save ENOUGH on the purchase of coal and gas, due to this reduction in the price of them, then renewables are actually a bargain on a dollar and cent basis for the typical consumer and business. Every last one of us buys coal and gas indirectly, in the form of electricity, steel, food, countless consumer goods, etc.

        This argument stands up qualitatively, but putting numbers on it is a very hard thing to do, at least for an amateur such as myself, since I lack the necessary research skills to find the data, and crunch it for myself.

        But it seems very likely somebody has already done this, and all I have to do is locate their work.

        I think maybe I can prove to the folks who think renewables increase the cost of electricity that renewables actually LOWER their overall cost of living.

        This sort of hard data will go a long way towards converting numerous anti renewable people into renewable advocates, if it exists and can be publicized. Most people are ready to vote for what is good for their personal financial situation.

        It puzzles me that this argument has not been made, and discussed pro and con, in the environmental camp, but if it has I have overlooked it.

        There is a big difference between trying to convince a person who is basically technically illiterate that climate change and air pollution are serious problems, and the sad fact is that most people ARE scientifically illiterate. Most people are too busy with their day to day lives to worry much about things a decade or a generation or two down the road. Externalized costs are very real of course, in actuality, but they are not real in the minds of the average person on the street. The average person on the street has his or her noggin crammed full of football, pop music, soap operas, beer, etc.

        Show such people that renewable electricity lowers their cost of living by the price of a monthly pack of cigarettes or a six pack of beer, and they will look on renewables favorably. Even technically illiterate people generally understand that when coal and gas are cheaper, their living costs are lower, especially when they heat and cook with gas, or buy fertilizer by the ton, like I do, or when they look at the fuel cost component of their electricity bill.

        1. “What I am trying to do is determine if it is true that having wind and solar power on the grid, especially in substantial amounts, requires MORE than the usual amount of hot spinning reserve.”

          As we can predict generation by PV and wind turbines quite well for hous and days ahead, the amount of SPINNING reserve does not increase. In Germany actually NG turbines are the big losers after the addition of PV and wind turbines, coal power plants produce a sufficient power gradient.

          You need in a RE scenario of course more “back-up” or storage as there are days without sun and wind, however, this is not as dramatic as sold by proponents of nuclear power. Hint: France has 58 GW NPPS but a peak demand of 103 GW in winter, nuclaer power need as least 50% of what we expect for RE.

          In a RE scenario the back-up capacity runs with very few FLH and should therefore cheap, i.e. open NG turbines, emergency diesel generators etc.

          At the moment there is no evidence that RE plus back-up is more expensive than NPPs plus reserves.

    2. OFM,

      This is off-topic, but are you familiar with the stories written by Manly Wade Wellman in the 1950s and 60s? He lived in the country in the west of North Carolina, near Tennessee, and he placed his stories there. His main character was a guitar player name of John; had a silver-strung guitar.

    1. Is this related in any way to the QBO not reversing as it was supposed to? Looks like we in the UK are going to get another drenching from a series of autumn storms that track along the south of the cold blob in the Atlantic. And according to the met office prediction future storms will be at least 30% worse than the worst we have so far seen. I’m not sure we have the infrastructure and building codes here that will be able to stand up to that very well.

  26. Let’s just look at 1 square meter of Arctic Ocean. The summer sea ice has an albedo of 0.6 while open water is about 0.3. The Arctic during the summer receives between 4 and 7.5 kWh/day/m2 of solar insolation. That means a delta of +1.4 to +2.25 kWh/day/m2 heating due to loss of sea ice. A similar effect happens on land, since the snow cover anomaly has been negative for decades now.
    That change is about the total winter sun energy in less northern regions.
    So we are talking about a better than 80 w/m2 increase in absorbance of sunlight.
    Basically like adding a solar collector to Earth that is about 8 percent of the land area of the earth as the Arctic loses it’s snow and ice. Globally that is more than the forcing of CO2, at maximum almost double.
    So for those that ignore albedo changes, take note. A 0.01 reduction in earth albedo is equal to the forcing of CO2.

    1. Basic science understanding does indeed tell us that if the snow and ice in the polar regions begins a rapid melt, less sunlight will get deflected, which will ultimately result in a warming of the land or water formerly containing the snow and ice. However, a more advanced scientific understanding, one that you may not be aware of (as I do not know your level of education in the sciences), tells us that two of the most significant drivers of the global climate are the cyclical sunspot patterns and the Earth System Global Conveyor Belts.

      To put both of these factors in simple terms, when the number of yearly sunspots decreases, global temperatures usually decrease as well. Likewise when the number of sunspots increases, global temperatures usually increase alongside the higher number of sunspots. The cycle of decreased sunspots followed by increased sunspots followed by decreased sunspots most often happens over a period of many years. Sometimes even the valley of the cycle, when sunspots are at a very low count, leads to a Maunder Minimum, where sunspots are at such a low number that global temperatures go into a very deep extended cold spell for many years.

      Sunspots aren’t the only factor driving global climate though, and sometimes the sunspots can be acted upon by Earth System Global Conveyor Belts. These are a series of identified systems encircling the world’s oceans and seas. Usually they transfer warm air to faraway places on the globe, causing many of the northern regions to be warmer than we would expect based merely on how far north they are. These Conveyor Systems thus do wonderful things for humanity by allowing humans to live comfortably and prosperously in northern areas which would otherwise have such a cold climate that anybody who tried to live there would quickly perish.

      Well to go back to the topic of your post, an increasing number of the world’s leading scientists including the astro-meteorologists are believing that loss of snow and ice at the poles will soon cause the Earth Global Conveyor Belts to break down. Additionally, sunspot activity over the past several years has been significantly depressed. That has caused many scientists to think another Maunder Minimum is also soon on the way. The result of these two things means that a drastic extended period of global cooling could start very soon, if in fact such hasn’t actually already begun.

      As we achieve more and more understanding of the sunspot cycles along with the Earth System Global Conveyor Belts, more news of the circumstances in which our present global climate exists will undoubtedly come to light. Right now, climate science isn’t too much different from how well your local weatherman performs on TV. You know, how many times has he said “it’s going to rain tomorrow” yet the day turns out sunny, or that “we’re going to get a foot of snow tomorrow” yet we only get a dusting, and so on. Many times, we have to keep in mind that science can often be like
      taking a stab in the dark without fully understanding the how’s or the why’s behind the planet’s processes.

      Regards,
      Ralph
      Cass Tech ’64

      1. Right now, climate science isn’t too much different from how well your local weatherman performs on TV.

        Tell you what, read this report then come back and tell us why some ignorant fool like yourself has more credibility than all of the scientists from multiple fields who unlike yourself have the scientific backgrounds, which you do not, and have actually been engaged in doing the research, which you also have not…

        https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documents/2016-046_0.pdf

        You are right that science doesn’t understand all the details and that much still needs to be learned but to argue that we don’t know how the planetary systems actually work is just plain ridiculous!

        We know with very high degrees of confidence that we are causing changes to our atmosphere and ocean chemistry by burning fossil fuels. To suggest otherwise is a mark of someone who is profoundly ignorant of science, is in deep denial of reality or has a perverse agenda. And quite frankly I really don’t care which of those identifiers applies to you in particular!

        Excerpt from Concluding remarks:

        To conclude, the evidence in this report shows a complex
        story of change in the ocean, change that is underway,
        is often already locked in for future decades, and is
        beginning to impact on all our lives whether it is obvious
        or not. This is no longer a single story of challenges to
        coral reefs, but stories of changes across species and
        at ecosystem scales, and across geographies and the
        entire world. It is pervasive change, driven by ocean
        warming and other stressors that are already operating
        across scales and in ways we only barely understand.

        (That does NOT mean we don’t understand the basic science it means we are aware that because we are dealing with complex non linear systems the outcomes could surprise us in ways for which we are ill prepared to cope. We know things are bad and getting worse and the results of what we are doing could be catastrophic! This is no longer up for debate.) Comment in parenthesis, mine.

        It is critical that we sit up and recognize these issues
        and act, or we will be poorly prepared, if at all, for an
        uncertain changing future.

        What we know does not come from just one field of science, the empirical evidence from multiple fields is overwhelming.

        1. Fred, you are too kind, giving explanations like that. Best to just let them wander in their permanent internal darkness and feel self satisfied, not even comprehending energy sources, let alone the magnitude of energy changes. In a bassackward partial way he/she might be right, the changes in the Arctic may shift some of the ocean and air currents causing regional climate change. But that is a result of the warming and melting, not the other way around.

          Being at a minima in orbital forcing for the northern hemisphere, the Arctic will slowly get more solar input over the next almost 20,000 years. To the tune of delta 40 watts/m2 at 65N. But that is a much slower change than the albedo changes. I won’t discuss methane and CO2 exudations from permafrost and shallow ocean areas since that is generally frowned upon here.

          Be that as it may, as I have said many times, the magnitude of natural feedbacks is potentially far greater than anthropogenic forcings. CO2 will go from an initiator to a follower in the longer scheme of things. H2O will play it’s typical role. Each in it’s turn exacerbates all the others.

          Right now it’s headed for 90F near me, can’t wait for the minus 20F later. Not sure if my local climate got warmer, but it certainly got more variable.

          1. “I won’t discuss methane/CO2 exudations from permafrost and shallow ocean areas since that is generally frowned upon here.” I’ve noticed that as well; like clouds, might be due to complexity of the subject which makes it easy to pick on (or ignore).

            1. Hi Doug and Gonefishing,

              Are those areas well understood? Do we actually have a good model for how much methane and CO2 will be released?

              Sometimes these concerns are based on RCP8.5 type scenarios which require 5000 Pg of carbon emissions. My “high” scenario is less than one third this level of emissions from 1800 to 2200 (assuming no attempt to reduce carbon emissions).

              David Archer of Real Climate (who’s focus is the carbon cycle) thinks the concern over methane emissions may be overblown.

              Perhaps he is wrong, I am far less of and expert on these matters than Archer.

              A summary of why methane might be less of a problem than some people believe:

              http://www.skepticalscience.com/toward-improved-discussions-methane.html

            2. Hi Dennis,

              Are those areas well understood? Do we actually have a good model for how much methane and CO2 will be released?

              I’m certainly no expert on this issue but I still worry about the potential for self reinforcing feedbacks. My personal fear is that the amount of CO2 we have already released, is sufficient to have pushed us past certain tipping points. The discussion at this link does put forward some numbers and scenarios. The potential is certainly there for runaway global warming!

              http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/potential-for-methane-release.html

            3. http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/potential-for-methane-release.html

              How stable is this methane?

              It does take time for heat to be transferred down sediments. What can take place much more rapidly, though, is for heat to be transferred down fluids in cracks and openings in the rock and sediment, called pingos.

              The image right, from Hovland et al., shows pingo-like sediment features, formed by local accumulation of hydrate (ice) below the sediment surface, and methane migrating upwards through conduits. (8)

              A recent study by Serié describes geophysical signatures of different development stages associated with the formation and dissociation of shallow gas hydrate, as well as their link to deep-rooted plumbing systems that allow thermogenic fluid migration from several-kilometers-deep sedimentary basins. (9)

              Paull et al. describe pingo-like-features on the Beaufort Sea Shelf, adding that a thermal pulse of more than 10 degrees Celsius is still propagating down into the submerged sediment and may be decomposing gas hydrate as well as permafrost. (10)
              .

            4. Thanks Fred, you beat me to it. Besides, I’m in no way seduced by Chris Colose’s (very conservative) Skeptical Science piece as Dennis appears to have been. I would list my (numerous) reservations but they are already represented in the extensive comments section of Colose’s article.

              Perhaps I’ll add, we are walking on a climate precipice and to say things are probably OK is not good enough: it’s a cop out. You don’t design a bridge and say: That should be strong enough. Methane is a potential time bomb, period. Just ask the Russians in the Siberian Yamal Peninsula. Let’s stop pretending otherwise.

            5. Looking at the boundaries, the best case we can hope for is the mid Pliocene. The worst case scenario is too extreme to contemplate.

      2. “Sometimes even the valley of the cycle, when sunspots are at a very low count, leads to a Maunder Minimum, where sunspots are at such a low number that global temperatures go into a very deep extended cold spell for many years”

        The next MM won’t be one of those extended cold spells. Those days are gone for about 100,000 years.

        No, the sun isn’t going to save us from global warming
        A solar minimum would offset no more than a decade’s worth of human-caused global warming
        https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/jul/16/no-the-sun-isnt-going-to-save-us-from-global-warming

  28. The health costs of coal are one important example of Externalities: costs which are not properly accounted for, and which are incurred by one group but paid by another.

    It’s an old and very well accepted concept. The most conservative of economists agrees with the general concept, though of course everyone has their own idea about what to include and how to value it.

    “A Pigovian tax (also spelled Pigouvian tax) is a tax applied to a market activity that is generating negative externalities (costs for someone other than the person on whom the tax is imposed). The tax is intended to correct an inefficient market outcome, and does so by being set equal to the social cost of the negative externalities. In the presence of negative externalities, the social cost of a market activity is not covered by the private cost of the activity. In such a case, the market outcome is not efficient and may lead to over-consumption of the product.[1] An often-cited example of such an externality is environmental pollution.[2]

    In the presence of positive externalities, i.e., public benefits from a market activity, those who receive the benefit do not pay for it and the market may under-supply the product. Similar logic suggests the creation of a Pigovian subsidy to make the users pay for the extra benefit and spur more production.[3] An example sometimes cited is a subsidy for provision of flu vaccine.[4]

    Pigovian taxes are named after economist Arthur Pigou who also developed the concept of economic externalities.”

    “The Pigovian tax is a commonly used method by government as it has relatively low transaction costs associated with implementation. Other methods such as command and control regulations or subsidies assume that government have a complete knowledge of the markets which is almost never the case, and can often lead to inefficiencies and market failure though rent seeking behavior by individuals and firms.”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax

    In economics, an externality is the cost or benefit that affects a party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit.[1]

    For example, manufacturing activities that cause air pollution impose health and clean-up costs on the whole society, whereas the neighbors of an individual who chooses to fire-proof his home may benefit from a reduced risk of a fire spreading to their own houses. If external costs exist, such as pollution, the producer may choose to produce more of the product than would be produced if the producer were required to pay all associated environmental costs. Because responsibility or consequence for self-directed action lies partly outside the self, an element of externalization is involved. If there are external benefits, such as in public safety, less of the good may be produced than would be the case if the producer were to receive payment for the external benefits to others. For the purpose of these statements, overall cost and benefit to society is defined as the sum of the imputed monetary value of benefits and costs to all parties involved.[2][3] Thus, unregulated markets in goods or services with significant externalities generate prices that do not reflect the full social cost or benefit of their transactions; such markets are therefore inefficient.

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

    1. The problem with the concept of externalities is that it is only really comprehensible to people who are willing and able to pay attention for a whole minute.

      Unfortunately the vast majority of us are either unable or unwilling to pay heed to anything not DIRECTLY concerned with our short term day to day existence, our day to day business of getting a living and entertaining ourselves if any time is left over.

      Walk in a hospital, and you will see that over half the nurses past forty are seriously overweight, although they have substantial professional training and experience with the health problems associated with obesity.

      All the starving people in China are as nothing, compared to a boil on a man’s own neck. Don’t know who said that first.

      The typical man on the street doesn’t really give a hoot about what will or might happen a few decades down the road. His life is all about now, paying his current bills, satisfying his current desires. Time ceases to exist between his ears out past the next year or two, for the most part.

      What I am trying to do is find a way to prove to such a man that it is in his own personal direct short term interest, as measured in dollars and cents, to support the rapid expansion of the renewable energy industries.

      Wind and solar power reduce the sale of coal and gas, with the immediate result being downward pressure on coal and gas prices. Cheap coal and gas mean, at least in the short term, lower living costs for virtually everybody, because we coal and gas are key inputs from a to z right across the entire economy.

      It is possible that this means the typical man on the street gets an immediate positive return on his tax dollar spent on subsidizing the wind and solar industries.

      1. Hi Mac, I view this comment as an extension of a previous comment of yours up thread. As far as the data goes, I’m pretty certain that all the data needed to make the case you are trying to make can be found at the EIA’s Electric Power Monthly. The graphs I post every month are compiled from the data in tables 1.1 and 1.1.a only and there are over 140 tables in total! Relevant sections should include:

        Chapter 2. Consumption of Fossil Fuels,
        Chapter 4. Receipts and Cost of Fossil-Fuels
        and
        Chapter 5. Sales, Revenue, and Average Retail Price of Electricity

        As a side note, I believe it was you who drew my attention to tables 6.7 and 6.7.a under “Chapter 6. Capacity”, having initiated a discussion on the capacity factors of the various sources, a discussion that highlighted (for me) how abysmal the capacity factors are for some of the lesser used sources.

        I don’t know if you are familiar with spreadsheets (born out of Lotus 123 in the IBM PC, pre Windows days) but if you don’t want to purchase a copy of Microsoft Excel, there are very solid free alternatives, particularly the spreadsheet component of the free, open source LibreOffice project. Once you have the spreadsheet software, you can download and open the tables from the Electric Power Monthly and produce your own graphs to visualize the trends. I don’t think I am overestimating you abilities since, you seem like a pretty quick learner and if you’ve had any exposure to computer spreadsheets at all, it’s not all that difficult to figure your way around LibreOffice, especially with all the free instructional videos and articles that can be found on line.

        On the other hand, great minds think alike and there may well be somebody out there who has crunched/is crunching the numbers and has put/is putting together the case you are making. My bet is that by the time any of us here get around to crunching the numbers, an article making the case will pop up somewhere on line. The longer we put it off the more likely it is to turn out that way. 🙂

    1. It’s a good thing that Apple is not making a car. Otherwise it’s charging socket would be proprietary, changing from year to year, and there would be no place to plug in any device in the car.

        1. Sure Fred, after you buy a bunch of dongles to adapt the socket to the other chargers.

          Yep, only a few moving parts. The cars might last 20 or 30 years. However, how long do the electronics last or the batteries?

        2. “It’s Pretty much an open secret that Apple is working on an autonomous EV.” ~ Fred Magyar

          It’s a good thing that Apple is not making a car.” ~ GoneFishing

          Feeling lost and confused? Then come to Peak Oil Barrel and let your feelings find confirmation. ‘u^

          1. Yea Caelan, you are lost and confused, you forgot to read a little further up.

            1. I not only read a little further up, but also checked the article-in-question before commenting.

              And of course found your and Fred’s quotes in the same thread ‘nicely-aligned’.

            3. Like the ‘content’ of your own comment just now? ‘u^

              The content is meant to be inferred so to speak, though I realize not necessarily by everyone.

              For some embellishment…

              Earlier today, as usual, I saw the overwhelming majority of people, slowed to a crawl in rush hour traffic no less, with one person per vehicle. That’s probably repeated across at least the North American continent every single day, and to nurture an economy that isn’t even economic. That’s one of the many examples of the levels of insanity that surrounds the car, whether electric or internal combustion.

              And another example of a lost and confused species.

              “If you dig to the heart of it—if there were any heart left—you would find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.” ~ Derrick Jensen, book, ‘End Game’

            4. Yes Caelan, it would be better if we all flew everywhere.
              No Caelan, it’s not to nurture an economy, it’s to put food on the table and have a home in which to put that table.

            5. That home you’re talking about better be the planet, because we’ve only got one, and I happen to be living on it too.

              Here’s a calc 4 u: Give us the time we’ve been driving cars as a species, relative to the time we have not.
              ‘Oh, but Caelan, that’s just plain silly. We both know it’s some ridiculous number longer.’

              Yes, Gonzo, exactly, silly and ridiculous, etc.. Like putting food on a table with a car.

            6. So you call your other personality Gonzo?
              Talking to yourself on the internet is a bit stranger than normal strange, but at least creative.

            7. The answer to your question about driving time, using Americans as the example population is
              0.07.

        3. Yeah, an EV is just a computer on wheels. Tony may want to talk to Chevy Bolt chief engineer Josh Tavel. Or maybe that is the problem. GM and their engineers, stuck in that 20th century gas engine rut as they are, just don’t realize that an EV doesn’t need all those 20,000 door, window, suspension, battery/gear box/motor thermal cooling, passenger heating/AC, seat, horn, air bag, glove box, steering wheel, turn signal, seat, transaxle, bumper, trunk, sun visor, windshield wiper, windshield cleaner tank and pump, stopping brake, emergency brake, door seal, wheel, tire, etc. etc. etc. parts. It doesn’t need all those 1000’s of engineers actually experienced at designing said useless parts, nor the testing facilities to ensure they will work reliably for 10 years, in the arctic, the sahara, through 10″ of rain, while traveling at up to 100 mph, at 14,000 feet elevation, hitting potholes, going through dirt, surviving head-on, side, and rear-end crashes and roll-overs with five stars, etc. etc. etc. All that hardware crap can be can all be converted to solid state semi-conductors, printed on PCB’s, and farmed out to a Chinese fab plant and then sold for quadruple the cost of production.

          Silicon Valley can play with autonomous controls, electric charging concepts, and other aspects similar to their electronic toys. Detroit is already all over that, too, but Detroit understands something that Google and Apple still need to learn. Automatic controls and electric drive doesn’t change the fundamental nature of a car. They are physical beasts, damned hard to design and build.

          1. Silicon Valley can play with autonomous controls, electric charging concepts, and other aspects similar to their electronic toys. Detroit is already all over that, too

            Sadly, it isn’t.

            Tesla (a Silicon Valley company if ever there was one) dragged the whole car industry into the EV age. GM only built the Volt because of Tesla:

            “General Motors’ then-Vice-Chairman Robert Lutz said the two-seater sports car being developed by Tesla, the Tesla Roadster, and the rapid advancement of lithium-ion battery technology inspired him to push the carmaker to develop the Volt after the 2006 Detroit Auto Show,[30][31][32] overcoming internal opposition.[33]”

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

            And, it’s the continuing presence and success of Tesla that is forcing the production of the Bolt, and many other EVs. Even so, most of them are “compliance” vehicles, built as slowly and at as small a volume as they can manage. And, when they ship them to dealers, the dealers ignore them.

            The whole industry is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the EV age by Silicon Valley.

  31. I am writing a series of articles on oil for publication at Seeking Alpha, TalkMarkets, and Forbes. I have included some charts from your post “How Soon Will The World Oil Production Peak?” and with your permission, would like to credit them both to you and Political Economist. The current article I’m working on is about some of the possible over-production history in Russia and Saudi Arabia and how it could aggravate the peak oil problem. I plan on doing some articles on The Pickens Plan for switching US transportation over to nat gas, and would also like to use some of the charts from “World Energy 2016-2050: Annual Report” with your permission. I’ve tried to find contact info for Political Economist for permission to use these charts. Could you send me an email for this?

  33. Unintended consequences are where you find them, like diamonds, and like diamonds, some are to be treasured.

    Apparently kids in places with lots of electronic toys are so wrapped up in them they don’t get together physically often enough to suffer as many unwanted pregnancies as they used to.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1751537/teen-pregnancy-rates-plunge-as-youngsters-are-too-busy-sexting-to-get-together-in-person/

    More readily available contraceptives probably play a serious role in this reduction, but young kids are not noted for being all that careful about contraceptives.

    1. It’s a complex world, but doing outdoor things like swimming, hiking, fishing, horseback riding, boating, working at a horse farm, back packing, outdoor sports, gives them a strong base of confidence and self-reliance that no electronic item can replace. Young people need a physical world to work with, it develops their strength and ability to deal with unexpected situations.
      .

      1. I totally agree , GF.

        I didn’t keep the link, but I read an article last night speculating that robotic sex dolls will be available within the easily foreseeable future- dolls that are good enough to mimic real girls and boys successfully.

        Some people think that when this comes to pass, a lot of people will simply give up the rest of their lives and stay inside and play with their sexual toys.

        I don’t mind admitting I would have spent a SUBSTANTIAL amount of time with such a toy back when I was a teenager without a girlfriend. Back then the better class of girls just DIDN’T , until they fell in love, any way.

        Anybody who is interested in a really good literary examination of the possibilities of electronic addictions of the TRULY serious sort can find it in the works of the classic science fiction of Larry Niven. I can’t remember the title, but he wrote about having implants in the skull, to be connected to a machine by a doctor or fake doctor, that would put you in paradise until you turned off the juice. Needless to say, some people got into a comfortable chair with a machine at home and died happy without ever getting up again.

        A sex robot combined with some potent mind candy would probably solve half the problem we have with unattached violent young men. They would disappear indoors and never be seen again, except maybe to look for food, etc, until they were old enough their sex drive falls off. Getting older generally means they calm down considerably behavior wise.

        And fat ugly people with pimples wouldn’t have to rely on beer any more to get laid, lol. 😉

        There is a little poster in a lot of bars that reads

        BEER-HELPING UGLY PEOPLE GET LAID
        FOR FOUR THOUSAND YEARS

        I am unquestionably fat and kind of ugly myself, so no lecture from any of the holier than thou pc type is necessary.

        And now that I AM old and fat, I am in the Groucho Club. I can’t attract the interest of any woman I would find attractive. 🙁

        Such dolls will be so expensive I will never be able to afford one, at first, and given my age, I won’t be around by the time the price comes down. 🙁

        1. As Ogden Nash said when writing about an endless party.
          “You wonder why they pursue each other’s wives,
          Who by now resemble the cream cheese and the chives.”

          Technology offers us goods and bads. Choose well.

          Larry Niven’s Ringworld and Footfall were great.
          However, Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama certainly was great and put our place in the universe in perspective.

        2. Maybe like EV’s, they’ll be affordable on the used doll market.

    2. Teen pregnancy rates have been falling continuously for the last 50 years in the US.

      Distraction by s/texting makes a great story, but I wonder if they have any real evidence?

      1. The authors seem to be basing their argument on the correlation between the drop in teen pregnancies and the sudden explosion of affordable mobile communications among teenagers in the observation area.

        The drop in pregnancy rates has been truly dramatic, and it matches the figures on the rise of mobile devices in the hands of the teens, but as you point out, this is not actually PROOF.

        I do keep up with what kids are up to these days, to some extent, by talking to parents, teachers, reading websites devoted to that audience, etc.

        There is no doubt in my mind that teenagers are spending less time on average in each others company, physically, than they used to, and less time together means fewer opportunities.

        Privacy seems to be the key factor in determining whether there is an opportunity for intercourse, and with cars being less popular, it is at least somewhat harder for teens to find opportunities to be alone in American society.

        But I believe that better education, and easier access to contraceptives, are the really important reasons that the teen pregnancy rate is falling.

        1. It could also be an effect of so many aiming for college. Almost 70 percent of high school graduates head for college. No way will a pregnancy be allowed if they want to graduate college.

  34. Science of SLAC | Batteries for the Future: What’s Possible?

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

    This is a detailed seminar of battery development and research at the molecular level. The use of Nano-materials is becoming very important to constrain battery problems and enhance their charge density as well as their lifetime.
    Well worth the time if you are not already a battery expert.

    “Yi Cui is an associate professor at Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1998 and a PhD from Harvard University in 2002. He was a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley from 2003 to 2005. Cui is an associate editor of Nano Letters and a co-director of the Bay Area Photovoltaic Consortium, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. He founded Amprius Inc. in 2008 to commercialize high-energy battery technology.”

    Note: if you have difficulty in understanding his accent just click on the CC button at the bottom of the video.

  36. http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/sep/10/soil-our-best-shot-at-cooling-the-planet-might-be-right-under-our-feet

    Well they got the headline right but failed to include the most relevant work done by Scientists like Christine Jones, Peter Donavan and others, that point to “the liquid carbon pathway” as the only way that stable soil carbon is formed.
    The formation of topsoil requires photosynthesis to capture carbon dioxide in green
    leaves, followed by exudation of simple sugars from plant roots and humification within biologically active
    soil aggregates. Humification is a process whereby simple carbon compounds are joined together into
    more complex and stable molecules. The formation of humus requires a vast array of soil microbes,
    including mycorrhizal fungi, nitrogen fixing bacteria and phosphorus solubilising bacteria, all of which
    obtain their energy from plant sugars (liquid carbon).
    http://www.amazingcarbon.com/PDF/JONES-LiquidCarbonPathway(AFJ-July08).pdf
    http://www.amazingcarbon.com/

    1. The only ‘geoengineering’ I would approve of is what nature already does.
      So helping nature along, by mobilizing a global population, seems to make sense.
      Imagine all those in offices, in front of their screens, and stuck in traffic in their cars, instead, outside, helping to grow stuff, nurturing nature along.

  37. With some of the AGW talk upthread, here’s a link to a previous article by ours truly:

    Are We Headed For Global Warming Collapse?

    My Conclusions

    We are well past the point of no return. Given the delay between greenhouse gas emissions and the actual warming of the atmosphere, there is no way we can possibly stop it. Given the forty year delay between cause and effect, even if we completely stopped the emissions of greenhouse gasses today, it would still be forty years before we saw the first changes from our actions. And we all know we are not going to stop emissions, the best we can hope for is a slowing down of emissions. And it is way, way too late for that to help at all.

    If we accept that greenhouse gases are warming the planet, the next concept that needs to be grasped is that it takes time, and we have not yet seen the full rise in temperature that will occur as a result of the CO2 we have already emitted…

    The reason the planet takes several decades to respond to increased CO2 is the thermal inertia of the oceans.

    The trigger has already been pulled, the methane explosion has already started, the atmosphere is getting warmer but the oceans are getting even warmer. And it will get worse, a lot worse, but it will not lead to total extinction of the human species as Guy McPherson predicts. It will be bad but not that bad.

    It has all happened before.

    1. Regional (latitudinal) temperature responses to changes in solar radiation are fairly quick as is demonstrated by our seasonal changes. Overall changes and polar changes are slower due to the ocean and ice.

      Right now we are in a particularly interesting situation. Most of the land mass is in the northern hemisphere, while the southern hemisphere is mostly ocean. However there is a strange twist, the northern pole is ocean while the southern pole is continental.
      Given all that, the northern latitudes have been receiving decreasing sunlight over the last 11,000 years . I am not talking a few watts/m2 but tens of watts/m2. Yet the Arctic is melting steadily, the large chilling effect of lower solar radiation has been overcome by the GHG effect. Well, at least partially.

      Meanwhile, the southern oceans have been receiving steadily more sunlight as has the ice covered Antarctic continent (a bit reflective though and high altitudes in places). Here is where the slow changes occur, huge masses of water and ice have to be warmed before much change occurs. Combine that with the fact that the elliptical nature of the orbit gives peak solar insolation to the southern latitudes in it’s summer, feeding that ocean with heat.

      The only way I can figure it is that warm ocean circulation from the southern hemisphere was pumped up to the Arctic regions, keeping it just warm enough that an increased GHG effect pushed it toward melting. Without that circulation the northern regions would be a block of ice.

      The solar irradiance is starting a slow reversal that will last thousands of years, increasing northerly radiation while diminishing southerly. So the ocean, acting like a huge solar collector, has been leveling out the temperatures across the globe through thermohaline circulation. We would probably notice far larger climate shifts if the ocean circulation gets disrupted than we will from GHG’s due to the large differential in temperature between the equatorial region and the poles.

      Of course, in the long run, the amount of GHG is a dominating factor since our average distance from the sun and the earth’s tilt is not changing. The long period of continental shifts and in particular mountain building chilled the earth over many millions of years. CO2 keeps getting absorbed by the new rock and the altitude chills things. The total surface area of seas changed too.
      Now CO2 and other GHG’s are on a fast rise, raising the flag of fast climate change.

      But we are not too concerned about the very long term, so GHG’s and ocean currents should be our main focus at this point.

      I do find the Arctic response to be quite illuminating, since much of the data for change is buried in the normal weather and seasonal variations. It is easy to see massive changes in ice though.

      1. Reality– whatever it is– is strange. Everything is connected apparently. My subatomic particle is your subatomic particle…

        I used to be intrigued by terraforming many moons ago and even wrote an essay on it for one of my classes. In doing the research for it, I found out that there are some planetary ‘locks’ or ‘influences’ that made me think at the time that terraforming Mars, for example, if we’re using nuclear fusion and moving a whole lot of significant planetary/asteroidal/etc. matter around on a solar system scale, it might threaten how planets move around the sun, including and maybe especially, Earth. lol
        For all we know, there are alien beings that tried stuff like that and wrecked their entire solar system’s balance, and home planet. “D’oh!”

        Over here I live near a mini forest oasis on one side of the property and noticed that there are less black spots (some sort of widespread fungus or ‘disease lite’) on the leaves of the maple trees that grow here compared with the ones growing more in isolated fashion around people’s homes, surrounded by the typical lawns. Now of course, the forest is a different context in which a tree grows, and we are just learning about it, about what happens under the soil.

  38. This comment of mine might be construed as being totally OT and possibly way out in left field.
    However I be curious to know what people here think might be the ethical and moral implications of destroying marine ecosystems that might be inhabited by sentient conscious beings that are highly social and perhaps in possession of an alien intelligence on par with our own?

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405722316301177

    Abstract
    This paper continues studies in the problem of animal language by registering acoustic signals from two quasi-stationary Black Sea bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) using a two-channel system in the frequency band up to 220 kHz with a dynamic range of 81 dB. The packs of mutually noncoherent pulses (NP) generated by the dolphins were matched to the animals. The waveforms and the spectra of these pulses changed from one pulse to another in each pack. In this connection, a suggestion was made that the set of spectral components of each pulse is a ‘word’ of the dolphin’s spoken language and a pack of NPs is a sentence. The paper studied the NP peculiarities in the context of the characteristics of the human spoken language.

    Conclusion
    In this study, we carried out a reliable measurement of the mutually noncoherent pulses and their subsequent analysis as the most probable acoustic signals of the hypothetic spoken language of dolphins.

    As this language exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language, this indicates a high level of intelligence and consciousness in dolphins, and their language can be ostensibly considered a highly developed spoken language, akin to the human language. This claim is supported by the fact that dolphins have possessed brains that are somewhat larger and more complex than human ones for more than 25 million years [49]. Due to this, for further research in this direction, humans must take the first step to establish relationships with the first intelligent inhabitants of the planet Earth by creating devices capable of overcoming the barriers that stand in the way of using languages and in the way of communications between dolphins and people.

    1. Hi Fred,

      I’ve had several dolphin encounters, all wonderful: this was one of them. It all started when I noticed a request for volunteers in The Sun newspaper and decided to donate some time to the Vancouver Aquarium. My academic life had been dominated by mathematics and the physical sciences; I know nothing of biology and figured a few evenings a week helping aquarium staff feed fish, or whatever, might wind up being an interesting experience − little did I know.

      Following a very short interview I was asked if I’d be willing to apply my engineering skills to help design, build and run an experiment with dolphins. It would involve creating a device; a sort of camera-in-reverse that dolphins could stare into, look at various cards with lines on them, make a decision and press a lever announcing their decision: a YES or a NO. It was to determine visual acuity, in other words, the level of detail Dolphins could see underwater.

      Of course I knew dolphins communicated and they’re amazingly playful animals; I also knew the dolphin brain is much larger than a human’s and, like us, it has two hemispheres. I found out theirs are split into four lobes instead of three and the fourth lobe in the dolphin’s brain hosts all his senses, whereas in a human, the senses are split. Some believe that having all of the senses in one lobe allows the dolphin to make immediate and often complicated judgments that are well beyond the scope of human ability. It wouldn’t surprise me.

      I was then introduced to Spike, five years old and full of fun. Like all these guys he could leap 15 feet into the air, two and a half times his body length, and return leaving barely a ripple on the surface OR create a tidal wave aimed at that curious cluster of humans lowering a strange device into HIS pool.

      Next, Spike had to be taught to look into our contraption, to decide if there was space between two black lines or it was just one solid line, and then announce his decision by pushing right or left on a lever with his snout. While we fiddled with our box, getting ready, he’d be sweeping by us in the water, flicking his head to get a look; there were constant chittering sounds that weren’t very melodic.

      It took many frustrating nights but finally he got it, celebrated with a series of acrobatic leaps and immediately concentrated on the task with enthusiasm only a porpoise can muster: this was wonderful to watch, to be part of. Finally, with our data recorded, I assumed the experiment was complete but was told no, it had to be repeated with another dolphin to confirm results; did I want to help with this too? Of course I did.

      An adjoining pool held a young female: Splash. They were separated because Spike was being aggressive with her and there were some safety concerns. Anyway, Spike was replaced by Splash and we got ready to spend many nights, perhaps weeks, teaching her to do the acuity test. But, she just swam up to our “camera” and stopped: waiting for us to start inserting the cards; our second acuity trial was finished within an hour. Impossible! Unbelievable!

      Among the collection of professional biologists with their string of PhDs only two possibilities could be imagined: dolphins are telepathic OR Spike explained our experiment to Splash in Dolphin, in an extraordinary language of chittering, whistles and squawks we’ve yet to learn thus paving the way for her to finish the test in record time.

      Of course water circulation pipes connect the dolphin pools so sound waves, “voices”, could easily be transmitted throughout the aquarium complex. It’s difficult to say what dolphins can or cannot do but one thing we know for sure: of the two species, theirs is the one wearing a permanent grin.

  39. There are intelligent sentient beings on this planet? I feel sorry for them, they are sure in a fix with us running the show.

  40. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/news/20160912/

    NASA Analysis Finds August 2016 Another Record Month

    This year looks to have jumped above trend in terms of rate of temperature increase, CO2 increase, QBO not reversing, La Nina not as expected, and apparently more and worse floods, wildfires and droughts (that last might be anecdotal only until the numbers come in though).

    Note last three ENSO indexes for AMJ, MJJ and JJA are 0.6, 0.1 and -0.3 so El Nino has gone as an influence and it’s looking like we might stay neutral (above -0.5) this year from various sources so no major La Nina to cool things off.

    1. Where’s Javier these daze and those anthro climate change/global warming drive-by’s?

  41. http://climatedebatedaily.com

    https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

    Average sea ice extent for August 2016 was 5.60 million square kilometers (2.16 million square miles), the fourth lowest August extent in the satellite record. This is 1.03 million square kilometers below the 1981 to 2010 average for the month and 890,000 square kilometers (344,000 square miles) above the record low for August set in 2012. As of September 5, sea ice extent remains below average everywhere except for a small area within the Laptev Sea. Ice extent is especially low in the Beaufort Sea and in the East Siberian Sea. With about two weeks of seasonal melt yet to go, it is unlikely that a new record low will be reached. However, since August 26, total sea ice extent is already lower than at the same time in 2007 and is currently tracking as the second lowest daily extent on record. In addition, during the first five days of September the ice cover has retreated an additional 288,000 square kilometers (111,000 square miles) as the tongue of sea ice in the Chukchi Sea has started to disintegrate.

    http://americasquarterly.org/peruvian-protests-explained

    All your land to us belong.

  42. The morning news has it that the Chevy Bolt will be on sale before Christmas with an EPA range of 238 miles.

      1. Seems to be an efficient EV at about 0.25 kWh/mile.
        The race is on, EV’s competing against EV’s, now as if the ICE did not even exist. With all the credits, it is entering the affordable range.
        Another 200 mile range and they will be quite practical.
        Remember the range is very dependent upon outside temperature and accessories used.

        Do EV’s work in the cold?
        http://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/electric-cars-cold-weather-temperatures

        I remember those times at minus 20F when the engine would barely crank over (even after using low viscosity oil).

        1. I have been in areas that can reach minus 50 F in the winter at times and minus 20 at night is normal.
          The Model S states -24F as a lower limit for 24 hours.

          1. Hi Gonefishing,

            Probably would be ok in an attached garage, are there a lot of days that average -24F for 24 hours where you live?

            1. You are funny, not many attached garages at trailheads or even motels.
              Don’t worry, at minus 50 most of the ICE’s won’t start, need to keep a heater in the oil or other warming device.
              I am sure for most town and city people that things will be fine, although the northern regions will severely test them.

            2. “Why my family pulled the plug on owning an electric vehicle”
              http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/culture/commuting/why-my-family-pulled-the-plug-on-owning-an-electric-vehicle/article22024557/

              Range drops to less than half in Canadian extreme cold.
              http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/electric-cars-can-handle-canadian-winter-1.1199058

              So if you get an EV, make sure that the range is two to three times your maximum trip length (if there is a charger there). At least you can get home then.
              Otherwise you will spend lots of time running for charging stations that may be occupied when you get there. One more level of adventure added to the driving experience, lots of planning needed.
              And sometimes you just can’t get there from here. So rent an ICE.

            3. Or, just buy a plug-in hybrid.

              You can reduce fuel consumption by 80% easily, and 90% with a little effort, and never have to worry about range anxiety.

              The perfect is the enemy of the good.

    2. The announced Bolt range is awesome news. Now if they can just implement 150KW fast charging.

      The other really interesting EV news of this morning comes from Satoshi Ogiso, Toyota’s chief Prius engineer:

      “The cost of pure electric depends very much on range,” Ogiso told Forbes this week, “Up to 250km (155 mile) range, battery-electric vehicles already can be built for less money than hybrids.”

  44. American Driver Survey results:
    Motorists age 16 years and older drive, on average, 29.2 miles per day or 10,658 miles per year.
    Women take more driving trips, but men spend 25 percent more time behind the wheel and drive 35 percent more miles than women.
    Both teenagers and seniors over the age of 75 drive less than any other age group; motorists 30-49 years old drive an average 13,140 miles annually, more than any other age group.
    The average distance and time spent driving increase in relation to higher levels of education. A driver with a grade school or some high school education drove an average of 19.9 miles and 32 minutes daily, while a college graduate drove an average of 37.2 miles and 58 minutes.
    Drivers who reported living “in the country” or “a small town” drive greater distances (12,264 miles annually) and spend a greater amount of time driving than people who described living in a “medium sized town” or city (9,709 miles annually).
    Motorists in the South drive the most (11,826 miles annually), while those in the Northeast drive the least (8,468 miles annually).
    On average, Americans drive fewer miles on the weekend than on weekdays.
    Americans drive, on average, the least during winter months (January through March) at 25.7 miles daily; they drive the most during the summer months (July through September) at 30.6 miles daily.

    http://newsroom.aaa.com/2015/04/new-study-reveals-much-motorists-drive/

    1. All of that effectively underlines the reality that EV’s + PV can and will affordably supersede ICE + petrol. The remaining uncertainty is how quickly.

  45. Dong Energy has installed the first of the world’s largest wind turbines, which are taller and wider than the London Eye, at its Burbo Bank windfarm off the coast of Britain in the Irish Sea, it said on Thursday.

    The 32 turbines, made by Vestas, will each be able to generate 8 megawatts (MW) of electricity, stand 195 meters tall from sea level and have a rotor diameter of 164 meters.

    Combined, the 32 turbines will create enough electricity to power around 230,000 homes.

    “Using larger turbines is a critical part of the industry’s drive in getting costs down,” Sykes said.
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dong-energy-windfarm-britain-idUSKCN11E1F9

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