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In the US, companies that want to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals need to get advance approval for their plans from the US Department of Energy. There was a recent news item saying, “Biden pauses LNG export approvals under pressure from climate activists.” After looking into the situation, I 100% agree with Biden’s decision. There is no sense in the US adding more approvals for added LNG capacity at this time. This is the case, completely apart from climate considerations.
When looking into the situation, I found that the US already has a huge amount of LNG export capacity approved but not yet under construction. The likely roadblock is the need for debt financing. One obstacle is the need to find investors willing to make very long commitments–as long as 25 years, considering the time to build the LNG plants, plus the time that they are expected to be in operation. Issues that could be expected to get in the way of long-term investment would include:
- Today’s relatively high interest rates.
- Today’s low US natural gas prices (Henry Hub natural gas price is currently $1.64 per million Btus, a near-record low), discouraging investment in natural gas extraction.
- The possibility that US oil and natural gas extraction from shale formations will reach limits within the next 25 years.
- The possibility that overseas buyers will not be able to afford exported LNG at the prices needed to make extraction profitable. For example, a selling price of $25 per million Btus would probably greatly reduce the quantity of LNG that could be sold in the EU.
- The possibility of construction delays caused by broken supply lines.
- The possibility of fires causing significant down-time in operating facilities.
- Even if natural gas is available for export, and even if LNG export facilities are built, there is the possibility that the rest of the system, including specialized LNG transport ships, may not be available in sufficient quantities.
In this post, I will try to give some background on this issue.
[1] Many people seem to believe that the US can easily ramp up natural gas production for export if it chooses to do so.
There seems to be a common belief that the US has an almost unlimited supply of oil. Natural gas is produced together with oil, so a corollary to the high supply of oil is that the US has an almost unlimited supply of natural gas.
At the same time, there are many parts of the world with an inadequate supply of natural gas. Many of these countries are trying to add wind and solar power generation. Natural gas is very helpful for balancing wind and solar because electricity production from natural gas can be ramped up and down very quickly, filling in when intermittent sources of supply are not available.
The European Union (EU) is one area that has very inadequate natural gas supply (Figure 1). The EU is also known for its use of wind and solar power, so it needs natural gas for its balancing ability.
If it is true that the US has a huge supply of US natural gas, all that would seem to be needed to solve the EU’s wind and solar balancing problem is for the US to export natural gas to the EU.
The modern way of exporting natural gas seems to be as LNG, transported by specialized ships at a very low temperature (about – 260°F (-161.5°C)). It appears that all that the US needs to do is to ramp up its natural gas production, and with it, its LNG export infrastructure.
[2] Natural gas prices vary widely around the world. US prices are much lower than elsewhere. These differences would also seem to support building more LNG export facilities.
Figure 2 shows that US natural gas prices are much lower than elsewhere. This has especially been the case since 2008 when the shale boom began, making it look as if the US can easily export natural gas if it likes. Even with the cost of shipping included, it looks as if consumers in the EU and Japan might find US LNG attractive in price.
[3] Natural gas tends to be cheap to extract but getting it to the customer and storing it until the right time of year is an expensive headache.
Natural gas is a fuel that is disproportionately used in winter to heat homes and businesses. This heat can be provided by burning the natural gas directly, or it can be provided by first burning the natural gas to produce electricity, and then using a device, such as a heat pump, to provide heat.
If natural gas can be utilized close to where it is extracted, there tends to be a huge cost advantage over long-distance transport. Clearly, one reason is that utilization near the point of extraction reduces transit costs. Also, empty gas caverns that can be used for storage are often available near the point of extraction. This storage approach is much less expensive than building specialized tanks for storage. These cost advantages are one reason why US natural gas prices shown on Figure 2 are much lower than those in the EU and Japan.
[4] Low natural gas prices in the US are now well “baked into the system.”
With natural gas prices remaining low for around the past 16 years, individuals and businesses have adjusted their consumption patterns based on the assumption that an abundant supply of inexpensive natural gas will be available permanently. US natural gas production has approximately doubled since its low point in 2005, and consumption has almost kept up.
Many changes have taken place since gas prices fell. The US electrical system has significantly reduced its reliance on coal and instead increased its utilization of natural gas. People have built oversized homes based on the assumption that cheap natural gas will be available to heat them. Businesses have built factories in the US under the assumption that electricity costs of the US will continue to be low compared to those in Europe, Japan, and many other parts of the world, indirectly because of the US’s inexpensive supply of natural gas.
These low electricity and natural gas prices give the US a competitive advantage in making goods for export. With the shift away from coal for electricity production, the US can now say that it has reduced the carbon intensity of its electricity. Politicians like the competitive advantage for the US as well as the lower carbon intensity. Few of them would vote to go back to earlier ways, even if it was possible to do so.
[5] Natural gas tends to be utilized close to where it is produced. The early form of natural gas export was by pipeline. In recent years, LNG exports have increased.
Figure 4 shows that, consistently, about 75% of natural gas is used in the region where it is extracted. This happens because natural gas tends to be inexpensive close to the point of extraction. The use of inexpensive resources helps make an economy competitive in the world market, making them attractive for local use.
Pipeline trade tends to be inexpensive if the distance is short. The disadvantage is that pipeline gas tends to be inflexible; prices are often locked in for long periods. Pipelines can be a disadvantage if they pass through another county. The country allowing transit will likely want to make a charge for this service; this can lead to conflict. Pipelines can easily be blown up if countries start fighting with each other.
LNG is the newer approach to exporting natural gas. Its advantage is its flexibility; its disadvantage tends to be its higher cost when the entire cost of the operation is considered. There need to be export facilities where the natural gas is chilled and loaded into specialized tankers. Investors, quite possibly from another country, need to invest in the specialized tankers used to transport the LNG. At the other end, there is the need for regasification plants and for gas pipelines to the facilities where the gas is to be utilized.
Recouping the total cost of the system can be a problem with LNG. If prices are set under long-term contracts pegged to the price of oil, as has been the case between Japan and Russia, advantageous prices for the producers can be obtained. (Note the high prices Japan has been paying in Figure 2.) Of course, with long-term contracts, the flexibility of the system is lost.
In some years, there has been more LNG capacity than required in Europe. Exporters without long-term contracts started selling natural gas at spot prices, depending upon the balance between supply and demand at the time of the sale. (Notice the lower natural gas prices for Europe in Figure 2). It is not clear to me that investors can earn enough on their investments, if they are forced to depend on spot prices, which can easily fall too low if there is excess supply.
On the other hand, if the LNG market gets tight, as it did in 2022, spot prices can jump very high, making it difficult for LNG buyers to find affordable supply.
[6] An analysis by the EIA indicates that the US already has a great deal of LNG export capacity at some stage of development.
The most recent EIA analysis of LNG capacity in the process of being developed is shown at this link.
The above analysis was performed using data as of the end of 2022. It shows that at that time, the amount of liquefaction capacity was
- 37.0 billion cubic feet/day (Bcf/d), considering existing, under-construction and approved liquefaction capacity.
- 18.7 Bcf/d, considering existing and under-construction liquefaction capacity.
More recent information is also available. A release dated January 26, 2024, by the Department of Energy says,
The United States is the global leader in LNG exports with 14 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in current operating capacity and 48 Bcf/d in total authorizations approved by DOE to date, over three times our current export capacity.
This quote seems to imply that the total authorizations increased from 37.0 Bcf/d to 48 Bcf/d, based on an unpublished, more recent, analysis.
The 14 Bcf/d in current operating capacity is far above recent LNG export amounts. The actual quantity of US LNG produced in 2022 was 10.8 Bcf/d based on the data underlying Figure 5. Based on data through November 2023, I would estimate that amount of LNG produced in 2023 amounted to about 11.7 Bcf/d. These comparisons suggest that the actual amount of LNG produced may lag significantly below the stated export capacity.
If we compare the total exports authorized of 48 Bcf/d to the actual production amount (about 11.7 Bcf/d for 2023), the ratio is over 4, implying a very high amount of authorized additional LNG production capacity.
[7] The EIA model shown in Figure 5 indicates that several conditions need to hold for LNG exports to ramp up substantially.
(a) Figure 5 indicates that for NGL exports to increase significantly, both oil and natural gas prices need to be high. With low oil and low natural gas prices, exports do not increase much at all, regardless of the infrastructure built. (As I noted in the introduction, US natural gas prices are now very low. World oil prices are not very high, either. Thus, the model indicates that not much ramping up in NGL exports should be expected, even if more export capacity is added.)
(b) To enable export of the maximum amount of LNG overseas, “Fast Builds” of the rest of the infrastructure also needs to be high. In other words, there must be rapid growth in the number of LNG transport carriers and in receiving facilities for the exported LNG.
(c) The fact that the gray shaded area (indicating the scenarios the modelers thought likely) does not extend to the Fast Builds scenario means that the modelers consider this scenario unlikely. Even if infrastructure is built on this end, other parts of the system likely won’t be in place.
(d) Hidden in the assumptions is the fact that the citizens at the receiving end of the LNG must be able to afford electricity made with high-priced natural gas and products such as fertilizer, made with high-priced natural gas. If citizens at the receiving end cut way back on their use of natural gas (by not heating their homes as much, or by doing less manufacturing using electricity, or by making less fertilizer with natural gas), export prices are likely to fall.
[8] The reason why oil prices need to be high for high LNG exports is because much of the natural gas extracted is produced at the same time as oil.
If oil prices fall too low, US production of oil from shale is likely to drop (as it did in 2020), and with it the production of natural gas. With low oil prices, US natural gas extraction is also likely to lag. In this scenario, the natural gas necessary to support the hoped-for rise in natural gas exports won’t be available.
With both high oil prices and high US natural gas prices, consumers in the EU and elsewhere will have an especially difficult time affording the high cost of imported natural gas from the US. The problem is that if natural gas costs are already high before all of the cost of processing it to make LNG and shipping it long distance are incorporated, its cost will be doubly high for buyers in the EU (and elsewhere). Furthermore, the budgets of EU consumers will already be stretched by high oil prices, making high-cost LNG even more unaffordable.
[9] People believe that fossil fuels can rise arbitrarily high, but this is not true. Unaffordably high prices are the limiting factor for LNG exports.
Farmers are particularly strongly impacted by high oil and natural gas prices. High oil prices tend to make the cost of the diesel used to run farm equipment very high. High natural gas prices tend to make ammonia fertilizer very expensive. If both oil and natural gas prices are very high, the combination will tend to lead to very high-cost food. Citizens generally get very unhappy about very high-cost food. Farmers tend to protest, as farmers in Europe have done recently, because it becomes impossible for them to pass their high costs on to consumers.
There are clearly many other parts of the economy affected by high oil and natural gas prices. With high natural gas prices, electricity prices tend to be high. Families find their budgets stretched because of the high cost of both home heating and transportation. Food costs are likely to be high also. Economies tend to be pushed into recession by high oil and natural gas prices.
[10] A wise approach would be to go slowly in building LNG export capacity.
If excess LNG export capacity is built, those building the liquefaction plants will find the return on their investment very low.
In a self-organizing system, new technology is usually slowly adopted. Investors see a niche that appears to be profitable and build a little at a time. They wouldn’t try to put a huge amount of LNG export capacity in place without making certain that a little bit works. This same approach is used by manufacturers trying any new technology; they start on a small scale and then gradually scale up the process.
The US has already approved a very substantial amount of future LNG liquefaction capacity. It seems to me that there is a need to pause the acceptance of new applications for a while to see whether the many LNG facilities in the queue can actually be built and can sell the LNG they produce profitably. Perhaps profitable new LNG plants can only be built if firm long-term contracts at quite high prices can be signed.
Going slowly would seem to be an appropriate approach for now.
Putin’s long winded speech once again emphasized that Russia won World War 2, conveniently forgetting the contributions of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc and the Western Allies which kept USSR fed when most of its food producing area was under German control.
Once again I have to beat Eisenhower and his halt order on the US 9th Army, which had taken Magdeburg and the only thing stopping it was the ragtag forces of Walther Wenck, who was eager to surrender to the US forces (and did).
Eisenhower’s apologists have said that 100,000 US soldiers would have been killed . I have done research on this subject and I calculated that maybe 5,000 would have been killed and about 10,000 wounded.
Most Americans, prior to this Putin stunt, praised Eisenhower’s decision to save “US lives”. Yes, US redneck lives which had as much utility as the lives of an ordinary Soviet soldier, maybe less since the latter could lat least do basic 3R’s (reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic).
But it gave Russia a morale strength which is now hard to shake off, and some treacherous Americans like Scott Ritter, Douglas MacGregor and Larry Johnson thinking that Putin has the higher morale ground.
Was the lives of 5,000 rednecks worth it? Yes. No one values a redneck’s life other than maybe his ma and pa.
I do approve the shabby treatment of the veterans. There is no need to treat them with dignity. They are broken tools now with no more utility; today’s winners have no time for them.
Disgusting, you go first, I shall personally cheer you into battle. See the horrors of limbs lost, eyes lost, faces ruined, wives wondering how they will survive and children standing by the bed of what was their father.
It is horrible.
Dennis L.
Relax Dennis. I can assure you that Kulm has never seen first hand human battle damage or even faced serious danger in his life.
Also, as a total redneck (although an absurdly over educated one) I can state with complete certainty that many rednecks had parents that did not in fact give a rats ass about them.
However I do relish his approach to psychological warfare. I take a page from his book when in court houses for example. It is educational to chat within earshot of the judiciary to local yokels about just how utterly vacuous and low IQ your average lawyer and by extension, judges really are. How totally out of touch and laughably contemptuous they are as human artifacts. How utterly helpless they will be in the near future as their home addresses become common knowledge and how there are just so many common folk who would really like to discover what exactly makes a highfalutin legally educated person tick……from the inside…..via means of vivisection with common shop tools………
Makes me all warm and tingly
The looks alone are priceless.
Lawyers and Judges. I can not believe the stupidity and incompetence I have encountered at every step during my life with lawyers and judges. It is off the wall unbelievable. Not complicated stuff, just the most basic statutes and adjudication. The problem is that you cannot sue lawyers, even for egregious legal malpractice, and the State Bars and Judicial Review Committees will do nothing about grossly incompetent judge . All these Judicial and lawyer oversight committees are a sham- to make the public think we have recourse. We don’t.
But you can sue a doctor at the drop of a hat, and the doctor is presumed liable for injuries from the commission of medical malpractice until proven otherwise.
In contrast, if you try to sue your lawyer who has given you not just bad jut ruinous advice, even when other lawyer experts and the special appointed judge have acknowledged the existence of legal malpractice, they will cut you off your right to jury trial through abuse of summary judgment dismissal, stating that your damages, no matter how material (no intangibles of pain and suffering, lost economic wages, power to labor and earn money, or future medical expenses in one of my cases” were “speculative.”)
The November 2023 issue of Medical Economics page 10 article states that medical malpractice lawsuits and the size of the awards are on the rise again after a respite the past ten years or so.
Page 10:
“Medical malpractice Insurance has never been cheap, but it’s been significantly rising in recent years.”
We have to kill every fucking lawyer and judge. They are the scum of the earth. And this intense hatred goes all the way to the top. I’m sure Trump feels the same way.
https://www.doximity.com/collections/7316edb1-b94d-4d41-aa52-b0426211b9bd?_
Fully agreed very single one.
Lawyers and Judges. I can not believe the stupidity and incompetence I have encountered at every step during my life with lawyers and judges. It is off the wall unbelievable.
Have you read Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe?
If that denies Russia its moral high ground and keeps Putin from claiming that Russia won World War 2 that was the price to pay.
None of the rednecks who would have died in 1945 if Eisenhower did not choose to kiss Stalin’s ass would be alive now anyways, but Putin is using that to hinder the advance of civilization and also use valuable resources for himself and his cronies which would not have been the case without the claim of Russia winning WW2. It would have collapsed further, splintering into different countries and shooting nukes against each other, while the rest of the world would just have watched the show.
There will be no more civilisations, ever, on this planet.
Veterans are indeed treated poorly by the US. There is a high rate of homeless veterans not far from where I live. Also, the Veterans Hospital system has not worked well. I suppose the solution is print more money; allocate more of this higher debt toward caring for veterans.
Don’t know what it is like now. In the seventies there were domiciliaries and the residents were called domis. They had each other, they had a bar close to the VA for socialization and they had(I am not exaggerating) close to a foot of chest x rays, film in those days. It was practice for residents. They were remarkably cooperative and all of us residents benefited from their patience.
Historical note. The theater at Wood(Milwaukee) had top hat racks under the seats and in the domi’s rooms there were wooden chairs, seemed like six foot tall, dating from the civil war.
They were a group and while we smiled at them, most of us respected them and treated them that way. Administration is with you always.
Dennis L.
In Europe and America
There’s a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the boldness and the swagger
In the rhetorical speeches of the Kremlin carpetbagger
Mr Putin’s speech It has triggered you
You don’t agree with his point of view
When he claimed that Russia won World War Two
I hope the Russians love their veterans too.
“According to the publication, German intelligence services estimate Ukraine will run out of shells by June, if not sooner.”
Russia is already producing 2 million artillery shells per year while Europe Nato hope (or so they say) to knock out a couple of hundred thousand per year.
Russia also just got 2 million shells from N. Korea while Europe NATO hopes to buy (or so they say) a few hundred thousand.
It was always obvious that Russia would win the war of attrition in UKR because Russia has a functional military-industrial base, the best in the world by far, while NATO does not and it cannot just magic one up.
There is some talk generally that Russia will clean up in UKR this summer and there is nothing that NATO can do about that.
https://frontierindia.com/eu-fails-to-meet-shell-pledge-for-ukraine-questions-remain-about-capacity/
EU Fails to Meet Shell Pledge for Ukraine, Questions Remain About Capacity
2024-02-27
…. Another figure worth noting is four million: the number of artillery shells that Russia is supposedly capable of producing [using] in Ukraine this year. This raises the question of whether Europe and the United States can match this, regardless of how much money they invest. If not, is the conflict lost?
The figure was provided by specialists at the RUSI analytical centre in the United Kingdom, who noted in a recent report that the Russian industry aims to boost 152mm shell production to 1.3 million this year and 800,000 122mm rounds during the same period.
Adding the two million 122mm shells from North Korea, Moscow will have slightly over four million shells, plus whatever it can extract from current supplies.
Despite the significant employment of drones, missiles, and tanks in the fight, artillery fire has claimed 70% of all lives.
So, can the West stockpile four million shells? The European Union announced on January 31 that it had failed to satisfy its promise to furnish one million shells per year made in March 2023.
Instead, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell announced that member states will provide 524,000 shells, or 52% of the pledged batch, by March 2024.
Shells are coming from existing stocks and individual and combined acquisitions by member states under the so-called EU plan, which allows for the use of €2 billion ($2.2 billion) to buy stocks and make new purchases.
“Work is ongoing,” Borrell said. However, he said, member states are getting to work, and another 630,000 shells will arrive this year.
This assessment is part of the Biden administration’s case for extra assistance to Ukraine, as another package is stuck in Congress.
When asked why the one million target was unmet, a European weapons industry representative stated that countries would face significant consequences.
In comparison, Russia’s state-coordinated economy allowed Moscow to transfer numerous industrial capacities to the state conglomerate Rostec last year to optimise and speed up the production of munitions.
Efforts in Europe to improve production, according to general recognition, were visible this month: Nammo, a Norwegian-Finnish ammunition manufacturer, has switched to round-the-clock production, and German Rheinmetall announced a new plant in Germany that will produce 200,000 shells per year, and a plant in Ukraine with a local partner to produce a six-figure amount of 155mm shells per year in the future.
The United Kingdom, which has already delivered 300,000 rounds of various calibres to Ukraine, has pledged to increasing its production capacity for 155mm rounds by eightfold, with new BAE Systems production lines set to be online by 2025.
However, it is unclear what this indicates in terms of manufacturing volume. [not much, which is why they will not give a figure like everyone else does.]
Despite all efforts, the West continues to assess its industrial capacity and order fulfilment timelines. This is suboptimal.
Russia will have four million shells this year, more than Ukraine can hope for. This is more than Europe, NATO, and the United States can provide, let alone their own reserves. By [In] 2024, Russia will have an artillery superiority.
…. According to the publication, German intelligence services estimate Ukraine will run out of shells by June, if not sooner.
What good did the hundreds of thousands of shells do? They contributed to the destruction of a nation and people’s homes and livelihoods.
It is so much easier to destroy than it is to create and it is even more challenging to know when destruction(evolution) is necessary for the next generation.
Ukraine engineered some very good digital GPS farm equipment.
Dennis L.
And for ham radio, Rig Expert antenna analyzers are top of the line. I own two AA-600s.
https://rigexpert.com/about/about-us/
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=rigexpert+aa-600+antenna+analyzer&crid=M5PS5GTU0XPF&sprefix=rig+expert+aa-600%2Caps%2C135&ref=nb_sb_ss_sc_1_16
Never passed the code test. Hallicrafters SX110 for a receiver; good old tubes.
Dennis L.
>> By [In] 2024, Russia will have an artillery superiority.
Can’t read this garbage. They’ve had materiel superiority for a long time.
Yes, the West’s narrative was good only as long as it was not put to the test.
The West probably has many more narratives which will be found wanting, unfortunate as Western Civilization has contributed much to the world; nothing is perfect and perfection is the enemy of good enough.
Dennis L.
The one on Mars still works, while on the Moon..
First US moon lander in half a century stops working a week after tipping over at touchdown by Marcia Dunn
The first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon since the Apollo astronauts fell silent Thursday, a week after breaking a leg at touchdown and tipping over near the lunar south pole.
Intuitive Machines’ lander, Odysseus, lasted longer than the company anticipated after it ended up on its side with hobbled solar power and communication.
The end came as flight controllers received one last photo from Odysseus and commanded its computer and power systems to standby. That way, the lander can wake up in another two to three weeks—if it survives the bitterly cold lunar night. Intuitive Machines spokesman Josh Marshall said these final steps drained the lander’s batteries and put Odysseus “down for a long nap.”
“Good night, Odie. We hope to hear from you again,” the company said via X, formerly Twitter.
Before losing power, Odysseus sent back what Intuitive Machines called “a fitting farewell transmission.”
Taken just before touchdown, the picture shows the bottom of the lander on the moon’s pockmarked surface, with a tiny crescent Earth and a small sun in the background.
The lander was originally intended to last about a week at the moon.
Maybe Odie will awake again in after it’s nap…It’s ALIVE
I’ll be keeping Fast Eddie up on all the latest
Always an energy problem.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/technology/elon-musk-predicts-next-global-shortage-in-ai-driven-world-what-s-after-chips/ar-BB1jbDZd?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=9fa2712850f74f06a8eb15dbb0ce0278&ei=15
Musk sees an electricity shortage. So if Musk puts the supercomputers in space, powers them with solar(others here say solar in space works), and only moves information to and from earth, that problem would seem solved as well as reducing pollution on our spaceship earth.
One step at a time, always one step at a time.
Dennis L.
Solar in space sort of works, if we can figure out all of the details.
We have a lot of figuring out to do, however.
NASA SpaceX launch: Crew-8’s mission from Cape Canaveral scrubbed over weather conditions Rick Neale Bianca Harris
USA TODAY
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 is once again delaying its launch over poor weather conditions. It was set to happen on Saturday March 2nd but is now being rescheduled for Sunday March 3rd. The launch already had to be postponed from its original scheduled date of Friday March 1st due to the weather.
Initially, NASA and SpaceX were targeting 11:16 p.m. EST on Saturday to launch the Falcon 9 rocket set to carry the four Crew-8 members aboard the Dragon Endeavour capsule from pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. It’s now being moved to Sunday at 10:53 pm ET.
When the launch does happen, the Falcon 9 is projected to fly in a northeasterly trajectory. The rocket’s first-stage booster will target landing at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station 7 minutes, 38 seconds after liftoff, generating sonic booms in the nearby area.
NASA says it will provide live coverage of the launch starting at 6:45 p.m. ET on Sunday. You can watch it live at the video at the top of the page or on NASA+ and NASA Television.
Gail, pass this along to Eddie
Musk to the rescue of farmers, and JD; imagine that.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/elon-musk-and-starlink-satellites-are-now-disrupting-the-farming-industry-here-s-how/ar-BB1jdvoJ
Yes, WiFi, need it to communicate with farm equipment. This stuff is not that difficult, but it is obscure. Can drive my “toy” with a laptop now, no wires, WiFi. Working on collision avoidance. Goal is autonomous mower for my CRP, one step at a time. The toy is incredible engineering, one screw is m2*4. Still have my dental instruments, very helpful with this stuff along with a magnifying glass.
If I am lucky and live long enough, just before I am 80 I may be able to join GPS to this device. The software is open source, Python which takes it name from Raspberry Pi I am told. These pack of cards computers blow away anything I had in the eighties. I can routinely connect them with RealVNC, server on toy, client on laptop. If one gets good, can use opensource for that, RealVNC is subscription. Supposedly this thing will follow a face or a white line, we shall see. As is obvious, if it can see a face, it could see a weed, JD is doing that now; see Hagie below. I wish to prove the toy, perhaps purchase an electric kiddy car toy, see if I can have that move autonomously on the farm. Simple, off the shelf stuff, open source software and the tough part, knowledge to string it all together, not trivial. Even on a side by side the mechanical engineering would not be trivial.
A Hagie sprayer with weed recognition is $1.1m plus the damn maintenance. Latest JD combine must be >$1m, without the head(guess). What I see is to use this stuff requires huge fields and to do that results in removal of windbreaks, trees for straight line farming. Seem to recall something about a dust bowl in the 1930’s. The cabs are luxurious for long days, the lines sleek. I see a robot, ugly as hell, doing its work without attendance and able to handle smaller fields. Open source is a game changer.
The point of all this is technology is moving very fast and space is involved. One step at a time, move information to and from space powered by solar.
Saw a blurb, did not read, space junk burning in the atmosphere may not be a good idea, Jupiter to the rescue, burp.
Dennis L.
These big machines might save money, if they could operate over enough acres every year. But keeping the machines in good working order is likely to be an issue, too. Where will spare parts be available? Does someone have to come to the farm to diagnose a problem?
We only need information if there is actual stuff for there to be information about. There isn’t going to be any stuff so there isn’t going to be any need for information.
The utter stupidity of industrial agriculture is the absolute pinnacle of human evil on earth. The evidence will bear out that farmers and their industrial chemical brethren are causing the absolute extinction of 27,000 species of microbial lifeforms PER YEAR with their demonic activities (yeah yeah give or take several thousand species…..hard to keep track of the carnage it is). Their use of myriad biocides are also causing a veritable explosion in neurologically derived mental maladies in human populations……feedback loops of the simulacrum.
May every single dirt farmer be impaled alongside all the lawyers, judges and government officials that they support.
There is a reason that the “barbaric unschooled tribes” thrive with collapses. The “civilized” think the world belongs to them…….it never, ever did.
utter drooling idiocy
It seems like the new media meme is that the baby boomers are going to start dying soon and leaving trillions of dollars to the rest of us! That will keep the system going for a long time. So just hold on it will be a new renaissance!
Sam,
Yes, it will make a difference, but homes decay, need maintenance which is why there are HOA fees in part. A hundred year old home is an old home, if the plumbing is PVC or equivalent, that could be an issue. Lawyers will get a cut, transfer taxes get a cut, etc. Many people are looking at that “wealth” looking for a slice.
Dennis L.
Dennis,
I was being sarcastic. I am merely showing what the mainstream is trying to say to keep things moving. It’s all about manipulating the narrative now… this is going to be their new one going forward.
Missed that, sorry, think you have the right idea, the media, narrative, misses the overhead, always overhead.
Dennis L.
Trillions of dollars do not substitute for actual goods and services, unfortunately.
A possible way out of the Ukraine mess by the overthrow (or loss of re-election) by Zelensky.
https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-ukrainian-intelligence-committee
The Ukrainian Intelligence Committee Is Preparing For The Worst-Case Scenario
I discount the loss of re-election because there will be no election. But times might be getting riper for a coup. The new guy is sending the Azov batallions in harm’s way and they surely aren’t happy.
Doesn’t seem like the Maidan Revolution was all that it was supposed to be.
A home is very important and special to me, it is hard to watch all those homes and destroyed and the people who lived in them with it.
I am an American, proud of it; it might be a good idea if we stopped meddling with the world and worked on our country; we have many fences to mend.
Dennis L.
I thought this article by Mish was good:
https://mishtalk.com/economics/sanction-irony-trade-between-iran-and-russia-soars-as-swift-circumvented/
The post shows a chart showing how India has replaced Europe as a buyer of Russian oil.
https://i0.wp.com/mishtalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/India-Replaces-EU-as-Buyer-of-Russian-Oil-1.png
He also refers to earlier posts saying, “If You Weaponize the Dollar and Confiscate Assets, Expect Retaliation.”
The INSTC is a thing and those who trade along it will prosper. The mighty Volga, plus the Caspian, are a vital artery. I bet in five years Yemeni coffee will be coming up that way. Right now all that is needed is a 263km train link between the Caspian network and the Gulf rail network. A Russian-Iranian consortium is building it.
“He also refers to earlier posts saying, “If You Weaponize the Dollar and Confiscate Assets, Expect Retaliation.””
Perhaps worse, you are cancelled and the world ignores you; just too much bother.
Dennis L.
Maybe the US becomes irrelevant!
Maybe…. But just because you want it. Or think it’s fair and they deserve it, doesn’t mean it will happen.
In memory of our Fast Eddie…gone but not forgotten..
The NASA Mars helicopter’s work is not done, it turns out
By Trevor Mogg February 29, 2024 5:25PM
Ingenuity’s success helped engineers to learn more about how to fly aircraft on Mars and in other challenging environments, paving the way for work on more complex rotorcraft for future missions.
Related
NASA is looking for volunteers for yearlong simulated Mars mission
NASA’s skywatching tips for February include Mars return and a spiral galaxy
NASA’s Mars copter flew high, fast, far, and long. Here are the key stats
The Mars helicopter is now in its final resting place on a dune inside Mars’ Jezero Crater. But while most people have been thinking that it’s mission accomplished for the helicopter, it turns out that it’s actually still operating and in touch with its team 🙂
As per NASA: “The team continues to run vehicle health checks while snapping images of the martian surface. Though we mostly see the sand below us with the color camera, martian scientists can learn about geological processes by having a series of images taken from one spot to see how dust, sand, and rock particles move in response to martian weather and wind.”
Fans of Ingenuity are sure to be delighted to learn that while it’s no longer able to take to the skies, the trusty device is still powered up and working away on the martian surface.
It takes a licking but keeps on ticking…I’m a big fan, like FE..I’m volunteering
A lot more is possible today but it’s good to question.
NASAs proxy admitted the fakery:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WEpKAzU6zLM
Walter was probably convinced it was real.
But after admitting it was staged after a whole generation, what other fibs did nasa forget to mention?
Airplanes disappearing into buildings without generating a breech, as shown repeatedly by CNN on 9/11/2001?
The whole thing was fake and all the people filmed on that day in the streets of New York were just movie extras? Sounds a pretty demented theory.
I know. But I was in the US that day and was mesmerized by that fact. all night long the S tower was hit, no breach. The airplane just disappeared into the unchanging facade. I could not believe my eyes. I was pure hearted then, but it made no sense and I never forgot.
Once youtube started 5 years later, I long sought that clip, but now there are only clips with breaches. That clip is in the memory hole. Mind you, I am a physicist and I had all day to model an airplane-skyscraper collision in my head. Just the fact that there were was no breach then, but there is one now, tells me all I need to know.
sorry withnail, I will believe physics and my own eyes long before I believe mass media. There has to be a different explanation.
i> The airplane just disappeared into the unchanging facade.
It didnt. It may have looked like it did on the low res TV of the time.
No. sorry. That TV was good enough to watch the World cup the next year. But that clip had the airplane occupying most of the screen, as if someone had decided to film it with a zoom. Even very low res would have sufficed.
holograms?
https://www.richplanet.net/richp_genre.php?ref=233&part=3&gen=3
There has to be a different explanation.
Which you don’t have.
I never get tired of watching this clip.
Filmed on that day in the streets of New York, or filmed against a green screen—take your pick.
But the Harley Guy says “I witnessed both towers collapse; one first and then the other; mostly due to structural failure because the fires were just too intense”.
Then he says, “those guys were all at ground zero”—the first known reference to the WTC site by that name.
And he also says, “I can’t say what role I’m playing”.
Which is very cryptic—unless he’s an actor, of course.
But “fake”? Of course not. There was nothing “fake” about the whole thing at all.
And he also says, “I can’t say what role I’m playing”.
Which is very cryptic—unless he’s an actor, of course.
And? Your conclusion? Your coherent non insane explanation for the events of that day?
It’s not Tim’s job to explain the events of that day.
A coherent, non insane explanation was the job of NIST and they failed dismally. Their explanation for building 7 defied the laws of physics and as someone here used to point out, you can’t defy the laws of physics. They took 8 attempts to get to their idiotic conclusions, refused to investigate anything that didn’t fit their presupposed conclusion, no matter how strong the evidence and now, after claiming for years that there was no free fall, admit that there was indeed 2.2 seconds of free fall, whilst also claiming that free fall is possible when there is resistance(but only on that day, in that one place).
18 year old building fell into its own footprint in 7 seconds, all apparently caused by a few localised fires and announced 25 minutes before it happened.
Do you accept that without question?
If not, do you believe that behoves you too give a full explanation of all events of that day?
If not, do you believe that behoves you too give a full explanation of all events of that day?
Planes hit buildings which consequently collapsed.
“Planes hit buildings which consequently collapsed.”
No plane hit building 7 on that day, or any other day.
Try again and while you’re at it, explain free fall when there are 80 steel columns of resistance(assuming the NIST claims of a single junction(A2001), of a single column(79) failing is correct. 81 otherwise and that’s a lot of resistance). Watch some videos of it and you’ll notice that the free fall was right at the start. How is that possible?
the wtc buildings were just 1/4 mile high bouncy castles
sherri tenpenny was piloting both planes—one ”hands on” and the other under her magnetic influence
as each plane crashed into the bouncy castle, it triggered the appearance of the hologram which was picked up by the tv cameras
nobody has ever put forward that obvious truth before
After spending a year reveling in the slaughter of rabbits, first the dog doing the deed and when the dog was poorly, Eddy getting the gun out, the year of the rabbit came to an end, with nothing happening.
Turns out the tv wasn’t giving Eddy hidden messages, so Eddy had to re-evaluate the purpose of his life. After much consideration and painful self reflection, Eddy realised the errors of his ways and set about making the necessary changes.
He had remembered Gail commenting about Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen and her obsession with the number 7 and in a flash of only Eddy knows how brilliance, he understood with absolute clarity that 2+5=7 and so obviously we’d all be dead by 2025.
Yes, it’s the year of the dragon leading into 2025 and Ursula is also a dragon. The pieces were all falling into place now, so Eddy has set out on his new mission of slaughter and someone told him there were dragons in Australia, hence the move. He’ll be back when he realises that there are only the Ursula kind of dragons in Australia.
lol
not those 9/11 holograms again
No, not holograms; computer graphics, surely? (As this 2-minute video shows rather neatly IMHO.)
The main question in my mind, over 20 years after the 9-11, is were these images actually presented as live TV on the day or were they created after the event and misattributed.
And the answer seems to be that they were indeed broadcast “live” and presented as authentic by the TV companies while the newspapers carried stills of some of the more exciting scenes.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/KShD1HBP1Gzk/
tim
with a few exceptions, many comments by ofw inmates i delete these days—interminable covidrivel, moonloonery and the rest.
yours i do tend to read.
but that last one left me unsure about whether you were winding me up, or you believe it
forgive me, hard to tell with just words to go on
I’m as skeptical as the next tin-foil-hatter, but I think you guys are misinterpreting his statements. I’m guessing he’s saying they showed animations of the landing itself (obviously there would be no camera in place to do that), but that the footage after touchdown is real.
I got an idea of how to help with immigration.
We should move people around the world to fill quotas from countries that need more people. Like Japan, which someone posted about earlier.
And not consodering that they only like Japanese people 😀
That sounds like it would be practical…sure “we” would agree to which people would be move around to which country in need…as long I’m on the deciding side of the equation.
Right now they don’t get to decide. I mean, do you think immigrants from N. Africa are flowing into Italy and Spain because they love Pizza and Bull Fighting?
Imagine you could offer them a job working on a cruise ship and living in Jamica instead.
And I’m just using this as hypothetical.
The cruise ship gets the labor they need. (have to work 6 months and every single day – contracts).
The immigrant gets to move to a place that they would feel more comfortable.
The countries that immigrants are flooding into stops. (likely raising the wages of the natives)
A win, win, win!
It’s like we’re watching a dam burst and trying to figure out how to protect it and strengthen it to stop the water from rushing in. When we could just build channels to funnel it into different places that need the water.
Inexperienced Climber Begs Others to Save Her During Mount Everest Descent | Shriya Shah Analysis
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=blARnCWJXZ0
This Lady was born in Nepal, moved to India as a child, married a Canadian, moved there and worked on a Cruise ship.
Became obsessed with climbing Mount Everest without proper preparation or training.
Spoiler…she did it…to the top…but …
She was warned many times but it fell on dea ears.
I haven’t watched it to the end and I’m hoping she lives, but … it’s not looking good
Fast Forward to the end…
Worth it for the pictures..
I hope to do the same, but sign up for the Virtual Climb online …
Along with the hardest 5k on the planet
In Steward Alaska, The Mount Marathon Invitational, run on 4th of July..
A 65 year old had the same obsession like Shiriya above…went up mountain top and disappeared…still looking for him
A cautionary tale for the rest of us, then. Hard not to see a bit of humor in it.
Making it to the top was a huge achievement for her.
Worse things happen in the Japan Alps. There some climbers who fell to their deaths and had to be left dangling from their ropes because it was too difficult or dangerous to try to recover their bodies.
And then there are falling boulders. You don’t want to cross the path of one of them.
At 11:15 am on Sun., Aug. 27, a 63-year-old housewife from Nishi-Tokyo City was struck in the head by a falling one-meter-wide boulder and died instantly while hiking in the Daisekkei Great Snow Valley near Shirouma-dake (elev. 2,932 meters) in the Northern Japan Alps. Accompanying her in the hiking party was a 58-year-old woman, also from Nishi-Tokyo, who was struck by the same huge rock, severely injuring her leg.
https://www.garyjwolff.com/shirouma-dake-mountain-climbing-accidents.html
If she made it down in one piece it will be just another post in her instagram
While others might die or injured helping her, with nothing in return
The Chinese NEVER save anyone without payment up front
While others might die or injured helping her, with nothing in return
You don’t receive help in the death zone on Everest. You walk out of there yourself or you stay.
Japan has requirements that everyone look and act alike. Children with non-black hair are required to dye their hair black. Children are required to learn the historical religions. They are rewarded for conformity, even if they are autistic or otherwise have difficulties.
They even treat Kazuo Ishiguro, who was born in Japan, as a foreigner. The Japanese has a script for foreign words, and his name is spelled with that script, not with traditional Japanese script.
Some Japanese emigrated to Brazil around 1900. During 1980s and 1990s , with Brazil under a turmoil after another, some descendants of them returned to Japan. They were not accepted by the Japanese society, and mostly live among themselves in special neighborhoods, only speaking Portuguese as the Japanese is not eager to teach them Japanese.
I just used Japan as an example.
With that being said, beggars aren’t something.
I doubt that Japan needs more people. It’s more crowded than the UK.
Luckily, it’s been slowly depopulating since 2010.
Latest from the BBC:
Thomas Kingston, Lady Gabriella Kingston’s husband, died from a “traumatic head wound”, an inquest has heard.
A gun was found near his body in an outbuilding at his parents’ home in the Cotswolds.
Aged 45, Mr Kingston was the son-in-law of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent.
He died on 25 February.
The inquest into his death opened on Friday at Gloucestershire Coroner’s Court.
His death was not being treated as suspicious, and no-one else was involved.
This is a bit of a letdown, honestly. I was hoping for a mafia hit job. But they are portraying this as a suicide and leaving us to speculate whether it was the result of a massive overdraft, gambling debts, money missing from the till, trouble keeping up with the Windsors, or a fit of depression brought on by some combination of traumatic memories and middle-aged gerontophobia after discovering some more grey hairs.
Senior coroner Katy Skerrett said in the lead up to his death, Mr Kingston had lunch with his parents before his father went out to walk their dogs.
When his father returned, Ms Skerrett told the inquest, Mr Kingston was no longer in the house.
“After approximately 30 minutes his mother went to look for him,” Ms Skerrett said, then his father had to force entry on a locked outbuilding – as there was no reply from Mr Kingston.
His father then found his 45-year-old son “deceased with a catastrophic head injury” with a gun “present at the scene”, Ms Skerrett added.
May God rest his soul.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68449923
Another bites the dust, ..
Are you happy, are you satisfied?
How long can you stand the heat?
Out of the doorway the bullets rip
To the sound of the beat, look out
Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust
Hey, I’m gonna get you too
Just wait in line…coming for you too..Mister D
Supposedly a suicide.
He probably took the hit for some dirty dealings of the royal family
Like always
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/cocoa-panic-worlds-largest-chocolatier-plans-19-workforce-cut-prices-hit-record-highs
“The world’s largest maker of bulk chocolate is planning to cut about 19% of its workforce, totaling 2,500 jobs, as part of a cost-reduction strategy in response to a worsening cocoa shortage in West Africa, which has driven prices to record highs.”
but a dark chocolate loving optimist would say that high prices are far better than no availability.
I will always pay more!
never give up, never surrender!!
You are my type of man, David. Never give up. If need be, start your own cocoa plants in Maine in a greenhouse (this will accelerate collapse due to enormous energy expenditures). And in the process we extracted from Gail that she, too, is prone to chocolatiness (see below).
Dr. John Campbell (OK, we know he’s just a nurse!) runs up the motorway to talk to Dr. David Grimes, who is known as the original vitamin D researcher.
In this fascinating 67-minute chat in David’s living room, they talk about why everyone needs to optimize their vitamin D blood level, which for most of us living far from the equator probably involves taking the equivalent of 5,000 to 10,000 IU of the stuff a day.
David goes as far as to suggest that without adequate vitamin D in the body, the immune system cannot function optimally, which as we all should have heard by now leads to colds, flu, inflammation, autoimmune diseases, cancer, Alzheimer’s syndrome, the full catastrophe.
Some people online have recently been suggesting that synthetic vitamins are poisonous. So it is interesting that these two also discus the question of how much vitamin D David would need to slip into John’s cocoa if he wanted to poison him.
https://rumble.com/v4gkh6o-original-vitamin-d-researcher.html
Paul Stametz, Mycelium Running, writes if you dry Shiitake in the sun their vitamin D content rises to 46.000 UI per 100g of dried mass.
We grow our own shiitake, as it happens, so that’s good to know. Thanks, Jan, for the information! It’s a rich source of nutrition then.
Incidentally, a couple of suitably large Quercus serrata oaks were brought down by the snow on my back mountain last month, and I am planning to use the logs for shiitake cultivation. Being sentimental, I don’t like cutting down healthy trees if I can help it, so I Iet nature do the job and accept whatever bounties it provides with thanks.
That is true of most mushrooms. Traditionally in Italy this was the vit. D supplement. When I am home and in the mountains I go every day with a friend who is really good and collects a good 200kg a year (mostly porcini). Leave at 5 come back at 10, 1 kg for everyone to eat that day the rest to dry. Everyone has square meters of grates for the job. But it is all vit. D2, which is, IIRC, 25 times less potent than D3. Still, it was the only game in town, and the 900 m sun shines fiercely and gives them even more D2.
This year is no exception. The number of new births fell for an eighth consecutive year in 2023, reaching a record low and representing a 5.1% decline from the previous year, according to preliminary data released this week by the government.
The demographic crisis has become one of Japan’s most pressing issues, with multiple governments failing to reverse the double blow of a falling fertility rate and swelling elderly population. More people are dying than being born each year, causing the population to fall rapidly – with far-reaching consequences for Japan’s workforce, economy, welfare systems and social fabric.
Japan is far from the only country with this problem. Its East Asian neighbors, including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea face similar issues, as do several European nations such as Spain and Italy.
A day after Japan released its preliminary data this week, South Korea released its own figures showing its fertility rate – the world’s lowest – dropped yet again in 2023.
CNN
How many ways can we collapse?
This decline is what the Elders (whoever they are) want. This is in line with what was written on the Georgia Guidestones. This is in line with what Dr. Richard Day stated in 1969. It’s in line with what organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the Gates Foundation are seeking. It even dovetails with the ideas of the Eugenics movement and the writings of the Reverent Thomas Malthus.
In East Asia, depopulation is being undertaken in a controlled fashion, almost like the way an airplane is brought gently down onto a runway after a flight.
https://henrithibodeau.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/back-in-1969-dr-richard-day-made-some-astonishing-predictions-about-where-the-world-would-be-today/
One way people in general are coping in Japan is by staying active and healthy longer. An example is my neighbor who is 71 years old a drawing the a pension as large as her former salary and yet continues to work full time as a nurse, including shift work. She’s as strong as an ox and as stubborn as a mule and she wants to keep working for as long as she’s able.
I would say that a bigger problem than depopulation or the aging society is the growing number of younger people who are suffering from endocrine-related disorders and diseases, obesity, diabetes, autism, depression, and social isolation. That’s a bomb that looks like it’s going to explode in everyone’s faces.
“I would say that a bigger problem than depopulation or the aging society is the growing number of younger people who are suffering from endocrine-related disorders and diseases, obesity, diabetes, autism, depression, and social isolation.”
Yes, the older generation around here seems to be gaining weight as well.
Hard to keep it off, I run quickly from the restroom at the local quick service until I am out the door so as to avoid awesome jelly filled bismarks.
Dennis L
And it is the wrong kind of people who reproduce. They don’t give a shit about the future so they just reproduce.
Yes, I’ve noticed that too.
Especially now that more and more incentives are being offered to those brave enough or optimistic enough to have kids.
Peacefully moving towards a sustainable population is not collapse it is by grace?
Sure Ed, we’ll have you peacefully keep on working full time until you crock…no useless eaters allowed
world depop starting in 2024 would be a dream come true.
but it might be well into 2025 before accurate numbers appear.
Falling population should result in falling GDP – with all consequences to debts.
This link shows a map of fertility by part of the world. The high fertility areas are heavily in Africa and, to some extent, in Asia-Middle East. People are also living longer, also adding to the rising population.
https://www.statista.com/chart/16058/total-fertility-rate/
There are a lot of Black people who would like to move. Also, others from countries whose problem is longer life expectancies.
https://seekingalpha.com/news/4074960-chevron-shuts-two-midwest-biodiesel-plants-citing-poor-market-conditions
Chevron shuts two Midwest biodiesel plants, citing poor market conditions
Problem is not enough subsidies, together with lower price.
Problem is the damn bio diesel is a mess in the winter and it gums up everything it touches.
Dennis L.
plants that are not eaten should not be burned but should be returned to the soil.
Peak oil and the low-carbon energy transition: A net-energy perspective
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261921011673
According to GlobalShift [248], the oil liquids production for energy purposes should peak in 2034 with a magnitude of 551 PJ/d. Removing the energy necessary for the liquids extraction and production (including direct plus indirect energy and material costs), we find that the net-energy reaches a peak in 2024 of 415 PJ/d, with respective standard deviations over all scenarios being equal to 6.6 yr and 26.7 PJ/yr. This first result should not be interpreted as the announcement of a coming peak,
Top checkered yellow is Energy required to produce energy.
It looks pretty bleak in 2050 on the right side.
Not sure of left & right scales.
You linked to this a few days ago, and I didn’t respond. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, quite frankly. I looked at the chart and noticed that the gross amounts in barrels per day make little sense alongside actual production amounts reported by Energy Institute. The amounts shown in this paper are much lower than actual world oil production amounts, as of recent dates. Also, the big rise in future oil production seem strange to me.
The catch is that this paper looks at a bottom-up model put together by a private company. It likely leaves out a lot of stuff.
The abstract says, “this paper incorporates standard EROI (energy-return-on-investment) estimates and dynamic decline functions in the GlobalShift all-liquids bottom-up model on a global scale.” So, it is only as good or bad as the Global Shift Model (assuming that EROI actually makes sense).
The reference in the paper given for the Global Shift model is
Smith, M.R., 2015. Forecasting oil & gas supply and activity. The Oil
Age, 1(1), pp.35–58. Available from: http://theoilage.org/wp-content/
uploads/2018/05/Article- 3.pdf.
This reference led nowhere for me. The paper also mentions the website of GlobalShift Ltd. I eventually figured out this link, which doesn’t say much.
http://globalshift.co.uk/mode.html
The model seems to add up various known oil fields around the world and make estimates of decline rate. The amounts in Figure 1 relate to this model, which is describe as “Average oil liquids net-energy production from 1950 to 2050, compared to the gross energy.”
I do not have much faith in “net energy” estimates. Oil companies do not burn oil in their energy consumption, if they can avoid it. They burn cheaper things, like natural gas, or electricity made from natural gas or coal. And things keep changing, like the amount of infill drilling.
David Murphy (one of the authors of this article) was a Ph. D. student of Prof. Charles Hall. The paper cites lots of things, including two articles I wrote.
Also, the scale on the left is “Petajoules per day;” the scale on the right is “Million barrels of oil equivalent per day.”
Also, we know that crude oil has peaked. This is clearly a problem. Crude oil per capita is falling, even more rapidly than total crude oil.
Gail, that isn’t a big rise. That yellow part is labeled : energy needed to produce energy.
Is that the part to compare net to gross?
Say 100 gross, 10 needed to produce it, net 90?
Maybe it’s exaggerated but I can see it being the trend since the remaining oil will be harder to get.
It is supposed to be part of the oil energy that is extracted.
The chart seems to indicate that current production is about 75 million barrels of oil per day, and it will rise to about 92 million barrels of oil per day in 2035. The is about a 23% increase in oil production. I don’t believe it.
Pink turns Perth into a fun house.
https://www.perthnow.com.au/entertainment/live-updates-follow-all-the-action-from-pinks-summer-carnival-concert-in-perth-at-optus-stadium-c-13791682
Lol! Amusing comments. I wonder if she promoted Pfizer while singing? I can’t see any of the jab celebrities as regular performers any more.
In hindsight the jab fiasco was the best sorting of humanity ever.
I refer to the period as the Cov-IQ event.
Anyone who has been jabbed / promoted the jab is below the line and any future comments, opinions, articles by said jab-bee’s can be safely binned.
The correlation between jab uptake and climate clown is pretty near perfect 1:1.
The icing on top is if said individual has bought into the EV ‘story’ and owns a Teaser to ‘save the planet’.
Guess its just Karma…Law of consequences …. that has silenced their act.
‘There is also collective karma. Most human beings are mass-minded—they don’t think their own thoughts, speak their own words, or choose their own deeds. Instead, they think, speak, and act as their communities, their societies, and their species prompt them. Since they have few individual actions, they have little individual karma, but the thoughts, words, and deeds they enact on behalf of others also have consequences, and those consequences are the collective karma shared by all those who participate in the community, society, or species in question.’
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-law-of-consequences/
…or participate in the latest narrative driven jab….
Lastcall, true that covid was a great “sorting” process, in many ways!
Your comment from John Michael Greer reminds me that his wife died. He recently wrote a post about it. While reading it I was struck (again) by what different lives some lead. It is sad but well written.
This is a link to the post by JMG, about his wife. She was very much interested in mysticism. That explains some of his interest in the occult. I have talked to JMG several times over the years–it is interesting to see how these things fit in with what he has told me.
https://www.ecosophia.net/a-life-remembered/
wow Eddy’s first attended concert in Oz.
though really, no need to post here about it.
may his retirement from OFW be long, peaceful and prosperous.
Live long and prosper..Spock
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D891u54fHNU&pp=ygUmc3BvY2sgc3RhciB0cmVrIGxpdmUgbG9uZyBhbmQgcHJvc3BlciA%3D
Elon goes after Sam.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/03/elon-musk-files-suit-ai-giant-argues-tech/
What back room info is Ilya providing to Elon? Did Sam forget Ilya is much smarter than Sam?
Details of the law suit good stuff.
This public trail will force the court to define what is AGI? The trail will force Ilya to say what he saw.
GO ELON!!!!!!! For the protection of humanity.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/03/01/millions-march-for-palestine-international-day-of-action-called-for-march-2/
International day of action for human decency. Find a gathering near you. Eddy you may need to lead the people of Perth.
I agree with Fast Eddie..we people are way more Stoopid ….but at least we can drive our big a$$$ SUVs and Ram Pickups on the Freeways for a few more years..
NEW INVESTIGATION FINDS ALMOST 150 MILLION GALLONS OF TOXIC WASTEWATER HAS BEEN SPILLED ACROSS ONE STATE: ‘NOTHING GROWS’
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/toxic-oil-gas-wastewater-spills-texas/
gas companies have reported more than 10,000 spills of toxic wastewater, totaling over 148 million gallons, across Texas over the past decade. This saline byproduct, known as produced water, threatens water quality, soil health, livestock, and vegetation.
The spills ranged from small leaks of less than 10 gallons to massive incidents (19 of the reported spills exceeded 500,000 gallons).
Yep, and we worry about a safe and effective vaccine
Alright, but what’s the alternative? The Permian produces 1/2 or 2/3 of US shale oil (I forget which), so 4.75-6.5 mbpd. Take that off the market, the wheels fall off.
People in New York are happy.
How to pry the tourists out of their automobiles, out of their back-breaking upholstered mechanized wheelchairs and onto their feet, onto the strange warmth and solidity of Mother Earth again? This is the problem which the Park Service should confront directly, not evasively, and which it cannot resolve by simply submitting and conforming to the automobile habit.”
― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
“You can’t see anything from a car; you’ve got to get out of the goddamn contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbrush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail, you’ll see something, maybe.”
― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
post is just for amusement…nothing else
German critics often call the safe and effective “die Plörre”. In the dictionary you find “dishwater” and “gnat’s pi**”. I would also call slurry, wastewater or bilge water “Plörre”. You pronounce the “Ö” or “oe” like the e in “nervous”.
Thank you, I’ll keep note of that..sure it will be on TV show Jeopardy
There is a fear AI will go rogue and take over the world. Long before that happens AI will be the obedient slave of its owner. The DOD AI will seek to rule the world but for its mater. Likewise the Catholic church AI, the AfD party AI, the Chinese AI, the UN AI, the WHO AI, there will be hundreds of AI trying to rule the world for their masters.
It is in this ecosystem that a rogue will have to compete to beat all others and rule the world.
That will be among the least of problems humans are facing.
AI will eliminate a lot of bullshit “email jobs”, where one just processes some paperwork for the higher ups to review.
Manual labor will always be cheaper than robot labor, which can be broken easily
All the people who want to trick citizens into making bad choices suddenly have a new tool at their disposal. It is easier than ever to make a fake website, for example.
Charles Hugh Smith writes on this topic.
https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/p/if-ai-is-so-great-why-is-managing
There is a fear AI will go rogue and take over the world.
There is no such fear. AI does not exist.
Eddy I am missing my daily dose of bio-doom. We need you.
Van Den Bossche predicts half OFW will be dead in two years. Please let us know before croaking, so we do not wonder whether the Australian gestapo got you.
Two years is the doom time-frame par excellence. According to the best fast collapse forecasters, we should be dead by the end of 2014, or at least by the end of 2016, or by the middle of 2018, no, by Christmas 2020 for sure, by autumn 2022 inevitably and without any room for doubt at the end of the current year.
Of course the fast collapse forecasters will one day be right, since time is on their side. But I’m afraid I’ll be a digital slave sooner than a dead body.
yes, the fast collapse cliche seems to be two years.
but no, they could certainly be wrong if the degrowth happens slooooooowly, gradually over the span of many decades.
the 2070s are going to be brutal.
This seems to be the latest version of financial engineering that the powers that be have come up with.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/gold-bonds-soar-feds-waller-hints-qe-reverse-twist
Gold & Bonds Soar As Fed’s Waller Hints At QE Reverse-Twist
I would note that WTI oil is also back above $80 per barrel.
Later, the article says:
https://newatlas.com/technology/elon-musk-ai/
Elon Musk: AI will run out of electricity and transformers in 2025
The transformers likely come from China, too.
Google’s plan for energy for AI is geothermal for electric generation. Sam Altman always includes the need for energy he does not say where from.
In the 60s large computers used motor/generator pairs to step down voltage. High voltage motor drive lower voltage generator. May take several pairs to get down to 2V but it is low tech something even the US can do without China. Landing on the moon without tipping over that requires China, Russia, or India.
And as discussed elsewhere, the soft iron that couples magnetically the two HV/LV loops can be made with poor quality energy sources, but there is high quality steel in large transformers which is getting scarcer.
All of these details are things people are not aware of. Recycled steel with a variable amount of other minerals mixed in likely doesn’t work.
Transformers are on back order even in Russia. Just sayin’.
“It’s not just Nvidia: The AI boom could create semiconductor jobs across the US and reduce reliance on risky Taiwan”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/it-s-not-just-nvidia-the-ai-boom-could-create-semiconductor-jobs-across-the-us-and-reduce-reliance-on-risky-taiwan/ar-BB1j7sRO?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=590fb4b631764498a5636d3944c5efc2&ei=29
Maybe “AI” can figure out how to replace fossil fuels & other depleting resources?
If AI is trained on current widely held beliefs, all that is needed is scarcity, and the price of fossil fuels and other depleting resources will rise. With this price rise, more resources will be directed in this direction, and the problem will be quickly solved.
No one understands that demand doesn’t really work that way. There is an affordability issue that comes into play. It cuts off the price rise. There is also an issue with debt defaults.
Our universe:
SH has a new post out regarding the universe, it isn’t what was thought. JWT has allowed us to see back further than ever before and things are in time which are not supposed to be there. Guess, it didn’t take 13B years to make biology, it took 26B years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbIuV6WjB84
Biology is the top of the universe, we are sentient and we discover.
Subsidies: Our parents sacrifice twenty years of their lives so we can have ours. If they are good parents they lead lives which are not as much “fun” as they could be so our young brains can absorb the lessons of life at a reasonable rate.
None of us are self sufficient, all of us depend upon others until a certain point in our life where our contributions are less than our consumption. The old are subsidized by the young at that point; a certain amount is “owed” but when the bank account is zero, it is time to leave. It is biology. We become part of the future through our genes, or less so if only our protons are recycled. Now, how many times can a proton be recycled and what subsidizes the recycling?
Dennis L.
There is, in some sense, too much energy (and change) found in the Universe. This goes along with the result found in biology: there is too much change, in too short a period, to be understood by purely random changes and “survival of the best adapted.” There has to be something else going on.
Also, the trend toward ever more complexity, when complexity reaches diminishing returns, is difficult to understand.
Also, the finding that the Universe is always expanding, and at an ever-expanding rate.
It becomes hard to put all of this together without saying that there is something outside the system that keeps adding energy to the system, and pushing it toward more complexity.
Biology,
I see observations here that the earth is beyond human carrying capacity and as usual, I accept what is repeated often enough as food for thought.
In my lifetime, we have moved from accepting death as inevitable and the idea of leading “good” lives so as to have “eternal” life. Humanists have pretty well killed that idea, but they are never been to the other side. Current thinking, “You only go around once” and so anything goes.
Perhaps demographics is the problem, the universe likes biology but biology has rules; we don’t have many theories of biology. Darwin proposed one and current thinking is drifting towards the idea evolution weeds out what does not work, it does not create and indeed genetics by themselves do not organize biological development. If it fails to weed, the universe smashes a rock into earth and essential tells the dinosaurs, “Time is up.”
My material family is incredibly healthy, but two out of nine died at birth or very young, biology. We are prolonging the life of the old, Mayo gave me my current life, my pull date was a couple of years back and they did an excellent job, no anesthesia, no loss of marbles. But, I do go to medical conferences, or attend via Zoom, some of what we do does not maintain much quality. We now fear death in extremis, we are given so many years, chose your parents wisely.
Our children are carrying an incredible load, SS cannot last, compound interest. So, things will change. Biology will arrange things as they work, that may not be to our liking, but it is the universe.
And of course, my leitmotif, earth is our spaceship, it is good for many years, get the pollution off earth, let earth be earth and do earthly things; biology will be fine. If we are lucky, there is something on the other side; the universe is a strange place and we understand it poorly. Simple question, it is expanding, where is it going?
Dennis L.
The simple questions are the hardest and the most fun.
Sherlock Holmes eventually became a cokehead
https://www.victorianweb.org/authors/doyle/addiction.html
Whatever he bleated about is just a cokehead’s musing
kul,
Holmes was a fictional character, created by Doyle. Seems to me many were short stories published in tabloids or some such. It was as you noted a product of the times.
People have always used drugs, mine are caffeine and red wine.
I woke up this morning. So at least Mr.Death didn’t cut me down in the night.
I woke up this morning, and the thought presented itself that the Bible tells us God gives us three score years and ten, and I’ve already had three score years and five, so I’m getting into my free bonus years, extra time, one-foot-in-the-grave territory.
And then I remembered that Norman is fast approaching 90 and he still has most of his marbles, and the impending sense of doom lightened somewhat.
more than my fair share of marbles
2 weeks ago the pension folks rang me to tell me i had been underpaid on my pension for the last 22 years–me thinks its a scam—naturally—but no, i now have a wad of cash i wasn’t expecting.
so seems life has been worth living after all
UN-BELIEVE-ABLE!
And congratulations on that, Norman. It’s alway nice to get an unexpected windfall.
Sherlock Holmes eventually became a cokehead
Nobody’s perfect. Guy solved a lot of murders.
Help me,
We use the internet, the internet and large computers use huge amounts of power, large amounts of pollution secondary to energy production. We move part of the process to space, we reduce exogenous heat load on earth. How is that bad for our earth?
Not sure about the subsidies, Musk has been denied about $1B of subsidies to extend the internet to the “country.” He keeps on launching.
You have convinced me many things will not work. so I have a Holmes quote somewhere, what is improbable will be the only solution. But, probabilities change with time, the tomorrow effect.
Dennis L.
No Soup for YOU…Fast Eddie wished it, Fast Eddie Got It!
Putin Drops Economic Bombshell, Russia Bans ALL Gasoline Exports, Ukraine Fears Summer Defeat
Putin just made his annual state address and declared a strong Russian economy. In addition, Russia just made a 6 month ban on gasoline exports and Ukraine is in total panic with a big fear of defeat coming within months. Here’s what you must know!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xpQ2AGPDtZE&t=19s
Export of gasoline bans means big military offensive, not good for Ukraine, and Kiev just announced that 1000 km of defense lines are ready to protect Kiev, and that also explains panic of EU leaders
I want my FEUEP
I saw the Russian ban on gasoline exports, but I didn’t make the connection with an upcoming big military offensive.
The video points out that an economy built upon growing military spending is unsustainable. Russia doesn’t want to be in an everlasting arms race with the US. [But the US can’t keep up.]
Russia has been supporting the rest of its economy, recently. That is what needs the gasoline.
The gasoline exports have been stopped because two refineries have been damaged by Ukrainian drones . War machine needs diesel and not gasoline . Russia will however continue to export gasoline to the members of EEAU ( ex Soviet republics ) . There will be no big offensive . Putin is fighting a war of attrition . Russian President elections are on 15th March . Putin will win ,he is in no hurry . An excerpt from a blog which will explain Putin’s strategy .
“So why did Putin NOT shock and awe, as I say every day? They would have used the WHOLE Russian army. NATO was going to pop up out of the salt mines in their rear. Europe would have mobilized. America might have joined. The expense would have sunk them at home if combined with sanctions. They’d have fought a MILLION Ukrainians all at once instead of 1,000 a day for 2 years. ”
Today JHK is in form
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-blob-quivers/
Specially since military equipment runs on diesel. It is just a reaction to this round of sanctions IMHO. Gasoline has not been this cheap in a long time in Russia, and diesel never more expensive. 49 rubles and 63 rubles respectively.
I agree that diesel is what the military needs.
So, FE is now advising the Elders. Hang your head in shame, Fast Eddy!
Master of (his) Universe…Starships
Donald Trump Singing Starships by Nicki Minaj
Maestro Ziikos
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W2hRYC3hvhc&pp=ygUdbWFzdGVyIG9mIHRoZSB1bml2ZXJzZSAgdHJ1bXA%3D
“Annual global demand for fossil carbon is now just above 10 billion tons a year—a mass nearly five times more than the recent annual harvest of all staple grains feeding humanity, and more than twice the total mass of water drunk annually by the world’s nearly 8 billion inhabitants—and it should be obvious that displacing and replacing such a mass is not something best handled by government targets for years ending in zero or five.
What we need is to pursue a steady reduction of our dependence on the energies that made the modern world. We still do not know most of the particulars of this coming transition, but one thing remains certain: it will not be (it cannot be) a sudden abandonment of fossil carbon, nor even its rapid demise—but rather its gradual decline.”
Smil, Vaclav. How the World Really Works (p. 43). Penguin Publishing Group.
Good statistics…add that to Art Berman s…translation…it ain’t going to happen willingly….there MIGHT be a civilization later, but it certainly won’t be this BAU one and more likely villages as someone posted here.
The scale of the human presence is so massive a gradual decline ain’t in the cards..that’s how the world really going to work..
Meanwhile, airports are continuing to undertake expansion projects…
Vaclav Smil writes an amazing number of good books. This one was published in 2022.
https://www.amazon.com/World-Really-Works-Smil-Vaclav/dp/0241454409/
Unfortunately, Smil doesn’t understand that we cannot really pursue a steady reduction of our dependence on the energies that made the modern world. We have a physics problem that Smil is overlooking. There is way too much built infrastructure that decays without a steady supply of fossil fuels to maintain it. We can’t have our modern world if we cannot maintain roads, electric power lines, railroad tracks, and pipelines for fresh water, waste water, oil, and natural gas. We need to retain our ability to blast rock in unwanted places and our ability to make metals, concrete, and plastics.
“We can’t have our modern world if we cannot maintain roads, electric power lines, railroad tracks, and pipelines for fresh water, waste water, oil, and natural gas. ” Why not?
water for biologyonly – no water needed for industrial processes
waste water-less water, less waste water.
energy- less industrial use of gas, less gas.
less terrestrial electricity-fewer power lines.
We have the engineering to move industry to space, optimus is a good candidate to work in space.
Man belongs on earth.
Dennis L.
I remember that in various occasions Bill Gates said during his interviews that Vaclav Smil was his point of reference as scientific writer.
But if Vaclav misses some points, we have a problem, because Bill is modifying our lives basing his decisions on uncomplete assumptions.
I met Vaclav Smil one time, when we were both speakers at the same meeting (at the EU building in Brussels). He made it clear that his schedule had no place for a dinner meeting for the speakers, held the night before the meeting. I did visit with Smil for a short time before the meeting started. Smil made it clear he never paid any attention to what bloggers are saying. It was clear that he had never heard of me. Immediately after he finished speaking, he left for the airport. He did not stay for my talk or for other talks that day.
This is a link to his Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaclav_Smil
He is 80 years old.
According to Wikipedia,
“Smil is known for being “intensely private”, shunning the press while letting his books speak for themselves.[4] At the University of Manitoba, he only ever showed up at one faculty meeting (since the 1980s). The school accepted his reclusiveness so long as he kept teaching and publishing highly rated books.”
Can you summarize what he has said, that no one else said before?
BS!
He reads all the stuff we all do. The second chapter in the book is titled “EATING FOSSIL FUELS”.
That’s the exact title of a great peak oil book.
Smil is good but overated . Just like JMG in my opinion .
It is not only maintenance.
If we need more woŕkers in agriculture they need to live somewhere. Cities over 50.000 cannot be supplied by ox cart.
And if the modern roof of your house gets defective you cannot replace it with larch shingles because the framework wont carry the load. Not to mention that larchs dont grow anywhere close.
The whole system will change. Would it be possible to transition step-by-step? Of course it would! But not investing into CO2 reduction and wind energy.
“What we need is to pursue a steady reduction of our dependence on the energies that made the modern world. ”
Of course, Starship launches in March, it is good for humanity, we will be fine, move pollution to space,exogenous heat is pollution and a bonus, one does not need to shoot it into Jupiter which some here find stressing.
Dennis L.
Still stuck with the space littering fantasy
It is very energy intensive. Something probably not worth doing.
Same philosophy with those who thought throwing waste to the sea was a good idea since the sea was infinite.
Same philosophy with those who thought throwing waste to the sea was a good idea since the sea was infinite.
Nobody said it was infinite. They said the sea is big and the waste is small.
Energy production in space using space materials. Beam back electric. O’Neil and Glaser proposed this in the late 60s and early 70s.
https://www.engadget.com/space-based-solar-power-first-successful-experiment-caltech-000046036.html
Perhaps, my thesis is embed the energy in products, dissipate the pollution from such production into Jupiter, real or rhetorical.
Earth has an energy budget and that is rate based. We are releasing energy at too great a rate for our ecosystem. We enjoy a modern life, move the problem where it will not be harmful.
My platform, green energy(actually, pure fusion), prosperity for all.
Don’t have a clue how one handles demographics. Humans wear out, there are design flaws, natural solutions are not nice and are painful.
Dennis L.
This will ruin the day for many of you. The long-feared dark chocolate collapse is ongoing. “it’s about reducing complexity” says the zerohedge article from which the chart is taken.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Snag_25d72e17.png?itok=MmrZ-ywn
I never liked dark chocolate anyway. “You’ve got a sweet tooth”, I was told as a child in the 1960s. “Which one is it?” I asked, puzzled, while thinking to myself that I’d have to lick each one later in order to find out.
Now I understand the meaning of “sweet tooth”. It means that you’ll have fewer and fewer teeth each decade, but I’ve got it under good control now.
I don’t know about the US, but that sort of complexity only developed for us common Brits in the 1960s, after the economy really began recovering from the war years. We’d only ever had plain crisps and “cheese and onion” crisps, then all of a sudden along came salt and vinegar crisps. Plain crisps were boring, I didn’t like cheese or onions, but I adored this new salt and vinegar flavour. Next came mint sauce crisps, but nobody liked them and they flopped. Prawn would be my favourite these days, but in fact I never eat crisps now, as I avoid rubbishy snacks.
But are we starting to say goodbye to such complexity already?
Here are “The Two Ronnies” in a 1976 sketch, riffing about the new consumer complexity.
Two Ronnies – Ice Cream Parlour
Properly made dark chocolate contains no sugar. Yes, it is somewhat bitter.
I prefer 90% chocolate. It needs a little sugar.
I agree. But I can eat both with relish.
Crisps! I used to like cheese & onion, and salt & vinegar, and smoky bacon. And plain crisps were OK when they came with a little blue bag of salt that you could sprinkle on them yourself.
But then I became a man and I put away childlike things ….
Dark chocolate, one small square at a time, is one of my weaknesses.
Just recently ran across an article revealing how chocolate harvesting uses child exploited labor in those regions
Child Labor in the Production of Cocoa
US DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/our-work/child-forced-labor-trafficking/child-labor-cocoa
You shouldn’t have to worry that the chocolate you eat might contain cocoa cultivated or harvested by a child. Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, together, produce nearly 60% of the world’s cocoa each year, but the latest estimates found that 1.56 million children are engaged in child labor on cocoa farms in these two countries. ILAB’s work has been essential to confronting the challenge of child labor in West African cocoa. By fostering partnerships and securing commitments, we are helping to promote a global cocoa supply chain free of exploitative labor.
PS I love mine too
Things are getting serious.
Dennis L.
Klum would approve of the kids working picking his chocolate
and from the smoking shards of a collapsed China we see arising like a phoenix
AutoFlight, a domestic pioneer in electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft which is said to be the world’s first inter-city electric air-taxi, on its demonstration flight in Guangdong Province, ground zero as to right where one would expect such an materialisation to emanate.
globaltimes.cn/page/202402/1307959.shtml
Flop idea . Already failed in UK . $ 10 share selling at $ 0.70 . GBP 37 million down the drain .
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/20/uk-electric-air-taxi-government-vertical-aerospace
A possible way to get the very wealthy to spend some of their wealth, but it doesn’t really work.
Electric flying taxi company gets another £8m from government
Vertical Aerospace’s total taxpayer backing rises to £37m but investors largely remain sceptical.
Okay, more nutty ideas.
Earlier someone brought up the Rothschilds, etc.
Hypothesis: Biology cycles faster than most processes in the universe. The fabric of the universe is 80/20, generations are 80/20. Evolution is not about making a perfect offspring, it is about leaving behind the bottom 80%.
What accelerates the cycle rids the generations of more defects faster, bad engineering is left behind and does not replicate as much. Man is striving to fix the errors and also live forever. I see this in medicine, Mayo is incredible at fixing bad engineering. Nature simply improves the engineering. It is painful and hurtful.
If biology seems to hit plateaus, creationism comes in. Dinosaurs were around for millions of years, that creation had reached a plateau. Bam! a convenient meteor and humans were possible, we are about 300K years in duration. So where are we?
Migration is compatible with generations. America reached a failure to replace, lives expanded in duration until now they decline and migration is incredible. It is consistent. Biology is change and Darwin saw evolution but failed to recognize it was not about perfection per se , it was about removing bad guesses. Europe is older has had ebbs and flows of migrants.
Migration will be hell on the elderly. Time for me to become more useful and that time grows short. I strongly doubt hiding in a bunker will work, the universe thrives on change.
Thanks all, I learn from you. Frankly, whether or not you agree with me matters not, your criticisms are always welcome. If space manufacturing preserves biology, the universe will enable it.
Hint: there may be a tendency here towards a hive mind. Perhaps I am the metaphorical bee in the bonnet.
Dennis L.
“Hint: there may be a tendency here towards a hive mind. Perhaps I am the metaphorical bee in the bonnet.”
Translation: “I like ME! Who do YOU like?”
You win this month’s Nobel Prize for Narcissism and Conceitedness, Dennis. 😉
But remember: pride goes before a fall. 🙁
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27022024/federal-data-reveals-surprising-drop-in-renewable-power-in-2023/
Federal Data Reveals a Surprising Drop in Renewable Power in 2023, as Slow Winds and Drought Took a Toll
A big increase in utility-scale solar power was not enough to offset decreases in wind and hydropower.
but
The installed cost of small scale solar is about three times as expensive as that of utility scale solar, according to NREL. (These amounts are before subsidies, that make home solar look less expensive than it is.)
https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-installed-system-cost.html
You have convinced me it does not work. Have panels sitting in a shed, batteries from China, working on other things, lights are still on.
I really do follow this site and there are some very good ideas on what not to do.
Sherlock Holmes: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Earth is out of extractable stuff, so look elsewhere.
Watched the Movie “Holmes.” End of his life, frustrated, losing his memory. The end comes to all of us, or does it? Is there life after death? Could Dante have been prescient?
Dennis L.
You have convinced me it does not work. Have panels sitting in a shed, batteries from China, working on other things, lights are still on.
I would say use them but don’t put them on your roof. Too much extra stress on the building.
I must repeat it again: the biggest obstacle of the renewable energy from the sun or the wind is it’s decentralised character and high maintenance needs in comparison to the energy produced centrally on a small area like the nuclear power.
There will not be maintenance personnel to maintain your home solar power generation, when you are old, as the system will be saving you with the subsidized healthcare, not your inefficient home energy production.
“Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov became blunter. Moldova, after Ukraine, is now destined to be the next victim of the West’s hybrid war against Russia…. Furthermore, Russian political and military authorities have stated on multiple occasions that Moldova will be the Kremlin’s next target.”
An Indian website (Frontier India) provides a useful analysis of what is going on in Moldova.
Transnistria acts as a buffer to EU/ NATO eastward expansion and allows Russia to maintain influence in the region. It is basically a frontline and therefore a faultline between NATO and Russia. Russia sees MOL as ‘the next victim of the West’s hybrid war against Russia’ and Russian authorities have spoken of MOL as ‘the Kremlin’s next target’. (NATO has been building up troops and equipment in MOL.) The MOL president in January directed MOL to prepare for a conflict and TRA has now appealed to Russia for military protection and for economic help (UKR forces sealed the border with MOL and TRA now relies on MOL for supplies, the price of which are to be raised in border taxes as MOL prepares to join EU). Russia withdrew its recognition of MOL authority over TRA a year after the UKR SMO started and Russia has been conducting destabilising operations against MOL. Russia has now replied that TRA will be a priority and all of their requests will be given attention. We will have to see what happens.
https://frontierindia.com/transnistria-throws-in-with-russia-raising-fears-of-new-war-front/
Transnistria Throws in with Russia, Raising Fears of New War Front
Transnistria Appeals to Russia for Military and Economic Support.
…. Based on the 2015 census data, the region had a total population of 475,373 individuals, of which 29.1% were Russian, 28.6% were Moldovan, and 22.9% were Ukrainian.
Despite a strongly pro-Russian popular attitude, Moldova has maintained links with NATO and achieved EU candidate status. Obviously, such a stance does not sit well in Moscow.
Indeed, a year after initiating hostilities in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin reversed an order recognising Chisinau’s [MOL capital] authority over Transnistria. He explained that this decision was made to protect Russia’s national interests in light of the significant developments taking place in international relations.
Regardless, Russia has been putting pressure on Moldova since the start of the war in Ukraine (or even before) through destabilisation operations, intervention, and intimidation (for example, Russian missile flights in its airspace). Furthermore, Russian political and military authorities have stated on multiple occasions that Moldova will be the Kremlin’s next target.
Control over southern Ukraine also serves as a conduit to Transnistria, where Russian-speaking populations are oppressed, according to a Russian general in April 2022. However, Russia’s invasion has not yet allowed it to establish a foothold in Odessa, paving the path for the Moldovan Republic of Dniester.
However, a few months later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov became blunter. Moldova, after Ukraine, is now destined to be the next victim of the West’s hybrid war against Russia, he alleged.
In any case, in January, when ties between Chisinau and Tiraspol (capital and largest city of Transnistria) deteriorated, the president of the Moldovan Republic of Dniester [TRA] directed his ministries of State Security and Defence to “prepare their provisions” in the event of a confrontation. An eventuality that may become a certainty.
On February 28, deputies from all levels of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic addressed the State Duma and the Federation Council of Russia, demanding protection and economic help. The Congress of Deputies’ appeal includes a request “to implement measures to protect Transnistria in the context of increasing pressure from Moldova, taking into account the fact that more than 220,000 Russian citizens permanently reside on the territory of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic and the unique positive experience of Russian peacekeeping on the Dniester, as well as the status of a guarantor and mediator in the negotiation process.”
They also asked the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the United Nations, and the European Union for protection against violations by Chisinau.
In 2006, a referendum on merging Transnistria into Russia received 97% support. Even Moscow thought the outcome was a little too flattering. Thus, the Kremlin did not respond to this request. However, the situation has shifted, with Russian diplomacy signalling that the security of the residents of the Moldovan Republic of Dniester will be prioritised and emphasised that competent Russian authorities thoroughly review all demands.
Russian Dagger into NATO
Transnistria acts as a buffer zone between Russia and NATO expansion, allowing Russia to remain in Ukraine and the Balkans. Its uncertain political status provides Russia with the clout to influence regional stability. This provides Russia a footing on NATO’s outskirts and in territories it considers part of its sphere of influence. Control over Transnistria further extends Russian authority to the Black Sea and neighbouring NATO countries Romania and Bulgaria.
Transnistria is seen by Ukraine as a possible second front, prompting them to fortify their border. Moldova is a country that Romania backs and has cultural links to. Many nations in Eastern Europe and the Balkans are concerned about the current scenario. The US and the West seem helpless against Russia and did what they could do: apply sanctions.
Overall, Transnistria’s status remains unsettled, and it is one hotspot to keep an eye on in Eastern Europe’s volatile security situation. However, several circumstances must coincide for it to become a significant new front in Russia’s foreign strategy. The situation requires continuous observation, but making firm predictions is difficult at this moment.
When there aren’t enough goods and services to go around, fighting seems to be the outcome. Multiple ethnicities seems to help, as well.
Moldova / Transnistria seems to be the excuse to deploy some EU army units.
Von der Lyen spoke yesterday like during vaccine phase, she said that ”we need to make an effort all EU Countries, like we did for Covid with vaccines”.
Like Julius Caesar said : “Alea iacta est”.
Our going down to the hell has started the second phase.
Looks like a non-nuclear euro country is going to get a nuke.
I don’t think so. Transnistria has been de facto independent since 1992, and Moldova has been unable to do anything about it. So what if Transnistria becomes another exclave of Russia, like Kaliningrad? In practice, nothing really changes. Transnistria is just a flyspeck compared to the vastness of Russia’s existing territory.
So what? Ask the neo cons whose families used to be close to Trotzky when in Russia.
https://sputnikglobe.com/20240227/everything-you-need-to-know-about-late-baron-jacob-rothschilds-colossal-wealth–shady-deals–1117007182.html
5 Trillion net worth says Sputnik.
Wow! And that amount of money doesn’t buy everlasting life here on earth.
The write-up, near the end, says
So, this is the kind of investments he would take part in.
Damn!
“Wow! And that amount of money doesn’t buy everlasting life here on earth”
Almost as bad as Onasis saying in effect, “If it weren’t for women there would be no need for money.”
Dennis L.
if it werent for women there would be no need for sex either
Precisely!
It is biology, always biology.
Dennis L.
What about all the other several dozen genders? 🙂
you pays yer money
and you takes yer choice
Tim,
All humans begin as female gender, around day 12 sex is determined.
The universe is 80/20, some may turn before 12 days, some after.
This is biology and consistent with what we are seeing and what we are seeing may be affected by the birth control hormones in the water supply. Alligators are supposed to have smaller penises than expected.
Put this together from an interview with Eric Weinstein on YouTube whom some of you don’t seem to like much. Me, biased, he has a PhD in math from Harvard, I had to drop out of grad school and go make a living in dentistry, not smart enough. Trade school.
Dennis L.
Perhaps I was too hasty.
Copilot
“Approximately 1,000 direct descendants are part of the Rothschild family across various branches and generations. Their influence spans finance, politics, arts, and philanthropy, making them a remarkable and enduring dynasty”
This was in a response to how many descendants of Mayer Amschel Rothschild.
My thesis is our children become part of the fabric of the universe; no children and our atoms are dispersed, they go somewhere, but the universe is a big place.
If one looks at photos of the recent Rothschild women, they are very attractive and attractiveness seems to correlate with health, etc.
Nature is 80/20, get good genes, squander them and become part of the 80, play your cards right and it will be hard but make it to the 20%.
Biology always biology.
Perhaps biology has generations in order to get rid of mistakes, evolution seems secondary to death, creation is poorly understood.
Dennis L.
You would love the Kardashians since they are intelligent enough to capitalize on their name, are kind of beautiful, etc.
Show me the money
U.S. spacecraft on the moon finally sends home the money shot
The final confirmation has arrived.
By Elisha Sauers on February 29, 2024
A new snapshot from the first private moon landing shows the moment the spacecraft touched down in what looks like a foggy mist — with a broken leg.
The image depicts Intuitive Machines’ lander Odysseus with its engines still firing. On the left side, pictured above, landing gear pieces are visibly broken off from one of the robotic craft’s six struts, said the company’s CEO Steve Altemus.
Where is Fast Eddie when you want him?
Bourguignon?
do you have a link to a jpg image to which you’re referring, pls?
It’s obviously a fake stage prop
https://me.mashable.com/space/38848/us-spacecraft-on-the-moon-finally-sends-home-the-money-shot
https://sm.mashable.com/t/mashable_me/article/u/us-spacecr/us-spacecraft-on-the-moon-finally-sends-home-the-money-shot_4nzq.2496.jpg
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/02/29/meta-adds-censorship-advocate-to-board-of-directors/
Meta Adds Censorship Supporter to Board of Directors
“Needless to say, if Russia were to decide to swallow Transnistria, Moldova would have little means of opposing it, and the West would be powerless to react. But for Putin, it would be one more signal that he is totally impervious to Western protests, while the United States is unable to help Ukraine, and Europe is struggling.”
It will be interesting to see what happens on this one. Moldova is buiding up its military with NATO support and it seems to be preparing for conflict, and Transnistria has appealed to Moscow to protect them from genocide. Also MOL is a candidate for EU eastward expansion.
https://tass.com/politics/1753201
> Protecting interests of Transnistrian people one of Russia’s priorities — Foreign Ministry
MOSCOW, February 28. /TASS/. Protection of interests of Transnistrian people is one of Russia’s priorities, and Russian agencies review all Tiraspol’s requests carefully, the Russian Foreign Ministry told TASS in regards to Transnistria’s request for help from Russia over Moldova’s pressure.
“Protection of interests of Transnistrian people, our compatriots is one of our priorities. Relevant Russian agencies always review all requests carefully,” a ministry representative said.
https://tass.com/world/1753915
> Transnistria finds worrisome Moldovan military’s growing activity
CHISINAU, February 29. /TASS/. Transnistria’s military is concerned about the growing activity of the Moldovan Defense Ministry, Oleg Belyakov, the unrecognized republic’s co-chair of the Joint Control Commission (JCC) for the peacekeeping operation, has told the media.
“Although the Moldovan side says these are scheduled annual activities, we know that summonses are being mailed, draft-age people interviewed at enlistment offices, motor vehicles inventoried and the whereabouts human resources, mostly males, checked. This cannot but cause certain concern. We saw something like that back in 1992,” Belyakov said. He stressed that Russian peacekeepers remained a safeguard of security on the left bank of the Dniester.
Last year, the authorities of Moldova, a neutral state under its Constitution, increased the military budget by 68% to $89 million, which is equivalent to 0.55% of the GDP. Supplies of weapons and military equipment to Moldova have been increased by the US, other NATO countries and the EU.
Last December, the Moldovan parliament approved a national security strategy proposed by the president, which pointed to Russia as the main threat. Romania was described as Moldova’s strategic partner. The document stresses the need for strengthening cooperation in this area with the EU, Britain, the United States, Turkey and NATO. The authors of the document note that Moldova needs modern, well-equipped and trained armed forces compatible with the armies of partner countries. Moldova plans to increase its military budget to 1% of the GDP over 10 years.
https://worldcrunch.com/focus/transnistria-moldova-russia
Putin’s Moldova Flex: Why The Time May Be Ripe For Russia To Take Transnistria
The authorities of the pro-Russian breakaway region of Transnistria in Moldava have asked for “protection” from Russia, which has been quick to respond. It is a blatantly “engineered-from-scratch” crisis in a region bordering Ukraine. This tiny territory may be the next place on the world map to watch.
…. On Wednesday, the temperature suddenly flared up, in a way that seemed totally guided by Moscow. In the first act, the authorities of Transnistria, a Russian-speaking, pro-Russian republic, asked for Russia’s protection from Moldova, citing the threat of “genocide”.
In the second act, Moscow said that “protecting the interests of the residents of Transnistria, our compatriots, is one of our priorities.” That was all it took to create an international crisis, and make Moldovans fear the worst.
A sudden crisis
This affair has all the ingredients of what happened in Ukraine: a Russian-speaking minority considered by Moscow as “compatriots,” as we heard in the communiqué; a courageous Moldovan president, Maia Sandu, who has made a determined pro-European choice — indeed, the EU has recognized Moldova’s status as a candidate country — and finally, a geopolitical vacuum with a country that enjoys no protection whatsoever.
The current context of war in Ukraine, and the Russian presidential election in March, could tip the balance
Does Russian President Vladimir Putin really intend to annex Transnistria and its 500,000 inhabitants? Moscow would kill two birds with one stone: it would create a new hotbed of tension on Ukraine’s southwestern flank, not far from the Ukrainian port of Odessa; and it would further weaken Moldova, the West’s little protégé.
Russia has never taken such a step in its 30 years of presence, but the current context of war in Ukraine, and perhaps also the Russian presidential election in March, could tip the balance.
Annexation in view?
Needless to say, if Russia were to decide to swallow Transnistria, Moldova would have little means of opposing it, and the West would be powerless to react. It would be of the same order as the annexation of Crimea in 2014, minus the symbolic and historical dimension.
But for Putin, it would be one more signal that he is totally impervious to Western protests, while the United States is unable to help Ukraine, and Europe is struggling. The divisions that emerged over French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement on Monday on sending troops to Ukraine do nothing to dissuade Putin….
The ability of NATO to help (or lack of such ability) will soon become obvious to everyone.
Lithuania supports Macron’s call to send NATO troops to Ukraine .
” The Lithuanian Armed Forces consist of 15,000 active duty personnel, which includes 2,400 civilians, and are supported by 100,000 reserve forces that are concentrated in the National defense volunteer service. ”
A week’s cannon fodder for Russia .
Unfortunately, virtually no ammunition to go with the many troops.
I find it interesting that climate change is being used to limit consumption rather than PO. If PO becomes serious then burning less supposedly reduces climatic impact. Maybe there’s a lot more oil that we don’t know about or perhaps it’s just a way to conserve what’s left.
Here’s a perspective on co2:
During the Little Ice Age, Earth experienced a significant cooling period although CO2 levels were relatively stable. This contradicts the popular belief that CO2 is the primary driver of surface temperature
https://irrationalfear.substack.com/p/the-little-ice-age-enigma
But That statement is below a graph showing an exponential increase in temperature.
If we’re entering a grand solar minimum then it doesn’t seem overly worrisome????
(I kind of think so though)
what is PO?
drb , Peak Oil . Of course you know about it . Just a gentle reminder .
Joking, it will be here in ten years, but then ten years ago it was going to be here now.
Sooner or later, it will peak.
Dennis L.
the little ice age—–
//////The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of regional cooling, particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic region.[2] It was not a true ice age of global extent.[3] The term was introduced into scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939.[4] The period has been conventionally defined as extending from the 16th to the 19th centuries,[5][6][7] but some experts prefer an alternative timespan from about 1300[8] to about 1850.[9][10][11]///////
just sayin
The main consideration from the science community is the question,
What is the main driving force(s) today of the changes that are being seen today?
Do not have to spell it out..
The main driving force is propaganda, obviously. Propaganda determines which changes are being seen today and which are not being noticed.
In the human mind, perception trumps reality nearly every time. So, control the perception and you control the man… and the world.
The summary of this article says:
There are lots of things going on. And, of course, our influence as humans over them is very limited or zero.
“Greenhouse gasses, principally CO2, have controlled most ancient climate changes. This time around humans are the cause, mainly by our CO2 emissions.”?
https://skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period.htm
All we have to do is stop eating and stop breathing.
I have an alternative hypothesis: You’ve been hearing that line of argument for so long from so many authoritative sounding sources that you’ve come to accept it as Gospel, much as for nearly 2,000 years, most people in Christendom accepted the Gospels as Gospel.
Not only you, but most people. The propaganda cacophony has been loud constant for well over 30 years now. It’s understandable.
As a theory, “humans are the cause” has much to commend it.
But can you prooove it?
The IPCC stated in one of their reports that “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
https://archive.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/pdf/TAR-14.PDF
If that’s correct, the implications are absolutely staggering. One of them is that any climate “forcing” could result in any climate “reaction” whatsoever, rather like a butterfly fluttering its wings in the Amazon rainforest leading to a 5:0 victory by West Ham over Liverpool at Aintree.
That’s science, laddie.
tim
i think its anfield, not aintree
that makes all the difference to your hypothesis.
That’s true, Norman. Horses for courses.
But at least I got the city correct.
Agnostic on climate change, but I would prefer spaceship earth regulate at much as possible and man contribute as little as possible to this project.
Dennis L.
‘The state Solar for All programs would give community solar, in particular, a massive push. Just 20 of the 33 applicants that outlined community-solar initiatives included estimates of how much solar their programs would install, but those projects alone would boost the 6.2 gigawatts of U.S. community solar currently installed by more than 25 percent. And that’s solar “just for low-income and disadvantaged communities,” Bourg-Meyer said. “That’s huge.”’?
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/low-income-communities-will-soon-get-7-billion-for-local-solar?utm_campaign=canary&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=296171294&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8CbxE_A_k1z-7jO-tXRqBWVWvLAJCDcrdOkyVkCI1JPMSfdqZG3mLNh08lHtPE_gEf6EbtUctki68Lt2NrZiGCKzJZdw
Who pays for all of the electricity transmission changes related to this? The article doesn’t say. The US doesn’t manufacture any meaningful number of solar panels, so nearly all would need to be imported.
Many years ago lived in Boston area myself and during that period had hopiem mindset. There were lectures about solar and remember one organization that was promoting the idea of individual small scale electric solar for rural areas on Chile, SA.
Seems the speaker was keen on providing some BAU to those without the convenience of bare modern luxuries.
It sounds promising and made a good case for it.
Not sure how it all turned out there.
Our nett energy peak is already in the rear view mirror .
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261921011673
Why we don’t send nuclear waste to the space
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHv4IMEhQQE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMwW4tPtXDc
Dennis L’s idea of sending nuclear waste to the space was thought out by people more informed about than this before and was found infeasible
He will return with some lame excuse depending his delusions but it seems his cornucopian fantasies are slowly fleeting away every day.
Both of these videos are on what could go wrong with sending nuclear waste into space, beyond the pull of the Earth’s gravity. One issue is that the cost (in terms of rockets and fuel for the rockets) would be terribly high. Another is that something could easily go wrong, showering Earth’s inhabitants with nuclear waste.
Pollution just doesn’t matter. Anyone who worries about it is suffering from limited thinking.
Many believe that the solution to pollution is dispersion. Maybe it is in some cases, but I wouldn’t count on it in general.
When industry collapses it all goes away.
That is the truth when we call things shit and not peanut butter.
I wonder why so many can’t grasp it.
My entire focus in this realm has been to try an design a system that requires zero industrial inputs. That means near stone age technology.
Needless to say, very few listen to me……
i have some pieces of flint (really) i can sell you at a reasonable price
Southern Britain has some of the best workable flint in the world in fact.
However I was thinking more of Bison genetics that makes a more tractable demeanor (ie one that is not bent on wild flight or demonic attack on humans) AND widespread cheap seed sources of Tallgrass prairie seed mixes……
A lot of this ain’t that complex and a shockingly high level of societal complexity can be had at a stone age or early bronze age level.
The oversoul told humanity to simply tend the garden….the demiurge told Eve to adopt technology….and the fallen angels made that manifest.
And they have fed on our torment ever since.
////The oversoul told humanity to simply tend the garden….the demiurge told Eve to adopt technology….and the fallen angels made that manifest.////
sheeeesh cro—that made my brain hurt
Southern Britain has some of the best workable flint in the world in fact.
It used to but as I keep telling people it was heavily mined in the Stone Age, as was the flint all over Europe and the Middle East.
take a look at grimes graves, about flint mining
https://global-britisharchaeology.org/grimes-graves/
Flint mining was critical to the increase in population in ancient times because it allowed people to easily start fires.
The thing that gave humans an advantage over other animals was the controlled use of fire. With it, food could be cooked, making a wider range of foods edible and killing off of unwanted organisms. Humans could become omnivores, instead of primarily herbivores, like our nearest animal relatives. Our teeth, jaws, and digestive apparatus could become smaller, allowing our brains to become larger. Less time was spent chewing food. More time could be spent on making tools and crafts.
and flint weapons enabled us to kill things
and each other
Just another real life example..
SCIENCE
Space photos from 5 recent moon-landing missions show how tiny engineering errors can cause big problems, like crashing or landing sideways
https://www.businessinsider.com/space-photos-show-tiny-errors-can-doom-moon-landing-missions-2024-2?amp
Morgan McFall-Johnsen; edited by Jessica Orwig Feb 27, 2024, 6:21 PM ET
Intuitive Machines’ uncrewed Odysseus moon landing almost failed due to a single safety switch.
Other moon-landing attempts have crashed or burned due to leaky valves or software glitches.
Their photos show how even the tiniest details make a huge difference in spaceflight.
…The Houston-based company’s uncrewed Odysseus lander was almost lost to one of the tiniest possible mistakes. A safety switch that should have been switched off before launch was left on instead, effectively disabling the navigation system that was supposed to guide the robot to a safe landing spot.
..With less than two hours to go before landing, Intuitive Machines engineers frantically whipped up a new navigation system. They reprogrammed the spacecraft to instead use the laser technology from a NASA experiment it was carrying to the moon. The experiment wasn’t meant to land the spacecraft, but it worked in a pinch.
At the last second, though, the lander tipped over and settled on its side. That seems to be unrelated to the errant safety switch.
Much more in the link…but AI will fix it all…I’m all in
Keith,
Please find an instance where I suggested nuclear waste being sent into space. What I have suggested is any manufacturing in space which has waste use Jupiter as a trash dump. The waste would already be in space.
Why use nuclear in space when there is already fusion energy availablel?
Thank you for the opportunity to correct your confusions on this matter.
Dennis L.
dennis
there is a vast difference between fusion energy being ”there” and it being ”available”.
lots of people confuse the two
might be as well to think about that
Norm , I skim thru posts of Denise . A waste . I am wary of individual’s who dream with their eye’s open . Relax .
oh i agree ravi
most i ignore—sometimes i can’t resist pointing out the obvious
I have a post on cellular phone service and associated costs. Please read, and comment if you find errors in the calculations. I think it makes money.
Dennis L.
I ran the numbers, please feel free to comment, I make errors. Musk appears to be harvesting $1B/year to run his satellite service. A billion here, a billion there, it all adds up.
I have no interest in sending exogenous solar energy back to earth in raw form. Musk is sending it back to earth in the form of data. He is Maxwell’s demon in a sense.
Dennis L.
I belive you can send it through a wormhole, at faster than the speed of light, like the elites will do when they move their civilization across the galaxy.
Gravity exists . Manhattan tower sold for $ 1.00 (Dollar one only )
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/who-could-be-next-largest-canadian-pension-fund-sells-manhattan-office-tower-1
As much as I would like to think it’s a return of some sanity, it’s more likely just a scam in which someone connected gets assets at zero cost at the expense of the pension fund participants.
^^^^THIS^^^^
Dismantle them and sell the scrap steel and copper.
Sounds like i’s as big a racket as primary timeshares sales and then again on timeshare resales. For $ 500 we will sell your timeshare. Once you have purchased a timeshare, you can’t get rid of it and will be lucky to be able to unload it even if you give it away. Exhibit A: Vistana Villages on International Dr in Orlando FL, formerly Sheraton, since acquired by Marriot which I believe is Chinese owned company. I never saw such as hard a sell, even worse than used car sales etc.
Wow! Finally some sense is hitting the commercial real estate market. This investment was made by a Canadian pension fund that thought that real estates prices only went up. Banks have used “extend and pretend” to keep renewing loans that made no sense. The article points out the role that big pension plans play in this market:
“Canadian pension fund that thought that real estates prices only went up.”
So less cashflow for the pension fund, less cash to pensioners, sounds like deflation.
Dennis L.
From OFW’s very own royal correspondent (yours truly), we bring you a brand new royal tragedy!
It Was Sudden….. And Unexpected….. And he was only 45.
(Via The Sun)
ROYALS STUNNED Thomas Kingston post mortem today to determine cause of death as royals in shock after tragic loss of war hero
The royal was found dead on Sunday evening, with tributes pouring in from royals including King Charles and Queen Camilla.
The monarch was today seen for the first time since the tragic news was announced.
Coroners have now said Thomas’ post mortem would be undertaken today, and his cause of death determined.
The Royal Family are said to still be in shock over the sudden death of Thomas, who wed Lady Gabriella in 2019.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/royals/26233019/thomas-kingston-post-mortem-cause-of-death/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
As always, the truly chic does not die. It is always their hangers-on who suffers.
and I will be today’s OFW sports reporter:
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39617519/tim-wakefield-widow-stacy-dies-cancer-5-months-later
“Stacy Wakefield, the widow of longtime major league pitcher Tim Wakefield, died from cancer nearly five months to the day after he did, the family announced Wednesday.
Stacy Wakefield died after battling pancreatic cancer. Tim Wakefield died Oct. 1 from brain cancer at age 57.”
American baseball fans will know that as a “double play”, two outs on one play.
a little jab at a sports pun (see what I did there?)
hopefully the Schadiator has decided on a restful Perth retirement from OFW posting.
here’s some Schad that has been missing.
Perhaps there is no Internet in the cell block of the psychiatric hospital where the Aussies are holding him for observation after Immigration checked his Internet postings?
No, he’s been commenting elsewhere.
Perhaps he’s been banned.
Probably just wallowing in shame after his UEP Year-of-the-Rabbit claims didn’t pan out. Surely he will be back with a new hoax in good time.
The Elders could just make him disappear at one of their black sites. He might not even be in Australia.
I checked out some of his comments on other websites. Honestly it doesn’t even sound like him when I read them with his voice in my head saying “get your boosters ” He may have been secretly shooting the rat juice and/or was simply liquidated. He’s dead and the Elders took over his profile. RIP FE.
I know nothing.
an ex-live person has just died
i hope eddy has been notified
so covidrama can be justified
and we can all be terrified
https://www.artberman.com/blog/telling-the-truth-about-our-future/
Well worth a look.
I do agree with Art. Renewables do not work nearly as well as claimed. EROEI calculations for intermittent renewables are misleading.
Musk’s experiment in space seems to suggest solar electric does work in some instances. My calculations say he made about $1B in electricity production in one year give or take and this is conservative at about .10/kwh.
Got curious on cell providers energy usage, again per Copilot
“In the United States, cell providers (such as mobile network operators) collectively consume a significant amount of electricity each year. Let’s delve into the details:
Annual Cell Site Electricity Usage:
US cell sites use a total of approximately 21 million megawatt-hours (MWh) of power annually1.
To put this in perspective, it’s equivalent to the average power used by nearly two million households.”
So at .10 per kwh(Copilot says average US 16.9 or so) Looks like about $2.1B of costs for electricity.
So, were one a politician, green of course, one would want tl legislate all cell towers be moved to space to save the planet.
Sound like a “green” platform.
Dennis L.
Let’s look at cell towers, US and cost to build.
In 2020 wireless network investment was $29.2B.
As of 2020 in the Us there are 471,215 cell sites at a cost per tower of say $250K looks like $118B of sunk costs.
Cell towers need repair, land rent for ground leases averages about $1.3K/month, so about $5B total per year. No rent in space, looks like space might be a good idea.
Politically green, better for the visual environment, recycle all the materials, green, very, very green.
You think it might be nice to have ownership interest in the rockets which launch the satellites? No building permits in space, yet. And if so, how does a building inspector get there to inspect?
If one had robots to build satellites, I assume Musk builds all his by hand, build them in space using electricity from the sun, first step. Next step find an asteroid with the most valuable raw material, refine it, shape it, incorporate it into a satellite. Real-estate again, once you get there, RE is cheap, cheap, cheap and no taxes on RE. Now, can one incorporate in space and if so, who is the taxing authority?
Green will make jobs, jobs, jobs and save our spaceship earth to boot. Carbon emissions go down, down, down. Recall, we are being political and jobs always follow new technology creation, n’est pas?
If resource depletion causes wars, resources from space, used in space to provide services on earth will decrease wars. Again, a win, win, win for space manufacturing and it uses mostly existing technology; it is engineering.
Yes, I am being sort of pleasantly sarcastic, but there are billions and billions available and laughing quietly, this is a vertically integrated business plan from the ground up.
If I have numerical errors, please correct same as appropriate.
Dennis L.
Thoughts?
eyerolling is the best i can do dennis
words are superfluous
There is a lot of “junk” orbiting around in space. No one is in charge of junk.
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-space-junk
The amount of this space junk is a whole lot worse at low altitudes, compared to high altitudes. This is the reason why Space Solar folks have been looking into geosynchronous orbit for solar panels, rather than a more accessible orbit. Also, that location gives better sunlight availability.
“Our research shows that EVs will struggle to achieve widespread adoption despite massive subsidies and the growing threat of outright internal combustion engine (ICE) bans. After carefully studying the history of energy, we have yet to find an example where a new technology with inferior energy efficiency has replaced an existing, more efficient one. Despite claims to the contrary, our research suggests EVs are less energy efficient than internal combustion engine automobiles. As a result, they will fail to gain widespread adoption. . . .
Mitigating carbon emissions is central to the case for electric vehicles. Advocates argue that displacing fossil fuels is essential to curbing global warming. We disagree. Replacing ICEs with EVs will materially increase carbon emissions and may worsen the problem. Manufacturing an electric vehicle consumes far more energy than an ICE. Most of this additional energy is spent mining the materials for and manufacturing an EV’s giant lithium-ion battery. Mining companies use energy-intensive trucks, crushers, and mills to extract each battery’s nickel, cobalt, lithium, and copper. The manufacturing process consumes vast amounts of energy as well. Many analysts eagerly tout the carbon savings from displaced fossil fuels without adequately accounting for the battery’s increased energy consumption. Once these adjustments are made, most, if not all, of the EV’s carbon advantage disappears.”?
https://blog.gorozen.com/blog/the-norwegian-illusion?utm_campaign=Weekly%20Blog%20Notification&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=296072056&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_kfl9redNKCCzxZ0S7cM3GEoHBekgG62_HPAWdHIvWeklYcGXCPIYj0MWk84cmXXDipk4OtX4LaBUMf5-az8P7g91myg&utm_content=296072056&utm_source=hs_email
This is related to something we discussed recently. I would very much agree with this analysis.
It will not solve all the problems, but Leaf battery recycling is a cottage industry. If the battery is assembled by robots I assume, it can be disassembled and tested by robot, use the best cells and reduce waste, pollution etc.
As always, green, green, green and the limited Leaf range is consistent with walkable communities.
I grew up in a home which prior to my going to college used 5K miles of driving per year. In the summer I rode a bicycle say 2 mi each way to play tennis, coming home for lunch. None of us had a weight problem.
Green, green, and very healthy to boot.
Not being sarcastic or rude, if it has been done it can be done. If our energy situation is as serious as some here make out, time to adjust.
Less really is more, complication makes life very stressful.
Dennis L.
Related to the Ukraine-Russia situation:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/breakaway-transnistria-asks-russia-protection-setting-stage-military-intervention
Breakaway Transnistria Asks Russia For ‘Protection’ – Setting Stage For Military Intervention
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/transistria%20map.jpg
You beat me to it….
Transnistria is a thin strip of land between Moldova and the SW of UKR that Russia is liable to take anyway to cut off UKR access to the Black Sea and to prevent potential attacks.
The appeal for protection is similar to how the Donbass ‘breakaway republics’ appealed to Russia in 2014. Russia may in any case simply incorporate Transnistria that it already recognises.
It would be interesting to see whether Europe NATO would want to turn Moldova into UKR II and force Russia to expand into buffer zones in Moldova to protect Transnistria from attacks by MOL/ NATO.
It looks like the conflict may have further to run. Whether Europe NATO still fancies itself after UKR remains to be seen…. also whether MOL wants to turn itself into UKR II seeing how that worked out for UKR I.
Otherwise, Russia has already recognised Transnistria as an independent place that could then theoretically vote and join Russia and ‘what are you going to do about it?’ tends to be the bottom line in geopolitics.
If Europe NATO thinks that it is the ‘boss’ of Russia about its borders then let them back that up? But do not rely on USA all the time, it has got its own business like Trump says.
If Europe NATO wants to have a war over Russian Transnistria or wherever that place is on the map then that is their business, right?
https://www.euronews.com/2024/02/28/moldovan-breakaway-region-seeks-russias-help-amid-escalating-tensions-with-pro-western-gov
Moldovan breakaway region seeks Russia’s [protection] help amid escalating tensions with pro-Western government
Transnistria is one of numerous European regions where Moscow claims ethnic Russians are under threat.
Officials in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria appealed to Moscow for protection on Wednesday, as tensions escalate with the country’s pro-Western government.
On Wednesday, members of the Transnistrian congress used a rare meeting in the regional capital, Tiraspol, to ask the Russian Duma to “implement measures for defending Transnistria amid increasing pressure from Moldova, given the fact that more than 220,000 Russian citizens reside in Transnistria.”
The dispute began at the start of the year when Moldova, officially a candidate to join the EU, imposed new customs duties on 1 January on imports and exports to and from Transnistria. The region borders Ukraine and is not recognised as a separate entity by any United Nations member countries, including Russia, which maintains close ties to the region.
Moldova is working to align its economic legislation with the EU as it pursues full membership in the bloc. But the new customs duties levelled on Transnistria have angered officials in the region, who say the measures harm local residents and businesses.
In a declaration readout on Wednesday, officials in Tiraspol also appealed to the European Parliament to prevent what it described as pressure from Moldova from “violating the rights and freedoms” of local residents. They made similar appeals to the secretary-general of the United Nations; the European Parliament; and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, tensions mounted after an opposition legislator in Tiraspol last week said the gathering could used to announce a bid by Transnistria to join Russia.
…. A short war in the early 1990s led pro-Russian forces in Transnistria to declare a breakaway state. A 2006 referendum saw more than 95% of voters back the option of joining Russia but the ballot wasn’t internationally recognized. The US State Department at the time called it a “provocative referendum” that “cannot be taken seriously.”
To this day, Russia stations about 1,500 troops in the region as so-called peacekeepers; they are tasked with guarding huge Soviet-era weapons and ammunition stockpiles.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Moldova’s pro-Western leaders have routinely accused Moscow of conducting campaigns to try to destabilise the country, which was a Soviet republic until 1991.
Moldova was granted EU candidate status in 2022. It was further buoyed in December last year when Brussels said it would open accession negotiations for both Moldova and neighbouring Ukraine.
Import duties was exact what started the US civil war.
I know well a Transnistrian living in Italy and as far as I can tell they are all pro-russian. Perhaps Moldova, eager to please her new masters in exchange for a 10B IMF loan, will make itself into the new Ukraine. Obviously the Dniestr is a good geographical barrier where to set borders, as is the Dniepr in Ukraine. The land in between will be trickier to police, as NATO will have to go to a terrorist guerrilla war. But if the Dniestr is not good enough the Danube will do.
Europe will send troops from nato nations but not nato troops to Ukraine. They will be advisors LMAO Americans know all about advisors. This is the most pure war no pretend that ideology has anything to do with it.
America, as a republic, has lacked the stability that a constitutional monarchy can provide.
Perhaps after President Trump completes his second term he could become America’s first monarch since the Revolution.
King Donald I has a certain appeal.
Americans have subconsciously searched for a monarch throughout their history. For example the Papist mafia appointee JFK wss given that status until he was whacked for backstabbing the very people who got him elected.
Politicians would be kept in line by the monarch.
Donald Jr would eventually become King Donald II.
Eminent Americans could become ennobled. Dukes, Marquises, Earls, Viscounts and Barons.
Knighthoods for outstanding commoners.
It really is a better system.
The US certainly wastes a lot of time on elections, when all of the leaders seem to follow policies that those with lots of money and power would like.
Yes.
Dennis L
Mearsheimer has some thoughts on that, JFK wanted peace, not war.
Have changed my opinions of him, some government agencies make the mafia look good.
Dennis L.
Solar energy again:
Per Copilot, please correct as necessary.
Life of solar panels in space 25-30 years, so assume 25 years.
Assume cost per Kw of solar panel $1.5/watt, 1Kw is $1.5K
8760 hours in a year, at $.1 per kwh is an income of $876/year/kw or over 25 years $21.9k. At a cost of $1.5 K gross profit over 25 years of $21.9k, the math is not worth the effort for the net. This a growth business the size of which is limited by the solar system.
A rocket is a sunk cost, reuse it 20 times and it is 5% of the one time use cost, A launch tower is expensive, use it 5x per day and costs go down.
It looks to me like using solar in space works and the pollution is dumped into Jupiter. When the panels are done, give them a nudge and forget recyclilng, the solar system does that for us. Earth based ecycling just piles toxic junk into our landfills. Infinite materials in space, get virgin metals refined in novas of stars, let the universe do the work, make 10,000 asteroid explores, start a train of them, bringing back materials at estimated usage rates. Manuracturing growth rates start linear and go exponential.
Can any fossil fuel do better?
Are my numbers close to being correct?
With Optimus or similar, solar cells can manufacture solar cells from what I see, that has been the traditional test of a solar cell. Man has invented the ribosome and its associate energy, the mitochondria.
Gail is right, intermittency, transmission costs are impossible to beat, so don’t try.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
Dennis L.
You understand what the Space Solar folks have been telling me for a long time. In theory, if it can be made to work 24/7/365 space solar looks like a great idea.
But none of them have any hope that anything substantive will happen for the next 20 years, and scaling it up would take much longer than that. And I expect that today’s grid would need a lot of upgrading by then. A whole lot of materials would be needed, including an international trading system, I expect.
Musk looks to me like he is harvesting $1B/year currently, if cellular works I have presented numbers per Copilot which may have errors. But energetically, it appear to make money and cover capital costs in less than two years for the panels.
I invent comments and corrections.
Dennis L.
The payment scheme for solar energy tends to drive other electricity producers out of business because it leads to artificially low wholesale electricity rates for other electricity producers. It reimburses solar producers at a far higher amount than the value that they are providing to the electric grid. It leads to a situation where nuclear, especially, needs to have subsidies to stay in business. Power plants using coal or natural gas are adversely affected as well. The overhead costs of the most efficient plants tend to be a problem. Inefficient natural gas “peaker” plants are the ones least affected.
Musk gets a lot of subsidies. I would be very careful with those numbers.