In the 1970's James Lovelock came up
with a theory that “organisms interact with their inorganic
surroundings on Earth to form a self-regulating, complex system that
contributes to maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.”
This was called the Gaia Hypothesis.
But what exactly does that mean for us?
If, as he theorized, our actions are part of a “self-regulating”
system, how are other parts of that system reacting to us? Perhaps
we are already starting to see the beginnings of that reaction in the
droughts, floods and unseasonable temperatures we have been
experiencing in various regions of the world.
How will our future be colored by this
changing climate?
I think it's time for another book recommendation. This time the book is The World in 2050, by
Laurence C. Smith. I know I have mentioned it before, but since we
have been seeing some rather extreme weather recently here in the
States I thought it might be interesting to revisit it.
Obviously, predictions are not set in
stone. Lovelock and others have revamped their opinions on
climate change as being alarmist.
However that doesn't necessarily mean
they are entirely wrong. So, to continue with my book synopsis …
Smith has listed four forces that are
affecting our world and will shape our future. They are
demographics, human demand for natural resources, globalization, and
climate change. As you may have noted all four have our sticky
little fingers all over them. Unless, of course, you are of the
“humans are not a factor in climate change” ilk. Then you would
not attribute the last item on that list to us.
In 1950 there were two megacities of
ten million or more, New York(12.3) and Tokyo(11.3). In 2025 there
are projected to be twenty nine, with the first five being
Tokyo(36.4), Mumbai(26.4), Delhi(22.5), Dhaka, Bangladesh(22), and
Sao Paulo, Brazil(21.4). Smith estimated that the world population
stood at one billion in 1800 A.D., and reached six billion in 1999.
Currently we appear to be adding a billion people every twelve years.
That's a lot of people to feed, clothe and provide care for. The
demand on Earth's natural resources will only continue to grow. All
at a time when climate change is starting to rock our world.
The most important resource for human
life is water, without it we would perish. With climate change will come feast or famine in terms of water. Literally. Too much at the wrong time and crops will
flood out, too little and they will die of thirst. There is likely
to be rising tensions over water supplies, with the Nile, Jordan,
Tigris-Euphrates and Indus rivers cited as likely points of
contention. According to climate models precipitation will increase
in Canada, Alaska, Scandinavia, and Russia. It will be southern
Europe, western North America, the Middle East, and southern Africa
who are the losers in the water lottery.
Smith is optimistic that we will adapt
to our changing world and it's climate. He has cited past agreements
over water usage and the fact that global trade will provide goods
where they are needed.
While I have touched on the highlights, there are other factors, such as the changing economic fortunes of various countries, that will play a role in our future.
While I have touched on the highlights, there are other factors, such as the changing economic fortunes of various countries, that will play a role in our future.
The World in 2050 is an
interesting and thought provoking read. Not just because of what it
says, but also because of what it doesn't say. If you read it you
will note he seems to focus on the Northern hemisphere, but says
little about the Southern's future. And there is little thought
about what it may take for people to adapt. Personally I am not so sure that
adaptation will come easily or cheaply.
One more thing I want to touch on is abrupt climate change. Smith writes that core samples taken from the Greenland Ice Sheet have shown evidence of extreme swings in temperature in "less than a decade and as quickly as three years". "Precipitation doubled in as little as a single year." The conclusion by Richard B. Alley, who took the samples, was that "the extreme rapidity of these changes implied some sort of threshold or trigger in the North Atlantic climate system." The slowdown of the global thermohaline circulation would be that trigger. For that to happen there would need to be a large infusion of fresh water into the North Atlantic. As Smith notes there is a rather large source of fresh water located in the middle of the North Atlantic, the Greenland Ice Sheet.
One more thing I want to touch on is abrupt climate change. Smith writes that core samples taken from the Greenland Ice Sheet have shown evidence of extreme swings in temperature in "less than a decade and as quickly as three years". "Precipitation doubled in as little as a single year." The conclusion by Richard B. Alley, who took the samples, was that "the extreme rapidity of these changes implied some sort of threshold or trigger in the North Atlantic climate system." The slowdown of the global thermohaline circulation would be that trigger. For that to happen there would need to be a large infusion of fresh water into the North Atlantic. As Smith notes there is a rather large source of fresh water located in the middle of the North Atlantic, the Greenland Ice Sheet.
167 comments:
You figure we've already gotten to the point that ‘adapting’ to the inevitable is in our future?
Personally I think they're gonna run us right over the climate change cliff. I've lost a lot of faith in the ability of our government to handle anything that serious. I hope I'm wrong, but fear I'm right.
I agree with you about the probable outcome.
But: I don't think our government could solve the problem. There's too much of the world we could never control. The only solution I can see ever being implemented on the scope required would be a cheap, non-polluting power source of a kind we simply do not have, neither currently available nor on the foreseeable horizon. Perhaps we'll get lucky and some genius will capture that unicorn, but most likely not.
I'm quite optimistic about zero carbon power sources. I think nuclear fusion will be cracked. There are at least five respectable efforts under way (i.e. not wild-eyed loons). If we get really lucky it'll be proven and under construction in three years. If we're unlucky it'll be thirty years.
I think new types of fission are also a runner. However, because of public perceptions of nuclear power, these won't be developed in anger until long after their really needed.
After that there are renewables, but I don't seem them providing the baseload power we really need to continue with business as usual.
Off topic, the winefalcon is off over the edge again.
"It is the threat of deadly pandemics that seem to emerge at the same time –
and all are under control of the UN and its specialized organization, WHO which is
assisted and advised by a number of international laboratories…
***
"Aids – the HIV virus, also a Pentagon biological warfare experiment –broke out in
the 1980’s, likewise in Africa, spread to Haiti from where it was ‘imported’ to the
US and the rest of the world. Today it is, though incurable, under control. But a
new strain could easily be designed to make current drugs impotent."
The brits appear to have unleashed the SAS on IS:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2845668/SAS-quad-bike-squads-kill-8-jihadis-day-allies-prepare-wipe-map-Daring-raids-UK-Special-Forces-leave-200-enemy-dead-just-four-weeks.html#comments
Pete: "I think it's time for another book recommendation. This time the book is The World in 2050, by Laurence C. Smith. I know I have mentioned it before,"
I bougt and read that book when you mentioned it before and I agree it's a very interesting read. I can second that recommendation.
Pete: "I'm quite optimistic about zero carbon power sources. I think nuclear fusion will be cracked. There are at least five respectable efforts under way (i.e. not wild-eyed loons). If we get really lucky it'll be proven and under construction in three years."
I'm not that optimistic. It's one thing to build a functioning test-reactor and another to implement it on a global scale that would be sufficient. I think it will take a long time and that we'll run into serious consequences before that. But let's hope you're right.
[Marcus]: "Pete: I think it's time for another book recommendation..."
That was Lynnette who wrote the article :)
"It's one thing to build a functioning test-reactor and another to implement it on a global scale that would be sufficient."
Agreed. And if the eventual reactor is the one that the ITER consortium is building it's unfortunately going to be expensive even if the fuel is limitless and free. All of the other efforts, however, are smaller scale and dramatically cheaper. All of them would be cheaper than present day coal fired plants, which are being built at a rate of one per week in China alone. They variously rely on some combination of inertial and electric ion confinement, instead of the magnetic confinement of the ITER/tokamak approach which has to overcome problems of plasma self-action.
I am of the rather pessimistic opinion that it may be too late, at least in the case of the Greenland Ice Sheet, to do anything that will change what is to come.
When Smith's book was published in 2010 he stated that no serious scientist believed that the Greenland Ice Sheet would melt anytime soon. That was part of those worst case scenarios that the Pentagon included in their report.
But looking at what is happening now it seems that the impossible may very well be possible. Listening to the gentleman in the video describe the underwater melting that is occurring on the Ice Sheet reminds me too much of how ice melts here. When we have ice build up on the side of the street, and have a period of warming, we sometimes go out and trench out a channel for the water to flow to encourage faster melting. The ice melts from underneath and the top crust becomes brittle and eventually breaks up, either by itself, or with the encouragement of a shovel. It just depends on how impatient we get for ice free streets. :)
Granted, the Greenland Ice Sheet is a massive chunk of ice, but melting in the inside, as is mentioned, will put pressure on the outside edges. I should think this would contribute to faster breakup.
While alternate non carbon emitting forms of fuel are a good idea, I don't know that the adoption of those will do much good. It would take too long to remove enough CO2 from the atmosphere to make any difference. Unless we can invent some kind of giant vacuum to remove the CO2 from our atmosphere (yeah, right!), we are rather screwed, I'm thinking.
Our best option now may simply be putting in place plans to deal with the change that is coming.
Marcus,
I know you are concerned with illegal immigration to Sweden. When I was paging through Smith's book again, I ran across the section about illegal Chinese immigration to Russia. It seems Sweden may not be the only one with low birth rate/illegal immigration issues.
Oops, I'll have to check out the other links later. I've gotta run, I've chores to do before going to a play today. :)
Pete: "They variously rely on some combination of inertial and electric ion confinement, instead of the magnetic confinement of the ITER/tokamak approach which has to overcome problems of plasma self-action."
I confess I have no idea what you were telling us there. Not my area of expertise at all.
I do hope "they" will come up with something miraculous, and the sooner the better, but even if they do I still foresee great challenges.
For one thing, as you mention, we're increasing fossil fuel dependency at the moment. All those coal fired plants are unlikely to be just scrapped even if a better/cleaner alternative comes along. More likely they will remain and be in use until their economic lifespan runs out.
Second, electricity generation is immensely important and some form of nuclear is, IMO, our best hope. But as I have stated before we are very muck locked into oil for many, many years ahead when it comes to transportation.
Lynnette: "I know you are concerned with illegal immigration to Sweden. When I was paging through Smith's book again, I ran across the section about illegal Chinese immigration to Russia. It seems Sweden may not be the only one with low birth rate/illegal immigration issues."
That actually ties into the first point the author of that book made, the one about demographics. I know from an economic standpoint, in our "must have growth"-economy, increasing populations is seen as a good thing, a necessity even. But if we take a step back and ask ourselves how sustainable it is in the longer run we might come up with different answers.
Japan is often held up as some sort of horror-example with their aging population and their lack of immigration and lack of economic growth. Still, look at ordinary people in Japan and they seem to be doing pretty well for themselves. Low crimerates, high life expectancy, lots of savings, high purchasing power, etc. Could be worse, right?
[Marcus]: "All those coal fired plants are unlikely to be just scrapped even if a better/cleaner alternative comes along."
Don't forget that coal has an ongoing fuel cost. And in the EU it has a carbon emission cost. That's why for instance Drax, the biggest coal plant in the UK, is co-fired using torrefied wood pellets imported from the US and Canada.
There's also an erroneous perception that an autocratic government like the Chinese will not let anything stand in the way of industrial development. But they are very sensitive to coal pollution which is the subject of major protests in Chinese cities. And they have had promising climate talks with the US.
If you have a sufficiently cheap source of electricity, oil is not a showstopper either. You can use methanol as a near drop-in replacement and make it from hydrogen from electrolysed water and CO/CO2.
Lynnette, have read some interesting stuff about the Greenland melting -- it's a vicious circle. Moving glaciers are lubricated at their bases by pressure-induced melting (as in those cool wire-thru-ice demonstrations). Surface melt percolates through moulins to the base, speeding things up. As the ice sheet flows faster, there is more iceberg calving at the terminus. This is like releasing a dam so that the glacier flows still faster. Since the edges are breaking off faster than the snow pack builds up in the centre, the whole sheet thins, so moulins have less distance to penetrate.
[Lynnette]: "Unless we can invent some kind of giant vacuum to remove the CO2 from our atmosphere (yeah, right!), we are rather screwed, I'm thinking."
No need to invent it, it already exists. We need to plant a trillion trees in temperate forests, where the right conditions can be provided to prevent decay from returning the carbon to the atmosphere. We'll recycle some fraction of it into methanol, of course.
"Don't forget that coal has an ongoing fuel cost."
Ya can't just dump hydrogen into those things and expect them to work. They tend to use deuterium pellets. There is going to be a fuel cost. I don't know anybody who's run out a good estimate on what that'll be.
I expect you've heard of deuterium pellets in the context of NIF, the attempt to create fusion by laser compression. I wouldn't count that among the approaches likely to work, in fact at this stage I'd say it's categorically failed.
Deuterium currently costs about $4,000 per kilo, about one tenth the cost of the energy equivalent in coal. Costs of commercial extraction should go way down if there was a bigger market than the current highly rarefied one. The easiest fusion reactions involve tritium as well as deuterium. Apart from a starter charge of tritium it's normally bred in situ from lithium, another plentiful element.
"Deuterium currently costs about $4,000 per kilo, about one tenth the cost of
the energy equivalent in coal."
Coal is in higher demand. And I don't think you're accounting for the fact that only some small fraction of the deuterium can be expected to happen to hit head-on and maybe fuse. ‘Energy equivalent’ is not the same thing as extractable energy.
"…lithium, another plentiful element."
‘Plentiful’ is a relative term. It's considerably less plentiful than say…aluminum. What costs more, a pound of refined aluminum or a pound of anthracite coal?
"only some small fraction of the deuterium can be expected to happen to hit head-on and maybe fuse"
So what happens to the rest? Disappears?
"‘Plentiful’ is a relative term."
Relative to the amount required it's effectively inexhaustible.
"Costs of commercial extraction should go way down if there was a bigger
market than the current highly rarefied one."
There's the thing I was looking for right there. The fuel for these things has to be produced; it does not occur naturally in usable form. So far I've not seen any good analyses suggesting that the costs of producing these fuels can be brought down in the face of surging demands for the same. (Nor, do I believe anybody's yet produced a net positive power output, but that's another problem entirely.)
We can today make gold from lead, the ancient alchymest's dream. Only thing is, manufactured gold costs more to make than mined gold costs to find and extract. With diamonds it's another matter matter; they can make diamonds these days, gem quality diamonds, as cheap or cheaper than the market price for natural diamonds. But I don't know that the fusion fuels for these little burp reactors they're working on are going to be diamonds rather than gold, and don't know of anybody who claims to know.
typo there: …alchemist's dream…
"So far I've not seen any good analyses suggesting that the costs of producing these fuels can be brought down in the face of surging demands for the same."
They don't need to be brought down. They cost one tenth the price of coal today. The process is simple. The Germans were doing it during the second world war. You could do it with equipment you could build at home. Surging demand is irrelevant since the quantities available are unlimited. The publicly funded research (ITER) is costing hundreds of billions -- you think they left the fuel cycle to worry about later?
"Washington (CNN) -- Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, has some
harsh words for the recently released Benghazi report, led by his own party.
"‘I think the report is full of crap,’ Graham told Gloria Borger on CNN's ‘State of the Union’ on Sunday."
"They don't need to be brought down."
So you say. But that's only because I blew on by what was a stupid question, and so you mistakenly jumped to the conclusion that you got away with it. To wit:
"So what happens to the rest [of the deuterium]? Disappears?"
You'd have us believe it magically reprocesses itself for free back into a usable form and format.
It does not. I blew by the question because it was a stupid question.
"You'd have us believe it magically reprocesses itself for free back into a usable form and format."
What magical reprocessing do you imagine it needs?
My point was that I didn't believe in the magical part at all.
What reprocessing do you imagine it needs?
You're searching hard for a fight. Are you sure this is the fight you want, or would you rather I let you continue your search in hopes of a better prospect?
LOL. I don't play those games anymore. You want to learn something about the deuterium fuel cycle, feel free to ask. If not, feel free to believe anything you please about it.
Wise choice. There'll surely be a better prospect come along eventually.
I doubt it. You were 100% clueless on this one. But like I said, I don't play your silly games anymore.
Maybe not.
Wiki say:
"Thus, in order for an IFE [inertial fusion energy] plant to be economically viable,
fuel shots would have to cost considerably less than ten cents [per each] in year
2012 dollars."
And then again, maybe so. Perhaps if you'd done less of the huffing and puffing and posturing, we could have avoided your confusion. I already told you at Sun Nov 23, 12:36:00 pm above that I didn't count that form of ICF among the approaches likely to work. If you had prioritised a bit of honest dialogue above a spate of furious Googling to prove me wrong, you might have learned that the "NIF" of my comment is the National Ignition Facility of your Google reference.
I'm fully aware that you don't put much stock in the laser based system. However, unlike areas where you imagine yourself to excel, like Catholic theology and theoretical physics, in an area of applied science such as power production, terms sometimes actually mean what they sound like they might mean.
That said, the idea to follow is the notion of containment (‘confinement’ is the techie preferred term).
The first problem is keeping the power producing fusion contained else it blows itself out. You want to concentrate on ‘inertial and electric ion confinement’ with electrical fields doing the work lasers do in the more traditional NIF reactors. Sounds like a reasonable idea, but they still have the problem of maintaining containment, and so far, I've not heard of anybody who's maintained their confinement for longer than some small fraction of second. Guess what happens to your fuel mix when your reaction becomes ‘not confined’.
"Guess what happens to your fuel mix when your reaction becomes ‘not confined’."
Why don't you tell us?
One of the things that happens is that the fuel mix fails to ‘magically reprocess itself for free back into a usable form and format.’
And, in the meantime, of course, only a tiny fraction of it ever got converted into usable fusion power.
That assumes that the fuel first changes from a "usable form" into an "unusable form". You still haven't told us what you imagine the latter is, only that you imagine it occurs "when your reaction becomes ‘not confined’".
You appear to be still working on the theory that you can just dump some fuel down those things and expect them to work. If that were true, they'd just have rerouted the exhaust back into the intake and would have made them work a long time ago.
Good god, you're actually showing a bit of insight here. Rerouting the exhaust back into the intake is exactly (well, with a little poetic license) what inertial electric confinement does. Any advance on what the "unusable form" is?
By the way, have you heard of anybody who claims to have maintained a hot fusion reaction using inertial confinement for anything more than a small fraction of a second? Using any containment mechanisms? ‘Cause I sure as hell haven't. I think that'd be front page news all across the planet.
These things are all burp reactors. They prepare a fuel charge, the sucker burps once and that's it, and they prepare to feed it another charge.
"By the way, have you heard of anybody who claims to have maintained a hot fusion reaction using inertial confinement for anything more than a small fraction of a second? Using any containment mechanisms? ‘Cause I sure as hell haven't. I think that'd be front page news all across the planet."
That's why I didn't say at Sun Nov 23, 12:38:00 am above that it has been cracked. I said I am optimistic that it will be cracked. I base that on my knowledge of progress to date.
"These things are all burp reactors. They prepare a fuel charge, the sucker burps once and that's it, and they prepare to feed it another charge."
Most, if not all, of the efforts focus on pulsed operation. You have to get energy out of the thing. You also have to get rid of any "ash" (i.e. the helium fusion product) that threatens to quench the reaction. Fortunately, net energy production doesn't depend on steady state operation. Nor does it depend on the fuel being prepared in as complex a configuration as the deuterium pellets used in laser compression.
"Nor does it depend on the fuel being prepared in as complex a configuration as the deuterium
pellets used in laser compression."
But it still needs to cost less than 10¢ to restore the exhaust to a usable form and format. They're not there yet. (And then there's the problem nobody's yet cracked of getting more power out than they put in to maintaining confinement.)
They can, by the way, recollect the unspent deuterium from the pellet operations too, if they want to do that. Reprocessing the exhaust isn't quite the same thing as rerouting it back into an intake manifold.
"But it still needs to cost less than 10¢ to restore the exhaust to a usable form and format."
So far we only have your say-so that it ever takes on an unusable form. Are you going to tell us what that is?
"They can, by the way, recollect the unspent deuterium from the pellet operations too, if they want to do that. Reprocessing the exhaust isn't quite the same thing as rerouting it back into an intake manifold."
IEF doesn't bare the slightest resemblence to laser compression ICF. The latter was always ridiculous, from the get go. Even the Wiki article maintains the diplomatic fiction that they "achieved a major milestone in 2013". That was an attempt to keep overpaid public servants in a job for a couple of years longer, after the gubmint had finally told them they were pulling the plug on them. Everyone who knew anything knew the whole enterprise was dead in the water.
resemblence = resemblance
"IEF doesn't bare the slightest resemblence to laser compression ICF."
Rotary combustion engines don't look much like piston engines either. The lack of any apparent ‘resemblance’ is deceiving. Neither one relies on ‘steady state operation’. You didn't confuse anybody with that one, in spite of your best efforts.
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
"So far we only have your say-so that it ever takes on an unusable form."
Nope, we also have your admission that they have to remove the ‘ash’. I'll not bother with the problem of having to remove the slag too (among other necessary preps). The one admission is quite sufficient for my purposes.
"Neither one relies on ‘steady state operation’"
The reference was intended to be to rotary combustion and internal combustion engines, not to his proposed distinction between ICF and IEF, although it applies there too.
Damn boy, didn't I warn you to wait for a better, more promising prospect? Ya gotta learn patience.
And, just by the way…
"You were 100% clueless on this one."
You have no idea how hearty a laugh I got out of that one. I knew you were goin’ for it right then. Ya just can't help yourself.
"You have no idea how hearty a laugh I got out of that one. I knew you were goin’ for it right then. Ya just can't help yourself."
Yep, I admit to a weakness in terms of wantin' to educate you, in spite of yourself. I usually drip feed you enough clues that you can keep on Googlin', and imagine you're keeping up. Otherwise you get disillusioned and drop out early... as nearly happened above when you were furiously Googlin' the complete wrong process.
"Nope, we also have your admission that they have to remove the ‘ash’."
Fortunately the fusion products are easily distinguishable from the fuel constituents by mass, and can be separated by a "diverter" which functions essentially the same as a mass spectrometer.
Any other advances on the "unusable form" of the fuel?
Not to burst your bubble, but I didn't bother to go for a Google until just after your post of 12:12:00 pm with the ‘100% clueless’ notation.
Your problem is still what it's always been, you think getting people lost in your jargon games makes them think you're smart.
Doesn't work on me. It so happens that I already knew what a tokamak was.
LOL. Tokamaks (which have been in the news for sixty years so it don't take much genius to have heard of them) are nothing to do with IEC either. But you know that ... (now).
:)
Knew that long you before you ever wrote down tokamak or EIC on these pages.
So, about that "unusable form" of the fuel ... ?
It's got ‘ash’ in it, among its other problems.
Yep, we've dealt with that -- continuously removed below the "quench" level by a diverter. What else?
"The one admission is quite sufficient for my purposes."
Lee C. @ Mon Nov 24, 02:24:00 pm
Tell ya what teacher. You make the absurd claim that this ‘diverter’ will clean up the fuel enough to make it usable again, tell us you actually believe that, and then I'll you why you're fulla shit.
I may even run a Google to get the name of somebody with credentials behind my point.
Or, you can maybe figure it out for yourself.
Should read as:
"…and then I'll tell you why you're fulla shit."
"The one admission is quite sufficient for my purposes."
Who knows what your "purposes" are, but if they're to discuss how "to restore the exhaust to a usable form and format" (Mon Nov 24, 01:55:00 pm), then I don't see how it's sufficient for your purposes to agree that the exhaust never gets to an unusable form, as you appear to have just done.
"You make the absurd claim that this ‘diverter’ will clean up the fuel enough to make it usable again, tell us you actually believe that, and then I'll you why you're fulla shit."
LOL. Glad to see you've been furiously Googlin' and not wastin' yer time. I take satisfaction from proddin' y'all on to such self-education.
On the other hand, I fear you are trying to run before you learn to walk. There are serious problems with getting to the stage where there is any ash to remove. They may be surmountable. They may not. I'll give y'all some keywords to Google if you like.
It's not a matter of "belief", it's a question of weighing up the probabilities and making a series of educated guesses. I'll leave the "beliefs" to yer Lord High Jesuiticalness :)
"Glad to see you've been furiously Googlin' and not wastin' yer time."
Hadn't been to Google; didn't need to go there.
However, all that would prove, were it true, is that it was that easy to punch a hole in your argument, just going on knowing what to google up.
I believe my argument is that "there are at least five respectable efforts [toward nuclear fusion] under way" and I'm optimistic about the prospects of at least one of them cracking it. Y'all want to punch a hole in that by furiously Googlin' issues around helium ash removal, I salute yer dedication to proving me wrong (even if not for the most noble of motives), and look forward to being educated.
"There are serious problems with getting to the stage where there is any ash to
remove. They may be surmountable. They may not."
May not be surmountable? Curious admission comin’ from a fella who was just earlier touting this as the great new thing, so obviously superior to all other forms of containment, and destined to be workable in three years if were lucky, thirty years if we were not.
"…by furiously Googlin' issues around helium ash removal…"
It hadn't occurred to me to question whether this ‘diverter’ was actually practical for removal of helium ‘ash’. So, there's another problem there, is there? That doesn't work so well either?
The more you chatter, the more holes seem to be apprearin’ your position.
I sense you may be having difficulty with some basics of R&D. If there weren't any problems we'd be using this stuff today. We're not. I'll leave you to wrestle with the logical implications of that.
:) :) :)
So, the assertion of a three year time line if we're lucky is, as the Nixon administration once put it, "No longer operative"?
You have me baffled there.
Probably the reference to Nixon was an inside joke only Americans would likely get--don't worry ‘bout it.
Uh, no. I understood the Nixon reference very well. I was baffled as to why you think I'd have lied in the first place about what is, after all, merely my educated guess, or have changed my mind on the strength of anything you've said. It's not like you brought any new information to the table :)
Speaking of (another) Nixon (governor of Missouri) ... dashed inconsiderate to make us wait until 2am UTC for the Darren Wilson indictment decision. Do they think the prime meridian runs through their state ... or do the riots just look better at night time?
That time of night in St. Louis, Missouri, it'll be getting cold. Some of the potential rioters will have given on hot rage and gone home to get out of the cold.
Makes sense. No point announcing it in time for an all day riot. Protestors I've seen interviewed, though, seem pretty determined to "be heard". And Wilson and his defence team sound confident that there will be no indictment. Is that the general feeling?
Also ... was the Chuck Hagel resignation announcement timed to be buried under the Ferguson news?
No indictment.
No riot either. The crowd before the courthouse began to break up and wander off even before the prosecutor finished his announcement.
Some of the crowd look pretty restive to me.
The evidence being presented is interesting (and pretty damning for Mr. Brown).
[Marcus] Japan is often held up as some sort of horror-example with their aging population and their lack of immigration and lack of economic growth. Still, look at ordinary people in Japan and they seem to be doing pretty well for themselves. Low crimerates, high life expectancy, lots of savings, high purchasing power, etc. Could be worse, right?
Well, of course it could. But if left to continue on this path who will be left, well, alive? You do have to have some replacement population, or what's the point?
Pete,
That ice melting experiment was interesting.
Between higher temps, pressure melting, and the growth of algae, which creates a heat attracting landscape, melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet appears to be occurring faster than scientists had originally thought.
As the ice sheet flows faster, there is more iceberg calving at the terminus.
Rather like tossing ice cubes into a drink. Eventually they will melt increasing the water levels of the oceans. If it is enough to affect the thermohaline current then there will be a decrease in global temperatures leading to refreezing. That would be in keeping with a self-regulating system. Possible? If so, it may not be so pleasant for many organisms living on the planet at the time.
I hadn't heard about the algal growth and its effect -- that's interesting. I did see an experiment testing the opposite effect -- silvered plastic sheeting spread over several hundred square metres of snow to see how much the melt was reduced. Not sure what the point was though ... they're hardly going to cover thousands of square miles as a "fix".
Regarding the thermohaline current, I'm under the impression (but I could certainly be wrong) that it is still in the realm of speculation that its slowdown was the cause of previous glaciations. I'm not aware of any seafloor sediment studies, or other evidence, that indicates a slowdown. I don't know what sort of evidence would be capable of showing such a thing, although I know seafloor sediments and ice cores samples can be used to show rates of iceberg calving, levels of volcanic ash and blown dust, atmospheric isotopic ratios (which are proxies for temperature), predominant flora (through pollen grains), and so on. Last study I read (several years ago) showed no thermohaline current slowdown in the north Atlantic as a result of increased melting. I think we'd hear about that pretty quickly if it was the case, although it's by no means easy to measure.
Hmmm...appears they have been busy tear gassing reporters in Ferguson.
Gunshots, flash-bangs and tear gas canisters being tossed back and forth.
Seems to be plenty of tear gas floating around, alright.
It looks like there are people within the protesters who are intent on creating a violent confrontation, throwing bricks and attacking a police car, trying to set it afire. Others trying to calm those people down. Police are trying to isolate those who are causing problems. I wonder if there are people from outside the area agitating. We'll see.
"I wonder if there are people from outside the area agitating."
Upwards of 25% of the people arrested in the earlier protests were from out-of-state (counting both Missouri and Illinois as in-state.)
Quite a few people with faces concealed also. Not to mention the ones equipped with gas masks.
It's an anomalous scene -- the burning car, the crowds of protestors and lines of police ... and above it all a large red illuminated "Seasons Greetings" sign! I bet someone will make an iconic photo of it.
The crowd outside the courthouse had dropped to around 150 people at one point; I don't know where it is now; I think the activity directors are trying to concentrate a critical mass on the Ferguson Police Headquarters.
But, it is cold in Ferguson tonight.
There is also the issue of soot from wildfires darkening the ice contributing to melting.
I think you need massive amounts of fresh water to affect the thermohaline current.
They've started looting some stores. You always get the criminal element involved when violence starts.
Yeah, that "Long Summer" book suspects that the breaching of glacial Lake Agassiz and freshwater outflow via Hudson Bay was the cause of the cooling known as the Younger Dryas. The lake at one stage had a surface area of nearly half a million square kilometres. Just one of its outbursts (much later than the Y.D.) caused a sea level rise of between three and nine feet, i.e. equivalent to up to a third of the entire Greenland ice sheet.
"You always get the criminal element involved when violence starts."
Yeah, pity. It does seem to me the majority of the folk there are interested in peaceful protests. Some are determined to wreck it, or just cash in on it.
Little Caesar's is burning. Idiots.
Could be just an overdone pizza? :)
Hmmm..they're talking about some protests in New York occurring.
I'm off for the night...
Could be just an overdone pizza? :)
Lol! Way over done!
Yeah they were talking about some protests in Union Square in NY earlier.
G'night. I've got an assignment to write.
Lynnette: "Well, of course it could. But if left to continue on this path who will be left, well, alive? You do have to have some replacement population, or what's the point?"
There are over 100 million of 'em and even the book you recommend suggests Tokyo as the most populated city in 2050. So I don't think you have to worry about them dying off completely any time soon.
I don't really get the "logic" that says a population can't decline and then increase again. Why not? It's way more sustainable than the holy grail of infinite ever growing growth. If you have look at it for more than a few decades ahead that is.
You noted yourself that we add a new billion people every 12 years now (soon to be every 11 years since the rate increases along with population growth). How does 15 Billion people on Earth in 2100 seem to you? And how would that affect things like water scarcity, lack of foodstuffs, disease, war, mass migration, the energy system, depleted oceans, CO2 emmissions, pollution, etc, etc?
Morning news is talking about police cars burned, buildings burned, chaos in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. I think it was one police car and a pizza parlor. I saw a high elevation shot (from a chopper it would seem) of two car fires in a parking lot, but I'm not certain they were even in Ferguson.
It also seems there was some looting, some by folks who seem to have been planning on doing some looting under cover of the riots they expected. (Speculation already about fairly high percentages of those folks being from out-of-town.) Also some random shooting (apparently mostly in the air since there were no reports of gunshot victims).
There was some trouble, but seemingly not quite as much as the media was ready to breathlessly report.
Of course, that's just the first night.
CBS News is now saying that ‘at least a dozen buildings and cars were set on fire.
"An entire row of businesses on West Florissant Avenue, a major thoroughfare,
[in Ferguson] was engulfed in flames."
CNN
The damage in Ferguson seems largely localized to the West Florissant area. It had been mostly spared in the past summer's riots.
Pete, Lee,
I'm not ging tto even try to get in on that debate over fusion and how it could work or what challenges there are, because I don't know enough and I think it'd take me a while to read up on the matter to know enough to add to the discussion. Something I don't inted to do right now. So my comments are not about the details of it but rather I try to look at the bigger picture.
Pete: "All of the other efforts, however, are smaller scale and dramatically cheaper. All of them would be cheaper than present day coal fired plants, which are being built at a rate of one per week in China alone. They variously rely on some combination of inertial and electric ion confinement, instead of the magnetic confinement of the ITER/tokamak approach which has to overcome problems of plasma self-action."
I am not really sure how you think you can comment on the cost of something that is yet to (hopefully) come along. OK, you can compare the feedstocks: coal VS lithium or whatever. But the cost of the plants or the surrounding infrastructure are yet unknown. Also the EROEI is not known and that's a major factor. It's always a major factor in any debate on energy, but often sadly missing.
Pete: "If you have a sufficiently cheap source of electricity, oil is not a showstopper either. You can use methanol as a near drop-in replacement and make it from hydrogen from electrolysed water and CO/CO2."
I challenge the idea that methanol is a "near drop-in" replacement for oil. I take that to mean you believe existing engines that runs on gasoline could be run on Mathanol or converted to run on Methanol? I say the cannot (Yes, in a lab they probably could, but not in the real world).
As for new engines, yes Methanol could be a great option since it in its liquid form would be a "near drop-in" for the infrastructure we have in place already. But there are still challenges with running engines on it. They tend to have significantly shorter lifespans for one thing.
Also: we started out in the CO2/environment debate. There you held upp these new (possible) fusion reactors as a way to get energy with less (or almost zero) CO2 emissions. First ane foremost that would mean replacing the coal fired plants If we are to focus first on CO2 and only THEN to use those new (possible, but not yet real) plants to cook up Methanol for the global transportation fleet. So what would be a realistic timeframe to accomplish both?
While I agree that our best (IMO only) real hope lies in some sort of safe/safeish nuclear power, because I believe all other non-fossils while some being good alternatives can never be scaled up enough, I feel rather pessimistic we'll get there in time.
On a side note I'd like to advocate conservation. Slap a severe tax on gas-guzzlers and subsidise cars that run on little fuel or (viable) alternatives. That's a political decision which could be implemented fast, give fast results and buy us some much needed time.
"So what would be a realistic timeframe to accomplish both?"
Without a realistic timeframe to accomplish first one, there's no way to estimate the timeframe for both.
We don't have a realistic timeframe to accomplish the first one. That's gonna require a technological breakthrough that's not yet on the foreseeable horizon. First, somebody's gotta capture the unicorn.
Marcus,
There are over 100 million of 'em and even the book you recommend suggests Tokyo as the most populated city in 2050. So I don't think you have to worry about them dying off completely any time soon.
Actually, Smith's figure of 36.4 million Tokyo residents by 2025 may have been a little conservative. According to Wiki there are around 35 million right now. If you scroll down that page you will note that it also makes the same point as you, that an older population brings less crime, more affluence and more stability than a younger one. But it is also noted that the segment of the population that is 65 or older will increase with time, threatening the standard of living. Japan's estimated population in 2060 will be down to 87 million.
I don't really get the "logic" that says a population can't decline and then increase again. Why not?
Well of course it can. In the case of countries with a low birth rate that is not high enough to maintain the population size immigration would be a solution.
How does 15 Billion people on Earth in 2100 seem to you? And how would that affect things like water scarcity, lack of foodstuffs, disease, war, mass migration, the energy system, depleted oceans, CO2 emmissions, pollution, etc, etc?
Of course all of those things will be adversely affected by a larger world population. I guess all I am saying is that for a country like Japan to maintain a robust economy and maintain its standard of living it will need young people. Whether they are provided through increasing birth rates or immigration doesn't really matter. Although I suppose you could argue that immigration would be the better choice because it has the net effect of not increasing world population. Japan would be in effect stealing people from other areas of the world.
Marcus (Tue Nov 25, 11:42:00 am), all very good points, and none of them easy to answer. Fusion is a big subject area and there are many different approaches with quite different characteristics.
"I am not really sure how you think you can comment on the cost of something that is yet to (hopefully) come along. OK, you can compare the feedstocks: coal VS lithium or whatever. But the cost of the plants or the surrounding infrastructure are yet unknown."
The reason I am able to be optimistic is that some efforts are quite far advanced. Only one of them (the ITER tokamak) is pretty much guaranteed to work, but the broad parameters for others have been worked out. That is not to say that they might yet fall at some hurdle -- if that was not the case we would not be in the realms of speculation but of waiting for the engineering to be completed. Nevertheless, certain characteristics of the plant can be anticipated.
Firstly, with only one exception they are all heat engines, with the heat being generated by collision of neutrons with the container walls. That more or less implies steam or gas turbines as you would have in any modern coal, gas, or nuclear plant. That on its own means that they have one big limitation in common with such plant -- large quantities of coolant water required. The one exception I mentioned is aneutronic fusion, which produces only alpha particles (i.e. high energy helium ions) which, by deceleration in an electric field, would produce high voltage direct current, ready for transmission without any other intervening plant and, crucially, no water requirements. That is the holy grail of fusion, but it requires either high energies (for proton-boron aneutronic fusion) or exotic fuels (e.g. helium-3) which might have to be mined on the moon. So lets assume the plant is at least as big and complex as any modern power plant, but bearing in mind that advanced technology could dramatically reduce the size and complexity in future.
Ok, if we assume neutron heating, then we have some other big problems in common with current nuclear fission plants. In fact, fission plants have some advantages because the neutrons can be absorbed and regulated by damping rods that go right into the reactor core along with the fuel. The entire core can then be bathed in the primary coolant for extracting heat. In a fusion reactor the "core" contains a rarefied gas and any intrusions would wreck the reaction. So the container walls must take the brunt of the neutron bombardment. Over time, this means some transmutation of elements in the container, which are both embrittled and become radioactive. It is low level radioactivity, very different from the potent daughter products of fission reactions, but it nevertheless needs some processing and handling, and the embrittlement means that core replacement is eventually necessary. There are some possible improvements on this situation along the same lines touted for current fission reactors -- using molten fluoride salts as both neutron absorber and coolant. (There are even more complications if we have to breed tritium from lithium in a reactor blanket, but lets keep things simple).
(cont'd)...
...(cont'd)
Finally, there is the size of the fusion part of the plant (minus the turbines). Magnetic confinement of the reactants, as in ITER/tokamaks, place lower limits on the curvature -- and thus size -- of the machine. The tighter the turns your plasma takes, the more power is required to contain it, and the more kinking and turbulence effects you experience. You have to remember that plasmas produce their own magnetic effects that act against the containing force. You can see this on a gigantic scale on the sun's surface in coronal mass ejections -- normally plasma flows along giant looping arcs between adjacent sunspots which have opposite magnetic polarity. When adjacent loops are forced together you get something called magnetic reconnection which snaps the loops like elastic bands, causing stupendous explosions in the form of CMEs. This is part of the reason why ITER is a fundamentally large machine.
Inertial electric confinement is a different proposition. Instead of compressing a hot plasma like a tokamak, they accelerate plasma ions using an electric field. In a tokamak, the atoms in the hot plasma ions take on a huge array of different random energies, according to the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution -- the well-known black body curve. Vast energy goes into heating the plasma, but only a tiny few ions achieve the energy required for fusion. In an IEC device, the plasma ions are mono-energetic (initially at least). They work quite like an old TV tube or valve triode and, in fact, fusion reactions have been observed for decades in modified tubes such as the Farnsworth fusor (but not at breakeven energies of course).
In IEC one of the electrodes is replaced by a cloud of electrons at the centre of the device (the "virtual cathode") which attracts incoming ions into a potential well at energies sufficient for fusion. You never get the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of energies, so all the heating energy is saved. Where you do spend your energy is in building the electric and magnetic fields to create and maintain the potential well. Also, if enough of your ions are involved in non-fusion collisions, you get Maxwellianisation and useless heat (the "unusable form" of the fuel that Lee C wishes he'd known about a few posts ago ;-)
The energy yield of IEC reactors is theorised to be quite dependent on a small number of machine parameters, one of which is the radius of the container. Unlike a tokamak, an IEC machine is unlikely to be more than a couple of meters in diameter (not including the thermal plant). None of the designs for either tokamaks or IEC devices involve especially exotic materials. (There are things like niobium-titanium for superconducting magnets, at several tens of thousands of dollars per metric tonne, but not outlandish).
(cont'd)...
...(cont'd)
So, let's summarise and answer your question about plant cost in broad brush strokes. Except for "holy grail" devices, there is the cost of conventional thermal plant. ITER is additionally an intrinsically large and complex plant costing billions of dollars. (The initial research reactor will cost hundreds of billions, over a couple of decades). IEC devices are much smaller, and in some sense are just glorified vacuum tubes, but could incur similar operational costs in terms of core degradation and required handling of low grade radioactive waste (again, discounting "holy grail" devices). But I presume this costs would be correspondingly lower due to the small scale of the device.
Current capital costs of plant for one gigawatt of power in the US, per EIA figures, are (very, very roughly to avoid getting into small details) -- combined cycle natural gas: $1 billion; single unit advanced pulverised coal: $3 billion; dual unit nuclear: $5 billion. Fixed operational and maintenance costs amount to an additional 2% of CAPEX per year for nuclear and 1% for the others. Variable O&M costs (i.e. fuel, based on 100% load factor) are 2% of CAPEX for gas, 1% for coal, and 0.25% for nuclear. (All these figures are for electricity -- they already take into account the thermal efficiencies of the different technologies).
There is already a lesson in this. The comparatively cheap cost of nuclear fuel doesn't make up for the exorbitent capital costs compared to coal or gas if those costs have to be amortized over, say, thirty years. So even "free" fusion fuel is no guarantee of "cheap" energy. This is the concern over ITER. Capital costs could be vast. Even if you attach a large environmental cost to existing coal and gas to make the comparison more favourable, it ain't gonna be cheap. See also these figures which show CAPEX, OPEX, and levelised costs (including amortized plant over 30 years) for different types of generation. Nuclear competes with the dirtiest forms of coal, and beats clean coal, but gas is much cheaper than either. It also shows UK and German costs, which are higher than US.
So tokamak fusion -- the only one that I would give a 95%+ chance of "success" (i.e. net power generation) to -- may never be financially viable. I would give ICF a <5% chance of success, and I don't think it would be financially viable either. That leaves IEC, which I'm going to give a 60-40 chance of success, based on the number of efforts ongoing, their success in attracting private investment, and their technical successes to date to the extent they have published them and I've read and understood them (i.e. a limited amount). If they succeed technically, they have a chance of being cheaper than existing nuclear fission, due to their small size, simpler fuel cycle, and much lower level of hazardous waste.
(cont'd)...
...(cont'd)
"Also the EROEI is not known and that's a major factor. It's always a major factor in any debate on energy, but often sadly missing."
This is difficult to answer, mainly because of difficulties with the EROEI concept itself. In terms of instantaneous input and outputs, the figure normally used is the power gain factor (or "Q"). It is expected that a factor of 20 is achievable for tokamak fusion, and as you probably know this compares favourably with today's conventional oil or coal. However, it completely ignores the embodied energy in the plant construction and materials. Because of high capital costs, you will see wildly different estimates for EROEI even for today's nuclear fission. I would expect EROEI not to be an issue for IEC which can achieve higher Q than MCF, due to not heating a thermalised plasma, and lower capital costs. Of course, working IEC has not been demonstrated, and the EROEI is obviously going to non-existent for any form of "unobtainium" ;-)
"I challenge the idea that methanol is a 'near drop-in' replacement for oil. I take that to mean you believe existing engines that runs on gasoline could be run on Mathanol or converted to run on Methanol? I say the cannot (Yes, in a lab they probably could, but not in the real world). As for new engines, yes Methanol could be a great option since it in its liquid form would be a "near drop-in" for the infrastructure we have in place already. But there are still challenges with running engines on it. They tend to have significantly shorter lifespans for one thing
Ok, I'll relax the claim. We could use methanol blended with petrol in the same 10% mix as we do for ethanol today. We could probably up it to 15% or 20% at a pinch. We could convert existing engines with certain anti-corrosion measures if necessary. But if we had to wait for the entire car fleet to be replaced, then so be it -- most of that could happen in ten years if pushed.
(cont'd)...
...(cont'd)
"Also: we started out in the CO2/environment debate. There you held upp these new (possible) fusion reactors as a way to get energy with less (or almost zero) CO2 emissions. First ane foremost that would mean replacing the coal fired plants If we are to focus first on CO2 and only THEN to use those new (possible, but not yet real) plants to cook up Methanol for the global transportation fleet. So what would be a realistic timeframe to accomplish both?"
There are two answers to this -- one is based on technical criteria, the other on political. Obviously if these new devices don't work, the answer is "never". However, as I said, tokamak fusion will work, and a timescale is already mapped out. It is rather depressing. Twenty years from now before ITER is constructed and testing performed. This includes materials testing for core shielding to address the activation and embrittlement issues. At least another ten years to build a net power demonstration reactor. If all goes well, commercial reactors begin construction in the second half of the century. IEC devices, if they work, are much cheaper and easier to construct. Much progress has been made with only millions, or tens of millions, in investment. But there are technical hurdles which have yet to be overcome, so there is no guaranteed timeframe. Admitting that various groups are trying to hype their wares and attract investment, three of them have given timeframes for demonstration reactors of three to five years. Twenty years for commercial deployment might not be unreasonable (always with the caveat that nothing might work). Switching thereafter to alternative methods of liquid fuel production would still be a mammoth task, likely needing decades more. The political part of the decision comes down to deciding to retire fossil fuels for power plants and transportation early. Obviously the decision gets a lot easier once there is an alternative, but you still have to decide to scrap plants that might have decades of usability still ahead of them.
"While I agree that our best (IMO only) real hope lies in some sort of safe/safeish nuclear power, because I believe all other non-fossils while some being good alternatives can never be scaled up enough, I feel rather pessimistic we'll get there in time. On a side note I'd like to advocate conservation. Slap a severe tax on gas-guzzlers and subsidise cars that run on little fuel or (viable) alternatives. That's a political decision which could be implemented fast, give fast results and buy us some much needed time."
I agree with this, mostly. However, there's no world government that could implement policies globally, so a kind of "tragedy of the commons" may be inevitable.
(end)
"Also, if enough of your ions are involved in non-fusion collisions, you get
Maxwellianisation and useless heat (the "unusable form" of the fuel that Lee C
wishes he'd known about a few posts ago"
I was gonna let that string of jargon-babble go by until I got to here. You are apparently fairly clueless here. I wasn't even close to thinking ‘bout that.
You've got some significant problems with corruption of fuel during the burp in a deuterium-tritium fusion reactor that you've apparently never even thought about. (Must not be jargon-rich enough to attract your interest.)
‘Maxwellianisation’? Appears I know who has been furiously googling up stuff on fusion power of late. (Hint for Marcus and Lynnette: Ain't me.)
That's not actually a corruption of fuel problem, as in, not a problem specific to the un-spent fuel still contained in the exhaust. Although it certainly is a problem. I'd always thought of this more as problem of losing focus. But, since these are burp reactors, one doesn't need to maintain focus for long, simply acquire it for long enough. After that it's merely a cooling problem.
Great comment Pete, quite enough for a blog post on its own. I'm still not going to pretend to understand how those various fusion reactors are supposed to work. I did find it interesting to read that there's one possible solution which doesn't involve heating water and running the steam through turbines. I didn't know that.
But I remain a pessimist, largely due to the vast scale of the challenges.
On a side note we have a nuclear plant here about 40 minutes from where I live that was closed down in -99, partly to appease the Danes who had been furious about it for decades. Now they use it for education purposes since it's very convenient to have a real plant that was fully functional where all the equipment except the fuel is still intact. A friend who used to work there arranged a round tour and it was all very interesting. We got to check out the control rooms, the reactor basin (though obviously looking from behind a glass partitioning) and the turbines and condensation chamber. We could even go into the condensation chamber and have a look there. Apart from the nuclear reaction its, like you said Pete, a very simple and easy to understand process.
Lynnette: "But it is also noted that the segment of the population that is 65 or older will increase with time, threatening the standard of living."
That's the common view. One that Japan has been proving wrong for quite some time now.
It's like the common view about all them people retiring this decade and last that would create a great shortage of people to fill their jobs. First it was supposed to be those born in the 40's who would be almost impossible to replace. Well, they are almost all retired by now and not only have we not had any real problems with replacing them, but quite the opposite - high unemployment is the main problem. So now the new common view is how hard it will be to replace those born in the 50's. Guess what? I'm betting they too will be easily replaced or their jobs largely rationalised away.
Lynnette: "In the case of countries with a low birth rate that is not high enough to maintain the population size immigration would be a solution."
Or allow the population size to fall for a while. I don't see the harm in, for instance Japan, having "only" 87 million people.
Lynnette: "I guess all I am saying is that for a country like Japan to maintain a robust economy and maintain its standard of living it will need young people."
Some young people yes, which they also have got, quite many actually. But I say they have proven already that their increasingly older population doesn't really affect their standard of living, which is still arguably among the highest in the world. In a high tech robotised and computerised economy you simply don't need as many fit, young workers as in the past. Times have changed.
Lynnette: "Whether they are provided through increasing birth rates or immigration doesn't really matter."
LOL! You think so? Ask the japanese what they think about that then and you'll get a whole new idea 'bout it. :-)
Lynnette: "Although I suppose you could argue that immigration would be the better choice because it has the net effect of not increasing world population."
Quite the opposite is true. Migration increases the global population. That's a well established fact.
"Migration increases the global population."
That's an historical fact (averaged). I'm not sure that history is necessarily going to be applicable in a world where all the good land is already taken.
Well, unless there's a proven new theory I'll go with the current proven one. Seems a bit silly to do otherwise, no?
Lee: "That's an historical"
That caused me to Google whether it should be "an historical" or "a historical", because to me "an historical" seemed wrong.
Apparently "an historical" used to be the go to writing but these days "a historical" is more used.
There seems to be no real right or wrong but there is an increasing trend towards "a historical":
http://www.betterwritingskills.com/tip-w005.html
Interesting. I learned at least one new thing today it seems.
And the ‘theory’ to which you refer is exactly what?
"Apparently ‘an historical’ used to be the go to writing but these days…"
Yeah, I grew up in the deep backwoods; I've still got several ingrained anachronisms to my language.
"And the ‘theory’ to which you refer is exactly what?"
Just read through the last 5 comments and I'm sure you'll figure that out. It's right there in plain writing.
Whadda ya got to go on beyond this?
"Quite the opposite is true. Migration increases the global population. That's a well established fact."
Ya got anything other than, ‘that's a well established fact’?
[Lynnette]: "Although I suppose you could argue that immigration would be the better choice because it has the net effect of not increasing world population."
[Marcus]: Quite the opposite is true. Migration increases the global population. That's a well established fact.
Hmmm...yes, I suppose I could see that happening. Because usually migration is tied to poor or dangerous lives in the country of origin. Reaching a place of safety, and hopefully, creating a more prosperous life would lend itself to...ummm...starting a family. :)
Oops, forgot.
Or allow the population size to fall for a while. I don't see the harm in, for instance Japan, having "only" 87 million people.
As I see it that would depend on the makeup of those 87 million people. If they are older and elderly the cost for them maintaining a decent lifestyle will increase. Caring for the elderly takes an emotional and financial toll.
It's just amazing the things people have in their attic. :)
"… creating a more prosperous life would lend itself to...ummm...starting a family."
Birth rates tend to be higher in poor countries than in affluent countries. Nowadays childhood survival rates are high enough that population increases are higher in less prosperous regions. (Lot of affluent populations are having trouble maintaining population.) This was not always true in the historical record.
[Marcus]: 'Apparently "an historical" used to be the go to writing but these days "a historical" is more used. There seems to be no real right or wrong but there is an increasing trend towards "a historical"'
The problem with standardising it is that there is not (yet) a standard way of saying it either. H-dropping is a feature of many English dialects (and Scandinavian dialects too according to Wikipedia?). Not mine, I might add -- you'll never find an Irish speaker or writer using "an" before "h"; that's because in the Irish language a pronounced aspirated h sound is the standard way of breaking up adjacent vowel sounds without hiatus or glottal stop. It is funny sometimes hearing h-dropping English speakers pronounce Irish names where this occurs: there's a snooker player called Doherty who BBC commentators refer to variously as "Dough-erty" and "Dockerty" -- neither is correct and neither is a hiatus or glottal stop. The h is smoothly aspirated.
[Lee C]: "Yeah, I grew up in the deep backwoods; I've still got several ingrained anachronisms to my language."
Only in yer language? :)
Ok, joking aside, got some examples?
[Me]: 'you'll never find an Irish speaker or writer using "an" before "h"'
I mean in those disputed cases. We do write "an hour", of course.
Happy Thanksgiving to our American friends.
Hope your Thanksgiving is good in whatever way it's supposed to be (having never experienced one, I'm afraid I can only guess, but if it's anything like Christmas then I assume it's all about arguing over turkey recipes and table layouts, and maybe a spilled drink or two).
:)
I just read that we've got a new record for gloomy weather here in Sweden. So far in November there has been just 3 hours of sunshine in Stockholm. 3 hours in a whole month. Pathetic.
That's depressing. I thought we were bad, but actually we've been getting an acceptable mix of heavy showers interspersed with bright weather for most of the month. And temps haven't been too bad either, only falling now toward the end of the month with a couple of overnight frosts. Even though we are only three weeks from mid-winter, some of the trees are only starting to realise it's autumn.
I see Minnesota's had more snow, and lake effect areas are having more, as well as that snow in the north east. I don't think I'd like the north American climate much, or even the continental European one. The older I get the more I think our changeable weather here is perfect.
Thanks Pete. :)
I chopped up my cranberries and mixed my pineapple and marshmallows last night in prep for my cranberry salad. The squash was cut up this morning in anticipation of a slow baking with brown sugar in the oven. My brother and his wife are having Thanksgiving dinner, as usual, so we are all gathering there tonight. That gives me the day to while away doing whatever I want. Yipppeee! I like it when I find a little free time. :) Plus I have Friday off as well, so it's a nice long four day weekend. I will try my best to avoid doing any major Christmas shopping. Although I have heard that it isn't quite as bad as it used to be, with stores being open today (boo...hiss) and many shopping online.
Yes, we did get a little snow yesterday in my location. Just enough to slick up the roads and be a nuisance. I just finished sweeping off the back deck. They had more south of the cities.
We had just had a nice melting spell over the weekend too. Warm enough to melt off a lot of the ice build up from the 10 inches we got earlier in November. Of course there were those of us out chipping and chopping to encourage melting in front of our driveways. ;)
A new batch of "moderate rebels" unleashed into the worlds worst conflict zone by self appointed world police:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/86970f5cc5b34d94a4e5ed11a765d4dd/rebels-push-forward-southern-syria
"BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian rebels backed by the United States are making their biggest gains yet south of the capital Damascus, capturing a string of towns from government forces and aiming to carve out a swath of territory leading to the doorstep of President Bashar Assad's seat of power
The advances appear to be a rare visible success story from efforts by the U.S. and its allies to train and arm moderate rebel fighters.
The rebel forces are believed to include fighters who graduated from a nearly 2-year-old CIA training program based in Syria's southern neighbor Jordan.
[...]
The gains are a contrast to northern Syria, where U.S.-backed rebels are collapsing in the face of an assault by Islamic militants. Notably, in the south, the rebels are working together with fighters from al-Qaida's Syria branch, whose battle-hardened militants have helped them gain the momentum against government forces."
Already in bed with Al Qaida it seems. I wonder just how moderare those moderates will turn out to be?
"The rebel forces are believed to include fighters who graduated from a nearly
2-year-old CIA training program…said Gen. Ibrahim Jbawi, the spokesman for the
Free Syrian Army's…"
It might be a little early to assume that the Free Syrian Army has the story straight, or is necessarily telling it straight. (Unless, of course, one is a CIA paranoid Swede, in which case it's never too early to assume the worst.)
And, of course, we must remember, if even one single American trained, supposedly ‘moderate’ rebel ever cooperates with an Islamist anywhere in Syria, then that is to be declared as American support for al-Qaeda all across Sweden. (Cooperation being defined as not shooting hysterically at the first rumor of an al-Qaeda presence.)
You just can't read the article on it's own Lee? You just have to try to turn it back on me?
For fuck's sake, I gave you the AP this time, not the RT. You still seem to deeem it in the conspiracy realm.
Talk about a blinkered fool!
"For fuck's sake, I gave you the AP this time, not the RT."
And the AP did not back the claim as something they'd confirmed for themselves, but attributed it solely to the Free Syrian Army ‘general’. Also, they were more than a little vague on what it was that he considered ‘cooperation’.
As for me being ‘a blinkered fool’, I figure it's more than possible, it's likely, that some of our graduates will cooperate at times with Islamists against Assad. That's a good part of the reason why the Obama administration has been so hesitant to go wide open with support for the Free Syrian Army. It'd be foolish to expect 100% compliance from them with our druthers. But, occasional non-compliance, or even total non-compliance by a minor percentage of our graduates will hardly be sufficient basis to declare the policy of trying to limit al-Qaeda while supporting less drastic rebels a total failure.
In short, you're dancing way too early on this one. If you expect 100% to be our measure of success it's you who's the fool.
Things are heating up for the Kurds in Kobanê again.
Brits report that ISIS has launched an attack on Kobanê from inside Turkish territory, opening the attack with suicide bombers coming in across the border with Turkey. Turkey denies it happened.
[Petes]: Also ... was the Chuck Hagel resignation announcement timed to be buried under the Ferguson news?
If so, it didn't work for long. They were just talking about that today on CNN. Speculation is that he was forced out. I should think that's a given, considering how many Defense Secretaries Obama has went through.
I finally had a chance to read that article that Marcus linked to regarding the SAS raids on ISIL. They are estimating 200,000 members of ISIL? That's a lot higher then I have seen in the past. Same goes for the 500 British citizens fighting for ISIL.
But kudos to the Brits for their hard work! A brave group.
Here is more information on the attack by ISIL on Kobane from Turkey.
I remember reading earlier that the YPG had been alleging that ISIS has had a command/control node in a Turkish grain storage area near the border and that it was regularly patrolled/guarded by Turkish troops. The YPG was claiming that its function was to coordinate ISIS movements with the Turks so's to prevent any ‘friendly fire’ incidents between ISIS and Turkish troops. Your article mentions a grain storage area, grain silos in particular.
By the way…. Our Iraqi friend sees things a little differently than does the western press. He was posting a little earlier today about how ‘the rebels’ were already in ‘mopping up’ operations against the ‘remnants’ of the YPG and the Peshmerga in Kobanê. Seems to think Kobanê has effectively fallen to ISIS.
I don't think the Hagen announcement was timed to get lost in the Ferguson news. Obama didn't control the timing of the announcement in Ferguson. Besides, it looks like one of those few decisions Obama had not fully thought out.
So many things happening today and I'm still busy trying to get Christmas started. Got the tree up on Friday and the outside lights up on Saturday.
Anyway, I did see Zeyad's new post. I think that assessment a little premature. It looks to me like ISIL tried something and failed. The fact that they are continuing to throw tanks at the Kobane problem says that what they tried earlier was not working. I'm wondering where those tanks were pulled from? Mosul or Raqqa? I see this morning that we have been busy over the skies of Raqqa last night. If ISIL wants to bog down in Kobane, fine. We can hit their equipment wherever they place it. Tanks are finite, unless you can get replacements from somewhere. Even the Turks may be a little hesitant to slip a tank over to ISIL.
Dang it! I wanted to do a post on Ferguson sometime this weekend, but something always comes up. Anyway, we'll see...
"…a post on Ferguson…"
…Where angels fear to tread.
Seems pretty straightforward to me. In a country awash with guns, lethal showdowns are inevitable, especially where one side has a gun and the other hasn't. On the other hand, it makes it particularly stupid to be the aggressor when you don't have a gun, the defender is a cop, and you've just robbed a store with threats of violence and are high on an illegal substance. Add to that the fact that you attacked the cop in his car, have already had a grazing gunshot wound by way of warning, ran away, and then came back looking for a fight, and you're six foot four and three hundred pounds.
I'd say police should have more equipment and training to deal with situations in a non-lethal way. Given the way things are, though, the only complication is that the dead man is black, he has a deluded mother who thinks her boy "wouldn't have done something like that" in spite of overwhelming evidence that he did, and a community predisposed to taking take one side rather than the other.
Does that sum it up?
"…and you're six foot four and three hundred pounds…"
Officer Darrell Wilson is also 6 foot four, and weighs well in excess of 200 pounds, although he's not as heavy as was Michael Brown (who weighed maybe 280).
Is that supposed to make some kinda difference? (It's Darren Wilson by the way).
Correction, Brown's weight was up over 280 pounds, 289 by the autopsy
"Is that supposed to make some kinda difference?"
You seemed to think Brown's size significant enough to mention. I thought it might therefore be significant that Wilson is also a rather large fella. And, the ‘illegal substance’ in Brown's system was marijuana, which tests positive in the blood up to six weeks out from last usage, and which does not, in recreational doses, tend to support aggression. (Perhaps if the boy'd actually been high he'd still be alive today.)
I'd say being over one third heavier than your opponent is a significant relative size difference. Not as significant as your willingness to throw it around though. If you watched that store CCTV, Brown turns around after he's already reached the store exit to intimidate the store manager for daring to challenge him.
I agree the drug use is unlikely to be a factor in the aggression, but neither does it seem to have worked as a calming factor in Brown's case. I haven't seen anyone report depression or psychotic tendencies as a factor. So it's hard not to see stupidity and fecklessness as primary causes.
Not that I consider those as things deserving of being killed for. I do think the evidence supports Wilson's version of events, and that Brown was probably charging him. The "hands up don't shoot" mantra is bullshit and that evidence didn't withstand scrutiny.
On the other hand, why is a lone police officer giving chase to someone who has already displayed a willingness to attack him in spite of being shot at. Backup was only seconds away. What did he think he was going to achieve when he had already used potentially lethal force? That shows poor judgement.
"I'd say being over one third heavier than your opponent is a significant relative
size difference."
A physical advantage on account of being fat?
"On the other hand, why is a lone police officer giving chase to someone who has already
displayed a willingness to attack him in spite of being shot at."
Perhaps the cop was pissed off.
That shows poor judgement.
I don't think he was on the job long.
Four years in Ferguson. Don't know if that was his first job.
[Lee C]: "A physical advantage on account of being fat?"
Sure. Newton's laws of motion don't distinguish between fat and muscle.
"Perhaps the cop was pissed off."
Yes, perhaps. I would be.
"Four years in Ferguson. Don't know if that was his first job."
Could be wrong but I thought I read six on total.
"Newton's laws of motion don't distinguish between fat and muscle."
But, guys engaged in close combat do.
The muscle to fat ratio matters in a hand-to-hand fight. A look at Brown's pictures says he was fat.
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