Note: While I did make an effort to not use really old dated Impressions, The Ed Sullivan one was so apt, for the type of Impressions that Katz usually does with his foot – that I just couldn’t pass it by…
Thugs-in-a-can! Now neatly compacted for your convenience. Bunz & Katz human refuse removal service. They do the work so you don’t have to! (Now with NEW FRESH PINE SCENT!)
This just might turn out alright after all. Thugs get canned, officer get’s collar and Bunz keeps cash. But then, it is Quag-world. Don’t count your chickens…
Aw gee, I just love Bunz’s “bashful, innocent schoolgirl” pose in the first panel… but you gotta remember, mere pages ago she was kicking the bejabbers out of a quartet of canned creeps…
It um… Seems that our March Calendar has been posted…
Being March, Winter is our theme – along with those controversial words, “Climate Change” or “Global Warming”… Is this all our own fault or is it just an act of Nature? Either way, we are most definitely “Helping” the process – We’ve been garbaging up our planet since the beginning of the Industrial Age, now ecosystems around the planet are in distress, especially those in the Oceans, which we’ve made into a Cesspool! And remember, if the Oceans die – We Die!
Well, that’ll touch off the Deniers, of course… odd, the way they flare up at any mention of the subject, and carry on and parrot Big Oil “experts,” Faux News “experts” and Internet Conspiracy “experts”… you’d swear they all own big shares of Exxon stock… but no, they’re all just impoverished struggling schmucks like us, breathing the same air and drinking the same water as all the rest of us… so what gives? Is thinking such hard work?
Well we have been being lectured and hectored about global warming for about 30 years now and we have observed a marked and somewhat puzzling absence of predicted calamitous events – snow is still falling, the oceans have not overheated – at least not yet, nor have they risen and drowned certain and various island chains in the Western Pacific (or anywhere else). New York and Miami are keeping their heads well above water. Hurricanes in the gulf are still well within their usual parameters. (Yes, they are.) The polar ice caps seem to be more or less normal with NOAA telling us that the ice cap in Antarctica is thicker than ever. The warming “pause” seems to still be pausing and Canada says that those poor, marooned but lovable, polar bears are doing dandy.
I think, and this is just me mind, that if there was a bit less smug condescension and/or apocalyptic hysteria (depending on the source and the mood of the moment) from GW proponents we might get a little further into the actual merits of the subject. But as long as “belief” in global warming is going to be considered an article of religious faith with “deniers” being treated as heretics and actually having their livelihoods endangered and threatened with physical violence as well having laws proposed that makes disagreement a criminal act…
Well how do you talk to somebody like that?
Aside: It’s fascinating how similar the GW faithful are to the worst extremes of the Christian or Muslim faiths at the height of their power. All of the coercive elements are in full play. It is the only arena of science where you are asked if you “believe in” this or that scientific theory and a negative response in some quarters brings the same mix of alarm and disgusted-loathing that publicly announcing that you were a gay communist would get you back in the ’50’s. The only thing missing are a few really juicy auto-da-fes and some public executions. But the irony seems entirely lost.
Uh… Bill, responding to your comments point by point…
Would take hours!
However, if one follows the BBC (a notoriously hard-nosed and truthful outfit) and NPR (“liberal,” but with a lot of hard-digging and science-based investigators), NASA (who got us to the Moon and back, and continue to explore Mars, despite Conspiracy Theories to the contrary) NOAA, EPA, OHSA (and some other government agencies now on the chopping block for the high crime of doing their jobs), then you gotta get just a dim sorta inkling that things are getting just a bit wonky, and far faster than geological “cycles” would permit. And actually, I haven’t heard of “deniers” being burned, stoned or fired for their beliefs. Under this administration, they actually seem to be promoted to powerful positions. (It helps, of course, if they are also wealthy industrialists).
Yes and it’s obviously nonsense that “man” is having no impact on global climate. There are after all around 7 billion of us kicking around on this dirtball. The numbers alone indicate something MUST be happening. The question, as always, is how much and due to what?
There are extremists on both ends anywhere from the knuckle-draggers who proclaim that only God can change the climate to the straight-faced and sincere proponents (college students) with whom I have spoken who literally told me that the sun has nothing to do with Earth’s climate. I kid you not.
When there is such a huge range of opinion it’s hard to reach a common starting point. Even when we start with something you would think is a baseline for everyone – “pollution is bad” – you find yourself in an argument on what constitutes pollution!
At this point in my life I know that I am not going to lead any earth-changing crusades so I do what I can with what I have. I refuse to use styrofoam cups. I work at a hospital. I use my own ceramic cup (with a certain bunny on the side) and have been for over 10 years. I drive a high mileage car. I absolutely refuse to drink or buy water in plastic bottles. Home filters.
How much carbon in the atmosphere is too much? Not a clue. That’s something I want science to tell me. But who do you trust in this day and age? Money and politics has everything so gummed up it’s ridiculous. I just want Walt Disney, Walt HIMSELF, to do a series of shows on it from NASA and other nationally respected labs and give me the straight dope like he did back in the day before everyone had an agenda.
One of the problems with these type of discussions – that is, If you pay any real attention to the issue, then you should know that geologic processes normally take place over thousands of years – meaning changes within’ a short a time as our own life-spans are doubly alarming! I recall that back in the 60s we were told that the oceans were so vast that no amount of pollution could effect them… Yet, since then we’ve seen the oceans poisoned and turned into a trash dump with masses of plastic garbage, clots of oil and every other sort of refuse imaginable – while no one seems to know how much radioactive crud the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster has, and continues to dump into the north Pacific – but it can’t be good!
Whether you wish to blame Climate Change on “Natural Causes” or Industrial Waste, one thing that should be clear to everyone – Massive pollution and destruction of ecosystems only exacerbates the problem! Even if it isn’t 100% our fault, our garbage and toxic waste is making it worse!! When your house is on fire, you don’t put out the fire by throwing gasoline on the fire – But this is exactly what’s being done! Within’ the past decade we’ve seen the Gulf poisoned by a massive Oil well blowout – The Chump’s reaction is to open up more coastline to offshore drilling while removing safety regulations that could prevent more blowout disasters… (That is, he’s opened up offshore drilling for every state with an ocean coastline except Florida, where he owns resort property) He’s also pulled out of the Paris Agreement – made moves to increase coal production, opened up more public lands to exploitation – the Chump’s is an insane out of control administration!
I looked, but couldn’t find a NOAA survey of the Antarctica ice cap – though I did find a 2015 NASA report, which does indicate that satellite surveys show that the central Antarctic ice mass is thickening somewhat – However Antarctica is simultaneously losing mass in costal glaciers and sea ice at an accelerating rate… At the time, the two processes were approximately equalizing one another – however the accelerating loss of coastal ice also seemed likely to soon tip the scales… As such, just declaring that “The Antarctic ice cap is thickening” (As the Chump did) ignores at least half the data and creates a false impression! Quoting the Chump on any matter of “Fact” is always an iffy proposition… Still, as he tweets out so much garbage, just calculating the odds, he’s liable to stumble across some real fact at some point… Though, like the Thousand Monkeys eventually typing out a Shakespeare play, it may take him a while…
Josh low cost energy is like the life blood of the economy. Trump is geared to making the economy grow. And even his worst critics can see that. But most are not on a high enough thinking level, that they can process that risking a temporary trade war over our exports of steel and aluminum would be a worthy thing to risk. Trump’s analytic mind sees decades of trade imbalance to fix. His critics see jumps and drops in the stock market and give them too much focus.
If you or others see pollution matters that need addressing didn’t I give you a solid place to begin at? [Admit that giving small countries remedies for their pollution contribution (from the big countries wealth) in no way at all addresses even in theory the pollution problem of big countries. Trump saw that right off the bat, and a hundred or so world leaders in Paris (holding hands) didn’t.]
Trump is not a scientist, but he has whole armies of them working for him (if they are not all deep state never-Trumpers) Profit focused as he is, he could theoretically be influenced to change course with energy projects if they are cheaper (cheaper even than semi-risky platforms in arctic waters). And then if cheaper, he wouldn’t object to them also being cleaner. Minus an economic argument of some sort, neither he nor America in general could be expected to show much interest.
Remember the ozone hole back in the late 70s? It was getting bigger and bigger and it was going to be the death of everything on earth because without the ozone layer the sun would fry us. Only the complete ban of CFCs would stop it. We banned CFCs but nobody else did. Turned out the ozone hole was always getting bigger and smaller in cycles. Naturally. This was an example of going off half cocked on a small scale.
In the late 1300s the world began to experience what has become known as the little ice age. It started with a run of cold summers that took place over a period of about 25 years. This period lasted, depending on who you ask and how you measure, until the 19th century. Didn’t take a geologic age to set in. Happened in a geologic blink-of-an-eye. Why? Nobody is sure. Before this we had what is called “The Medieval Warming Period”. Why? Nobody knows for certain.
Now further nasty pollution of any kind we don’t need. But I can remember the late 60’s and early 70’s when the EPA was created. We were being insanely careless with our own industrial wastes – pollution. Since then we (and Western Europe) have cleaned up our act to a degree which is nothing short of astonishing. You can swim in the East River now! That’s amazing. Let’s give ourselves a little credit.
The real problem is the developing world which looks at our lifestyle, or the leadership looks at our wealth, and says screw environment we want some of that. So India, Russia, China – they are doing the exact same environmental crap we did back in the 60’s and that bill will come due. Unfortunately the world will have to pay and not just them. What do WE do about it. No ideas. I simply do not believe that hamstringing our own industry, economy and technology with draconian regulation designed to produce possible, incremental reductions in pollutants or long term projected global temperatures while causing massive damage to our economy are not, in the long run productive.
And as for the oil well blowout poisoning the Gulf – “In the Gulf of Mexico, there are more than 600 natural oil seeps that leak between one and five million barrels of oil per year, equivalent to roughly 80,000 to 200,000 tonnes.”[38] Wiki. Perhaps not the most reliable of sources but as a resident of Louisiana I have known of this phenomenon for decades. Blowouts are still bad because they are dangerous to personnel and put a lot of oil on the surface – which can get all over beaches and fisheries – in a short time.
Forgive some probably grotesque oversimplifications but it’s the best I can do to be pithy, on point, and not write a book in this place that has no space for it.
I believe that your Ozone hole story is just Wrong! A recent NASA study indicates that a significant reduction in chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the upper atmosphere has resulted in the hole’s reduction (Just pretty much the opposite of your assertion)…
Oil Seeps in the Gulf are one thing, while a major oil blowout like the Deepwater Horizon, that goes on for months and months is quite a different matter! However, it was the Corexit oil dispersant (1.84 million US gallons) intended to break up the oil, that actually added to the toxicity of a spill! Containing cancer-causing agents, hazardous toxins and endocrine-disrupting chemicals, the dangers were even greater when poured into the source of a spill, because they were picked up by the current and washed throughout the Gulf.
As for the US reducing our own Pollution – largely, via NAFTA we’ve just exported our industry and its resulting pollution to countries like Mexico, China and Malaysia, where they have far less stringent pollution regulations… This does not actually improve the situation at all!
Well that’s what happens when you rely on memory alone at 11:00 at night, and 40 year old memories at that. The CFC ban is a generally accepted environmental victory. Yay us! So I’m just going to shut up and go away now.
Al Gore is a wonderful person — who I thought would make a perfectly fine president. But he is a politician and not a scientist, so one of his off the chart (literally) movie camera predictions just didn’t take place. It’s sexy to “extrapolate” from known results to unknown results, but risky too.
Less sexy, is that calcium based life (large and small) is having a much harder time in the oceans, as their acidity increases and corresponding pH decreases. Such things as coral reefs provide important food and shelter for marine life. A bleached out reef is not all that spectacular next to Road Island sized ice burgs breaking off of a continent.
As to what might attract Trump’s attention about fossil fuel burning — that’s easy. He will [always] do the right thing for America, if money is to be made or saved — and you can straightforwardly and [boldly] point it out to him. He rather likes people to be bold. But truthful as well doesn’t hurt. None of which applied in implementing the Paris accords. They spread wealth but did virtually NOTHING to lower Green House Gases. And thus were NOT in any fashion bold.
Here is BOLD and [money saving] and simple as a concrete wall — and thus stuff that Trump would be interested in. Form a mass movement, like the High School children after realistic gun laws and to clip the perks of the NRA. They took notice of not getting their usual low cost hotel rooms and seating on jet planes. The lion roared (momentarily) however when the self same airlines asked for help from their political people with the cost they pay for gasoline. Political people (except quite noticeably Trump himself) are “afraid” to offend the NRA. Some even mistakenly ASSUME that God approves of guns on exactly the same level as Bibles. That the second amendment quite literally was Heaven’s idea. Nope. Jesus said if you live by the sword then you will die by the sword. Put in the word “gun” in place of “sword”, like in places in Chicago and that’s closer to Heaven’s thoughts on the matter. Or when you buy guns and ammo are you expecting to just shoot it in the air and make noise. No, rather the thought went through your head that you are potentially going to shoot someone with it. Besides that, isn’t our large, well trained and organized army EXACTLY what the amendment was about? In flintlock days, there was no large standing army. Now there is! Furthermore King George’s people [did] answer American concerns tabulated by Jefferson in the DOI. It just didn’t get delivered. Well for Washington that it didn’t though. For it it had, the Jefferson would have said never mind. And Washington and maybe his entire General Staff with him, might have been hung on the same tree that the all agreed to hang an “innocent” Tory on. They all agreed as to his [not] being guilty any hanging worth offense.
The Trump level BOLD idea is simple and sweet. The US Navy found a way to create gasoline from seawater (extracting CO2 from Baking Soda therein) and so forth. This using electricity at 0.06$/kWh produced from a light-water nuclear reactor for 3 $/gallon. Use zero required gray matter, and simply plug and play a molten salt thorium reactor in place of the light-water reactor:
All hydrocarbons (even coke) might be derived from this method.
And aside from being far, far cheaper — it is also completely carbon neutral.
So who among you would be BOLD enough to tell Trump the idea here expressed?
California had a different name for the MSTR, but names are just names. The point of this reactor is that California studied the thing to death, and finally declared it nothing other than good. The reactor can’t go “China Syndrome” since it is already melted. Little Rocket-man could cause ALL our 100 light-water reactors to melt down — by merely taking down our power grid. You see the need continual cooling with feed-back energy from the grid OR from diesel engine generators. With the whole power grid out, diesel fuel will be hard to obtain — at least within a period of months. 100 fully melted down reactors would spread hundreds of tons of reactor contents per reactor — dwarfing to insignificance what all the earths super weapons could possibly do. Including whatever the Russian or American president might want to up-grade to. Be BOLD and tell then. You don’t dare to have even one nuclear bomb in a missile. Use them to rather make the MSTR in place of the other kind. See if Trump and Putin see the handwriting on the wall. And give the world’s generals a comfort animal — or quite space, to otherwise see them through the shock, that all teaching and learning about super weapons no longer has any merit.
Be BOLD as the children facing off with the NRA. What do you loose otherwise?
A note for completeness if someone bothers to check out California’s study of the molten salt thorium reactor. The study used the assumption of 3 cents/kWh electricity. Other engineers used the assumption of 1 cent/kWh electricity. No one lied in either case. However the 1 cent/kWh electricity was derived from an upgraded of construction materials — such as welding together graphite blocks with Molybdenum solder. These are materials that can handle temperature extremes quite easily. But using them is relatively new — at least over long periods of time. So we will all see how they weather with years of high temperature use.
California solved the problem in another way. There is plenty of information about materials not subjected to extreme temperatures. So they merely studied reactor designs with lower temperatures of operation. Lower operating temperatures translates directly to lower energy conversion and hence higher grid electricity costs (the 3 cents/kWh quoted).
Even California proved the MSTR as completely safe to over heating conditions. If allowed to get too hot, a salt plug at the bottom of the reactor melts and quickly drains the reactor contents into a well designed holding cell (by gravity alone). The operators can walk away from the reactors as the cells require no special provisions to pump water to eliminate heat.
Whatsoever the engineering problems to de-bug of the MSTR system, it has no problems to it that place life on planet earth at risk. As a suggestion: merely periodically drain the reactor, and do a complete rebuild of the graphite and Molybdenum “Trump-like toy block” parts. From experiment the proper scheduling can be worked out. Is that not why God inspired people to become engineers in the first place? Let them do their thing and be happy.
At a low cost, nearly infinite amounts of Thorium can be extracted from the sea. Not only can this be used as fuel. But much like Thor’s hammer itself, this is a super tough material — quite naturally resistant to radiation. Every so often drain out the reactor, when there is some minority of material to get rid of, them merely dissolve it into Thorium torpedoes and drop into the super deep subduction trench in the Pacific ocean.
What about using solar methods to meet our energy needs. The answer is to be found in one of Jerry Brown’s speeches. In the foreground were solar cells collecting energy at about 12 cents/kWh. In the background was a decommissioned nuclear plant that produced electricity at about 6 cents/kWh. The first was operative for only a few hours per day — subject to such things as sun angle during the day (and the cosine of that angle) that the tilt of the earth at that location, and at that season. The other delivered the same power 24/7, with not a cosine to be seen.
But solar at 12 cents/kWh next to MSTR electricity at 1 cent/KWh. No contest in the choice. Not if you are the one paying for it. Furthermore I mentioned not bothering to use your gray mater. If you did so, then thermal decomposition of water with available 1000 C heat might open up an entire new option.
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And so… Someone gets the Last Laugh – I’m not certain who, maybe it’s Katz…
Note: While I did make an effort to not use really old dated Impressions, The Ed Sullivan one was so apt, for the type of Impressions that Katz usually does with his foot – that I just couldn’t pass it by…
Thugs-in-a-can! Now neatly compacted for your convenience. Bunz & Katz human refuse removal service. They do the work so you don’t have to! (Now with NEW FRESH PINE SCENT!)
This just might turn out alright after all. Thugs get canned, officer get’s collar and Bunz keeps cash. But then, it is Quag-world. Don’t count your chickens…
Aw gee, I just love Bunz’s “bashful, innocent schoolgirl” pose in the first panel… but you gotta remember, mere pages ago she was kicking the bejabbers out of a quartet of canned creeps…
1) Critics get what they deserve.
2) Which is larger, the cop’s shoe size or his IQ?
It um… Seems that our March Calendar has been posted…
Being March, Winter is our theme – along with those controversial words, “Climate Change” or “Global Warming”… Is this all our own fault or is it just an act of Nature? Either way, we are most definitely “Helping” the process – We’ve been garbaging up our planet since the beginning of the Industrial Age, now ecosystems around the planet are in distress, especially those in the Oceans, which we’ve made into a Cesspool! And remember, if the Oceans die – We Die!
Well, that’ll touch off the Deniers, of course… odd, the way they flare up at any mention of the subject, and carry on and parrot Big Oil “experts,” Faux News “experts” and Internet Conspiracy “experts”… you’d swear they all own big shares of Exxon stock… but no, they’re all just impoverished struggling schmucks like us, breathing the same air and drinking the same water as all the rest of us… so what gives? Is thinking such hard work?
Well we have been being lectured and hectored about global warming for about 30 years now and we have observed a marked and somewhat puzzling absence of predicted calamitous events – snow is still falling, the oceans have not overheated – at least not yet, nor have they risen and drowned certain and various island chains in the Western Pacific (or anywhere else). New York and Miami are keeping their heads well above water. Hurricanes in the gulf are still well within their usual parameters. (Yes, they are.) The polar ice caps seem to be more or less normal with NOAA telling us that the ice cap in Antarctica is thicker than ever. The warming “pause” seems to still be pausing and Canada says that those poor, marooned but lovable, polar bears are doing dandy.
I think, and this is just me mind, that if there was a bit less smug condescension and/or apocalyptic hysteria (depending on the source and the mood of the moment) from GW proponents we might get a little further into the actual merits of the subject. But as long as “belief” in global warming is going to be considered an article of religious faith with “deniers” being treated as heretics and actually having their livelihoods endangered and threatened with physical violence as well having laws proposed that makes disagreement a criminal act…
Well how do you talk to somebody like that?
Aside: It’s fascinating how similar the GW faithful are to the worst extremes of the Christian or Muslim faiths at the height of their power. All of the coercive elements are in full play. It is the only arena of science where you are asked if you “believe in” this or that scientific theory and a negative response in some quarters brings the same mix of alarm and disgusted-loathing that publicly announcing that you were a gay communist would get you back in the ’50’s. The only thing missing are a few really juicy auto-da-fes and some public executions. But the irony seems entirely lost.
Uh… Bill, responding to your comments point by point…
Would take hours!
However, if one follows the BBC (a notoriously hard-nosed and truthful outfit) and NPR (“liberal,” but with a lot of hard-digging and science-based investigators), NASA (who got us to the Moon and back, and continue to explore Mars, despite Conspiracy Theories to the contrary) NOAA, EPA, OHSA (and some other government agencies now on the chopping block for the high crime of doing their jobs), then you gotta get just a dim sorta inkling that things are getting just a bit wonky, and far faster than geological “cycles” would permit. And actually, I haven’t heard of “deniers” being burned, stoned or fired for their beliefs. Under this administration, they actually seem to be promoted to powerful positions. (It helps, of course, if they are also wealthy industrialists).
Yes and it’s obviously nonsense that “man” is having no impact on global climate. There are after all around 7 billion of us kicking around on this dirtball. The numbers alone indicate something MUST be happening. The question, as always, is how much and due to what?
There are extremists on both ends anywhere from the knuckle-draggers who proclaim that only God can change the climate to the straight-faced and sincere proponents (college students) with whom I have spoken who literally told me that the sun has nothing to do with Earth’s climate. I kid you not.
When there is such a huge range of opinion it’s hard to reach a common starting point. Even when we start with something you would think is a baseline for everyone – “pollution is bad” – you find yourself in an argument on what constitutes pollution!
At this point in my life I know that I am not going to lead any earth-changing crusades so I do what I can with what I have. I refuse to use styrofoam cups. I work at a hospital. I use my own ceramic cup (with a certain bunny on the side) and have been for over 10 years. I drive a high mileage car. I absolutely refuse to drink or buy water in plastic bottles. Home filters.
How much carbon in the atmosphere is too much? Not a clue. That’s something I want science to tell me. But who do you trust in this day and age? Money and politics has everything so gummed up it’s ridiculous. I just want Walt Disney, Walt HIMSELF, to do a series of shows on it from NASA and other nationally respected labs and give me the straight dope like he did back in the day before everyone had an agenda.
One of the problems with these type of discussions – that is, If you pay any real attention to the issue, then you should know that geologic processes normally take place over thousands of years – meaning changes within’ a short a time as our own life-spans are doubly alarming! I recall that back in the 60s we were told that the oceans were so vast that no amount of pollution could effect them… Yet, since then we’ve seen the oceans poisoned and turned into a trash dump with masses of plastic garbage, clots of oil and every other sort of refuse imaginable – while no one seems to know how much radioactive crud the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster has, and continues to dump into the north Pacific – but it can’t be good!
Whether you wish to blame Climate Change on “Natural Causes” or Industrial Waste, one thing that should be clear to everyone – Massive pollution and destruction of ecosystems only exacerbates the problem! Even if it isn’t 100% our fault, our garbage and toxic waste is making it worse!! When your house is on fire, you don’t put out the fire by throwing gasoline on the fire – But this is exactly what’s being done! Within’ the past decade we’ve seen the Gulf poisoned by a massive Oil well blowout – The Chump’s reaction is to open up more coastline to offshore drilling while removing safety regulations that could prevent more blowout disasters… (That is, he’s opened up offshore drilling for every state with an ocean coastline except Florida, where he owns resort property) He’s also pulled out of the Paris Agreement – made moves to increase coal production, opened up more public lands to exploitation – the Chump’s is an insane out of control administration!
I looked, but couldn’t find a NOAA survey of the Antarctica ice cap – though I did find a 2015 NASA report, which does indicate that satellite surveys show that the central Antarctic ice mass is thickening somewhat – However Antarctica is simultaneously losing mass in costal glaciers and sea ice at an accelerating rate… At the time, the two processes were approximately equalizing one another – however the accelerating loss of coastal ice also seemed likely to soon tip the scales… As such, just declaring that “The Antarctic ice cap is thickening” (As the Chump did) ignores at least half the data and creates a false impression! Quoting the Chump on any matter of “Fact” is always an iffy proposition… Still, as he tweets out so much garbage, just calculating the odds, he’s liable to stumble across some real fact at some point… Though, like the Thousand Monkeys eventually typing out a Shakespeare play, it may take him a while…
Josh low cost energy is like the life blood of the economy. Trump is geared to making the economy grow. And even his worst critics can see that. But most are not on a high enough thinking level, that they can process that risking a temporary trade war over our exports of steel and aluminum would be a worthy thing to risk. Trump’s analytic mind sees decades of trade imbalance to fix. His critics see jumps and drops in the stock market and give them too much focus.
If you or others see pollution matters that need addressing didn’t I give you a solid place to begin at? [Admit that giving small countries remedies for their pollution contribution (from the big countries wealth) in no way at all addresses even in theory the pollution problem of big countries. Trump saw that right off the bat, and a hundred or so world leaders in Paris (holding hands) didn’t.]
Trump is not a scientist, but he has whole armies of them working for him (if they are not all deep state never-Trumpers) Profit focused as he is, he could theoretically be influenced to change course with energy projects if they are cheaper (cheaper even than semi-risky platforms in arctic waters). And then if cheaper, he wouldn’t object to them also being cleaner. Minus an economic argument of some sort, neither he nor America in general could be expected to show much interest.
Remember the ozone hole back in the late 70s? It was getting bigger and bigger and it was going to be the death of everything on earth because without the ozone layer the sun would fry us. Only the complete ban of CFCs would stop it. We banned CFCs but nobody else did. Turned out the ozone hole was always getting bigger and smaller in cycles. Naturally. This was an example of going off half cocked on a small scale.
In the late 1300s the world began to experience what has become known as the little ice age. It started with a run of cold summers that took place over a period of about 25 years. This period lasted, depending on who you ask and how you measure, until the 19th century. Didn’t take a geologic age to set in. Happened in a geologic blink-of-an-eye. Why? Nobody is sure. Before this we had what is called “The Medieval Warming Period”. Why? Nobody knows for certain.
Now further nasty pollution of any kind we don’t need. But I can remember the late 60’s and early 70’s when the EPA was created. We were being insanely careless with our own industrial wastes – pollution. Since then we (and Western Europe) have cleaned up our act to a degree which is nothing short of astonishing. You can swim in the East River now! That’s amazing. Let’s give ourselves a little credit.
The real problem is the developing world which looks at our lifestyle, or the leadership looks at our wealth, and says screw environment we want some of that. So India, Russia, China – they are doing the exact same environmental crap we did back in the 60’s and that bill will come due. Unfortunately the world will have to pay and not just them. What do WE do about it. No ideas. I simply do not believe that hamstringing our own industry, economy and technology with draconian regulation designed to produce possible, incremental reductions in pollutants or long term projected global temperatures while causing massive damage to our economy are not, in the long run productive.
And as for the oil well blowout poisoning the Gulf – “In the Gulf of Mexico, there are more than 600 natural oil seeps that leak between one and five million barrels of oil per year, equivalent to roughly 80,000 to 200,000 tonnes.”[38] Wiki. Perhaps not the most reliable of sources but as a resident of Louisiana I have known of this phenomenon for decades. Blowouts are still bad because they are dangerous to personnel and put a lot of oil on the surface – which can get all over beaches and fisheries – in a short time.
Forgive some probably grotesque oversimplifications but it’s the best I can do to be pithy, on point, and not write a book in this place that has no space for it.
I believe that your Ozone hole story is just Wrong! A recent NASA study indicates that a significant reduction in chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the upper atmosphere has resulted in the hole’s reduction (Just pretty much the opposite of your assertion)…
Oil Seeps in the Gulf are one thing, while a major oil blowout like the Deepwater Horizon, that goes on for months and months is quite a different matter! However, it was the Corexit oil dispersant (1.84 million US gallons) intended to break up the oil, that actually added to the toxicity of a spill! Containing cancer-causing agents, hazardous toxins and endocrine-disrupting chemicals, the dangers were even greater when poured into the source of a spill, because they were picked up by the current and washed throughout the Gulf.
As for the US reducing our own Pollution – largely, via NAFTA we’ve just exported our industry and its resulting pollution to countries like Mexico, China and Malaysia, where they have far less stringent pollution regulations… This does not actually improve the situation at all!
Well that’s what happens when you rely on memory alone at 11:00 at night, and 40 year old memories at that. The CFC ban is a generally accepted environmental victory. Yay us! So I’m just going to shut up and go away now.
Al Gore is a wonderful person — who I thought would make a perfectly fine president. But he is a politician and not a scientist, so one of his off the chart (literally) movie camera predictions just didn’t take place. It’s sexy to “extrapolate” from known results to unknown results, but risky too.
Less sexy, is that calcium based life (large and small) is having a much harder time in the oceans, as their acidity increases and corresponding pH decreases. Such things as coral reefs provide important food and shelter for marine life. A bleached out reef is not all that spectacular next to Road Island sized ice burgs breaking off of a continent.
As to what might attract Trump’s attention about fossil fuel burning — that’s easy. He will [always] do the right thing for America, if money is to be made or saved — and you can straightforwardly and [boldly] point it out to him. He rather likes people to be bold. But truthful as well doesn’t hurt. None of which applied in implementing the Paris accords. They spread wealth but did virtually NOTHING to lower Green House Gases. And thus were NOT in any fashion bold.
Here is BOLD and [money saving] and simple as a concrete wall — and thus stuff that Trump would be interested in. Form a mass movement, like the High School children after realistic gun laws and to clip the perks of the NRA. They took notice of not getting their usual low cost hotel rooms and seating on jet planes. The lion roared (momentarily) however when the self same airlines asked for help from their political people with the cost they pay for gasoline. Political people (except quite noticeably Trump himself) are “afraid” to offend the NRA. Some even mistakenly ASSUME that God approves of guns on exactly the same level as Bibles. That the second amendment quite literally was Heaven’s idea. Nope. Jesus said if you live by the sword then you will die by the sword. Put in the word “gun” in place of “sword”, like in places in Chicago and that’s closer to Heaven’s thoughts on the matter. Or when you buy guns and ammo are you expecting to just shoot it in the air and make noise. No, rather the thought went through your head that you are potentially going to shoot someone with it. Besides that, isn’t our large, well trained and organized army EXACTLY what the amendment was about? In flintlock days, there was no large standing army. Now there is! Furthermore King George’s people [did] answer American concerns tabulated by Jefferson in the DOI. It just didn’t get delivered. Well for Washington that it didn’t though. For it it had, the Jefferson would have said never mind. And Washington and maybe his entire General Staff with him, might have been hung on the same tree that the all agreed to hang an “innocent” Tory on. They all agreed as to his [not] being guilty any hanging worth offense.
The Trump level BOLD idea is simple and sweet. The US Navy found a way to create gasoline from seawater (extracting CO2 from Baking Soda therein) and so forth. This using electricity at 0.06$/kWh produced from a light-water nuclear reactor for 3 $/gallon. Use zero required gray matter, and simply plug and play a molten salt thorium reactor in place of the light-water reactor:
(3 $/gallon)*(0.01 $/kWh)/(0.06 $/kWh) = 50 cent/gallon gasoline.
All hydrocarbons (even coke) might be derived from this method.
And aside from being far, far cheaper — it is also completely carbon neutral.
So who among you would be BOLD enough to tell Trump the idea here expressed?
California had a different name for the MSTR, but names are just names. The point of this reactor is that California studied the thing to death, and finally declared it nothing other than good. The reactor can’t go “China Syndrome” since it is already melted. Little Rocket-man could cause ALL our 100 light-water reactors to melt down — by merely taking down our power grid. You see the need continual cooling with feed-back energy from the grid OR from diesel engine generators. With the whole power grid out, diesel fuel will be hard to obtain — at least within a period of months. 100 fully melted down reactors would spread hundreds of tons of reactor contents per reactor — dwarfing to insignificance what all the earths super weapons could possibly do. Including whatever the Russian or American president might want to up-grade to. Be BOLD and tell then. You don’t dare to have even one nuclear bomb in a missile. Use them to rather make the MSTR in place of the other kind. See if Trump and Putin see the handwriting on the wall. And give the world’s generals a comfort animal — or quite space, to otherwise see them through the shock, that all teaching and learning about super weapons no longer has any merit.
Be BOLD as the children facing off with the NRA. What do you loose otherwise?
A note for completeness if someone bothers to check out California’s study of the molten salt thorium reactor. The study used the assumption of 3 cents/kWh electricity. Other engineers used the assumption of 1 cent/kWh electricity. No one lied in either case. However the 1 cent/kWh electricity was derived from an upgraded of construction materials — such as welding together graphite blocks with Molybdenum solder. These are materials that can handle temperature extremes quite easily. But using them is relatively new — at least over long periods of time. So we will all see how they weather with years of high temperature use.
California solved the problem in another way. There is plenty of information about materials not subjected to extreme temperatures. So they merely studied reactor designs with lower temperatures of operation. Lower operating temperatures translates directly to lower energy conversion and hence higher grid electricity costs (the 3 cents/kWh quoted).
Even California proved the MSTR as completely safe to over heating conditions. If allowed to get too hot, a salt plug at the bottom of the reactor melts and quickly drains the reactor contents into a well designed holding cell (by gravity alone). The operators can walk away from the reactors as the cells require no special provisions to pump water to eliminate heat.
Whatsoever the engineering problems to de-bug of the MSTR system, it has no problems to it that place life on planet earth at risk. As a suggestion: merely periodically drain the reactor, and do a complete rebuild of the graphite and Molybdenum “Trump-like toy block” parts. From experiment the proper scheduling can be worked out. Is that not why God inspired people to become engineers in the first place? Let them do their thing and be happy.
At a low cost, nearly infinite amounts of Thorium can be extracted from the sea. Not only can this be used as fuel. But much like Thor’s hammer itself, this is a super tough material — quite naturally resistant to radiation. Every so often drain out the reactor, when there is some minority of material to get rid of, them merely dissolve it into Thorium torpedoes and drop into the super deep subduction trench in the Pacific ocean.
What about using solar methods to meet our energy needs. The answer is to be found in one of Jerry Brown’s speeches. In the foreground were solar cells collecting energy at about 12 cents/kWh. In the background was a decommissioned nuclear plant that produced electricity at about 6 cents/kWh. The first was operative for only a few hours per day — subject to such things as sun angle during the day (and the cosine of that angle) that the tilt of the earth at that location, and at that season. The other delivered the same power 24/7, with not a cosine to be seen.
But solar at 12 cents/kWh next to MSTR electricity at 1 cent/KWh. No contest in the choice. Not if you are the one paying for it. Furthermore I mentioned not bothering to use your gray mater. If you did so, then thermal decomposition of water with available 1000 C heat might open up an entire new option.