== Again, be passionate... but NOT "mad as hell!" ==
As we embark on a year of political hell in the USA - and therefore the world - I plead with all sides to see how our deepest sickness - deliberately stoked by enemies - is a self-doped high of sanctimony that afflicts ALL partisans, of all kinds! (And yes, including me.)
Please watch my TEDxUCSD talk on “The addictive plague of getting mad as hell.”
That does not mean that all sides are morally or factually the same! You all know that I believe – supported by mountains of proof – that one of the US parties has spiraled into utter insanity, waging all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.
So yes, I am dedicated to the ‘Union” side – nearly always the good side – in this latest phase of the 240 year American Civil war.
Still, there can be no doubt that many on our side, as well, are poisoned by this mind plague that robs humans of their reason. And it makes for a fractious alliance… the only one with a chance to save the nation, the planet and our children. In other words, we cannot afford this malignancy-addiction.
*(Here's scientific background: Addicted to Self-Righteousness? And my video: Indignation, addiction and hope.)
== Patterns and currents that flow below your favorite - or most-hated - memes ==
First a couple of notes:
A June milestone passed without much notice, the 300th anniversary of the birth of Adam Smith, arguably as important to our Enlightenment Experiment as even the American revolutionary ringleader, Ben Franklin. See my posting: Adam Smith - Liberals, you must reclaim him.
Okay, so can we wean ourselves off carbon? The zero-sum Foxite meme is that Democrats' push for sustainable alternatives must mean more dependence on oil imports. Yes? Um, no? U.S. oil production is forecast to average an all-time high of 12.8 million barrels a day this year and keep growing to 13.1 million in 2024, even as sustainables surge. That means the loser is... OPEC. Indeed, effective energy independence from OPEC happened under Barack Obama.
Still, U.S. fuel market price sways on decisions made at the oil cartel’s machinations. Feeding lie-narratives from Fox etc. that Joe Biden has hampered US production.
To be clear. I want rapid progress toward zero carbon! (A carbon tax is essential.) Still, today's surge in sustainables like wind and solar ironically depends on a steady supply of reliable transition energy. We do our best and most rapid work not with purity, but momentum and determination.
== Political tactics in play! ==
Most Americans - indeed most Earthers - spent their formative years suckling from the greatest propaganda campaign in history, called Hollywood, yet cannot name the deep reflexes they were taught... like Suspicion of Authority. No, you didn't invent SoA - the main theme in almost every film you ever loved. I talk about that in Vivid Tomorrows.
But what of the American Empire? Loathed and admired, might it open a path to an end to all empires? In an older essay, I laid out possibilities for how Pax Americana could succeed its way into revered retirement, in favor of the Earth Federation we see so often portrayed in sci fi. See Whatever Comes Next.
Hence, if they regain power in 2024 (and there are tricks in play) they know it could be their last chance to end one-person-one-vote democracy, to crush the civil servants and entrench inheritance-brat feudalism forever. ALL of the ‘reforms’ offered under “Project 2025” have that aim, and to preserve the GOP’s sole political reason for existence.
What reason is that? Why, to protect Supply Side tax grifts for the rich and keep eviscerating the IRS. LOOK at the actual bills passed by the Mike Johnson House - the laziest in 100 years. That truly is all they care about.
Speaking of which - after one of those marvelous Pelosi Bills restored IRS funding, and the crippled agency is back on the job! “The IRS plans to crack down on 1,600 millionaires to collect millions of dollars in back taxes.” Striking terror into the core of the cheater aristocracy, a form of anti-feudal revolution that I predicted in Earth.
== Patterns of Democracy ==
Alt sources of wisdom… assuming I am not enough of a wiseguy for you?;-)
Arend Lijphart seems worth looking into. Beginning with his book Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in 36 countries, and going back to his earlier work, Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian & Consensus Government in Twenty-one Countries (1984), Lijphart focused on the broader contrast between majoritarian democracy and consensus democracy. Somewhat similar to Adam Smith and Arnold Toynbee, Lijphart argues that the main factor in having a viable democracy in a strongly divided society is the spirit of accommodation among the elites of different groups.
And this is where I step in, with perspective on 6000 years of dullard feudal lords practicing stoopid, zero-sum governance that held us back in 99% of past civilizations. Unsapiently pursuing male-reproductive reflexes (e.g. harem building), their imperative was - and remains - one that Smith and Marx and even Ayn Rand deeply loathed: creating empires to leave to those aforementioned inheritance brats.
Alas for the oligarch-castes, they cannot succeed in this project (eating the enlightenment goose that laid all their golden eggs) amid a healthy enlightenment society. One that practices actual politics… the open comparison of priorities, goals and means, especially reciprocal accountability and good faith negotiation… all of it guided by fact-professions who provide grounding in objective reality.
In order to restore feudal pyramids of power, today’s worldwide oligarchy must first discredit those fact professions… a campaign that’s already underway! While destroying – as they already have – the practical art of politics.
Let there be no mistake here. Those are the two goals. Forget the details. Destroying enlightenment style politics of the kind described by Liphart – and discrediting all fact professions, from science, teaching, medicine, law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps—Those are the two priorities that can lead to restoration of secure pyramids of inherited power… and to humanity’s extinction.
== Role Models? ==
Okay, this from Margie Taylor Greene -- now just Marjorie Taylor (look up the differing divorce rates among high Republicans vs Dems!) - is just too rich. No need to even edit! (I suspect there's some compacting edits but you can't beat this!)
Then there’s the Lauren Boebert hypocrisy.
Why does no one recite the passage “By their fruits you shall know them?” Seldom mentioned by anyone is the dissonance of getting parenting advice from MTG, Boebert and Sarah Palin, then glancing – even briefly – at how their own children came out! You hypocrites dare to preach to us?
== A libertarian who (maybe) actually means it? ==
Here’s an important article, about ways that our Enlightenment Experiment is under fiercely coordinated attack. Sure, by now we all know that. The big surprise is where this thing was published, at an ‘institute’ that long ago became not a promoter of freedom but a shill for oligarchy. Only now we see a serious attempt to tear masks off of the world-lunatics who aim to restore feudalism. Could it be that some, at Cato, are rediscovering their stated mission?
“In an age of widespread concern that liberal democracy is increasingly embattled around the world, the twin attacks on Enlightenment liberalism from the right and the left—and not just from the fringes—represent a worrying trend.”
Okay, sure, there are anti-enlightenment fanatics on all horizons. But these authors have realized what’s abundantly clear. That shrieks from a frippy far-left of woke-ist postmodernists are a much smaller threat... driven by sanctimony addictions, yet still rooted in enlightenment goals… while our meme-enemies on the far-right are massively coordinated, waging all-out attacks against our every pillar, from science, democracy, merit, and accountability… to, yes, any sort of freedom.
== No longer even pretending ==
In a worrisome trend, many elements of the oligarchy-funded neo-feudalism movement – that I’ve denounced ferociously elsewhere – no longer even try to disguise their intent to end anything like what we call liberty or free speech or open inquiry.
Styling themselves as scions of Edmund Burke, their screeds display utter ignorance of human history or the past thinkers they claim to ‘quote.’ For example, as the Cato article points out, the "neo-monarchist' morons conflate Hobbes with Locke! While attributing to feudalism virtues that 6000 years of bullying lords always loudly claimed – but never actually displayed – as they preyed-upon and oppressed nearly all of our ancestors.
And here is a profile of more neo-monarchist brats, yattering (while they orbit Peter Thiel) about how a mixture of LouisXIV and czarist Putinism and Galt’s Gulch will (despite 6000 years of insipid-failed feudalism) somehow be vastly better (for uber lords, one imagines) than the scientific enlightenment that indulgently gave the ingrate-parasitic brats absolutely everything they ever had.
I take solace from the evident fact that these malignant ingrates are also so very, very stoopid. Alas, they can still be dangerous.
107 comments:
Dr. Brin
"Okay, so can we wean ourselves off carbon?" It doesn't really matter what we do. China and India are completely dominating:
"Use of the carbon-heavy fuel in Western countries is falling, the IEA said, but demand in emerging and developing economies “remains very strong, increasing by 8% in India and by 5% in China in 2023 due to rising demand for electricity and weak hydropower output.”
The IEA expects coal use to rise by 1.4% this year and set a new record of 8.5 billion tons. That increase shows, yet again, how difficult it will be to achieve significant cuts in CO2 emissions from hydrocarbon use. Mainly due to coal use, which accounts for about 40% of emissions from energy, global CO2 emissions will set another new record in 2023 of 36.8 billion tons.
Surging coal use also shows that the Iron Law of Electricity hasn’t been repealed. That law says, people, businesses, and countries will do whatever they have to do to get the electricity they need. The surge in coal use is a sober reminder that the fuel remains a cornerstone of electricity generation, particularly in Asia. The IEA noted that coal-fired generation will rise by about 158 terawatt-hours, or 1.5%, this year. It also reported that India and China have “struggled to keep the lights on during periods of high electricity demand...owing to coal shortages and high prices. As a result, both governments have intensified efforts to increase coal production.” [ https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/two-days-after-cop28-iea-delivers ]
Wind and Solar are not going to help much https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-11-30-no-amount-of-subsidies-will-ever-make-a-windsolar-electricity-system-economically-feasible .
Nuclear and eventually geosynchronous solar plants will do the job.
I think it can finally be said that Marjorie Taylor-Greene is now running on MT?
Sorry, McS, but the jury's in.
Nuclear costs way more than renewables.
Still, I suspect that nuclear's appeal to conservatives has more to do with where production control lies than economics.
As for the iron rule...
Since you like quoting the IEA, I will refer you to a subtle change in language in their annual report between 2015 and 2016.
2015: "India's coal demand expected to triple by 2040."
2016: "India's energy demand expected to triple by 2040." (Projected coal demand had quietly dropped from 300 to 150%. Eight years later...)
Anyway, since I am betwixter the dateline and the witching hour than most (except Duncan), I will wish you all a merry Christmas and sign off for now.
mcsandberg
Nuclear is safe and green
But it COSTS four times as much as Wind, Solar and Storage
China is busy removing its older dirtier coal plants and making and installing more wind and solar than the rest of the world put together
China is currently emitting more CO2 than the USA - but LESS on a per capita basis AND the USA is miles and miles ahead on the TOTAL emitted
Wind Solar and Storage are incredibly expensive.
Since almost all of the analyses that show Wind, Solar, and Storage to be cheaper go back to Lazard, let's see how they do it:
"In the column headed “Storage Duration (Hours),” we find a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 4. Four hours of duration just happens to be the norm for the capability of today’s most cost-effective battery storage technology, lithium ion batteries. Unfortunately, the studies that I feature in my energy storage Report calculate that the number of hours duration of storage needed to fully “firm” a system using only wind and solar generation would be at least one month (720 hours), and potentially two to three months (1440 to 2160 hours). Lazard would seem to be off by a factor of somewhere between 180 and 540 of what would be needed. [ https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-12-17-climate-advocacy-incompetence-versus-intentional-fraud-lazard-edition ]"
Ah, that makes it easy to show Wind, Solar, and Storage are cheaper, just understate the amount of storage actually needed by over two orders of magnitude!
Even without the necessary backups, Wind is so expensive that every wind farm off the North Atlantic coast has now been cancelled.
As for Solar and Wind actually accomplishing anything:
"Bottom line: it’s now $1 trillion per year, plus or minus, invested in wind and solar “renewables” plus grid upgrades and energy storage needed to accommodate them. And for that vast sum of money, the percent of primary energy from fossil fuels does not budge by even a tenth of a percent. And, as world energy consumption increases, carbon emissions just continue to increase. The trillion is just completely wasted. [ https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-6-29-world-now-wasting-more-than-1-trillion-per-year-on-investing-in-useless-renewables ]"
Tony Fisk:
Still, I suspect that nuclear's appeal to conservatives has more to do with where production control lies than economics.
I suspect it has to do with the potential (even if only perceived) for ecological harm.
Paradoctor in the previous comments:
"Mutually dependent incompatible" principles
A tale as old as male and female. :)
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It's still Dec 24 in Chicago, but for some strange reason, my wife's family has always opened presents on Christmas Eve. Even this Jewish boy know you're supposed to wait for Christmas morning, but what can ya do?
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate.
Dr Brin in the previous comments:
Alas, that is far too multidimensional for any resident of flatland – or line-land – to grasp.
Or point-less land.
Nuclear power would be, at this point more of a belt and suspenders thing. But even without active resistance a nuclear fission facility's expensive, and you'd really want a UREX facility to go with it, which wasn't cheap 45 years ago when Carter tried to sell it to Congress. Renewables and a lot of storage would give roughly close enough utility. And it must be at minimum fewer outages than carbon based power, or the reactionaries will attack.
Loc is a mixture of profundity and insipidity: almost making sense, afterwards pulling back. As grandad was an ordained minister, can tell you Loc’s remark re Christianity in the previous post was on the pulling—back side. Forgiveness is on sale yet extremely few are buying.
Christianity is akin to asking volunteers to go on hazardous mission duty. Self-abnegation; self-sacrifice—dying to oneself in not merely the letter but also the spirit of forgiveness. As a missionary dies in an inhospitable clime (cf the ending of ‘Jane Eyre’).
Which is why there’re so very few Christians. It’s all linked: forgiveness/self-abnegation/self-sacrifice. Meekness is “fearing God[‘s judgment]”
Loc simply doesn’t know much about Christianity, thus his briefly discussing the decline of Christianity, the decline relative to other cultures, has no base to it. Culture is a construct, isn’t it? The term ‘kulture’ invented as a catch-all?
mcsandberg
Several months storage is both BOLLOCKS - and achievable
You don't need anything like that much - what you do need is some overbuilding for the summer/winter differences
If you do want a LOT of long term storage then pumped hydro is the answer
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2516-1083/abeb5b#prgeabeb5bs10
"In this paper we explored the technology, siting opportunities and market prospects for PHES in a world in which most electricity is produced by variable solar and wind. Vast numbers of potential off-river pumped hydro sites were identified in most regions of the world, far exceeding the number required to support 100% variable renewable electricity systems. Off river PHES is likely to have low environmental impact and low water consumption."
duncan cairncross
The need for several months of storage comes from the fact that solar and wind are seasonal:
“ The particular calculations in Fekete, et al., look at data from twelve states of the northeastern U.S. — New England, plus New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and West Virginia. Rather than using production data from existing wind and solar facilities, the authors obtained daily wind speed and solar irradiation data for the region. For consumption data, the blog post states that the authors applied an assumption of “constant energy consumption,” after determining that “seasonal variations of energy consumption are relatively small (deviate by only 10-15% of the annual average).” (Perhaps this decision could be criticized, but I doubt that it makes any material difference to the conclusion.)
And the bottom line is:
The storage capacity needed to align power generation from solar or wind is around 25% of the annual energy consumption.
In other words, you need three months worth of storage to try to make this work. [ https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-12-3-another-critical-thinker-reaches-the-obvious-conclusion-intermittent-renewables-cant-work-on-their-own ]”
egalitarianism and meritocracy are non-compatible principles
That is a "Straw Man"
Its only a problem if you use a different/wrong definition of "egalitarian"
adjective
believing in or based on the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.
"a fairer, more egalitarian society"
noun
a person who advocates or supports the principle of equality for all people.
"he was a social and political egalitarian"
Egalitarian does NOT NOT NOT mean "Equality of OUTCOME"
Egalitarian means "Equality of OPPORTUNITY"
On this rare occasion I agree with MCS! Much of the high cost of nuclear is because of obscene degrees of overregulation. The newer designs are virtually proof against meltdown. Earth is in far more danger from refusing this energy source than from using it (carefully).
Alas, he goes back to drivel re solar and wind. Where are they in their development arcs? Their rates of improvement are vastly higher than the rates of oil/coal fired electricity generation, 130 years ago. That last paragraph is utterly utterly specious! The world’s newly not-impoverished billions (thanks to Pax Americana) WILL have electricity, or else. We are learning how to give it to them from the sun. Extend the curves. Try looking ahead instead of gloming onto carbon lobby memes.
Also, Iceland is virtually independent energetically. How? We have VAST geothermal resources.
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“Egalitarian means "Equality of OPPORTUNITY"
Which is what I mean by “Stop wasting talent! And stop inheritance brat cheating.” Uplift all poor children with health/education and let them compete fairly and you get Adam Smith and even Friedrich Hayek, who used to be the doyen of conservative economics… till the right went insane.
Dr. Brin
Thanx for the kind words about nuclear!
Wind and Solar are fairly mature technologies with the new 15 MW turbines achieving about 90% of the Betz theoretical limit and new solar panels achieving about 80% of the Shockley–Queisser limit. There simply isn’t much improvement left in these technologies.
Here’s what is actually happening :
“ We don’t need to hypothesize. Government data disprove the Treasury’s contention and demonstrate that increasing deployment of renewable capacity reduces the productivity of Britain’s grid. In 2009, 87.3 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity, comprising only 5.1 percent of wind and solar, generated 376.8 terrawatt hours (TWh) of electricity. In 2020, 100.9 GW of generating capacity, with wind and solar accounting for 37.6 percent of capacity, produced 312.3 TWh of electricity. Thanks to renewables, 13.6 GW (15.6 percent) more generating capacity produced 64.5 TWh (17.1 percent) less electricity.
Those numbers are damning for renewables and demonstrate why they make electricity more expensive and people poorer. Before mass deployment of renewables, 1 MW of capacity in 2009 produced 4,312 MWh of electricity. In 2020, 1 MW of capacity generated 3,094 MWh, a decline of 28.3 percent. It’s as clear as can be: investment in renewables shrinks the economy’s productive potential. This is confirmed by the International Energy Agency’s net zero modelling. Its net zero pathway sees the global energy sector in 2030 employing nearly 25 million more people, using $16.5 trillion more capital and taking an additional land area the combined size of California and Texas for wind and solar farms and the combined size of Mexico and France for bioenergy – all to produce 7 percent less energy. [ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/12/24/britains-net-zero-disaster-and-the-wind-power-scam/ ]”
"There simply isn’t much improvement left in these technologies."
Baloney! What's next is far more efficient manufacturing and deployment and mosre endurance. Get all three of those and we can cover every aqueduct, slashing evaporation and taking over all pumping. We can have universal desalinization and who cares if it's only 10 hours a day!
"Those numbers are damning for renewables and demonstrate why they make electricity more expensive and people poorer."
Stark jibbering raving nonsense. No seriously, you are following pied pipers of truly raving magnitude.
There are a lot of people in the third world who will be able to utilize solar and wind to increase their power usage from near zero to far less than 1st world citizens would consider adequate - and still improve their lives measurably. Even if McS' figures are correct, it doesn't matter if the cost per kwh is higher if nobody is going to string power lines from a far-off nuclear reactor to their remote village anyway.
(I remember Heinlein's old novel "Waldo" where beamed power was available to anyone on Earth who had a collector, but nobody had yet noticed the side effects of all that power on the humans that were being beamed through. Was Heinlein referencing some of Tesla's more hair-raising power distribution schemes?)
A lot of old school investors are apparently betting big on nuclear and downplaying solar and wind. In business terms - i.e. the next quarter - they are probably right, but Dr. Brin appears to be correct about rates of decline in cost per kwh. I think the problem lies in the nature of ROI - purchased solar cells, for instance, offer little return after sale, but a power plant can sell power for at least 20 years, gaining returns over time.
Fusion still seems a pipe dream for investment purposes, but my youngest son is very excited about the potential - about equal to what I felt about fusion, mumbly-mumbly years ago.
If there's going to be a breakthrough that would upset the electroncart, I suspect it might be in superconducting tech, which could allow for a much more flexible grid.
Pappenheimer
P.S. Chapter one is done, taking quick Christmas break.
Culture derived from Latin, to cultivate, till. A more recent definition:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kultur
"Much of the high cost of nuclear is because of obscene degrees of overregulation."
I used to think that - it was the irrational fear of radiation death cooties that made Nuclear so expensive
Then China went in for nuclear in a BIG way - you can moan about the Chinese leadership but pragmatic is their middle name - so problems with radiation death cooties
Then after 20 years or so China carefully moved their emphasis from Nuclear to Wind and Solar
They did NOT "Go Cold Turkey" - they just moved the emphasis
Thinking about my career I think I know why
We made massive improvements - but they were by the death of a thousand cuts - thousands of tiny improvements that added up to a doubling of output in 10 years
There were large projects - but they did not deliver immediate improvement - they "enabled" more of the small improvements
In my industry the engineers just went ahead and made changes - there was a process but it wasn't too restrictive - us hairy engineers did the cost/benefit stuff - of course we were always correct and never had to back our changes out!!
Nuclear - the Cost/Risk/Benefit analysis would NEVER pass the small changes we made - NOR should it!
So while Wind and Solar are now less than a tenth of the cost in the 80's - Nuclear is still the same cost it was then
And I will be buggered if I can think of any way around that!
mcsandberg - you don't need large areas for solar - there are a lot of roofs available and you can even use it on fields and canals to improve agricultural productivity. And even where it would make sense to use it on a large scale it would be mostly on desert. Similarly I'm hopeful that better mini windmills could eventually be roof top installed. I think this is how it will end up, much more distributed power sources. Similarly there are other potential renewable sources of energy (for instance bio-gas) to fill in the lulls as well as better storage techniques. Yes we will need more capacity and the capital cost will be high - but the running costs will be very low. This is how it is with electric cars (and I see that finally they are realizing that the correct way to recharge is not via gas stations but via parking lots) - the long term cost is actually lower. There are countries or at least islands now (mostly European in long latitudes with reliable winds) that are to a very large percentage renewable already. The problem we have now is that we left it too long and we are seeing higher interest rates as everybody is having to invest all at once. We should have done this when interest rates were low instead of pumping up land and share prices.
I don't know why you keep quoting from unlinked propaganda pieces. Who do think that convinces?
Most Americans - indeed most Earthers - spent their formative years suckling from the greatest propaganda campaign in history, called Hollywood, yet cannot name the deep reflexes they were taught... like Suspicion of Authority.
After following Contrary Brin for more than 10 years, I can honestly say that today's offering is one of Dr. Brin's tightest & most persuasive, even though he recommends a course of action that is practically inconceivable to most Americans.
By reclassifying Suspicion of Authority as mere propaganda, he counsels respect for authority, but only for certain partisan establishmentarian 'fact using' Democrat Party wonks & most definitely NOT for any conservative authority figures, with the sole inconsistency being that this argument appears to contradict the paired cultural relativism & chauvinism inherent in his own Dogma of Otherness, a mindset which simultaneously argues that the ONLY one correct worldview is that all "widely diverse points of view have merit", as long as those diverse view do not diverge from the one true path.
Even so, some of his enumerated items are just plain lazy, especially his unexplained rationale for (1) lionizing unelected civil service appointees over democratically elected civilian representatives, (2) blaming MAGA confederates for turning the southeastern US malaria belt into the malaria belt it once was, (3) claiming that the existence of 1,600 cheating millionaires justifies the appointment of 87 thousand new jackbooted IRS agents and (4) his hypocrisy in regard to the GOP's terrible parenting skills when the current Democrat Commander-in-Chief's son is an incestuous drug-addicted whoremongering paedophile with a self-documentation fetish.
That the Contrary Brin blog tends to attract implacable Type A perfectionists, of this I am well aware, and so I accept Alan_B's many criticisms on the imperfect nature of Christian Mercy & Charity without offense, only to tell Alan_B & his supporters to be of good cheer, as Pew Research reports an across-the-board 20% decline in the US Christian demographic from 2009 to 2019 which, if it continues apace, will soon allow for the replacement of imperfect Christian morality with a much more perfect & palatable substitute of the Mohammedan variety, giving y'all good reason to celebrate from your rooftops as you make the short trip down.
But, for now, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
Best
_____
At least on Earth, nuclear power by fission is a 'dead duck' as its waste products are much too toxic & long-lived. In space, this is not the case as nuclear waste can be disposed of willy-nilly, practically anywhere. For dependable nuclear power down here on Earth, fusion represents our best & only hope, assuming we can make it work before a massive culling makes such an advance unnecessary in terms of our greatly diminished global energy needs & our reduced ability to produce CO2 as waste.
Hunter’s case is an anomaly..other children of presidents were, with rather few exceptions, acceptably adjusted.
—
Re Christianity, my comment is not a critique of Christian mercy & charity; it is that in Christianity, as well as in the other Abrahamic faiths, sacrifice and mercy/charity are equivalent. Such is in the scriptures and is the rule today.
A missionary doctor makes a sacrifice—and once in awhile the ultimate sacrifice of dying. Some parents sacrifice everything for their children...
Naturally, many people would rather ponder the more pleasant aspects of Christianity: why shouldn’t they? But today, read some scriptures and you’ll see them in a slightly different light than before.
—
Anecdotally, after visiting many mosques, would say they contained harmless adherents, who left visitors alone to listen to proceedings.
In relation to some of what you've written before, Dan Davies has this recently at his Back of mind blog:
There are many reasons why so many people in the developed economies feel a sense of constant simmering impotent fury. But one of the more important ones is that there are a lot of intelligent middle class professionals whose bonuses depend on this being the case.
An analogy; consider the audience at a comedy club. You might ask why they are happy, and it would be an acceptable answer to say that they’re young, they’re middle class, they have disposable income and spare time and in general modern society is working for them and providing them with goods and services they enjoy consuming. But if you ask why they’re laughing, the reason is that there’s a guy at the front of the room telling them jokes.
The insight on which the fortune of Fox News was based is that a lot of people enjoy being angry (or at least, behave as if they do, which is all you need from a commercial point of view). And that there are some people who have a talent in making an audience angry in the same way that comedians are good at making them laugh.
[...]
The development of productised rage is a big part of the story of the last twenty years, inn my view. And it’s an example of the way in which a system can get out of control when it becomes unregulated. If you take a look at the Fox News / Dominion court case, you can see the gradual realisation on the part of the media executives that they weren’t actually in the driving seat. They had created a feedback loop between rage and money, and the POSIWD (purpose of a system is what it does) principle had taken over.
Davies is focused on "management cybernetics", or how systems (including corporations) function, and I think that this is also a part of what is going on with the "plague" you reference.
Yes, there is an ideological purpose driving Fox (and various other media), but looking at how systems work to reinforce behaviour - including that of organs promoting "outrage" - is also important.
reason
The Manhattan Contrarian has been studying the issue of storage for quite some time now. Here's a summary of his energy storage paper https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-12-1-the-manhattan-contrarian-energy-storage-paper-has-arrived and it has a link to the paper itself and links to some supporting material as well. The reason so much storage is required is shown by Figure 1 of that paper on page 5:
"This annual storage requirement calculated by Andrews is a large multiple of the requirement estimated by Wojick for a one- time worst-case multi-day wind/sun drought. This is because of the seasonality of wind and solar generation and consumption. In both Germany and California, the wind and solar facilities produce much more power in certain seasons than others – sun more in the sum- mer and less in the winter; wind more in the spring and fall, less in the summer and winter. That phenomenon leads to a seasonal sine-wave pattern in charging and discharging the storage facility.
The surpluses in the spring and early summer, and the deficits in the autumn and winter, are obvious. The result is that it takes storage of almost a full month’s average usage to get through the year without a blackout."
Here's a question for TASAT.
Considering the possibly immense amount of liquid water in the solar system, gravity gradients galore, and the extreme simplicity/safety of hydro power, has any SF been written about using PHES out there? It seems this might unite environmentalists and expansionists - not an easy trick.
Someone here on this blog once suggested converting solar energy to bitcoin in the daytime and then converting the bitcoin back to power at night. I'm not sure if that was a complete joke, or if he meant "Buy power with the bitcoin" as a way to accomplish the latter. If so, I thought that was brilliant.
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BTW,
Happy birrrrrrthdaaaaaay, dear Jeeeeeeeeeeeesuuuuuuuuuss.
Happy birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.
Scidata, what is PHES? We hope to have some kind of TASAT soon.
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The anti-solar narrative has all sorts of twisty logic like requiring all nighttime energy come from storage… what idiocy!
This whole narrative has one fundamental flaw. The basic question… how long do cell arrays last and remain useful? If they decay to uselessness over small period X… and have high maintenance costs… then the kinds of “calculations” MCS gloms from shill sites might have validity. But if maintenance costs are small and they have substantial lifespan, then their manufacturing costs get amortized over many X.
Um… obvious? Whatever the efficiency levels, it is lifespan that controls all aspects of the economic utility of solar. If year-after year the total amount of long-lasting solar generation increases with near-zero replacement cost, then the curves inevitably lead to covered aqueducts & reservoirs and rooftops. And please tell me how that doesn’t translate over years into very low cost energy … that also is distributed and resilient requiring little infrastructure.
So the cells don’t work at night? BFD! You use them by day, develop storage in stages… and use carbon sources to bridge at night. Um duh?
And then… sigh…
“By reclassifying Suspicion of Authority as mere propaganda, he counsels respect for authority”
Gawd even when he tries to offer smarmy -unctuous flattery it leads immediately to outright insane lies. I speak to AWARENESS of the source of values that I openly and repeatedly say are the only way we’ve moved forward and ever will.
For L to attempt to claim his are the Suspicion of Authority folks – while his cult kneels to suck every oligarchy – is pretty sad. Truly, that is an utter jibber not worth my time.
“Hunter’s case is an anomaly..other children of presidents were, with rather few exceptions, acceptably adjusted…”
???
Terrific interview with experts on Russia about how its destiny unfolded since the 1980s and may unravel in the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JJsbs_7lW0
PHES is Pumped Hydro Energy Storage (discussed earlier upthread)
I was looking at a list of world leaders in PHES, Canada didn't appear on it. Truly, necessity is the mother of invention. There are drawbacks to being blessed with vast natural resources.
Night-time power from carbon defeats the purpose. Fortunately, batteries are a developing technology, with price falling quickly. I'm waiting for batteries to get better before I solarize house and electrify car. I plan to install the big battery first, so I can run my house at night rates.
Suspicion of authority, coming from an authoritative source, is a Goedelian paradox. "Distrust this authority" ~ "This statement is not provable." Both undermine dualistic dogma. Blessed be Doubt!
Three weeks ago I was on campus, and I passed a student wearing a T-shirt saying "Disobey". I told him, "No, I won't!"
Paradoctor:
Night-time power from carbon defeats the purpose.
I think that's why Dr Brin used the word "bridge". An interim solution.
I doubt you contend that a hybrid engine defeats the purpose because it uses some gasoline. Do you?
I passed a student wearing a T-shirt saying "Disobey". I told him, "No, I won't!"
Heh. Similar to Life of Brian:
"You are all individuals."
"We are all individuals!"
"You are all different!"
"We are all different!" "I'm not."
* * *
Dr Brin:
Gawd even when he tries to offer smarmy -unctuous flattery it leads immediately to outright insane lies.
That person's flattery is always an ironic insult.
Dr. Brin
Solar Cells have a lifespan of 25 to 30 years, they degrade steadily over that time. In a lot of places, you'll get a hail storm that destroys the panels before that https://www.westernjournal.com/pictures-look-punishing-minutes-baseball-sized-hail-massive-nebraska-solar-farm/ .
Wind Turbines don't last for long either and their prices are increasing not decreasing, which is a sign that they are a mature technology.
Projects are being canceled at higher rates now https://robertbryce.com/renewable-rejection-database/ .
There are several potential means of energy storage. Apart from Batteries and PHES, there's heat storage in molten salt, which is how CST* works (*not* NaCl! a mix of KCl and KNO3 which has a melting point of 200C and a fluidity similar to water) and compressed air.
The other thing I bet McS's sources decline to consider is distribution. The sun's shining and the wind's blowing somewhere.
Australia's experience with renewables to date has been that they're great at picking up the slack when 'baseload' coal plants shut down during heatwaves (which they do regularly).
* CST: concentrated solar thermal.
25-30 years is a GREAT start! Already vastly better than any coal or oil system. And we are talking about zero-moving parts, which means that the prospect of steady durability improvements is inherent.
Watch, your favorite cynicism-meme shill sites mention nothing about the economics of continuous use for 30-40 years, amortizing pure net profit along the entire second half. Of course they won't.---
----
LH:
Yes, I'm okay with interim technology. Life is an interim technology.
For years I've driven my gasoline car with a nagging conscience. But then I look at electric car prices and I say 'not yet'. My present car drives well enough, so I'll keep it, and drive it until it stops driving, and then go electric, if I can afford to.
It's not just the car; there's installing a car-charging plug on my house, and solar panels, maybe also a mini-windmill, and a battery. If they work, and I can afford them. Until then, interim tech.
My motive is not environmental altruism, for altruism is neither 'natural' nor politically reliable; it is my desire to possess my own power, independent of the schemes of the rich and powerful. Such selfish pride is natural and politically reliable.
I thought of that "Life of Brian" scene, and so did you. From time to time I wonder how much of me is me.
Well, a stop-gap tech that we need is the Allam process electrical plant. Any future power grid still looks like it will need fossil fuels until we figure out the peak use problem.
Thus, we need the Allam process, which uses pure O2 combustion combined with carbon capture to get to zero emissions with compressed air as a by product. It's sort of like a turbo-charger for a power plant, which cycles exhaust back through the system. Works most efficiently with natural gas, but can be used with coal.
Early models suggest it should be 2% more efficient plus being zero emissions.
Carbon capture is the green tech that never made the slightest sense to me, energetically.
Unless you are talking about 'capture' by vast algae farms fed by agricultural runoff/waste and co2 from concrete factories. THAT is being tried with some initial promise.
Base and peak load problems are vastly overrated, by guess who.
Thst said, one thing that would be worth expending a few shekels on would be a more interruptable alternative to the Bayer process. Current aluminum smelters are utterly dependent on a reliable power source.
Solar panels
The expected lifespan is that they do degrade and after 40 years will be at 85% of capacity
Wind Turbines
The early ones used gearboxes and lattice work towers
The towers provided perching places - which were used by birds in calm air - and then the birds would hit the blades
Todays turbines use a big central shaft with the generator coils attached to that shaft
The result is that the maintenance costs have been dropping
The result of THAT is that people have been replacing perfectly good wind turbines with BETTER ones to make more money
Its not because they were "worn out" !!
Seasonal variation
YES the amount of power produced is seasonal - as is the amount required
The cheap solution is to overbuild - this does mean that there is too much power available in the other season - which should NOT be a big problem
Tony Fisk is 100% correct - we need to find something that we can make with "Free" electricity - but if we can't its NOT a big problem!
Hunter’s is a one-off case that the President is not culpable for.
A big deal is made of Hunter, a fellow who has no intention of entering politics.
Am attempting to write in Loc’s language—as I do with Christians, etc. Do you need further explanation?
One of you wrote to me: "If Interstate 8 was shaded over for most of the desert miles, would it pay for itself in a decade or less from having drivers set their car's AC to a lower setting."
---
I will happily wager over a comparison of Hunter's entire life vs any random month of Don Junior.
And BEAU Biden's toenail clippings were worth more than the entire Trump clan, combined. Look him up.
Carbon capture is the green tech that never made the slightest sense to me, energetically.
Dr. Brin, The Allam process doesn't suck carbon from the air, basically it creates more complete combustion by using pure O2 and collects the exhaust from combustion and recirculates it through the system. It's a contained system that yields compressed CO2 as a side product.
I guess saying it's "carbon capture" isn't really accurate, what it uses is carbon sequestration. The test plant makes power generation more efficient bc you get more complete combustion, even with sequestration cost.
Compressed air has its own value, but using it to power things would just release the carbon.
Is it "the" solution. No, I see it as a stop-gap that can be deployed now, which generates power for less cost. You still end up mining fossil fuels with all its attendant environmental problems, but the emissions go way down. Basically, it's zero from power generation, but mining fossil fuels creates emissions.
It's wonderful to say the cost of renewables will go below fossil fuels, but until it does---its pie in the sky. You use Allam process plants until someone shows cheaper renewable power generation in a working plant.
China can claim it will do more conversation to renewables all it wants, but the Chinese provinces are notorious for economic numbers that are pure fantasy. Poor countries will do whatever is cheapest and simply lie about future reductions (and then scream for reparations from global warming caused by the 1st world
It's wonderful to say the cost of renewables will go below fossil fuels, but until it does-
The "Cost of renewables" - without any emissions costing - is below the cost of fossil fuel NOW
Not in the future - NOW!
The only reason that we are not using 100% renewables is that the plant for fossil fuels is already built - its "Sunk Cost" - so its ZERO when making the decisions
When comparing the cost of building and running a fossil fuel plant renewables win
When comparing the cost of running a fossil fuel plant to the cost of building and running a renewable setup the fossil fuel is still cheaper
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/levelized-cost-of-energy
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/why-is-cheap-renewable-electricity-so-expensive/
Aye.
Was telling Loc he worries too much about these matters, and Hunter is merely one guy—whose mother was killed in an auto accident, right?
The "Cost of renewables" - without any emissions costing - is below the cost of fossil fuel NOW
Duncan,
Yes, the cost of new plants are lower for wind and solar, but creating an entire grid using them would be more expensive.
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/would-getting-all-our-electricity-wind-and-solar-power-raise-price-electricity
This is where the Allam process plants come into the mix. Until you can get to the point where you can built out the new infrastructure and run the entire power system from renewables, a power generation mix that includes carbon sequestration plants makes sense.
As has already been suggested, the arguments in the "Manhattan Contrarian" article are based on a stupid premise: that "California" or "Germany" must produce all the power that they need at all times. This is a stupid premise because electric power is already traded both interstate in the US and internationally.
The author also seems not to understand electricity generation. He writes, "In Case 2, additional wind and solar facilities are built. At times of high sun and wind, there is a substantial surplus of electricity, which has to be discarded." In periods of excess generation capacity, there is no "surplus of electricity, which has to be discarded". Instead, it can be used to charge storage, or sold elsewhere, or the configuration of the generating devices is altered such that no electricity is produced. Of course, one still has surplus capacity but that is something that is true of all forms of power generation.
Interesting:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/25/2213813/-Israeli-War-in-Palestine-is-About-American-Elections
Looks like "Vlad the insaner" wishes to play the game of Kings at a lower difficulty level.
Alan Brooks:
Am attempting to write in Loc’s language—as I do with Christians, etc
Just stay clear of trademark infringement.
You must have been "fun" (in the sense of "not fun at all") in the era of prank calls. "Thank you for alerting me to the fact that my refrigerator may be escaping down the street. I'll go check right now."
duncain cairncross
"The "Cost of renewables" - without any emissions costing - is below the cost of fossil fuel NOW
Not in the future - NOW!"
That is simply not true and people are realizing it. This is the actual data:
"Government data disprove the Treasury’s contention and demonstrate that increasing deployment of renewable capacity reduces the productivity of Britain’s grid. In 2009, 87.3 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity, comprising only 5.1 percent of wind and solar, generated 376.8 terrawatt hours (TWh) of electricity. In 2020, 100.9 GW of generating capacity, with wind and solar accounting for 37.6 percent of capacity, produced 312.3 TWh of electricity. Thanks to renewables, 13.6 GW (15.6 percent) more generating capacity produced 64.5 TWh (17.1 percent) less electricity.
Those numbers are damning for renewables and demonstrate why they make electricity more expensive and people poorer. Before mass deployment of renewables, 1 MW of capacity in 2009 produced 4,312 MWh of electricity. In 2020, 1 MW of capacity generated 3,094 MWh, a decline of 28.3 percent. It’s as clear as can be: investment in renewables shrinks the economy’s productive potential. This is confirmed by the International Energy Agency’s net zero modelling. Its net zero pathway sees the global energy sector in 2030 employing nearly 25 million more people, using $16.5 trillion more capital and taking an additional land area the combined size of California and Texas for wind and solar farms and the combined size of Mexico and France for bioenergy – all to produce 7 percent less energy. [ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/12/24/britains-net-zero-disaster-and-the-wind-power-scam/ ]”
That is not opinion, that is what has actually happened! I am tired of people ignoring reality.
Every wind project off the North Atlantic shore has been cancelled due to insane costs:
"The developers of four offshore wind farms in New York are seeking average price rises of almost 50% on their offtake agreements. . . . The projects involved are Orsted and Eversource’s 924MW Sunrise Wind project, along with Equinor and bp’s 816MW Empire Wind 1, 1260MW Empire Wind 2 and 1230MW Beacon Wind. Sunrise Wind previously agreed a price of $110.37 per MWh, and is now seeking a $139.99 price instead, a 27% increase, according to NYSERDA. Empire Wind 1 requested increasing its strike price from $118.38 to $159.64, a 35% increase, while Empire Wind 2 asked for its $107.50 original price to be increased to $177.84, a 66% increase. Meanwhile, Beacon Wind wants its $118.00 previously agreed price ramped up to $190.82, 62% more. The three Equinor and bp projects combined have an average price rise of 55%.
Add up the capacity figures there, and it looks like of the 4,300 MW that NYSERDA was bragging about, the developers of at least 3,300 MW are about to back out without massive price increases. By the way, natural gas plants can typically sell electricity to the grid at around $50/MWh, or $0.05/kWh. The prices being talked about here for the offshore wind are in the range of triple to quadruple, and that’s before getting to the costs of extra transmission, let alone energy storage to back up the intermittency." [ https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-10-5-update-on-offshore-wind-projects-off-the-mid-atlantic-and-new-england ]
Just search for "if green energy is so cheap, why is electricity so expensive"
The green nonsense is coming to an end https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/the-alt-energy-bloodbath-in-10-charts
I cannot tolerate the insane denial of reality here any longer - good by.
I thought I would write something off topic as the last thread had a long discussion of UBI that I thought covered most but not all of the important points - so I would like to fill in some gaps. (I'm an economics graduate and are a bit appalled that many, many economic professionals are in favour of the idea - first raised to public discussion with a different name by none other than Milton Friedman - but most of the public don't even seem to understand it.)
1. People keep saying "how can we afford it" - but they forget that we have to keep people alive regardless and in fact we pay a very large price for not allowing people the means to survive and for creating a large, punitive and intrusive bureaucracy (some of it private) to eke out what we do.
2. Part of the financing of a UBI (I actually hate that term - I would as others much prefer it was called a national dividend) would come from getting rid of many, many tax deductions (tax deductions are horribly regressive), and part from marginal higher tax rates. In fact I would prefer that the standard deduction be set to exactly equal the UBI (because this would in particular simplify things regarding people who are not eligible (notice - it is a CITIZEN'S dividend - it is not available to non-citizen's). I can't see how many Libertarians ideal of open borders can be politically feasible without it.
3. The UBI would change bargaining power substantially without greatly changing the incentive to work. In particular it would reduce the bargaining power of employers of minimum wage employers (in fact you maybe could consider getting rid of a minimum wage with a UBI) but also between men and women. It would help people also that are not helped by the emphasis on creating jobs as the only solution to all problems (for instance carers of various sorts).
4. The biggest impact of the UBI would be regional. The UBI would never be enough for instance to allow people to live in their own flat alone in Manhatten - but it would allow people to live in some sort of domestic arrangement somewhere. To some extent people would move less than now to where the jobs are and more than now to where they could afford to live. And to some extent the jobs would follow them, because some declining places would end up with more circulating money.
5. Which brings us to money - the budget deficit fetish means that the only method we have for creating money is private lending. i.e. In order for the money supply to expand (as an expanding economy would need) is for people and firms to go ever deeper into debt. This cannot be stable. It would be much better if private debt was reduced and more of the public debt was monetarized (which means the central bank buying government debt). Again this was what Milton Friedman in fact recommended. Our current system exacerbates inequality - new government money being spread widely increases resilience and spreads financial wealth. Using private debt reduces resilience and concentrates financial wealth. It only looks as good as it currently does because we have an aging population of home owners where home ownership was once cheap and widely spread.
Oh and one more things - by all means introduce it at a lower level. One other policy I really want to see is a carbon tax with the revenue raised distributed to all citizens. As a citizens dividend! To me it is a no brainer. Clearly our two biggest problems are climate change and inequality and this policy would help with both.
P.P.S. A UBI is not a solution to all problems. In particular health care and insurance won't be solved by a UBI and housing may be helped (because people may move) but I still think direct housing provision by the government will be needed to combat homelessness - at least in some places.
mcsandberg:
I cannot tolerate the insane denial of reality here any longer - good by.
Ironically appropriate in a way not intended.
reason:
Clearly our two biggest problems are climate change and inequality and this policy would help with both.
Which is why Republicans will never pass such a thing.
An old cartoon I no longer remember the source of--maybe Playboy magazine--had office workers giving their boss a t-shirt that read, "I don't get ulcers. I give them." A similar Republican Party slogan could be, "We don't solve problems. We cause them."
?
Am trying to discuss with bloggers—such as Loc—issues on their own terms. He brought up Hunter Biden’s case, so I’m telling him it is a very minor issue that he shouldn’t worry about.
Most interactions with Loc and others of his sort are arguments at cross-purposes.
Hey - insane_denial_of_reality is my middle name.
"I don't have to take this abuse from you, I've got hundreds of people dying to abuse me." - Peter Venkman
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Dec25-8.html
Cait Conley, a senior adviser at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, ...acknowledged that AI is evolving quickly and may still fool people, even if they are alerted to the possibility of fake information. One problem is that AI is getting better every day at mimicking the voices of public officials, so when people see a fake video but the voice seems right, they may believe it.
The solution seems obvious (though underhanded) to me. Democrats and groups like The Lincoln Project should get out in front of this by blasting videos of Republicans saying things they never would say, such as support for a woman's right to an abortion or for black people to vote or for suspects to be treated as if they are innocent until proven guilty. Then, the Republicans themselves would be forced to make it clear to their voters that video can't necessarily be trusted.
While admittedly slimy, the fake ads wouldn't have to assert actual wrongdoing on the Republicans' part. I'm not suggesting they be shown to support Nazis or machine-gun immigrants or anything that would make liberals feel bad. I'm suggesting they be made to seem reasonable and sympathetic--something they would have to deny to their "cruelty is the point" base.
Alan Brooks:
?
Am trying to discuss with bloggers—such as Loc—issues on their own terms.
I actually find that commendable. You're a better man than I am if you don't get discouraged and throw your hands up.
I also can't prove, but strongly suspect, that loc in particular wouldn't appreciate the outreach, and perceives you as sealioning the sealion. Nothing wrong with that, though.
scidata:
"I've got hundreds of people dying to abuse me." - Peter Venkman
I purposely misinterpreted the comment by mcs above to mean "I'm tired of spreading denial of reality here, so I'm stopping now."
Interesting article on the topic of energy storage via flow batteries: https://spectrum.ieee.org/flow-battery-2666672335
A British take on Donald Trump:
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Dec26-1.html
Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?
A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace—all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump's limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing—not once, ever. I don't say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility—for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it's a fact. He doesn't even seem to understand what a joke is—his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn't just talk in crude, witless insults—he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It's all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don't. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He's not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He's more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff—the Queensberry rules of basic decency—and he breaks them all. He punches downwards—which a gentleman should, would, could never do—and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless—and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority—perhaps a third—of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think "Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy" is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
+ Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
+ You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it's impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of sh**. His faults are fractal: Even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W. look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws—he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: "My God... what... have... I... created?" If being a tw** was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.
Larry Hart:
Run an AI-generated ad with R candidates saying things too reasonable for them to say? Clever, but for a mind-f#&% this deep, you need a condom.
So I propose that it start with a robot voice droning 'bleep, bloop, bleep, the following is a deep fake', and ending with the robot voice droning 'bleep, bloop, bleep, he has never said that'. Also the whole thing should have an "AI SIMULATION" chyron.
The difference between a lie and a joke is that the joke admits that it's a lie. This sentence is false.
Some might find this discussion worth a listen.
AC Grayling - The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss
Blurb, "Lawrence joins philosopher Anthony Grayling in his office at the New College of the Humanities in London. Together, they discuss the Brexit crisis, Humanism, and the current state of democracy around the world."
Grayling makes many of the same / similar points that OGH does. His view is that democracies around the world are in trouble, not just the US's. He points out that of the many democracies around the world that are based on the British parliamentary system that a key failure has been, "The supposed separation of powers between the executive and the legislature collapsed, and the legislature became the creature of the executive."
Grayling says a key failure afflicting the US government is, "Yes, you (the US) do have separation between the presidency and Congress, but you've got that problem of a failure of separation between the political process and the judiciary . . ."
He also opines that key failures of all modern democracies are the combination of the internet, big money utilizing said internet to spread misinformation and low / poor information voters trained to, among other things, think poorly of experts.
“Yes, the cost of new plants are lower for wind and solar, but creating an entire grid using them would be more expensive.”
But the point is that solar/wind systems can be DISTRIBUTED over highways, aqueducts and countless roofs -and feed LOCAL grids that enhance resilience and reduce need for new, vulnerable infrastructure.
----------
MCS I am tempted to sigh and offer five or ten year wagers over the ornate, sciencey-sounding incantations you have offered here... like what we'd find if we GO TOGETHER to the chem dept at a major research university, knock on a random door and ask what they think of the nonsense you parrot here.
But you aren’t even interested in checking to see if your sources discuss amortizing a built system that requires almost zero added costs while providing energy for 40+ years. They don’t. Making their "points' utter drivel.
What IS so explicit that you can’t counter with masturbatory incantations is OCEAN ACIDIFICATION. If you feel you can DISPROVE that OA is happening… or that its sole cause is CO2 pollution… or that its curve is terrifyingly toward collapse of ocean ecosystems… then please have your atty contact me to confirm escrowed wager stakes and DISPROVE any of those. It would delight me to be proved wrong about all that!
Dig it, pal. If Ocean Acidification BY ITSELF is true, then your denialist cult is a suicide cult, one that intends to take all our children down with you. Let’s bet on that, sir. And if you refuse that wager... if you think there's ANY chance that your side is helping to kill the oceans... then staying in that cult makes you an enemy of the future.
Your goodbye is such immature silliness. Your incantatory edifice is collapsing around you and you know it.
Back into the echo-chamber Nuremberg Rally you go.
No, I’m a worse person (wrong genepool) but stubborn.
Loc is similar to many Christians: well-meaning, yet setting the bar impossibly high. I think like Loc, negatively. When Russia invaded Ukraine, I thought it was The Beginning Of The End; same with Oct 7th. Going too much by temporary impressions.
Larry,
I'd come across that Nate White missive before, but it was a pleasure to read it again.
I've got to try to remember, "His faults are fractal."
Paradoctor:
Also the whole thing should have an "AI SIMULATION" chyron.
Hmmmm, I understand your point, but I'm not sure that wouldn't make the whole exercise pointless. I think Republicans would then presume that the fake ads would not tarnish their image in their voters' eyes, and so continue to produce fake ads of their own without such chyrons. The viewers would be trained to think that fake ads are required to out themselves, and so any ad which doesn't disclaim its own content is real.
My intent was not to directly fool Republican voters, but rather a judo move that would constrain Republican candidates to alert voters that video can be faked. That would go some way toward disarming the effect of any Republican-produced fakes. I'm operating under the provision of our society which refuses to solve any problem unless Republicans need it to be solved.
The difference between a lie and a joke is that the joke admits that it's a lie. This sentence is false.
I was going to snark, "I am lying,"* but my brain immediately filled it in with Kent Brockman saying, "...in bed." Like his deliberately provocative tv news headline during the 1990s, "President Reagan dies...(long silent pause)...his hair!"
* Hmmmm, if I am standing up and I say, "I am lying," isn't that sentence really true?
I meant:
* Hmmmm, if I am standing up and I say, "I am lying," isn't that sentence really false?
But it might be able to work either way, depending on compound recursion.
A few thoughts on fission power.
It is expensive, doubly or triply so because of the irrational long term public hate of it and the out of the ordinary regulatory hurdles constructed largely because of that. Even if you streamlined that it would still be relatively expensive. But, I'd argue that cost should not necessarily be good enough reason to discard it. If that were so solar would not have survived long enough to advance to the 10 time reduction in costs that it has seen over the past several decades. But solar had some characteristics that made it worth pursuing, despite the initially exorbitant costs. I think fission does too.
If fission had been steadily evolving from day one like solar has, how expensive would it be now? I don't know, not something that can confidently be answered, but it seems clear it would be significantly cheaper than it is now, and safer. Advancement has nearly entirely been limited to "paper studies" for 60 years. Even so, what we know seems promising enough that it seems a crime not to have pursued development of it. Designs in which the failure mode is inherently, passively, cessation of the reaction. Designs in which, once the cycle is started, can extract as much as 90% of the available energy (current designs extract perhaps 10%) in the same reactor. Designs for which all existing spent fuel rods would be excellent fuel from which could be extracted many times more energy than has already been extracted from them. Right in the reactor, not requiring expensive additional re-processing. Those are possibilities we really should have pursued.
Even if our energy sector goes almost entirely solar and wind, there are characteristics of fission that are likely to always be advantageous in certain conditions, and yet the technology has been largely stagnant since the 1950s largely due to an unwarranted bad reputation. To clarify, I think it would be just great if we met all of our energy needs with solar and wind and I've no doubt that they will be a huge part of our future energy sector. I have no ideological commitments here. But I think it is a shame to have allowed fission technology to lie dormant for the past 60 + years. It can be quite safe, and in fact statistically speaking actually is the safest, and it is by many orders of magnitude the most energy dense method of producing power that we are capable of, at the moment.
Larry Hart:
Putting the warning chyron and the robot voice in the deep-fake ad is like killing a virus before you inject it. That's what makes it a vaccine, not a disease. The point is for the viewer's mind to reject it, and thus be trained to reject other fakes.
Something like this has been tried, by the late-night comics, with their self-proclaimed 'fake news' shows. The experiment has been a success; few mistake those shows for real fake-news.
Few, but not none. Someone in the R party was dumb enough to invite Colbert to address an R gathering, including Dubya. The result was legendary.
"I am lying...down" is how a binary mind flinches away from paradox. But the need for evasion proves contradiction's power. To break that power, confront the paradox. "This sentence is false": if it's false then it's true, then it's false, then it's true, and so on. So it's neither, so a grey area exists, Q.E.D.
That's why ideologues and their tyrannical manipulators hate jokes. They need black and white; they cannot survive in the Twilight Zone.
Hatred of fission power is the people's rational response to a well-financed four-decade propaganda campaign against fission. That agitprop campaign was called 'the Cold War', and it was a joint venture by the armed forces of the United States and the Soviet Union.
There were also bit players, such as Greenpeace, doing their part to spread fission-phobia. But they were remoras riding on the nuclear-warrior shark.
After terabux and terarubles spent to make atomic fission into the ultimate terror, then it would have been a huge waste of money if fission energy weren't feared and hated by both masses and elites, worldwide. I consider that to be a kind of psychic fallout. It will take generations to decay.
Paradoctor:
Putting the warning chyron and the robot voice in the deep-fake ad is like killing a virus before you inject it. That's what makes it a vaccine, not a disease. The point is for the viewer's mind to reject it, and thus be trained to reject other fakes.
I'm not misunderstanding your intent. What I'd be afraid of is that the viewer's mind wouldn't be trained to reject fakes, but instead trained to expect a disclaimer on fakes. Therefore, Republican fakes without the disclaimers would still be interpreted as true images.
What I'm aiming for is a way to alert Dem-leaning (or Never Trumper) voters who could be easily swayed to abandon Democrats by the right images to be open to the idea that the Republicans are faking those images. I'm skeptical that it is possible through normal means to plausibly assert that Republican-produced videos are fake. After all, they will be reinforcing stereotypes against Democrats that FOX and company are already training them to believe. But if Republicans need to convince viewers that video can be misleading, that will serve to inoculate them against any and all subsequent fakes.
The persuasive power of video is that when you see something with your own eyes, it must be true. Once that truism is cracked, it's nowhere near as easy to convince viewers that "ours" are real even though "theirs" are fake. The illusion itself is broken.
Just like when Mitch McConnell made that hilarious statement about how corporations should stay out of politics, and everyone laughed at him. There was no way for him to plausibly assert that corporations could continue to support Republicans, but those who support Democrats should stay out of politics, even though that's what he'd have wanted.
Ok, here's where my mind goes with those "I am lying" variations. Suppose I were speaking at the UN and being simultranslated to many different languages at once. If I stood up on the podium and said something like, "The sky is made of green cheese," it would be a lie in every language that anyone was hearing. The truth value isn't affected by translation.
But if I were to say, "I am speaking German," the sentence would be true in the German translation, even though it is a lie in every other language. (If you want to be really nitpicky about who the "I" is, then "This is a sentence in German.")
* * *
Completely off-topic, for Alfred or anyone else making a mental copy of me. I've been reading a book from one of my favorite holiday escape-fiction series, Johnathan Kellerman's "Alex Delaware" mysteries, when I encountered the following short passage--a dialogue between Alex and his long-time paramour. The male character could be me speaking to my wife, and this bit of dialogue does more to explain me than any of the long posts I've made here over the years.
"Want to try driving tomorrow?"
"Maybe." she closed her eyes.
"I'd like everything to go smoothly for you," I said.
"Don't worry. I'll have a great time."
"How's your [injured] wrist?"
She laughed. "Much better. And I pledge to go to bed on time and drink my milk."
"I know. I know."
"It's ok, honey. You like to take care of me."
"It's not just that. For some reason, after all these years, I still feel I need to court you."
"I know that too," she said softly and slipped her hand under my shirt.
LH that's lovely.
---
At NIAC we’ve been funding some VERY early-stage and amazing new fission-based propulsion concepts. The numbers are… encouraging.
------
“Loc is similar to many Christians: well-meaning…”
Seriously? His made-up strawmen have one purpose. Like Clarence Thomas, ONLY spite motivates those responses. He hopes to poke a soft spot. Alas, those are on in 3D land + time. Hence inaccessible to him.
Alan Brooks:
When Russia invaded Ukraine, I thought it was The Beginning Of The End; same with Oct 7th.
I have no idea how old you are, but my impression from your writing skews "young". Same with mcsandberg, btw, though for different reasons.
I also went through many world crises which signaled "end times". But go through enough of those and you start to realize that each new one isn't all that different from the previous dozen or so. Somehow, the world keeps on keeping on. Somehow, the dollar never quite inflates to obsolescence. Somehow, nuclear destruction keeps not happening. Somehow, Jesus doesn't return with a host of angels.
In Fred Saberhagen's series of Dracula books, written from the count's POV, Dracula claims to have had his entire life's quantity of fear exhausted by the time he was a twelve-year-old prisoner of the Turks. Even as a breathing human, he simply had no capacity for fear left after that. Sometimes, I feel the same way. Trepidation, or a sense that things are on the wrong track? Sure. But not fear. Not like I had in my cowardly teens and twenties.
My wife's family had a cat like that. For 10 years or so, he ran in terror from everyone. Then one day, from out of the blue, he started approaching people and being all friendly. Either he got senile enough that he forgot to be scared, or else he finally realized there was no reason to be afraid of everyone after all.
Mcsandberg's issues stem from the Jargon Problem, as he fails to understand that the political left & right have ceased to share either a common language or a compatible vocabulary.
What is jargon? It is variously defined as both "nonsensical or incoherent language" and "a specialized language of a particular trade, profession or GROUP, especially when viewed as difficult to understand by outsiders".
Dr. Brin's parting words to MCS illustrate this very fact, as exemplified by his use of the term 'ocean acidification', even though he has previously acknowledged that the world's oceans are most definitely NOT becoming 'acid' in any sense of the word, but are merely becoming slightly 'less basic' on the pH scale; hence his recent use of 'ocean deBASEment' terminology.
The same is true with the whole 'global warming' canard, which was quickly renamed 'climate change' when data showed an increasing tendency towards both hot & cold weather EXTREMES (rather than a more uniform warming pattern), at least until just recently when the climate faithful re-embraced the whole 'global warming' inaccuracy with the newfangled hyperbole of GLOBAL BOILING.
The use of language as an In-Group & Out-Group Identifier, this is the whole purpose of jargon whose original legitimate purpose was the rapid exchange of specialized data, but has since degenerated into pseudo-mystical incantations designed to dazzle the marks & rubes who now make up the modern credulous consumer.
All this means that Alan_B's comments about attempting to communicate with one another on one's 'own terms' and/or 'arguing at cross purposes' is absolutely correct, as I mostly agree with the bulk of what Alan_B & Dr. Brin have to say.
That Hunter_B's self-documented immorality represents 'anomaly & anecdote', I don't doubt it, but remember that I'm not the one who set the terms for that particular exchange. Those terms were set by our fine host, who insists to this very day that his In-Group is the morally superior group, even as official fedgov stats confirm the opposite by showing higher across-the-board crime rates in US democrat-dominated urban zones.
And, once you add Dr. Brin's In-Group Bias to his rather tiresome reliance on Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" -- Rule#5: Make the ENEMY live up to its own book of rules & Rule#5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon (from which) there is no defense -- it should come as no surprise that those who belong to the designated Out-Group tend to quickly 'get the message' and exit this forum post-haste.
That I remain, this might elucidate to which group I belong, but there's no hurry there. For now, I derive great satisfaction from inception -- the process, not that incredibly horrible film -- as my words slowly invade your psyches & alter your worldview, as in the case of Dr. Brin's eventual acceptance of 'deBASEment' and Larry_H's recent adoption of the Liar's Paradox as a talking point.
Best
______
Dr. Brin's In-Group Bias & Alinsky tactics still demonstrate proven efficacy, especially against those who are largely unfamiliar with established psychological manipulation techniques, as evidenced by MCS's above apology. Ouch. Which is why MCS should reconsider & stick around some, if only to see how a master wordsmith practices his trade.
MCS seriously? A parting WHINE? Geez I thought you a man with more dignity than that. Know this as you leave, that any sort of man who is willing to gamble the fate of the planet, America and our children on blithe incantations that all the scientists are wrong and there's no danger...
...OUGHT to also be willing to stand up like a man and put up wager stakes on EASILY verifiable and fact-testable assertions.
I am willing to put the Ocean Acidification thing before any nonpartisan panel of scientists and retired senior military officers, of the sort who US conservatives used to admire, but now slag each night on Fox.
I deem this a pity, since I have seen you argue well and this contrarian site welcomes that. But that whine only proves one thing.
You are no man.
---
Locum's moronic screed. "(Brin's) use of the term 'ocean acidification', even though he has previously acknowledged that the world's oceans are most definitely NOT becoming 'acid' in any sense of the word, but are merely becoming slightly 'less basic' on the pH scale; hence his recent use of 'ocean deBASEment' terminology."
... that insipidity is beyond execrable levels of stoopidity. Wager NOW whether the oceans NEED to be somewhat alkaline, in order to support life, and whether the calcium shells of many whole families of sea life can survive reductions of pH... and whether your whinge over the term acidification would get support from any chem instructor, including in some red state community college.
You are a monster, sir. But I am unsurprised.
I AM saddened by MCS. He seemed smart enough to either disprove this core danger to the world or else dis-join the cult assasinating our children's world. Yessir, you do waste our time.
Dr Brin:
MCS seriously? A parting WHINE?
I had "Not really leaving" on my BINGO card.
Re: TEDxUCSD talk (circa 2015?)
Really good but just a wee bit frustrating. You went right up to the curiosity door, but never explicitly kicked it in. My favourite riff of yours is on curiosity. It deserves an entire TED talk.
There's no shame in being wrong. We're all wrong much of the time, myself more than most due to neural damage. However, there is shame in willful ignorance (looking at you, Francis Collins). Especially if that ignorance is used as a wall against answers that might threaten one's world view and assumptions. Utter lack of curiosity is utterly lamentable. It's the fifth horseman.
"A Question. Since before your Sun burned hot in space, and before your race was born, I have awaited ... a Question."
- TOS "City on the Edge of Forever"
In defence of MCS I am very conscious that the main stream media and a LOT of "technical papers" are actually ten or twenty years out of date and with renewable energy moving as fast as it is that is a LONG time
My personal examples are things like papers saying that batteries cost $750/kWh at the same time that Chevy were replacing a 16 kWh battery for $4000
And papers saying that solar panels were $1.50/watt when I was buying panels for my house at $0.40/watt
MCS is quoting papers from 2009 - for most things a 14 year gap is not so much of an issue - for renewables.....
Would have to read statistics on crime rates in Blue metro areas.
But do know that violent criminals are not flaming libs or Alinskyites; they are might-makes-right Rightists. (Or non-political. One told me he had kids and needed to rob.)
Criminals think of themselves as being businessmen. A carjacker thinks he is in business—and he is; he’s in the business of slapping a civilian and taking their vehicle.
One reason I don’t have anything against women is that when one is is a metro area, it isn’t women one has to fear.
Rural areas can be dangerous, as some people simply disappear and no one sees them in the act of ‘disappearing’.
Larry Hart 4:08 pm:
The world is always ending, and always beginning, and always keeping on keeping on. That's what makes it a world.
Paradoctor,
And the graveyards are full of irreplaceable men...
Re: McS, convincing people on the internet to change their opinions is near impossible - even in person, the only way I ever found to even make a little headway was to point out the flaws that underlay a worldview rather than arguing facts...
like - "If it's so important to win the War on Terror, why aren't we raising taxes to do so?"
Or - "If the Year of Jubilee is sanctioned by God, then what have you got against loan forgiveness?" (It seems to surprise many Xtians that unbelievers can, and do, read scripture.)
Pappenheimer
P.S. My wife just informed me that the humpback ritual of 'breaching' - i.e. leaping out of the water and coming back down to make gods-almighty splashes - is probably a mating signal.
"Hey, baby, I make a BIG splash."
P.P.S. In the D&D campaign my DIL is running, a tower scriptorium had to be set on fire due to the presence of a copy of the King in Yellow. Yeah, wasn't down with that. Good adventure, though, well DM'd.
Same age as you, not as smart. Still, I don’t take peace for granted anymore—or anything else.
“We have nothing to fear except fear itself” was a necessary fiction to buck up America’s spirits. And it succeeded; yet within a decade came the largest war ever.
It only takes one End to be The End. If ‘luck’ exists, haven’t we been lucky so far in not having a nuke war since hydrogen bombs were cranked out by the thousands?
Duncan,
Yes, I see that all the time, people using data and arguments that are no longer accurate because significant progress has occurred. IMO this sort of argumentation simply reveals an ideological commitment that is more important than the facts.
Alan Brooks:
“We have nothing to fear except fear itself” was a necessary fiction to buck up America’s spirits. And it succeeded; yet within a decade came the largest war ever.
And in the end, we kicked Hitler's ass, liberated Europe, and gave fascism and anti-Semitism a bad name for two generations. What good would fear have done? Fear is only useful if it prompts you to take action to mitigate the cause of that fear. Fear of things you can't affect or escape serves no useful purpose.
It only takes one End to be The End.
Yes, but that way goes young Woody Allen's character in Annie Hall. He won't do his homework, because "The universe is expanding!" And therefore, "What's the point?"
There are all sorts of philosophical rabbit holes one can fall down to dismiss the process of living and skip right to the end. But that misses the point entirely. Life isn't about where it ends up. It's all about the journey, not the destination.
My late father was obvious in his belief that after a certain period of toil, one should reach a point in life where there are no more problems. Dr. Seuss understood this philosophy in his children's book about Solla Selew (by the banks of the beautiful River Wa-Hoo, where they never have troubles, at least very few). But real life doesn't work that way. And if you live consumed by fear or frustration because of that fact, you do yourself no favors.
I reflect at times on how posterity will judge evil doers. Not via some heavenly realm, but a computational one. It's entirely possible that in the future, every single life ever lived will have a recorded, detailed biography, complete with connections and influences to/from. This will be an easy task for big A.I. and database systems. Current LLMs might even be sufficient.
The days of escaping consequence for one's (in)actions may be coming to an end, if they haven't already. Even death will be no shield against accountability. "What would your children think?" will no longer be an hypothetical, toothless query.
“We have nothing to fear except fear itself” was strictly a statement about the Depression. Fearful people don’t spend and the economy collapses.
>>young Woody Allen's character in Annie Hall. He won't do his homework, because "The universe is expanding!"
Goo bit. But it was in Radio Days
>> It's entirely possible that in the future, every single life ever lived will have a recorded, detailed biography, complete with connections and influences to/from. This will be an easy task for big A.I. and database systems.”
Frank Tipler’s THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY ran with this notion to a spectacular/cosmic degree. If only the universe was as he portrayed in his theory.
Wager NOW whether the oceans NEED to be somewhat alkaline, in order to support life, and whether the calcium shells of many whole families of sea life can survive reductions of pH... and whether your whinge over the term acidification would get support from any chem instructor...
This is a Sucker Bet & Fool's Wager for two reasons, the first being that I and every marine biologist agree that the oceans need to be "somewhat alkaline" in order to support sea life & allow calcium shells to form and the second being that preliminary study results are already available.
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/how-will-changing-ocean-chemistry-affect-shellfish-we-eat
I quote:
The pH scale measures how acidic a substance is, ranging from 0 to 14. The lower the number, the more acidic the substance. pH 7 is neutral, neither acidic or basic. Substances below pH 7 are considered acidic, while substances above pH 7 are considered basic (or alkaline).
Milford scientists measured feeding, growth, and respiration in two groups of oysters, fed and unfed, under three different pH levels: typical Long Island Sound water at 7.8, 7.5, and a low pH treatment of 7.3.
Data from the first experiment are still being analyzed, but the team has already found that shell weight was significantly lower in oysters from the low-pH treatment than those kept at the typical pH of Long Island Sound.
At a decreased (but non-acidic) pH of 7.3, the shell weight of the oysters was "significantly lower", but that's it. A lower shell weight with appropriate oyster growth & survival. Similar studies on the effect of 'ocean acidification' on other shellfish types are currently ongoing under NOAA auspices.
The US Environmental Protection Agency also says the following about Ocean Acidification:
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, average ocean pH was about 8.2. Today, average ocean pH is about 8.1.
On the logarithmic pH scale, that's a mere 0.1 decrease in pH attributable to anthropogenic climate change & fossil fuel use, and this means that oceanic base loss must get at least 10 times worse than it is now even before ocean pH neutrality can occur, indicating that the current 'ocean acidification' claim is pseudo-scientific hogwash.
That's BEFORE we even discuss the chemical dynamics of 'CO2 solubility in Water' as the amount of dissolvable gaseous CO2 shows a precipitous & near logarithmic decrease with either (1) an increase in water temperature or (2) 'acidification' with a decrease in water pH.
Chart#1: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/gases-solubility-water-d_1148.html
Chart#2: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/CO2-dissolved-in-water-in-function-of-pH_fig1_315791900
Best
Blah blah fizzing loony nonsense. I am finally as long as I can) going zero on this loon.
Scidata, Brin:
<<
It's entirely possible that in the future, every single life ever lived will have a recorded, detailed biography, complete with connections and influences to/from. This will be an easy task for big A.I. and database systems.
>>
Surely thou art merry. I've already forgotten most of what I did yesterday. Same for you. Others are even fuzzier about both of us, and as for official records, LOL. What is your opinion of the inventor of the number zero? None, for nobody know who that was. What is your opinion of the second cousin once removed of the inventor of the number zero? Lost to history.
I'm glad that our hold on existence is so tenuous, because that makes officious afterlife vengeance impossible. I reject Christianity's necro-karma fantasies because they would inevitably be pointless and infinitely unjust. Any god wise enough to run such a horror would be wise enough not to do so.
As for being judgemental in a computational realm: that was hilarious, tell me another.
Re: necro-karma
Oh, I'm certainly not advocating it. But I know for a fact that history can be reconstituted in very great detail. Inference is one of the skills that A.I. learned in its infancy. Just take a look at recent renderings of the Tree of Life. Or the ancestry industry.
I suppose lower growth rather than die-off is good news, of a sort.
However, maturity imparts a certain level of ruggedness to an individual. I would be interested to see how lower pH affects the larval stages of molluscs, rather than the 7 monthers used in the 2019 NOAA Fisheries experiment.
Dr Brin:
>>young Woody Allen's character in Annie Hall. He won't do his homework, because "The universe is expanding!"
Goo bit. But it was in Radio Days
Maybe something like that--I'm not sure I ever saw that movie. I do know that the scene I'm thinking of was in Annie Hall, the first Woody Allen movie I ever saw. See the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OZhn6EBLXQ
Found an interesting carbon capture tech that can convert CO2 into solid carbon.
https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/media-releases-and-expert-comments/2022/jan/decarbonisation-tech#:~:text=Carbon%20dioxide%20is%20injected%20into,taking%20just%20a%20split%20se
Another lab is working on turning CO2 into gasoline.
These carbon capture methods might become economical by reusing the reconstituted fossil fuels. Combine the first one with the Allam process, and you just might have an interesting zero emissions fossil fuel tech that can help with the intermittent nature of wind and solar without having to overbuild so much infrastructure for short periods of peak use.
Alright, it’s only that trepidation is fear-Lite, an agitation in anticipating the future.
But then again, trepidation can also be a nervous excitement in anticipating the ‘unfolding’ of events.
At any rate, the discussion here on energy is enjoyable. One consensus appears to be that nuclear power is over-regulated.
A line from Megatrends 2000 reads: “no one will be able to escape their responsibility.”
But the authors didn’t predict when It will be that no-one will be able to escape responsibility.
The When is always a difficulty in predictions.
LH jeepers, really? Radio Days is all about him being that age. The flashback in Annie Hall must've drifted into that memory. Jeez. First time ever... I wuz rong.
JV there's something called entropy. When you mnake CO2 you are at the BOTOM of the energy well. You need ENERGY to remake it into low entropy compounds containing high usable energy. This... is... a... scam.
Unless you use lots of energy and efficient processes like alga farming base d on sunlight and ag effluents.
This might be promising:
https://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=4317
Fuel from "Politics made manifest".
Dr Brin:
Radio Days is all about him being that age.
Woody Allen films of that era were awfully autobiographical, so it's not surprising that the imagery from the same time of his life was similar in different movies.
In the 80s, the satirical British puppet show (whose name I'm blanking on) did a riff on Woody Allen and his then-wife Mia Farrow complaining that he was writing another film about their real life. The Woody Allen puppet responds that it's all he knows to write about. "Life is the only thing that ever happens to me." Later in the show, there's an identical scene in black and white with different actors playing Woody and Mia--obviously the movie that he was writing--repeating the exact same dialogue.
The flashback in Annie Hall...
Yeah, I thought "young Woody Allen character" was clear, but I probably should have mentioned that the scene was a flashback.
LH, are you thinking of "Spitting Image"?
Larry Hart said...
In the 80s, the satirical British puppet show (whose name I'm blanking on)...
Spitting Image?
Yes, Spitting Image it was.
I've been trying to explain why ocean acidification is an unlikely scenario from a biochemical perspective, but I've been doing a piss poor job, as Oceanic pH is not just (1) a simple interaction between gaseous CO2 & the Bicarbonate Buffering System -- even though this appears to be the dominant pathway -- but (2) a complex interaction between solublized metal ions (Na, Mg & Ca being the most common in seawater) which catalyze the transformation of acidic H+ ions into neutrally-charged hydrogen (H2) gas at ambient temperatures.
Magnesium is an effective catalyst for producing hydrogen through thermochemical water splitting. However, the slow reaction between Mg and water prevents this catalyst from being commercially useful.
The last part, (2) the biochemistry of hydrogen catalysis, is an exciting field still in its infancy but it already appears to be our most likely path forward to the development of a cheap, clean & renewable hydrogen fuel technology, especially if one considers the advances that have been made recently with cobalt, chromium & boron-based compounds.
This may even represent the future that Dr. Brin is looking for.
Best
At a glance... utter moronic psuedo science. If I thought he had money and the honore to pay a bet, I'd wager demand any of it.
Alas bah again.
onward
onward.
I note that you mention the U.S.A. civil service test and imply that it is original and led to the first mostly honest government. China had a testing system for entrance into the imperial bureaucracy since the 800-900s A.D. You can argue the nature of the imperial system, but they actively tried to have talented individuals administering government.
Vince Koloski
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